Willem Frederik Hermans wrote at night. Not because it got better then, but because he had been procrastinating during the day.
‘What are you going to do?’
“I’m going to take the garbage bag away.”
“But we’re sleeping.”
‘I know, but I can’t do it during the day. I’ll be right back.’
I left the residence. Hiemstra was right once again, the night was significantly cooler. There he was, the horror sack, his skin sickly tense. Hopefully it had cooled down in there, under the plastic, too, although I could imagine that after weeks of stewing and simmering there was a body temperature.
Yes, the bag had got me to the point where I thought about him in those terms, during the day, when I stood at the window and saw him scalding in the pleurisy heat – but now also at night, so, in bed. He was parked, psychologically, against my braincase. It had gotten out of hand due to a flaw in the flaw of the system I use being the garbage chief.
The system is to tie up every full bag and immediately take it to the waste point, about a hundred meters away. Femke Bol would take half a minute to get there and back. Perhaps because I’m not Femke Bol, a flaw crept in. I soon slammed each bag against the house, and only when there were about three of them did I lug them to the dirt point in disgust. Fresh bags take precedence over delayed bags, write that down somewhere.
Now the flaw in the flaw that resulted in the bag we’re talking about. Look, I never lug all three delayed bags in one session, but only two. Often one on each hand, though, which apparently makes me so proud that I postpone the third until next time.
Terribly? Not necessarily. As long as you take away the two oldest bags. Seniority is the keyword. ‘A kind of fan system’, I once explained to Jet, ‘like cyclists have, but with pockets. Do you understand?’
No answer.
Anyway, this bag was once the oldest, and after skipping it twice, it had grown too old, so old that I feared woodlice had eaten the entire bottom out. That thousands would pour out teeming if you lifted the bag. And/or that rats lived in it, by now. The rat, I read aloud this week, is everywhere where people are careless with their garbage. That’s right, said the bag.
This is what I was thinking, on my bunk, and more. Or the neighbors, when they get into their cars before dawn, smell the bag. If so, I’m afraid it would be seriously at the expense of the gold in the mouth of their morning, not mine, for I, the culprit, will lie on the floor above, going crazy for a while—that too. yet.
Anyway, half past three in the morning, loose laces, in my sleep shirt. Procrastination kills, whether it’s tax forms or blanks.
With a firm grit I lifted my tormentor from the earth. The bottom was still there, and actually the amount of woodlice was not too bad, even though I had no lenses in it. I left squatting and feeling to Midas Dekkers. But it seemed like at night, like humans and dogs, they sought out their beds.
There I walked, with my dripping friend. Halfway through something came towards me, a bicycle, what was on it, I could not determine without jam jars, but it said: ‘Hello neighbor’, which I didn’t like.