I’ll be honest with you, even here I wouldn’t have taken on the job of minding the place if they hadn’t agreed it would stop being the way it was up till then, when anything went. Minding the cabins, that also requires giving something up so as to have something else. I said, fine, I’ll do it, but I have to be able to impose order here. Never mind that we’re in nature. Ever since people left nature behind, in doing that they agreed to a different kind of order. If they still lived in nature, nature would do the minding. But since it’s going to be me …
I began by marking out the paths, because people were walking any way their feet took them. They trampled the grass not just in front of the cabins, everywhere you looked it was all trodden down. I had them provide spades, and string to do the laying out. The pegs I made myself. I sketched out where all the paths would be, made a plan for each side of the lake. And can you imagine, they even started objecting to the paths, they said I was restricting their freedom. It made me mad and I said, do they want me to look after the place, yes or no? If so, then we need to get to work. I’m restricting their freedom, can you believe that? And they’re not restricting my freedom? Any reciprocal arrangement is a restriction. Not to mention that I didn’t come here to look after their cabins. I have my nameplates, that’s more than enough for me. Who knows if it isn’t actually too much, because there’s always too much work for one person. I could easily just live my own life, so long as I have my dogs. Besides, I don’t have long to go now. In my spare moments I could go walking in the woods, read, listen to music. That’s right, I brought some books. Not too many, but any of them can be reread, you can do that as often as you like. I always liked reading if I only had the time.
Back when I was working on building sites, whenever the site had a library I’d always borrow books. I had to read at least a few pages before I fell asleep. It depended on how tired I was. But even when I was exhausted I had to, otherwise I couldn’t get to sleep. Even when I was drunk I had to. I’d read even if I didn’t understand what I was reading. Actually, you don’t have to understand right away. You can live any amount of life and you don’t understand that either. I brought a lot of things, TV, radio, cassette player, video, lots of records. It’s all through there in the living room.
I wouldn’t have to know all the people here, know who’s who, which cabin they’re from. But now I do, though I don’t need them for anything. I have to remember who and where and when, who gave what to who and all that. I have to give everyone’s cabin the once-over after each season. I have to do this and that and the other, but I wouldn’t have to do any of it, because I don’t have to do anything at all anymore. They go mushrooming then they ask me to come check whether any of the mushrooms they’ve picked are poisonous. And I have to go, because what would happen if they got poisoned?
I’m restricting their freedom. Like anyone knows what that even means. Or they come to me with all sorts of problems and complaints, and I have to hear them out. It goes without saying that they tattle on each other as well. You can’t have all these cabins and all these people without someone telling on someone else. Sometimes I feel like a priest in the confessional. Except that priests teach you how to forget. They forgive your sins and forget them. But I don’t forgive anything, and I can’t forget either. So who’s restricting whose freedom, tell me that.
Freedom. You could say the word itself conceals its own negation. In the same way that despair lurks in the most beautiful illusion. Because if you understand it as freedom from all constraints, then that includes freedom from yourself. After all, people are their own most troublesome constraints. They can be unbearable to themselves. Some of them are too much for themselves. Uncle Jan for instance, the first example that comes to mind. Nothing in particular happened to make him do what he did. What might have happened, in any case what they suspected him of, maybe he could have endured it somehow or other. People have put up with worse. Did he hang himself because he was free? Or because it was the only way he could get free of himself? I’ll tell you one thing, free people are unpredictable. Not just to other folks. Above all to themselves.
When I think about it sometimes, I come to the conclusion that freedom is just a word, like lots of similar words. They don’t mean what they’re supposed to mean, because that isn’t possible. They aim too high and end up becoming illusions. Which is hardly surprising, since life is just one long series of illusions. We’re guided by illusions, motivated by illusions. Illusions drive us forward, hold us back, determine our goals. We’re born out of illusions, and death is just a transition from one illusion into another.
After all, there are words like that that don’t have any fixed meaning. Words that can adapt to any of our desires, our dreams, our longings, our thoughts. You might say they’re immaterial, words drifting in a universe of other words — that they’re words searching for their own meaning, or to put it more precisely, for their own idea. For example eternity, nothingness. Who knows if freedom isn’t one of those words. Yet you have to beware of words like that, because they can assume any meaning, any idea. Depending on how ready we are to yield to them, and what we intend to use them for. In my view not even nature is free.
To tell you the truth, it’s only the children that keep me here, otherwise I’d have given up this minding business long ago. Yes, I like children. Children may be the only thing I still like. Myself? Why do you ask that? I’ve no reason to like myself. When they bring their children here, the kids come running to me of their own accord. And whatever they want, I always do it, show them things, explain things. I dig up worms so they can go fishing, put them on their hooks, teach them how to tell one kind of fish from another. Teach them to swim. If they break something I mend it without a word. Sometimes I take a larger or smaller group of them to the woods. With their parents’ consent, of course. We learn about the trees, how to tell an oak from a beech, a larch from a spruce. We pick blueberries, wild strawberries, blackberries, or we collect pine cones or acorns. Learn how to tell poisonous mushrooms from edible ones. Sometimes I give them little quizzes so they’ll remember things better. When we see a bird I explain to them what kind of bird it is and how not to confuse it with other kinds. If we find a nest I’ll tell them what sort of bird lives in it, and what kinds of nests other birds build. Then when they get tired we sit down and I tell them stories. What about? No, not about what once happened here, not that. And I never lead them to where the graves are. They might stop being children, because being a child has nothing to do with how old you are.
I don’t have any children of my own. I was married, but I don’t have any children. That was why my wife and I split up, because she wanted to have children. I liked my friends’ children, though. Whenever I visited I’d always bring them some gift. It pleased me to see how it pleased them. I liked to play with them. But the thought that one of them could be mine would fill me with anxiety. It’s the same now, whenever I think that one of the children here could be mine …
With adults I know at least that nothing much links me to them anymore. And nothing needs to, aside from the fact that here for example, I look after their cabins and insist on order. Not for its own sake, or even because order makes the looking after easier. No. It’s that when there’s order around you, it’s easier to find order in yourself. When they make a fuss, I can always threaten to stop minding their cabins. I demanded a lights-out time in all the cabins. After all, they come here to rest, it ought to be quiet. Do you think they all got it right away? Not a bit of it. Some of the cabins, they’d deliberately leave their lights on all night long. They only began to catch on when I refused to look after certain cabins. Unless someone had a nameday or some other special occasion, then I’d let them have an extra hour or two, but not all night. I marked out firepits for bonfires, at a distance from the cabins and the woods, close to the water. I’ve nothing against people grilling sausages, but only up to such and such a time. Then the regulations say they have to douse the fire. I go around and check.