{"id":36497,"date":"2019-10-18T13:58:20","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T11:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/?page_id=36497"},"modified":"2019-10-18T13:58:20","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T11:58:20","slug":"sample-translation-time-enough","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/foreignrights\/authors\/ronald-giphart\/ronald-giphart-time-enough\/sample-translation-time-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample translation – Time Enough<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ronald Giphart – Time Enough<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

pp. 32-46<\/p>\n

Half a mile further, Jonas Valentijn and Berend Moorman met in the kitchen of a girls\u2019 dorm on the Kromme Nieuwegracht. They were not acquainted, but that was only a matter of logistics: they\u2019d simply never crossed paths. Berend sat smoking; Jonas, his stomach rumbling, came into the kitchen to see if there was any grub to be had.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hey, man,\u2019 he said, addressing him as though they were old friends.<\/p>\n

Berend\u2019s reply was not overly jovial. \u2018Hey\u2019.<\/p>\n

An outsider might have assumed they had been out on the town together the previous night. Two guys in what looked like a deserted girls\u2019 dormitory. Berend motioned that there would be a package of bread somewhere amid the dirty pans, plates and glasses strewn over the counter.<\/p>\n

\u2018How first about I bum one of those off you,\u2019 Jonas said. A cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, Berend tossed him his pack of Marlboros. Jonas took a lighter from the table and sucked the flame into a ciggy, then exhaled with theatrical relish. Berend asked if he was the actor he had heard screaming on the roof that night.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sounds like something I might\u2019ve done,\u2019 Jonas said. \u2018Sorry.\u2019<\/p>\n

Bear waved it off.<\/p>\n

There was a short silence, during which Jonas rifled through a few cupboards in search of some breakfast.<\/p>\n

\u2018My grandma\u2019s senile,\u2019 he said, his back to Berend. \u2018Whenever I go visit her, she looks at me and says, \u201cSo which one do you belong to?\u201d Then I say my father\u2019s name. If she\u2019s having a good day she knows who that is, otherwise she asks: \u201cAnd which one does he<\/em> belong to?\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

Berend smiled and raised his eyebrows.<\/p>\n

\u2018What I mean is: which one do you belong to? Here, in this house?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Michelle.\u2019<\/p>\n

Jonas nodded. He had passed her on the stairs.<\/p>\n

Bear continued: \u2018Until this morning, anyway. We broke up.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Damn, guy.\u2019<\/p>\n

Bear stubbed out his cigarette in the overfull ashtray. \u2018The flame was extinguished before it was ignited.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Did she say that?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Nah.\u2019<\/p>\n

Jonas nodded.<\/p>\n

\u2018She wanted to give it another try, but I didn\u2019t see the point. We diplomatically decided that we made the decision together.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018She left the house in a state of distress,\u2019 Jonas said with the unemotional tone of a news anchor. And then, in his normal voice: \u2018I saw her storm down the stairs.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Yeah, that was her.\u2019<\/p>\n

Again, a brief silence.<\/p>\n

\u2018So do you feel like shit?\u2019 Jonas asked. \u2018To be honest, you look like you feel like shit.\u2019<\/p>\n

Bear said nothing. He was touched by the remark of this guy he didn\u2019t know, and Jonas, for his part, was moved by the silent suffering in the eyes of this hulk sitting there smoking on a shabby kitchen chair in even shabbier kitchen. They had no idea that this question and Berend\u2019s look at that moment forged something that would be unbreakable for thirty years.<\/p>\n

\u2018Let\u2019s go have a drink,\u2019 said Jonas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u0489<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the late 1970s Flip Broeder\u2014a not insignificant supporting actor in the story of our brewery\u2014had begun four different university majors and did not finish a single one. Ten years later he was still registered as a student, with the intention of remaining so until his death. Nowadays new students were subject to a rule that stipulated a maximum number of years they were allowed to wander around the university, but in Flip\u2019s day you could stay as long as you liked. He was fond of the sobriquet \u2018Eternal Student\u2019, even though he had not opened a textbook in years and had almost forgotten which was his last major\u2014at least, he pretended to, when he played on it.<\/p>\n

Flip\u2019s regular study hall had been caf\u00e9 De Nagel, a place where it was cool in the summer and cozily warm when the furies of winter ravaged solitary souls. He felt at home there, so when the neighborhood bar fell on hard times during the recession of the early 80s and was unexpectedly put up for sale, he worried that his beloved refuge would soon become the umpteenth employment bureau. Friends, family and his parents chipped in, and he managed to scrape together the fifteen thousand guilders needed to take over the bar\u2019s contents, goodwill and name. He installed his then-girlfriend Mathilde behind the bar, which was a stroke of genius, because with her at the beer tap, De Nagel flourished.<\/p>\n

Flip apparently had the knack: within a year he purchased, on a whim, a second bar, and two years later a third and a fourth. He had no long-term plans, did not subscribe to a \u2018caf\u00e9 concept\u2019; his motivation was purely to rescue local pubs from extinction, because these were much more than just places that served alcohol. His only rule was that bar personnel should be the type that patrons could fall in love with. His philosophy was: \u2018Everybody should have a secret crush on a bartender or barmaid. Always good for business.\u2019 Mathilde\u2019s leaving him a few years later for a man who had fallen for her at De Nagel was, he called (through his tears) a \u2018commercial setback\u2019.<\/p>\n

In 1988 Flip bought an ancient fabric shop on the Oudegracht after the city council had given him a full liquor license for the premises. The local government was keen to revitalize the downtown area, and Flip was only too happy to oblige. It was the first time he started a business from scratch, and here, too, he had the gift of foresight. He called his caf\u00e9 De Sidonia, an homage to the 93-year-old proprietress of the sewing shop that had previously occupied the building. When the still-robust three-time widow saw the bar emerge on the spot where she had spent nearly sixty years selling ribbons, fabric swatches and zippers, she blurted out: \u2018I\u2019ll be damned, I should\u2019ve thought of this myself. All that stupid yarn.\u2019<\/p>\n

Flip invited her to officiate at the opening, and the old lady stayed perched on a barstool until closing time. Guru Houckama, the last of our as-yet-unformed group, was tending bar. Their age difference was twenty-three years, but this did not keep Miss Sidonia from heartily flirting with the young bartender. She took his strange first name for granted. He was actually called Gregor. When they were children, his elder brother Raymond had bastardized it to \u2018Guru\u2019, and the nickname stuck. Young Gregor looked it up in the dictionary and the meaning satisfied him. In high school he would use it as a pen name for his columns in the school newspaper, and when he went to study philosophy in Utrecht, the name went with him. There were people who did not know what his real name was.<\/p>\n

Caf\u00e9 De Sidonia became a magnet for admirers of the bar staff and their hangers-on. Compared to caf\u00e9 De Nagel\u2014where the interior looked as though it for years had been marinated in blunted desires and drowned heartache\u2014De Sidonia was a sight snappier. Flip had single-handedly installed a five-meter-long aquarium under the bar, which sent sparkles of light through the caf\u00e9 all evening long. The goldfish did not seem to mind that above their heads, people drank, smoked and shouted; rarely did one float to the surface belly-up.<\/p>\n

Even though he had built the joint himself, it wasn\u2019t a place Flip frequented. The clientele was too young, to studentish, too alternative. When the bar became a permanent student hangout, he turned over the management to Gregor so he could focus on his other caf\u00e9s. Guru was not happy with this responsibility, but a healthy pay raise and a growing disenchantment with his studies tipped the balance in favor of the bar. His father disagreed, and challenged his son: \u2018Do you want to be a bartender who once studied philosophy, or a philosopher who once tended bar?\u2019 It was a question Gregor should have given some serious thought, but he did not have the time. He made an intuitive decision and became a professional beer-tapper.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the Friday that the Oudegracht\u2014thanks to the Yugoslavian criminal D\u00fcran Stojanovi\u0107\u2014would be entirely drained, Guru\u2019s shift started at eight in the morning. The bar opened early for students, workgroups, women shoppers, nightshifters not yet ready to hit the sack, and city workers who, despite the early hour, felt like a shot of jenever. Because of the canal drainage works, De Sidonia was busier than usual during the day, since the bar had a good view of the medieval trench as it gradually emptied. In the afternoon a group of archaeologists took over the bar, using it as their base of operations to divvy up the tasks. It gave the place a pleasant bustle, and Gregor was not bothered by the mud the researchers dragged in on their boots, muck that had been lying at the bottom of the canal for a thousand years.<\/p>\n

Jonas, who the previous night had sat at the bar with a bevy of hoarse female students until after closing time, came in around mid-afternoon with a large fellow that Gregor had seen in De Sidonia often enough, but who did not really belong to the regular crowd. There were between fifty and a hundred regulars who came to De Sidonia, maybe not every day, but at least once a week. Some of them studied the same thing, some had the same part-time job, some lived in the same neighborhood, some had the same dealer, but for most of them, the bar itself was their common ground. Students, locals, former students or those still leading the student life.<\/p>\n

Evenings followed a certain playbook: during the day the patrons were either installed in a classroom, lay in bed, or worked in a shop or office; in the course of the day they made their way to De Sidonia, where they talked, lounged, drank, ate, smoked pot (outside), and mostly eyed the place. Then various small groups would form, people would get chatting, stories were told or got made up on the spot; sometimes someone was looking for a fight, but mostly for friendship, lust, and love. Without any stage directions, De Sidonia was a nightly setting for anecdotes, running gags that sometimes went on for months, a web of characters and intrigues. The evenings were linked together like a garland; new evenings, never-ending evenings. At De Sidonia there was an addictive camaraderie and predictable unpredictability: the regulars knew something memorable would always happen, but never quite what. And the next night all over again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u0489<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On Friday evening, October 20, 1989 we stood outside, on the bridge close to the bar, in groups of varying makeup, looking at the drained canal and the people around it. The mood was agreeable, there were girls there too, every so often a tray of beer got brought out and the sounds of the city reverberated softly against the canal walls. But as the evening progressed, the temperature dropped. The warmth of the De Sidonia\u2019s crowd beckoned, while others along the canal shoved off for somewhere else. Something kept us together, until we were left with the six of us.<\/p>\n

Jonas the actor.<\/p>\n

Lucien the body-slicer.<\/p>\n

Mike the draft dodger.<\/p>\n

Berend the bear.<\/p>\n

The last (for now) Cola.<\/p>\n

A guru named Gregor.<\/p>\n

Why it was that night and not another, why that troupe and not six arbitrary others: the chance that it could have turned out completely differently was infinitely greater than that our \u2018sextumvirate\u2019 would be created that night\u2014our accidental sextet, the unspoken, unplanned and apparently random group that was as yet hardly a group.<\/p>\n

We stood together and drank beer, and, later, swigs of jenever from a bottle Gregor brought out from De Sidonia. We watched as nighthawks\u2014despite the prohibition from patrolling policemen\u2014clambered down the Oudegracht wall into the mud to dredge through what had been inaccessible for ten centuries. That evening in October went down in our personal history as \u2018the night of the canal bed\u2019. Our friendship began with the stinking, centuries-old muck of thousands of fellow city folk and ancestors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2019<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thirty years later, the world rushes past. Past! Past! We have stopped at the enormous Medenbach rest area along a German highway and are parked fraternally close together in a deserted corner of a huge parking lot, looking at the asphalt and listening to the Doppler effect, the high-pitched screech of oncoming traffic versus the lower-pitched grumble as it recedes into the distance. How\u2019s that for a metaphor: the future screeches, the past grumbles. It is the first muggy spring day of the year, which, according to Jonas, is quite a contrast with our impending malheur<\/em>. The word \u2018malheur\u2019 appears in his most recent play, so now he regularly uses it himself.<\/p>\n

Our destination is Lessebach, about a hundred kilometers further; this parking lot is the regular foraging spot in the woods. Lucien has brought elaborate sandwiches, and just to be on the safe side he picked up some greasy German snacks at the gas station further up. In the old days we\u2019d have travelled together, but now, for the first time, we\u2019re each in our own car. Back in the day, we would cram into our rickety van: Berend at the wheel, a stream of whisky that went from mouth to mouth, Cola buried in a collection of poetry, Mike and Berend debating countless subjects, Jonas with a guitar in his lap and Lucien in back on a mattress, catching up on sleep after a mattressless night shift.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of our friendship there was, of course, a kind of exchangeability. It is a romantic idea to think that friendship has nothing to do with age or background, but in the real world, people become friends because they are of a similar ilk, are about the same age, and live close by. We satisfied these three criteria. As time goes by, we have become less similar.<\/p>\n

These days, travelling together was impossible to arrange, which must too be undoubtedly symbolic. Dammit, our beer brewery\u2014according to Het Financieele Dagblad<\/em> \u2018the biggest microbrewery or smallest megabrewery in the Netherlands\u2019\u2014hasn\u2019t even been wrenched out of our hands yet, and everything has changed. Berend is the only one who drove directly from Utrecht today; Lucien started in Groningen (where he\u2014because not everything<\/em> changes\u2014had spent all night in an operating room in the university medical center), Jonas had a tryout in Antwerp last night and stayed overnight in the theater company\u2019s guest house, and Cola made the biggest detour: the day before yesterday he drove to the Alsace so that his father could put his signature on powers of attorney and contracts this morning, and give Cola got two magnums of Bourgogne for the coming weekend. He triumphantly set the oversized cardboard box on a Rastst\u00e4tte<\/em> picnic table.<\/p>\n

\u2018Present from the old man,\u2019 he said. \u2018They were in his wine cellar, with ten thousand other bottles. He\u2019s worried we\u2019ll get thirsty.\u2019<\/p>\n

The rest of us nod and whistle. Jonas takes one of the bottles and holds up the label to Lucien, who\u2019s got more know-how than he in such matters. Lucien inspects the label and nods.<\/p>\n

\u2018Shall we open one?\u2019 says Jonas, and he goes over to his car to fetch a corkscrew. He shouts across the parking lot: \u2018We have to drink something<\/em>, after all…\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I dunno,\u2019 Lucien says. \u2018I\u2019ve hardly slept. If I start boozing now, I\u2019ll end up in a hospital myself.\u2019<\/p>\n

Chewing on a piece of French bread, Berend asks Lucien: \u2018Isn\u2019t this the place where you once…?\u2019<\/p>\n

Bear knows the answer, but asks anyway. Cola and Jonas chuckle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once, twenty-two years ago. The first time we drove to Cola\u2019s family\u2019s hunting ground must have been in \u201997, right? We could have been in the cabin four hours earlier if one of us\u2014let\u2019s say Lucien\u2014hadn\u2019t screwed up. We only found out when were a few kilometers from this very same rest area and the van started shaking and stalling. Then, too, the Mercerdeses tore past you at 180 kph. There was a plenty wrong with our van, so it didn\u2019t surprise us that it broke down along the way. On the shoulder of the road we tried in vain to coax our jalopy back to life, and eventually we managed to call in German roadside assistance via one of those emergency roadside call boxes. An hour later a heavy-set man showed up, and within twenty seconds he had the problem sussed out. \u2018Haben Sie vielleicht Benzin statt Diesel getankt?<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n

This became our stock phrase. For decades we would say Did you perhaps fill up with gas instead of diesel?<\/em> to one another when anything went wrong. Years later after the incident, we brewed a fifty-liter keg of beer for Lucien\u2019s fortieth birthday and called it \u2018Benzin im Diesel\u2019.<\/p>\n

When Lucien realized he had filled up with the wrong fuel, an electric shock raced through his torso, a tingling in his fingers, a dizziness in his head. Benzin im Dieselmotor<\/em>. This was the kind of blunder that could cost us hundreds of guilders, and we were already in dire straits because we had had to scrape together fifty thousand.<\/p>\n

That night\u2014it was during his residency\u2014Lucien was on duty at the hospital emergency room. A man had come in with an extreme form of hay fever\u2014a drag for the patient, but not life-threatening. The duty specialist did not think it necessary to go to the hospital in the middle of the night, and Lucian, as duty intern, left the treatment over to his assistant, who collected medicine from the night pharmacy that did more harm than good, sending the patient into anaphylactic shock and even requiring reanimation. Lucien got read the riot act, even though technically the incident wasn\u2019t his responsibility. So when, some eight hours later, his friends took him to task because of the fuel mix-up, something in him snapped. And it wasn\u2019t just the patient or that damned gasoline, but also some long-brewing hassles with our beer business. Angry and full of self-recrimination, Lucien disappeared into the woods.<\/p>\n

After a quarter of an hour, we went looking for him. He sat leaning against a fallen tree, lethargically smoking a cigarette.<\/p>\n

\u2018You okay, man?\u2019 Cola asked.<\/p>\n

\u2018I let a guy die last night,\u2019 Lucien muttered. \u2018Well… almost.\u2019<\/p>\n

Cola sat down next to him while the others walked back to the Stra\u00dfenrand Mechaniker<\/em>. He took a cigarette out of Lucien\u2019s pack, although he had officially quit, what with a baby on the way.<\/p>\n

\u2018You shouldn\u2019t have insisted on becoming a doctor.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018And now we\u2019re stuck in der Mitte von fuckin\u2019 Nirgendwo<\/em> because of me.\u2019<\/p>\n

That later became a standard expression, too. In der Mitte von fuckin\u2019 Nirgendwo.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cola told him the mechanic was pumping out the tank. It was an old engine, which made the repairs a good deal easier. The mechanic said it would all work out. Lucien shrugged his shoulders.<\/p>\n

\u2018And we\u2019re going bankrupt,\u2019 he said, and then fell silent.<\/p>\n

\u2018Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration, too,\u2019 Lucien says. \u2018We were on the threshold of our brewery\u2019s big breakthrough.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By now, the mistakenly fueled diesel has become one of our classic stories. In recent years a modest portion of our history together has been recorded in interviews, television items and magazine features. The story is always the same: six friends started up a small beer brewery which grew into a large one. Perhaps that is the essence of our friendship. One question that keeps getting asked is: did you start a brewery together because you were friends, or are you friends because of the brewery? That was a legitimate question, but one that even after thirty years we\u2019re really not able to answer. And after next week, the question will be superfluous.<\/p>\n

When, a few years after we set up our basement brewery, we had to submit our first financial year-end report to the tax people, we asked a poet we knew from the caf\u00e9 to compose a \u2018group portrait in words\u2019 about us, a poem we could place on the front cover. Actually this was a sneaky way of sliding some money his way without him realizing it. It was the first time anyone had written about us. Later, we had his words painted in calligraphy on the walls of our second brewery, in an industrial zone outside Utrecht:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

but not yet<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Did I ever tell you what I thought, the first time<\/em><\/p>\n

I saw you? I thought: everything\u2019ll vanish, you and me<\/em><\/p>\n

and this caf\u00e9, our children that we don\u2019t even have yet,<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

a trail of mirror images through time, the stars<\/em><\/p>\n

above, the shine of the sky in the canal<\/em><\/p>\n

but now all is here and full and busy and fine and warm.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

We know this city, it\u2019s a light-trap,<\/em><\/p>\n

We know who lay sleeping behind a hundred windows<\/em><\/p>\n

when we went. We save their faces,<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

names but they didn\u2019t belong to you or to me because we<\/em><\/p>\n

still had to find each other. This all disappeared<\/em><\/p>\n

one day, but not yet. Is what I thought. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since then, verses by this promising young poet\u2014now the father of three children and winner of various literary prizes\u2014have adorned the cover of every one of our company\u2019s annual reports. Everyone wants his or her life to be part of a bigger story, of a plan, divine or not, that gives meaning to everything and makes life worth living. That was and is true for our sextumvirate. We are programmed\u2014in Mike\u2019s words\u2014\u2018to see everything that happens around us in relation to ourselves, and to regard our vicissitudes as a centripetal force around which the universe turns, no matter how absurd and arrogant that notion is.\u2019<\/p>\n

The story of our six-man enterprise is absolutely not a heroic epos, although at times one has been made of us. In fact, our story\u2014which appealed to some in the outside world, especially when we achieved some success, and even more when we almost fell flat on our face, only to clamber back out of the smoldering mess\u2014is nothing more than an arbitrary sum total of thousands of small and, in the context of eternity, trivial events and anecdotes of six pretty normal men, each of whom is a hue in our group portrait, the story that has formed us these thirty years.<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s one thing I don\u2019t<\/em> want,\u2019 Cola says: \u2018for this to be a road trip like in one of those buddy-buddy movies, where hard knocks force old friends to reassess their friendship and suddenly come to profound realizations.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re not going to reassess anything,\u2019 Lucien says. \u2018It\u2019s just a weekend of R&R. No hassles. No profound realizations. Drink a little, hike a little, smoke a little weed, sell the business.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018So what do we toast to?\u2019 Jonas asks, once he\u2019s managed to pry open one of the magnums. He has got out the plastic beer glasses with our brewery\u2019s logo and starts filling them with the expensive Bourgogne.<\/p>\n

\u2018To the end!\u2019 says Berend, raising his glass.<\/p>\n

To the end. But not yet.<\/p>\n

– Translation by Jonathan Reeder<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ronald Giphart – Time Enough   pp. 32-46 Half a mile further, Jonas Valentijn and Berend Moorman met in the kitchen of a girls\u2019 dorm on the Kromme Nieuwegracht. They were not acquainted, but that was only a matter of logistics: they\u2019d simply never crossed paths. Berend sat smoking; Jonas, his stomach rumbling, came into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1135,"featured_media":0,"parent":36261,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-36497","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36497","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=36497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36497\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}