Margriet de Moor - The Storm

“Mr s . Blaauw.”

Very funny even now. She cleared her throat sarcastically.

“Hello, it’s me.”

Lidy hadn’t been able to get it at first and found it all a little strange: Armanda’s goddaughter was turning seven and was determined that her aunt and beloved godmother, who came to visit once a year, must make the long trip to the little provincial town, bringing ballet shoes as a birthday present. And now Armanda was asking her to go in her place? Oh. But why?

“All right, okay, I guess it sounds like a nice idea,” Lidy finally said after five minutes of to-and-fro.

It had been a sudden stirring, a blind impulse that had come to her the previous Monday from out of the blue, and which, just like that, she had allowed to take hold.

When Sjoerd came home shortly after midday, the table was covered with papers, and Armanda was hunched over her diploma thesis. She put down her pen and greeted him with a smile signifying that she and Nadja, who was at the head of the table with two fingers in her mouth, drawing a bear, had spent a wonderful morning together. She quickly poured him a cup of coffee; a plate of rolls sat on a dictionary between them. The mood was companionable as Sjoerd tried good-naturedly to report on the urgent meeting he’d had to have in the office this Saturday morning with a client involving a mortgage loan of many hundreds of thousands of guilders that would have to be converted in a flash on Monday into a 6 percent bond, but the thing didn’t interest her, and conversation soon moved on to Betsy’s party.

“Fine by me.” He stared at her for a moment, and then said with the same indifference, “I’ll pick you up at nine fifteen.”

The rain had stopped, but the wind was still raging.

“Seems to be getting worse,” he said, without turning to look at the window.

“Yes?”

Armanda observed his face, which was almost being erased by the background behind it: rattling panes of glass in the west-facing window, and behind them treetops swaying wildly in a chaos of branches. She was suddenly overcome by the feeling that everything was happening in almost farcical parallel with the story that had been occupying her for half the morning in her work, for the part she’d been working on involved a play in which a storm, conjured up by human powers, broke out and tore across an island. So — and why should that be impossible? By human powers? Out of revenge, out of holy outrage or some such? Now, as she thought back over it again, it didn’t strike her as not at all unthinkable. In earlier times — and we can be sure that the human race was no dumber back then than it is now, maybe it was even a little more intelligent — people believed absolutely it was possible, highly possible, that mental energy, the mad heart of pure invention, could trick an event into becoming real. God, in short, and why not? Who says that everything that is fated to happen must first be properly thought out? Thought out and, maybe, written down in the most convincing way possible? She closed her books. While she was thinking that an event, if it announces itself, discovers that a place has already been made for it and hence connects so familiarly with the imagination that those it touches, i.e., us, respond accordingly, she gathered up her sheets of paper. Dialogues, gestures, scenes, everything already predigested by a literary memory.

She made an unconscious movement. Her pen rolled onto the floor. He bent down faster than she did.

“Thank you.”

She saw something in his eyes as they flashed at her. What kind of marriage did the two of them have? she wondered, and at that moment something so wicked tightened around her heart that she didn’t even try consciously to understand it. She stood up and started pushing her things into her bag.

“Okay,” said Sjoerd, also getting to his feet.

Armanda bent down to fish her shoes out from under the table. She heard the house creak under the force of a squall. My God, she thought, with the detachment of the incurably candid, what a terrific, homely sound! Just think, the weather is going to get so much worse in the night that some of the ferry services will certainly get interrupted, and the captains can thumb their noses at the idea of working tomorrow, maybe even the day after tomorrow, maybe even till hell freezes over. Just think!

Looking distracted, she said good-bye.

As she and Sjoerd got out of the taxi that evening on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, Betsy’s front door was standing open. Sjoerd took the four narrow, almost vertical flights of stairs so fast that they had to pant at each other speechlessly for a moment when they reached the apartment door at the top. He took the coat from her shoulders. There was already a mountain of wet clothes hanging over the banisters. Betsy discovered them, called out a welcome, and led them into the attic room that once upon a time had served as a secret church; it had very high ceilings and was already filled with the din of voices. Armanda was in seventh heaven. It felt so good to walk in with a carefree Sjoerd in his old tweed jacket. And naturally there were any number of more casual acquaintances who did a double take when they first saw her.

“Armanda,” she had to say more than once. “I’m Armanda.”

For the first time today she was crossing water. The Nieuwe Waterweg is a deep but fairly narrow channel — the ferry only needs ten minutes to get from one side to the other — but the fare between the two landing stages is still a quarter guilder. Lidy saw a shockingly old peasant’s face loom up by her left-hand window. She understood, wound it down, and put the demanded coin in the ferryman’s paw. As all the windows in the car promptly steamed up, she got out and was startled by the wind, which seemed to her to be extremely strong out here on the water.

She looked around, and was amused to see a broad-shouldered man in a captain’s uniform up on the bridge, standing at the wheel and looking serious. I really am on a ship. Little waves all around, at an angle ahead of them an oceangoing steamer making course for the open sea, and over to the left the freighter RO8, headed toward the harbor in Rotterdam. Leaning against the car, she was standing in the blurry light of an imminent rain shower. Under the roof of the gangway, people with bicycles and people on foot. Her eye fell on a chest standing next to the railing, with Life Vests painted on it in white letters, as if to make absolutely clear to her once more that she really had left dry land. A few minutes later and the ship was already swinging round and coming to a stop. The loading ramp landed on the quay with a loud crash. And yet: as Lidy drove onto the island of Rozenburg, the crossing, regardless of how short it had been, had succeeded in placing a greater distance between her and home than she had expected or intended. This little outing was supposed to be only a fantasy, wasn’t it, a little exercise in tyranny on the part of her sister, Armanda, one that she herself had almost no part in?

Right, but in the hours that followed there was no pretense of a proper road to follow. A labyrinth of little side roads, locks, and bridges demanded her total attention. Impossible to think anything else in life more important, even for a moment, than the route, which seemed to have a will of its own and cared very little about the map spread out on the passenger seat. Near Nieuw-Beijerland she had to take another ferry, and a quarter of an hour later she reached the sea dike with a narrow asphalt road along the top. She stopped and ran in the wind to a faded street sign on which, luckily, she was able to decipher the name Numansdorp. That was where the harbor must be, at the Hollands Diep, which was the departure point for several ferries that made the crossing of the long arm of the sea.