B007P4V3G4 EBOK (60 page)

And so each had his own thoughts on the whale and nobody
knew that the whale had disappeared long since, and that behind
them two men were lugging a corpse, stumbling under the weight
of their burden and walking ever faster because of this, and
nobody knew that there was nothing there to be understood -
except for the deceased, perhaps; maybe he had realised it, just for
an instant, before the incomprehensible enclosed him forever.

Out in front went Humpkin, to fetch the nets - and behind him,
his dead father was being dragged through the dunes, and Humpkin
knew nothing at all of this and thought that something big was
going to be caught with those nets.

Simon Vestdijk

The third house, standing out from the night and at the same time,
as though with a reticent gesture, allowing the light from my torch
to skim untouched along its gable, was larger than both the other
ones. A hat-like roof rose up in the pallid darkness; some low
outbuildings stood to one side. It was located quite close to the
road, and when my eyes had grown slightly accustomed to the
sparse light, I discovered that the entrance was situated in a side
road, or it was possible that the road my path would have to lead
to was the main one, for it was hard to judge the width of either
of them. For a while, the problem of those two roads took the
place of what ought to be so much closer to my heart, but then,
interrupting this idle ponder with a jolt, I began to think intensely
about my situation.

I must have lost my way. My host had warned me, for that
matter, about this part of the road - oh, how I now longed for his
dune villa with the two table lamps below which our wine had
gleamed! - but he had warned me about the fierce dogs, not for
what I was about to experience now. Experience: already with a
certain foretaste of mysteries which appeared to lay themselves
down from the night wind on my tongue, past which my own
wine-breath engulfed me.

Assume I knew the region. Not as a part of this area of dunes to
be indicated at random, in which case I would have to have been
there before, but as something one has read about long, long ago,
or has dreamed about, and of which one has always borne along
the vaguely drawn model. Every landscape knows such road
complexes which, like Gordian knots in an innocent looking network, wait for years, indeed for centuries even, for a traveller who
will become ensnared in them. Mostly there is a windmill in the
vicinity, one lacking sails like a guide who has given up and draws
in his arm. Cats skulk around there. They ought to mark these
places on maps in a special colour, but no. Because they must not
resemble each other - that would be too easy by half! - each of them displays different inessentials, in this case those large,
detached houses, almost feudal, which marked entire tracts of
their surroundings in their survey as being dark and inaccessible, or
that lonely garden - it's known even though it isn't seen - with
the two broken plaster statues in it and many gusts of wind where
the summer house once stood ... And I wondered why, in
darkness and in such ambiguous places, the world has to be so
different, so much deeper, more despairing, and with the particular
kind of feigning that determines the honesty of night ... Let me
dream some more, I thought, until I'm past this house, for its
intentions towards me can't be that good ... Two plaster statues,
broken - but of identical manufacture? ...

Let's assume, let's believe the wind indeed returned to that
garden and created a life from nothing, one which was lost again
and yet is still there, even though it is not seen by Again, I
tore myself from ponder that could serve no purpose: the longwinded and free translation of four glasses of wine and wild conversations ...

Right in front of me, the road seemed to break off all of a
sudden; an edge shimmered there; cobbles, far apart, made way for
a little wilderness of thistles and rubbish; there the cats would have
to stalk through, there the windmill had stood or the burned down
farm or what-you-will. And there too, probably, was the centre,
the junction, the most lonely of all, where all the strands conspired;
I had expected to get there and yet I could not reach it even
though I was there now ... Again my thoughts grew confused.

The torch, my sword of Alexander, would have to find everything from now on, and free me of this confusion. For a few
moments this distracted me: a round patch of light that becomes
elliptical, stretches out an arm, embraces the night expansively and,
hesitating, hovering, beating almost in time to the pulse, returns,
half way, and then fragments itself in a pale rain of light on leaves
and gravel, or feels along boards down which splinters, gnarls and
heads of nails run towards it as though deranged. But then the
house drew my attention again, the way it stood there so tall and
remote. Long, straight walls, walls to walk along after a nocturnal
conversation that asks no sorrow of us, only petrification ... In
what way the gable had been decorated or overgrown, I could not
make out at first. Soon, however, my torch discovered the capricious, lissome creepers which, struggling, bent upwards as though
they were seeking a window or a hand - each branch, each leaf quickly provided with a Chinese shadow behind, which moved
away a little, crept back again and instantly became more distinct.
Stone frames, I made out, around the windows, in front of which
the shutters had been closed. Still I let my cone of light rise and
fall a few cycles, meanwhile already forming the intention to walk
on and seek the road in accordance with my friend's instructions,
when the shine attached itself to something above me, and me
along with it, as though I was being directed by a power in, or
attached to the house which had seized the torch. I looked more
closely, there: a grave head of stone.

I was surprised. There was even a kind of hilarity that gripped
me, a sequence of bouts of laughter somewhere in my body which,
for that matter, were unable to penetrate my still half-inebriated
consciousness. Be that as it may, I felt at once to be thrown
together with the stone head as though with a chum in trouble: he,
too, was lost, one might assume; he, too, - I now suddenly saw
the creepers as vines - must be inebriated, lost, and cast out by
life, though it would not be easy to ascertain whether he was all
these things by day as well, when walls, plants and stone ornaments
lead so different an existence than at night. No, little could be said
about that. For example, did he like living in the light or was he a
loner, a shaded one? He remained almost invisible by day, behind
those tangled branches sprouting in all directions, like over-abundant antlers, from his skull. Thus he lived as though in a cool
grotto. But now, at this nocturnal hour, my light seized him in the
right place, unlocked his eyelids, flared his nostrils, and finally,
when my hand had begun to tremble a little less, it showed his
forehead lofted high above the broad shadows of the eyebrows
climbing it like tired thoughts. Vague was the direction the eyes
were looking in, though what they expressed spoke clearly of the
satisfaction of knowing someone to be below who wished to shine
on the forgotten one of this house! A quiet smile, a few lines in the
comers of the eyes: and already I no longer felt any regret about
my nocturnal jaunt. Firmly, I directed the torch to engender new
life this way in one who, through the chill association with leaf and
stem, could only still be accustomed to the colour of green mould,
who for years now had no longer found any profile and who now
tasted the light as though from behind vines. I had been drinking:
he too must drink; I gave him plenty. The branches swiped back
and forth in the wind but I didn't allow myself to be chased off, no
matter how much they flailed and waved. I had found a confidant. Who was he7 Did this house have more of such heads? But no, this
I didn't want to believe; and how could it be possible, for that
matter, now that I had found him and wanted to stay with him till
morning, not wanting to leave before all loneliness and deprivation
had been shone from his face! ...

But my cone of light had slipped away, suddenly, because of an
uncontrolled movement of my hand. Search now! High and low,
left and right: of course he still had to be there ... There. I struck
his face as though with a snow ball - he laughed. So young that
face now looked, younger than a moment before, and the creepers
branches now suited him better. And even though my hand
trembled mercilessly, I wanted to carry on for as long as possible,
for it seemed as though he changed in the beam of light, becoming
ever more youthful under my hand, fresh and revived like a god of
antiquity. Was I myself creating him from nothing? Was it possible
to make statues of marble or stone assume any age by any kind of
lighting? Whatever the case, I was the creator, no matter what; he
owed everything to me, right down to the vines which, shimmering
red, grew up contrastingly from within the green under the magic
power of my circle of light. And, though the night wind was
cooling down so that I shivered and had to button up my clothes
more tightly, again and again I engrossed myself in the stone face
that gleamed with inviolable youth.

Inviolable? Having reached a peak which did not seem easy to
surpass any further, it was now as though he resisted something,
as though he attempted to surmount something which my torch
would have to assist him with. Carefully, I aimed the beam of light
in such a way that branches cast as few shadows as possible, but
there was always one which would not allow itself to be passed, a
fat, hairy one: I could make it out clearly from below. Then, when I
dropped the torch a little, he suddenly resembled someone drowned
among seaweed and polyps, pallid and swollen, but how rapidly
could that image not be dispelled! He lived and revived, time and
again, feverish and inextinguishable; he drank my light, radiating it
in all directions, though I was never able to chase away that high
shadow running from his eyebrows across his forehead because I
was standing too low down. Then I stepped back to try it from a
greater distance: in an instant he had disappeared. No wonder, I
thought, that he can only seldom be seen by day; what would he
not give always to have such a life, the way it was now! From time
to time it seemed again as though a smile was playing on his lips, but now it continued to be a smile of youth, self-evident and
effortless: youth doesn't have enough wrinkles yet to smile truly;
this was the natural smile of sleep and innocence I had conjured up
there in the twinkling of an eye.

But the night strode on and with this a creeping change came
over his face, one which had announced itself already a few
moments earlier when shadows were playing across his features.
Wrinkles returned, crystallised, first hiding themselves in the corners of his mouth and eyes, then shooting across cheeks and
forehead; pitiable grooves waged war on one another, still cancelling each other out for a while, but then everything moved
unstoppably towards old age. How to preserve him from this? I
kept my hand as steady as possible; there was no film of moisture
on the lens of the torch; no chill mist floated by. For a moment he
stared at me as though reproaching me, then he sank even more
deeply into his own destruction, assailed by fatal decay I had so
gladly wished to hold at bay, for I felt that everything was at stake
now, that in a few minutes' time he would be beyond
Perfectly lonely it was, all around me: no dog barked, no light
anywhere, the house seemed uninhabited. I had every chance
ahead of me, if only my will would remain sufficient! Even now I
hoped for him, indeed I believed, I demanded, that the cycle of
mounting youthfulness would begin again; but it was not only
ageing from which he now suffered: pain too, sorrow, despair,
mortal terror ... Every expression of human woe I saw pass over
stone that night, vague but unmistakable and not suited to any
explanation other than of the woeful afflictions they evoked within
myself ... Then again, it was as though he was on the verge of
coming down to whisper his secret to me which would rob me of
all peace; he pleaded, he prayed, his cheeks hollowed, beard
stubble grew rampant, grizzling in the light; had he had a body, he
would have knelt down or writhed about in agony, but his body
was no longer there any more, surely: the house was his body, the
ground upon which the house was built, the fields around it, the
night ... And how old and far away and irretrievable the night
And then, all of a sudden, I understood that he must be the
one, doomed to restlessness, who controlled this landscape and
who had lured me here in order to have me share in his misery. I
was seized by impotence. I wished to get away but could not.
Trails, fragments of my initial thoughts coursed through my mind,
and behind them a fresh thought arose, not to be caught in words yet, a thought I was not yet ready for, as all my attention was
being taken up ... My arm stiffened; with muscles growing more
powerless all the time I trained the light on to the same spot. And
his eyes just stared, stared - and slowly they sucked me towards
him...