B007P4V3G4 EBOK

by Richard Huijing

  Baldur watched him go and saw that the other spider had made considerable progress already with a large and extremely sturdy web. That spider's skill was evident. His threads were nicely taut and the joins looked unassailable. Simon P. Quellyn saw perfectly well that Baldur was watching him, and though he didn't make an issue out of it and continued to work just as calmly as before, it still gave him pleasure. He had learned that one must always keep calm and that excitement leads to mistakes, but on the other hand he knew that the danger of excitement is ever present when one is busy with a construction in the certainty that it is unsurpassably good. 'It's always wait-and-see what makes a beeline for it,' he used to say to himself occasionally in the past. He never did that now any more, for the slightest allusion to fate's favour can itself be of unfavourable influence. The emotion of satisfaction, too, can be so. One ought not to undergo such an emotion therefore, if one truly wishes to draw the favour of fate towards oneself! Thus, Simon P. Quellyn ignored from then on any possible appreciation from Baldur D. Quorg.

  The latter, having watched for a while, let himself drop too. With a pounding heart! This was undeniable for, even though he had been talking bitterly and like some one of experience, as had been demanded of him, this was to be his first web!

  When he had let himself drop some way, he halted with a jolt.

  Now the thing was to begin to rock back and forth until he was able to grab the side of the door with his front legs. For, if he didn't do that, he would have to drop down altogether and then climb up that side with a good length of thread behind him, there to make his first join, having first drawn in a long and useless length of the thread, to be his first construction thread running from half way down the upper edge to half way the side.

  And what use's that palaver to me7 thought Baldur, so he began to rock back and forth. Swinging about like that, he did think it a pity after all that Simon P. Quellyn was busy in the same door opening, for the fun of this adventure was being marred a bit by the necessity of having to act experienced. The conversation with Simon marked the end of his youth, and now he had to calculate and keep his mind on things; but had all of this not been the case, the swinging would have rather amused him.

  Swinging, Baldur looked at Simon but, sitting on a cross-thread, he was just at that moment busy on a join and he needed all his attention and didn't look round. Then, despite himself and therefore with an angrily contorted mouth and very much under his breath, in case Simon should start to look after all, Baldur sang:

  What a rotten ditty, thought Baldur, for he hadn't kept an eye on the door and had swung into it with his back without having been able to grab hold of it. The following swings he executed in silence, doggedly, and then he was able to grasp the side. He fixed his thread well indeed and then he had the foundation for a web.

  'Not bad for a beginning,' observers might have muttered and would have certainly had they had known that this was indeed the very first time; in the main, spiders use trees or bushes with a good number of side branches offering a generous hold. But Baldur didn't miss the fact that there were no observers cheering him on. Now he'd fixed the first thread, he no longer had a need for Simons proximity either, what with his chatter. Now Baldur was looking at that lovely foundation thread, he felt that he wasn't one for company at all, really. He climbed, making thread, up into the comer of the door. Having landed there, he suddenly spotted he had made a mistake. During this last part of the climb he shouldn't have made any thread but should only have started in the corner from where he ought then to have walked over to the beginning of his thread, half way along the top edge, then to have stepped on to his construction thread in order to make a join half way along that thread with the first cross thread running from the comer. But now he was in that comer already, with a huge strand of thread flying from his body, and Baldur became dark with rage. There's me having to yank it from my arse, he now thought too, quite like Simon just now, and he let the piece of thread go, which now hung, pointless and disfiguring, down the side of the door. He quickly began a new one which, with exaggerated care, he fastened in the comer and then, spinning like one possessed, he walked along the top edge of the door to the start of his diagonal construction thread, quickly nipped along it to half way and then, quietly and thoroughly, he made his first thread join.

  There now! But who could take pleasure in a first result like this while, rumpled and pointless, that unused length of thread hung down along the side of the door, like a mistake and a stomach churning waste? Baldur didn't rest, therefore, and worked on at once. He didn't want to make any more mistakes. Not ever again. He spun threads, first three from the comer to other points on the first construction thread and then, in corners other than that one, threads from these to the top and side of the door. Once he was done with this, he climbed back up again and oversaw the whole thing. It was hard to speak of a 'whole thing', for that matter, but when Baldur pondered this further, he had a terrible shock for he noticed that he had made a far bigger mistake than that first, wasted thread: were he to expand his web on the other side of his construction thread, then he would inevitably touch Simon P. Quellyn's web. But that wasn't all. He also saw that, in the time Baldur had needed to climb up to the top edge of the door, Simon had made a join with a thread from his web, quick as a flash, on to Baldur's construction thread.

  It made Baldur go rigid. What was it again he had cried in his first thread, in the fence, about 'silent flyers and augurs'? 'What a stench the world is,' he now cried out. He didn't really cry as much as shriek: 'What a stench the world is, what a whining stench of unwillingness.' He decided upon the following: in due course, Simon P. Quellyn would have to come up along thread c6 of his web for a new connection to join r3 to the wood. Baldur would go and sit there, but tucked away slightly, so that the climbing Simon would not be able to see him before sticking out his head above the edge. Then Baldur would strike.

  He only thought of the word 'strike', not of killing, murdering, destroying or of pinching off the head. To strike is sufficient and all other concepts are needless.

  Thus he waited.

  Simon P. Quellyn would have to come soon. He still had to go past v6 and then half way along to c7, parallel to c6, make the join there and then back and up on the wood along c6. Simon had been going about for a while, thinking what to say to Baldur this time, once he had reached the top, and he had decided on an amiable remark. He would say: 'Loads of catches here,' for he had used one of Baldur's threads and perhaps he would then be at peace with the fact that Simon had taken advantage of his work, for a plentiful catch could be expected anyway.

  Baldur's calculation was exactly right. The moment he thought: watch out, he might well now appear, Simon's front legs came up over the edge. Baldur struck, but only at those front legs, not at the head. Simon drew back fiercely, but Baldur was still able to pinch one off. Hurriedly, Simon slid down a fresh thread from join r3 to the bottom of the door, and disappeared there, one leg short. A fight was pointless now for Baldur's strength was young and hard.

  Baldur watched him go and he now surveyed the new situation. The way Simon had made use of one of his threads, he now could deploy what Simon had wrought. Quellyn was certain not to return, for no one fought with half a front leg.

  But the formula for his web was no good any more. Both q as well as r had changed and the tension which would now fall on the foundation thread was too great.

  The thread needed to be doubled and this was what Baldur was going to do, quickly. He worked until dark and then he went to sleep in the corner and next morning he began afresh, the moment it became light. The threads were barely moist; the spot in the roof frame was as favourable as possible and in the course of the morning the highly complex web reached completion. Baldur withdrew into the centre of it and there he began a battle against the thoughts occurring to him. He looked along the threads of the web. Bar that wasted one along the door, there were no flaws in it, though the form wasn't pleasing because of the
annexation of Simon's part. Baldur ground his jaws together, for he had to do something to quell the satisfaction gaining hold of him even so. He ground them so hard that the desire to have something in between to be ground down overtook him, trembling. Oh, blow me, what a web, he thought. What an achievement, what an overwhelming good, what irreplaceable worth. And in spite of his firm intention never to recite a rhyme again, one arrived nevertheless:

  A nice little ditty but dangerous to give in to that gift. It was for the second time, though, that Baldur had raised the subject of calcium and he went and thought a bit about this now. He must have hit on it because of the hard grinding of his jaws and that urge to grind something down, but he felt that there had to be something else behind it as well. Something that, amongst other things, was connected with the quickly forsworn youth and the doom he had felt when that one front leg of Simon P. Quellyn's was snapped off and dropped down so unexpectedly and pointlessly. A strange rhyme, Baldur thought, that of the marshal on his threads. He raised himself up and considered the reach of his net and the marshal's eye in charge of it. But just when this made him tingle for a moment, something happened again that confirmed his abhorrence of life.

  A fat wasp who had been getting up to heaven-knows-what in the loft of the bam, came flying out with a great racket. It touched thread g5, stood on its head there because it got caught for a moment, but then it began to beat its wings and twist its hindquarters so impetuously that the thread first gave and then shot loose from join p2. Gone, the fat wasp, and the entire g-section of the new web had been distorted, and dangled there feebly. Baldur was instantly on the edge of the tattered part. He ground with temper and trembling watched the wasp, who had a good length of thread trailing behind him, go. 'Gunk!', he cried, as loud as he could. 'Gunk, blundering stop-squirt, blubber gunk.' But the wasp had gone and it was very quiet now, after all that noise.

  Baldur shut his jaws. He was almost vomiting and rather wished that it would be calcium then.

  'Never, no one,' he then shouted, hoarsely. And with this, Baldur D. Quorg indicated that from now on he would never engage with anyone ever again, didn't want to see anyone again, wished to speak to no one and to look no one in the face again.

  Then he began the repairs.

  But what is it to repair something that has been perfect and had tension, and had been woven and joined exactly according to the formulae?

  What is it to repair a work that has come forth from nothing through calculations and through industry and strength and through bodily material, by one's own thread? What is it to repair threads that existed in space like crystallised silence and are now destroyed and disjointed, and which from now on can only tarnish a creation, a true creation?

  The web was repaired. Indeed it was. But it was no longer a net that could be compared with what once had been. It was a solution Baldur had thought up for the repairs. The only good one, even, for when the repair was done there was cohesion in the web again and it transmitted the vibration of every movement made, in or against it. But that vibration was no longer clear and gleaming and faultless: it was dull and laboured. It had become a practical aid.

  While Baldur was still busy, he felt the net tremble a few times. There was prey therefore; he must set out after it. But he didn't; he went on working first. He used the auxiliary formula for restoring tensions, but he calculated them sadly, for the web was no longer a thing that was there for ever, a thing that allows no thoughts of decay, a thing there, the way you yourself are there.

  The wasp was no longer a gunk but a scourge and a continuous betrayal. Only when it became dark did the repair reach completion and only then did Baldur go along the threads to the point where they had got caught: the flies Guwel, Roesk and Drod and the gnats Zuuwkin, Resie, Zamiel, Luuk and Frizoen. They were almost dead already when Baldur struck so they were barely startled any more. Baldur then withdrew, not into the nucleus of the web but into the comer of the door. He bit off the pointless thread still hanging there so that it floated down. But this made no headway. The web was too tattered for that. Baldur closed his eyes; he slept.

  It is dark and dead quiet. Countless is the number of living creatures. On this side of the earth they are almost all asleep, most of them very well hidden and impossible to find. Baldur D. Quorg is impossible to find too, for not only he has crept into the dark corner of the loft door below the roof of the farm barn, but also beneath the dust and a piece of dead leaf that has been trapped there for ages already and is decaying. His first web hangs motionless across the door and since he has devoured Zuuwkin and the other gnats, and Guwel and Roesk and Drod, there are three more gnats, flying in the night and wanting to go into the dark of the bam, who have got caught, that's to say: Zarina, Loes and Rufkin. These are now dying there and, nervous and frightened, they look around them. If they should set to work thoughtfully - as thoughtfully as Baldur works - they would be able to free themselves, but they set to work wildly and jittery. Rufkin has said so once or twice: 'If you think everything through in advance then you actually do things very stupidly, in retrospect. But I'm just always so pleased I'm alive.' When it gets light they will all be dead from fatigue because they wanted to get out of that web so wildly all that time. They will not be given a monumental tomb though Rufkin was one whom life blessed frequently.

  When Baldur finds the three gnats - for that matter, there are sure to be more by that web will still be new and fresh. He will devour his prey but probably without being triumphant, for when he emerges from beneath his leaf and sees the web glinting in the light, his satisfaction over the construction has passed and it will be clear to him how vulnerable his work is. And so it is. If they are going to fetch sacks from the loft today then the farmer will swipe that web out of his way with a single stroke of his arm; it could also start to rain hard or a chicken, in its boundless folly, could go and try to get into the loft. There's a great chance, when it gets dark again, that the entire web will be dangling about in mucky tatters, rubbish and dirt; and who will comfort Baldur then?

  He is still asleep, but when he wakes later on a new experience will await him: the fact that he can move provokes unease within him. The hinges of his legs and grabbers and of his neck and his hindquarters displease him, that's to say, the circumstance that everything there is able to move. It is as though the night has taught him something of the meaning of 'calcium hidden well' in his marshal-on-the-threads ditty. Life should be more insignificant. And it should lie like a small control centre in the calcium box of his head with for its sole instrument his eyes with which to leer and to determine how rightly he has foregone more of life than necessary in order to reject all.

  But everything did still move and Baldur ran out on to his threads. Two gnats had joined the three of that night: Diek and Snuis. These were still alive and Baldur stayed and watched them for a while before he struck, and he devoured them as like-minded ones, for it was clear that they pleaded for the end when they made out Baldur on the thread.

  The web in the door remained in use for ten days or so, but then sacks indeed had to be fetched from the loft, and the first tore the net in the comer as if it had never been there. Baldur managed to escape and disappeared into the same skirting board Simon P. Quellyn had fled through. From there he set off on the journey down: he walked a long, long way across the ground and then reached a pear tree in the yard. Here he made his second web, from the lowest branch to the trunk. Much smaller than the first but magnificently constructed, too, and refined in structure. When it had been there for a day, a cock who crowed every morning in that branch of the pear tree, sagged backwards rather oddly, so that he plunged from that branch and, fluttering, tumbled right through the web.

  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 sojou
rn 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.