Margriet de Moor - The Storm

“No-o …”

· · ·

“Are you still there?”

“Ye-es!”

“Your voice sounds so light, Lidy, and so interested, as if you really want to know how I’m faring here.”

“Yes, well, must be because I was dreaming that the two of us were taking a walk on Sunday to the water tower. There were botanic gardens for plant trials on the other side of the bridge back then, hidden behind a wall. The early sun was tinting the sky above them to a pinkish mother-of-pearl color like the inside of a seashell.”

“That isn’t a dream, that really happened. We were still little children. But can you dream while you’re drowning?”

“And how. In fact, it’s all you do. In the dream you’re calling life, we went through the grass past the houseboats, looked at the wall on the opposite bank, and felt a pleasant, eventful sort of homesick feeling. Homesickness mostly starts when you’re in the open, and then a wall is always really helpful. We got to talking about eternity, endlessness, and from there we automatically got into the God problem, you simply didn’t understand why the most rational people made such a song and dance about it. You stood still, to pull up one of your white kneesocks, which was all wet through — the grass was wet, it had been raining — you were thinking, and you murmured to yourself, why couldn’t there be some Being that spanned everything and guided it? Your little red patent-leather purse slipped down off your shoulder. ‘I don’t see why that should be so inconvenient,’ you said, and hung the purse, which had nothing in it, back round your shoulder. ‘Me neither,’ I said. You were quiet. I could see your nose and mouth tensing. ‘Why can’t I read Netteke Takes a Cure?’ you asked finally, looking at me. ‘You know you’re not allowed,’ I replied, and named the name of a friend I hung around, not a real friend, a girl who granted me her dubious and always a little tormenting favors only during school hours. She had lent me the book under the most draconian conditions.

“‘Look,’ I said, to distract you, and pointed at the afterdeck of the General Praag right next to us, where a black bantam cock was getting ready to fly off the deck rail between some speckled hens that were waiting on the bank, frozen in a kind of primordial terror. The morning sun picked out the small male creature with its fiery-red cockscomb, its rough plumage puffed out like an actor’s cloak. ‘He’s waiting for a drumroll from the orchestra,’ I said placatingly.

“You looked at me steadfastly. You said we had made a promise always to share everything. By way of an answer, I started talking about the two white mice, which was the stupidest thing I could have done. They belonged to you, you exclusively, which was the only thing that made my reminder relevant. You had hidden them in an empty aquarium, scattered a layer of wood shavings, and put our world atlas on top to make a lid. And yes, although you would actually have preferred that I not even look at your cuddly toys through the glass, I once lifted the atlas while you were gone to have a look from on top. Terrific, not a second later, they both suddenly got their necks broken as they were cunningly scaling the sides and got hit by the heavy book when their little mama’s sister dropped it in fright.

“‘What is it?’ I asked, for I couldn’t read your expression properly. Somehow it seemed you were listening to the scuffling next to the General Praag , the bantam cock had landed. Somehow I should have known: you had picked up on my mistake, of course you had.

“‘Dumb creatures,’ you said.

“I nodded and indicated with my eyes the poultry sex going on in the grass, but you shook your head. A bit irritated, or so it seemed to me, at my simplemindedness, you began to express your loathing of white mice, those little snouts, those little teeth, those little eyes, all of it dumber than dumb, and the peak of dumbness was naturally to keep the pair in an aquarium.

“ Quelle idée!’ you said, in Mother’s tone of voice, and crossed your feet in a way that meant you either needed to go really badly, or that you had come clean about something and now you were ready to fantasize a little. Oh, you were such a golden, magnanimous child! You were wearing a checked, pleated skirt that morning, a blindingly white blouse, and a striped knit jacket that had previously belonged to me. Children like you often love to theorize, completely uninhibitedly. ‘People have so little fantasy,’ you burst out plaintively. ‘It’s okay that there’s a primary color we don’t know, but it’s just pathetic and sad that we can’t imagine it.’ Beyond that, I can no longer remember exactly who took which part in our dreamy, faltering dialogues.

“‘Eternity,’ you said, or maybe I said, ‘is that we have to live the lives of everyone who ever lived or will ever live, from beginning to end.’

“Mmmm, yes, and so interesting, isn’t it? Even down to the details?”

“Even down to the details, without the slightest deviation from the facts.

“We slid around ice rinks on shoes with leather soles. We licked the metal railings on the Mageren Bridge. The Amstel froze over.”

“No, it was summer. We lay in our bathing suits on the beach at Langevelder Slag.”

“We put on our skates with double runners and went slicing through the flocks of gulls that happened to be so numerous that year and had flown from the IJ, which was all iced over, into the city.”

“I can remember to this day our sense of pleasure — space, not a movement in the sky, our warm bodies, and the even greater warmth of the sand — as we looked over at the hazy outlines of a gray ship that stood out against the furthest rim of the sea.”

“Cyclists were also crossing the river.”

“We thought about the bottomless chasm there must be right behind the horizon where the ship was. An aunt of our maid had killed herself the week before, and they’d only just told us, so we were in a very solemn mood.”

“We’d heard that there was such a terrible cold front approaching from Siberia that within a day or so the North Sea was going to freeze over. The question that interested us was whether we’d get absorbed into the Arctic Circle just like Canada and Nova Semlya, which would mean we’d get to see the Northern Lights — yes, it was definitely winter.”

“If you say so.”

“Why are you lying in bed?”

“I’m lying in bed because I’m dying.”

“Armanda, you can really be pathetic.”

“No, no. It’s really true. The children have been here twice already to say their good-byes. They plumped up my pillow, gave me a glass of water, held my hand. Oh, darlings, I said, I’m making such a lot of trouble and worries for you, do me a favor, go into town and get something to eat. I’ll be awake for a bit yet.”

“Ha, that reminds me that you had to go to bed half an hour earlier than I did at home, and I never allowed you to go to sleep till I’d crawled into bed too. To control this, I used to run upstairs sometimes during the half hour and bend over you in the dark, and if I smelled from your breath that you were asleep, I’d hiss in your ear reproachfully: ‘You’re asleep!’ You were incredibly well trained, trained against me, and you were able to say ‘Am not!’ so convincingly out of a deep sleep that although I knew perfectly well you were lying, I had to put up with it.”

“God, yes, I remember that.”

“So the young ones are in town now. Take advantage, I’d say, seize the opportunity to exit in peace, on your own. You’re alone.”

“Yes, insofar as anyone who has another person who’s taken up residence inside them can be said to be alone.”