At least once a year I think of the pediatrician Dr. Israels, who practiced in the Haringvlietstraat in Amsterdam. For inexplicable reasons, I was terrified of Dr. Israëls, so one day I found myself having to call his wife, who was also his doctor’s assistant, “witch” or “old witch.” I must have been four. My mother hated it, perhaps because she had a crush on Dr. Israëls.
The town of Salem, north of Boston, was the site of a number of infamous witch trials in the late 17th century. Today the town is completely dominated by the witch. Witch industry is also tourist industry. It was probably inevitable that it was precisely there that I thought of Dr. Israëls and his wife. I could also have thought of Sigrid Kaag, but I never called him a witch.
While Picasso has claimed it took him a lifetime to paint as a child, chasing the four-year-old in you doesn’t guarantee great achievement.
It is not the desire for love but the desire for enmity that drives many adults. Presumably because love often disappoints, read the Bible. The enemy is recognized by the fact that he rarely disappoints. Hence the German poet Friedrich Hebbel in his stage adaptation of the book of the Bible Judith Holofernes says: ‘If only I had an enemy, only one.’
In Salem, teenagers dressed up as ‘witches’, at least what they thought witches looked like. They seemed to crave not for enemies but for acceptance. Identification with the witch as a rescue from loneliness. You can identify with Kafka, or the witch.
Also many witch museums in Salem. Again and again my thoughts drifted to Dr. Israëls, my mother, his wife. A small triangle in which I was allowed to loudly figure.