R.A. Basart
The Reconciliation
The father
Summer of 2004
1
One day — Dr. Pardijs stood bent over to pick up the mail — a hand came sticking through the front door. Out of the blue a delicate, shapely hand with tapering fingers appeared, probing tentatively near his head like the tentacles of a cupreous squid. He watched, puzzled as well as amused, and for a second he considered taking the hand into his and pressing his lips onto it. He changed his mind though: were the other to retract abruptly, he (or she) might get hurt by the letterbox flap, now resting on the slender wrist.
He did not touch the hand. Instead, he rose. Wanted to arise. But failed.
In the old days, a cricked back was believed to be caused by an arrow shot by evil beings. “Cricking it” is what it’s commonly called. Doctors speak of lumbago. Dr. Pardijs was a doctor. One day they planned to go sailing, he and his wife; Juul installed herself with the cooler in the front of the small boat, while he pull-started the motor; in that same position, his back in a ninety degree angle he spent the following three days. On the couch. So that wasn’t too bad. Some people will suffer from lower back pain for a week or longer, and too often you’ll see they them increasing and prolonging the burden by stuffing themselves with poisonous chemical junk. In such a case Dr. Pardijs would prescribe Petadolor combined with Symphosan. The first drug, made from butterbur, combats cramping within the cells; the second, battling muscular and joint pain, derives its beneficial effects mainly from comfrey. Dr. Pardijs was a naturopathic doctor.
He did not succeed in arising.
His back wouldn’t stretch.
He moaned, the delicate hand froze; and as he lifted an arm, the pale-brown fingers gradually grew shorter; by the time he’d reached the lock, the copper flap clanked and the odd extremity (thought by Dr. Pardijs to belong to a burglar) had disappeared.
No sound, no receding footsteps thereafter.
He waited.
Listened.
Behind him the rattling of a bumblebee against the kitchen window, sparrows quarreling and darting to and fro privet, holly and apple tree, the bustling whir of wings; he’d just been watching it.
He waited and listened for quite some time.
Then he opened the door, daylight violently falling inward, and there, standing before him on the pavement, was his son. Blinded at first, he perceived a short dark shape, a shimmering helmet of hair, then the hand, brought to the mouth, and finally the eyes.
He looked into the lemniscate eyes of his son, whom he hadn’t seen in nearly 30 years.
“Good heavens”, the boy said, taking a step back, “you must be thinking…”
The doctor didn’t answer. He was too busy gasping for air. Grinning in pain was all he could muster.
The boy began barking behind his hand. He opened his eyes wide, wanted to speak, then collapsed forward — they resembled two politely bowing Chinese now — and coughed in a smothered manner.
He nearly choked on it.
On rising up panting, the boy displayed his mouth, his lips the kissing kind with a Cupid’s bow — exactly like his mother’s mouth. (Dr. Pardijs thought. That is, when we got married. When we got divorced, the bow had withered into a pointed protrusion resembling a turtle’s beak.)
He looked from the mouth to the eyes, and again from the eyes to the mouth that barked once more, hoarsely and high-pitched. Only then his gaze fell on a four-wheeled cart with rectangular grey bags hanging from it. Then on the outfit: red. So he was a postman — he’d never seen him before. At the same time he realized the young man standing before him, who probably deemed him a hunchback, couldn’t possibly be his son. He couldn’t be older than twenty years. If this boy looked like his son at all, it’d be the son from back then. The child that, twelve years of age, chosen for his mother and hadn’t wanted anything to do with the father whatsoever.
“I’d suggest”, Dr. Pardijs uttered with difficulty, “Drosera complex from Doctor Vogel. And tea from dry oat straw.”
The next day he received a parcel.
From A. Vogel.
Now, even though the doctor was used to receiving parcels for his work, and they were usually sent from ‘t Harde, a village on The Veluwe where “The Netherlands’ Most Wholesome Spot” is located, still postal parcels ignited within him a vague birthday-feeling, kind of a nervous thrill, a tingling in his diaphragm that — just for a moment, and very remotely — brought back the joyous cramps from his childhood.
No different this afternoon.
“Equal exchange.”
While taking the parcel with his left hand, his right offered the boy a bottle.
“Drosina syrup. For the coughing. Composed based on the Drosera Rotundifolia.”
The boy slowly nodded.
“Also known as Sundew, a carnivorous plant.”
The boy held the bottle between thumb and index finger and suspiciously turned it around and around.
Dr. Pardijs watched him meticulously.
Incomprehensible how yesterday he had taken him for his son, even for a split second.
For that mouth was the only thing actually reminding him of his son. And the high cheekbones. And that skin, of course, that lovely skin made of a smooth, matte copper.
And those eyes. Those almond-shaped eyes, rather close-set.
2
Mistaking a perfect stranger for your son… Confusing your own child with a Royal Mail delivery guy…
These things happen. Every day. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy.
There are instances known of people who were in their full senses yet took a handbag for a dog. Or used a slice of sausage as a bookmark. Or sat down on a parakeet.
These things are commonly deemed “scatterbrained”, which is a misleading term.
“Scatterbrained” suggests the mind is aimlessly moving in all directions. The opposite is true: the spirit has attached itself to one object, is fixed upon one point, and all that lies outside this center will escape attention. The horizon has narrowed into a tube. “Tubed vision” would be an option, “tunnel vision” — okay. Not “scatterbrained”, though. It’s not about lack of direction, on the contrary — it’s all about focus. “Scatterbrained” is all wrong. (“Absentminded” grazes truth.)
Who now thinks they can determine Dr. Pardijs as a member of the Order of the Calculi, member of the Pnin-like, thus afflicted with the endearing ditziness usually called scholarship — they’ve missed the mark completely.
Although being a doctor (of biology, promoted cum laude, no less, at twenty-four, thank you very much; in the same year he begot a child with his supervisor), Ini Pardijs was no ditz. Not in the least. He wasn’t clumsy or unworldly either. Neither professor, nor scatterbrained. On the contrary, he was a practical-minded man with two right hands and both feet on the ground, aware of what the world has to offer.
3
The following days the doctor’s tubed vision was pointed exclusively downward, to the square meter before him. His eyes grazed the floor. He shuffled through the house in a crouch. The house was boiling like a pot. He stopped undressing. He stank like a skunk. He stumbled around like a zombie, a bum, old and crooked, raising his fist every other step, mumbling gibberish; he’d become Salvation Army material.
Three times he watched the postman approaching, three times the Indian boy quietly passed by his house.
Then he made a decision.
Upon awaking, he thought about the capitulation of Japan, while getting dressed about the bodily ascension of Mary, and only in the hallway about his sore back. He looked himself straight in the eye.
For the first time the mirror displayed his entire head, and not as usual, and often elsewhere, just an egg without a top.
He grabbed a walking cane he’d already had as a boy, plated with tourist ornaments, and plunged into the light, onto the road, the blazing road to his surgery (a space with no room to swing a cat he rented around the corner), although he still couldn’t move any other way than like an aged bum, and although neither duty nor appointment awaited him. All of his patients were on vacation. As was his wife.
As he moved forward, probing his cane, he thought of her. Of Juul, who had remained in their cottage on the island of Terschelling; he himself had held out there for exactly one week. Like every year. And even this one week, like every year, had been an ordeal. A week of vacation! Seven days of idleness! Dr. Pardijs loathed idleness. Idleness clashed with the simple moral code instilled within him as a child (“whomever is not burning with zeal here and now, will be met with eternal hellfire in times to come”), but with his own ideas about health as well. Those were just as simple: working is good for people, doing nothing makes them ill.
Well, his own ideas…
Dr. Pardijs was a follower of A. Vogel, the Great Doctor who spoke thus: “Regular exercise from labor stimulates blood circulation and with this the entire metabolism. This keeps the body resilient and healthy.” And so: “Many an urbanite would feel much better during their holidays if they helped the farmers with the harvest, as opposed to just lying down, lying down and…”
He halted. Halted on the corner, a crossroad. Just lying down… then what? He scraped between the tiles with the iron-tipped cane. Then he carefully recoiled, muttering: “Just lying down, walking around a bit and then having a good one drinking and eating.”
Pleased, he stuck out his cane to continue his way. At that very moment however, he saw the postman appearing at the other end of the avenue.
He extended his neck as far as possible, raised his head as far and high as his tall though kinked shape allowed him to and firmly headed forward. He deviated from his route. Instead of turning right to his surgery, he went straight ahead, bending underneath the beating sun.
As a result, he bumped into an acquaintance shortly after: Gé Koridon, Doctor Gé Koridon.
“Ini!”
Koridon, Principal of Holy Heart College in Kortenhoef, lived in Nederhorst ten Berg just like the Pardijs’, but their paths rarely crossed, and only if chance had a (in this case cupreous) hand in it.
“To evaporate right now”, the doctor thought, hiding behind his cane.
Koridon evoked clashing images within him and contradictory emotions, the concurrence of which never ceased to amaze him: the dull misery of his teaching job was instantly joined by the memory of a glowing Juul, and their romance: yes, whenever he met Koridon, Dr. Pardijs felt the thrill of victory and battle at the same time.
“Ini! What brings you here?”
You are my Madeleine, the doctor thought. For the images sprung up immediately, the bugbears of his first job, and at the same time, like simultaneously projected slides, his second wife’s eyes. The childlike eyes and sweet mouth of Juul Arenth. He and Juul — they’d known each other from their studies — had formed the biology section at Holy Heart College, but section meetings soon became somewhat less formal (ah, fingertips that, hovering over the Illustrated Flora of the Netherlands by E. Heimans, H.W. Heinsius and Jac. P. Thijsse, approach other fingertips…, ah, eyes that answer never-asked questions…), yes, deliberation turned less and less formal, to which it should be added that neither prudent Ini nor proper Juul ever made the obvious pun.
What brings me here?
“I never see you round here! I bet you thought: come on, it’s vacation, let’s make a long journey!”
“I don’t like long journeys”, Dr. Pardijs muttered.
“Right you are! Why not take some pressure off! Out and about!”
“I hate relaxing. Entertainment. There’s nothing I detest more than vacation.”
“Sure, my lad! Leave the labor to the others!”
“I suffer”, Dr. Pardijs told Koridon’s shadow, “I suffer from horror vacantiae.”
The principal didn’t hear him though, he could only hear himself. “I don’t have time for these things!” he shouted, and spread his feet. He positioned himself comfortably across the sidewalk. He was a man of medium build and average traits, who didn’t look much different than any old principal. His hairdo was the only thing that stood out: one moment two cornets hanging down his forehead, pointing to each other, then — hands lifting up the cornets and modeling them onto the scalp — the shell of a beetle. Professing homosexual and Catholic.
“No such thing as vacation for a principal!” bellowed Koridon, “no time!”
He now took such a position that Dr. Pardijs couldn’t move forwards, or sideways (mobile war, Dr. Pardijs thought) and started a lengthy and widely fanned out argument. On school. First, he delineated the miserable status of the Dutch educational system, then he spoke about the upcoming innovations at Holy Heart College which he had recently “put to soak“ with the staff (“my people”).
“Put how?”
“To soak. Before school starts, I send them some stuff, interesting facts, booklets, articles. To give them a notion. That’s how I put the innovations to soak.”
Yet the other still looked at him uncomprehendingly.
Speaking with Dr. Pardijs often reminisces a hurdle race, or a game of tennis with just service: the doctor was eloquent enough and sane too, but concerning language use he believed time should keep up with him.
That’s why Koridon, stepping forward, continued: “Soaking. Softening. After which comes the massage. Of the troublemakers. Those who dig their heels in. In advance. Completely ignorant of the matter. Teachers like Broos Houben. Theu Roosen. Kas Koeman.”
He took a cigarette from his chest pocket.
“I quit”, he reported, “so I’ll only smoke half. Against stress.” He broke the cigarette in two, stuck one half into his mouth (displacement activity, Dr. Pardijs thought) and went on: “Constant stress. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining, I do my job with great pleasure. But being a principal entails constant stress.”
He shook a lighter.
“And you know why? It’s the negativity in many teachers. Especially older teachers. Those who are fed up with their jobs, who know right to the day how long they “still have to go”. Who are approaching the finish line and see more and more of what lies beyond.”
Only now did he light the half cigarette.
“Nothing, to wit. Behind that line is the nothing.”
He waved away the smoke before his eyes. “Ah, Ini, trust me: the older teacher’s resistance is fear, sheer fear… He wants to go back to the old days, when he was still young. When he was bursting with energy. And ideals. When everything was better, in his experience. But forward he’ll go, irrevocably, it can’t be helped. That’s why he hates everything smelling of progress.” Again, Koridon took a step forward. “It’s his age he is resisting, in vain.” Another step. “It‘s a sad thing. Pathetic. If it weren’t so annoying.”
“It’s the amygdala”, Dr. Pardijs mumbled, inaudible to Koridon. “Quite simple. They’ve got a large amygdala.”
As the principal had approached him so closely now he could smell the odor of excessively blow-dried hair, he took a step to the side. But there he was hit by the sun cannon — just a moment, for Koridon moved to the side with him. So he retook his former position.
This was repeated. A couple of times, Dr. Pardijs took two or three steps away from the other, who then followed him closely. And shuffling across the sidewalk at barely an arms’ length of the Doctor, Koridon continued his argument.
He spoke with enthusiasm and great conviction. So large was his display of conviction when speaking about the “New Learning” and its associated benefits, that it seemed Koridon himself was only partly (perhaps not at all) convinced of these benefits.
“Enter the new pupil”, the principal exclaimed. “The pupil who will unite within himself the Franciscan, Dominican and Jesuit!”
He grasped at his chest, took out the other half of the cigarette he’d broken in two.
“The Franciscan knows, the Dominican understands, the Jesuit knows how to explain — surely you know the expression? Well: the new pupil will be one …” (he held the piece of cigarette to his burning lighter) “… who both knows and understands and is able to explain. And what is the teacher’s new task? The new teacher just has to look on! Look on hand-rubbing. A one hundred percent win-win situation!”
He beamed at the Doctor.
“Win-win”, Dr. Pardijs whispered, “what was that? I may have misheard. Win-win situation?”
Then he went silent, startled.
His diaphragm was tingling.
Without hurrying, and without paying the least of attention to the two gentlemen, the Indonesian boy passed by.
“I should”, Dr. Pardijs stammered, “I really should…” (the postman stood still, looked over his red shoulder) “… I should go. Really.”
For more information about R.A. Basart and THE RECONCILIATION, please visit the Lebowski Agency website.
