"Why not?"
Mrs. Buisman poured more tea and they were looking at each other, each stirring their tea mechanically.
"He used to remind me of a tumbleweed. You are a city man, aren't you, sergeant? You don't know about tumbleweeds?"
"I know a little about birds."
Mrs. Buisman laughed. "Yes, my husband told me about your adventure this morning."
"Oh, but I did enjoy it," de Gier said quickly, "but the adjutant, Grijpstra I mean, didn't feel well and we had the murder on our minds, of course."
"Never mind. I'll tell you about tumbleweeds. When the plants die here, at the end of the year, some of them break off. First they dry out and become brittle and one day the wind grabs them and they break their stems and begin to tumble all about the island. It's an amazing sight. The weeds seem so busy and so energetic, they go everywhere and when the wind changes they come back again. They bounce across the roads and get stuck against our fences, they even get into the gardens. The dunes are alive with them but eventually they will reach the beaches and then they drown in the sea, but they are dead already of course, they died long before they broke off and lost their souls."
De Gier had put his cup down and was staring at the fat woman.
"Yes?" he asked. "Do you think Drachstma lost his soul?"
"Soul, soul," Mrs. Buisman said. "I am not a very Christian woman. I don't know about souls, it's just a manner of speaking. But Mr. Drachtsma is a hard man, he always gets his way, he bounces around and he never seems happy. Every year he buys a bigger boat and his cars never last and there are always carpenters and bricklayers working on his house. He is an unhappy man and he isn't really alive."
"Who is aliver de Gier asked.
"Oh, lots of people are. My husband is. He is a loving man."
De Gier smiled.
"Oh, not that way," Mrs. Buisman said and giggled. "We aren't as young as we used to be. I mean he loves living tilings, and dead things too. The other day I saw him standing on the dike, looking at the sea and the birds and the clouds and I walked up to him and said 'Buisman' and he looked at me as if he didn't know who he was, he was so full of everything around him. But Drachtsma isn't like that, he always knows who he is. 'Drachtsma' is the most important word he knows and he is always thinking of how to make it bigger. And he'll be blown about by his endless desires the way the tumbleweeds are blown about by the wind."
"And eventually he'll be blown into the sea and disappear," de Gier said.
Mrs. Buisman went to look after her patients and she was away for a while. De Gier telephoned the hotel and was told to meet the commissaris at seven o'clock. He still had half an hour.
"Tell me, Mrs. Buisman," he said when she had come back again, smiling about something, "what was the relationship between Mr. Drachtsma and Rammy Scheffer?"
"I was thinking about that," Mrs. Buisman said, "but I forgot when I saw my two fat babies. Your Mr. Grijpstra certainly has a loud snore and my Buisman was wheezing right through it. I can't understand why they don't wake each other up. Rammy Scheffer, you say. Well, in the beginning, they just knew each other. Everybody knows everybody on the island, but I noticed that they had become closer, about a year ago it started, I think. Drachtsma always pretends he is interested in nature and he has donated a lot of money to the reserves. I know that he does care about the island; it's his home after all, his father came from the island, and his grandfather was born here, but I don't think Mr. Drachtsma cares about the birds. If he could build a hotel here he would probably do it but nobody is allowed to build hotels here anymore. I think Rammy went to see him about new fencing or something and after that they were sometimes together. I thought it was strange for they are so different. Rammy gets away from people, he'll work in his garden in his free time, and he sits near his fireplace and reads the Bible and Drachtsma always has people around him."
Mrs. Buisman began to play with her spoon.
"You don't know what they talked about?"
"I did overhear something of a conversation they were having," Mrs. Buisman said. "I was in the garden and they came past, I don't think they noticed me. Mr. Drachtsma was talking about 'evil' and Rammy was listening. 'Evil has to be destroyed, Rammy,' he was saying, and he said it again, and Rammy was listening very carefully."
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Buisman," de Gier said. "I'll have to go back to the commissaris. We are having dinner at Mr. Drachtsma's house tonight."
"Come again," Mrs. Buisman said, and opened the door for de Gier.
"I am not as silly as I look, sergeant," she said. "I know what you are after, but I don't think you have a chance. Nobody has ever been able to catch Mr. Drachtsma at anything."
De Gier smiled and thanked her for the tea.
"Not so fast," the commissaris said as they were walking toward the Drachtsma mansion. "My legs are about half the size of yours. And tell me the whole story again. Mrs. Buisman interests me, I should have come with you."
De Gier told the story again.
"Tumbleweeds," the commissaris said as they reached me gate and saw their host coming toward them. "I have heard about tumbleweeds before. Interesting, very."
19
In spite of the excellent food and the expensive wines which had poured from dusty bottles, de Gier hadn't enjoyed his meal. He had been placed opposite Mrs. Drachtsma, and the hard expression of her face, the thin lips, and the heavy coat of paint which almost cracked as she tried to look pleasant, had interfered with his digestion and he now felt as if his stomach were full of sand.
The interior of the house, contrary to his expectations, was dull. The house showed that its owner was rich, everything was of the best possible quality, but no imagination had been used and the heavy furniture stood where it should stand, heavily immobile, like trucks parked in a factory's courtyard, "Solid," de Gier was thinking, "just like my stomach. I couldn't even belch if I wanted to, there is no air."
They had been directed toward the fireplace and Drachtsma was pouring brandy. The commissaris was holding on to an enormous cigar and de Gier had rolled himself a cigarette from a little bag of tobacco which he had found in the pocket of his duffelcoat. He normally didn't roll his own cigarettes but he did it now as a feeble protest against the unsympathetic environment he had been forced into, and he had, almost rudely, refused the cigar which Drachtsma had offered.
"I have been to this island before/' the commissaris was saying when he had finally managed to find a way of handling his cigar, "but in autumn, late autumn."
"That's a good time too," the mayor said. "The island is lovely in all seasons but I like it best just before winter. The tourists have gone by then and we have Schiermonnikoog to ourselves. It's a good time to walk on the beaches."
"That's what I was doing. I was very impressed by many things that evening. There was a strange atmosphere around me. Nature had died and the trees were bare and the seagulls were circling and yelling raucously and some crows were following me. Whenever I moved they would fly ahead and sit on a rock and stare at me. Crows are intelligent birds and they were talking to each other with their hoarse voices."
There was something about the way the commissaris was talking that wouldn't allow for interruptions and everybody was listening. Drachtsma had put the bottle down and was leaning against the mantelpiece, his long legs crossed and his hands in his pockets, but he didn't look casual.
"And then I saw the tumbleweed. I was on a wide stretch of beach, very wide perhaps, and I had walked close to the sea and I saw the tumbleweed coming down the dunes, rolling, being pushed by the wind. It was very big, perhaps ten feet across, and it wasn't just one dead plant, but I didn't know that at the time. I knew about tumbleweeds and I know that some of them do their trick on purpose. They grow special roots, late in their life, but the roots do not go into the ground. They touch the ground but they won't go in and yet they'll keep on growing. They are like arms which the weed uses to push itself up when the time comes. It starts pushing, using its long strong arms, and it pushes itself until it breaks away from its own proper roots and men it is free and begins to roll when the wind grabs it, and as it rolls it will meet other dead balls of branches and it will hook on to them and it goes on meeting others and they all tangle up together and finally the plants form one gigantic growth. I was seeing one of those that evening and it was coming straight for me. I ran to the left, but it changed direction, and then I ran to the right and it changed direction again. It was bouncing off the ground and twirling its yellow tentacles and it got me and pushed me into the sea, wanting to drown me." The commissaris' cigar had gone out and he busied himself with it.