{"id":26287,"date":"2017-01-02T16:12:38","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T15:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/?page_id=26287"},"modified":"2017-08-03T14:30:12","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T13:30:12","slug":"sample-translation-among-people","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/foreignrights\/authors\/mathijs-deen\/mathijs-deen-among-people\/sample-translation-among-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample translation – Among People<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mathijs Deen –\u00a0Among People<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chapter I: The Agreement<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Jan places a personal ad: \u2018Farmer\u2019s son seeks wife. Lives alone. 80 ha.\u2019 When he sees it in the Saturday paper it strikes him as odd that he wrote \u2018farmer\u2019s son\u2019 and not simply man, farmer, or agriculturalist. Still, it\u2019s there and responses are coming in. A week later he receives four letters. He reads them slowly, walking home against the wind, and before he reaches the farmyard he\u2019s rejected three of them. When he gets to the fourth (\u2018I know how it is. Phone me. Wil.\u2019) he hesitates. Jan wonders what she could mean by \u2018it\u2019. She couldn\u2019t possibly know what it\u2019s like to be a farmer\u2019s son. So it can only refer to living alone, or 80 ha.<\/p>\n

Jan calls her. She\u2019s just as brief on the phone as in her letter. Firm, too. He was meaning to ask what she meant by \u2018it\u2019, but the conversation is over before he knows what\u2019s happening. And when they\u2019re sitting at a table in the station restaurant the next day, Jan\u2019s attention is focused more on the waiter who pretends not to have seen him beckon than on the woman across from him that he doesn\u2019t dare look at.
\n\u2018I\u2019ve a feeling neither of us wants to be here,\u2019 she says after a while. \u2018Just take me back to your house. You live by the sea, don\u2019t you?\u2019
\nJan needs to give that some thought, too.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t want to go inside until she\u2019s looked from the top of the dyke. They stand side by side for a bit, staring across the water. Then she says, \u2018You know what it is with the Netherlands? There\u2019s sea everywhere, but are only a few houses where you can look out over it. There\u2019s always a dyke in front, or dunes. You can\u2019t see the water from your house either, I suppose?\u2019 Jan turns and looks at the huge blind roof of the farmhouse. \u2018No,\u2019 he says. \u2018I don\u2019t believe you can.\u2019
\n\u2018Do you like the sea?\u2019
\nIrritated now, Jan sticks his hands in his pockets. \u2018I\u2019m not sure what to say to you,\u2019 he says. \u2018Just come inside with me and I\u2019ll make something to drink. Or would you like something to eat? I\u2019ve got more than enough.\u2019<\/p>\n

Once indoors a petulance grows in Jan that he can barely keep under control. Wil would like to drink something and a bowl of soup would be fine. So Jan heads for the freezer. But halfway between kitchen and barn he stops like a fractious mule. After a brief internal consultation he goes back to the kitchen. \u2018Out of soup,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite a while before the ice breaks. They sit in the bare living room, with the sofa, the chair, the low table and the TV. On the empty walls you can see the places that were occupied by the calendar, the clock, the painted scenes of fields of flowering potatoes and the photographs of the forefathers, until his parents took them away to their new house.\u00a0 Now, packed into boxes and transported back, they lie waiting in the barn until Jan can decide what he wants to do with all those things.
\n\u2018Just look here, Jan,\u2019 Wil says. \u2018You should have a clear understanding of my starting point.\u2019 She gazes around the room for a moment and takes a deep breath. \u2018Up to now I haven\u2019t been able to find what I want in love. I\u2019ve been disappointed many times. I don\u2019t want it to happen to me again. Do you understand that, Jan?\u2019
\nJan makes no effort to understand. The contrariness in his head has driven out the initial shyness and now he\u2019s sitting bolt upright on the sofa, looking fixedly at the young woman across from him and asking himself whether he might be capable of desiring her. He searches her face for something he\u2019d want to stroke, kiss or if need be hit. But Wil has a face like a defensive rampart, with hair pulled up, a mouth full of incomprehensible words, narrowed eyes and a hard, thrusting nose. Jan stares and stares, thinking: What does she look like, dammit?
\n\u2018What did you mean by \u201cit\u201d?\u2019 he says.
\n\u2018What do you mean by what did you mean by \u201cit\u201d?\u2019
\n\u2018In your letter. I know how it is, you wrote.\u2019
\nWil thinks for a moment. \u2018Can I see the house?\u2019 she asks.
\n\u2018The house?\u2019<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Jan goes ahead of Wil, through the farmhouse. They spend a long time in the cellar, where vegetable preserves are lined up in rows under the vaulted ceiling. She asks how they were preserved and how long ago, how old the tiles on the floor are and other things to which Jan doesn\u2019t immediately know the answer. The stripped rooms upstairs don\u2019t interest her, but the large hall and the attic do. She makes sure Jan doesn\u2019t miss out even the remotest corner of the enormous farm, so that with her he returns to places he hasn\u2019t been to since he was small. On rickety staircases and in narrow passageways, where out of sheer necessity they come close to having bodily contact, he tries to feel her body heat and inhale her odour. But there\u2019s nothing except for a cool draught and eddies of odourless air as if, rather than a woman having passed by, a window has been opened. With his eyes, Jan gropes her clothes, which hide everything he is thinking about. She\u2019s wearing a scarf round her neck, a long, undisturbed woollen cardigan that hangs to her thighs, stout trousers and lace-up shoes. In his silent search for sensuality he comes upon only pleats, seams and stitching.
\nTwilight has fallen by the time they finally walk into the barn. While Jan issues short statements about the sorting machines and the tractor, she stands with her head thrown back, looking up.
\n\u2018What a huge roof. And how high,\u2019 she interrupts him. \u2018Can you see the sea from the roof?\u2019
\nJan thinks for a moment. He tries to remember the last time the thatch was replaced. He got up onto the ridgeline then. \u2018I believe you can,\u2019 he says. \u2018But I\u2019m not certain. What is it with you and the sea?\u2019
\n\u2018You live next to it, and you\u2019re unmoved by it?\u2019
\n\u2018Water and mud.\u2019
\n\u2018Then you miss half the world,\u2019 says Wil. \u2018An entire horizon with infinity, right next to your house. You need only go and stand on the dyke and your world becomes twice as big.\u2019
\nIt\u2019s as if Jan is getting to see something of Wil after all. Something inside her has sprung open and now she\u2019s looking directly at Jan. Go on about the sea, he thinks. \u2018Eighty hectares is plenty big enough. Do you know what it\u2019s like, eighty hectares?\u2019
\n\u2018Oh really? Why did you place the advert then? Because you were so busy, I suppose.\u2019
\nNow, for the first time, Jan has begun to want to do something with Wil, to pull that damn scarf off her neck for instance, or, or, or something…
\nA little later they\u2019re up on the dyke again (Wil\u2019s idea) and as night falls it becomes clear that there\u2019s a lighthouse on the horizon.
\n\u2018Which island is that?\u2019 asks Wil.
\nJan names an island and says he doesn\u2019t know for sure. Wil turns around. She prods Jan. \u2018Look.\u2019 She points to the wooden board at the top of the hipped end of the roof. \u2018Notice that the light from the lighthouse sweeps across the roof? If you had a window at the top there, you could look out across the sea from inside, couldn\u2019t you? Every night the lighthouse would shine in the curtains.\u2019
\n\u2018Someone sleeps there already,\u2019 Jan says. \u2018At the top, that\u2019s called an \u201cowl board\u201d.\u2019
\n\u2018An owl sleeps in daytime, we at night,\u2019 says Wil.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Jan and Wil drive into town. Before the last train leaves they have something to eat in the station restaurant. \u2018That was it then,\u2019 says Jan. \u2018Train in fifteen minutes.\u2019 He stretches his leg under the table and touches her knee. He looks at her face.
\n\u2018I have a proposal,\u2019 she says.
\n\u2018Tell me.\u2019
\nWil looks at her watch, gets out her diary, rummages in her bag for a pen and says, \u2018I propose that we do it three times…\u2019 She leafs through her diary.
\n\u2018What?\u2019 says Jan. But she\u2019s still looking in her diary. \u2018Do what?\u2019
\n\u2018It,\u2019 she says. \u2018You know. Are there days that are absolutely impossible for you?\u2019
\nJan says nothing and looks at her darkly.
\n\u2018Look Jan, I\u2019ve been disappointed quite a few times and love has never brought me what I wanted from it. So maybe I wanted the wrong thing. And now I don\u2019t feel like dawdling and silliness any longer. Three times, Jan, first my way, the second time your way and then we\u2019ll see. Okay?\u2019
\nJan looks and says nothing.
\n\u2018Understand what I mean? Three times means on three different occasions, on three different days. Just so you don\u2019t misunderstand me… Come on, the train\u2019s about to leave.\u2019
\nJan sits motionless, looking at Wil, and then he says, \u2018Let down your hair.\u2019
\nA little jolt runs through her, as if she\u2019s startled. She recovers quickly and points to her watch.
\n\u2018First your hair,\u2019 Jan insists.
\n\u2018Okay,\u2019 she says and she sighs. She fumbles a bit and then the raised hair hesitantly abandons its style. Jan nods.
\n\u2018Alright then,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2: Wil\u2019s Way<\/p>\n

Wil\u2019s proposal to Jan to do it three times \u2013 first her way, then his way and finally in a way yet to be determined \u2013 did not come out of thin air. She spent a lot of time thinking about it. For the last few months she\u2019s given everything a great deal of thought, unlike in the past, when she avoided all difficult thoughts. So much has changed; so much, thank God, is over and done.
\nWil has had more than the average share of bad luck. When she thinks back to her childhood she sees herself in her bedroom, lying in bed looking at the curtains. It\u2019s late in the evening, she\u2019s seven and she\u2019s frightened. She whispers that she\u2019s invisible, and when she gets up and tip-toes along the landing to the stairs and then goes very slowly down seven steps, she tries to move silently, so that no one can hear where she is or what she\u2019s doing. On each stair she stops, counts slowly to seven or names all the girls in her class as slowly as possible, or all the animals she knows. After seven steps she sits and listens to the argument below. She knows roughly what they\u2019re going to say, or what they\u2019re going to shout. She whispers it along with them, until she hears her mother stride out of the living room, pull the door to her own room shut and turn the key in the lock. Then she waits for the slam of the front door, her father starting his car, the silence that descends and the cold draught that pours from above down the stairs to the bottom, past her back and her legs. Because the cold lives upstairs where her room is, and she is the queen of the cold, her bed is of snow. Down below the argument has ceased, everything has gone silent, there\u2019s nobody any longer, it\u2019s dark. And she sits and waits.
\nWhen daylight finally breaks over her memory, she sees the empty kitchen in the early morning, the sandwich she makes herself to take to school, the door she pulls shut softly to avoid disturbing anyone.
\nOr the bay window where she\u2019s hidden behind the curtain with her knees drawn up, trying to breathe against the pane without fogging it. She also sees the garden in the endless summer holiday, where she splints broken flowers with satay sticks or catches bumble bees, puts them in jam jars, and takes them to her room to speak to them softly and stroke them with her fingertips.
\nOf course there were also the moments, now so irretrievably past, when they were together, the three of them, father, mother and she, and when she walked across the room with an evasive but smiling amiability, silently laid the table, placed the knives and forks soundlessly on the table top and looked from a distance at nothing happening, at them both sitting reading and thank god no one saying anything. Boredom is good, she thought. Boredom is quiet.<\/p>\n

In her room there was a poster of a mountain on a headland in the sea, eternal snow on the peak. It was a photo of a sleeping volcano, in the high north, in Iceland. Deep inside, she knew, was a glowing core, a smouldering pilot light down in the earth. But the mountain was sleeping, the mountain didn\u2019t stir, everything was under control, everything was quiet. The water around it was clear and very cold.<\/p>\n

In her dealings with friends, teachers, shopkeepers and later those few boys outside of school hours she maintained that same friendly distance and silence. Gradually that turned against her, when it became clear that friends of both sexes were simply taking advantage of her tendency to anticipate problems and circumvent arguments. During her documentation training she didn\u2019t complete her own assignment only but at least as many for those friends, who suddenly had all kinds of other things to do, or were just unashamedly lazy. All that extra work routinely received better marks than work she submitted under her own name.
\nWhen events were organized, she took on more of the work than others, but her own parties were only very sparsely attended. When she got a paid job, she settled for a tiny desk in a busy room and work that was below her level of capability but far too much. There were a few boys, who left her.
\nShe did what she was asked to do, with a smile but with typing errors. Even a year and a half ago when the doctor, after she lost her job and went to him with persistent skin problems, sent her to a psychologist rather than a dermatologist, she did as she was instructed. She got a new job in the small ads department of the newspaper. Once a week, on her free afternoon, she went to her therapist, to find out why things always turned against her and why she wasn\u2019t happy.
\nIt was because she had a pattern, it seemed.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The therapist made light of it. He even rubbed his hands and said they were going to work on it together. \u2018I\u2019ll give you clear tasks to do,\u2019 he said. \u2018A new one every week. And every week we\u2019re going to see how it went. Whether you succeeded.\u2019
\n\u2018Shall I write down what you tell me?\u2019 she asked.
\n\u2018Very good,\u2019 he praised. \u2018Just say if you want to write something down.\u2019 He leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. \u2018Never do anything because someone else wants you to do it,\u2019 he began. \u2018Do things because that\u2019s what you want yourself. And if you don\u2019t know what you want to do, wait until you do know. Work out what your own wishes and desires are, and then work out whether they really are your own wishes and desires. Don\u2019t get flustered. Never allow anyone to force you to reach a verdict before you\u2019re sure of your ground. As long as you show dependency, other people will take advantage. If you don\u2019t know what you want or how you want to do something, take your time. Avoid situations in which you\u2019re vulnerable or can be manipulated.\u2019
\nHe paused and watched her write. \u2018Did you get that?\u2019 he asked.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

For a year she cycled out of town every Friday, through the quiet of the suburbs, along watersides with willows and country houses, to a farmhouse where, sometimes alone with the therapist, sometimes with fellow sufferers, she discussed her life. She hoed the vegetable plot, fed the three hobby cows, cleaned out the chicken coop and on quiet days warded off the therapist\u2019s occasional advances with a smile.
\n\u2018I\u2019m here for me and me alone,\u2019 she said.
\n\u2018Very good,\u2019 he praised.<\/p>\n

Slowly she discovered a different way of being; certainly not happy but nevertheless, well, wiser, or as she put it herself, \u2018With self-knowledge and achievable goals.\u2019 The boredom, which as her therapy went on she had learned to recognize as a repository for old loneliness, disappointment and sadness, hardened into an anger that refused to budge.
\n\u2018That anger, that\u2019s your dog,\u2019 the therapist told her. \u2018You\u2019ve got it on a short leash, everyone feels that. Including me.\u2019 He laughed. \u2018It\u2019s your strength.\u2019
\nOn the way back especially, cycling home to her flat in the city past a decor of meadows, wet ditches and pollarded willows, the insight grew in her that if she didn\u2019t want to be, she need never be the victim again. She took a stand against the chill of her childhood with a vision of a house by the sea, like the sleeping volcano on the poster, far from everyone who wanted to take advantage of her, with an empty horizon, an uncomplicated man who could be handled, and the rest of the time her hands free to read, to work in the garden, and plenty of opportunity to have a good think before acting.
\nWhen she typed out Jan\u2019s personal ad and saw his address, she consulted a map of the Netherlands, reported sick and travelled the next day by train and bus to the north. It was a walk of more than an hour from the last bus stop. She walked until she could see the farmhouse from the road, in the distance, at the bottom of the dyke. All around her were deep drainage ditches, straight as arrows, and ploughed land all the way to the horizon. A fire of hope and expectation flared in her. She walked past the drive and a kilometre further on she headed straight across the field, to the dyke. She walked along the dyke, behind the farmhouse. It was fiercely cold and the farmhouse looked warm but uninviting. A sudden hailstorm that had blasted over the dyke against that high roof had left a layer of ice on its crest. Tears actually came to her eyes. \u2018This is it, here it is,\u2019 she said to herself. She tried at first to block it, but then she started to run. \u2018Let it come,\u2019 she said. And then she shouted it out for blazing joy. She had found her destination. She knew it for sure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Liz Waters<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mathijs Deen –\u00a0Among People   Chapter I: The Agreement […] Jan places a personal ad: \u2018Farmer\u2019s son seeks wife. Lives alone. 80 ha.\u2019 When he sees it in the Saturday paper it strikes him as odd that he wrote \u2018farmer\u2019s son\u2019 and not simply man, farmer, or agriculturalist. Still, it\u2019s there and responses are coming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1135,"featured_media":0,"parent":25821,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-26287","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26287\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}