for that purpose. And a white one for Sundays.
‘David,’ Father said when he noticed I was daydreaming, ‘how many wheels on a cart?’
‘Four!’ I said.
‘How many legs on a table?’
‘Four!’
‘A chair?’
‘Four!’
‘A horse?’
‘Four!’
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Because the cart, the table, the chair and the dog would fall over otherwise,’ I said.
‘The horse,’ Father said.
‘Yes, the horse!’
‘That’s correct,’ he said, pleased I had followed his train of thought. ‘Four creates stability, it allows things to stand firm.’
‘We don’t have four legs,’ I said.
Mother glanced at me over her shoulder.
‘True. And we are nowhere near as steady on our feet as all the other mammals. Push someone unexpectedly and he will fall. You can’t push over a horse or a cow, even if they don’t expect it,’ Father said. ‘Besides, we do have four limbs.’
I agreed with him, but added that I would be able to push over a mouse.
‘Other things come in fours, too,’ he went on.
‘Have you been chatting with some professor again?’ Mother asked. He ignored her question, eager to finish his lecture on the number four. But the word ‘professor’ was used regularly at mealtimes.
‘There are four seasons, four points of the compass, four elements and four temperaments.’
I wanted to ask what elements and temperaments were, but had the feeling he was now talking to Mother, as he was watching her backside as he spoke. The Friday ribbon was red. This ribbon was different from the others: it was perforated and had scalloped edges, like the leaves of our oak tree. Ratface, who had been strapped to his chair all this time, was getting bored. He tried to clamber out. Mother asked Father to unfasten Henri and put him down on the floor.
‘David, do you know what else makes four so special?’
‘No, Dad.’
‘It’s the only number whose meaning is identical to the number of letters in its name. F-o-u-r. Four letters.’ He laughed.
I understood, and looked up at my father in awe.
‘The entire visible world is based on the number four,’ he philosophized. I picked at a dried-up piece of food on the table top.
‘And even more than that—there’s a fourth dimension, namely time.’
‘That’s enough now,’ Mother said. ‘It’s too much for the boy to take in. And for us,’ she added, laughing.
‘May I leave the table?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered.
Ratface started to scream and batter his chair with his fists. Finally, Father stood up, unfastened him and put him down on his hands and knees. He immediately crawled after me. Father took the dish cloth from the shelf, joined Mother at the sink and starting drying the pots and pans.
-
MARCUS VERSCHOPPEN. A boy with thick black hair and a perfectly cut fringe. He walked with short steps, as if afraid of breaking. The other boys regularly followed him around, marching over the playground as stiff as boards, only to start shoving each other when one of them bumped into the other or threw up his leg just a little too high. Marcus knew they did it. During playtime, he stood with his back against the wall, hands beside his hips, palms pressed against the bricks. Always in the same spot, where his nails had scraped a slight hollow into the granular surface of the bricks. From there, he watched as the others resumed their game, watched their flexible bodies and double-jointed knees and elbows as they jostled to steal the ball from each other. There was no envy in his gaze, rather admiration. Sometimes he straightened up, lifting the top of his head half a brick higher than before. Toward the end of the break period he would finally summon up the courage to leave the wall and stand on the edge of the playing field, just close enough not to get in the boys’ way, and out of reach of their flailing arms. On such moments, I could tell he was bursting to join in, to fight for the ball and perhaps even deliver the occasional kick or shove himself. He never allowed himself to disrupt their game, however.
Marcus’s eyes never hid the fact he knew the answer before I had finished the question. He would bend over, pick up his pen from its groove and scribble the answer into his exercise book. When four o’clock had passed and the classroom was empty and silent again, I would rummage in the belly of his desk to fish out his exercise book and find that he had jotted down all the correct answers. Without smudges or scratches. And in perfect handwriting.
One day in the first week of school, I noticed that he lingered after I had dismissed the class. He was placing his books in his satchel with deliberate slowness while the others were already outside, their chattering voices dying away in the distance. I was sitting at my desk writing the chores for the next day in my diary. He fastened the straps of his satchel, and after a moment’s hesitation, mustered all his courage and walked up to me.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you last Saturday,’ he said.
‘That’s all right, Marcus,’ I said, surprised that a boy his age would apologize for such a thing.
‘I never usually forget a face,’ he said.
‘A very useful skill for an artist.’
He nodded.
‘After seeing you on my walk that Saturday, I wondered how you manage to draw the butterflies. Surely they would have to hold very still for you to get a proper look. How do you do it?’ I asked.
The worried expression vanished from his face as he started talking. ‘I’ve got a small bottle of ether in my bag. I put a drop on a piece of cloth that I spread out on the bottom, and when I’ve caught a butterfly in it, I close the bag—just for a moment, mind, too long is bad for them. Just long enough, so the butterfly is drugged.’
I nodded with interest.
‘Then I spread its wings. I never pin them down,’ he hastened to add, ‘I just let them lie there. And if they come round too soon, that’s too bad. They are free to fly away again. I must have drawn a hundred half-finished butterflies.’
‘That’s clever,’ I said, impressed. ‘Most boys your age are more interested in pulling out the butterflies’ wings, or burying them alive.’
He looked at me in horror.
‘I mean … of course I’m not saying you should do that, or that I ever did it as a boy, I didn’t; but I knew plenty of boys who did … ’
I was lying.
