shit. The geese crapped about once a minute.
Next to the old farm was a pasture, where Uncle Fred ran a campground. He had recently gotten the campground listed in a farm-camping guide, although it didn’t meet any of the criteria. No peace and quiet here. The planes took off and landed at about the same punishing tempo as the geese’s bowel habits. The guide said it was a niche campground, which was absolutely true. It wasn’t popular with families. The plane spotters who camped here were solitary figures by and large. The fact that the campground was not a success didn’t bother Uncle Fred in the least. Nothing bothered him. He looked at the grey film of jet fuel covering the wooden sign that said WELCOME TO THE HOT SPOT and shrugged his shoulders.
The geese came toward him, greeting him with outstretched, swaying necks. Gieles patted the tufts on their heads and set the bucket of peels in the grass. They stuck their heads into the bucket with little enthusiasm, then began pecking at his thighs. The geese preferred the speculaas cookies that they were more or less addicted to. But Gieles only fed them speculaas during their training sessions, knowing that otherwise they wouldn’t listen to him at all.
Parked on the edge of the pasture was a trailer that looked like a spaceship. A woman was standing in front of it. She waved at him and motioned to him to come over. He planted his shovel in the ground like a flag pole and walked up to her with the geese at his heels, begging for food. The woman’s face was full of creases and cracks, like an antique painting, but her eyes were as clear as a girl’s. As if they had been restored somehow.
‘Hello, ma’am,’ he said politely. ‘Everything all right here?’
Gieles enjoyed being excessively polite to old people. There was something sad about them, he thought, because they were going to die soon.
‘Excellent,’ she said kindly. ‘What I wanted to ask you is that my husband and I want to barbecue tonight. Is that all right?’
‘No problem, ma’am. Just as long as you don’t build a campfire. That might confuse the pilots. And don’t fly any kites,’ he joked.
She smiled. ‘Silly boy.’
The door of the spaceship swung open and her husband came out. He was wearing a pair of aviator glasses and a body warmer with pockets stitched onto it. A pair of binoculars dangled from his neck. And the knobby knees and fossilised calves that stuck out from beneath his shorts looked like they were wasting away.
The man began rubbing the rounded curves of the spaceship with a handkerchief. Dispensing with all formalities he got right down to business. He didn’t even give Gieles a chance to say hello. ‘Look at that. Mirror finish, huh?’
Mirror was right. Gieles could see his reflection in the door, and he noticed that his hair was standing straight up. He ran his hand over his head.
‘The origin of the Airstream,’ said the man proudly, tucking his aviator glasses into one of the pockets, ‘lies in the American aerospace industry. The wings are missing, but otherwise …’
A descending Cityhopper drowned him out. They waited patiently until the sound died away.
‘Where was I?’ The man tugged at his white eyebrows. ‘What’s your favourite?’
‘My favourite what, sir?’
‘Plane,’ he said, sitting down in a lawn chair. Gieles didn’t have a favourite. The aviation industry left Gieles completely cold.
‘The Antonov 225, sir,’ he lied. The biggest plane in the world, number one for many spotters.
The man screwed up his face. ‘That Russian hulk? Let me tell you something. I once waited hours for an Antonov, and all for nothing. The Russians can have their Antonov.’
‘And the Boeing 747 400,’ said Gieles to oblige him. ‘They’re awesome too, sir.’ All plane spotters loved the 747 400.
He clapped his wrinkled hands. ‘That’s what I like to hear! One phenomenal looking plane, especially when it’s frozen. Wingspan?’
Gieles gave him a puzzled look.
‘What’s the wingspan?’ It was obvious from the way the old man asked the question that he already knew the answer. ‘Sixty-four-point-four metres,’ he said, looking at a plane through his binoculars. ‘An Airbus A321. My wife goes for the take-offs, I love the landings. You?’
Gieles couldn’t care less. A landing plane wasn’t even in the same league as a flock of descending geese. Suddenly appearing with all that cackle and flapping of wings. Then sweeping over the land like a wave that finally, slowly, disintegrates.
‘I love geese when they land,’ said Gieles, and he cast a glance at his geese, who were pulling up clumps of grass. ‘The racket they make when they come down. The last metres before they hit the ground. They’re really funny then. As if they can’t remember what they’re supposed to do.’
Gieles spread his arms and pretended to be losing his balance. ‘Once they’ve landed, they strut around like anything. That’s from pride. Sometimes they cover three thousand kilometres! They come all the way from the northernmost tip of Norway, and they all start shrieking together. “We’re back! We’re back!”’
The man and his wife looked at him in amazement.
‘Geese talk to each other all day long,’ Gieles went on. ‘Just like a bunch of women, my father says. And they’re never alone. They always fly together. The whole family.’
‘Goodness,’ said the woman with wide eyes. ‘I didn’t know that. But how do they know which way to go? The sky is so—how shall I put it?—so vast. It’s easy to take a wrong turn.’
Gieles crossed his arms self-confidently. Geese were his speciality.
‘The most important things are the sun and the stars.’ He spoke the words with an air of importance. ‘They’re migration signposts. And the little ones learn from their parents. Chicks straight from the egg don’t know anything at all. When they overwinter for the first time, they fly with their parents to learn the way. Sometimes it’s thousands of kilometres.’
The woman listened attentively to Gieles while her husband spotted the next plane.
‘And the chicks that have no parents? Who do they learn from?’
‘There’s always an aunt to take care of them,’ said Gieles. ‘Or a nice uncle.’
‘Oh, of course,’ she sighed, sitting down in the other lawn chair. ‘How many geese do you have?’
‘Two, ma’am. Just these two.’
‘But they shit for ten,’ said the old man disdainfully. ‘Better to have a dog. They don’t shit nearly as much.’
They watched silently as another plane descended. One of the geese was foraging along the bank of the canal. In the four years he had had them, not once had the geese ever gone into that filthy water. They never even considered it.
‘Very dangerous, geese near a runway.’ The man squeezed the binoculars so hard that his knuckles turned white. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard of that emergency landing? On the river in New York?’
Heard
