The Corpse on the Dike (11 page)

Yes, Wernekink had worked there for several years. No, he knew nothing about his private life. Tom Wernekink had arrived and left on time, hadn’t been ill very often, and had done his job reasonably well.

Had there been anything at all that he remembered about Wernekink, the clerk who filled in forms? Yes. Wernekink never went to the canteen where the employees could buy a simple meal at ten percent above cost price. He ate at his desk. Brought half a loaf of brown, a jar of margarine and a jar of jam. Cut his bread, spread it on the desk, buttered it, spread jam on it, and ate it. He drank tea from a thermos flask. Then he read the paper. After the paper he worked again, as the clerks filed back to their desks.

“I didn’t like it,” the chief clerk said and shook his head, “didn’t like it at all. The firm gives us a good canteen and proper food, and the chaps sit there and talk to each other and play cards. It’s unhealthy to sit by yourself, asocial in a way. Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Grijpstra said.

“And I didn’t like the mess he made on his desk. All that margarine and jam. I spoke to him about it, told him that he might muck up his forms. But he still refused to go to the canteen, and there is no rule about it.”

“So you let him get away with it,” Grijpstra said, clearly indicating by his facial expression that Wernekink shouldn’t have got away with it.

The man spread his hands. “What could I do?”

“Nothing,” Grijpstra agreed.

“And now he’s got himself killed, has he? Did he get himself a job in Amsterdam?”

“No.”

“Laziness,” the man said. “Drink, women. The free life. It’s bad for them. We used to have a clerk here who rode a motorcycle, one of those big heavy ones. Would come in all dressed up in leather overalls and a helmet. You know the type—flirt with the girls and drink and have it all his own way. No, no.”

“What happened to him?” Grijpstra asked.

“Got himself killed, in Persia or Turkey or somewhere. On holiday he was.” The man looked pleased.

“It’s the irregular life,” Grijpstra said. “Looks all right but they can’t do it.”

“Exactly,” the man said and meant to open up and tell the adjutant a long story that would explain and justify his simple but interesting philosophy of life. But the story never came. There had been something about the adjutant’s face that changed and killed the chief clerk’s intention. A twinkle in the pale blue eyes and a quiver of the cheeks.

Grijpstra read the name of the street the tram was crossing and put a thick finger on the map. Next stop he would have to get off. He pressed his left arm against his body and felt the bulge made by his notebook, which he kept in his wallet. Then he pressed his right elbow against his hip and felt the bulge of his pistol. He folded the map and got up, nodding to the little old lady who smiled at him.

There were villas around him—large villas—mansions with huge parklike gardens, driveways, trees and lawns set off with bushes and clusters of high-growing pampa grass bending in the fresh breeze mat tempered the heat of this summer day. Grijpstra studied the splendor of his surroundings and tried to work out what the occupants of this corner of heaven would have to be earning. He arrived at a large round figure. Then he tried to work out what they would have to be earning if they declared their true income. The figure doubled. He shook his head in surprise. But the houses, the driveways, the lawns were still there. And the expensive cars, which would be second cars given to wives to do their shopping, visit each other and perhaps take the children to school. He thought of his own house and Mrs. Grijpstra and the paint peeling off the ceiling of his small bathroom. The bathroom hadn’t been there when he rented the house fifteen years ago and it had cost him a year’s savings. These houses would have several bathrooms, all tiled.

He kept on walking, checking the house numbers on the way, still feeling peaceful. He found the number he was looking for and turned into a narrow gravel path. At the end of the path he had a choice between two houses, both small compared to the villas he had just been admiring. There were no numbers on the gates, so he chose one, walked up the path and rang the bell.

“I’m here,” a voice said from the garden. He turned and saw a woman in an invalid chair. “What can I do for you?” She was wheeling herself toward him. He bowed down to her, shading his eyes from the sun.

“Morning, madam. I am a police detective from Amsterdam; I’m looking for the house where Mr. Wernekink used to live. Is this it?”

“No,” the woman said, “it’s the house next door but the people who live there are on holiday. Can I help you perhaps?”

“Yes,” Grijpstra said. “Perhaps you can.”

“Come sit with me in the garden,” the woman said and turned her wheelchair around.

When he left the garden it was three hours later and he had eaten a good lunch. The soft voice of the crippled woman was still somewhere inside his skull, vitalizing the various parts of his brain. There had also been the peace of the garden, protected by a good hundred meters of distance from the traffic of the main road. It was almost as quiet as a glade in a vast forest. Several thrushes and a pair of small dark-headed songbirds had been close to the crippled woman and himself while they sat and talked and ate a meal of fried eggs, fresh bread and a salad. She had prepared the meal in her old-fashioned but well-organized kitchen, wheeling around in her chair but making the minimal number of movements, for she knew exactly where everything was and seemed as efficient as a highly trained nurse during an intricate operation. He had carried the tray out and they had eaten in the shadow of an oak with the birds hopping about eating bits off the table. One of the songbirds had rested on his arm for a while, looking at him with bright little eyes, moving its head and occasionally lifting a wing to keep its balance. He still felt pity for the crippled woman and the memory of her grotesque and distorted body hurt him. She had, she told him, been struck by polio when she was still very young and the treatment had come too late. Her chest was pushed up to her chin, one shoulder was raised as high as her ear and one leg was so twisted it was useless—only a weight to be dragged along—and the other was too short. He also admired the woman whose brain was clear and whose voice could understand and explain, but best of all he had liked the sound of her voice, which was like the sound of a Chinese flute. He couldn’t remember now that he had ever heard a Chinese flute but he had a picture of a young girl playing one on a balcony that overlooked a rock garden and a pond surrounded by shrubs. The picture, part of a calendar that hung in the police canteen, had thrilled him so much he had taken it home when the month was up. He kept it in his desk at home in the same file with his insurance policy and police diplomas.

The crippled woman remembered Tom Wernekink well: the boy who lived next door with his old father, a retired businessman who read the newspaper and watched football on TV. Tom had come to talk to her and he often helped her around the house; they had tea and coffee together, under the same oak and with the same thrushes and songbirds.

“He talked to you?” Grijpstra asked, for he was under the impression that the corpse that had grinned at him a few days before had never talked to anyone. But she assured him that Tom did talk and that he was intelligent and able to communicate, even if he seemed to have no friends and no one ever came to visit him or his old father. But she also told him about Tom’s negativity and his vegetative way of life. She pointed at a dead tree, lying in the garden next door. It had been Tom’s seat and she had seen him there, immobile, for hours on end. Once it was raining and she tapped her window; Tom looked up and went indoors, soaked to the skin.

“Yes,” Grijpstra said and began to get up, looking for words to thank her for the lunch and the information he had him solicited. She asked him to wait and wheeled her chair indoors, up the special ramp that a carpenter had built so that she would be able to get in and out easily. She came back with a letter that Grijpstra promised to return. He read the letter on his way back to the station in the same old streetcar that had taken him to Kralingen earlier in the day.

Dear Liza,

How are you? How is the weather? And the birds, and the oak tree? Did that stuff work that I gave you to keep the mosquitoes away? I am sure Father didn’t remember to water the laburnum; give him a shout when you see him, will you? I have never had laburnum before and the instructions say that it needs plenty of moisture. I put the seeds in the ground near my dead tree. If they come up they should grow all over the tree and their flowers will hang down. There are three different colors: red, orange and yellow. Perhaps I should have had yellow only. This way the tree may look like the box top of some cheap brand of horrible chocolates, but I can always snip off the wrong flowers. I am a gardener after all, not a lover of nature. To hell with nature. It doesn’t care about us, so why should we care about it? All this modern rubbish about pollution makes me laugh; why are we so concerned all of a sudden?

Let the sea get full of oil and the rivers full of boiling soapy suds, I don’t care. I only care about the garden and the dead tree. If they take that away as well, I’ll find another spot. And if everything is mucked up, I’ll grow a few mini plants in an aquarium. Ah, I am being negative again; you don’t like that I remember. Sorry. It’s the way I am. But it’s true that you have often cheered me up, for which I send you my respectful thanks. It’s nice to live in a different atmosphere sometimes. I like you, Liza, and you are about the only person I like. I don’t like Father, the silly old buzzard, although he amuses me at times, especially when his club loses. You should see him stomp about the house.

This holiday is drawing toward its end and good riddance to it. I am in Cassis-sur-Mer as you can see by the postmark. I shouldn’t be here but it seems that I am always in a place where I shouldn’t be. I certainly shouldn’t be in that silly office where I fill in the forms, but I have to return to it, so why grumble? And this Cassis-sur-Mer isn’t the worst place on earth. The tourists haven’t found it yet. I only found it because the brand-new car that Karel K. bought chose this convenient spot to break down completely. Something with the gearbox, I understand. Karel is in Marseilles; he had the car dragged there—it cost him a fortune—and it sits in a garage. He has taken a room in a hotel and goes to annoy the garage owner every day. A new gearbox has arrived and is being installed. I don’t like Marseilles; it’s a big city like any other although not quite as depressing as Rotterdam. I have begged him to let me stay here, in this little fishing port. At least I am close to the sea. Sometimes I take the bus to Marseilles and drink with Karel on a terrace. We drink Pernod, which hits you like a mule after a while, and watch the whores in the street. We make bets about whether or not they’ll manage to catch a particular customer. I usually lose, for Karel is a good psychologist. And then, when we are drunk, we go to see a film. We only see French films and it’s very enjoyable to make up your own story, fitting in the characters who shuffle or glide about the screen. I was so drunk the other day that I saw double and then it was even better. Two beautiful men kissing—or hitting; they hit each other a lot in these films—two beautiful women in two cars. I am glad I never bothered to learn French; we had it at school of course, seven hours a week, but the teacher was such an unbelievable clod that I refused to listen to him. And yet I passed the exam. Oh, life is full of miracles.

In spite of everything I am doing wrong I still seem to be picking up the language now. I caught myself thinking in French yesterday, not just a few words but complete sentences; I was even conjugating the verbs properly. The first French I read here was on the label of the Pernod bottle and I looked up the words I didn’t know in Karel’s dictionary.

Karel is a very pleasant chap, you know. Fancy that I have worked at the desk next to him for more than a year and I never knew that it would be such fun drinking Pernod with him. He is a bit like me, I think, poor fellow. But he is weaker, so he will survive. He was saying that he will probably get married, rent a flat and have children. He doesn’t really want to but life is too strong he says; it’s got him by the scruff of the neck and is shaking him. They’ll take photographs at his wedding and they’ll paste them in an album that he’ll show to his friends and relations. Oh, poor gentle Karel. But who am I to sneer at him? Perhaps I want the same thing, although I doubt it I really doubt it, Liza. And I doubt whether he wants all this family life and happiness and coziness and good cheer. Does anybody want it? Once the human animal was a hunter, lived in the forests and had a good time. Life was short. I read somewhere that the skeletons found in a grave a million years old all belonged to young people. There wasn’t a skeleton to be found that had held a life older than twenty-five years. They ran about and had their adventures, and then a bear caught them, or the flu, or the plague, or the jealous lover. They had their skulls crushed when the fun was still on. And now we build concrete boxes and look at two-dimensional pictures that move, and we have an early night four times a week. It can’t be right.

The biggest riddle—to me—is that I am sometimes quite happy. Two weeks ago, for instance. The chief clerk, a secondhand clown who you must never meet, brought me a whole heap of forms to be filled in and I was actually grateful. Can you imagine, dear Liza? I was
grateful.
The forms were some new model and I was looking forward to filling them in. Poor crazy me.

I had an adventure yesterday. I was walking about on the beach looking for a woman I’d met the night before—a nice woman with a nice figure. She had been alone and I had said something about the moon and the sea. I’d had a flask of cognac with me. She’d had a sip and I’d had a sip and it all ended the way I had wanted it to end. She hadn’t seemed to be very enthusiastic but she had made the right movements and what more does a tourist want? Love in the moonlight on a deserted beach, heigh-ho and a bottle of Yo. I thought she might be on the beach again but that was silly of me, of course, for she had told me she was a nurse and would be on duty during the day. Anyway, I was ambling about when I saw a sand hill, a very steep hill and I climbed it to enjoy the view of the sea. The view was fine and I fell asleep. When I awoke I had moved to the edge of the hill; suddenly I felt myself rolling down. I didn’t think it was so bad at first, but then I saw that I was heading for some sharp rocks and that I was actually
in danger of losing my life.
And I was frightened. I didn’t want to lose my life. I, Tom Wernekink, wanted to live. Wasn’t that a surprise? I managed to live, as you can see, for this isn’t a letter from the Other Side, conveyed to you through the good offices of Madame Raqama, who will go into a trance at the drop of a hat and a twenty-five guilder note. I, your friend Tom, am writing the letter in my own spidery, illegible and unbalanced handwriting.