from big pans of beans that had been cooked to death. They ate at long tables, and often the discussions became so heated that Gieles thought they were going to start fighting. He heard words he hadn’t heard before, such as ‘free state,’ ‘mafia,’ ‘court order,’ ‘occupation.’ And he learned how to curse for the first time. ‘Prick’ and ‘asshole’ were already familiar to him, but ‘twat,’ ‘cunt,’ ‘motherfucker’ and ‘cocksucker’ were new. His friend Tony couldn’t get enough of the curse words.
When his mother came back from abroad she would go take a look at the camp, sometimes still in her uniform. The environmentalists were nice to Ellen. No one paid any attention to her stewardess outfit. Gieles even suspected that the men of the camp were flirting with her.
In the evening, Gieles would stare at the encampment through his attic window as long as he could keep his eyes open. Some of the activists sat around the campfire, others lay entwined in hammocks. Someone played the guitar. Flashlights blinked on and off in the dome tents and made the woods look magical. One man hauled a bucket of dishwashing water out of the canal he’d just pissed into. Once Gieles saw a bare bottom sticking out of a hammock. Whether there was one person or two in the hammock was impossible for him to tell.
On the day the woods were cleared by court order, the environmentalists got ready to resist to the bitter end. They promised a raging battle, a guerrilla war. Gieles was on the environmentalists’ side, of course. He and Tony made a slingshot out of wood and a rubber band.
But the battle never materialised. When two policemen closed off the road so the camp could no longer receive supplies, the tents were taken down in silence. The only reminder of the environmentalists was the metal tree with its wooden leaves, but even that disappeared within a couple of days. The airport had won.
Since the runway’s completion, the short distance between it and the farm had been drawing Gieles like a magnet. The first time he and Tony had tried to bridge the few forbidden metres was with a blowpipe and paper. They shot spitballs at the runway from his attic window until the ink from the paper made them nauseous. This led to a game with a slingshot and a whole series of variations that became increasingly less innocent.
The shootings ended for good when a homemade paint bomb exploded against the flank of a Cityhopper. The idea for a paint bomb had come from a squatter who lived next-door to Tony and his family. The house had stood empty since the opening of the runway. No one wanted to live there any more, except the squatter. He was the one who taught Tony and Gieles how to make the bombs, a procedure that involved dipping balloons in candle wax at least forty times. That, said the squatter, would produce a bomb that could smash a double-glazed window. Gieles and Tony didn’t want to smash any double-glazed windows, so they only dipped the balloons twenty times. The very first shot was a direct hit. For a moment the pilot was under the impression that a big bird had crashed against the cockpit, but there was something suspicious about the blue colour. From the attic window Tony and Gieles could see the flashing lights of the military police. Terrified, Gieles grabbed one of the balloons and squeezed it so hard that the paint squirted all over his bedroom. There was no point in denying that they were the culprits.
Gieles emptied his glass of cola, and when the woman offered him another syrup waffle he accepted it. Her husband had fallen asleep. His chin was hanging loosely over his body warmer. The binoculars rested on his lanky legs. Gieles thanked her and went back to cleaning up the goose shit.
His father had called the environmentalists a bunch of boneheads. Leaving without resistance: that, according to him, made you a bonehead. But for Gieles the environmentalists were heroes, and since that summer he had felt a deep longing to be a hero himself. He had done the occasional heroic thing, but that didn’t make him a hero. Two years before he had rescued a German shepherd from the canal. The dog hadn’t been able to scramble up onto the bank himself. Gieles pulled him out by his collar and the dog ran away. No one had seen his act of heroism, so it didn’t count.
The Frenchman Christian Moullec was a hero. In his flying two-seater motorbike he saved lesser white-fronted geese by showing them the way to their winter quarters.
His mother was a hero. At the risk of her own life she travelled from one dried out place to another (for reasons that were incomprehensible to him) to teach poor Africans to cook on solar-powered stoves.
Captain Sully was the biggest hero of them all. Without a doubt. I was sure I could do it. Americans adored him. They drank coffee from I ♥ SULLY mugs. They wore T-shirts with THANK YOU CAPTAIN SULLY, SULLY IS MY HOMEBOY, OLD PILOTS NEVER DIE on them. His name was on pillows, mouse pads, bumper stickers, calendars and dog shirts. Women wore panties bearing the words TRUE HERO FLT 1549. He was sexier than Johnny Depp, greater than Jesus. Jesus could walk on water, but Captain Chesley Sullenberger could land on water and bring a hundred fifty-five people to safety.
Another hero of immense proportions: Jan-Ove Waldner. The best table tennis player ever. Also called the Mozart of table tennis. Gieles had no idea why, but it sounded good.
His father was a kind of hero. He drove birds from the runways to keep the passengers safe. Gieles suspected him of driving the birds away to save them from the airplane engines. Obstinate birds were shot, but not by Willem Bos. He never shot. Except at pigeons. His father despised pigeons.
Gieles went to the barn, shovel and bucket in hand. In just a few more months he’d be a hero himself. He would personally see to it that his mother never wanted to go back to Africa again. Everyone would be hugely impressed.
In the barn he picked up the bamboo stick and the tin of speculaas. When he shook the tin the geese came running. He gave them a couple of cookies and put the tin in his backpack. Then he prodded their feathery backsides with the stick.
Strutting with pride, their tufts held jauntily in the air, the geese crossed the road. When they got to the environmentalists’ woods they began to graze in the grass. Gieles looked up at the camera that was mounted to a lamppost.
The airport tolerated the geese because his father had told them they were flightless farm chickens that had never flown a metre in their lives. His father had authority.
If only they knew.
Idiots.
They passed a derelict house whose garden was overrun by wild blackberry bushes that were creeping up the outer walls. Gieles noticed that part of one bush was growing in through a broken window, as if the house were being devoured. Behind the uninhabited ruin was a grassy path leading to the shed. He pushed open the corrugated metal door. The shed was empty, except for a couple of aluminium boats and a disassembled tractor. The geese waddled in, their tails wagging. They were eager to get started.
‘Stay,’ he said to the geese, articulating distinctly. He held up his hands as if he were pronouncing a blessing.
‘Stay.’
Slowly Gieles started walking backward, repeating the command. The geese stayed where they were but became restless. They wiggled up and down and began cheeping. At a distance of less than twenty metres Gieles again called out ‘stay!’, but this time they took a running start and flapped up to him awkwardly, flopping down at his feet and cackling with wild abandon.
‘Damn!’ said Gieles in frustration. ‘You guys are supposed to wait till I give the sign! With my stick!’ They pecked at his pants’ leg. Gieles pushed the geese away. ‘First listen. Then cookies.’
He began walking backward once more. ‘Sit! Stay!’
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