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Joris Luyendijk (1971) is te gast in VPRO BOEKEN over zijn nieuwste boek ‘Dit kan niet waar zijn’. Twee jaar geleden ging Luyendijk met zijn gezin in Londen wonen. Hij ging werken voor The Guardian, die hem de opdracht gaf om vanuit antropologisch perspectief te schrijven over The City, het financiële hart van Groot-Brittannië. De conclusie van het boek is even stevig als pijnlijk: de instellingen die ervoor moeten zorgen dat de economie functioneert, kunnen de wereld in de afgrond doen storten.
Joris Luyendijk
VPRO Boeken
zondag 22 februari 2015
NPO 1, 11.20 uur
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Book News, Archive K-L, Art & Literature News, FDM in London, MONTAIGNE
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
(1729-1781)
Das Mädchen
Zum Mädchen wünscht’ ich mir – und wollt’ es, ha! recht lieben –
Ein junges, nettes, tolles Ding,
Leicht zu erfreun, schwer zu betrüben,
Am Wuchse schlank, im Gange flink,
Von Aug’ ein Falk,
Von Mien’ ein Schalk;
Das fleißig, fleißig liest:
Weil alles, was es liest,
Sein einzig Buch – der Spiegel ist;
Das immer gaukelt, immer spricht,
Und spricht und spricht von tausend Sachen,
Versteht es gleich das Zehnte nicht
Von allen diesen tausend Sachen:
Genug, es spricht mit Lachen,
Und kann sehr reizend lachen.
Solch Mädchen wünscht’ ich mir! – Du, Freund, magst deine Zeit
Nur immerhin bei schöner Sittsamkeit,
Nicht ohne seraphin’sche Tränen,
Bei Tugend und Verstand vergähnen.
Solch einen Engel
Ohn’ alle Mängel
Zum Mädchen haben:
Das hieß’ ein Mädchen haben? –
Heißt eingesegnet sein, und Weib und Hausstand haben.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, CLASSIC POETRY
Amy Lowell
(1874–1925)
To a Friend
I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!
Amy Lowell poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Archive K-L, CLASSIC POETRY, Lowell, Amy
Babelmatrix Translation Project
Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész was born in Budapest on November 9, 1929. Of Jewish descent, in 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz and from there to Buchenwald, where he was liberated in 1945. On his return to Hungary he worked for a Budapest newspaper, Világosság, but was dismissed in 1951 when it adopted the Communist party line. After two years of military service he began supporting himself as an independent writer and translator of German-language authors such as Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Roth, Wittgenstein, and Canetti, who have all had a significant influence on his own writing.
Kertész’s first novel, Sorstalanság (Eng. Fateless, 1992; see WLT 67:4, p. 863), a work based on his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was published in 1975. “When I am thinking about a new novel, I always think of Auschwitz,” he has said. This does not mean, however, that Sorstalanság is autobiographical in any simple sense: Kertész says himself that he has used the form of the autobiographical novel but that it is not autobiography. Sorstalanság was initially rejected for publication. When published eventually in 1975, it was received with compact silence. Kertész has written about this experience in A kudarc (1988; Fiasco). This novel is normally regarded as the second volume in a trilogy that begins with Sorstalanság and concludes with Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért (1990; Eng. Kaddish for a Child Not Born, 1997; see WLT 74:1, p. 205), in a title that refers to the Jewish prayer for the dead. In Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért, the protagonist of Sorstalanság and A kudarc, György Köves, reappears. His Kaddish is said for the child he refuses to beget in a world that permitted the existence of Auschwitz. Other prose works are A nyomkereso” (1977; The pathfinder) and Az angol labogó (1991; The English flag; see WLT 67:2, p. 412)
Gályanapló (Részletek) (Hungarian)
Ahhoz, hogy valaki – dehogy az „emberiség!” – csupán a saját élete megváltója, föloldozója lehessen, egy teljes, hihetetlenül intenzív és állandó belsö munkával eltöltött élet szükséges. Az embernek van egy förtelmes élete – a történelem-, és van egy nála sokkal bölcsebb, hatalmas világmeséje, amelyben istenséggé, mágussá válik; és ez a mese éppoly csoda, mint amilyen hihetetlen a történelmi, a „reális” élete.
Augusztus 11. Minden véget ért, és minden újrakezdödött; de máshol kezdödött, és talán máshová visz. Tegnapelött éjszaka az erkélyen, hüvösödo” szélfutamok, a Pasaréti úti fák nagy, felhöforma, sötét lombozata, alatta az aranyló világítás – egy pillanatig mintha nem is ez a jól ismert lidércváros lenne. Mély, mély melankólia, emlékek, mintha az elmúlás környékezne, csupa közhely, csupa valóság, csupa unalmas igazság, akár a halál.
L., az író, aki viszonylagosnak fogja fel az irodalmat. Szemben Schönberg nézetével, miszerint a mu”vészethez elég az igazság, L. szerint a müvészetnek a túlélést kell szolgálnia: hiszen, mondja, ha meglátjuk a puszta igazságot, akkor nem marad hátra más, mint hogy felkössük magunkat – vagy netalán azt, aki az igazságot nekünk megmutatta. Nem éppen szokatlan magatartás; nem csodálkoznék, ha L.-ról kiderülne, hogy családapa, s csupán a gyermekei jövo”jéért teszi, amit tennie kell. Csakhogy a viszonylagos irodalom mindig rossz irodalom, és a nem radikális müvészet mindig középszeru” müvészet: jó müvésznek nincs más esélye, mint hogy igazat mondjon, és az igazat radikálisan mondja. Etto”l még életben lehet maradni, hiszen a hazugság nem az egyetlen és kizárólagos föltétele az életnek, ha sokan nem is látnak egyéb lehetöséget.
Mostanában gyakran elképzelek valakit, homályos alak, egy emberi lény, kortalan, persze inkább ido”s vagy legalábbis idösödo” férfi. Jön-megy, végzi a dolgát, éli az életét, szenved, szeret, elutazik, hazatér, olykor beteg, máskor úszni, társaságba, kártyázni jár; mindeközben azonban, amint akad egy szabad perce, tüstént benyit egy eldugott fülkébe, gyorsan – és mintegy szórakozottan – leül valami ócska hangszer elé, leüt néhány akkordot, majd félhalkan improvizálni kezd, évtizedeken keresztül játssza ugyanegy téma immár számtalanadik variációját. Nemsoká felugrik, mennie kell – de amint újabb szabadideje adódik, ismét ott látjuk öt a hangszernél, mintha az élete csak amolyan két játék közötti, kényszer közbevetés lenne. Ha ezek a hangok, amiket a hangszerböl kicsal, mondjuk, megállnának, és egymásba su”ru”södve mintegy megfagynának a levego”ben, talán valami görcsös kataton mozdulatra emlékeztetö jégkristályképzödményt látnánk, amelyben, jobban is megnézve, kétségkívül felismerheto” lenne valamilyen kifejezö szándé makacssága, ha csupán a monotóniáé is; ha meg netán lekottáznák, végül alighanem ki lehetne venni egy mindegyre sürüödo” fúga bontakozó körvonalait, mely mind határozottabban tör célja felé, csakhogy e célt mind távolabbra tolja, taszigálja magától, s így mégis mind bizonytalanabbá válik. – Kinek játszik? Miért játszik? Maga sem tudja. Söt – és azért mégiscsak ez a legfurcsább – nem is hallja, hogy mit játszik. Mintha a kísérteties erö, amely újra meg újra odaparancsolja a hangszerhez, megfosztotta volna a hallásától, hogy egyedül neki játsszon. -De ó legalább hallja-e? (A kérdés azonban, lássuk be, értelmetlen: a játékost természetesen boldognak kell elképzelnünk.)
1992
Galeerentagebuch (Auszüge) (German)
Um Erlöser – keineswegs der »Menschheit«! – lediglich seines eigenen Lebens sein zu können, um sich für das eigene Leben Absolution erteilen zu können, ist ein volles, unsagbar intensives und von ständiger innerer Arbeit erfülltes Leben notwendig. Der Mensch hat ein grauenhaftes Leben – die Geschichte –, und er hat die Erzählung von der Welt, mächtig und viel weiser als er, in der er zur Gottheit, zum Magier wird; und diese Erzählung ist genauso ein Wunder, wie sein geschichtliches, «reales» Leben etwas Unglaubliches ist.
11. August Alles hat ein Ende, und alles begann von vorn; doch es begann anderswo und führt vielleicht anderswohin. Vorgestern nacht auf dem Balkon, ein kühler Wind, das große, wolkenförmige, dunkle Laubdach der Bäume in der Pasareti-Straße, darunter die schummrige Beleuchtung – für einen Moment war mir, als sei es nicht die vertraute Alptraumstadt. Tiefe, tiefe Melancholie, Erinnerungen, als umgebe mich dei Vergänglichkeit, voll Banalität, voll Wirklichkeit, voll langweiliger Wahrheit, wie der Tod.
L., der Schriftsteller, der die Literatur relativ auffaßt. Im Gegensatz zu Schönberg, nach dessen Ansicht Wahrheit für die Kunst genügt, muß die Kunst L. zufolge dem Überleben dienen, denn, sagt er, wenn wir die nackte Wahrheit erblicken, bleibt uns nichts anderes übrig, als uns aufzuhängen – oder vielleicht den, der uns die Wahrheit gezeigt hat. Keine ganz ungewöhnliche Haltung; es würde mich nicht wundern, wenn sich herausstellte, daß L. Familienvater ist und das, was er tut, nur für die Zukunft seiner Kinder tut. Nur daß relative Literatur immer schlechte Literatur und nichtradikale Kunst immer mittelmäßige Kunst ist: Der wirkliche Künstler hat keine andere Chance, als die Wahrheit zu sagen und die Wahrheit radikal zu sagen. Deswegen kann er trotzdem am Leben bleiben, denn die Lüge ist nicht einzige und ausschließliche Bedingung des Lebens, selbst wenn viele keine sonstigen Möglichkeiten sehen.
In letzter Zeit stelle ich mir häufig etwas vor, eine unklare Gestalt, ein menschliche; Wesen, einen alterslosen, freilich eher alten oder doch älteren Mann. Er kommt und geht, erledigt seine Dinge, lebt sein Leben, leidet, liebt, verreist, kehrt heim, manchmal ist er krank, manchmal geht er schwimmen, zu Bekannten oder Karten spielen; zwischendurch jedoch, sobald sich eine freie Minute findet, öffnet er die Tür einer versteckten Zelle, stetzt sich rasch – und gleichsam zerstreut – vor ein schäbiges Instrument, schlägt einige Akkorde an und beginnt dann halblaut zu improvisieren, eine weitere von inzwischen zahllosen Variationen des seit Jahrzehnten gespielten, immer gleichen Themas. Kurz darauf springt er auf, muß gehendoch sobald sich wieder freie Zeit findet, sehen wir ihn abermals vor dem Instrument, als sei sein Leben nur die notgedrungene Unterbrechung zwischen zwei Spielen. Würden die Töne, die er dem Instrument entlockt, aufstehen und, gleichsam ineinander verdichtet, in der Luft gefrieren, würden wir vielleicht ein Eiskristallgebilde erblicken, an eine verkrampfte katatonische Bewegung erinnernd, worin, bei genauerer Betrachtung, zweifellos die Hartnäckigkeit einer Ausdrucksabsicht zu erkennen wäre, wenn auch nur die der Monotonie; setzten wir sie gar in Noten, könnten wir vermutlich die Umrisse einer sich mehr und mehr verdichtenden Fuge herauslösen, die immer entschlossener zu ihrem Ziel durchbricht, dabei aber dieses Ziel immer weiter fortschiebt, fortstößt von sich, und so wird es dennoch immer ungewisser. – Für wen spielt er? Warum spielt er? Er weiß es selbst nicht. Zudem – und das ist das Merkwürdigste daran – kann er nicht einmal hören, was er spielt. Als habe ihm die gespenstische Kraft, die ihn wieder und wieder an sein Instrument zwingt, das Gehör geraubt, damit er allein für sie spiele. – Ob jedoch sie ihn wenigstens hört? (Die Frage, sehen wir es ein, ist sinnlos, aber den Spieler müssen wir uns natürlich glücklich vorstellen.)
Schwamm, Kristin
FLEURSDUMAL.NL MAGAZINE
More in: Archive K-L, Kertész, Imre
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Babelmatrix Translation Project
Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész was born in Budapest on November 9, 1929. Of Jewish descent, in 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz and from there to Buchenwald, where he was liberated in 1945. On his return to Hungary he worked for a Budapest newspaper, Világosság, but was dismissed in 1951 when it adopted the Communist party line. After two years of military service he began supporting himself as an independent writer and translator of German-language authors such as Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Roth, Wittgenstein, and Canetti, who have all had a significant influence on his own writing.
Kertész’s first novel, Sorstalanság (Eng. Fateless, 1992; see WLT 67:4, p. 863), a work based on his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was published in 1975. “When I am thinking about a new novel, I always think of Auschwitz,” he has said. This does not mean, however, that Sorstalanság is autobiographical in any simple sense: Kertész says himself that he has used the form of the autobiographical novel but that it is not autobiography. Sorstalanság was initially rejected for publication. When published eventually in 1975, it was received with compact silence. Kertész has written about this experience in A kudarc (1988; Fiasco). This novel is normally regarded as the second volume in a trilogy that begins with Sorstalanság and concludes with Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért (1990; Eng. Kaddish for a Child Not Born, 1997; see WLT 74:1, p. 205), in a title that refers to the Jewish prayer for the dead. In Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért, the protagonist of Sorstalanság and A kudarc, György Köves, reappears. His Kaddish is said for the child he refuses to beget in a world that permitted the existence of Auschwitz. Other prose works are A nyomkereso” (1977; The pathfinder) and Az angol labogó (1991; The English flag; see WLT 67:2, p. 412)
Sorstalanság (Hungarian)
A pályaudvarhoz érve, mivel kezdtem igen érezni a lábom, no meg mivel a sok többi közt a régröl ismert számmal is épp elibém kanyarodott egy, villamosra szálltam. Szikár öregasszony húzódott a nyitott peronon egy kissé félrébb, fura, ódivatú csipkegallérban. Hamarosan egy ember jött, sapkában, egyenruhában, és a jegyemet kérte. Mondtam néki: nincsen. Indítványozta: váltsak. Mondtam: idegenböl jövök, nincsen pénzem. Akkor megnézte a kabátomat, engem, s azután meg az öregasszonyt is, majd értésemre adta, hogy az utazásnak törvényei vannak, s ezeket a törvényeket nem ö, hanem az o” fölötte állók hozták. – Ha nem vált jegyet, le kell szállnia – volt a véleménye. Mondtam neki: de hisz fáj a lábam, s erre, észrevettem, az öregasszony ki, a tájék felé fordult, de oly sértödötten valahogyan, mintha csak néki hánytam volna a szemére netán, nem tudnám, mért. De a kocsi nyitott ajtaján, már messziroö nagy lármával, termetes, fekete, csapzott ember csörtetett ki. Nyitott inget, világos vászonöltönyt, a válláról szíjon függö fekete dobozt, kezében meg irattáskát hordott. Miféle dolog ez, kiáltotta, és: – Adjon egy jegyet! – intézkedett, pénzdarabot nyújtva, lökve inkább a kalauznak oda. Próbáltam köszönetet mondani, de félbeszakított, indulatosan tekintve körbe: – Inkább némelyeknek szégyenkezniük kellene – szólt, de a kalauz már a kocsiban járt, az öregasszony meg továbbra is kinézett. Akkor, megenyhült arccal, énfelém fordult. Kérdezte: – Németországból jössz, fiam? – Igen. – Koncentrációs táborból-e? – Természetesen. – Melyikbo”l? – A buchenwaldiból. – Igen, hallotta már hírét, tudja, az is „a náci pokolnak volt egyik bugyra” – így mondta. – Honnan hurcoltak ki? – Budapestro”l. – Meddig voltál oda? – Egy évig, egészében. – Sok mindent láthattál, fiacskám, sok borzalmat – mondta arra, s nem feleltem semmit. No de – így folytatta – foöhogy vége, elmúlt, s földerülö arccal a házakra mutatva, melyek közt épp csörömpöltünk, érdeklödött: mit érzek vajon most, újra itthon, s a város láttán, melyet elhagytam? Mondtam neki: – Gyülöletet. – Elhallgatott, de hamarosan azt az észrevételt tette, hogy meg kell, sajnos, értenie az érzelmeimet. Egyébként öszerinte „adott helyzetben” a gyülöletnek is megvan a maga helye, szerepe, „so haszna”, és föltételezi, tette hozzá, egyetértünk és jól tudja, hogy kit gyu”lölök. Mondtam neki: – Mindenkit. – Megint elhallgatott, ezúttal már hosszabb ido”re, utána meg újra kezdte: – Sok borzalmon kellett-e keresztülmenned? –, s azt feleltem, attól függ, mit tart borzalomnak. Bizonyára – mondta erre, némiképpen feszélyezettnek látszó arccal – sokat kellett nélkülöznöm, éheznem, és valószínu”leg vertek is talán, s mondtam neki: természetesen. – Miért mondod, édes fiam – kiáltott arra fel, de már-már úgy néztem, a türelmét vesztve –, mindenre azt, hogy „természetesen”, és mindig olyasmire, ami pedig egyáltalán nem az?! – Mondtam: koncentrációs táborban ez természetes. – Igen, igen – így o” –, ott igen, de… – s itt elakadt, habozott kissé – de… nohát, de maga a koncentrációs tábor nem természetes! – bukkant végre a megfelelo” szóra mintegy, s nem is feleltem néki semmit, mivel kezdtem lassan belátni: egy s más dologról sosem vitázhatunk, úgy látszik, idegenekkel, tudatlanokkal, bizonyos értelemben véve gyerekekkel, hogy így mondjam. Különben is – kaptam magam a változatlanul ott levo”, s éppen csak egy kissé kopárabbá és gondozatlanabbá vált térröl rajta –, ideje leszállanom, és ezt be is jelentettem neki. De velem tartott, s egy árnyas, támlája vesztett padot mutatva arrébb, indítványozta: telepednénk oda egy percre.
Elöször némelyest bizonytalankodni látszott. Valójában – jegyezte meg – most kezdenek még csak „igazán feltárulni a rémségek”, és hozzátette, „a világ egyelo”re értetlenül áll a kérdés elött: hogyan, miként is történhetett mindez egyáltalán meg”? Nem szóltam semmit, és akkor egész felém fordulva, egyszerre csak azt mondta: – Nem akarnál fiacskám, beszámolni az élményeidro”l? – Elcsodálkoztam kissé, és azt feleltem, hogy roppant sok érdekeset nemigen tudnék mondani neki. Akkor mosolygott kicsikét, és azt mondta: – Nem nekem: a világnak. – Amire, míg jobban csodálkozva, tudakoltam to”le: – De hát miröl? – A lágerek pokláról – válaszolta ö, melyre én azt jegyeztem meg, hogy meg egyáltalában semmit se mondhatok, mivel a pokolt nem ismerem, és még csak elképzelni se tudnám. De kijelentette, ez csak afféle hasonlat: – Nem pokolnak kell-e – kérdezte – elképzelnünk a koncentrációs tábort? – és azt feleltem, sarkammal közben néhány karikát írva lábam alá a porba, hogy ezt mindenki a maga módja és kedve szerint képzelheti el, hogy az én részemro”l azonban mindenesetre csak a koncentrációs tábort tudom elképzelni, mivel ezt valamennyire ismerem, a pokolt viszont nem. – De ha, mondjuk, mégis? – ero”sködött, s pár újabb karika után azt feleltem: – Akkor olyan helynek képzelném, ahol nem lehet unatkozni –; márpedig, tettem hozzá, koncentrációs táborban lehetett, meg Auschwitzban is – már bizonyos föltételek közt, persze. Arra hallgatott egy kicsit, majd meg azt kérdezte, de némiképp valahogy már-már a kedve ellenére szinte, úgy éreztem: – És ezt mivel magyarázod? –, s kis gondolkodás után azt találtam: – Az ido”vel. – Hogyhogy az ido”vel? – Úgy, hogy az ido” segít. – Segít…? miben? – Mindenben –, s próbáltam neki elmagyarázni, mennyire más dolog például megérkezni egy, ha nem is éppen fényu”zo”, de egészében elfogadható, tiszta, takaros állomásra, ahol csak lassacskán, ido”rendben, fokonként világosodik meg elo”ttünk minden. Mire egy fokozaton túl vagyunk, magunk mögött tudjuk, máris jön a következo”. Mire aztán mindent megtudunk, már meg is értettünk mindent. S mialatt mindent megért, ezenközben nem marad tétlen az ember: máris végzi az új dolgát, él, cselekszik, mozog, teljesíti minden újabb fok minden újabb követelményét. Ha viszont nem volna ez az ido”rend, s az egész ismeret mindjárt egyszerre, ott a helyszínen zúdulna ránk, meglehet, azt el sem bírná tán se koponyánk, sem a szívünk – próbáltam valamennyire megvilágítani néki, amire ö zsebéböl közben szakadozott papirosú dobozt halászva elö, melynek gyu”rött cigarettáit énfelém is idetartotta, de elhárítottam, majd két nagy szippantás után két könyékkel a térdére támaszkodva, így elo”redöntött felso”testtel és rám se nézve, kissé valahogy érctelen, tompa hangon ezt mondta: – Értem. – Másrészt, folytattam, az ebben a hiba, mondhatnám hátrány, hogy az ido”t viszont ki is kell tölteni. Láttam például – mondtam neki – foglyokat, akik négy, hat vagy éppen tizenkét esztendeje voltak már – pontosabban: voltak még mindig meg – koncentrációs táborban. Mármost ezeknek az embereknek mindezt a négy, hat vagy tizenkét esztendo”t, vagyis utóbbi esetben tizenkétszer háromszázhatvanöt napot, azaz tizenkétszer, háromszázhatvanötször huszonnégy órát, továbbá tizenkétszer, háromszázhatvanötször, huszonnégyszer… s mindezt vissza, pillanatonként, percenként, óránként, naponként: vagyis végig az egészet el kellett valahogy tölteniök. Megint másrészt viszont – fu”ztem tovább – épp ez segíthetett o”nekik is, mert ha mindez a tizenkétszer, háromszázhatvanötször, huszonnégyszer, hatvanszor és újra hatvanszornyi ido” mind egyszerre, egyetlen csapással szakadt volna a nyakukba, úgy bizonyára ök se állták volna – mint ahogy így állani bírták – se testtel, sem aggyal. S mivel hallgatott, hozzátettem még: – Így kell hát körülbelül elképzelni. – Ö meg erre, ugyanúgy, mint elöbb, csak cigaretta helyett, amit idöközben eldobott már, ezúttal az arcát tartva mind a két kezében, s talán etto”l még tompább, még fojtottabb hangon azt mondta: – Nem, nem lehet elképzelni –, s részemröl ezt be is láttam. Gondoltam is: akkor hát, úgy látszik, ezért mondanak helyette inkább poklot, bizonyára.
Imre Kertész
Onbepaald door het lot (Dutch)
Bij het station aangekomen, stapte ik op de tram omdat ik last kreeg van mijn voeten, bovendien was het een lijn die ik van vroeger kende. Op het open balkon ging een magere, oude vrouw met een eigenaardige, ouderwetse kanten kraag haastig opzij toen ze me zag. Weldra verscheen er een man met een pet en een uniform, die mijn kaartje wilde zien. Ik zei dat ik uit het buitenland kwam en geen geld bij me had. Hij monsterde mijn jas, keek eerst mij aan en vervolgens de oude vrouw en zei toen dat er bepaalde voorschriften golden voor het passagiersvervoer, die overigens niet door hem, maar ‘door de lui boven hem’ waren gemaakt. Als ik geen geld had voor een kaartje, moest ik de tram verlaten. Ik antwoordde dat ik pijn in mijn voeten had, waarop de oude vrouw haar blik afwendde en naar de straat keek, alsof ze beledigd was door mijn woorden, ja alsof ik haar een verwijt had gemaakt. Op dat ogenblik ging de tussendeur van het rijtuig open en kwam er een zwaar gebouwde, donkerharige man met een verwaarloosd uiterlijk het balkon op gestommeld die iets onverstaanbaars riep. Hij droeg een overhemd zonder stropdas en een lichtgekleurd linnen pak en had een aktentas in zijn hand. Aan een riem om zijn schouder hing iets wat eruitzag als een zwarte doos. ‘Wat heeft dat te betekenen?’ riep hij, en tegen de conducteur snauwde hij: ‘Geef die jongen oumiddellijk een kaartje!’ terwijl hij hem met een nogal bruusk gebaar een geldstuk overhandigde, of liever gezegd: toestopte. Ik wilde hem bedanken, maar hij onderbrak mij nog steeds boos om zich heen kijkend, en zei: ‘Bepaalde mensen hier zouden zich moeten schamen.’ De conducteur was echter al doorgelopen en de oude vrouw staarde nog steeds aandachtig naar de straat. Toen hij dit zag, wendde hij zich met een veel vriendelijker gezicht naar mij en vroeg: ‘Kom je net terug uit Duitsland, mijn jongen?’ ‘Ja’, zei ik. ‘Uit een concentratiekamp?’ ‘Natuurlijk.’ ‘Welk kamp?’ ‘Buchenwald.’ Hij zei dat hij daarvan had gehoord en noemde het een der meest beruchte krochten van de nazi-hel. ‘Waar ben je opgepakt?’ ‘In Boedapest.’ ‘Hoe lang heb je in het kamp gezeten?’ ‘Alles bij elkaar één jaar.’ ‘Die ogen van je zullen heel wat gezien hebben, jongen, veel gruwelijks’, zei hij toen hij dit hoorde, waarop ik niets terugzei. ‘Gelukkig is het nu allemaal voorbij’, vervolgde hij, en met een opgewekt gezicht naar de huizen wijzend waar de tram tussendoor ratelde, vroeg hij wat fik voelde nu ik weer thuis was en de stad terugzag. Ik zei: ‘Haat.’ Even zweeg hij, maar toen zei hij dat hij vreesde mijn gevoelens te moeten begrijpen. Overigens waren haatgevoelens volgens hem ‘in bepaalde situaties’ zeer functioneel en zelfs ‘nuttig’, wat ik waarschijnlijk uit eigen ervaring wel wist. Hij zei ook nog: ‘Ik weet heel goed wie je haat.’ Ik antwoordde: ‘Iedereen.’ Na dit antwoord zweeg hij opnieuw en nu duurde het veel langer voordat hij weer begon te spreken. Hij vroeg: ‘Heb je veel gruwelijke dingen meegemaakt?’ Ik zei hem dat ik die vraag moeilijk kon beantwoorden omdat ik niet wist wat hij met ‘gruwelijk’ bedoelde. ‘Je hebt ongetwijfeld veel ontberingen moeten doorstaan en honger geleden en misschien hebben ze je in het kamp ook geslagen’, zei hij met een enigszins gespannen gelaatsuitdrukking.’ Ik antwoordde: ’Natuurlijk.’ Daarop riep hij luid: ‘Waarom antwoord je op alles wat ik zeg „natuurlijk”, beste jongen, terwijl we het over zaken hebben die helemaal niet natuurlijk zijn?’ Ik had de indruk dat hij op het punt stond zijn geduld te verliezen en zei: ‘In een concentratiekamp zijn ze wel natuurlijk.’ ‘Nu ja, goed, daar misschien wel, maar…’ – op dat punt aangeland bleef hij even steken en aarzelde hij – ‘maar een concentratiekamp is op zichzelf niet natuurlijk.’ Dit laatste zei hij op opgeluchte toon, alsof hij eindelijk het juiste woord had gevonden. Ik gaf geen antwoord omdat ik langzamerhand begon in te zien dat je over sommige zaken eenvoudig niet kon discussiëren met buitenstaanders, die wat de kampen betreft totaal onwetend waren en als kleine kinderen konden worden beschouwd. Toen ik uit het raam keek, zag ik dat we het plein naderden waar ik moest uitstappen. Het lag er nog net zo bij als vroeger, maar de huizen waren wat grauwer en vervelozer dan bij mijn vertrek uit Boedapest en zagen er enigszins verwaarloosd uit. Ik zei tegen de onbekende dat ik mijn bestemming had bereikt en dus afscheid van hem moest nemen, maar hij wilde me kennelijk nog wat langer gezelschap houden en stapte eveneens uit. Buiten wees hij op een overschaduwd bankje waar de rugleuning van was verdwenen en hij stelde voor om daar even te gaan zitten.
Aanvankelijk wist hij niet goed hoe hij van wal moest steken. ‘Eigenlijk’, merkte hij op, ‘komen al die gruwelen nu pas aan het licht’, en hij voegde eraan toe ‘dat de wereld zich verbijsterd afvroeg hoe dit alles had kunnen gebeuren.’ Ik zei niets, waarop hij zich geheel naar mij toekeerde en onverwachts vroeg: ‘Zou je de mensen niet willen vertellen wat je allemaal hebt meegemaakt, mijn jongen?’ Ik was nogal verbaasd door deze vraag en antwoordde dat ik hem niet veel interessants te vertellen had, maar hij glimlachte flauwtjes en zei: ‘Niet mij, maar de wereld.’ Nog meer verbaasd dan eerst vroeg ik: ‘Maar wát zou ik dan moeten vertellen?’ ‘Wat een hel het concentratiekamp was’, antwoordde hij, waarop ik opmerkte dat ik daar niets over wist te zeggen omdat ik de hel niet kende en me die ook absoluut niet kon voorstellen. Hij zei daarop dat dit ook maar een vergelijking was. ‘Is een concentratiekamp dan geen hel?’ vroeg hij, en ik antwoordde met mijn hak kringetjes in het stof trekkend dat iedereen natuurlijk vrij was om zich bepaalde voorstellingen te maken, maar dat ik alleen wist wat een concentratiekamp was, althans ertigszins, doordat ik daar zelf in had gezeten, maar dat ik me bij het woord ‘hel’ niets kon voorstellen. ‘Maar als je je de hel toch probeert voor te stellen, hoe ziet die er dan uit?’ hield hij aan en ik antwoordde na nog wat nieuwe kringetjes te hebben getrokken: ‘Als een plaats waar je je niet kunt vervelen, en dat kon je in de kampen wel, zelfs in Auschwitz in bepaalde omstandigheden.’ Daarop zweeg hij enige tijd en vervolgens vroeg hij, bijna met tegenzin naar het scheen: ‘Heb je daar een verklaring voor?’ Na even nagedacht te hebben antwoordde ik: ‘Dat komt door de tijd.’ ‘Door de tijd? Wat bedoel je daarmee?’ ‘Ik bedoel dat de tijd helpt.’ ‘Helpt? Waarmee dan?’ ‘Met alles.’ Ik probeerde hem uit te leggen wat het was om op een misschien niet luxueus maar in elk geval acceptabel, goed onderhouden en schoon station aan te komen, waar de werkelijkheid pas langzaam en geleidelijk, als het ware stukje bij beetje, tot je doordrong. Zodra je een brokstukje van het geheel aan de weet was gekomen, diende zich alweer het volgende aan en tegen de tijd dat je alles wist, begreep je ook alles. Intussen keek je niet werkeloos toe, je deed wat je te doen stond, leefde, handelde, spande je in en trachtte aan de eisen te voldoen die bij elke nieuwe graad van inzicht hoorden. Als dit niet zo was geweest, als je niet geleidelijk met de werkelijkheid was geconfronteerd, maar door al die kennis onmiddellijk bij aankomst was overspoeld, hadden je hersenen en je hart dat waarschijnlijk niet kunnen verdragen. In dergelijke bewoordingen trachtte ik hem duidelijk te maken wat het is om in een concentratiekamp te zitten, waarop hij een rafelig kartonnen doosje uit zijn zak opdiepte en me een verfomfaaide sigaret aanbood, die ik niet accepteerde. Hij stak zelf wel op, maar na de rook tweemaal diep geïnhaleerd te hebben boog hij zijn bovenlichaam voorover, legde zijn ellebogen op zijn knieën en zei zonder me aan te kijken, op enigszins doffe, moedeloze toon: ‘Ik begrijp het.’ ‘Aan de andere kant’, vervolgde ik, ‘werkte de tijd ook tegen je, of laat ik zeggen in je nadeel, want je moest hem zien door te komen. Ik heb gevangenen gezien die al vier, zes of meer jaren in het kamp zaten, beter gezegd nog in het kamp zaten, en sommigen zelfs twaalf jaar. Deze mensen moesten vier, zes of twaalf lange jaren doorkomen, in het laatste geval dus twaalfmaal driehonderdvijfenzestig dagen, oftewel twaalfmaal driehonderdvijfenzestig maal vierentwintig uren, dat wil zeggen twaalfmaal driehonderdvijfenzestig maal vierentwintig… enzovoort. Al die seconden, minuten, uren, dagen, die hele lange tijd, moesten ze het op de een of andere manier zien vol te houden. En toch… toch was dit juist hun geluk, want als ze die onmetelijke hoeveelheid van twaalfmaal driehonderdvijfenzestig maal vierentwintig maal zestig maal nog eens zestig seconden in één keer over zich uitgestort hadden gekregen, waren ze daar vast niet tegen bestand geweest, lichamelijk noch geestelijk, terwijl ze dat nu wel waren.’ ‘Toen de man bleef zwijgen, voegde ik er nog aan toe: ’Zo moet u zich dat ongeveer voorstellen.’ Hiecrop gooide hij zijn sigaret weg en zei, nog steeds in dezelfde gebogen houding gezeten maar met zijn handen zijn gezicht bedekkend: ‘Nee, ik kán me dat niet voorstellen!’ Zijn stem klonk nog doffer dan daarstraks, bijna verstikt, zodat ik begreep dat hij daar werkelijk niet toe in staat was. Ik dacht: daarom noemen buitenstaanders de kampen natuurlijk graag een hel.
Henry Kammer
Publisher Van Gennep, Amsterdam
Source of the quotation p. 226-231.
Imre Kertész
Fateless (English)
On reaching the train station, I climbed aboard a streetcar because my leg was hurting and because I recognized one out of many with a familiar number. A thin old woman wearing a strange, old-fashioned lace collar moved away from me. Soon a man came by with a hat and a uniform and asked to see my ticket. I told him I had none. He insisted that I should buy one. I said I had just come back from abroad and was penniless. He looked at my coat, then at me, then at the old woman, and then he informed me that there were rules governing public transportation that not he but people above him had made. He said that if I didn’t buy a ticket, I’d have to get off. I told him my leg ached, and I noticed that the old woman responded to this by turning to look outside the window, in an insulted way, as if I were somehow accusing her of who knows what. Then through the car’s open door a large, black-haired man noisily galloped in. He wore a shirt without a tie and a light canvas suit. From his shoulder a black box hung, and an attaché case was in his hand. „What a shame!” he shouted. „Give him a ticket,” he ordered, and he gave or rather pushed a coin toward the conductor. I tried to thank him, but he interrupted me, looking around, annoyed: „Some people ought to be ashamed of themselves!” he said, but the conductor was already gone. The old woman continued to stare outside.
Then with a softened voice he said to me: „Are you coming from Germany, son?” „Yes,” I said. „From a concentration camp?” „Yes, of course.” „Which one?” „Buchenwald.” „Yes,” he answered, he had heard of it-one of the „pits of Nazi hell.” „Where did they carry you away from?” „Budapest.” „How long were you there?” „One year.” „You must have seen a lot, son, a lot of terrible things,” he said, but I didn’t reply. „Anyway,” he went on, „what’s important is that it’s over, it’s finished,” and with a cheerful face pointing to the buildings that we were passing, he asked me to tell him what I now felt, being home again, seeing the city I had left. I answered, „Hatred.” He fell silent, but soon he observed that, unfortunately, he had to say that he understood how I felt. He also felt that „under certain circumstances” there is a place and a role for hatred, „even a benefit,” and, he added, he assumed that we understood each other, and he knew full well the people I hated. I told him, „Everyone.” Then he fell silent again, this time for a longer period, and then he asked: „Did you have to go through many horrors?” I answered, „That depends on what you call a horror.” Surely, he replied with a tense face, I had been deprived of a lot, had gone hungry, and had probably been beaten. I said, „Naturally.” „Why do you keep saying ‘naturally,’ son,” he exclaimed, seeming to lose his temper, „when you are referring to things that are not natural at all?” „In a concentration camp,” I said, „they are very natural.” „Yes, yes,” he gasped, „it’s true there, but … well … but the concentration camp itself is not natural.” He seemed to have found the appropriate expression, but I didn’t even answer him, because I began to understand that there are certain subjects you can’t discuss, it seems, with strangers, ignorant people, and children, one might say. Besides – I suddenly noticed an unchanged, only slightly more bare and uncared-for square – it was time for me to get off, and I told him so. But he came after me, and pointing to a backless bench over in the shade, he suggested, „Let’s sit down for a minute.”
First he seemed somewhat insecure. „To tell the truth,” he observed, „it’s only now that the horrors are beginning to surface, and the world is still standing speechless and without understanding before the question How could all this have happened?” I was quiet, but he turned toward me and said: „Son, wouldn’t you like to tell me about your experiences?” I was a little surprised and told him that I couldn’t tell him very many interesting things. Then he smiled a little and said, „Not to me, to the world.” Even more astonished, I replied, „What should I talk about?” „The hell of the camps,” he replied, but I answered that I couldn’t say anything about that because I didn’t know anything about hell and couldn’t even imagine what it was like. He assured me that this was simply a metaphor. „Shouldn’t we picture the concentration camp like hell?” he asked. I answered, while drawing circles in the dust with my heels, that people were free to ignore it according to their means and pleasure but that, as far as I was concerned, I was only able to picture the concentration camp because I knew it a bit, but I didn’t know hell at all. „But, still, if you tried,” he insisted. After a few more circles, I answered, „In that case I’d imagine it as a place where you can’t be bored. But,” I added, „you can be bored in a concentration camp, even in Auschwitz – given, of course, certain circumstances.” Then he fell silent and asked, almost as if it was against his will: „How do you explain that?” After giving it some thought, I said, „By the time.” „What do you mean `by the time’?” „Because time helps.” „Helps? How?” „It helps in every way.”
I tried to explain how fundamentally different it is, for instance, to be arriving at a station that is spectacularly white, clean, and neat, where everything becomes clear only gradually, step by step, on schedule. As we pass one step, and as we recognize it as being behind us, the next one already rises up before us. By the time we learn everything, we slowly come to understand it. And while you come to understand everything gradually, you don’t remain idle at any moment: you are already attending to your new business; you live, you act, you move, you fulfill the new requirements of every new step of development. If, on the other hand, there were no schedule, no gradual enlightenment, if all the knowledge descended on you at once right there in one spot, then it’s possible neither your brains nor your heart could bear it. I tried to explain this to him as he fished out a torn package from his pocket and offered me a wrinkled cigarette, which I declined. Then, after two large inhalations, supporting his elbows on his knees with his upper body leaning forward, he said, without looking at me, in a colorless, dull voice: „I understand.”
„On the other hand,” I continued, „there is the unfortunate disadvantage that you somehow have to pass away the time. I’ve seen prisoners who were there for 4, 6, or even 12 years or more who were still hanging on in the camp. And these people had to spend these 4, 6, or 12 years times 365 days-that is, 12 times 365 times 24 hours – in other words, they had to somehow occupy the time by the second, the minute, the day. But then again,” I added, „that may have been precisely what helped them too, because if the whole time period had descended on them in one fell swoop, they probably wouldn’t have been able to bear it, either physically or mentally, the way they did.” Because he was silent, I added: „You have to imagine it this way.” He answered the same as before, except now he covered his face with his hands, threw the cigarette away, and then said in a somewhat more subdued, duller voice: „No, you can’t imagine it.” I, for my part, thought to myself. „That’s probably why they say `hell’ instead.”
Christopher C. Wilson, Katharina M. Wilson
Wilson, Katharina M.; Wilson, Christopher C.
Imre Kertész
Los utracony (Polish)
Dochodza;c do dworca, poniewaz. noga zaczyna?a juz. porza;dnie dawac’ mi sie; we znaki, a takz.e dlatego, z.e w?as’nie zatrzyma? sie; przede mna; jeden ze znanych mi z dawna numerów, wsiad?em do tramwaju. Na otwartym pomos’cie sta?a nieco z boku chuda, stara kobieta w dziwacznym, staromodnym koronkowym ko?nierzu. Wkrótce przyszed? jakis’ cz?owiek, w czapce, w mundurze, i poprosi? o bilet. Powiedzia?em mu: – Nie mam. – Zaproponowa?, z.ebym kupi?. Rzek?em: – Nie mam pienie;dzy. – Wtedy przyjrza? sie; mojej kurtce, mnie, potem równiez. starej kobiecie, i poinformowa? mnie, z.e jazda tramwajem ma swoje prawa i te prawa wymys’li? nie on, lecz ci, którzy stoja; nad nirn. – Jes’li pan nie wykupi biletu, musi pan wysia;s’c’ – orzek?. Powiedzia?em mu: – Ale przeciez. boli mnie noga – i wtedy zauwaz.y?em, z.e stara kobieta odwróci?a sie; i patrzy?a na ulice; z obraz.ona; mina;, jakbym mia? do niej pretensje, nie wiadomo dlaczego. Ale przez otwarte drzwi wagonu wpad?, czynia;c juz. z daleka wielki ha?as, postawny, czarnow?osy, rozczochrany me;z.czyzna. Nosi? rozpie;ta; koszule; i jasny p?ócienny garnitur, na ramieniu zawieszone na pasku czarne pude?ko i teczce; w re;ku. – Co tu sie; dzieje? – wykrzykna;? i zarza;dzi?: – Niech mu pan da bilet – wycia;gaja;c, raczej wpychaja;c konduktorowi pienia;dze. Próbowa?em podzie;kowac’, ale mi przerwa?, rozgla;daja;c sie; ze z?os’cia; dooko?a: – Raczej niektórzy powinni sie; wstydzic’ – oznajmi?, ale konduktor by? juz. w s’rodku, a stara kobieta nadal patrzy?a na ulice;. Wtedy ze z?agodnia?a; twarza; zwróci? sie; do mnie. Zapyta?: – Wracasz z Niemiec, synu? – Talc.- Zobozu?- Oczywis’cie.- Zktórego?- Z Buchenwaldu. – Tak, juz. o nim s?ysza?, wie, to takz.e „by?o dno nazistowskiego piek?a”, powiedzia?. – Ska;d cie; wiez’li? – Z Budapesztu. – Jak d?ugo tam by?es’? – Rok, ca?y rok. – Musia?es’ duz.o widziec’, synku, duz.o okrucien’stw -rzek?, a ja nic nie odpowiedzia?em. – No, ale – cia;gna;? – najwaz.niejsze, z.e to juz. koniec, mine;?o – i wskazuja;c z pojas’nia?a; twarza; domy, obok których w?as’nie przejez.dz.alis’my, zainteresowa? sie;: co teraz czuje;, znów w domu i na widok miasta, które opus’ci?em? Odpar?em mu: – Nienawis’c’. – Zamilk?, ale wkrótce zauwaz.y?, z.e niestety rozumie moje uczucia. Nawiasem mówia;c, wed?ug niego „w danej sytuacji” nienawis’c’ takz.e ma swoje miejsce i role;, „jest nawet poz.yteczna”, i przypuszcza, doda?, z.e sie; zgadzamy i on dobrze wie, kogo nienawidze;. Powiedzia?em mu: – Wszystkich. – Znów zamilk?, tym razem na d?uz.ej, a potem zacza;? na nowo: – Przeszed?es’ wiele potwornos’ci? – a ja odpar?em, z.e zalez.y, co uwaz.a za potwornos’c’. Na pewno, powiedzia? na to z troche; zaz.enowana; mina;, musia?em duz.o biedowac’, g?odowac’, i prawdopodobnie mnie takz.e bita, a ja mu powiedzia?em: – Oczywis’cie. – Dlaczego, synu – wykrzykna;? i widzia?em, z.e juz. traci cierpliwos’c’ – mówisz na wszystko „oczywis’cie”, i to zawsze wtedy, kiedy cos’ w ogóle nie jest oczywiste?! – Rzek?em: – W obozie koncentracyjnym jest oczywiste. – Tak, tak – on -tam tak, ale… – i utkna;?, zawaha? sie; troche;- ale… przeciez. sam obóz koncentracyjny nie jest oczywisty! – jakby wreszcie znalaz? w?as’ciwe s?owa, i nic mu nie odpowiedzia?em, poniewaz. z wolna zaczyna?em pojmowac’: o takich czy innych rzeczach nie dyskutuje sie; z obcymi, nies’wiadomymi, w pewnym sensie dziec’mi, z.e tak powiem. Zreszta; dostrzeg?em niezmiennie be;da;cy na swoim miejscu i tylko troche; bardziej pusty, bardziej zaniedbany plac: pora wysiadac’, i powiedzia?em mu o tym. AIe wysiad? ze mna; i wskazuja;c nieco dalsza;, zacieniona; ?awke;, która straci?a oparcie, zaproponowa?: – Moz.e usiedlibys’my na minutke;.
Najpierw mia? troche; niepewna; mine;. W istocie, zauwaz.y?, dopiero teraz zaczynaja; sie; „naprawde; ujawniac’ koszmary”, i doda?, z.e „s’wiat stoi na razie bezrozumnie przed pytaniem: jak, w jaki sposób mog?o sie; to wszystko w ogóle zdarzyc'”. Nic nie powiedzia?em, wtedy odwróci? sie; do mnie i nagle zapyta?: – Nie zechcia?bys’, synku, zrelacjonowac’ swoich przez.yc’? – Troche; sie; zdziwi?em i odpar?em, z.e w?as’ciwie nie mia?bym mu nic szczególnie ciekawego do powiedzenia. Na to sie; lekko us’miechna;? i powiedzia?: – Nie mnie, s’wiatu – na co jeszcze bardziej zdziwiony zapyta?em: – Ale o czym? – O piekle obozów – odpar?, na co zauwaz.y?em, z.e o tym to juz. w ogóle nic nie móg?bym powiedziec’, poniewaz. nie znam piek?a i nawet nie potrafi?bym go sobie wyobrazic’. Ale on oznajmi?, z.e to tylko taka przenos’nia: – Czyz. nie jako piek?o- spyta?- wyobraz.amy sobie obóz koncentracyjny? – a ja mu na to, zakres’laja;c przy tym obcasem kilka kó?ek w kurzu, z.e piek?o kaz.dy moz.e sobie wyobraz.ac’ na swój sposób i jes’li o mnie chodzi, to potrafie; sobie wyobrazic’ tylko obóz koncentracyjny, bo obóz troche; znam, piek?a natomiast nie. – Ale, gdyby, powiedzmy, jednak? – upiera? sie; i po kilku nowych kó?kach odpar?em: – To wyobraz.a?bym sobie, z.e jest to takie miejsce, gdzie nie moz.na sie; nudzic’, w obozie zas’ – doda?em -by?o moz.na, nawet w Os’wie;cimiu, rzecz jasna w pewnych warunkach. – Troche; milcza?, a potem jeszcze zapyta?, ale wyczu?em, z’e juz. jakos’ niemal wbrew woli: – Czym to t?umaczysz? – i po krótkim namys’le oznajmi?em: – Czasem. – Dlaczego czasem? – Bo czas pomaga. – Pomaga?… W czym?- We wszystkim – i próbowa?em mu wyt?umaczyc’, jaka to ca?kiem inna sprawa przyjechac’, na przyk?ad, na jes’li nawet nie wspania?a;, to ca?kiem do przyje;cia, czysta;, schludna; stacje;, gdzie powolutku, w porza;dku chronologicznym, stopniowo zaczyna sie; nam wszystko klarowac’. Kiedy mamy za soba; jeden etap, juz. przychodzi naste;pny. Kiedy sie; wszystkiego dowiemy, to rozumiemy tez. wszystko. A kiedy sie; cz?owiek wszystkiego dowiaduje, nie pozostaje bezczynny: wykonuje nowe zadanie, z.yje, dzia?a, porusza sie;, spe?nia wszystkie nowe wymagania wszystkich nowych etapów. Gdyby natomiast nie by?o tej chronologii i gdyby ca?a wiedza rune;?a nam na g?owe; od razu tam na stacji, to moz.e nie wytrzyma?aby tego ani g?owa, ani serce, próbowa?em mu jakos’ wyjas’nic’, na co wycia;gna;wszy z kieszeni poszarpana; paczke;, podsuna;? mi pogniecione papierosy, ale odmówi?em, patem zacia;gna;? sie; mocno dwa razy i opieraja;c ?okcie na kolanach, pochylony, nawet na mnie nie patrza;c, powiedzia? jakims’ troche; matowym, g?uchym g?osem: – Rozumiem. – Z drugiej strony – cia;gna;?em – wada;, powiedzia?bym, b?e;dem, jest to, z.e trzeba wype?nic’ czas. Widzia?em na przyk?ad – powiedzia?em mu – wie;z’niów, którzy cztery, szes’c’, a nawet dwanas’cie lat byli juz., a dok?adniej, wcia;z. jeszcze byli, w obozie. Otóz. ci ludzie musieli jakos’ wype?nic’ te cztery, szes’c’ czy dwanas’cie lat, czyli w ostatnim przypadku dwanas’cie razy po trzysta szes’c’dziesia;t pie;c’ dni, to jest dwanas’cie razy trzysta szes’c’dziesia;t pie;c’ razy dwadzies’cia cztery godziny, dalej: dwanas’cie razy trzysta szes’c’dziesia;t pie;c’ razy dwadzies’cia cztery razy… i wszystko od nowa, co chwile;, minute;, godzine;, dzien’, czyli z.e musza; ca?y ten czas jakos’ wype?nic’. Z drugiej natomiast strony- cia;gna;?em dalej – w?as’nie to mog?o im pomóc, bo gdyby ten ca?y czas, to znaczy dwanas’cie razy trzysta szes’c’dziesia;t pie;c’, razy dwadzies’cia cztery razy szes’c’dziesia;t i znów razy szes’c’dziesia;t, zlecia? im jednoczes’nie i za jednym zamachem na kark, to na pewno nie byliby tacy, jak sa;, ani jes’li idzie o g?owe;, ani o cia?o. – A poniewaz. milcza?, doda?em jeszcze: – A wie;c tak to mniej wie;cej trzeba sobie wyobraz.ac’. – A on na to tak samo jak przedtem, tylko zamiast papierosa, którego juz. tymczasem wyrzuci?, tym razem trzymaja;c w obu d?oniach twarz i moz.e przez to jeszcze bardziej g?uchym i jeszcze bardziej st?umionym g?osem powiedzia?: – Nie, nie moz.na sobie wyobrazic’ – i ja ze swojej strony zrozumia?em go. Pomys’la?em tez.: zatem, jak widac’, dlatego zamiast „obóz” mówia; „piek?o”, na pewno.
Pisarska, Krystyna
Source of the quotation : Los utracony, p. 250-255., WAB, Varsó, 2001
FLEURSDUMAL.NL MAGAZINE
More in: Archive K-L, Kertész, Imre
Jack London
(1876-1916)
The Water Baby
I lent a weary ear to old Kohokumu’s interminable chanting of the
deeds and adventures of Maui, the Promethean demi-god of Polynesia
who fished up dry land from ocean depths with hooks made fast to
heaven, who lifted up the sky whereunder previously men had gone on
all-fours, not having space to stand erect, and who made the sun
with its sixteen snared legs stand still and agree thereafter to
traverse the sky more slowly–the sun being evidently a trade
unionist and believing in the six-hour day, while Maui stood for
the open shop and the twelve-hour day.
“Now this,” said Kohokumu, “is from Queen Lililuokalani’s own
family mele:
“Maui became restless and fought the sun
With a noose that he laid.
And winter won the sun,
And summer was won by Maui . . . “
Born in the Islands myself, I knew the Hawaiian myths better than
this old fisherman, although I possessed not his memorization that
enabled him to recite them endless hours.
“And you believe all this?” I demanded in the sweet Hawaiian
tongue.
“It was a long time ago,” he pondered. “I never saw Maui with my
own eyes. But all our old men from all the way back tell us these
things, as I, an old man, tell them to my sons and grandsons, who
will tell them to their sons and grandsons all the way ahead to
come.”
“You believe,” I persisted, “that whopper of Maui roping the sun
like a wild steer, and that other whopper of heaving up the sky
from off the earth?”
“I am of little worth, and am not wise, O Lakana,” my fisherman
made answer. “Yet have I read the Hawaiian Bible the missionaries
translated to us, and there have I read that your Big Man of the
Beginning made the earth, and sky, and sun, and moon, and stars,
and all manner of animals from horses to cockroaches and from
centipedes and mosquitoes to sea lice and jellyfish, and man and
woman, and everything, and all in six days. Why, Maui didn’t do
anything like that much. He didn’t make anything. He just put
things in order, that was all, and it took him a long, long time to
make the improvements. And anyway, it is much easier and more
reasonable to believe the little whopper than the big whopper.”
And what could I reply? He had me on the matter of reasonableness.
Besides, my head ached. And the funny thing, as I admitted it to
myself, was that evolution teaches in no uncertain voice that man
did run on all-fours ere he came to walk upright, that astronomy
states flatly that the speed of the revolution of the earth on its
axis has diminished steadily, thus increasing the length of day,
and that the seismologists accept that all the islands of Hawaii
were elevated from the ocean floor by volcanic action.
Fortunately, I saw a bamboo pole, floating on the surface several
hundred feet away, suddenly up-end and start a very devil’s dance.
This was a diversion from the profitless discussion, and Kohokumu
and I dipped our paddles and raced the little outrigger canoe to
the dancing pole. Kohokumu caught the line that was fast to the
butt of the pole and under-handed it in until a two-foot ukikiki,
battling fiercely to the end, flashed its wet silver in the sun and
began beating a tattoo on the inside bottom of the canoe. Kohokumu
picked up a squirming, slimy squid, with his teeth bit a chunk of
live bait out of it, attached the bait to the hook, and dropped
line and sinker overside. The stick floated flat on the surface of
the water, and the canoe drifted slowly away. With a survey of the
crescent composed of a score of such sticks all lying flat,
Kohokumu wiped his hands on his naked sides and lifted the
wearisome and centuries-old chant of Kuali:
“Oh, the great fish-hook of Maui!
Manai-i-ka-lani–“made fast to the heavens”!
An earth-twisted cord ties the hook,
Engulfed from lofty Kauiki!
Its bait the red-billed Alae,
The bird to Hina sacred!
It sinks far down to Hawaii,
Struggling and in pain dying!
Caught is the land beneath the water,
Floated up, up to the surface,
But Hina hid a wing of the bird
And broke the land beneath the water!
Below was the bait snatched away
And eaten at once by the fishes,
The Ulua of the deep muddy places!
His aged voice was hoarse and scratchy from the drinking of too
much swipes at a funeral the night before, nothing of which
contributed to make me less irritable. My head ached. The sun-
glare on the water made my eyes ache, while I was suffering more
than half a touch of mal de mer from the antic conduct of the
outrigger on the blobby sea. The air was stagnant. In the lee of
Waihee, between the white beach and the roof, no whisper of breeze
eased the still sultriness. I really think I was too miserable to
summon the resolution to give up the fishing and go in to shore.
Lying back with closed eyes, I lost count of time. I even forgot
that Kohokumu was chanting till reminded of it by his ceasing. An
exclamation made me bare my eyes to the stab of the sun. He was
gazing down through the water-glass.
“It’s a big one,” he said, passing me the device and slipping over-
side feet-first into the water.
He went under without splash and ripple, turned over and swam down.
I followed his progress through the water-glass, which is merely an
oblong box a couple of feet long, open at the top, the bottom
sealed water-tight with a sheet of ordinary glass.
Now Kohokumu was a bore, and I was squeamishly out of sorts with
him for his volubleness, but I could not help admiring him as I
watched him go down. Past seventy years of age, lean as a
toothpick, and shrivelled like a mummy, he was doing what few young
athletes of my race would do or could do. It was forty feet to
bottom. There, partly exposed, but mostly hidden under the bulge
of a coral lump, I could discern his objective. His keen eyes had
caught the projecting tentacle of a squid. Even as he swam, the
tentacle was lazily withdrawn, so that there was no sign of the
creature. But the brief exposure of the portion of one tentacle
had advertised its owner as a squid of size.
The pressure at a depth of forty feet is no joke for a young man,
yet it did not seem to inconvenience this oldster. I am certain it
never crossed his mind to be inconvenienced. Unarmed, bare of body
save for a brief malo or loin cloth, he was undeterred by the
formidable creature that constituted his prey. I saw him steady
himself with his right hand on the coral lump, and thrust his left
arm into the hole to the shoulder. Half a minute elapsed, during
which time he seemed to be groping and rooting around with his left
hand. Then tentacle after tentacle, myriad-suckered and wildly
waving, emerged. Laying hold of his arm, they writhed and coiled
about his flesh like so many snakes. With a heave and a jerk
appeared the entire squid, a proper devil-fish or octopus.
But the old man was in no hurry for his natural element, the air
above the water. There, forty feet beneath, wrapped about by an
octopus that measured nine feet across from tentacle-tip to
tentacle-tip and that could well drown the stoutest swimmer, he
coolly and casually did the one thing that gave to him and his
empery over the monster. He shoved his lean, hawk-like face into
the very centre of the slimy, squirming mass, and with his several
ancient fangs bit into the heart and the life of the matter. This
accomplished, he came upward, slowly, as a swimmer should who is
changing atmospheres from the depths. Alongside the canoe, still
in the water and peeling off the grisly clinging thing, the
incorrigible old sinner burst into the pule of triumph which had
been chanted by the countless squid-catching generations before
him:
“O Kanaloa of the taboo nights!
Stand upright on the solid floor!
Stand upon the floor where lies the squid!
Stand up to take the squid of the deep sea!
Rise up, O Kanaloa!
Stir up! Stir up! Let the squid awake!
Let the squid that lies flat awake! Let the squid that lies spread
out . . . “
I closed my eyes and ears, not offering to lend him a hand, secure
in the knowledge that he could climb back unaided into the unstable
craft without the slightest risk of upsetting it.
“A very fine squid,” he crooned. “It is a wahine” (female) “squid.
I shall now sing to you the song of the cowrie shell, the red
cowrie shell that we used as a bait for the squid–“
“You were disgraceful last night at the funeral,” I headed him off.
“I heard all about it. You made much noise. You sang till
everybody was deaf. You insulted the son of the widow. You drank
swipes like a pig. Swipes are not good for your extreme age. Some
day you will wake up dead. You ought to be a wreck to-day–“
“Ha!” he chuckled. “And you, who drank no swipes, who was a babe
unborn when I was already an old man, who went to bed last night
with the sun and the chickens–this day are you a wreck. Explain
me that. My ears are as thirsty to listen as was my throat thirsty
last night. And here to-day, behold, I am, as that Englishman who
came here in his yacht used to say, I am in fine form, in devilish
fine form.”
“I give you up,” I retorted, shrugging my shoulders. “Only one
thing is clear, and that is that the devil doesn’t want you.
Report of your singing has gone before you.”
“No,” he pondered the idea carefully. “It is not that. The devil
will be glad for my coming, for I have some very fine songs for
him, and scandals and old gossips of the high aliis that will make
him scratch his sides. So, let me explain to you the secret of my
birth. The Sea is my mother. I was born in a double-canoe, during
a Kona gale, in the channel of Kahoolawe. From her, the Sea, my
mother, I received my strength. Whenever I return to her arms, as
for a breast-clasp, as I have returned this day, I grow strong
again and immediately. She, to me, is the milk-giver, the life-
source–“
“Shades of Antaeus!” thought I.
“Some day,” old Kohokumu rambled on, “when I am really old, I shall
be reported of men as drowned in the sea. This will be an idle
thought of men. In truth, I shall have returned into the arms of
my mother, there to rest under the heart of her breast until the
second birth of me, when I shall emerge into the sun a flashing
youth of splendour like Maui himself when he was golden young.”
“A queer religion,” I commented.
“When I was younger I muddled my poor head over queerer religions,”
old Kohokumu retorted. “But listen, O Young Wise One, to my
elderly wisdom. This I know: as I grow old I seek less for the
truth from without me, and find more of the truth from within me.
Why have I thought this thought of my return to my mother and of my
rebirth from my mother into the sun? You do not know. I do not
know, save that, without whisper of man’s voice or printed word,
without prompting from otherwhere, this thought has arisen from
within me, from the deeps of me that are as deep as the sea. I am
not a god. I do not make things. Therefore I have not made this
thought. I do not know its father or its mother. It is of old
time before me, and therefore it is true. Man does not make truth.
Man, if he be not blind, only recognizes truth when he sees it. Is
this thought that I have thought a dream?”
“Perhaps it is you that are a dream,” I laughed. “And that I, and
sky, and sea, and the iron-hard land, are dreams, all dreams.”
“I have often thought that,” he assured me soberly. “It may well
be so. Last night I dreamed I was a lark bird, a beautiful singing
lark of the sky like the larks on the upland pastures of Haleakala.
And I flew up, up, toward the sun, singing, singing, as old
Kohokumu never sang. I tell you now that I dreamed I was a lark
bird singing in the sky. But may not I, the real I, be the lark
bird? And may not the telling of it be the dream that I, the lark
bird, am dreaming now? Who are you to tell me ay or no? Dare you
tell me I am not a lark bird asleep and dreaming that I am old
Kohokumu?”
I shrugged my shoulders, and he continued triumphantly:
“And how do you know but what you are old Maui himself asleep and
dreaming that you are John Lakana talking with me in a canoe? And
may you not awake old Maui yourself, and scratch your sides and say
that you had a funny dream in which you dreamed you were a haole?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Besides, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“There is much more in dreams than we know,” he assured me with
great solemnity. “Dreams go deep, all the way down, maybe to
before the beginning. May not old Maui have only dreamed he pulled
Hawaii up from the bottom of the sea? Then would this Hawaii land
be a dream, and you, and I, and the squid there, only parts of
Maui’s dream? And the lark bird too?”
He sighed and let his head sink on his breast.
“And I worry my old head about the secrets undiscoverable,” he
resumed, “until I grow tired and want to forget, and so I drink
swipes, and go fishing, and sing old songs, and dream I am a lark
bird singing in the sky. I like that best of all, and often I
dream it when I have drunk much swipes . . . “
In great dejection of mood he peered down into the lagoon through
the water-glass.
“There will be no more bites for a while,” he announced. “The
fish-sharks are prowling around, and we shall have to wait until
they are gone. And so that the time shall not be heavy, I will
sing you the canoe-hauling song to Lono. You remember:
“Give to me the trunk of the tree, O Lono!
Give me the tree’s main root, O Lono!
Give me the ear of the tree, O Lono!–“
“For the love of mercy, don’t sing!” I cut him short. “I’ve got a
headache, and your singing hurts. You may be in devilish fine form
to-day, but your throat is rotten. I’d rather you talked about
dreams, or told me whoppers.”
“It is too bad that you are sick, and you so young,” he conceded
cheerily. “And I shall not sing any more. I shall tell you
something you do not know and have never heard; something that is
no dream and no whopper, but is what I know to have happened. Not
very long ago there lived here, on the beach beside this very
lagoon, a young boy whose name was Keikiwai, which, as you know,
means Water Baby. He was truly a water baby. His gods were the
sea and fish gods, and he was born with knowledge of the language
of fishes, which the fishes did not know until the sharks found it
out one day when they heard him talk it.
“It happened this way. The word had been brought, and the
commands, by swift runners, that the king was making a progress
around the island, and that on the next day a luau” (feast) “was to
be served him by the dwellers here of Waihee. It was always a
hardship, when the king made a progress, for the few dwellers in
small places to fill his many stomachs with food. For he came
always with his wife and her women, with his priests and sorcerers,
his dancers and flute-players, and hula-singers, and fighting men
and servants, and his high chiefs with their wives, and sorcerers,
and fighting men, and servants.
“Sometimes, in small places like Waihee, the path of his journey
was marked afterward by leanness and famine. But a king must be
fed, and it is not good to anger a king. So, like warning in
advance of disaster, Waihee heard of his coming, and all food-
getters of field and pond and mountain and sea were busied with
getting food for the feast. And behold, everything was got, from
the choicest of royal taro to sugar-cane joints for the roasting,
from opihis to limu, from fowl to wild pig and poi-fed puppies–
everything save one thing. The fishermen failed to get lobsters.
“Now be it known that the king’s favourite food was lobster. He
esteemed it above all kai-kai” (food), “and his runners had made
special mention of it. And there were no lobsters, and it is not
good to anger a king in the belly of him. Too many sharks had come
inside the reef. That was the trouble. A young girl and an old
man had been eaten by them. And of the young men who dared dive
for lobsters, one was eaten, and one lost an arm, and another lost
one hand and one foot.
“But there was Keikiwai, the Water Baby, only eleven years old, but
half fish himself and talking the language of fishes. To his
father the head men came, begging him to send the Water Baby to get
lobsters to fill the king’s belly and divert his anger.
“Now this what happened was known and observed. For the fishermen,
and their women, and the taro-growers and the bird-catchers, and
the head men, and all Waihee, came down and stood back from the
edge of the rock where the Water Baby stood and looked down at the
lobsters far beneath on the bottom.
“And a shark, looking up with its cat’s eyes, observed him, and
sent out the shark-call of ‘fresh meat’ to assemble all the sharks
in the lagoon. For the sharks work thus together, which is why
they are strong. And the sharks answered the call till there were
forty of them, long ones and short ones and lean ones and round
ones, forty of them by count; and they talked to one another,
saying: ‘Look at that titbit of a child, that morsel delicious of
human-flesh sweetness without the salt of the sea in it, of which
salt we have too much, savoury and good to eat, melting to delight
under our hearts as our bellies embrace it and extract from it its
sweet.’
“Much more they said, saying: ‘He has come for the lobsters. When
he dives in he is for one of us. Not like the old man we ate
yesterday, tough to dryness with age, nor like the young men whose
members were too hard-muscled, but tender, so tender that he will
melt in our gullets ere our bellies receive him. When he dives in,
we will all rush for him, and the lucky one of us will get him,
and, gulp, he will be gone, one bite and one swallow, into the
belly of the luckiest one of us.’
“And Keikiwai, the Water Baby, heard the conspiracy, knowing the
shark language; and he addressed a prayer, in the shark language,
to the shark god Moku-halii, and the sharks heard and waved their
tails to one another and winked their cat’s eyes in token that they
understood his talk. And then he said: ‘I shall now dive for a
lobster for the king. And no hurt shall befall me, because the
shark with the shortest tail is my friend and will protect me.
“And, so saying, he picked up a chunk of lava-rock and tossed it
into the water, with a big splash, twenty feet to one side. The
forty sharks rushed for the splash, while he dived, and by the time
they discovered they had missed him, he had gone to bottom and come
back and climbed out, within his hand a fat lobster, a wahine
lobster, full of eggs, for the king.
“‘Ha!’ said the sharks, very angry. ‘There is among us a traitor.
The titbit of a child, the morsel of sweetness, has spoken, and has
exposed the one among us who has saved him. Let us now measure the
lengths of our tails!
“Which they did, in a long row, side by side, the shorter-tailed
ones cheating and stretching to gain length on themselves, the
longer-tailed ones cheating and stretching in order not to be out-
cheated and out-stretched. They were very angry with the one with
the shortest tail, and him they rushed upon from every side and
devoured till nothing was left of him.
“Again they listened while they waited for the Water Baby to dive
in. And again the Water Baby made his prayer in the shark language
to Moku-halii, and said: ‘The shark with the shortest tail is my
friend and will protect me.’ And again the Water Baby tossed in a
chunk of lava, this time twenty feet away off to the other side.
The sharks rushed for the splash, and in their haste ran into one
another, and splashed with their tails till the water was all foam,
and they could see nothing, each thinking some other was swallowing
the titbit. And the Water Baby came up and climbed out with
another fat lobster for the king.
“And the thirty-nine sharks measured tails, devoting the one with
the shortest tail, so that there were only thirty-eight sharks.
And the Water Baby continued to do what I have said, and the sharks
to do what I have told you, while for each shark that was eaten by
his brothers there was another fat lobster laid on the rock for the
king. Of course, there was much quarrelling and argument among the
sharks when it came to measuring tails; but in the end it worked
out in rightness and justice, for, when only two sharks were left,
they were the two biggest of the original forty.
“And the Water Baby again claimed the shark with the shortest tail
was his friend, fooled the two sharks with another lava-chunk, and
brought up another lobster. The two sharks each claimed the other
had the shorter tail, and each fought to eat the other, and the one
with the longer tail won–“
“Hold, O Kohokumu!” I interrupted. “Remember that that shark had
already–“
“I know just what you are going to say,” he snatched his recital
back from me. “And you are right. It took him so long to eat the
thirty-ninth shark, for inside the thirty-ninth shark were already
the nineteen other sharks he had eaten, and inside the fortieth
shark were already the nineteen other sharks he had eaten, and he
did not have the appetite he had started with. But do not forget
he was a very big shark to begin with.
“It took him so long to eat the other shark, and the nineteen
sharks inside the other shark, that he was still eating when
darkness fell, and the people of Waihee went away home with all the
lobsters for the king. And didn’t they find the last shark on the
beach next morning dead, and burst wide open with all he had
eaten?”
Kohokumu fetched a full stop and held my eyes with his own shrewd
ones.
“Hold, O Lakana!” he checked the speech that rushed to my tongue.
“I know what next you would say. You would say that with my own
eyes I did not see this, and therefore that I do not know what I
have been telling you. But I do know, and I can prove it. My
father’s father knew the grandson of the Water Baby’s father’s
uncle. Also, there, on the rocky point to which I point my finger
now, is where the Water Baby stood and dived. I have dived for
lobsters there myself. It is a great place for lobsters. Also,
and often, have I seen sharks there. And there, on the bottom, as
I should know, for I have seen and counted them, are the thirty-
nine lava-rocks thrown in by the Water Baby as I have described.”
“But–” I began.
“Ha!” he baffled me. “Look! While we have talked the fish have
begun again to bite.”
He pointed to three of the bamboo poles erect and devil-dancing in
token that fish were hooked and struggling on the lines beneath.
As he bent to his paddle, he muttered, for my benefit:
“Of course I know. The thirty-nine lava rocks are still there.
You can count them any day for yourself. Of course I know, and I
know for a fact.”
GLEN ELLEN.
October 2, 1916.
From Jack London: ON THE MAKALOA MAT/ISLAND TALES
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, London, Jack
Els Kloek
A.s. zondag 17 maart 2013 om 11.20 uur op Nederland 1
In het boek 1001 vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis heeft historica Els Kloek de levensbeschrijvingen van vrouwen verzameld die in de afgelopen eeuwen op een of andere manier naam hebben gemaakt. Bij de samenstelling werd niet alleen gekeken naar bijzondere prestaties, maar ook naar de reputatie waarmee de vrouw de aandacht op zich wist te vestigen.
Een bonte stoet vrouwen trekt voorbij: reuzin Trijntje Keever, bordeelhoudster Thérèse, spion Mata Hari, schilderes Judith Leyster, feministe Joke Smit en muze Mathilde Willink. Door de levensverhalen worden al deze opmerkelijke en bijzondere vrouwen aan de vergetelheid onttrokken. In het gebouw van Bijzondere Collecties van de Universiteit van Amsterdam is een gelijknamige tentoonstelling ingericht, die nog tot en met 20 mei is te zien.
Kees van Kooten & Nelleke Noordervliet
A.s. zondag om 19.20 uur op Nederland 2
Gouden Tijden, Zwarte Bladzijden is het thema van de 78e Boekenweek, waarbij het draait om het bewogen en roemrijke verleden van Nederland. Moeten we ons schamen voor de Zwarte Bladzijden? Mogen we trots zijn op de Gouden Tijden? Aan Kees van Kooten en Nelleke Noordervliet de opdracht deze vragen te onderzoeken in het Boekenweekgeschenk De verrekijker en het Boekenweekessay De leeuw en zijn hemd.
In haar laatste boek, de historische roman Vrij man, schetst Nelleke Noordervliet een beeld van het dagelijkse leven in de Gouden Eeuw. De opdracht om voor het Boekenweekessay de vaderlandse geschiedenis tegen het licht te houden lijkt dan ook een logisch vervolg. Overheerst de schaamte voor ons koloniaal verleden of zijn we trots op onze handelsmacht? In De leeuw en zijn hemd onderzoekt Noordervliet de dubbelzinnige omgang met ons verleden. Per trekschuit reist ze door de Nederlandse geschiedenis en komt onderweg historische figuren tegen aan wie ze vragen kan stellen.
De Zwarte Bladzijden in de vaderlandse geschiedenis beperken zich niet tot ons koloniaal verleden. De opstelling van de Nederlanders tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog is een andere beladen discussie. Waarom hadden de Duitsers zo’n succes met de jodenvervolging in Nederland? Kees van Kooten nam voor het Boekenweekgeschenk De verrekijker het oorlogsdagboek en de agenda’s van zijn vader als uitgangspunt. Aan de hand van de notities van zijn vader, die in de oorlog sergeant was, gaat Van Kooten op zoek naar mogelijke zwarte bladzijden, maar ontdekt dat zijn vader in de oorlogsjaren vooral een gouden tijd beleefde. Hoewel een handgeschreven brief over een door hem in beslag genomen verrekijker de nodige vragen oproept.
VPRO BOEKEN zondag 17 maart 2013
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Archive M-N, Art & Literature News
Jack London
(1876-1916)
The Tears of Ah Kim
There was a great noise and racket, but no scandal, in Honolulu’s
Chinatown. Those within hearing distance merely shrugged their
shoulders and smiled tolerantly at the disturbance as an affair of
accustomed usualness. “What is it?” asked Chin Mo, down with a
sharp pleurisy, of his wife, who had paused for a second at the
open window to listen.
“Only Ah Kim,” was her reply. “His mother is beating him again.”
The fracas was taking place in the garden, behind the living rooms
that were at the back of the store that fronted on the street with
the proud sign above: AH KIM COMPANY, GENERAL MERCHANDISE. The
garden was a miniature domain, twenty feet square, that somehow
cunningly seduced the eye into a sense and seeming of illimitable
vastness. There were forests of dwarf pines and oaks, centuries
old yet two or three feet in height, and imported at enormous care
and expense. A tiny bridge, a pace across, arched over a miniature
river that flowed with rapids and cataracts from a miniature lake
stocked with myriad-finned, orange-miracled goldfish that in
proportion to the lake and landscape were whales. On every side
the many windows of the several-storied shack-buildings looked
down. In the centre of the garden, on the narrow gravelled walk
close beside the lake Ah Kim was noisily receiving his beating.
No Chinese lad of tender and beatable years was Ah Kim. His was
the store of Ah Kim Company, and his was the achievement of
building it up through the long years from the shoestring of
savings of a contract coolie labourer to a bank account in four
figures and a credit that was gilt edged. An even half-century of
summers and winters had passed over his head, and, in the passing,
fattened him comfortably and snugly. Short of stature, his full
front was as rotund as a water-melon seed. His face was moon-
faced. His garb was dignified and silken, and his black-silk
skull-cap with the red button atop, now, alas! fallen on the
ground, was the skull-cap worn by the successful and dignified
merchants of his race.
But his appearance, in this moment of the present, was anything but
dignified. Dodging and ducking under a rain of blows from a bamboo
cane, he was crouched over in a half-doubled posture. When he was
rapped on the knuckles and elbows, with which he shielded his face
and head, his winces were genuine and involuntary. From the many
surrounding windows the neighbourhood looked down with placid
enjoyment.
And she who wielded the stick so shrewdly from long practice!
Seventy-four years old, she looked every minute of her time. Her
thin legs were encased in straight-lined pants of linen stiff-
textured and shiny-black. Her scraggly grey hair was drawn
unrelentingly and flatly back from a narrow, unrelenting forehead.
Eyebrows she had none, having long since shed them. Her eyes, of
pin-hole tininess, were blackest black. She was shockingly
cadaverous. Her shrivelled forearm, exposed by the loose sleeve,
possessed no more of muscle than several taut bowstrings stretched
across meagre bone under yellow, parchment-like skin. Along this
mummy arm jade bracelets shot up and down and clashed with every
blow.
“Ah!” she cried out, rhythmically accenting her blows in series of
three to each shrill observation. “I forbade you to talk to Li
Faa. To-day you stopped on the street with her. Not an hour ago.
Half an hour by the clock you talked.–What is that?”
“It was the thrice-accursed telephone,” Ah Kim muttered, while she
suspended the stick to catch what he said. “Mrs. Chang Lucy told
you. I know she did. I saw her see me. I shall have the
telephone taken out. It is of the devil.”
“It is a device of all the devils,” Mrs. Tai Fu agreed, taking a
fresh grip on the stick. “Yet shall the telephone remain. I like
to talk with Mrs. Chang Lucy over the telephone.”
“She has the eyes of ten thousand cats,” quoth Ah Kim, ducking and
receiving the stick stinging on his knuckles. “And the tongues of
ten thousand toads,” he supplemented ere his next duck.
“She is an impudent-faced and evil-mannered hussy,” Mrs. Tai Fu
accented.
“Mrs. Chang Lucy was ever that,” Ah Kim murmured like the dutiful
son he was.
“I speak of Li Faa,” his mother corrected with stick emphasis.
“She is only half Chinese, as you know. Her mother was a shameless
kanaka. She wears skirts like the degraded haole women–also
corsets, as I have seen for myself. Where are her children? Yet
has she buried two husbands.”
“The one was drowned, the other kicked by a horse,” Ah Kim
qualified.
“A year of her, unworthy son of a noble father, and you would
gladly be going out to get drowned or be kicked by a horse.”
Subdued chucklings and laughter from the window audience applauded
her point.
“You buried two husbands yourself, revered mother,” Ah Kim was
stung to retort.
“I had the good taste not to marry a third. Besides, my two
husbands died honourably in their beds. They were not kicked by
horses nor drowned at sea. What business is it of our neighbours
that you should inform them I have had two husbands, or ten, or
none? You have made a scandal of me, before all our neighbours,
and for that I shall now give you a real beating.”
Ah Kim endured the staccato rain of blows, and said when his mother
paused, breathless and weary:
“Always have I insisted and pleaded, honourable mother, that you
beat me in the house, with the windows and doors closed tight, and
not in the open street or the garden open behind the house.
“You have called this unthinkable Li Faa the Silvery Moon Blossom,”
Mrs. Tai Fu rejoined, quite illogically and femininely, but with
utmost success in so far as she deflected her son from continuance
of the thrust he had so swiftly driven home.
“Mrs. Chang Lucy told you,” he charged.
“I was told over the telephone,” his mother evaded. “I do not know
all voices that speak to me over that contrivance of all the
devils.”
Strangely, Ah Kim made no effort to run away from his mother, which
he could easily have done. She, on the other hand, found fresh
cause for more stick blows.
“Ah! Stubborn one! Why do you not cry? Mule that shameth its
ancestors! Never have I made you cry. From the time you were a
little boy I have never made you cry. Answer me! Why do you not
cry?”
Weak and breathless from her exertions, she dropped the stick and
panted and shook as if with a nervous palsy.
“I do not know, except that it is my way,” Ah Kim replied, gazing
solicitously at his mother. “I shall bring you a chair now, and
you will sit down and rest and feel better.”
But she flung away from him with a snort and tottered agedly across
the garden into the house. Meanwhile recovering his skull-cap and
smoothing his disordered attire, Ah Kim rubbed his hurts and gazed
after her with eyes of devotion. He even smiled, and almost might
it appear that he had enjoyed the beating.
Ah Kim had been so beaten ever since he was a boy, when he lived on
the high banks of the eleventh cataract of the Yangtse river. Here
his father had been born and toiled all his days from young manhood
as a towing coolie. When he died, Ah Kim, in his own young
manhood, took up the same honourable profession. Farther back than
all remembered annals of the family, had the males of it been
towing coolies. At the time of Christ his direct ancestors had
been doing the same thing, meeting the precisely similarly modelled
junks below the white water at the foot of the canyon, bending the
half-mile of rope to each junk, and, according to size, tailing on
from a hundred to two hundred coolies of them and by sheer, two-
legged man-power, bowed forward and down till their hands touched
the ground and their faces were sometimes within a foot of it,
dragging the junk up through the white water to the head of the
canyon.
Apparently, down all the intervening centuries, the payment of the
trade had not picked up. His father, his father’s father, and
himself, Ah Kim, had received the same invariable remuneration–per
junk one-fourteenth of a cent, at the rate he had since learned
money was valued in Hawaii. On long lucky summer days when the
waters were easy, the junks many, the hours of daylight sixteen,
sixteen hours of such heroic toil would earn over a cent. But in a
whole year a towing coolie did not earn more than a dollar and a
half. People could and did live on such an income. There were
women servants who received a yearly wage of a dollar. The net-
makers of Ti Wi earned between a dollar and two dollars a year.
They lived on such wages, or, at least, they did not die on them.
But for the towing coolies there were pickings, which were what
made the profession honourable and the guild a close and hereditary
corporation or labour union. One junk in five that was dragged up
through the rapids or lowered down was wrecked. One junk in every
ten was a total loss. The coolies of the towing guild knew the
freaks and whims of the currents, and grappled, and raked, and
netted a wet harvest from the river. They of the guild were looked
up to by lesser coolies, for they could afford to drink brick tea
and eat number four rice every day.
And Ah Kim had been contented and proud, until, one bitter spring
day of driving sleet and hail, he dragged ashore a drowning
Cantonese sailor. It was this wanderer, thawing out by his fire,
who first named the magic name Hawaii to him. He had himself never
been to that labourer’s paradise, said the sailor; but many Chinese
had gone there from Canton, and he had heard the talk of their
letters written back. In Hawaii was never frost nor famine. The
very pigs, never fed, were ever fat of the generous offal disdained
by man. A Cantonese or Yangtse family could live on the waste of
an Hawaii coolie. And wages! In gold dollars, ten a month, or, in
trade dollars, two a month, was what the contract Chinese coolie
received from the white-devil sugar kings. In a year the coolie
received the prodigious sum of two hundred and forty trade dollars-
-more than a hundred times what a coolie, toiling ten times as
hard, received on the eleventh cataract of the Yangtse. In short,
all things considered, an Hawaii coolie was one hundred times
better off, and, when the amount of labour was estimated, a
thousand times better off. In addition was the wonderful climate.
When Ah Kim was twenty-four, despite his mother’s pleadings and
beatings, he resigned from the ancient and honourable guild of the
eleventh cataract towing coolies, left his mother to go into a boss
coolie’s household as a servant for a dollar a year, and an annual
dress to cost not less than thirty cents, and himself departed down
the Yangtse to the great sea. Many were his adventures and severe
his toils and hardships ere, as a salt-sea junk-sailor, he won to
Canton. When he was twenty-six he signed five years of his life
and labour away to the Hawaii sugar kings and departed, one of
eight hundred contract coolies, for that far island land, on a
festering steamer run by a crazy captain and drunken officers and
rejected of Lloyds.
Honourable, among labourers, had Ah Kim’s rating been as a towing
coolie. In Hawaii, receiving a hundred times more pay, he found
himself looked down upon as the lowest of the low–a plantation
coolie, than which could be nothing lower. But a coolie whose
ancestors had towed junks up the eleventh cataract of the Yangtse
since before the birth of Christ inevitably inherits one character
in large degree, namely, the character of patience. This patience
was Ah Kim’s. At the end of five years, his compulsory servitude
over, thin as ever in body, in bank account he lacked just ten
trade dollars of possessing a thousand trade dollars.
On this sum he could have gone back to the Yangtse and retired for
life a really wealthy man. He would have possessed a larger sum,
had he not, on occasion, conservatively played che fa and fan tan,
and had he not, for a twelve-month, toiled among the centipedes and
scorpions of the stifling cane-fields in the semi-dream of a
continuous opium debauch. Why he had not toiled the whole five
years under the spell of opium was the expensiveness of the habit.
He had had no moral scruples. The drug had cost too much.
But Ah Kim did not return to China. He had observed the business
life of Hawaii and developed a vaulting ambition. For six months,
in order to learn business and English at the bottom, he clerked in
the plantation store. At the end of this time he knew more about
that particular store than did ever plantation manager know about
any plantation store. When he resigned his position he was
receiving forty gold a month, or eighty trade, and he was beginning
to put on flesh. Also, his attitude toward mere contract coolies
had become distinctively aristocratic. The manager offered to
raise him to sixty fold, which, by the year, would constitute a
fabulous fourteen hundred and forty trade, or seven hundred times
his annual earning on the Yangtse as a two-legged horse at one-
fourteenth of a gold cent per junk.
Instead of accepting, Ah Kim departed to Honolulu, and in the big
general merchandise store of Fong & Chow Fong began at the bottom
for fifteen gold per month. He worked a year and a half, and
resigned when he was thirty-three, despite the seventy-five gold
per month his Chinese employers were paying him. Then it was that
he put up his own sign: AH KIM COMPANY, GENERAL MERCHANDISE.
Also, better fed, there was about his less meagre figure a
foreshadowing of the melon-seed rotundity that was to attach to him
in future years.
With the years he prospered increasingly, so that, when he was
thirty-six, the promise of his figure was fulfilling rapidly, and,
himself a member of the exclusive and powerful Hai Gum Tong, and of
the Chinese Merchants’ Association, he was accustomed to sitting as
host at dinners that cost him as much as thirty years of towing on
the eleventh cataract would have earned him. Two things he missed:
a wife, and his mother to lay the stick on him as of yore.
When he was thirty-seven he consulted his bank balance. It stood
him three thousand gold. For twenty-five hundred down and an easy
mortgage he could buy the three-story shack-building, and the
ground in fee simple on which it stood. But to do this, left only
five hundred for a wife. Fu Yee Po had a marriageable, properly
small-footed daughter whom he was willing to import from China, and
sell to him for eight hundred gold, plus the costs of importation.
Further, Fu Yee Po was even willing to take five hundred down and
the remainder on note at 6 per cent.
Ah Kim, thirty-seven years of age, fat and a bachelor, really did
want a wife, especially a small-footed wife; for, China born and
reared, the immemorial small-footed female had been deeply
impressed into his fantasy of woman. But more, even more and far
more than a small-footed wife, did he want his mother and his
mother’s delectable beatings. So he declined Fu Yee Po’s easy
terms, and at much less cost imported his own mother from servant
in a boss coolie’s house at a yearly wage of a dollar and a thirty-
cent dress to be mistress of his Honolulu three-story shack
building with two household servants, three clerks, and a porter of
all work under her, to say nothing of ten thousand dollars’ worth
of dress goods on the shelves that ranged from the cheapest cotton
crepes to the most expensive hand-embroidered silks. For be it
known that even in that early day Ah Kim’s emporium was beginning
to cater to the tourist trade from the States.
For thirteen years Ah Kim had lived tolerably happily with his
mother, and by her been methodically beaten for causes just or
unjust, real or fancied; and at the end of it all he knew as
strongly as ever the ache of his heart and head for a wife, and of
his loins for sons to live after him, and carry on the dynasty of
Ah Kim Company. Such the dream that has ever vexed men, from those
early ones who first usurped a hunting right, monopolized a sandbar
for a fish-trap, or stormed a village and put the males thereof to
the sword. Kings, millionaires, and Chinese merchants of Honolulu
have this in common, despite that they may praise God for having
made them differently and in self-likable images.
And the ideal of woman that Ah Kim at fifty ached for had changed
from his ideal at thirty-seven. No small-footed wife did he want
now, but a free, natural, out-stepping normal-footed woman that,
somehow, appeared to him in his day dreams and haunted his night
visions in the form of Li Faa, the Silvery Moon Blossom. What if
she were twice widowed, the daughter of a kanaka mother, the wearer
of white-devil skirts and corsets and high-heeled slippers! He
wanted her. It seemed it was written that she should be joint
ancestor with him of the line that would continue the ownership and
management through the generations, of Ah Kim Company, General
Merchandise.
“I will have no half-pake daughter-in-law,” his mother often
reiterated to Ah Kim, pake being the Hawaiian word for Chinese.
“All pake must my daughter-in-law be, even as you, my son, and as
I, your mother. And she must wear trousers, my son, as all the
women of our family before her. No woman, in she-devil skirts and
corsets, can pay due reverence to our ancestors. Corsets and
reverence do not go together. Such a one is this shameless Li Faa.
She is impudent and independent, and will be neither obedient to
her husband nor her husband’s mother. This brazen-faced Li Faa
would believe herself the source of life and the first ancestor,
recognizing no ancestors before her. She laughs at our joss-
sticks, and paper prayers, and family gods, as I have been well
told–“
“Mrs. Chang Lucy,” Ah Kim groaned.
“Not alone Mrs. Chang Lucy, O son. I have inquired. At least a
dozen have heard her say of our joss house that it is all monkey
foolishness. The words are hers–she, who eats raw fish, raw
squid, and baked dog. Ours is the foolishness of monkeys. Yet
would she marry you, a monkey, because of your store that is a
palace and of the wealth that makes you a great man. And she would
put shame on me, and on your father before you long honourably
dead.”
And there was no discussing the matter. As things were, Ah Kim
knew his mother was right. Not for nothing had Li Faa been born
forty years before of a Chinese father, renegade to all tradition,
and of a kanaka mother whose immediate forebears had broken the
taboos, cast down their own Polynesian gods, and weak-heartedly
listened to the preaching about the remote and unimageable god of
the Christian missionaries. Li Faa, educated, who could read and
write English and Hawaiian and a fair measure of Chinese, claimed
to believe in nothing, although in her secret heart she feared the
kahunas (Hawaiian witch-doctors), who she was certain could charm
away ill luck or pray one to death. Li Faa would never come into
Ah Kim’s house, as he thoroughly knew, and kow-tow to his mother
and be slave to her in the immemorial Chinese way. Li Faa, from
the Chinese angle, was a new woman, a feminist, who rode horseback
astride, disported immodestly garbed at Waikiki on the surf-boards,
and at more than one luau (feast) had been known to dance the hula
with the worst and in excess of the worst, to the scandalous
delight of all.
Ah Kim himself, a generation younger than his mother, had been
bitten by the acid of modernity. The old order held, in so far as
he still felt in his subtlest crypts of being the dusty hand of the
past resting on him, residing in him; yet he subscribed to heavy
policies of fire and life insurance, acted as treasurer for the
local Chinese revolutionises that were for turning the Celestial
Empire into a republic, contributed to the funds of the Hawaii-born
Chinese baseball nine that excelled the Yankee nines at their own
game, talked theosophy with Katso Suguri, the Japanese Buddhist and
silk importer, fell for police graft, played and paid his insidious
share in the democratic politics of annexed Hawaii, and was
thinking of buying an automobile. Ah Kim never dared bare himself
to himself and thrash out and winnow out how much of the old he had
ceased to believe in. His mother was of the old, yet he revered
her and was happy under her bamboo stick. Li Faa, the Silvery Moon
Blossom, was of the new, yet he could never be quite completely
happy without her.
For he loved Li Faa. Moon-faced, rotund as a water-melon seed,
canny business man, wise with half a century of living–
nevertheless Ah Kim became an artist when he thought of her. He
thought of her in poems of names, as woman transmuted into flower-
terms of beauty and philosophic abstractions of achievement and
easement. She was, to him, and alone to him of all men in the
world, his Plum Blossom, his Tranquillity of Woman, his Flower of
Serenity, his Moon Lily, and his Perfect Rest. And as he murmured
these love endearments of namings, it seemed to him that in them
were the ripplings of running waters, the tinklings of silver wind-
bells, and the scents of the oleander and the jasmine. She was his
poem of woman, a lyric delight, a three-dimensions of flesh and
spirit delicious, a fate and a good fortune written, ere the first
man and woman were, by the gods whose whim had been to make all men
and women for sorrow and for joy.
But his mother put into his hand the ink-brush and placed under it,
on the table, the writing tablet.
“Paint,” said she, “the ideograph of TO MARRY.”
He obeyed, scarcely wondering, with the deft artistry of his race
and training painting the symbolic hieroglyphic.
“Resolve it,” commanded his mother.
Ah Kim looked at her, curious, willing to please, unaware of the
drift of her intent.
“Of what is it composed?” she persisted. “What are the three
originals, the sum of which is it: to marry, marriage, the coming
together and wedding of a man and a woman? Paint them, paint them
apart, the three originals, unrelated, so that we may know how the
wise men of old wisely built up the ideograph of to marry.”
And Ah Kim, obeying and painting, saw that what he had painted were
three picture-signs–the picture-signs of a hand, an ear, and a
woman.
“Name them,” said his mother; and he named them.
“It is true,” said she. “It is a great tale. It is the stuff of
the painted pictures of marriage. Such marriage was in the
beginning; such shall it always be in my house. The hand of the
man takes the woman’s ear, and by it leads her away to his house,
where she is to be obedient to him and to his mother. I was taken
by the ear, so, by your long honourably dead father. I have looked
at your hand. It is not like his hand. Also have I looked at the
ear of Li Faa. Never will you lead her by the ear. She has not
that kind of an ear. I shall live a long time yet, and I will be
mistress in my son’s house, after our ancient way, until I die.”
“But she is my revered ancestress,” Ah Kim explained to Li Faa.
He was timidly unhappy; for Li Faa, having ascertained that Mrs.
Tai Fu was at the temple of the Chinese AEsculapius making a food
offering of dried duck and prayers for her declining health, had
taken advantage of the opportunity to call upon him in his store.
Li Faa pursed her insolent, unpainted lips into the form of a half-
opened rosebud, and replied:
“That will do for China. I do not know China. This is Hawaii, and
in Hawaii the customs of all foreigners change.”
“She is nevertheless my ancestress,” Ah Kim protested, “the mother
who gave me birth, whether I am in China or Hawaii, O Silvery Moon
Blossom that I want for wife.”
“I have had two husbands,” Li Faa stated placidly. “One was a
pake, one was a Portuguese. I learned much from both. Also am I
educated. I have been to High School, and I have played the piano
in public. And I learned from my two husbands much. The pake
makes the best husband. Never again will I marry anything but a
pake. But he must not take me by the ear–“
“How do you know of that?” he broke in suspiciously.
“Mrs. Chang Lucy,” was the reply. “Mrs. Chang Lucy tells me
everything that your mother tells her, and your mother tells her
much. So let me tell you that mine is not that kind of an ear.”
“Which is what my honoured mother has told me,” Ah Kim groaned.
“Which is what your honoured mother told Mrs. Chang Lucy, which is
what Mrs. Chang Lucy told me,” Li Faa completed equably. “And I
now tell you, O Third Husband To Be, that the man is not born who
will lead me by the ear. It is not the way in Hawaii. I will go
only hand in hand with my man, side by side, fifty-fifty as is the
haole slang just now. My Portuguese husband thought different. He
tried to beat me. I landed him three times in the police court and
each time he worked out his sentence on the reef. After that he
got drowned.”
“My mother has been my mother for fifty years,” Ah Kim declared
stoutly.
“And for fifty years has she beaten you,” Li Faa giggled. “How my
father used to laugh at Yap Ten Shin! Like you, Yap Ten Shin had
been born in China, and had brought the China customs with him.
His old father was for ever beating him with a stick. He loved his
father. But his father beat him harder than ever when he became a
missionary pake. Every time he went to the missionary services,
his father beat him. And every time the missionary heard of it he
was harsh in his language to Yap Ten Shin for allowing his father
to beat him. And my father laughed and laughed, for my father was
a very liberal pake, who had changed his customs quicker than most
foreigners. And all the trouble was because Yap Ten Shin had a
loving heart. He loved his honourable father. He loved the God of
Love of the Christian missionary. But in the end, in me, he found
the greatest love of all, which is the love of woman. In me he
forgot his love for his father and his love for the loving Christ.
“And he offered my father six hundred gold, for me–the price was
small because my feet were not small. But I was half kanaka. I
said that I was not a slave-woman, and that I would be sold to no
man. My high-school teacher was a haole old maid who said love of
woman was so beyond price that it must never be sold. Perhaps that
is why she was an old maid. She was not beautiful. She could not
give herself away. My kanaka mother said it was not the kanaka way
to sell their daughters for a money price. They gave their
daughters for love, and she would listen to reason if Yap Ten Shin
provided luaus in quantity and quality. My pake father, as I have
told you, was liberal. He asked me if I wanted Yap Ten Shin for my
husband. And I said yes; and freely, of myself, I went to him. He
it was who was kicked by a horse; but he was a very good husband
before he was kicked by the horse.
“As for you, Ah Kim, you shall always be honourable and lovable for
me, and some day, when it is not necessary for you to take me by
the ear, I shall marry you and come here and be with you always,
and you will be the happiest pake in all Hawaii; for I have had two
husbands, and gone to high school, and am most wise in making a
husband happy. But that will be when your mother has ceased to
beat you. Mrs. Chang Lucy tells me that she beats you very hard.”
“She does,” Ah Kim affirmed. “Behold! He thrust back his loose
sleeves, exposing to the elbow his smooth and cherubic forearms.
They were mantled with black and blue marks that advertised the
weight and number of blows so shielded from his head and face.
“But she has never made me cry,” Ah Kim disclaimed hastily.
“Never, from the time I was a little boy, has she made me cry.”
“So Mrs. Chang Lucy says,” Li Faa observed. “She says that your
honourable mother often complains to her that she has never made
you cry.”
A sibilant warning from one of his clerks was too late. Having
regained the house by way of the back alley, Mrs. Tai Fu emerged
right upon them from out of the living apartments. Never had Ah
Kim seen his mother’s eyes so blazing furious. She ignored Li Faa,
as she screamed at him:
“Now will I make you cry. As never before shall I beat you until
you do cry.”
“Then let us go into the back rooms, honourable mother,” Ah Kim
suggested. “We will close the windows and the doors, and there may
you beat me.”
“No. Here shall you be beaten before all the world and this
shameless woman who would, with her own hand, take you by the ear
and call such sacrilege marriage! Stay, shameless woman.”
“I am going to stay anyway,” said Li Faa. She favoured the clerks
with a truculent stare. “And I’d like to see anything less than
the police put me out of here.”
“You will never be my daughter-in-law,” Mrs. Tai Fu snapped.
Li Faa nodded her head in agreement.
“But just the same,” she added, “shall your son be my third
husband.”
“You mean when I am dead?” the old mother screamed.
“The sun rises each morning,” Li Faa said enigmatically. “All my
life have I seen it rise–“
“You are forty, and you wear corsets.”
“But I do not dye my hair–that will come later,” Li Faa calmly
retorted. “As to my age, you are right. I shall be forty-one next
Kamehameha Day. For forty years I have seen the sun rise. My
father was an old man. Before he died he told me that he had
observed no difference in the rising of the sun since when he was a
little boy. The world is round. Confucius did not know that, but
you will find it in all the geography books. The world is round.
Ever it turns over on itself, over and over and around and around.
And the times and seasons of weather and life turn with it. What
is, has been before. What has been, will be again. The time of
the breadfruit and the mango ever recurs, and man and woman repeat
themselves. The robins nest, and in the springtime the plovers
come from the north. Every spring is followed by another spring.
The coconut palm rises into the air, ripens its fruit, and departs.
But always are there more coconut palms. This is not all my own
smart talk. Much of it my father told me. Proceed, honourable
Mrs. Tai Fu, and beat your son who is my Third Husband To Be. But
I shall laugh. I warn you I shall laugh.”
Ah Kim dropped down on his knees so as to give his mother every
advantage. And while she rained blows upon him with the bamboo
stick, Li Faa smiled and giggled, and finally burst into laughter.
“Harder, O honourable Mrs. Tai Fu!” Li Faa urged between paroxysms
of mirth.
Mrs. Tai Fu did her best, which was notably weak, until she
observed what made her drop the stick by her side in amazement. Ah
Kim was crying. Down both cheeks great round tears were coursing.
Li Faa was amazed. So were the gaping clerks. Most amazed of all
was Ah Kim, yet he could not help himself; and, although no further
blows fell, he cried steadily on.
“But why did you cry?” Li Faa demanded often of Ah Kim. “It was so
perfectly foolish a thing to do. She was not even hurting you.”
“Wait until we are married,” was Ah Kim’s invariable reply, “and
then, O Moon Lily, will I tell you.”
Two years later, one afternoon, more like a water-melon seed in
configuration than ever, Ah Kim returned home from a meeting of the
Chinese Protective Association, to find his mother dead on her
couch. Narrower and more unrelenting than ever were the forehead
and the brushed-back hair. But on her face was a withered smile.
The gods had been kind. She had passed without pain.
He telephoned first of all to Li Faa’s number but did not find her
until he called up Mrs. Chang Lucy. The news given, the marriage
was dated ahead with ten times the brevity of the old-line Chinese
custom. And if there be anything analogous to a bridesmaid in a
Chinese wedding, Mrs. Chang Lucy was just that.
“Why,” Li Faa asked Ah Kim when alone with him on their wedding
night, “why did you cry when your mother beat you that day in the
store? You were so foolish. She was not even hurting you.”
“That is why I cried,” answered Ah Kim.
Li Faa looked up at him without understanding.
“I cried,” he explained, “because I suddenly knew that my mother
was nearing her end. There was no weight, no hurt, in her blows.
I cried because I knew SHE NO LONGER HAD STRENGTH ENOUGH TO HURT
ME. That is why I cried, my Flower of Serenity, my Perfect Rest.
That is the only reason why I cried.”
WAIKIKI, HONOLULU.
June 16, 1916.
From Jack London: ON THE MAKALOA MAT/ISLAND TALES
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, London, Jack
Jack London
(1876-1916)
When Alice told her soul
This, of Alice Akana, is an affair of Hawaii, not of this day, but
of days recent enough, when Abel Ah Yo preached his famous revival
in Honolulu and persuaded Alice Akana to tell her soul. But what
Alice told concerned itself with the earlier history of the then
surviving generation.
For Alice Akana was fifty years old, had begun life early, and,
early and late, lived it spaciously. What she knew went back into
the roots and foundations of families, businesses, and plantations.
She was the one living repository of accurate information that
lawyers sought out, whether the information they required related
to land-boundaries and land gifts, or to marriages, births,
bequests, or scandals. Rarely, because of the tight tongue she
kept behind her teeth, did she give them what they asked; and when
she did was when only equity was served and no one was hurt.
For Alice had lived, from early in her girlhood, a life of flowers,
and song, and wine, and dance; and, in her later years, had herself
been mistress of these revels by office of mistress of the hula
house. In such atmosphere, where mandates of God and man and
caution are inhibited, and where woozled tongues will wag, she
acquired her historical knowledge of things never otherwise
whispered and rarely guessed. And her tight tongue had served her
well, so that, while the old-timers knew she must know, none ever
heard her gossip of the times of Kalakaua’s boathouse, nor of the
high times of officers of visiting warships, nor of the diplomats
and ministers and councils of the countries of the world.
So, at fifty, loaded with historical dynamite sufficient, if it
were ever exploded, to shake the social and commercial life of the
Islands, still tight of tongue, Alice Akana was mistress of the
hula house, manageress of the dancing girls who hula’d for royalty,
for luaus (feasts), house-parties, poi suppers, and curious
tourists. And, at fifty, she was not merely buxom, but short and
fat in the Polynesian peasant way, with a constitution and lack of
organic weakness that promised incalculable years. But it was at
fifty that she strayed, quite by chance of time and curiosity, into
Abel Ah Yo’s revival meeting.
Now Abel Ah Yo, in his theology and word wizardry, was as much
mixed a personage as Billy Sunday. In his genealogy he was much
more mixed, for he was compounded of one-fourth Portuguese, one-
fourth Scotch, one-fourth Hawaiian, and one-fourth Chinese. The
Pentecostal fire he flamed forth was hotter and more variegated
than could any one of the four races of him alone have flamed
forth. For in him were gathered together the cannyness and the
cunning, the wit and the wisdom, the subtlety and the rawness, the
passion and the philosophy, the agonizing spirit-groping and he
legs up to the knees in the dung of reality, of the four radically
different breeds that contributed to the sum of him. His, also,
was the clever self-deceivement of the entire clever compound.
When it came to word wizardry, he had Billy Sunday, master of slang
and argot of one language, skinned by miles. For in Abel Ah Yo
were the five verbs, and nouns, and adjectives, and metaphors of
four living languages. Intermixed and living promiscuously and
vitally together, he possessed in these languages a reservoir of
expression in which a myriad Billy Sundays could drown. Of no
race, a mongrel par excellence, a heterogeneous scrabble, the
genius of the admixture was superlatively Abel Ah Yo’s. Like a
chameleon, he titubated and scintillated grandly between the
diverse parts of him, stunning by frontal attack and surprising and
confouding by flanking sweeps the mental homogeneity of the more
simply constituted souls who came in to his revival to sit under
him and flame to his flaming.
Abel Ah Yo believed in himself and his mixedness, as he believed in
the mixedness of his weird concept that God looked as much like him
as like any man, being no mere tribal god, but a world god that
must look equally like all races of all the world, even if it led
to piebaldness. And the concept worked. Chinese, Korean,
Japanese, Hawaiian, Porto Rican, Russian, English, French–members
of all races–knelt without friction, side by side, to his revision
of deity.
Himself in his tender youth an apostate to the Church of England,
Abel Ah Yo had for years suffered the lively sense of being a Judas
sinner. Essentially religious, he had foresworn the Lord. Like
Judas therefore he was. Judas was damned. Wherefore he, Abel Ah
Yo, was damned; and he did not want to be damned. So, quite after
the manner of humans, he squirmed and twisted to escape damnation.
The day came when he solved his escape. The doctrine that Judas
was damned, he concluded, was a misinterpretation of God, who,
above all things, stood for justice. Judas had been God’s servant,
specially selected to perform a particularly nasty job. Therefore
Judas, ever faithful, a betrayer only by divine command, was a
saint. Ergo, he, Abel Ah Yo, was a saint by very virtue of his
apostasy to a particular sect, and he could have access with clear
grace any time to God.
This theory became one of the major tenets of his preaching, and
was especially efficacious in cleansing the consciences of the
back-sliders from all other faiths who else, in the secrecy of
their subconscious selves, were being crushed by the weight of the
Judas sin. To Abel Ah Yo, God’s plan was as clear as if he, Abel
Ah Yo, had planned it himself. All would be saved in the end,
although some took longer than others, and would win only to
backseats. Man’s place in the ever-fluxing chaos of the world was
definite and pre-ordained–if by no other token, then by denial
that there was any ever-fluxing chaos. This was a mere bugbear of
mankind’s addled fancy; and, by stinging audacities of thought and
speech, by vivid slang that bit home by sheerest intimacy into his
listeners’ mental processes, he drove the bugbear from their
brains, showed them the loving clarity of God’s design, and,
thereby, induced in them spiritual serenity and calm.
What chance had Alice Akana, herself pure and homogeneous Hawaiian,
against his subtle, democratic-tinged, four-race-engendered, slang-
munitioned attack? He knew, by contact, almost as much as she
about the waywardness of living and sinning–having been singing
boy on the passenger-ships between Hawaii and California, and,
after that, bar boy, afloat and ashore, from the Barbary Coast to
Heinie’s Tavern. In point of fact, he had left his job of Number
One Bar Boy at the University Club to embark on his great
preachment revival.
So, when Alice Akana strayed in to scoff, she remained to pray to
Abel Ah Yo’s god, who struck her hard-headed mind as the most
sensible god of which she had ever heard. She gave money into Abel
Ah Yo’s collection plate, closed up the hula house, and dismissed
the hula dancers to more devious ways of earning a livelihood, shed
her bright colours and raiments and flower garlands, and bought a
Bible.
It was a time of religious excitement in the purlieus of Honolulu.
The thing was a democratic movement of the people toward God.
Place and caste were invited, but never came. The stupid lowly,
and the humble lowly, only, went down on its knees at the penitent
form, admitted its pathological weight and hurt of sin, eliminated
and purged all its bafflements, and walked forth again upright
under the sun, child-like and pure, upborne by Abel Ah Yo’s god’s
arm around it. In short, Abel Ah Yo’s revival was a clearing house
for sin and sickness of spirit, wherein sinners were relieved of
their burdens and made light and bright and spiritually healthy
again.
But Alice was not happy. She had not been cleared. She bought and
dispersed Bibles, contributed more money to the plate, contralto’d
gloriously in all the hymns, but would not tell her soul. In vain
Abel Ah Yo wrestled with her. She would not go down on her knees
at the penitent form and voice the things of tarnish within her–
the ill things of good friends of the old days. “You cannot serve
two masters,” Abel Ah Yo told her. “Hell is full of those who have
tried. Single of heart and pure of heart must you make your peace
with God. Not until you tell your soul to God right out in meeting
will you be ready for redemption. In the meantime you will suffer
the canker of the sin you carry about within you.”
Scientifically, though he did not know it and though he continually
jeered at science, Abel Ah Yo was right. Not could she be again as
a child and become radiantly clad in God’s grace, until she had
eliminated from her soul, by telling, all the sophistications that
had been hers, including those she shared with others. In the
Protestant way, she must bare her soul in public, as in the
Catholic way it was done in the privacy of the confessional. The
result of such baring would be unity, tranquillity, happiness,
cleansing, redemption, and immortal life.
“Choose!” Abel Ah Yo thundered. “Loyalty to God, or loyalty to
man.” And Alice could not choose. Too long had she kept her
tongue locked with the honour of man. “I will tell all my soul
about myself,” she contended. “God knows I am tired of my soul and
should like to have it clean and shining once again as when I was a
little girl at Kaneohe–“
“But all the corruption of your soul has been with other souls,”
was Abel Ah Yo’s invariable reply. “When you have a burden, lay it
down. You cannot bear a burden and be quit of it at the same time.”
“I will pray to God each day, and many times each day,” she urged.
“I will approach God with humility, with sighs and with tears. I
will contribute often to the plate, and I will buy Bibles, Bibles,
Bibles without end.”
“And God will not smile upon you,” God’s mouthpiece retorted. “And
you will remain weary and heavy-laden. For you will not have told
all your sin, and not until you have told all will you be rid of any.”
“This rebirth is difficult,” Alice sighed.
“Rebirth is even more difficult than birth.” Abel Ah Yo did
anything but comfort her. “‘Not until you become as a little child . . . ‘”
“If ever I tell my soul, it will be a big telling,” she confided.
“The bigger the reason to tell it then.”
And so the situation remained at deadlock, Abel Ah Yo demanding
absolute allegiance to God, and Alice Akana flirting on the fringes
of paradise.
“You bet it will be a big telling, if Alice ever begins,” the
beach-combing and disreputable kamaainas (old-timers) gleefully
told one another over their Palm Tree gin.
In the clubs the possibility of her telling was of more moment.
The younger generation of men announced that they had applied for
front seats at the telling, while many of the older generation of
men joked hollowly about the conversion of Alice. Further, Alice
found herself abruptly popular with friends who had forgotten her
existence for twenty years.
One afternoon, as Alice, Bible in hand, was taking the electric
street car at Hotel and Fort, Cyrus Hodge, sugar factor and
magnate, ordered his chauffeur to stop beside her. Willy nilly, in
excess of friendliness, he had her into his limousine beside him
and went three-quarters of an hour out of his way and time
personally to conduct her to her destination.
“Good for sore eyes to see you,” he burbled. “How the years fly!
You’re looking fine. The secret of youth is yours.”
Alice smiled and complimented in return in the royal Polynesian way
of friendliness.
“My, my,” Cyrus Hodge reminisced. “I was such a boy in those days!”
“SOME boy,” she laughed acquiescence.
“But knowing no more than the foolishness of a boy in those long-
ago days.”
“Remember the night your hack-driver got drunk and left you–“
“S-s-sh!” he cautioned. “That Jap driver is a high-school graduate
and knows more English than either of us. Also, I think he is a
spy for his Government. So why should we tell him anything?
Besides, I was so very young. You remember . . . “
“Your cheeks were like the peaches we used to grow before the
Mediterranean fruit fly got into them,” Alice agreed. “I don’t
think you shaved more than once a week then. You were a pretty
boy. Don’t you remember the hula we composed in your honour, the– “
“S-s-sh!” he hushed her. “All that’s buried and forgotten. May it
remain forgotten.”
And she was aware that in his eyes was no longer any of the
ingenuousness of youth she remembered. Instead, his eyes were keen
and speculative, searching into her for some assurance that she
would not resurrect his particular portion of that buried past.
“Religion is a good thing for us as we get along into middle age,”
another old friend told her. He was building a magnificent house
on Pacific Heights, but had recently married a second time, and was
even then on his way to the steamer to welcome home his two
daughters just graduated from Vassar. “We need religion in our old
age, Alice. It softens, makes us more tolerant and forgiving of
the weaknesses of others–especially the weaknesses of youth of–of
others, when they played high and low and didn’t know what they
were doing.”
He waited anxiously.
“Yes,” she said. “We are all born to sin and it is hard to grow
out of sin. But I grow, I grow.”
“Don’t forget, Alice, in those other days I always played square.
You and I never had a falling out.”
“Not even the night you gave that luau when you were twenty-one and
insisted on breaking the glassware after every toast. But of
course you paid for it.”
“Handsomely,” he asserted almost pleadingly.
“Handsomely,” she agreed. “I replaced more than double the
quantity with what you paid me, so that at the next luau I catered
one hundred and twenty plates without having to rent or borrow a
dish or glass. Lord Mainweather gave that luau–you remember him.”
“I was pig-sticking with him at Mana,” the other nodded. “We were
at a two weeks’ house-party there. But say, Alice, as you know, I
think this religion stuff is all right and better than all right.
But don’t let it carry you off your feet. And don’t get to telling
your soul on me. What would my daughters think of that broken
glassware!”
“I always did have an aloha” (warm regard) “for you, Alice,” a
member of the Senate, fat and bald-headed, assured her.
And another, a lawyer and a grandfather: “We were always friends,
Alice. And remember, any legal advice or handling of business you
may require, I’ll do for you gladly, and without fees, for the sake
of our old-time friendship.”
Came a banker to her late Christmas Eve, with formidable, legal-
looking envelopes in his hand which he presented to her.
“Quite by chance,” he explained, “when my people were looking up
land-records in Iapio Valley, I found a mortgage of two thousand on
your holdings there–that rice land leased to Ah Chin. And my mind
drifted back to the past when we were all young together, and wild-
-a bit wild, to be sure. And my heart warmed with the memory of
you, and, so, just as an aloha, here’s the whole thing cleared off
for you.”
Nor was Alice forgotten by her own people. Her house became a
Mecca for native men and women, usually performing pilgrimage
privily after darkness fell, with presents always in their hands–
squid fresh from the reef, opihis and limu, baskets of alligator
pears, roasting corn of the earliest from windward Cahu, mangoes
and star-apples, taro pink and royal of the finest selection,
sucking pigs, banana poi, breadfruit, and crabs caught the very day
from Pearl Harbour. Mary Mendana, wife of the Portuguese Consul,
remembered her with a five-dollar box of candy and a mandarin coat
that would have fetched three-quarters of a hundred dollars at a
fire sale. And Elvira Miyahara Makaena Yin Wap, the wife of Yin
Wap the wealthy Chinese importer, brought personally to Alice two
entire bolts of pina cloth from the Philippines and a dozen pairs
of silk stockings.
The time passed, and Abel Ah Yo struggled with Alice for a properly
penitent heart, and Alice struggled with herself for her soul,
while half of Honolulu wickedly or apprehensively hung on the
outcome. Carnival week was over, polo and the races had come and
gone, and the celebration of Fourth of July was ripening, ere Abel
Ah Yo beat down by brutal psychology the citadel of her reluctance.
It was then that he gave his famous exhortation which might be
summed up as Abel Ah Yo’s definition of eternity. Of course, like
Billy Sunday on certain occasions, Abel Ah Yo had cribbed the
definition. But no one in the Islands knew it, and his rating as a
revivalist uprose a hundred per cent.
So successful was his preaching that night, that he reconverted
many of his converts, who fell and moaned about the penitent form
and crowded for room amongst scores of new converts burnt by the
pentecostal fire, including half a company of negro soldiers from
the garrisoned Twenty-Fifth Infantry, a dozen troopers from the
Fourth Cavalry on its way to the Philippines, as many drunken man-
of-war’s men, divers ladies from Iwilei, and half the riff-raff of
the beach.
Abel Ah Yo, subtly sympathetic himself by virtue of his racial
admixture, knowing human nature like a book and Alice Akana even
more so, knew just what he was doing when he arose that memorable
night and exposited God, hell, and eternity in terms of Alice
Akana’s comprehension. For, quite by chance, he had discovered her
cardinal weakness. First of all, like all Polynesians, an ardent
lover of nature, he found that earthquake and volcanic eruption
were the things of which Alice lived in terror. She had been, in
the past, on the Big Island, through cataclysms that had slacken
grass houses down upon her while she slept, and she had beheld
Madame Pele (the Fire or Volcano Goddess) fling red-fluxing lava
down the long slopes of Mauna Loa, destroying fish-ponds on the
sea-brim and licking up droves of beef cattle, villages, and humans
on her fiery way.
The night before, a slight earthquake had shaken Honolulu and given
Alice Akana insomnia. And the morning papers had stated that Mauna
Kea had broken into eruption, while the lava was rising rapidly in
the great pit of Kilauea. So, at the meeting, her mind vexed
between the terrors of this world and the delights of the eternal
world to come, Alice sat down in a front seat in a very definite
state of the “jumps.”
And Abel Ah Yo arose and put his finger on the sorest part of her
soul. Sketching the nature of God in the stereotyped way, but
making the stereotyped alive again with his gift of tongues in
Pidgin-English and Pidgin-Hawaiian, Abel Ah Yo described the day
when the Lord, even His infinite patience at an end, would tell
Peter to close his day book and ledgers, command Gabriel to summon
all souls to Judgment, and cry out with a voice of thunder: “Welakahao!”
This anthromorphic deity of Abel Ah Yo thundering the modern
Hawaiian-English slang of welakahao at the end of the world, is a
fair sample of the revivalist’s speech-tools of discourse.
Welakahao means literally “hot iron.” It was coined in the
Honolulu Iron-works by the hundreds of Hawaiian men there employed,
who meant by it “to hustle,” “to get a move on,” the iron being hot
meaning that the time had come to strike.
“And the Lord cried ‘Welakahao,’ and the Day of Judgment began and
was over wiki-wiki” (quickly) “just like that; for Peter was a
better bookkeeper than any on the Waterhouse Trust Company Limited,
and, further, Peter’s books were true.”
Swiftly Abel Ah Yo divided the sheep from the goats, and hastened
the latter down into hell.
“And now,” he demanded, perforce his language on these pages being
properly Englished, “what is hell like? Oh, my friends, let me
describe to you, in a little way, what I have beheld with my own
eves on earth of the possibilities of hell. I was a young man, a
boy, and I was at Hilo. Morning began with earthquakes.
Throughout the day the mighty land continued to shake and tremble,
till strong men became seasick, and women clung to trees to escape
falling, and cattle were thrown down off their feet. I beheld
myself a young calf so thrown. A night of terror indescribable
followed. The land was in motion like a canoe in a Kona gale.
There was an infant crushed to death by its fond mother stepping
upon it whilst fleeing her falling house.
“The heavens were on fire above us. We read our Bibles by the
light of the heavens, and the print was fine, even for young eyes.
Those missionary Bibles were always too small of print. Forty
miles away from us, the heart of hell burst from the lofty
mountains and gushed red-blood of fire-melted rock toward the sea.
With the heavens in vast conflagration and the earth hulaing
beneath our feet, was a scene too awful and too majestic to be
enjoyed. We could think only of the thin bubble-skin of earth
between us and the everlasting lake of fire and brimstone, and of
God to whom we prayed to save us. There were earnest and devout
souls who there and then promised their pastors to give not their
shaved tithes, but five-tenths of their all to the church, if only
the Lord would let them live to contribute.
“Oh, my friends, God saved us. But first he showed us a foretaste
of that hell that will yawn for us on the last day, when he cries
‘Welakahao!’ in a voice of thunder. When the iron is hot! Think
of it! When the iron is hot for sinners!
“By the third day, things being much quieter, my friend the
preacher and I, being calm in the hand of God, journeyed up Mauna
Loa and gazed into the awful pit of Kilauea. We gazed down into
the fathomless abyss to the lake of fire far below, roaring and
dashing its fiery spray into billows and fountaining hundreds of
feet into the air like Fourth of July fireworks you have all seen,
and all the while we were suffocating and made dizzy by the immense
volumes of smoke and brimstone ascending.
“And I say unto you, no pious person could gaze down upon that
scene without recognizing fully the Bible picture of the Pit of
Hell. Believe me, the writers of the New Testament had nothing on
us. As for me, my eyes were fixed upon the exhibition before me,
and I stood mute and trembling under a sense never before so fully
realized of the power, the majesty, and terror of Almighty God–the
resources of His wrath, and the untold horrors of the finally
impenitent who do not tell their souls and make their peace with
the Creator.
“But oh, my friends, think you our guides, our native attendants,
deep-sunk in heathenism, were affected by such a scene? No. The
devil’s hand was upon them. Utterly regardless and unimpressed,
they were only careful about their supper, chatted about their raw
fish, and stretched themselves upon their mats to sleep. Children
of the devil they were, insensible to the beauties, the
sublimities, and the awful terror of God’s works. But you are not
heathen I now address. What is a heathen? He is one who betrays a
stupid insensibility to every elevated idea and to every elevated
emotion. If you wish to awaken his attention, do not bid him to
look down into the Pit of Hell. But present him with a calabash of
poi, a raw fish, or invite him to some low, grovelling, and
sensuous sport. Oh, my friends, how lost are they to all that
elevates the immortal soul! But the preacher and I, sad and sick
at heart for them, gazed down into hell. Oh, my friends, it WAS
hell, the hell of the Scriptures, the hell of eternal torment for
the undeserving . . . “
Alice Akana was in an ecstasy or hysteria of terror. She was
mumbling incoherently: “O Lord, I will give nine-tenths of my all.
I will give all. I will give even the two bolts of pina cloth, the
mandarin coat, and the entire dozen silk stockings . . . “
By the time she could lend ear again, Abel Ah Yo was launching out
on his famous definition of eternity.
“Eternity is a long time, my friends. God lives, and, therefore,
God lives inside eternity. And God is very old. The fires of hell
are as old and as everlasting as God. How else could there be
everlasting torment for those sinners cast down by God into the Pit
on the Last Day to burn for ever and for ever through all eternity?
Oh, my friends, your minds are small–too small to grasp eternity.
Yet is it given to me, by God’s grace, to convey to you an
understanding of a tiny bit of eternity.
“The grains of sand on the beach of Waikiki are as many as the
stars, and more. No man may count them. Did he have a million
lives in which to count them, he would have to ask for more time.
Now let us consider a little, dinky, old minah bird with one broken
wing that cannot fly. At Waikiki the minah bird that cannot fly
takes one grain of sand in its beak and hops, hops, all day lone
and for many days, all the day to Pearl Harbour and drops that one
grain of sand into the harbour. Then it hops, hops, all day and
for many days, all the way back to Waikiki for another grain of
sand. And again it hops, hops all the way back to Pearl Harbour.
And it continues to do this through the years and centuries, and
the thousands and thousands of centuries, until, at last, there
remains not one grain of sand at Waikiki and Pearl Harbour is
filled up with land and growing coconuts and pine-apples. And
then, oh my friends, even then, IT WOULD NOT YET BE SUNRISE IN
HELL!
Here, at the smashing impact of so abrupt a climax, unable to
withstand the sheer simplicity and objectivity of such artful
measurement of a trifle of eternity, Alice Akana’s mind broke down
and blew up. She uprose, reeled blindly, and stumbled to her knees
at the penitent form. Abel Ah Yo had not finished his preaching,
but it was his gift to know crowd psychology, and to feel the heat
of the pentecostal conflagration that scorched his audience. He
called for a rousing revival hymn from his singers, and stepped
down to wade among the hallelujah-shouting negro soldiers to Alice
Akana. And, ere the excitement began to ebb, nine-tenths of his
congregation and all his converts were down on knees and praying
and shouting aloud an immensity of contriteness and sin.
Word came, via telephone, almost simultaneously to the Pacific and
University Clubs, that at last Alice was telling her soul in
meeting; and, by private machine and taxi-cab, for the first time
Abel Ah Yo’s revival was invaded by those of caste and place. The
first comers beheld the curious sight of Hawaiian, Chinese, and all
variegated racial mixtures of the smelting-pot of Hawaii, men and
women, fading out and slinking away through the exits of Abel Ah
Yo’s tabernacle. But those who were sneaking out were mostly men,
while those who remained were avid-faced as they hung on Alice’s
utterance.
Never was a more fearful and damning community narrative enunciated
in the entire Pacific, north and south, than that enunciated by
Alice Akana; the penitent Phryne of Honolulu.
“Huh!” the first comers heard her saying, having already disposed
of most of the venial sins of the lesser ones of her memory. “You
think this man, Stephen Makekau, is the son of Moses Makekau and
Minnie Ah Ling, and has a legal right to the two hundred and eight
dollars he draws down each month from Parke Richards Limited, for
the lease of the fish-pond to Bill Kong at Amana. Not so. Stephen
Makekau is not the son of Moses. He is the son of Aaron Kama and
Tillie Naone. He was given as a present, as a feeding child, to
Moses and Minnie, by Aaron and Tillie. I know. Moses and Minnie
and Aaron and Tillie are dead. Yet I know and can prove it. Old
Mrs. Poepoe is still alive. I was present when Stephen was born,
and in the night-time, when he was two months old, I myself carried
him as a present to Moses and Minnie, and old Mrs. Poepoe carried
the lantern. This secret has been one of my sins. It has kept me
from God. Now I am free of it. Young Archie Makekau, who collects
bills for the Gas Company and plays baseball in the afternoons, and
drinks too much gin, should get that two hundred and eight dollars
the first of each month from Parke Richards Limited. He will blow
it in on gin and a Ford automobile. Stephen is a good man. Archie
is no good. Also he is a liar, and he has served two sentences on
the reef, and was in reform school before that. Yet God demands
the truth, and Archie will get the money and make a bad use of it.”
And in such fashion Alice rambled on through the experiences of her
long and full-packed life. And women forgot they were in the
tabernacle, and men too, and faces darkened with passion as they
learned for the first time the long-buried secrets of their other halves.
“The lawyers’ offices will be crowded to-morrow morning,”
MacIlwaine, chief of detectives, paused long enough from storing
away useful information to lean and mutter in Colonel Stilton’s ear.
Colonel Stilton grinned affirmation, although the chief of
detectives could not fail to note the ghastliness of the grin.
“There is a banker in Honolulu. You all know his name. He is ‘way
up, swell society because of his wife. He owns much stock in
General Plantations and Inter-Island.”
MacIlwaine recognized the growing portrait and forbore to chuckle.
“His name is Colonel Stilton. Last Christmas Eve he came to my
house with big aloha” (love) “and gave me mortgages on my land in
Iapio Valley, all cancelled, for two thousand dollars’ worth. Now
why did he have such big cash aloha for me? I will tell you . . .”
And tell she did, throwing the searchlight on ancient business
transactions and political deals which from their inception had
lurked in the dark.
“This,” Alice concluded the episode, “has long been a sin upon my
conscience, and kept my heart from God.
“And Harold Miles was that time President of the Senate, and next
week he bought three town lots at Pearl Harbour, and painted his
Honolulu house, and paid up his back dues in his clubs. Also the
Ramsay home at Honokiki was left by will to the people if the
Government would keep it up. But if the Government, after two
years, did not begin to keep it up, then would it go to the Ramsay
heirs, whom old Ramsay hated like poison. Well, it went to the
heirs all right. Their lawyer was Charley Middleton, and he had me
help fix it with the Government men. And their names were . . . “
Six names, from both branches of the Legislature, Alice recited,
and added: “Maybe they all painted their houses after that. For
the first time have I spoken. My heart is much lighter and softer.
It has been coated with an armour of house-paint against the Lord.
And there is Harry Werther. He was in the Senate that time.
Everybody said bad things about him, and he was never re-elected.
Yet his house was not painted. He was honest. To this day his
house is not painted, as everybody knows.
“There is Jim Lokendamper. He has a bad heart. I heard him, only
last week, right here before you all, tell his soul. He did not
tell all his soul, and he lied to God. I am not lying to God. It
is a big telling, but I am telling everything. Now Azalea Akau,
sitting right over there, is his wife. But Lizzie Lokendamper is
his married wife. A long time ago he had the great aloha for
Azalea. You think her uncle, who went to California and died, left
her by will that two thousand five hundred dollars she got. Her
uncle did not. I know. Her uncle cried broke in California, and
Jim Lokendamper sent eighty dollars to California to bury him. Jim
Lokendamper had a piece of land in Kohala he got from his mother’s
aunt. Lizzie, his married wife, did not know this. So he sold it
to the Kohala Ditch Company and wave the twenty-five hundred to
Azalea Akau–“
Here, Lizzie, the married wife, upstood like a fury long-thwarted,
and, in lieu of her husband, already fled, flung herself tooth and
nail on Azalea.
“Wait, Lizzie Lokendamper!” Alice cried out. “I have much weight
of you on my heart and some house-paint too . . . “
And when she had finished her disclosure of how Lizzie had painted
her house, Azalea was up and raging.
“Wait, Azalea Akau. I shall now lighten my heart about you. And
it is not house-paint. Jim always paid that. It is your new bath-
tub and modern plumbing that is heavy on me . . . “
Worse, much worse, about many and sundry, did Alice Akana have to
say, cutting high in business, financial, and social life, as well
as low. None was too high nor too low to escape; and not until two
in the morning, before an entranced audience that packed the
tabernacle to the doors, did she complete her recital of the
personal and detailed iniquities she knew of the community in which
she had lived intimately all her days. Just as she was finishing,
she remembered more.
“Huh!” she sniffed. “I gave last week one lot worth eight hundred
dollars cash market price to Abel Ah Yo to pay running expenses and
add up in Peter’s books in heaven. Where did I get that lot? You
all think Mr. Fleming Jason is a good man. He is more crooked than
the entrance was to Pearl Lochs before the United States Government
straightened the channel. He has liver disease now; but his
sickness is a judgment of God, and he will die crooked. Mr.
Fleming Jason gave me that lot twenty-two years ago, when its cash
market price was thirty-five dollars. Because his aloha for me was
big? No. He never had aloha inside of him except for dollars.
“You listen. Mr. Fleming Jason put a great sin upon me. When
Frank Lomiloli was at my house, full of gin, for which gin Mr.
Fleming Jason paid me in advance five times over, I got Frank
Lomiloli to sign his name to the sale paper of his town land for
one hundred dollars. It was worth six hundred then. It is worth
twenty thousand now. Maybe you want to know where that town land
is. I will tell you and remove it off my heart. It is on King
Street, where is now the Come Again Saloon, the Japanese Taxicab
Company garage, the Smith & Wilson plumbing shop, and the Ambrosia
lee Cream Parlours, with the two more stories big Addison Lodging
House overhead. And it is all wood, and always has been well
painted. Yesterday they started painting it attain. But that
paint will not stand between me and God. There are no more paint
pots between me and my path to heaven.”
The morning and evening papers of the day following held an unholy
hush on the greatest news story of years; but Honolulu was half a-
giggle and half aghast at the whispered reports, not always basely
exaggerated, that circulated wherever two Honoluluans chanced to meet.
“Our mistake,” said Colonel Chilton, at the club, “was that we did
not, at the very first, appoint a committee of safety to keep track
of Alice’s soul.”
Bob Cristy, one of the younger islanders, burst into laughter, so
pointed and so loud that the meaning of it was demanded.
“Oh, nothing much,” was his reply. “But I heard, on my way here,
that old John Ward had just been run in for drunken and disorderly
conduct and for resisting an officer. Now Abel Ah Yo fine-
toothcombs the police court. He loves nothing better than soul-
snatching a chronic drunkard.”
Colonel Chilton looked at Lask Finneston, and both looked at Gary
Wilkinson. He returned to them a similar look.
“The old beachcomber!” Lask Finneston cried. “The drunken old
reprobate! I’d forgotten he was alive. Wonderful constitution.
Never drew a sober breath except when he was shipwrecked, and, when
I remember him, into every deviltry afloat. He must be going on eighty.”
“He isn’t far away from it,” Bob Cristy nodded. “Still beach-
combs, drinks when he gets the price, and keeps all his senses,
though he’s not spry and has to use glasses when he reads. And his
memory is perfect. Now if Abel Ah Yo catches him . . . “
Gary Wilkinson cleared his throat preliminary to speech.
“Now there’s a grand old man,” he said. “A left-over from a
forgotten age. Few of his type remain. A pioneer. A true
kamaaina” (old-timer). “Helpless and in the hands of the police in
his old age! We should do something for him in recognition of his
yeoman work in Hawaii. His old home, I happen to know, is Sag
Harbour. He hasn’t seen it for over half a century. Now why
shouldn’t he be surprised to-morrow morning by having his fine
paid, and by being presented with return tickets to Sag Harbour,
and, say, expenses for a year’s trip? I move a committee. I
appoint Colonel Chilton, Lask Finneston, and . . . and myself. As
for chairman, who more appropriate than Lask Finneston, who knew
the old gentleman so well in the early days? Since there is no
objection, I hereby appoint Lask Finneston chairman of the
committee for the purpose of raising and donating money to pay the
police-court fine and the expenses of a year’s travel for that
noble pioneer, John Ward, in recognition of a lifetime of devotion
of energy to the upbuilding of Hawaii.”
There was no dissent.
“The committee will now go into secret session,” said Lask
Finneston, arising and indicating the way to the library.
GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA,
August 30, 1916.
From Jack London: ON THE MAKALOA MAT/ISLAND TALES
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Archive K-L, London, Jack
Amy Lowell
(1874-1925)
To a Friend
I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!
Amy Lowell poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Archive K-L, Lowell, Amy
Cobra Museum Amstelveen
Open de kooien van de kunst:
gedichttekeningen van Lucebert
until 9 september 2012
Lucebert (1924-1994 – ps. van Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk) wordt gezien als een van Nederlands grootste kunstenaars. Hij was dichter, beeldend kunstenaar, fotograaf; ongekend veelzijdig en zeer productief. Als dichter speelde hij een vernieuwende rol in de revolutionaire literaire beweging de Vijftigers en als dubbeltalent in de Cobra-beweging die een doorbraak in de moderne kunst teweegbracht. Zijn beeldend werk en gedichten zijn verfrissend origineel, weerspiegelen actie en vitaliteit en zijn daardoor overrompelend actueel. Van alle moderne dichters had hij bovendien grote, misschien wel de grootste, invloed op onze taal.
Open de kooien van de kunst is gewijd aan een tot dusver nauwelijks belicht aspect van Luceberts oeuvre: de gedichttekeningen. In veel vroege gedichten van dichter-tekenaar Lucebert (1924-1994) is er een organische wisselwerking tussen de woorden van het gedicht en de spontaan gemaakte figuren in diverse technieken (van inkt en verf tot collages) in de marges of over het blad. Ook van een aantal latere gedichten bestaan varianten met een opzettelijke interactie met de beeldtaal. In zijn genre-overstijgende gedichttekeningen maakt Lucebert een fascinerende cross-over tussen woord en beeld, taal en kleur. Samensteller Erik Slagter bracht ruim vijfenzestig gedichttekeningen van Lucebert bijeen in Open de kooien van de kunst. In deze gedichttekeningen komt de veelzijdigheid van Luceberts vernieuwende woord- en beeldtaal prachtig tot uitdrukking. In de bibliografische beschrijving van deze gedichttekeningen geeft Erik Slagter dit aspect een plaats in het oeuvre van Lucebert.
Open de kooien van de kunst verschijnt ter gelegenheid van de gelijknamige tentoonstelling in het Cobra Museum in Amstelveen (8 mei- 9 september 2012). Paperback, 144 pagina’s, met ca. 80 (kleuren)afbeeldingen. ISBN: 978-90-77767-33-7 € 24,50
Lucebert, drukwerk voor anderen: Lucebert heeft, vooral in zijn vroege jaren, in opdracht en op verzoek tal van omslagontwerpen voor boeken van andere schrijvers gemaakt. Daarnaast tekende hij in de jaren vijftig regelmatig boek- en tijdschriftillustraties en maakte hij in later jaren tekeningen voor affiches van maatschappelijke instellingen.
Lucebert, drukwerk voor anderen bevat een overzicht van dit illustratieve werk. Vrijwel onvindbare tekeningen die Lucebert maakte voor bv. Het Parool en de Haagse post, worden met meer of minder bekende boekomslagen voor andere dichters en schrijvers (Campert, Kousbroek, Schierbeek e.v.a.) beschreven én afgebeeld. Paul van Capelleveen, conservator van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek, maakte een becommentarieerde en aantrekkelijk geschreven bibliografie van Luceberts drukwerk voor anderen, wonderschoon vormgegeven door Huug Schipper.
Lucebert, drukwerk voor anderen verschijnt ter gelegenheid van de tentoonstelling Open de kooien van de kunst in het Cobra Museum in Amstelveen (8 mei- 9 september 2012). In deze tentoonstelling worden ruim dertig illustraties getoond die Lucebert voor anderen heeft gemaakt. 144 pagina’s, met ca. 250 (kleuren)afbeeldingen. ISBN: 978-90-77767-35-1 € 24,50
Zolang de lijm niet loslaat: Tijdens een voordracht in 1951 presenteerde Lucebert (1924-1994) zich met een woordenboek (de Van Dale?) in de hand als ‘vandaal’ van de Nederlandse taal. Niettemin is bekend dat hij bij het schrijven van zijn poëzie vaak gebruikmaakte van woordenboeken.
Ruim een halve eeuw later wordt duidelijk dat Lucebert van alle moderne dichters misschien wel de grootste invloed op de hedendaagse taal heeft gehad. Het Nederlands heeft tal van gevleugelde woorden aan hem te danken en sommige van Luceberts taalscheppingen worden tot het bezonken talige erfgoed gerekend en staan inmiddels zelf in de Dikke Van Dale, zoals overal zanikt bagger en alles van waarde is weerloos. In Zolang de lijm niet loslaat bespreekt Ton den Boon (hoofdredacteur van de Dikke Van Dale) niet alleen Luceberts houding ten aanzien van het woordenboek, maar beschrijft hij bovendien de schatplichtigheid van het Nederlands aan deze grote dichter en laat hij zien hoe Lucebert in zijn gedichten woorden en uitdrukkingen heeft gecreëerd en/of herontdekt die vervolgens een eigen leven zijn gaan leiden in onze taal.
Zolang de lijm niet loslaat verschijnt mede naar aanleiding van de tentoonstelling Open de kooien van de kunst in het Cobra Museum in Amstelveen (8 mei- 9 september 2012).
72 pagina’s, met kleurenreproducties van enige niet eerder gepubliceerde tekeningen van Lucebert. ISBN: 978-90-77767-34-4 € 17,50
De drie de uitgaven zijn paperbacks met flappen (formaat 17 x 24) en vormen uit het oogpunt van hun vormgeving een kleine reeks.
De tentoonstelling Open de kooien van de kunst in het Cobra Museum: Luceberts gedichttekeningen uit de periode 1949-1994 zijn verrassend veelzijdig in woord- en beeldtaal. Ook de expositie is daarom veelzijdig van opzet. Zo komt er een dichterskooi geïnspireerd op de ‘dichterskooi’ waarin de literaire experimentelen zich in november 1949 in het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam verschansten. Behalve de gedichttekeningen worden liber amicora getoond (unica gemaakt voor vrienden), alsmede het gedrukte grafische werk dat voor anderen ontstond. Voorts wordt een aantal originele boekjes uit de collectie van het Stedelijk, die in het najaar 2011 door uitgeverij De Bezige Bij in facsimile zijn uitgebracht, getoond. Behalve het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam zijn het Goethe-Instituut Nederland, Karel Appel Foundation en de erven Lucebert belangrijke bruikleengevers. Het Letterkundig Museum uit Den Haag draagt bij met documentatie. De tentoonstelling is een initiatief van kunsthistoricus en auteur Erik Slagter.
Cobra Museum Amstelveen
Open de kooien van de kunst:
gedichttekeningen van Lucebert
until 9 september 2012
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Archive K-L, Art & Literature News, FDM Art Gallery, Lucebert, Lucebert
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Ein Bericht für eine Akademie
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
Hohe Herren von der Akademie!
Sie erweisen mir die Ehre, mich aufzufordern, der Akademie einen Bericht über mein äffisches Vorleben einzureichen.
In diesem Sinne kann ich leider der Aufforderung nicht nachkommen. Nahezu fünf Jahre trennen mich vom Affentum, eine Zeit, kurz vielleicht am Kalender gemessen, unendlich lang aber durchzugaloppieren, so wie ich es getan habe, streckenweise begleitet von vortrefflichen Menschen, Ratschlägen, Beifall und Orchestralmusik, aber im Grunde allein, denn alle Begleitung hielt sich, um im Bilde zu bleiben, weit vor der Barriere. Diese Leistung wäre unmöglich gewesen, wenn ich eigensinnig hätte an meinem Ursprung, an den Erinnerungen der Jugend festhalten wollen. Gerade Verzicht auf jeden Eigensinn war das oberste Gebot, das ich mir auferlegt hatte; ich, freier Affe, fügte mich diesem Joch. Dadurch verschlossen sich mir aber ihrerseits die Erinnerungen immer mehr. War mir zuerst die Rückkehr, wenn die Menschen gewollt hätten, freigestellt durch das ganze Tor, das der Himmel über der Erde bildet, wurde es gleichzeitig mit meiner vorwärts gepeitschten Entwicklung immer niedriger und enger; wohler und eingeschlossener fühlte ich mich in der Menschenwelt; der Sturm, der mir aus meiner Vergangenheit nachblies, sänftigte sich; heute ist es nur ein Luftzug, der mir die Fersen kühlt; und das Loch in der Ferne, durch das er kommt und durch das ich einstmals kam, ist so klein geworden, daß ich, wenn überhaupt die Kräfte und der Wille hinreichen würden, um bis dorthin zurückzulaufen, das Fell vom Leib mir schinden müßte, um durchzukommen. Offen gesprochen, so gerne ich auch Bilder wähle für diese Dinge, offen gesprochen: Ihr Affentum, meine Herren, soferne Sie etwas Derartiges hinter sich haben, kann Ihnen nicht ferner sein als mir das meine. An der Ferse aber kitzelt es jeden, der hier auf Erden geht: den kleinen Schimpansen wie den großen Achilles.
In eingeschränktestem Sinn aber kann ich doch vielleicht Ihre Anfrage beantworten und ich tue es sogar mit großer Freude. Das erste, was ich lernte, war: den Handschlag geben; Handschlag bezeugt Offenheit; mag nun heute, wo ich auf dem Höhepunkte meiner Laufbahn stehe, zu jenem ersten Handschlag auch das offene Wort hinzukommen. Es wird für die Akademie nichts wesentlich Neues beibringen und weit hinter dem zurückbleiben, was man von mir verlangt hat und was ich beim besten Willen nicht sagen kann – immerhin, es soll die Richtlinie zeigen, auf welcher ein gewesener Affe in die Menschenwelt eingedrungen ist und sich dort festgesetzt hat. Doch dürfte ich selbst das Geringfügige, was folgt, gewiß nicht sagen, wenn ich meiner nicht völlig sicher wäre und meine Stellung auf allen großen Varietébühnen der zivilisierten Welt sich nicht bis zur Unerschütterlichkeit gefestigt hätte:
Ich stamme von der Goldküste. Darüber, wie ich eingefangen wurde, bin ich auf fremde Berichte angewiesen. Eine Jagdexpedition der Firma Hagenbeck – mit dem Führer habe ich übrigens seither schon manche gute Flasche Rotwein geleert – lag im Ufergebüsch auf dem Anstand, als ich am Abend inmitten eines Rudels zur Tränke lief. Man schoß; ich war der einzige, der getroffen wurde; ich bekam zwei Schüsse.
Einen in die Wange; der war leicht; hinterließ aber eine große ausrasierte rote Narbe, die mir den widerlichen, ganz und gar unzutreffenden, förmlich von einem Affen erfundenen Namen Rotpeter eingetragen hat, so als unterschiede ich mich von dem unlängst krepierten, hie und da bekannten, dressierten Affentier Peter nur durch den roten Fleck auf der Wange. Dies nebenbei.
Der zweite Schuß traf mich unterhalb der Hüfte. Er war schwer, er hat es verschuldet, daß ich noch heute ein wenig hinke. Letzthin las ich in einem Aufsatz irgendeines der zehntausend Windhunde, die sich in den Zeitungen über mich auslassen: meine Affennatur sei noch nicht ganz unterdrückt; Beweis dessen sei, daß ich, wenn Besucher kommen, mit Vorliebe die Hosen ausziehe, um die Einlaufstelle jenes Schusses zu zeigen. Dem Kerl sollte jedes Fingerchen seiner schreibenden Hand einzeln weggeknallt werden. Ich, ich darf meine Hosen ausziehen, vor wem es mir beliebt; man wird dort nichts finden als einen wohlgepflegten Pelz und die Narbe nach einem – wählen wir hier zu einem bestimmten Zwecke ein bestimmtes Wort, das aber nicht mißverstanden werden wolle – die Narbe nach einem frevelhaften Schuß. Alles liegt offen zutage; nichts ist zu verbergen; kommt es auf Wahrheit an, wirft jeder Großgesinnte die allerfeinsten Manieren ab. Würde dagegen jener Schreiber die Hosen ausziehen, wenn Besuch kommt, so hätte dies allerdings ein anderes Ansehen und ich will es als Zeichen der Vernunft gelten lassen, daß er es nicht tut. Aber dann mag er mir auch mit seinem Zartsinn vom Halse bleiben!
Nach jenen Schüssen erwachte ich – und hier beginnt allmählich meine eigene Erinnerung – in einem Käfig im Zwischendeck des Hagenbeckschen Dampfers. Es war kein vierwandiger Gitterkäfig; vielmehr waren nur drei Wände an einer Kiste festgemacht; die Kiste also bildete die vierte Wand. Das Ganze war zu niedrig zum Aufrechtstehen und zu schmal zum Niedersitzen. Ich hockte deshalb mit eingebogenen, ewig zitternden Knien, und zwar, da ich zunächst wahrscheinlich niemanden sehen und immer nur im Dunkel sein wollte, zur Kiste gewendet, während sich mir hinten die Gitterstäbe ins Fleisch einschnitten. Man hält eine solche Verwahrung wilder Tiere in der allerersten Zeit für vorteilhaft, und ich kann heute nach meiner Erfahrung nicht leugnen, daß dies im menschlichen Sinn tatsächlich der Fall ist.
Daran dachte ich aber damals nicht. Ich war zum erstenmal in meinem Leben ohne Ausweg; zumindest geradeaus ging es nicht; geradeaus vor mir war die Kiste, Brett fest an Brett gefügt. Zwar war zwischen den Brettern eine durchlaufende Lücke, die ich, als ich sie zuerst entdeckte, mit dem glückseligen Heulen des Unverstandes begrüßte, aber diese Lücke reichte bei weitem nicht einmal zum Durchstecken des Schwanzes aus und war mit aller Affenkraft nicht zu verbreitern.
Ich soll, wie man mir später sagte, ungewöhnlich wenig Lärm gemacht haben, woraus man schloß, daß ich entweder bald eingehen müsse oder daß ich, falls es mir gelingt, die erste kritische Zeit zu überleben, sehr dressurfähig sein werde. Ich überlebte diese Zeit. Dumpfes Schluchzen, schmerzhaftes Flöhesuchen, müdes Lecken einer Kokosnuß, Beklopfen der Kistenwand mit dem Schädel, Zungen-Blecken, wenn mir jemand nahekam, – das waren die ersten Beschäftigungen in dem neuen Leben. In alledem aber doch nur das eine Gefühl: kein Ausweg. Ich kann natürlich das damals affenmäßig Gefühlte heute nur mit Menschenworten nachzeichnen und verzeichne es infolgedessen, aber wenn ich auch die alte Affenwahrheit nicht mehr erreichen kann, wenigstens in der Richtung meiner Schilderung liegt sie, daran ist kein Zweifel.
Ich hatte doch so viele Auswege bisher gehabt und nun keinen mehr. Ich war festgerannt. Hätte man mich angenagelt, meine Freizügigkeit wäre dadurch nicht kleiner geworden. Warum das? Kratz dir das Fleisch zwischen den Fußzehen auf, du wirst den Grund nicht finden. Drück dich hinten gegen die Gitterstange, bis sie dich fast zweiteilt, du wirst den Grund nicht finden. Ich hatte keinen Ausweg, mußte mir ihn aber verschaffen, denn ohne ihn konnte ich nicht leben. Immer an dieser Kistenwand – ich wäre unweigerlich verreckt. Aber Affen gehören bei Hagenbeck an die Kistenwand – nun, so hörte ich auf, Affe zu sein. Ein klarer, schöner Gedankengang, den ich irgendwie mit dem Bauch ausgeheckt haben muß, denn Affen denken mit dem Bauch.
Ich habe Angst, daß man nicht genau versteht, was ich unter Ausweg verstehe. Ich gebrauche das Wort in seinem gewöhnlichsten und vollsten Sinn. Ich sage absichtlich nicht Freiheit. Ich meine nicht dieses große Gefühl der Freiheit nach allen Seiten. Als Affe kannte ich es vielleicht und ich habe Menschen kennen gelernt, die sich danach sehnen. Was mich aber anlangt, verlangte ich Freiheit weder damals noch heute. Nebenbei: mit Freiheit betrügt man sich unter Menschen allzuoft. Und so wie die Freiheit zu den erhabensten Gefühlen zählt, so auch die entsprechende Täuschung zu den erhabensten. Oft habe ich in den Varietés vor meinem Auftreten irgendein Künstlerpaar oben an der Decke an Trapezen hantieren sehen. Sie schwangen sich, sie schaukelten, sie sprangen, sie schwebten einander in die Arme, einer trug den anderen an den Haaren mit dem Gebiß. »Auch das ist Menschenfreiheit«, dachte ich, »selbstherrliche Bewegung«. Du Verspottung der heiligen Natur! Kein Bau würde standhalten vor dem Gelächter des Affentums bei diesem Anblick.
Nein, Freiheit wollte ich nicht. Nur einen Ausweg; rechts, links, wohin immer; ich stellte keine anderen Forderungen; sollte der Ausweg auch nur eine Täuschung sein; die Forderung war klein, die Täuschung würde nicht größer sein. Weiterkommen, weiterkommen! Nur nicht mit aufgehobenen Armen stillestehn, angedrückt an eine Kistenwand.
Heute sehe ich klar: ohne größte innere Ruhe hätte ich nie entkommen können. Und tatsächlich verdanke ich vielleicht alles, was ich geworden bin, der Ruhe, die mich nach den ersten Tagen dort im Schiff überkam. Die Ruhe wiederum aber verdankte ich wohl den Leuten vom Schiff.
Es sind gute Menschen, trotz allem. Gerne erinnere ich mich noch heute an den Klang ihrer schweren Schritte, der damals in meinem Halbschlaf widerhallte. Sie hatten die Gewohnheit, alles äußerst langsam in Angriff zu nehmen. Wollte sich einer die Augen reiben, so hob er die Hand wie ein Hängegewicht. Ihre Scherze waren grob, aber herzlich. Ihr Lachen war immer mit einem gefährlich klingenden aber nichts bedeutenden Husten gemischt. Immer hatten sie im Mund etwas zum Ausspeien und wohin sie ausspieen war ihnen gleichgültig. Immer klagten sie, daß meine Flöhe auf sie überspringen; aber doch waren sie mir deshalb niemals ernstlich böse; sie wußten eben, daß in meinem Fell Flöhe gedeihen und daß Flöhe Springer sind; damit fanden sie sich ab. Wenn sie dienstfrei waren, setzten sich manchmal einige im Halbkreis um mich nieder; sprachen kaum, sondern gurrten einander nur zu; rauchten, auf Kisten ausgestreckt, die Pfeife; schlugen sich aufs Knie, sobald ich die geringste Bewegung machte; und hie und da nahm einer einen Stecken und kitzelte mich dort, wo es mir angenehm war. Sollte ich heute eingeladen werden, eine Fahrt auf diesem Schiffe mitzumachen, ich würde die Einladung gewiß ablehnen, aber ebenso gewiß ist, daß es nicht nur häßliche Erinnerungen sind, denen ich dort im Zwischendeck nachhängen könnte.
Die Ruhe, die ich mir im Kreise dieser Leute erwarb, hielt mich vor allem von jedem Fluchtversuch ab. Von heute aus gesehen scheint es mir, als hätte ich zumindest geahnt, daß ich einen Ausweg finden müsse, wenn ich leben wolle, daß dieser Ausweg aber nicht durch Flucht zu erreichen sei. Ich weiß nicht mehr, ob Flucht möglich war, aber ich glaube es; einem Affen sollte Flucht immer möglich sein. Mit meinen heutigen Zähnen muß ich schon beim gewöhnlichen Nüsseknacken vorsichtig sein, damals aber hätte es mir wohl im Lauf der Zeit gelingen müssen, das Türschloß durchzubeißen. Ich tat es nicht. Was wäre damit auch gewonnen gewesen?
Man hätte mich, kaum war der Kopf hinausgesteckt, wieder eingefangen und in einen noch schlimmeren Käfig gesperrt; oder ich hätte mich unbemerkt zu anderen Tieren, etwa zu den Riesenschlangen mir gegenüber flüchten können und mich in ihren Umarmungen ausgehaucht; oder es wäre mir gar gelungen, mich bis aufs Deck zu stehlen und über Bord zu springen, dann hätte ich ein Weilchen auf dem Weltmeer geschaukelt und wäre ersoffen. Verzweiflungstaten. Ich rechnete nicht so menschlich, aber unter dem Einfluß meiner Umgebung verhielt ich mich so, wie wenn ich gerechnet hätte.
Ich rechnete nicht, wohl aber beobachtete ich in aller Ruhe. Ich sah diese Menschen auf und ab gehen, immer die gleichen Gesichter, die gleichen Bewegungen, oft schien es mir, als wäre es nur einer. Dieser Mensch oder diese Menschen gingen also unbehelligt. Ein hohes Ziel dämmerte mir auf. Niemand versprach mir, daß, wenn ich so wie sie werden würde, das Gitter aufgezogen werde. Solche Versprechungen für scheinbar unmögliche Erfüllungen werden nicht gegeben. Löst man aber die Erfüllungen ein, erscheinen nachträglich auch die Versprechungen genau dort, wo man sie früher vergeblich gesucht hat. Nun war an diesen Menschen an sich nichts, was mich sehr verlockte. Wäre ich ein Anhänger jener erwähnten Freiheit, ich hätte gewiß das Weltmeer dem Ausweg vorgezogen, der sich mir im trüben Blick dieser Menschen zeigte. Jedenfalls aber beobachtete ich sie schon lange vorher, ehe ich an solche Dinge dachte, ja die angehäuften Beobachtungen drängten mich erst in die bestimmte Richtung.
Es war so leicht, die Leute nachzuahmen. Spucken konnte ich schon in den ersten Tagen. Wir spuckten einander dann gegenseitig ins Gesicht; der Unterschied war nur, daß ich mein Gesicht nachher reinleckte, sie ihres nicht. Die Pfeife rauchte ich bald wie ein Alter; drückte ich dann auch noch den Daumen in den Pfeifenkopf, jauchzte das ganze Zwischendeck; nur den Unterschied zwischen der leeren und der gestopften Pfeife verstand ich lange nicht.
Die meiste Mühe machte mir die Schnapsflasche. Der Geruch peinigte mich; ich zwang mich mit allen Kräften; aber es vergingen Wochen, ehe ich mich überwand. Diese inneren Kämpfe nahmen die Leute merkwürdigerweise ernster als irgend etwas sonst an mir. Ich unterscheide die Leute auch in meiner Erinnerung nicht, aber da war einer, der kam immer wieder, allein oder mit Kameraden, bei Tag, bei Nacht, zu den verschiedensten Stunden; stellte sich mit der Flasche vor mich hin und gab mir Unterricht. Er begriff mich nicht, er wollte das Rätsel meines Seins lösen. Er entkorkte langsam die Flasche und blickte mich dann an, um zu prüfen, ob ich verstanden habe; ich gestehe, ich sah ihm immer mit wilder, mit überstürzter Aufmerksamkeit zu; einen solchen Menschenschüler findet kein Menschenlehrer auf dem ganzen Erdenrund; nachdem die Flasche entkorkt war, hob er sie zum Mund; ich mit meinen Blicken ihm nach bis in die Gurgel; er nickt, zufrieden mit mir, und setzt die Flasche an die Lippen; ich, entzückt von allmählicher Erkenntnis, kratze mich quietschend der Länge und Breite nach, wo es sich trifft; er freut sich, setzt die Flasche an und macht einen Schluck; ich, ungeduldig und verzweifelt, ihm nachzueifern, verunreinige mich in meinem Käfig, was wieder ihm große Genugtuung macht; und nun weit die Flasche von sich streckend und im Schwung sie wieder hinaufführend, trinkt er sie, übertrieben lehrhaft zurückgebeugt, mit einem Zuge leer. Ich, ermattet von allzugroßem Verlangen, kann nicht mehr folgen und hänge schwach am Gitter, während er den theoretischen Unterricht damit beendet, daß er sich den Bauch streicht und grinst.
Nun erst beginnt die praktische Übung. Bin ich nicht schon allzu erschöpft durch das Theoretische? Wohl, allzu erschöpft. Das gehört zu meinem Schicksal. Trotzdem greife ich, so gut ich kann, nach der hingereichten Flasche; entkorke sie zitternd; mit dem Gelingen stellen sich allmählich neue Kräfte ein; ich hebe die Flasche, vom Original schon kaum zu unterscheiden; setze sie an und – und werfe sie mit Abscheu, mit Abscheu, trotzdem sie leer ist und nur noch der Geruch sie füllt, werfe sie mit Abscheu auf den Boden. Zur Trauer meines Lehrers, zur größeren Trauer meiner selbst; weder ihn, noch mich versöhne ich dadurch, daß ich auch nach dem Wegwerfen der Flasche nicht vergesse, ausgezeichnet meinen Bauch zu streichen und dabei zu grinsen.
Allzuoft nur verlief so der Unterricht. Und zur Ehre meines Lehrers: er war mir nicht böse; wohl hielt er mir manchmal die brennende Pfeife ans Fell, bis es irgendwo, wo ich nur schwer hinreichte, zu glimmen anfing, aber dann löschte er es selbst wieder mit seiner riesigen guten Hand; er war mir nicht böse, er sah ein, daß wir auf der gleichen Seite gegen die Affennatur kämpften und daß ich den schwereren Teil hatte.
Was für ein Sieg dann allerdings für ihn wie für mich, als ich eines Abends vor großem Zuschauerkreis – vielleicht war ein Fest, ein Grammophon spielte, ein Offizier erging sich zwischen den Leuten – als ich an diesem Abend, gerade unbeachtet, eine vor meinem Käfig versehentlich stehen gelassene Schnapsflasche ergriff, unter steigender Aufmerksamkeit der Gesellschaft sie schulgerecht entkorkte, an den Mund setzte und ohne Zögern, ohne Mundverziehen, als Trinker von Fach, mit rund gewälzten Augen, schwappender Kehle, wirklich und wahrhaftig leer trank; nicht mehr als Verzweifelter, sondern als Künstler die Flasche hinwarf; zwar vergaß den Bauch zu streichen; dafür aber, weil ich nicht anders konnte, weil es mich drängte, weil mir die Sinne rauschten, kurz und gut »Hallo!« ausrief, in Menschenlaut ausbrach, mit diesem Ruf in die Menschengemeinschaft sprang und ihr Echo: »Hört nur, er spricht!« wie einen Kuß auf meinem ganzen schweißtriefenden Körper fühlte.
Ich wiederhole: es verlockte mich nicht, die Menschen nachzuahmen; ich ahmte nach, weil ich einen Ausweg suchte, aus keinem anderen Grund. Auch war mit jenem Sieg noch wenig getan. Die Stimme versagte mir sofort wieder; stellte sich erst nach Monaten ein; der Widerwille gegen die Schnapsflasche kam sogar noch verstärkter. Aber meine Richtung allerdings war mir ein für allemal gegeben.
Als ich in Hamburg dem ersten Dresseur übergeben wurde, erkannte ich bald die zwei Möglichkeiten, die mir offen standen: Zoologischer Garten oder Varieté. Ich zögerte nicht. Ich sagte mir: setze alle Kraft an, um ins Varieté zu kommen; das ist der Ausweg; Zoologischer Garten ist nur ein neuer Gitterkäfig; kommst du in ihn, bist du verloren.
Und ich lernte, meine Herren. Ach, man lernt, wenn man muß; man lernt, wenn man einen Ausweg will; man lernt rücksichtslos. Man beaufsichtigt sich selbst mit der Peitsche; man zerfleischt sich beim geringsten Widerstand. Die Affennatur raste, sich überkugelnd, aus mir hinaus und weg, so daß mein erster Lehrer selbst davon fast äffisch wurde, bald den Unterricht aufgeben und in eine Heilanstalt gebracht werden mußte. Glücklicherweise kam er wieder bald hervor.
Aber ich verbrauchte viele Lehrer, ja sogar einige Lehrer gleichzeitig. Als ich meiner Fähigkeiten schon sicherer geworden war, die Öffentlichkeit meinen Fortschritten folgte, meine Zukunft zu leuchten begann, nahm ich selbst Lehrer auf, ließ sie in fünf aufeinanderfolgenden Zimmern niedersetzen und lernte bei allen zugleich, indem ich ununterbrochen aus einem Zimmer ins andere sprang.
Diese Fortschritte! Dieses Eindringen der Wissensstrahlen von allen Seiten ins erwachende Hirn! Ich leugne nicht: es beglückte mich. Ich gestehe aber auch ein: ich überschätzte es nicht, schon damals nicht, wieviel weniger heute. Durch eine Anstrengung, die sich bisher auf der Erde nicht wiederholt hat, habe ich die Durchschnittsbildung eines Europäers erreicht. Das wäre an sich vielleicht gar nichts, ist aber insofern doch etwas, als es mir aus dem Käfig half und mir diesen besonderen Ausweg, diesen Menschenausweg verschaffte. Es gibt eine ausgezeichnete deutsche Redensart: sich in die Büsche schlagen; das habe ich getan, ich habe mich in die Büsche geschlagen. Ich hatte keinen anderen Weg, immer vorausgesetzt, daß nicht die Freiheit zu wählen war.
Überblicke ich meine Entwicklung und ihr bisheriges Ziel, so klage ich weder, noch bin ich zufrieden. Die Hände in den Hosentaschen, die Weinflasche auf dem Tisch, liege ich halb, halb sitze ich im Schaukelstuhl und schaue aus dem Fenster. Kommt Besuch, empfange ich ihn, wie es sich gebührt. Mein Impresario sitzt im Vorzimmer; läute ich, kommt er und hört, was ich zu sagen habe. Am Abend ist fast immer Vorstellung, und ich habe wohl kaum mehr zu steigernde Erfolge. Komme ich spät nachts von Banketten, aus wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften, aus gemütlichem Beisammensein nach Hause, erwartet mich eine kleine halbdressierte Schimpansin und ich lasse es mir nach Affenart bei ihr wohlgehen. Bei Tag will ich sie nicht sehen; sie hat nämlich den Irrsinn des verwirrten dressierten Tieres im Blick; das erkenne nur ich und ich kann es nicht ertragen.
Im Ganzen habe ich jedenfalls erreicht, was ich erreichen wollte. Man sage nicht, es wäre der Mühe nicht wert gewesen. Im übrigen will ich keines Menschen Urteil, ich will nur Kenntnisse verbreiten, ich berichte nur, auch Ihnen, hohe Herren von der Akademie, habe ich nur berichtet.
Franz Kafka : Ein Landarzt. Kleine Erzählungen (1919)
kempis poetry magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Franz Kafka, Kafka, Franz, Kafka, Franz
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