Like a director, Thomas Heerma van Voss skilfully strings his scenes together ★★★★☆

While the world is in the grip of a deadly virus, brothers Roy and Adam travel to the Cosmodrome of Baykonur. Although their trip to Kazakhstan is extremely dangerous, they want to fulfill their childhood dream: to see a rocket launch up close. The atmosphere is ominous: Adam makes all kinds of mysterious phone calls and Roy at one point walks with an ax in his hands. He keeps wondering what would happen if he killed his brother. How it will end remains uncertain. They see the rocket take off with a huge bang: ‘There he was, together with his brother who was also motionless, on a building they were not allowed to be, surrounded by grit and fumes.’

The sinister environment, the mounting tension and the open ending are characteristic ingredients in the stories of Thomas Heerma van Voss (1990). In Passengers/stayers he collected six stories, which continue to fascinate from start to finish. The author, who already has several novels, essay and short story collections to his name, knows how to quickly increase the tension. Subtle clues give the reader the feeling that there is danger in the air. You can’t help but eagerly read through how it ends.

outsiders

The main characters of Passengers/stayers are usually outsiders, who are uncomfortable in a new environment or on the road. Take the story ‘I can explain everything’. Bruno Pikula is a fired factory worker who goes to Amsterdam by train. He carries a gym bag with a knife, a bottle of drain cleaner and aluminum foil wrapped cherry tomatoes and cucumber pieces. He tells all kinds of details from his life, such as the fact that he wrote a provocative profile paper about the positive sides of Hitler in high school.

Gradually it appears that Bruno has been arrested for an attack he committed during the annual Remembrance Day on Dam Square in Amsterdam. He gives an incoherent statement during an interrogation. The confused maelstrom of thoughts comes to a halt when he looks back at the moment when all the people fled the Dam in panic: ‘and for a moment my head became completely silent, at last’.

All stories end with such a still, a still film image. This also applies to the opening story ‘The Beginning’, in which the first person gets possession of the friend album of his moved Asian girl upstairs. He studies all the boys and girls from there and one day follows Johannes and his mother. The boy looks straight at him. At that point, the narration stops ‘as if something important could happen here any moment, something that could finally set everything in motion’. Heerma van Voss acts as a director, who skilfully strings the scenes together.

open endings

But he can also suddenly stop the film. In ‘Bowling in Philadelphia’ – this story previously appeared in an independent issue – Victor visits his friend Jacob in Philadelphia. Victor struggles with his relationship because his girlfriend has cheated on him several times. He mirrors himself to the apparently perfect, hard-working couple Jacob and Anne. The story takes a surprising turn, as a result of which the two friends end up at a bowling alley in Utrecht. There they curse their unfortunate existence, while the bowling balls whiz across the lane. They keep throwing and throwing because they don’t want to go home. But there is hope: a new world awaits outside. The last scene, where time is stopped, is the best.

The open endings carry promise and evoke expectations, to name the titles of two other stories. In ‘The Promise’, a disabled director makes her dreams come true, and in ‘Expectations’, a mother trapped in a very unhappy marriage places all her hopes on her son.

Despite the ominous atmosphere and isolation of the main characters, there is something encouraging about the stories. Searching for meaning, they face an uncertain future and new possibilities open up. Heerma van Voss invariably stops time at this crossroads of roads. But when the roll of film fast-forwards, it can go either way. The thematic cohesion, the surprising changes of perspective and the open endings make the Passengers/stayers into a very successful collection.