When Pieke sees us coming back home she runs staggering across the field, her little arms flailing the air helplessly. ‘Just look at that,’ says Jantsje, ‘she can’t wait.’ Rebellion and impotence grate inside me. Bells keep ringing in my head, my eye sockets feel hollow and empty. I no longer want to live. Why do I have to go on with it all? Drained, I cross the road and watch Pieke, that maimed bit of life who, shamelessly disregarding the day of rest, is making her way towards us with flailing arms, distracted with joy.
Chapter 7
The red cliff rises from the flat land like a strange growth. From Laaxum the path runs along in the lee of the sea dyke and then up the slope of the Cliff to the top. At the highest point you can look far across the countryside, you can see Laaxum and Scharl, where Jan lives. Much further towards I lie horizon, the steeple of Warns church sticks up, and to the lilt, where the dyke makes way for a mass of tiny roofs, masts and treetops, lies Stavoren. Everything seems small and still. The sea, which makes up the other half of the view, puts an abrupt end to the all but treeless stretches of pasture, the dyke creating a sharp divide between the green land and brownish-black water.
As you stand there, right on top of the rise, you are sometimes filled with a sudden feeling of freedom, a tingling of happiness and adventure. The sea breeze is clean and bright and everything appears well laid-out and clear-cut: roads, fences and ditches form regular patterns and connections, one leading naturally to the next.
That unforgettable moment when enlightenment seizes you only to vanish again just as inexplicably, the moment for which you search as for a dream that has been swept away ,and yet is still present, locked away deep inside yourself.
It is coming up to the end of September but the weather is still warm and sultry. The walk from Laaxum to the Red Cliff has made us so hot that our faces are damp and sticky. We have been chasing each other along the way, shrieking with laughter, gasping for breath, up dyke, down dyke, and now we are clambering up the path feeling guilty: we are sure to be too late.
Jan is sitting waiting for us at the topmost point of the Cliff, looking unconcerned. I sense the annoyance behind his imperturbable air. ‘I thought you were never going to turn up,’ he says, looking past us over the landscape and yawning. ‘Do you lot still want to do something?’ He says ‘you lot’ but looks straight at me with a mixture of mockery and contempt. ‘I’ve been sitting here for half an hour. There was work I could have been doing in the stables.’
Shamefaced, we say nothing, even Meint keeping his mouth shut.
Jan takes a few steps away from us and looks down the slope. I cringe: now he’s going to go away, a precious afternoon with Jan has been lost. ‘Let’s see if the water’s still nice. First one in,’ he calls out even while he is racing down.
Boisterously we career after him, Pieke sliding on her bottom, shrieking with laughter.
Jan stands waiting for us below. He has kicked off his clogs and now struggles quickly out of his trousers. Jantsje stops in her tracks and turns round to Pieke, who is trailing far behind. Our voices ring out clearly in the warm air. I sit down in the tall grass and look at Jan. He has a yellow spot on his underpants. The sea makes cool, alluring noises along the stones.
An hour later I watch them walking down the sloping path again. Their blonde hair sticks out in spikes and I can clearly see wet patches on their backs and bottoms. Pieke is hobbling wearily between Meint and Jantsje, wailing for the support of an arm no one gives her. In any case, they’re off home and I am finally alone with Jan.
‘Why don’t you all go back,’ I had suggested. ‘Jan wants to talk something over with me. About Amsterdam. We want to go back there one of these days.’ I had made it sound important on purpose, almost whispering the last few words, like a secret message. Then I had raced back down the Cliff, taking reckless giant’s leaps, uncontrolled, half falling over, the grass lashing my knees.
Jan sits motionless on a slab of stone, his face towards the Bea. He swivels a length of rope through the air, but it is as if his arm doesn’t belong to him and is leading a circling life of Its own. For a while we sit silently, side by side, Jan a few paces away from me. I am afraid to interrupt his swivelling game and wait patiently. The sun burns my shoulders and makes me feel drowsy and languid. I listen to the buzzing of insects flying from flower to flower. The water laps idly between the stones.
‘Take off your shirt, it’ll dry more quickly,’ says Jan.
He has put his own in the grass behind him. His bare swivelling arm is thin and wiry. Leaning back he tries to dig up some grass with his toes, then kicks the grass away in a .mall arc. Slowly he stands up and gives me a searching look. ‘Did you see Jantsje in her underwear?’
I pretend not to hear and fiddle with my toenails.
‘When she was wet you could see everything. Or were you too scared to look?’ He walks a bit further off and pees into the sea in a wide arc, legs far apart. ‘Did you see how far I got? That’s muscles, boy.’ He flexes his arm, shows me a small round bump and pinches it with obvious satisfaction.
All five of us had been swimming and Jan and I are now trying to get our soaked things dry before we go back home.
When I had run up the slope with the other three, I had put on my shirt, hoping that my vest would dry underneath all the same. I find it suddenly odd to expose myself half-dressed to his pitiless gaze. A little earlier, when he had been shooting through the water on nimble, supple, frog’s legs, Jan, spluttering and tossing his hair, had made fun of my skinny body. Jantsje and Meint had been splashing about clumsily at the water’s edge and I had stayed close to Pieke, who was clinging tightly to a big rock, letting herself down into the water little by little. She had shrieked each time she touched something unexpectedly with the soles of her feet, and needed our constant attention.
I had looked at Jan’s glistening arms and legs as he came up out of the water and waded dripping wet towards us. Every part of his slender body displayed burgeoning strength, and his bearing was self-assured. With surprise and envy I watched him acting like a much older boy, swaggering about as he demonstrated the backstroke. He waded closer still and blew snot out of a nostril with a practised air. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘spindleshanks.’ He grabbed hold of me and tried to push me under the water, one knee placed firmly on my chest. I had come up half-choking and fled to the shore.
‘See that over there?’ Jan waves his rope in the direction of the sea where two thick round shapes in the distance are sticking above the surface of the water. ‘That’s the wheels of a plane. British. Shot down by the Jerries. The pilots are still inside, I’m not kidding.’
I turn my head away. We’d been swimming in that water only a quarter of an hour ago, and Meint had said, pointing to the two mysterious curves in the water, ‘Who dares swim out to that?’
No one had dared, of course. Not even Jan.
In my imagination I can see the two Englishmen sitting upside down in the water, still wearing their caps and mica goggles. They rock and sway about slackly with the current, like seaweed. One still clings to the joystick, his mouth hanging open while fish swim in and out. Their eyes in their goggles stare at the shore and watch our legs splashing exuberantly through the water…