Tommy Wieringa: Little Caesar

At an open spot where the last daylight was lingering I found a stone pillar, artfully carved, against which a mourning angel leaned its forehead. It was a friendly angel, one which, when I was gone, would lift its head and quietly sing Der Tod, das muss ein Wiener sein .

The gray paving stones outside the inn shone in the soft drizzle; I took an umbrella from the stand by the door. As I passed the restaurant I looked in. It was still early, only a few of the tables were taken.

Many of the little fishing cottages were empty, they were only rented out to tourists during bathing season. The occasional window was lit. There was no one else out on the street, the sign above a shop door groaned in the wind. I smelled coal burning, and sometimes wood smoke. The fishing cottages of Alburgh, piled up against the slope, gave the impression of gradual, organic growth — like a shelf fungus or a colorful fantasy design by the Viennese decorator Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The little houses looked as though a couple of strong men could pick them up, just like the beach cabins down by the pier. From a distance, Alburgh looked like a mille-feuille , pastel-colored structures growing on top of each other in layers. Two towers stuck out above it all, the conical white lighthouse and the belfry of St. George’s.

The esplanade was covered in orange streetlight. The cold metal of the balustrade above the beach bit into the palms of my hands. This was the decor of my teenage years, it made me feel like a tourist at Pompeii. When I did come across people on the street, I avoided their eyes; I didn’t want to have to guess at what the good people of Alburgh remembered about Marthe Unger and her son, Ludwig.

What I missed when I knocked on Joanna’s door was the deep woofing of Black and White, the one so black and the other so white that they looked like a single dog with its shadow. Instead, angry barking came from the other side of the door. When it opened, the little dog flew at my legs. A Jack Russell, his little teeth flashing frighteningly.

‘Down, Wellington!’ said the woman at the door. ‘Down!’

Wellington was going wild. He leapt up against me and seemed bound and determined to sink his sharp teeth into my balls.

‘Oh, bleedin’ Jesus. .’

She seized the animal by the scruff of the neck and, in an outburst of fury, threw it into the yard.

‘I’m very sorry,’ she said, ‘Welly is so. .’

Then it clicked into place.

‘Ludwig!’

‘Hello, Joanna.’

She spread her arms and wrapped me in a musty embrace.

‘Ludwig, it’s so good to see you. My lord, come in, come in. Welly, go fuck yourself!’

She slammed the door. On the other side, Wellington was still going out of his mind, scratching his nails against the wood.

‘He’s such a dear,’ she said, ‘but so jealous. The children gave him to me. That way they don’t have to worry much about their old mother, they figure. I’ll let him in when he calms down a bit.’

But on the other side of the door, Wellington was not giving the impression of a dog soon tuckered out. Joanna led me down the pine-paneled hallway to the tiny, low-ceilinged living room. It was hot inside. No windows were open.

‘Would you like some tea? Or is it already time for something more fortified? Would you. .?’

I saw that she was doing her best to keep moving, to keep up the cheerful tone, not to drop a single stitch for fear that otherwise she would come tumbling down, once and for all.

Before the window was an ironing board, on the TV screen the anchorwoman on Channel 4 spoke to me intently without a sound crossing her lips. I leaned down to look at the proliferation of picture frames on the sideboard. Three sons and a daughter, decked out with good saintly names, surrounded by their partners and children. I’d never had much to do with them, they were older than me; two of them had already left home by the time we moved to the hill. One photo showed Warren and Joanna with three children around them; a fourth one, still a baby, lay in Joanna’s arms. Warren had a short black beard and dark-framed spectacles — no trace yet of the tattered Viking king I had known. He only became that once he left Joanna for Catherine, and moved to number 17. Since then Joanna had flown the Union Jack, never at half-mast, never lowered. It was a minor diplomatic provocation, Joanna knew that ‘the Irishwoman’ could see the flag from her window.

The war between Joanna and Catherine knew neither surges nor truces. It simply lasted as long they both would live. I knew that Catherine, who did not have a driver’s license, never allowed herself to be driven past Joanna’s house on her way to the supermarket or Alburgh’s Catholic church, but always went via Flint Road and on to the back route. I suspected that during the years they had both lived on the hill they had seen each other at close range no more than two or three times, and that they otherwise remained phantoms in each other’s eyes. Their jealousy was in perfect balance, and had to do with the factor of time: time that both of them had not spent with Warren. Catherine grew feeble with rage whenever she spoke of the time during which Joanna was married to him.

‘Twenty-five years she stole from me,’ I once heard her say.

Every word of it was true. Warren reveled in possessing a woman who fought for every atom of his being.

Joanna in turn would not have hesitated to poison the Irishwoman for letting Warren give her the rest of his days. That was the bitter heart of their conflict: time. About the days they had not woken up beside Warren, not heard him gargling with mouthwash, not heard the door click shut when he left for the office, not seen him cut the cold roast or seen him slurp down his infamous homemade jellied fish. (My God, sometimes as many as twenty jars appeared on the table at once, each one containing something different from what the label promised, each one preserved with his own hands. ‘Eat,’ Warren said, and you ate. What you were eating you didn’t dare to ask, you chewed with bated breath and swallowed it all down. That’s what you did.)

‘Oh, Ludwig,’ I heard her say behind me, ‘it’s so sweet of you to drop by and see me. I was dying to know whether you had come, with this situation and all. Where were you when you heard?’

She put two mugs down on cork coasters. Through the smoked glass of the dining table I saw a pair of mangled slippers, newspapers Wellington had torn to bits.

‘Would you like some milk, love? I didn’t put any in it. You always did like my tea, didn’t you, Ludwig? Pour the boiling water right onto the leaves? And only first flush? You haven’t forgotten, have you?’

I was startled by the dog, that suddenly jumped up against the window outside. It drew its nails down the glass, it looked as though there were a little trampoline beneath the window. A horrible thing to see, that leaping dog trying to wrest a position of honor among the humans.

‘Aw, poor thing, I’ll just let him in.’

She left the room. The dog came storming in. Right away the animal resumed its animosity and began barking so shrilly that it hurt my eardrums.

‘Welly, stop that immediately!’

Wellington moved back a few steps and shut his mouth. Joanna put the milk on the table.

‘Good dog, that’s a good boy, good Wellington.’

I reached out and petted him gently on the head.

‘Don’t touch his ears!’ Joanna said in a fright.

I yanked my hand back.

‘He’s very touchy there,’ she said. ‘I think it’s something traumatic. You can pet him wherever you like on the rest of his body, with the grain as it were, but he’s ever so touchy about the ears, aren’t you, Welly? Does Welly want a biscuit?’