The Evenings

  “Now the cold is rising through my legs,” he thought, “it is already up to my knees. Like with a dying man. But it promotes reflection.” Without standing up, he turned off the light by twisting the bulb to the left, and laid his head on the desk. “I must think,” he thought, “and for that silence is needed.” “Rabbit,” he said aloud, “if anyone comes along, tell them I’m not here. Gone out for a bit. Or rather, tell them I’m taking a bath.” He worked his jaw back and forth. “A cracking sound,” he said to himself. “It is as though the joint is cracking, but it is the desk.”

  He dozed off, awoke, sat up straight, bowed his head and then remained sitting motionless. “In a dark room,” he thought. “I am in the dark. I can see everything that happens around me and yet I myself am invisible.” He nodded off again and again, but each time he almost fell asleep, he sat up again with a start. “Everything hurts,” he thought, “my head is a giant abscess.” He turned on the lamp again.

  “Frits!” his mother shouted. “Ah, yes,” he said to himself, “one more time.” “Frits!” she shouted again. “That’s twice,” he thought, “but I didn’t hear it. One must not forget: I am hard of hearing.” “Frits, where are you?” she called out. He heard his father say something in a deep voice. “That is thrice,” he said to himself, “but the fourth time I will certainly hear.” He waited. From the room, he could hear his parents talking loudly. “Frits!” his mother shouted after thirty seconds. “Yes, I’m coming,” he shouted and stood up. He pulled the rabbit from under his belt, kissed it on the head and put it back in the bookcase.

  “Where have you been, for heaven’s sake?” his mother asked as he came into the living room. She was still sitting in the chair by the fire. His father lay on the divan, reading a large book that he had placed on the seat of a chair slid up beside him. “Father was just saying,” his mother said, “that you’d probably gone out. But I said: Then I would have heard him. Where were you? I called you any number of times. For the last half hour.”

  “Nowhere,” Frits said. “I was in the next room, checking something.” “It’s already well over a quarter past eleven,” she said. “A quarter past eleven?” he asked, “quarter past eleven?” He looked at his watch. It showed eleven twenty-two. “I’ll be damned,” he said, “I was looking for something in a book. I suppose I must have nodded off, or else I was daydreaming.”

  “It is past eleven,” he thought suddenly. “Ten o’clock is behind us, eleven o’clock has come and gone. Long gone. Sing, angels, sing. Almost eleven thirty. Wonderful. Glorious.” “This is the same feeling,” he said to himself. “Mr Vogel is ill. The last period has been cancelled.” He turned on the radio. “How simple things are,” he thought. A piano was playing a slow tune. The tones grew weaker and faded. “Don’t start twisting the knob back and forth right away,” his mother said. “No,” he said, “it fades. That’s part of the programme.”

  “On the evening of this day, before darkness falls,” a calm, mellow voice said slowly, “we would like to once more enter into the presence of—” Frits ran through the channels. “—have arrived now at the final musical course of our banquet of cheerful New Year’s melodies,” an announcer said. “You are hearing the Bobbing Nightingales with… ‘Sunny Boy’.” “Is there really nothing else on?” his father asked once the music started. “This is Brussels,” Frits said, “we could try Hilversum One.” He turned the knob to the left. “Here we go,” he said. They heard the sound of shuffling feet in a cavernous space. “Probably another church,” his mother said. An organ began playing softly. After a few bars the congregation joined in. “Hark, hark,” Frits said to himself, “hours, days, months, years.” “Listen to that,” he said aloud, “hours, days, months, years.” “Hours, days, months, years,” he repeated to himself, “hours, days, months, years.” He turned up the volume. “Can’t you turn that down a little?” his father asked. “No,” Frits replied, “this needs to be loud. Leave it like this, just the way it is.” His heart was pounding. “Hours, days, months, years,” he said to himself. “This is the evening. This is the night. It is New Year’s Eve. In a little over twenty-eight minutes it will be midnight. I still have twenty-eight minutes. I must collect my thoughts. I must be finished thinking when twelve o’clock strikes.” He looked at his father. “Help those who are oppressed and imagine themselves abandoned in this world,” he thought. “Old fart.”

  The singing stopped. After a brief postlude, the organ fell silent too. “Brethren,” a high voice said. Frits spun the dial, but did not look for another station. The loudspeaker hissed softly.

  “Now I have to say it,” he said to himself, “I have to say it. But how? Just a few more moments. I have to. It’s still not too late.”

  “Father,” he said loudly, “Father.” “Yes, my boy,” his father said. He laid a pencil between the pages of the book and closed it. “He is listening,” Frits thought, “but I don’t yet know what I am going to say. I don’t know.” His head throbbed. “If I don’t speak right away, something terrible is going to happen.”

  “Father,” he said. The man sat up. “Frits is talking to you,” his mother said. “Yes, I hear that, obviously,” said his father. He grimaced for a moment, causing a row of wrinkles to appear at the spot where nose met forehead. “I can’t back out any more,” Frits thought. The room rocked back and forth before his eyes, faded for moment, then settled into place. “What is it, what did I say?” he thought.

  “Father,” he said, “only people can sing. That’s curious, isn’t it? That singing is something only people can do?” “Lost, all is lost,” he thought, “I didn’t dare to say it. I said something else. What did I say?” He felt his head grow hot. “Something very different,” he thought, “and nonsensical. Idiotic nonsense. A handful of words tossed out. Nonsensical words. The purest blather, neither here nor there. It’s ridiculous: birds sing too. What exactly did I say?”

  “But birds sing too, don’t they?” his mother said. “Help,” he thought, “I am lost.” “Yes,” his father said, “birds sing quite beautifully, I’ve always thought.” “I mean,” Frits said, “I, I mean, Father, don’t you understand what I mean?” The lamp shrank before his eyes, slid away into the distance and came back again. “No,” his father said, “that only people can sing, that’s simply not true.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe, if I go on talking,” Frits said to himself, “I can distract them.” “You mean those birds they catch and keep in cages,” he said, “to make them whistle. A canary, I can imagine that, that’s one of those tropical birds that can’t live out of doors around these parts. In fact, most canaries are born in captivity. They don’t know any better.” “What am I saying?” he thought, “what am I babbling on about?” “But they also catch thrushes and blackbirds,” he went on. “And all kinds of other birds, I don’t know, that live in the wild. They put them in cages.” “It’s your purest nonsense,” he thought. “There is no way out of it.” He felt the blood rush to his ears. “I need to sit down,” he thought. “A chair.” He pulled a chair back from the table and dropped down onto it. “Could it be that they didn’t notice anything?” he thought.

  “Yes,” his mother said, “in the countryside you see that so often. A blackbird, or a lark, in a cage in front of the house. What’s the charm in that? I can’t understand it.” “Dearest, best among women,” Frits said to himself. “Wine. Apple-berry. Berry-apple, actually.” “I started off talking gibberish,” he thought, “could they have forgotten what I said first?” The throbbing in his head diminished slightly.

  His father slid his legs off the divan and sat on the edge. “When I was little,” he said, “when summer came, my father and a few other men would go out catching finches. That was a real occasion.” He scratched his chin, broke wind and went on: “They would go out on Saturday evening and wouldn’t come back till Sunday morning, around nine o’clock. With a whole heap of finches. They sold them.”

  “I am delivered,” Frits said to himse
lf, “the conversation has moved on from a nonsensical start.” “Is it true,” his mother asked, “that they actually blind finches? Is that true?” “Oh yes,” his father said, “they blinded them, that makes them sing better; at least that’s what they claimed.” He parted his lips, gritted his teeth and said: “I remember seeing my father do it. He took a glowing knitting needle and burned their eyes out.” Resting his chin in his hand, he looked at Frits. “Father,” the boy thought, “Father.” “Are the oliebollen already finished?” he asked. He pointed at the empty platter. “Father said: Let’s eat the rest of them,” his mother said, “Frits won’t be back that quickly. I told him: let’s not. Well, it happened anyway. Your father has them in his stomach. Shall I make you a sandwich?” “Oh no,” Frits said. “What did you say?” his father asked her. “I said,” she shouted, “that you ate all the pastries, including his.” “Yes,” the man said. “Those pastries,” he said suddenly, turning to Frits, “I believe I ate your oliebollen too. Didn’t I?” “No, that’s fine actually,” Frits said. “They would only be hard and chewy in the morning. I don’t want any more.”

  “How about a little wine?” his mother asked. “It is juice,” Frits said to himself. “Berry-apple.” “Yes, I’d love that,” he replied. “The bottle is still half-full,” she said while she poured. “It will be good for a pudding,” he said, “you can use it to make a good sauce for semolina pudding.”

  “You won’t forget the radio, will you?” she asked. “It can’t be long now.” He looked at his watch. “Four minutes,” he replied, “going on three now, that’s three minutes. A little over three minutes.” He pulled his chair over to the radio and began running through the channels. “—we bring you ‘The Policeman’s Holiday’,” a voice said. “After that there will be a pause of about thirty seconds. You will hear the seconds ticking away; at ten seconds before midnight you will hear the sound we announcers know so well, signalling the full hour: a brief, clear tick.”

  “Sort of a strange song to end with, don’t you think?” Frits asked once the record began. “Time to fill the glasses, then,” his father said. His mother poured. She spilled some. “Apple-berry,” Frits thought. “Berry-apple.” The music stopped. The seconds ticked. “Grr-tock,” they heard suddenly. “Here it comes,” Frits said. He shivered.

  “Seven, eight, nine,” he counted off to himself. The slow tones of the overture began. Then two counts of silence. The chimes rang. Outside the sirens roared. “Happy New Year, dear,” said his mother, taking his father’s hand. “Happy New Year,” he said. They kissed. “Happy New Year to you, Mother,” said Frits, once his parents had let go of each other. His mother took his arm and pulled him to her, kissed him once on the cheek and once on the side of his neck. “Happy New Year,” she said. He kissed her on the corner of the mouth. While she was still holding him tight, he stuck his hand out to his father. “Happy New Year, Father,” he said. “Happy New Year, my boy,” the man said, gripping his hand and pumping the arm up and down forcefully.

  As soon as Frits was released, he raised his glass. His parents followed suit. They held them together, carefully clinked each other’s glass and drank. “Apple-berry,” Frits thought. “It is finished.” His parents sat down. The radio started in on a march.

  “I’m going out to take a look around,” he said. “I need to be outside for a bit.” He threw on his coat and rushed down the stairs. In front of the house he stopped. “First I need to take a piss,” he mumbled. He stepped up to the wall and made water against a drainpipe. More and more sirens and whistles mixed with the din. Closing his fly, he looked up. Halfway across the sky was an opening in the clouds, where the stars sparkled brightly. To the south, a rocket traced a green trail; it climbed, slowed, fell and extinguished halfway to earth. “That’s one of those flying suns,” he thought, “four cents apiece.” Passers-by, who had stopped to watch the rocket, walked on.

  He raced across the quay to the river, turned left and walked quickly, leaping from time to time, along the bank. There was almost no wind; the water’s surface was marked only by faint ripples. Two boys on a bike, dragging three large tins behind them on a string, passed him at high speed. Occasionally one of the tins bounced high in the air. “Very good,” Frits said to himself. On the far side, right behind the first row of waterfront houses, three red rockets shot up in rapid succession. “It’s not really red,” he thought, “more like a light purple. Like the silver foil around the chocolate towers when we were little.” At their apex the rockets spattered apart into white stars that died out after a few seconds.

  “Let us walk on,” he said to himself, “wish some people a happy New Year.”

  On a covered barge along the far bank he made out a few silhouettes. “It’s fairly light out,” he thought, “are those the street lamps or is the moon up there somewhere? It must be behind a cloud, because I don’t see it.” The figures on the barge were stooping over something. Suddenly he saw a flame rise up between them, at the level of the deck. First it flared white, then grew brighter and changed to a dark green. The flame grew, changed shape and became a globe. The faces of those standing around it became clearly visible. “Bengal fire,” he thought. “It looks like there’s moss growing on their faces. You can see even the individual stones in the walls.”

  The glow lasted for thirty seconds, reached full strength, flickered and then died out slowly. The sirens and whistles stopped, one by one. He looked around. Two young boys were standing a few steps away from him. They were wearing black raincoats. One was a head taller than the other.

  He took a few steps in their direction. They leapt away immediately. “They’re afraid,” he thought. “They are afraid of me; eight years old or so.” He cleared his throat and asked: “So, gentlemen, are you allowed out so late at night?” “Yes, sir,” the biggest boy replied, “it’s New Year’s Eve.” “So it is,” he thought, “they speak when spoken to, because one has to say something back, even to the stupidest questions.” “Still, it’s dangerous, you know,” he said, “with the boogiemen out and about.” “There’s no such thing,” the little boy said, “and besides, there’s two of us. I’d hit him on the head with this stick.” He produced a thick length of tree branch from under his raincoat.

  “He says that was cold fire,” the bigger of the two said, pointing first at his companion and then across the river, “but that can’t be, can it, mister?” “Cold fire does not exist,” Frits said, “there’s no such thing.” “See!” the big boy said to the little one. They turned suddenly and ran off. “A common misconception among the young,” Frits said to himself. “The belief in cold fire. They believe that fireworks and sparks are made of cold fire.” He moved close to the water and picked his way along the granite revetment. “This is more or less the spot,” he thought, “where Louis walked into the water. That was a good eighteen years ago. He wasn’t paying attention. His father suddenly heard a splash behind him.”

  He crossed the bridge with the stone balustrade and speeded up to a trot. “First we’ll wish Jaap a happy New Year,” he thought. On the far side he ran along the water’s edge, quickly rounded the corner onto the canal lined with warehouses, sped on to number seventy-one, skipped up the front steps and rang the bell. “Eleven minutes,” he said aloud. “How about if I shout something cute. German police!” “That’s once,” he thought after waiting for half a minute. He rang again, hopped down the stairs and slowly headed back the way he had come. “Of course,” he said to himself, “they’ve gone to Jaap’s parents. Taken the child along. Very wise. Or else they left it at home, in the hope that there will not be a fire.”

  “There is nothing going on tonight,” he thought, “it was only a bit of noise. In London everyone rushes out into the streets. In Moscow they fire cannons and set off huge fireworks over the whole city.”

  He followed the route back along the river and rang the bell at the house with the towers. “Viktor is bound to be at home, at least,” he said to himself, “and he wo
n’t have gone to bed yet either.” “Who’s there?” a woman’s voice called through the speaking tube. “Frits,” he shouted back, “is Viktor home?” “I don’t really have to wait,” he thought, “he’s not here anyway. Otherwise he would have opened the door himself.” “Viktor has gone to his parents, to Haarlem,” the voice answered. “Fine,” Frits shouted back, “tell him Frits van Egters says hello. He knows who that is. I’ll come by soon, to wish him a happy New Year. Goodbye, Lidia.”

  He sauntered back across the bridge. “I still have one chance left,” he thought, “that’s Louis. I suspect that he got home about an hour ago.” He remained standing at Louis’s door for a few minutes. “I’m not going to ring yet,” he said to himself. “It’s freezing, but no more than half a degree below zero. Everything is cooling down. The street, the trees and the walls have to become cold first. They go on radiating heat for a whole day. Now I’ll ring the bell. Almighty God, see me in my distress. This is the final door.”

  He pushed the button, held it in to the count of five and waited. “No one,” he said. “No one.” He rang the bell again, stepped back and remained standing before the portico. “Not home, the imbecile,” he murmured. “Here I stand.” He started walking home.

  “From the depths I have called to you,” he said to himself, “but my voice was not heard. Berry-apple. Now am I going home. Eternal and only God, our God, I am going to my parents. Look upon my parents.” His eyes grew moist.

  “Eternal, only, almighty, our God,” he said quietly, “fix your gaze upon my parents. See them in their need. Do not turn your eyes from them.” “Listen,” he said, “my father is deaf as a tradesman’s dummy. He hears little, what he hears is not worth mentioning. Fire a cannon beside his ear for a joke, he’ll ask if there’s someone at the door. He slurps when he drinks. He dishes up sugar with his dessert spoon. He takes the meat between his fingers. He breaks wind, without anyone having asked him to do so. He has the remains of food between his molars. He does not know where the guilder is supposed to go. When he peels his eggs, he does not know what to do with the shells. He asks in English whether there is anything new and interesting to report. He mashes together all the food on his plate. Everlasting Lord, I know that it has not gone unseen.”