Once again, he began to walk down the road; by his watch he saw that it was seven-thirty; he still had an entire evening ahead of him; a flock of birds passed along, high and far away against the grey sky.
He turned round.
A woman made up of large, brown spheres tapped against the window, slowly and seductively; the rain began to come down again; plumes of vapour rose from the water as if big animals were breathing in the winter air; a swan, created from small white blossoms, attempted, hissing, to rid itself of a condom that had wrapped itself round its beak. He nodded.
Tears came to his eyes and, with a rapid movement, before the dark woman opened the door, he loaded his revolver.
P.F. Thomese
I
Only after some time did the hunters notice that they were no longer walking along a path. Drink whispered and giggled in their ears so that they did not know it had become as quiet as death itself around them. They wanted to shoot, for they had not yet shot a thing all day. From time to time, one of them would train his gun in order to feel the butt against his cheek. With the barrel he would describe the flight of a grouse or the course of a rabbit. But all who rustled and fluttered concealed themselves in the trees and the scrub, so the gun was shouldered once more, with nothing to show for it. The hunters tottered on, and they did not know that they tottered - their drunken thoughts sped on ahead like fawns' hooves on moss, enticing. The dogs, curious, looked round continually, following the hunters' trail, thinking that it led somewhere. Behind them, the landscape fell apart into dunes of dusty sand.
Taking turns, the hunters bore along a dirty, linen sack. Inside it, they were transporting the stone head of Saint Hieronymus of Noordwijk which they had won on the way, gambling. The sack was heavy and stank of fish. Occasionally, they would have to rest because their fingers were becoming cramped with all that lugging. Yet, they would get up each time again and not forget the sack. Though they did not want to take the sack along, they actually did so.
The loose slopes slipped away beneath their feet. In vain they sought to gain a hold on the weeds that shot loose, on the prickly thorn bushes and dead tree branches.
Only when the sky darkened and the storm arose, in wild gusts which made the dune sand fly up, did they notice that, by God, they did not know where they were.
They halted near a weathered enclosure because they had seen its woodwork before, but when that had been and which way they had then gone at the time, this failed to spring to mind. So they stood there, indecisive, near that little fence in the wilderness while the storm battered the dunes and lightning flashed in the distance. It surprised them that there was no shelter anywhere: just now it was beginning to hail and sandstorms made further progress impossible. In his mind, each of them cursed the others, but himself as well, because he had gone along with them, off to nowhere. As well as they could, they hid behind the fence, the hacked-off head of the saint between them. Because of the wet, the sack had begun to stink even more and now their dress coats, too, smelled of fish. The dogs were in a panic and howled in desperation. The hunters were hardly worried at all, as nothing serious had ever happened to them. In their heads still hummed the boasting of a while ago: of hunts on the manor of so-and-so, and of women with doe's eyes who were soft and plump like rabbits. Rolled up tight, their faces in the hollows of their arms, they let the tempest pass over them and they did not notice that the plumes on their hats had snapped.
The storm raged terribly. A little further on, lightning struck and a hamlet disappeared in its entirety in the roaring, spitting flames. At sea, fishing smacks were engulfed by tidal waves and the boats on the beach, too, had disappeared, for there was no longer any beach there. Already the sea was swirling over the top of the first dunes. The hunters were oblivious. They lay there, huddled behind the fence, and were too far away to hear the bells of Noordwijk-op-Zee raising the alarm.
Around them, gusts of wind sliced away at the dunes and thus freed a path for the flood.
It lasted too long to the hunters' taste. It was already late and they wished to be home before dark. They were also worried about the dogs which they had not seen for a while now. And when the storm abated for a moment, they crawled out and stood upright. No mean thing: their joints were stiff and their heads ached with stabbing pains. They were cold and their sodden clothing itched on their bodies. After bickering a bit about the they would not leave it behind after were on their way, sack and all.
First, they had to climb the dunes to see where in fact they actually were. The sand was loose and heavy, giving their unsteady legs support. But before they had reached the top, a brusque, heavy gust of wind forced them to lie down.
Flat on their bellies they crawled along and thus they reached the highest point.
Perhaps they might better have stayed behind their fence, for what they saw did not improve their prospects. It was not just the sea which was all around them and foamed at the mouth like the prophecies of Isaiah, rising and lighting up beneath the darkened heavens, but it was that beast in particular, fearfully large and near, so large and awe-inspiring that it seemed almost regarded them and gave a leering grin at so much insignificance. It was not clear what they could do, for behind them, too, was the sea. The fact of the matter was, you might say, that the sea was had only failed to reach where they were. It was curious, too - and this only dawned on them slowly - that their case was a hopeless one. There was indeed a fishing smack floating in their direction, but before they had had a chance to see it properly, it was smashed to pieces by the waves.
The dune held up for quite a while still, and because it lasted so long the hunters got up hope. The biblical creature came no closer, though it did not go away either. Now and then, it submerged as if to hoodwink the hunters, and then it rose up again revealing its immense back. It seemed to the hunters that the beast was the instigator of the violence of the sea. It appeared to smash down on the waves with its tail and that way propel their surge. Occasionally it would open its jaws and they could see a disgusting tongue of flesh. Possibly, were they able to kill it, the fateful tempest would cease - and the water would return to the sea and they would be able to continue on their way through the dunes. But the hunters had never shot anything larger than a deer and they feared that the beast, once struck, would only burst forth in fury. Still, they grabbed for their field bags and wanted to load their guns. The gunpowder was wet, however, and they did not even make the attempt.
They thought they would soon be eaten this set them off crying. The hunters wept, their bellies shaking, and they barely noticed that the flood swept over them.
The sack with the saint's head, too, disappeared into the depths of darkness.
2
When morning was approaching, the storm had died down and a haze of light began to dawn beneath the low, heavy sky, the Admiral set out with a number of other fishermen to take in the damage on the beach. Their clothes were soaked and they were freezing with cold. They had little hope that there would be anything left of their little vessels, but they were relieved to be able to flee from the devastated hamlet. Its eight hovels had all been wrecked and had then collapsed. The women were now busy bandaging wounds with wet, stinking rags. Others took pity on the horse that during the lightning had got into a panic and had broken its legs. They had heard the creature all night but it merely trembled now. Someone sliced its neck open and allowed the blood to drain into the sand. While the horse was still convulsing, people began to cut off the meat in strips.
In the distance they heard the bells of Maria-ter-Zee, tolling for All Souls.
The Admiral thought of the candles that would be burning there and how those lights would make the gold, silver and brass gleam, with sparkles shooting up so that it seemed as if you had tears in your eyes, and the saints, too, had tears in their eyes - tears of sadness, but also because things had ended well, after all. The Admiral no longer attended chapel: he was one of the new faith. He walked with God. The new faith did
not gleam: it was dull and black and resigned, like a funeral cortege. Thus, head bent, he walked with God through the gruesomeness of life. Yet it alarmed him that the chapel which had likewise been built of wood had not been sent to perdition during the tempest. He walked out ahead of the men and was silent. They, too, were silent: they preferred not to have their forebodings confirmed.
The coast was beyond all recognition. The flood had forced the water to surge deep inland. Dunes had caved in and been swept away, and on the flattened remains they found the blue pulp of dead jelly fish. The fishing smacks were nowhere to be seen. For that matter, there was not a sail in sight on the entire sea. It lay grey and empty in the morning light. They could have gone back now but they walked on, in the direction of Noordwijk-op-Zee.
Ahead of them cantered the Admiral's little son. The humpbacked lad, commonly called the Humpkin, rose and dipped from dune to dune as if he was trying to escape from the little dune on his back. The Admiral was revolted by that little hump which had sent his wife to her death. He was revolted by that simple little lad that had been born from death - with its little-old-man's-head it had waited between blood-soaked thighs to see whether it would be allowed to live. The Admiral had not known what to do. He had taken his fishknife and fetched the mite in a gush of blood. There was nothing else he could have done: it had been that hump that had stuck in the mother's womb. Nobody had taken against him for this but he had turned dour precisely because nobody had made him take the blame - and he hated fate, a fate that was indifferent and took his beautiful young wife from him and provided an ugly hump in her place.
Humpkin, meanwhile, tripped on ahead and seemed to have no notion of the burden weighing down on his shoulders. It was the father who was weighed down.
For years now, the Admiral was being undermined by doubt which had rendered him taciturn and evasive. The fishermen took this to be gruffness and believed that their boss thought himself to be too high and mighty for them; they did not know that inner confusion and despair were what impeded his sociability. He had thoughts he could not utter so they continued to wheel about in his head without encountering contradiction. They dragged him along and left him stranded, not knowing the way.
Where he was lost, there it was writ that God had taken the truth away from the world and had set hope in its place.
The doubt had been sown in the days that preachers of the new faith had come to smash up the idolatrous statuary. Their word seemed true and the misdeeds of the false church appeared terrible to him. But when they had entered the convent garden of Saint Barbara, he had hesitated - and from then on he would continue to hesitate. It had been a languid summer's afternoon and nightingales were singing in the shrubbery. He was touched by the industrious plenty and peace that reigned in this garden. The herbs in their trimmed borders, the flower beds, the hum around the bee hives, the tuneful chatter of birds in the orchard - these were all there and it was good that this was so, for it was beautiful and devoid of people. The convent walls were cloaked in clouds of vine and honeysuckle, and in front of the convent stood shady lime trees. He knew he ought not to be there; he smelled how the scent of flowers, herbs and ripe fruit were being driven out by the smell of fish steaming from him in the afternoon warmth. Behind his back he felt the men's presence spread out. A cloud slid in front of the sun - but it was as though it were their shadow passing, chill and sombre, over the convent garden. Lizards slipped by past their feet; startled birds fanned out into the sky. Rustling everywhere, and snapping twigs.
It befell him that his feet were booming through the convent corridors and that his eyes saw the idols break. There was baying and screaming and the shattering of glass. The fishermen chased after the sisters, down corridors and up staircases, sanctity crunching beneath their feet. He stood in the chapel among the wrecked prayer stools, tom altar cloths, among the shards and powdered rubble. There he stood and he recognised the head of the saint of Noordwijk who looked at him and did not seem to understand all this either.
He felt a draught rush by, past his ankles, slipping away through a crack.
He had thought to rescue the saint by taking him with him. Often he had prayed to him when God was wrathful and made the waves foam. He knew Hieronymus was an idol and at the same time he knew that it was sacrilegious to touch a saint with one's own hands. He knew he was doing wrong, no matter what. But was this going to make him leave it lying there, defenceless, and wait for the others to trample it to dust?
He didn't have much time to think, for a moment later fire roared up from the thatched roof and smoke billowed through the corridors.
He wrapped the head in a strip of altar cloth and slipped away through a smashed window in the sacristy.
From then on, he had kept the head in a cupboard, together with his wife's worthless paraphernalia.
He wondered whether it had been wrong to take only the head. Possibly the torso was roaming about somewhere, haunting, soulless. But he had not seen the torso lying anywhere. Now, that head was lying on its side on a shelf as if it was a hunk of cheese or some kind of hat. It was the preposterousness which worried him, and he became convinced, by and by, that he had done something irreparable, something only to be atoned for by punishment. Though, indeed, he had converted to the new faith, he feared that God would take but little notice of that. The wayside preacher had said that He 'shall expunge from the land the names of idols, that they be thought no more'. And yet the head of Saint Hieronymus lay in his cupboard and each day he would think of him. And each night, when fear rattled at the shutters and groaned quietly in the wood of his alcove bedstead, he feared both retribution and vengeance.
Then - -se three gents, those simpletons had knocked at his door and they had got themselves drunk on the brandy he had sold them too dearly. The Admiral loathed such gents because they gave him the feeling that everything about him was wrong. They made him envious and caused him to feel sad for all he was not and would not become. The way they sat there on the wooden bench, with their boots of burnished leather and those hands gesturing you-know-what - it gave the Admiral satisfaction to ply them with brandy until their tongues writhed helplessly like fish on dry land. To frighten them, he had taken the head of Saint Hieronymus from the cupboard, but he himself had become afraid; the gents were not startled, on the contrary: they, with their rotund little turns, had had to laugh uncontrollably and wished most insistently to cast dice for 'that patron saint of brandy drinkers'. The Admiral wondered whether perhaps they were of the new faith that they dared mock a saint in so carefree a manner. And his loathing grew the greater because they seemed so at home with higher things and were not afraid at all, as if they had been able to strike a deal, somehow, with up-above.
Shortly after the gents had left, with the head of the saint in an old sack, the storm had risen. For a moment, the Admiral rubbed his hands with glee at those waddling bunglers who would only find a hold on each other's flapping coattails - then he forgot them, because his house had begun to creak ominously.
The peril his house was in notwithstanding, his neighbours came to seek shelter with him. His house had two floors and seemed almost impressive in the midst of the fishermen's hovels which most closely resembled tents, what with their posts and their canopies of sailcloth. But his house could not hold out against that battering North-Westerly either, and he was forced to seek refuge in the cellar. Here, there was only space for a few: the others had to go outside again to find what shelter they could under the oily sailcloth the storm tore at and the tempest hailed down upon.
It was dark in the cellar and airless, and everyone sat bent down because of the flotsam timber shifting and subsiding ominously overhead. Buried in this grave, they had listened to the voices borne along by the storm. No praying, just occasional cursing, for everyone wished to hear those voices which were the voices of the lost, roaming dead. They had heard them more often at sea when the storm came from the North-West, from over yonder where the world disappeared in mist a
nd where heaven and earth seemed to touch. Now, too, they listened to the voices again though they knew that these could not be understood.
In the end it had quietened down and shortly afterwards they had heard the familiar shrieks of common terns.
Now the storm had abated it seemed as if everything that once had been, had been taken away. The saint of storms had taken away their dwellings and their ships, and he had taken away the paths and made them roam in the wilderness. The fishermen wailed and cursed, but the Admiral was only tired. He knew that this was as it .was meant to be: one builds that which will be lost anyway - and that it is useless to know this. He would erect his two-storey house again, ridiculously puny with its thatched roof beneath the gruesome expanse of heaven. He again would lead the fishermen and they would believe themselves to be going somewhere because they followed him - the way they all followed the Lord and did not know that he was wrathful and had taken away the truth from the world, only leaving hope behind.
They had been trudging along all the while, heads bent, bogbrained with tiredness, looking on without noticing how their feet left imprints behind in the wet dune sand, feet meandering across the smooth sand, fanning out, crossing and trampling each other without discernible cause. The men walked heavily, as if they were carrying something. There was something solemn about it, something rather ceremonial, the way they progressed in this stricken dune landscape, something terrifying, too: the misshapen child out in front like a messenger of doom. The bells of Maria-ter-Zee still tolled in honour of the mystery of death and, seen from a distance, the little troupe resembled a funeral cortege, impressed by something of which the meaning eluded them.
Down below, the sea allowed its waves to unroll listlessly on to the bare coast.
Thus they went on, oppressed and introverted - and because of this, they only saw the stranger when he was nigh upon them. He resembled a monk, but if so, one from an unknown order. Around his shoulders hung a drab blanket which was bound tight round his middle with a frayed length of mooring rope. His head was bald, the bald pate hard and smooth as brass. He did not speak nor did he look them in the face. He pointed towards the sea. And then, only then did they see what they might have seen a long time ago, for it had been there all the while.
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