His Name is David. Jan Vantoortelboom
didn’t work, forced the key deeper into the keyhole, tried turning again, but the door wouldn’t open. Maybe I could get in through the back door. The garden was a mass of weeds. The key didn’t fit there, either. At the back of the garden, I saw a wooden shack with a heart carved into the door. I went back to the front and decided to kill the time sitting on the doorstep. Involuntarily, my thoughts wandered. The boys I saw earlier that day. Ratface could have been one of them. I had become used to the moments my thoughts turned to him, to seeing flashes of his presence in everyday objects, in animals, in the movement of an arm or a leg. My bum was starting to hurt. I stood up to walk back to Mr Vantomme’s house. This time, he was at home. I introduced myself politely and shook his hand. He smacked his lips. When I told him the key didn’t fit, he gave me a bewildered look, turned on the heels of his threadbare slippers and mumbled something to a row of photographs as he shuffled past them down the hall. He could hardly walk. I thought I saw some kind of lump between his legs, but decided that had probably been a pocket of air caught in the fabric of his oversized trousers. A moment later, a similar key was stuffed into my hand. He assured me this was the right one and apologized for the misunderstanding, saying he was but an old man, burdened with a failing memory. He asked me whether I had brought my wife and children along, as life would be lonely without them. And did I want a cup of coffee, because his wife had been dead these ten years and now his bitch Penny had also died last week.
‘Cancer,’ he said pityingly. ‘Body covered in lumps. Same as my own late wife. Can such a disease be passed from humans to dogs? Through a flea or mosquito bite, perhaps?’
I said it didn’t seem likely to me, that it was kind of him to offer me a cup of coffee, but that my journey had tired me out and I would prefer to go home.
The lock turned with a click, and the door opened without a squeak or creak. A promising start. The plainness of the living room also appealed to me: a table and two chairs, an armchair in the corner next to the window, and next to the stove, which was a kind of potbelly stove, a larder cabinet.
‘Everything a man needs,’ I mused. The back door didn’t open quite as smoothly. There was the shack with the heart door again. I cleared a path through the thistles and nettles until I reached it. The door handle came loose in my hand and didn’t seem to fit the mouldered hole when I tried pushing it back in. Leaving the door ajar, I pulled down my trousers. The seat felt damp, and I realized a moment too late that I didn’t have anything to wipe myself with. Some kind of large leaf would do. I emptied my bowels, hoping there was no one around to hear the repulsive noise. Through the cracks in the wall I could see a magnificent pink-orange haze where the sun had set. Standing up reluctantly with wet buttocks, I pulled my underpants up to my knees and hobbled to the weeds, in search of my leaf. Amazingly, I found just the thing, a broad leaf on a thick stem—probably rhubarb. I tore it off, bent over and wiped my backside. A cat in heat was wailing somewhere.
I climbed the stairs to look for my bed. With a bit of luck, it would even be made, though I doubted it when I saw the state of the stairs. Every other step was cracked. A recipe for a broken leg. I wasn’t disappointed when I entered the bedroom: there was a bed, even if it looked more like a large trough. And a mattress, too, or rather a bag filled with old straw, but soft enough. No sheets. It would do for now. The nights weren’t very cold yet.
I pictured myself lying there. My hands crossed on my belly. My feet side by side. Just like Ratface had lain at his wake. What if I died here in my sleep? Who would be the first to find me? Mr Vantomme? But he had a hard enough time walking, never mind climbing the stairs. He’d send over some handyman or other, in which case my body would be carried downstairs by a complete stranger. Perhaps he’d fall down through the cracks in the steps, corpse and all, giving me a posthumous skull fracture and brain haemorrhage. Blood leaking out of my ears. Soaking my hair. Just like Ratface’s. Scolding myself for my cowardly fretting, I turned to one side.
The caterwauling started again, closer this time. After yearning for silence for thirty torturous minutes, I got out of bed and tried to open the attic window. It was sealed shut. Besides, I didn’t have anything at hand I could have hurled at the creature, which I suspected was sitting in the roof gutter. Standing outside, in the light of a mottled moon, I couldn’t make it out anywhere. I climbed back into my trough, where I tossed and turned before finally going to sleep: the sea was rippling silver. I stared vacantly at the crestless waves. My feet stepped over the glistening silver and onto the sand, which gave way under the heels of my boots. Waves crashing against a distant rocky coast, my footprints walking away from the sea. Everything was silent. And I was alone. No squealing, naked women running up to me, breasts bobbing up and down to the rhythm of their steps. A bank of fog rolled down the beach. Suddenly, a little boy emerged from the fog, walking toward me with outstretched arms. Barefoot. His face a grey patch. Greyer than the fog. Gripped by fear, I walked backward, back into the water, my eyes glued to the grey face. When the seawater was at my lips I kept on walking, wanting to drown myself. I woke with a start in the falling dusk, gasping for breath. Several confused seconds later, I heard the cat whining again.
-
IT WAS ON one of my explorations of Elverdinge’s country lanes that I met him. After the heat of the days before, the gentle sunshine was a relief. He was standing at the junction where the straight drive met the winding Hospital Lane. In his right hand he was carrying a bag and a notebook. His left hand was in his trouser pocket. Beside him was an Alsatian, ears pricked. I didn’t notice them until I was quite close. They were standing as still as the pollard willows guarding the drive. I looked at him, intrigued by the bag and notebook. It was not a sight I would have expected to see that afternoon, on the last Saturday of the harvest month. I slowed down, saw that the dog had put back its ears and stopped wagging, its tail lying motionless beside it like a black snake. I stopped a couple of metres in front of them.
‘Good day, sir,’ the boy said.
He took his hand out of his pocket and signalled to the dog, who instantly stopped growling.
‘Good afternoon, Marcus,’ I said.
He jumped at the sound of his name coming from the mouth of a stranger; he didn’t recognize me.
‘Does he bite?’ I asked.
‘Buck won’t hurt you.’
I pointed at his bag and notebook.
‘Going insect hunting?’
‘Butterflies,’ he said.
‘You will set them free again, I hope?’
‘After I’ve drawn them.’
He tapped on the notebook with his index finger.
‘May I see your drawings? Only if you don’t mind,’ I added quickly when I saw his hesitation. But he carefully placed his bag on the ground and handed me the sketchbook. His fingers looked stubby, the fingertips plump. They didn’t match his lean body.
‘Very nice drawings,’ I said, impressed by the accuracy of the colours and details.
‘Thank you.’
He smiled, scrutinizing me curiously with eyes the colour of hazelnuts. In the distance behind his back, a cart pulled by two draught horses turned into the drive. The man on the box shouted something and a whip smacked down on the horses’ backs. Marcus had heard it too, and turned round. We stood to one side in the grass. I was still holding his sketchbook as we waited for the approaching cart, which left a cloud of dust and sand in its wake.
‘I have to go,’ the boy said in a worried tone of voice.
He grabbed the book I held out to him. The cart slowed down but didn’t stop. With a jerk of his head, the man ordered Marcus to jump on behind. The dog went first with an effortless bound, but the boy ran after the cart stiffly, trying to place his bag and notebook on the jolting vehicle as it gathered speed before awkwardly scrambling onto it himself. The man didn’t look back once. When the whip cracked a second time and Marcus was safely installed in the back, he waved to me.
-
RATFACE’S ARRIVAL WAS a major event. His scream woke me up, rang