Then Baldur made a web in the window of the farm's living room. This was fantastic, for a light burned there in the evening and the gnats arrived in throngs. But the farmer's wife was very tidy so, after two days, she appeared with a mop, and that was therefore that.
After his sojourn in front of the window, Baldur wove a web against the hen-roost. A dangerous place, one would say, but he stuck it out here a very long time, for the chickens never flew into that roost, walking studiously through the little archway instead; many gnats appeared in the swayingly warm air of the chicken coop and nobody was mad enough to go and wield a mop there. Baldur was only forced to give up this web when it had become too old and too dirty and too bedraggled to be used still. Not that he was still relying on the warning system of the vibrations in the web when something flew up against it. He leered, for although he could move he yet played the game of the calcium box where the little control centre had been stored which wanted to spy exclusively. Sometimes, because of this, he was already at his victims' side before these were actually well and truly stuck to the thread. This gave them an easy death, still quite ecstatic because of that trembling air from the hen-roost.
When Baldur left this net, he made one in a little window of the pigsty, then one near the hay stack, then one near the big barn once again, and then another one again in the pear tree. He grew older and bigger and his body became harder and more calcified, and the hinges became more of a struggle. On rare occasions he would kill another spider and occupy its net. He never thought any more, except when making a web; but construction, too, was in fact an almost automatic thing to him and he made no mistakes. He no longer swung and he made no rhymes. And it was as though his bitterness had become a new organ inside him, producing calcium.
One day, he left the yard and went out on to the road. knowing quite well that booty would be thinner there, knowing quite well that there would be no protection from wind and rain. Walking along the road he tested his jaws. These were rock hard and a touch grainy; for the first time in ages there was something like satisfaction in Baldur, who closed his eyes for a short while and did not leer. Then he climbed a tree and, having arrived on the first branch, he deliberated a little. It would have to be not too high up and not too low down. And it would have to be open. It became a masterpiece of constructional daring. There was no unevenness to it, the joins were accurately placed down to the last millimetre and they sat so tightly around the threads that it was barely possible to discern the ties. It was as though a mathematically creative hand was laying down a form for all time, for eternity, unsurpassable.
When the web was done, Baldur D. Quorg went and sat at its edge and he leered. Nothing came into it. It was as if nothing was flying any longer in the world. On the road, too, there was nothing to be seen. Baldur sat motionless and after a while he no longer leered. He looked at his joints. The sockets were smooth and white. He stretched his legs and looked again: it was possible to efface each movement. Beneath the calcium roof of his skull, his brain lay in a calcium box. It had become smaller and no longer allowed much thought. More space had risen up around it, in which there was perfect silence. His heart was still beating and propelled something through his body and through the channels in the calcium. This was cruel, and again Baldur repressed the satisfaction and made the bitterness work, so the propulsion that continued might deposit calcium too. Something flew into the web that shivered like a carillon, but Baldur did not look. Even his leering he had to surrender, he understood.
It became dark and started to blow. But the web held out splendidly and the force of the storm pressing on it was distributed so magnificently across all the threads that there was not the slightest threat of it breaking. Late that evening, a horse and cart came down the road. The farmer himself, driving it, had to smile from time to time. He had wanted to go by car but he hadn't been able to get it going and then he had left in the little carriage that had stood for years already in the stable, without being used. 'Take the carriage then,' his wife had said. Now he was on the dark road and they were heading for home. The lanterns did not give much light and the horse's hooves on the road were so calming that anyone would have had to smile. The whip was in its holder, to the right on the box, sticking up in the air, but the farmer did not think of using it. He had taken it into his hand for a moment at first, when he had driven away from the yard and they had all roared with laughter at that coachman in his carriage and they had cried prrrt, prrrt to make the horse run. But on the road the farmer at once had put the whip back in its holder and there it was now, in just the same state, and now he was going, very calmly and inevitably and, who knows, righteously, right through the web in a tree, close to the farm, of Baldur D. Quorg.
There wasn't a sound.
The web was left hanging from the whip like a pennant and Baldur calmly clambered down the whip to the floor of the box. There he settled, the hind legs leaning on the wood and the front ones resting against the two planks making up the corner. He was sitting beneath the whip holder. When the farmer got back home, he put the carriage in the stable. Not in the big one but in the little one that had been built up against it, and which was much chillier and more draughty and which only contained things that were old and no longer used. The farmer did put the leather cover, lying on the box to protect the coachman against wind and rain, right over the box. In deepest darkness, beneath that leather cover and in the even deeper darkness underneath the whip holder, sat Baldur.
He has been sitting there a fortnight now and he is still alive. He hasn't moved during that time, it is true, and his eyes are closed. It is darker there than blackest black can depict but should he wish to, Baldur would still be able to open his eyes. That's no movement worth mentioning and he would be able to close them again too. He would not see anything and we would not be able to perceive him either. But, were we able to see in the dark, then we would still notice that the bitterness in those eyes no longer glows, almost no longer exists, and is about to be expressionless calcium.
No one observes this death. Nobody visits the faun, by the last train and the last bus, by cars standing at night on the verge, on bikes put askew against the barn. There are no people standing in this draughty barn in the dark so that you see the fiery tips of their cigarettes flare up or describe arcs when they take their cigarettes from their mouths. And so there isn't any hushed conversation either. As dark as it is, that's how silent it is too, and so deserted, and there isn't a single sign of life except for that of the wind blowing across the earth precisely the way it already did millions of years ago.
The spider's heart is still beating.
That's annoying! When Baldur no longer leered, his much shrunk brain switched to observing this beating. It became hollower all the time and it made an echo beneath the calcium, reverberating dome of his skull.
Now that dome had to be freed of everything still there within: Baldur's brain. So it shrank and withered away.
Thus the heart tolled away perception. Both grew dim in time with one another, for the beating of the heart diminished and the echo died away. The dome became larger and empty. And silent.
Millions of years ago the wind blew the way it does now. It could not set anything in motion except the waves and the dust. At that time, in a swamp or deep down in the sea, in vaporous light or in a violet darkness, movement came about. Movement which was sealed into a form; movement that became beating, the beating of a heart, the beating of Baldur's heart, the tolling in this dome of calcium that is empty and silent once more.
Calcium.
It beats one more time.
Calcium.
And No, no more now. It is over.
A dead spider! It is as though the shapes have become vaguer already: the legs, the maulers, the head, the body. Granules are what remain. Barely, really.
'No one, never,' Baldur said, and this was right.
0 wondrous life that began to move in a swamp or a sea.
O sweet promise of a hear
t that beats; this was Baldur D. Quorg, spider.
Frans Kusters
I awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep. At the foot of my bed stood four figures: two men and two women, all of them well past fifty. They wore starched white coats; in front of one of the women's throats hung a paper theatre mask. They looked pale with fatigue and didn't move a muscle. Why, I could not say, but I was quite sure that the foursome had been observing me for some time already.
'Am I ill then?' I uttered, seeking to support myself on my elbows. Barely had I posed the question when, that instant, they lost all interest in me and, to my amazement at first, but soon to my indignation and annoyance, began to gambol about like little children and to grab one another by the hair, the nose and the ears. These can't be real doctors, I thought, they're nursing staff; if they get caught here, they'll be given the boot, you bet.
'Would you please cut out those pea-brained goings-on!' I cried. 'Let somebody tell me what's wrong with me, instead.'
My words did not have the desired effect: on the contrary. Things got ever wilder and more vicious; they rolled about on the floor more than that were on their feet, and where only recently there had been boisterous and teasing laughter now the first cries of anger, fear and pain resounded already. As far as I could see, each fought for himself; where there were any alliances, these never lasted longer than a few seconds. The most remarkable of all, however, was how the women kept their end up.
I would have to get out of bed and try all that was possible to put a stop to this bizarre and horrifying pantomime. I had already thrown off the covers but suddenly all my attention was taken up by the shirt I was wearing. It was so beautiful, that shirt; it was made of dark-grey damask and the patterns woven into it changed at the slightest movement I made. I just continued to stare at that dark, mysterious fabric that was so soft I could barely feel it, and the banging and shrieking seemed to be coming from very far away, now.
Then a very bright light shone in the room and a small, slight little man was standing on the threshold. I quickly wrapped the blankets round both my shoulders and the moment I went and lay down again I saw that the men and the women had let go of one another and, contrite, were brushing the dust from their coats and smoothing down their hair. Flanking the little man on both sides, they took up positions at the foot of the bed once again.
'The chef de clinique,' the woman without the mask whispered, bending forwards. Nothing in her appearance or behaviour indicated that, just now, she had had to perform a tremendous feat of strength, and this applied to her three colleagues likewise.
Am I ill then?' I asked once more, raising myself upright.
It was like flour, the head of the chef de clinique, cocked incessantly from left to right, and the exaggeratedly wide-open eyes within it were large and moist.
'Young man,' he spoke severely, 'now just you take it easy. With us you're in very good hands. We know exactly what's wrong with you. We know what it is, how it comes about and how it progresses. We've even got a name for it. It's just that we're not quite far enough advanced to combat it effectively. As is the case with cancer, I mean to say, and important discoveries are made in both areas, daily, so best not despair.'
He was silent and grasped his black, almost square moustache between thumb and index finger.
'The hairline recedes,' he went on, having cleared his throat, 'the body sags and wears out: that's our diagnosis.' During those last words he took a stethoscope from his doctor's coat, tossed the gleaming instrument into the air, caught it, and nonchalantly put it away again. Then he bowed his head a moment, glanced fleetingly and irritatedly over both his shoulders and indicated by demonstratively drumming with his right-hand fingers on the back of his left hand that he considered his visit to have come to an end.
'The patient has a right to the full diagnosis,' one of the men protested. He added a curse to his remark and it was because of this that, as if by magic, I recognised him and the other three. They were Hans and Monica, Margreet and Rudy, my best friends. Disbelieving, I looked from one to the other. No wonder I hadn't recognised them at first sight: they'd become thirty years older, at least. But it was them: no doubt about that in the slightest. Hans and Margreet were standing on the doctor's left hand side, Monica and Rudy on his right. Yet Monica belonged with Hans and Rudy with Margreet. The chef de clinique, too, I had seen before at some time or other, I realised, but I no longer knew on what occasion.
'Out of the question,' he said decisively. He took a step backwards. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he continued, 'you doubtless know that there are other patients awaiting us. Would you mind following me, please?'
Monica laughed encouragingly at me. Hans stared fixedly ahead of him. He had taken out glasses with half lenses like you see politicians and successful businessmen wear at times. Margreet whispered something into Rudy's ear; he nodded gravely.
'Oh, help me then, please,' I wailed, 'haven't we always been friends? Why won't you tell me the full diagnosis?' But they turned away and followed the strange little man who, with coattails flapping, had almost reached the door already. 'Patients come and patients go, the full diagnosis endures even so,' he cried over his shoulder, giggling. It was not clear whether that remark was intended for me or for his assistants instead.
They looked at me one more time and then they were gone. Only Hans halted on the threshold, looked around restlessly and then retraced his steps. The light had become less bright again now. He sat on his heels next to my bed and without losing sight of the doorway he began to speak, softly, hurriedly. There was also a touch of solemnity in his voice as if he was reciting an old and affecting poem.
'Listen,' he said, 'the full diagnosis runs as follows. The hairline recedes, the body sags, the parts wear out. The arrival of nocturnal guests. They knock on the back door; two shadowy figures against rain-stained, ink-black glass point at stomach and mouth and chew through all the food that now still stands on the kitchen shelves. Husband and wife they are, clad in rags; you don't know their names and why precisely you must be the one to regale them. And why specifically at night, not by day or in the evening hours. You give them ham: they want honey; you give them honey: they want ham. Behind their backs, you walk to and fro, an apprentice waiter who will never learn the craft. No, they do not eat, they just pretend, so their arrival has nothing to do with hunger. Only you have heard their knock on the door, only you have opened up to them. You don't know how long they will stay. They do not eat, nor do they speak. And you're afraid: you walk up and down the kitchen, busily.'
He was silent and regarded me fleetingly. 'I have to go now,' he said, 'farewell.' With the flat of his hand he stroked the metal bars of the bed, and before I was able to say anything he had already left the room. And the door swung to behind him and clicked shut.
Harry Mulisch
The base was in the rock. From the horizon the ocean came and lay there deep inside the rock where the submarines, gleaming, rose and fell with the tides. From the workshops, further into the rock, the noise of machines, shouting and loud music resounded.
Brightly lit by electric light, a group of sailors in overalls stood on a floating platform and watched the periscope, just above the water's surface, making its way from the tropical sun into the dusk. She rose a moment later, the dripping tower (Y253), the gun on the bow, and then suddenly, with a lot of splashing and gushing, the entire hull, the longest they had ever seen. A second submarine was fixed to the foredeck, a pup, a sweet little thing with triangular little wings, no more than four metres long.
The quarters for officers and men, the warehousing, the offices and radio rooms lay deeper down. The electronic brain that provided the base with all its meteorological and strategic data lay in the furthest bowel of the rock that protruded, bare, from the empty ocean.
Inside, Bernard Brose looked fixedly at the grey hair, brushed diagonally across the skull, of the admiral behind the desk. He was leafing through some typewritten papers, stapled together. He
looked up.
'This is an order,' he said. We can't take any risks. It must succeed. Do realise what's at stake: the Beast's on board. With his entire State Department.'
Brose stood to attention and slowly swung forwards so that he had to crush his toes down to the floor in order to stay where he was. For a moment, he marvelled at how, all his life, a human being managed to balance on two legs like a tightrope walker.
The admiral raised an eyebrow so that his monocle dropped into his hand, resting on the table top. He altered his tone.
'You'll bring the war to an end, Brose. On our side alone, the war has already cost forty million dead to date. Far away beyond the horizon, three quarters of our cities lie in ruins. Your town has been wiped from the face of the earth for ever. Both your parents perished in the bombing. Your brother died in action at the Northern front; his corpse is floating around the pole in an iceberg somewhere. Of your two sisters, one was murdered, the other died of typhoid. Your wife was in a train that was shot at, one which ran from one pile of rubble to the next.' The admiral - he had looked among the papers from time to time - began to twiddle the monocle between his fingers and once again he changed his tone of voice. 'You will exchange your life for forty million more lives at least, just on our side alone. You will live on in memory as one of the greatest heroes in the history of mankind - no, not a hero,' he said, gesturing with wide-spread fingers, 'something else ... more dangerous ... I'm still searching for it.' With his eyes, the admiral scanned the space next to Brose; then he got up and came out from behind the desk. 'I envy you, Brose,' he said and he laid his hand on Brose's shoulder for a moment in passing as he walked to the door.
The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy Page 23
