never named them,’ said Gieles. He didn’t have to lie. This was someone he didn’t have to impress.
‘Deliberately?’
‘No, I just never got around to it. But a name can be pretty handy.’
‘It certainly can,’ said the man guardedly. ‘What kind of geese did you say they were? Tuffs buffs?’
‘Tufted Buff,’ Gieles corrected him.
‘If they had names they might be more responsive. You said you were training the geese?’
Gieles nodded. Maybe that was the problem. They didn’t listen well because they didn’t have names. He’d ask Christian Moullec about it, although he realised it might be a complicated job for a French ornithologist with hundreds of geese of his own.
‘But it’s up to you, of course. I don’t want to stick my nose into your affairs.’
Super Waling! That was his name!
Gieles looked at him with one eye, the way his geese did. He couldn’t imagine an adult taking an interest in his life. Uncle Fred was caring, his dad never asked him anything and his mother conveniently assumed that he was doing fine. That’s because the rest of the world was doing so badly. They had AIDS, they were hungry or they butchered each other. But this ten-tonner actually listened to him.
‘Can I offer you a tour in the Cruquius?’ Super Waling asked him. ‘For your report?’ he hastened to add.
The question sounded so sincere that Gieles immediately said yes, much to his alarm. He had completely lost track of space and time.
‘Fantastic!’ the man said happily. ‘Just tell me when you can go. In the meantime, I have some material for you to read, if you like.’
‘Material?’ repeated Gieles stupidly, watching as the man attempted to get out of his massage chair. Relocating his weight was a regular mass migration.
‘I have a story,’ he puffed, putting his feet on the floor, ‘about … the … land reclamation. It’s the first part.’
-
PART I
Ide & Sophia
He was expected to take up his father’s trade, but Ide Warrens preferred to follow his own dreams. So he brought Sophia along with him without letting their parents know. She was barely fifteen years old, but she suited his dream perfectly. Sophia was not particularly beautiful. Her front teeth were broken off like bits of chalk and her face was asymmetrical, but he didn’t care. Sophia was the most big-hearted creature Ide Warrens had ever met. Her caresses, her laugh, her humour, her fury: she was extravagant in everything she did, a rare trait in their part of the country.
They left Zeeland and arrived two weeks later on the other side of the world. The girl never complained during the entire journey, even though her plump thighs had turned black-and-blue from the bumping of the covered wagons they rode in. Her feet, too, were battered by the long trek.
Sophia sat down on the sidewalk in front of a cafe, looking with curiosity at the unfamiliar village square before her. Hillegom. She had never heard of it. Farther on she saw a linden tree with a pear-shaped opening in the trunk. She smiled. She was crazy about hollow trees. Limping forward, she went up to the tree and squeezed herself inside, along with her suitcase. She stroked the bark. Then she carefully took off her shoes and saw that her woollen socks were stuck to the blisters. With a jerk she tore off one sock and examined the bloody, blistery expanse. It looked awful. Her right foot was even worse.
‘Sophia!’ she heard Ide calling. ‘Sophia!’
Peering through the cleft in the tree she could see him walking nervously back and forth. He had been searching for a place to spend the night. Once more he called her name, but she waited to respond. She stared out at him, forgetting her feet, and a glorious feeling ran through her. Ide was finally hers alone. She pressed her hand against the brocade shawl she had stolen from her mother, along with the two gold rings. At the end of this adventure she swore she would give the things back.
She began to whistle as Ide walked away from the tree. He looked around, scanning the square and following the sound of her whistle. First his boots appeared in front of the tree opening, and when he crouched down she could see his face. ‘That looks bad,’ he said, glancing at her feet. She pulled her skirt up over her knees. The red hairs on her legs were a shade darker than the curls on her head, and a few shades lighter than her pubic hair. Ide had examined and kissed every millimetre of her body.
‘I need jenever.’ With her chin she pointed in the direction of the cafe. Without asking any questions, Ide stood up and returned with a bottle of jenever. He looked on with surprise as Sophia poured the liquor over her feet.
‘I learned this from my father,’ she explained. Her father was a modern-minded physician. He abhorred the practice of bloodletting and the opium drinks his colleagues prescribed.
Ide’s mother had been keeping house for the doctor and his wife for twenty years. According to his mother, the doctor had more brains than the mayor, the minister and the schoolmaster put together. The way she said this bespoke total veneration. Ide’s father despised the doctor. In fits of drunkenness he would beat his wife, which for the moment made him think he was striking the physician as well. This gave him a pleasant feeling. But as soon as the man was sober again he regretted what he had done.
Ide hated his father’s short temper and his mother’s black eyes. His greatest fear was that she would have to stop working for the doctor. Her job was Ide’s only means of access to Sophia.
Sophia tore a strip of cloth from her petticoat and wrapped it around her heel. Then she poured a splash of jenever over it and took a swig from the bottle. ‘Pretty good,’ she said, sucking on her tongue. She firmly pulled Ide’s battered hands into the hollow tree and rinsed them clean with the liquor.
‘That stings.’
‘Stinging is good.’ Sophia licked his fingers off. Laughing mischievously, she opened her suitcase. She set aside the doll she slept with every night and pulled out a pair of socks from the jumble of clothes. ‘Come here.’ Obediently he squeezed his head and limbs inside. His torso remained outside the tree, as if he were stuck in the birth canal. Her father had dealt with that problem many times: babies who wouldn’t come out and midwives who called on him for help.
‘Shut your eyes. Come on, nothing’s going to happen.’
She grabbed his right hand tightly and emptied the sock. Ide heard her giggle as she pushed something cold onto his finger. He opened his eyes.
‘I’m not a woman!’ he shouted, looking at the ring with disapproval.
‘And now you have to put this one on me.’
Sophia held up her mother’s ring.
‘Too big,’ Ide concluded.
‘Put it on my thumb. It fits—look. From now on I’m Mrs Warrens.’ Speaking in a falsetto voice to imitate the tone of his mother, she said, ‘Mrs Warrens. Pleased to make your acquaintance.’
She laughed with her mouth wide open, so that Ide got a good look at her crumbling teeth.
