listened, and then sat down again and said that we didnât get it either, and we never would, he himself didnât get it, and really we were not much better than everyone else, and I think he was very nearly right about that.
No, we didnât actually do anything. We did our work at the office, not all that well, for bosses we despisedâexcept Bavink and Hoyer, who had no bosses, and who didnât understand why we went in to see ours every day.
But we were waiting. For what? We never knew. Bekker said: âFor the Kingdom of God.â At least thatâs what he said once, without explaining any further. Bavink always talked about âthe end that is also a new beginning.â We knew exactly what he meant and said nothing more about it.
II
That summer we met almost every night at Keesâs attic. Kees had decided he needed a âplaceâ too. His place was the biggest and the easiest for all of us to get to. The neighbors didnât like everybody going up and down the stairs every night. Keesâs father didnât see the point of the whole thing. Now Keesâs father greets me very politely and calls me âMister Koekebakker,â because heâs seen my name in the Handelsblad.
Bekker told Kees how he had to decorate it. They bought cheap wallpaper with a little flower pattern for three cents a roll and then glued it to the wall reversed so that the plain green backing faced out. Bekker wrote out a proverb in calligraphy and stuck it to the wall next to the door: â Jâai attendu le Seigneur avec une grande patience, enfin il sâest abaissé jusquâ à moi. â *
I donât know anymore where he got that from. Kees couldnât read it. But Kees did contribute something, he made a shovel and Bekker managed to attach it to the wall pointing at the proverb. It wasnât clear at first what it was supposed to mean, but later it turned out that Bekker wanted to go live on the heath someday and work a little piece of land, and never have to go back to the office. Bavink thought that was a good idea but was afraid Lien wouldnât agree, and Hoyer preferred to hang around in bars.
Then we sat there and tore everything to pieces. Or almost everything. I remember that Zola and Jaap Maris came out more or less unscathed, maybe one or two others. Bekker read to us from Dante, he knew Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs and the Book of Job by heart. It was very impressive. Not much of the outside world made it into Keesâs attic. The only window was almost shoulder-height off the floor; when you sat at the table, you couldnât see much more than a sliver of sky, the color slowly draining out of it, and a few stars when it was dark out.
Paint? Who still knew how to paint nowadays, to hear Bavink tell it! You could palm anything off on people today, literally anything. I should paint a picture myselfâhe was talking about me, Koekebakker. He would tell me what to do. âPaint two horizontal stripes, one on top of the other, same width, one blue and one gold, and then put a round gold bit in the middle of the blue stripe. Weâll write in the catalog #666 : The Thought, oil on canvas . And weâll submit it under my name: Johannes Bavink, Second Jan Steenstraat, number soand-so, and weâll price it at eight hundred guilders. Then you can just sit back and see everything they come up with. Theyâll discover all sorts of things in there that you didnât have the slightest idea of.â
Bavink was still very young back then. Later on, Lien came over too sometimes and made tea. One time, she scrubbed the floor and dusted everything off, but that was very unpleasant. It caused some embarrassment for Kees when she came over, because his old man had definite misgivings about the young lady, and Bavink was never the way we liked him when Lien was around. He was always giving her little squeezes and pinches. It was annoying.
Luckily
No, we didnât actually do anything. We did our work at the office, not all that well, for bosses we despisedâexcept Bavink and Hoyer, who had no bosses, and who didnât understand why we went in to see ours every day.
But we were waiting. For what? We never knew. Bekker said: âFor the Kingdom of God.â At least thatâs what he said once, without explaining any further. Bavink always talked about âthe end that is also a new beginning.â We knew exactly what he meant and said nothing more about it.
II
That summer we met almost every night at Keesâs attic. Kees had decided he needed a âplaceâ too. His place was the biggest and the easiest for all of us to get to. The neighbors didnât like everybody going up and down the stairs every night. Keesâs father didnât see the point of the whole thing. Now Keesâs father greets me very politely and calls me âMister Koekebakker,â because heâs seen my name in the Handelsblad.
Bekker told Kees how he had to decorate it. They bought cheap wallpaper with a little flower pattern for three cents a roll and then glued it to the wall reversed so that the plain green backing faced out. Bekker wrote out a proverb in calligraphy and stuck it to the wall next to the door: â Jâai attendu le Seigneur avec une grande patience, enfin il sâest abaissé jusquâ à moi. â *
I donât know anymore where he got that from. Kees couldnât read it. But Kees did contribute something, he made a shovel and Bekker managed to attach it to the wall pointing at the proverb. It wasnât clear at first what it was supposed to mean, but later it turned out that Bekker wanted to go live on the heath someday and work a little piece of land, and never have to go back to the office. Bavink thought that was a good idea but was afraid Lien wouldnât agree, and Hoyer preferred to hang around in bars.
Then we sat there and tore everything to pieces. Or almost everything. I remember that Zola and Jaap Maris came out more or less unscathed, maybe one or two others. Bekker read to us from Dante, he knew Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs and the Book of Job by heart. It was very impressive. Not much of the outside world made it into Keesâs attic. The only window was almost shoulder-height off the floor; when you sat at the table, you couldnât see much more than a sliver of sky, the color slowly draining out of it, and a few stars when it was dark out.
Paint? Who still knew how to paint nowadays, to hear Bavink tell it! You could palm anything off on people today, literally anything. I should paint a picture myselfâhe was talking about me, Koekebakker. He would tell me what to do. âPaint two horizontal stripes, one on top of the other, same width, one blue and one gold, and then put a round gold bit in the middle of the blue stripe. Weâll write in the catalog #666 : The Thought, oil on canvas . And weâll submit it under my name: Johannes Bavink, Second Jan Steenstraat, number soand-so, and weâll price it at eight hundred guilders. Then you can just sit back and see everything they come up with. Theyâll discover all sorts of things in there that you didnât have the slightest idea of.â
Bavink was still very young back then. Later on, Lien came over too sometimes and made tea. One time, she scrubbed the floor and dusted everything off, but that was very unpleasant. It caused some embarrassment for Kees when she came over, because his old man had definite misgivings about the young lady, and Bavink was never the way we liked him when Lien was around. He was always giving her little squeezes and pinches. It was annoying.
Luckily
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