After eating, they remained seated for a while. “Time to relax and have a smoke,” Frits said. He had just started to roll a cigarette when his father pulled out his case and offered him a cigar. “That looks good,” he said, taking one.
“Make a cigarette for me, would you?” his mother asked. He rolled a thin one and handed it to her. She stuck the cigarette a fifth of the way into her mouth, right in the middle of her lips. Puffing shallowly, she pulled the cigarette out of her mouth each time, using thumb and forefinger, and exhaled even before the smoke could quite fill the oral cavity.
“The way you smoke is both incredibly clumsy and ridiculous,” Frits said. “First of all, one should always hold the very tip of the cigarette between the dry, outermost part of the lips. Secondly, you must then move it to one corner of your mouth, not take it out all the time. And if you do, then only between index and middle finger.” “Make it sound like I’m joking,” he thought, and went on in a shrill voice, creasing his face into a smile. “Like this,” he said, pulling the cigarette from her mouth. It remained glued to her upper lip.
“Ow,” she cried. “Ow!” “Come now, stop this,” his father said, suddenly blowing a huge cloud of smoke. “She has to learn sometime,” Frits said. His mother stubbed out the cigarette and laid it in a groove in the ashtray.
While she was clearing the table, his father went and lay on the divan, then sat up again to remove his shoes. He remained seated like that for a moment, staring into space, then stood up and walked to the bookcase. Just as he reached it, he slipped; his left leg shot out, but he regained his balance. “Goodness!” his mother cried, “oh mercy!” “It’s nothing,” Frits said. “Don’t start bawling right away.”
His father took a book from the shelf, went back and lay on the divan, running his free hand through his hair. “Oh heavens, the fire,” his mother said. She peered into the stove, then said: “It’s burning nicely now. Mind, you two, that you leave it exactly like this. With the kettle just a little in between.” She demonstrated how to balance the aluminium kettle against the top of the stove door, to keep it ajar. “Otherwise it will all burn up within the hour,” she said, going into the kitchen.
Frits looked at the clock. “All is lost,” he thought, “everything is ruined. It’s ten minutes past three. But the evening can still make up for a great deal.” His father was feeling around with his right hand between the divan and the wall. “What are you looking for?” Frits asked. “Mmm,” his father replied, “I’m looking for something.” “Did you drop it?” Frits asked. “My lighter,” his father replied. His mother came in. “Have you lost something?” she asked. “Yes,” his father said, “yes, I have.” “What has your father lost?” she asked Frits. “The lighter,” he replied, “it rolled back behind there.”
“Get your lazy bones off that divan,” his mother said, and once his father was standing she pulled the divan away from the wall. Something hard fell to the floor. Frits bent over, felt around, found the little copper contraption and handed it to his father, who was bent over the divan, ready to lie down again. “Move it back first,” his mother said. Frits pushed the seat straight against the wall. His father turned and sat on it, relit his cold cigar, and lay down.
Seating himself before the window, Frits watched the ducks waddling across the ice on the canal. He leafed through a railway timetable he’d found on the mantel. His mother sat beside the fire, knitting something in white wool. “Needles ticking like a fast clock,” he thought. Forty-five minutes passed in this way. He moved to another chair, beside the divan, in front of the radio, and looked at his father. “He’s asleep,” he said to himself, and turned on the set. Suddenly the kettle began singing in the kitchen. “Make that noise stop,” he thought, “for God’s sake, make it stop.” His mother hurried into the kitchen; a moment later the whistling stopped. She came back with tea. “And now, dear listeners, ‘La Favorite’ by Couperin,” the announcer said. When the music had begun, his mother said: “That’s not a violin, is it? But it’s not a piano either. It must be a harpsichord. Is that a harpsichord?” “A glorious instrument, isn’t it?” Frits said. “I forgot to turn off the gas,” she said quite suddenly. “Would you do it for me?” He went to the kitchen and turned off the burner. When he came back, the radio was silent. His father was sitting half-upright, leaning on one elbow. The clock said twelve minutes to four.
When the doorbell rang, Frits went to open it. “Who’s there?” he shouted. There was no reply. “Who’s there, goddam it!” he bellowed. “Whoever it is, I feel like giving them a sound thumping,” he said out loud. A young man with black hair and glasses rounded the corner of the final landing. “Oh, it’s you. Hello,” Frits said with a smile, which vanished immediately. “See, things can get even worse,” he thought. The visitor was of slender build, his red, bony face dotted with pimples.
“Well, well, Mr van Egters,” he said, “how are you today?” “Fine, thank you, Mr van Egters,” Frits replied, “and you?” They entered the hallway together. “Is Ina coming too?” Frits’s mother asked after pecking him on the cheeks. “As chance would have it, Mother,” the young man said with a smile, “Ina isn’t feeling well. The only purpose of my visit is to say that we won’t be coming to dinner.” He shook his head. “He’s already grown a little balder,” Frits thought.
“Oh goodness,” his mother said. “Is she feeling poorly?” “Not well at all,” the young man said. “If you wait a moment, Joop, I’ll make something for you to take with you,” she said, going to the kitchen.
“How are things here?” Joop asked. “How do you think?” thought Frits. “How do you think?” he said. For a moment, no one spoke. “Since Joop has left home, Father” he went on in a jovial tone, “I find that I get along with him swimmingly.” Joop smiled. His father turned on the radio and found a waltz. He patted his right knee to the rhythm.
His mother poured them tea. “Have a macaroon,” she said to Joop. “We’ve had ours already.”
It was growing dark. Frits turned on the light, which caused a grinding noise to come out of the loudspeaker. “Ben Beender and his orchestra, with ‘On the Ice’,” the announcer said. His father clicked off the set.
“Our toilet’s frozen,” Joop said to Frits. “Christ,” Frits said, “is it frozen solid, or just blocked with ice? If it’s the latter, maybe something can be done about it.” “What do I care,” he thought, “what difference does it make to me?” “Well, that’s probably all it is,” Joop said. “Do you have something thin, something strong but flexible?” Frits went into the hallway and searched through the broom cupboard, until he found the top section of a fishing rod. “Will this do?” he asked, coming back into the room. “No,” Joop answered, “that would be a pity. It’s a good rod.” Frits put the piece back where he’d found it. “That was easy enough,” he said to himself. “Why do I think that way?” he thought then. “What right do I have to be so blasé?”
His mother came into the living room, carrying a pan. “Listen,” she said to Joop, “here’s some meat and gravy. There’s a little apple sauce in a jar, in there, between the endives and the potatoes. If I wrap it all in some newspaper and put it in here”—she held up a wicker shopping basket for him to see—“it won’t spill and it won’t get cold.” Joop put on his coat and coughed. “You’re going awfully bald,” Frits said. He eyed Joop’s scalp, the hairline already in full retreat along both sides of the forehead. “You say that with a certain glee, I note,” Joop said. He left, carefully balancing the pan in its bag. “Say hello, and give my love to all,” his mother called after him.
“At least that’s over with,” Frits said to himself. “All this coming and going, the doorbell never stops ringing.” His father crossed to the stove, seized the handle and opened the door with a clatter. “He’s going to make a mess,” Frits thought, “and all I can do is watch. Why can’t I stop watching?” His father rapped his pipe hard a few times against the metal sill: charred tobacco fell between door and
stove to the floor. Then he slammed the door with a loud clang.
His mother set the table and brought in the food. “Some of the potatoes might be a little hard,” she said as they sat down, “but I can’t help it. If you know of a better place to eat, I won’t stop you.” “There isn’t a single glassy one in the bunch, as far as I can ascertain,” Frits said. “Careful with the gravy,” she said, “don’t drown your food in it. I can make more, but it will only be waterier.” “The gravy is exemplary,” Frits said, “it’s absolutely heavenly. In fact, you don’t even need much of it, it’s so nice and rich.” “The gravy is good,” he thought, “it really is excellent.” “Father, does it meet with your approval as well, if I may be so bold?” he asked with mock affectation, his head tilted to one side. “It tastes fine to me, I have to admit,” his father replied.
After dinner his father went to sit by the stove, in the same spot where Frits’s mother had done her knitting that afternoon. Frits put on his coat and came into the room. “Where are you off to?” asked his mother, who was clearing the table. “Why not spend a nice, quiet evening at home?” “I’m fidgety,” Frits said, “I need to get out. I think I’ll go to see Jaap Elderer tonight, or else Louis.” Confirming the presence of tobacco and rolling papers in his box, he slid it into his coat pocket and left.
It was cold outside. A south-easterly wind was blowing hard. Not a single star could be seen on the firmament. At the river he turned left and followed the granite embankment. Crossing a bridge with heavy stone balustrades, he walked along the other bank, past a broad, busy street, turning at last onto a quay with warehouses at the start of it. At number seventy-one, having first climbed a flight of seven flagstone steps, he rang the bell beside a door with a wrought-iron grille before the glass. At the first pull of the bell handle he heard a dull rattle: only after a slight delay did the clapper sound two clear, penetrating notes. He waited thirty seconds, rang again, then went back down the steps. “The chances of this evening’s success have been significantly reduced,” he said quietly. “These are trying times.”
He took the same route for his return. Close to his own home he entered the portico of a tall, broad house by the riverfront and rang the bell. When the door swung open, he shouted up the stairs: “Egters, in the flesh.” High above him someone was leaning over the banister, peering down. “I reiterate: Egters, Van,” Frits shouted. “Well, all right then, why not?” the person upstairs shouted. “It’s probably better than nothing.” When Frits arrived upstairs he was met by an extremely tall young man with thin, blond hair slicked back. The young man wore no jacket, and had his sleeveless jumper on inside out, without a tie.
“I came by out of boredom,” Frits said. “A busy day, sometimes one needs to get away. Forgive me for imposing on your own hectic schedule, your studies, your labour of exploration. What are you working on at the moment?”
The windows in the room they entered were bare of curtains. It was, without actually being cramped, not a large room. An oversized paraffin heater was lit in one corner, yet the air was in no way stale. Along the wall to the left was a table, on the other side an upright fold-down bed, and between these two chairs.
“Photography,” said the young man, picking up a book from the table. Experiments with Film Sensitive to Colour, Frits read. “And are you making headway in this, Louis?” he asked. “Sometimes I believe I am,” the young man replied, flicking a breadcrumb against the wall. “Shoo, puss,” he said, giving a whack to the head of the black-and-white dappled cat that had jumped onto his lap. The animal leapt to the floor and crawled under the chair by the window where Frits had just seated himself. “They’re learning,” the young man said. “But Louis, I thought the cat you had here was black,” Frits said. “There are any number of them,” Louis said, “oh yes, any number indeed.” “How large a number might that be, pray tell?” “Five, I think,” Louis said. “And they have the run of the place?” Frits asked. “Doesn’t anyone else live here?”
“No,” Louis said. “When Kade is in his studio, his wife brings food for him and the cats. They have a room of their own. They’re not allowed to go into his studio any more, not since they shat on a pile of drawings.” “Ah, I see,” Frits said. “When you go into their room,” Louis went on, “they’re all sitting there on the table, pretty as you please.” “You should turn down the heater a bit,” Frits said. “I see it flaring up yellow.” As Louis was trimming the burner, Frits looked at the frost flowers on the windows, examining the ice crystals that had risen in twin sheaves, like a bird’s feathers. “Excuse me for just a moment,” Louis said, standing up and moving to the table. “I want to finish jotting this down; after that I am at your beck and call.”
“Fine,” Frits said, but it didn’t register. His eyes traced the outlines of the frost flowers and he poked his index finger against the ice again and again, leaving a little round hole each time where it melted. “That’s been a while,” he thought, looking over his shoulder at Louis, who was bent over his book. On his wrist he wore a large, flat watch with a broad grey strap. A pencil dangled from his lips.
“I must have been twelve or thirteen,” Frits thought. “We were on the balcony. Who else was there? Louis, Frans, Jaap, Bep and a couple of the others, I can’t remember their names.” He closed his eyes. “I can still see it,” he thought. “They were walking back and forth, on the fourth floor, balancing on the rail. It wasn’t much broader than my hand. And the others just laughed and laughed. How could they laugh?” He opened his eyes, looked at Louis, and closed them again. “To have such courage,” he thought, “what a blessing. Or did they simply fail to see how dangerous it was? Perhaps that was it. I felt nauseous, and there was this pain behind my eyes; that was me. And a sort of tickling at the base of my spine. Afraid I was, afraid I have remained. So is it.” He sighed. “If only I were Louis, or Frans, that’s what I used to think,” he said to himself. “And merely watching, and being discontented.”
“I need to find an envelope,” he heard Louis say. Rummaging through folders and piles of paper, the young man then seemed to find something that caught his eye, for he started reading it attentively.
“Yes,” Frits thought. “And that business with the flowerpots. Dropping them on someone from the fourth floor and then, at the last moment, yelling: look out! So they could jump aside just in time. It’s a miracle no one ever got hurt. I can’t explain it.” He listened to the silence, in which he heard his own watch ticking. “Or that time on the footpath,” he said to himself. “The four of us picked a fight with six others, they were all just as strong as we were. But they ran away. We caught one of them, took him along, tied him to that pole and left him there, and it was already growing dark. Louis didn’t care.”
Suddenly he heard the rustling of paper. Louis had finished, turned his chair to him and said: “Well well, Mr Egters.” “Allow me, if you would, to inquire as to the state of your well-being,” Frits said. “As per usual,” Louis replied, “as per usual.” “By now, of course, it has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Frits said, “that you do not inhabit a sound body. One suspects a family with a great many haematological disorders. Describe, if you would, the symptoms anew.” “How can I say things like this?” he thought, “why can’t I make it stop?” “They are known to you by now,” Louis said. “Does the headache give you no respite?” Frits asked. “No,” Louis said, “I’m sorry to have to disappoint you on that score.” “As soon as you work, or read, or write, it returns in force, isn’t that correct?” Frits asked. “Even at this very moment?” “Certainly, even at this very moment,” Louis said.
“So are we to conclude that you are headed for your demise, that it is all going steadily downhill?” Frits asked. “And that you are waiting patiently for your final repose?”
“Well, in the long run it does get a bit annoying, I must say,” Louis answered, slowly wrinkling his brow. “When it goes on for years, never changing, then at a given point”—here his voice
suddenly took on something airy—“you start thinking that the end might not really be so terrible after all. In the long run, you see, one starts to have doubts.”
Frits looked at Louis, at the eyes glistening colourless in his head. “It’s like they’ve been steeping in hot water for ages,” he thought. The room had grown hot again. For the second time that evening the cat sprang onto Louis’s lap, and again he smacked it. “He acts like it’s a casual slap,” Frits thought, “but this time it was a calculated movement. The knuckles of the right hand precisely against the beast’s head.” The animal did not jump away immediately. Louis drew his arm back a bit further and this time administered a more powerful blow. The cat sprang away with a cry. “It sounded just like: ‘mama’,” Frits said. They laughed.
“Do you like cats?” Louis asked. “Do you?” Frits asked.
“I asked you first.” “No,” Frits said, “in fact, I consider them creatures without a soul.” “For the love of me,” Louis said, “I can’t understand why anyone would keep such animals in their home.”
The chastened beast was hunched up beneath the fold-down bed by the door. Its tail and a few whiskers were the only things sticking out from under the curtain. “Render kindness unto animals, and consider the birds of the air,” Louis said with a grin. “A dog, though,” he went on then, “I can almost imagine that.” “One with big, faithful eyes,” Frits said, twisting his face into a grin that produced a yawn.
“Have I ever told you that crazy story about the dog in Bloemendaal?” “No,” Louis said, leaning forward. “A house in Bloemendaal,” Frits said. “A big old house, a mansion. This old man lives there, alone. All alone. One day the neighbours say: we haven’t seen him for ages. You know how that goes, one story leads to the next. They start poking around outside the house. Not a sound. Everything’s locked, they can’t get in.”