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fragment
rudy kousbroek
Joris felt restless; he walked around the room aimlessly a few times and went into the hall. On the landing he hesitated, then entered the kitchen without switching on the light; he walked to the window, pushed it up and looked out into the darkness. It was still raining. Far away he saw a lump of darkness, darker than the sky, and realized it must be the prison. Some tatters of talk and music came in from the room next door; het realized that the windows of the other room must be open as well. He recognized Lea's voice, then there was laughter; he ran his hand over his clothing. A fine spray of water, caused by the rain falling on the cornice under the window, moistened his face and he shivered. Over in the prison a window lit up for an instant and disappeared again. Joris wondered what might have caused whoever lived - voluntarily or involuntarily - behind that window to switch the light on and off - one of the criminals hoving a bad dream maybe. Did crooks have bad dreams? Surely not as bad as his own, he decided, that would be unlikely; maybe on the contrary they had beautiful, serene dreams. Or none at all. Phil had said that she found criminals attractive, he could hear her voice, saying, I think crooks are cute. They were sitting in the car on the parking island opposite the Bonaparte when a black maria had pulled up in front of it; several policemen had filed out and entered the café and after a while they had reappeared with a dark-haired young man in a very long jacket and narrow trousers.
While they walked off with him he had spoken to the cops with apparent ease and genteel gestures, as if he were clearing up some minor misunderstanding. She had said it at that moment and from the tone of her voice he had been sure that she was thrilled. It came bach to him what she had looked like when she said it; he stirred and looked into the dark.
He waited a while for the light to reappear, but it didn't. The radio next door broke into talking again and someone changed the station. Then he heard the street door being opened. He left the kitchen and went back into the room.
Joris had barely sat down when the door opened and a tall, middle aged man appeared in the doorway. He did not come in at once but looked in from where he stood, swaying slightly, and said good even ing in a heavy, indistinct voice.
‘O hello Philip’, Regan said evenly, ‘How was it? Meet Joris and Lea, they have just arrived from Paris’.
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Philip sat down massively at the table and started to welcome Lea and Joris in French, suddenly interrupting himself to say: ‘Regan, you are drinking’. He picked up a glass and sniffed it. ‘You are all drinking, and none of you even thought of offering me any’. His thick, slurred voice sounded childishly injured.
Both Lea and Joris understood that he must be Philip Potts, but they had imagined him quite differently from the stories they had heard about him; instead of the mannered, atonic lotus-eater they had expected, he looked like a giant school-boy. Regan gave hime some calvados from her own glass - the bottle was empty - and he resumed his discourse in French, until Lea told him that they were not French, and that even many Frenchmen would object to his cries of ‘vive le général De Gaulle’. He then declared that he didn't like the general either, and a toast was raised to the popular front.
‘It doesn't look as if there's going to be one’, William said thoughtfully, ‘let's see of we can get the news bulletin from France’.
Joris went over to the radio and started to look for a French station. ‘Sunny intervals and showers over most...’ a voice said, then there were a few bars of fast music, followed by a snatch of liquid Scandinavian with a strong hiss through it.
‘I can't seem to find it’, he said after a while.
Philip Potts announced that he was going to bed and retired.
‘Where will he sleep?’ Lea inquired, ‘have we chased him out of his bed?’
‘He used to sleep in this room’, Regan admitted, ‘but now he has to sleep with the children; I bet he doesn't like it’.
‘Let us sleep there, then,’ Lea said.
‘Of course you won't’, Regan said firmly, ‘you are our guests, I told him you were coming. We never invited him to come and stay here’.
‘He doesn't seem as destitute as I expected’, Joris remarked.
‘He isn't. He's got more money than us at the moment’.
‘Do the children like him?’
‘They tolerate him’.
‘By the way, how are they?’
‘They are all right, thank you. All dying to see your car’.
‘I'll try to get something decent out of that radio’, Lea said, getting up, ‘this is too awful’.
‘Maybe you can get France’.
Lea look her turn at the tiny dial and before long had tuned in to a French station, but it was very weak; a continous frying sound, like grease-proof paper being torn into endless strips, almost completely obliterated the voice of the announcer.
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‘We got it quite strong earlier this evening’, Lea said, ‘I don't understand why it is so weak now’.
‘I can hear it is about De Gaulle’, William said.
‘Shush’, Joris hissed, ‘if you'd stop yapping we might get some of it’.
After a few minutes the reception was drowned in a variety of noises, and William switched it off.
‘It seems De Gaulle made some sort of declaration’, Joris said, ‘they read the text, I got some bits about the “dégradation de l'état” and so on, and that he was ready to “assumer les pouvoirs de la république”. At that rate they might be fighting soon. I wish l'd understood all of it’.
‘What could you do if they were fighting’, William reflected, ‘there is nothing you could do’.
‘I don't see how a single person can say he's assuming the powers of the republic’, Lea remarked, ‘it's something like a child saying, if you'll be the hospital I'll be the patients. Anyway I'd be surprised if everything weren't dead quiet, and if they do start shooting it won't be in Clamart’.
Regan stood up. ‘Shall I make some tea?’, she asked.
Joris and William said that it was a good idea. Lea remained silent; she was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. Her face had become even more expressionless than usual, her eyes behind the glasses did not move.
‘I thought I'd never hit the sack’, she muttered later. She undressed slowly, with long pauses during which she sat with a garment in her hand, unable to decide what to take off next. Joris was already in bed when she finally switched off the light and closed the window that Joris had opened a while before to let the smoke out. The sound of the rain continued softly after she had pushed it down.
Lea was awakened very early by a ball that bounced on her head. She saw a little girl with a round face looking at her.
‘Hello Jane’, she said groggily.
‘Hello. May I take my ball?’
‘Please do’.
Jane took the ball and resumed her game; for a while Lea listened to the accompanying words and reflected how curious they were, then she turned around and fell asleep for about on hour. Some time in that period she dreamed that someone handed her a rose in a vase, but something was moving inside the rose.
Regan, wearing a faded raincoat over her nightclothes, was sitting at the table providing three children with tea; Jane and her twin brother, Barnaby, sat with their backs to Lea, and facing her was
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a small, straw-haired girl who was talking in a plaintive voice. Regan, seeing that Lea was awake, poured her a glass of tea. Lea said yes, she had slept very well; she noticed that it was still raining.
Joris woke up but didn't open his eyes. He realized that he wasn't home in Clamart, but pushed the thought back, trying to pretend that he hadn't discovered it yet; he attempted to float back into the sea that had just washed him ashore, but he stayed where he was, supine on the water's edge.
Lea sipped her tea, thinking that is was good tea, delicious tea, was it the tea, the way they made it, the pot, the water?
‘Did you see my glasses anywhere?’ she asked, nearsightedly inspecting her surroundings.
‘On the bookshelf’, Barnaby pointed, ‘right past your head’. Lea didn't understand him at first; these children talk so funny, she thought.
As Joris received his tea there still was the faint red shape of Phil's house-coat on his retina, it lingered while he had already given up holding on to it; he recalled a film where a scene of two people eating was blended into a carnival in the streets of a Latin American town, and for some time the image of the two masticating their food had been visible through the serpentines and the bobbing heads, until he no longer knew whether he was still seeing it or not.
A while later he made a dash to get a cigarette; as he got back into bed William entered the room; he seemed to be looking for something and went out again. After a while he reappeared with a Radio Times, and switched on the radio. Joris heard it start to hum and gradually a voice could be heard far off; the words were unintelligible and each time a letter S was pronounced the instrument made a hissing sound like someone blowing into a telephone. One by one William tried the four stations that the set was capable of picking up at that hour, and he consulted his paper again.
It must be last week's', Joris said.
William examined the outside. ‘So it is’, he said, and tossed it on a pile of papers.
Joris came out of bed and poured himself another glass of tea; the children had left for school and he sat down on one of the stools, looking out the window at the high walls of the prison in the rain.
‘Do you ever see signs of life in there?’ he asked, pointing at the disconsolate enclosure.
‘Sometimes, between the walls; they walk around’.
‘There are a remarkable number of them, walls I mean’, Joris reflected; ‘since four walls do not a prison make, they decided to
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have six. I don't suppose anyone has ever escaped from there?’ ‘No’, William said, ‘not that I know of. By the way, it's ‘stone walls’, not ‘four walls’.
‘Yes, I believe you are right’. Joris remained silent for a while, drinking his tea.
‘I know’, he said suddenly, ‘I've got it mixed up with some general in the Russian revolution who is supposed to have said: “why use four walls if one is sufficient”, or something to that effect’.
‘You mean -’, William said, shouldering an imaginary rifle and closing one eye as if he were taking aim.
Joris nodded.
‘Well, no amount of walls prevents them from having executions as well in there’, Regan said, indicating the prison with a movement of her head, ‘all this and heaven too. There was one only a few months ago’.
‘Do you notice anything when that happens?’, Joris asked.
‘A little. If one is up that early’.
‘Christ, yes, they always do it early in the morning, don't they. The early worm is caught by the bird. Did you ever see somebody being killed?’
‘No, never’.
‘People should. Just once. Then it would soon be abolished’.
‘Did you?’
‘Did I what?’
‘Did you ever witness an execution?’
Joris nodded. ‘During the war, when I was a child; only the beginning, the preparations; a soldier sent us away when they were about to start. And then afterwards, when it was over’. He felt that he had started to smile against his will and he hid his face with his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.
‘Where, in Indonesia?’
Jors nodded without looking up.
‘What did they do: shoot, hang, behead?’
‘Can't you-all talk about something else?’ Lea interrupted, ‘especially at such an early hour’.
‘But this is the hour, don't you see?’ Joris said, ‘if anything, we are already late’. He pointed to the sky, where a watery sun was trying to break through the clouds. ‘Look at the sun; if some chap was scheduled to die on this day he's already had it. It was this particular sun, this very one, that they decided he was not to see; he spent all night trying to imagine it, yet I'm sure he never thought it would look like this. No, executions ought always to be discussed in the morning, one should be rudely awakened at dawn to talk about them’.
‘So what did they do?’ Regan repeated.
‘They cut off his head’, Joris replied, ‘but it wasn't early in the
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morning, he was just condemned on the spot and killed’.
‘Why?’
‘He was caught looting by the Japanese, and executed on the spot. They made him kneel over a big basin; he was already blindfolded then, but I shall never forget what happened to him when he saw them bring the basin. I mean before he was blindfolded. He went the colour of cement suddenly as the idea struck home; he pissed and pissed in his pants till they were soaking wet, I never knew there could be so much piss in a man’.
‘Didn't he put up a fight?’
‘No, I wondered about that, afterwards, too. You'd think that you would try anything, because if you try to escape, you can only get killed, which is a certainty otherwise. But I believe that he simply couldn't realize it, you know, they won't do that to me, not really’ - until they came with the basin; and then it was too late’. ‘Jesus’, Regan began, but she didn't finish her sentence. There was a pause in which the radio could be heard talking softly, wrapped up in itself.
‘We went back, later, to see’, Joris said. ‘It must have been about an hour later’. He vividly remembered the heat, the flies swarming over the blood in the basin, in bright colours like a celebration.
‘The body was still in the same position, only where you expected the head there was unbelievably nothing; it - the head - had landed on its neck somehow, or maybe they had put it that way, and it seemed to be looking at the body; actually it looked as though someone had put the head in that position to show the body to it from a new angle. At the time it was much more, ‘I don't know, unbelievable, untrue, than horrifying. It's as if there is a prohibition about looking at your own body from a distance, a terrible taboo, and seeing it violated you are too stunned to be frightened’.
‘I thought he was blindfolded’, Regan said.
‘He was, but it must have slipped off, or maybe they took it off, I can't tell what happened. It didn't occur to me at the time; I can't even remember what thoughts I had. But for years afterwards the sight of a basin was enough to make me go to pieces; it still affects me to a certain extent. It's strange how a perfectly ordinary thing can become so horrible. You'd think that a basin can be looked at in only a few ways -. But it goes for everything, really, any common harmless-looking object has somewhere in it the possibility of becoming the most terrifying thing in the world. You start to look at everything with suspicion, it can't be trusted any more to keep on being the thing as you know it. It hasn't changed, but it's there all the time, concealed, undectable; it's still the same thing, but it has become - I don't know, ugly’.
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‘It sounds like something from a textbook’, Lea said.
No one spoke for a while. Regan went to the kitchen and started to make coffee.
‘Well, that doesn't make it less real’, Joris resumed. ‘Don't tell me that it's just in my mind. It isn't, it is in the things themselves. I once worked in a garage, as a volunteer, and one of the first things I found out was that you should never touch any parts lying about on the floor. You had to try with a wet finger first: somebody might have been welding those parts and trying to piek them up would be fatal. Yet you couldn't see any difference. It's something like that’.
Lea picked up a book from the table, read the title and put it down again.
‘An object is meaningless before someone has given it a meaning’, she said, fidgeting a little, ‘a book, a table, anything, hanging in outer space a million light years away - they mean nothing. When human beings attribute a meaning to them that is a purely human action and it only takes place in the mind’.
Regan entered the room with two cups of coffee and returned to the kitchen to get the others.
‘Have you reached agreement?’ she asked when she had come back.
‘God, no’, Joris answered, ‘she turns everything the wrong way round; she thinks things existed before people thought of them’. ‘We'll ask Reggie’, Regan said, ‘he's a psychiatrist. He might turn up one of these days. He washes dishes’.
‘He washes dishes? Doesn't he practise?
‘Oh yes, but evenings mostly. He makes people sit in a special box’.
‘What?’ Lea was suddenly alert. ‘You don't mean on orgone-box by any chance?’
‘Mm, I think he calls it that’.
‘How marvelous! When shall we see him?’
‘I don't know, he may turn up tomorrow or next week. He often comes for meals, towards the end of the week, when his money has run out. But why?’
‘Oh, I don't know. I'd like to speak to him’.
‘She collects them’, Joris explained, ‘faith-healers, Christian Scientists, the orgone crowd, anything’.
‘But he is a psychiatrist’, Regan said.
‘Then what was that about his washing dishes?’ Lea inquired, ‘or did I hear that wrong?’
‘You heard it right’, Regan said, ‘he does wash dishes. In a hospital. He says that it relaxes him. But the real reason is that he sleeps with all the nurses and the other female staff; he tried various jobs and stuck with this one’.
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‘So he doesn't keep his own orgone in a box, does he’, Lea said.
‘Does he practise psychiatry in that hospital as well?’
‘Oh, no, he just decided that girls who work in hospitals are the easiest lays; he studied the field extensively. He has a different girl almost every evening’.
‘But then were does he practise?’
‘At home’.
‘Does he analyse as well?’
‘I think he does some’.
‘But mostly the box, sort of? Have you ever seen it? What does it look like?’
‘I have been in it’, Regan said. It's nothing but a small room with lead on the walls, and you sit in it’.
‘What was it like?’
‘Oh, it wasn't like anything much; I think I feit a faint tingling in my skin after a while, but I can't say what that was caused by - you are completely naked, you see. I remember having funny thoughts, though’.
‘Like what?’
‘I don't recall exactly - what I do remember is that I noticed that my toe-nails wanted cutting’.
‘Uh-huh. Does he ever sit in it himself?’
‘I believe he does, yes’.
Lea nodded with satisfaction. Philip Potts entered the room, asked for something to eat and wolfed down some bread and cheese that Regan prepared for him. He thanked her verbosely, asked for a cigarette and left.
When his footsteps had died out on stairs they heard them coming up again, as if he had forgotten something. But instead a middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway; Joris was struck by the colour and texture of her hair, which reminded him of the nylon hair on Keziah's dolls. Keziah had tried to comb it, with the result that it stood out in entangled yellow ravels that nothing on earth would succeed in untwining again.
‘Excuse me butting in on you’, the woman said, ‘it's the ceiling again. Another bit came down this morning as I was having my tea’. Her voice sounded homely and agressive at the same time. Regan went into the hall to talk to her.
‘Our landlady’, William whispered.
‘I thought she lived in the Canary Isles or something’, Joris said.
‘Yes, she has a house there, but in the summer she rents it to English tourists’.
‘Doesn't she look weird’.
‘We always get into hot water while she's here. She Iets this hive decay under our feet, nothing has ever been repaired as long as
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we've lived here. But whenever the place falls a bit farther apart, up she comes to complain about the children stamping too much’. ‘I seem to remember she has children of her own’.
‘Mm, a little girl. And then she has a son of seventeen or eighteen whom she talked into signing up in the Army for something like 22 years. Saying how wonderful it would be to be earning his living at his age, no worries, and so on. But she just wanted to be rid of him’.
‘Christ, will he have to serve till they're up?’ Joris asked.
‘Well, in theory you can buy yourself out, and actually that's what this boy is trying to do, but obviously he can't raise the money. And his mother won't lend it to him’.
Joris stared out of the window. ‘And what about the little girl’, he said, ‘she couldn't put her in the WREN's, could she?’
‘Oh, that's another story. She has packed her off to a convent-school, but only a few days ago the child was sent away, so she's here now’.
‘You mean sent away, turfed out? Why?’
‘She had stolen a bracelet from another little girl’.
Joris and Lea glanced at each other. ‘And that is the only reason why she was sent away?’, Lea exclaimed.
‘Well, apparently she had stolen things once or twice before’.
The sun had disappeared, it looked as if more rain were going to fall soon. Regan came in and said they might have to go to court again.
‘The trouble is that we can't afford a lawyer. Last time William pleaded his own case’.
‘I didn't know that one could do that’, Joris said.
William tried to find a good programme on the radio and switched it off when he failed.
‘I wouldn't mind leaving this house’, he said, ‘but we'd never find anything else’.
‘I couldn't bear to stay here another winter’, Regan said.
Joris looked out of the window. It had started to rain again, a thin spray that looked almost like fog. Joris noticed a dog on the small strip of cobbles that was visible between the prison walls. It walked diagonally across the space, then stopped just before disappearing behind the wall, and stood quite still with its muzzle near the ground. It was a shaggy, yellow-brown dog, and Joris could see that its long ears were touching the ground, while it was sniffing or eating something.
‘Goldie’, he thought, ‘she called her dog Goldie, bless her’.
His eyes got wet as he watched the dog disappear behind the wall, keeping its muzzle close to the ground as it walked.
‘Phil’, Joris said inaudibly, ‘Phil, I love you, I love you I love you’.
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