Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh (1882–1961) was born in Amsterdam, the oldest of four children. After an idealistic youth, he joined the Holland–Bombay Trading Company in 1904, becoming director in 1926, suffering a nervous breakdown leading to a short hospitalization in 1927, and retiring at age fifty-five, on December 31, 1937; he married Aagje Tiket (b. 1883) in 1906 and had four daughters with her, born in 1907, 1908, 1909, and 1912. Meanwhile, as Nescio (Latin for “I don’t know”; he adopted a pseudonym so as not to jeopardize his business career, acknowledging his authorship publicly only in 1929), he wrote what is now considered perhaps the best prose in the Dutch language.

Damion Searls is a translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch and a writer in English. His own books include What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going, The Inkblots, and The Philosophy of Translation. He received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2019 for Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries.

Joseph O’Neill is the author of four novels, most recently The Dog. Born in Ireland, he spent most of his childhood in the Netherlands.

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No one has written more feelingly and more beautifully than Nescio about the madness and sadness, courage and vulnerability of youth: its big plans and vague longings, not to mention the binges, crashes, and marathon walks and talks. No one, for that matter, has written with such pristine clarity about the radiating canals of Amsterdam and the cloud-swept landscape of the Netherlands. Who was Nescio? Nescio-Latin for "I don't know"-was the pen name of J.H.F. Grönloh, the highly successful director of the Holland-Bombay Trading Company and a father of four-someone who knew more than enough about respectable maturity. Only in his spare time and under the cover of a pseudonym, as if commemorating a lost self, did he let himself go, producing over the course of his lifetime a handful of utterly original stories that contain some of the most luminous pages in modern literature. This is the first English translation of Nescio's stories.

Aus dem Klappentext

No one has written more feelingly and more beautifully than Nescio about the madness and sadness, courage and vulnerability of youth: its big plans and vague longings, not to mention the binges, crashes, and marathon walks and talks. No one, for that matter, has written with such pristine clarity about the radiating canals of Amsterdam and the cloud-swept landscape of the Netherlands.

Who was Nescio? Nescio-Latin for "I don't know"-was the pen name of J.H.F. Grönloh, the highly successful director of the Holland-Bombay Trading Company and a father of four-someone who knew more than enough about respectable maturity. Only in his spare time and under the cover of a pseudonym, as if commemorating a lost self, did he let himself go, producing over the course of his lifetime a handful of utterly original stories that contain some of the most luminous pages in modern literature.

This is the first English translation of Nescio's stories.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

AMSTERDAM STORIES

NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

Contents

Introduction..................................viiTHE FREELOADER................................3YOUNG TITANS..................................35THE WRITING ON THE WALL.......................63OUT ALONG THE IJ..............................69LITTLE POET...................................77FROM AN UNFINISHED NOVEL......................121THE VALLEY OF OBLIGATIONS.....................125THE END.......................................127INSULA DEI....................................131Notes.........................................157

Chapter One

I

Except for the man who thought Sarphatistraat was the most beautiful place in Europe, I've never met anyone more peculiar than the freeloader.

The freeloader you found lying in your bed with his dirty shoes on when you came home late; the freeloader who smoked your cigars and filled his pipe with your tobacco and burned your coal and peered into your cupboards and borrowed your money and wore out your shoes and took your coat when he had to go home in the rain. The freeloader who always ordered in someone else's name, who sat and drank jenever like a prince at the outdoor tables of the Hollandais on other people's tabs, who borrowed umbrellas and never brought them back, who heated Bavink's secondhand stove until it cracked, who wore his brother's double collars and loaned out Appi's books, and took trips abroad whenever he'd hit up his old man for money again, and wore suits he never paid for.

His first name was Japi. I never knew his last name. Bavink showed up with him when he came back from Veere.

All summer long Bavink had been painting in Zeeland and it was in Veere that he saw Japi for the first time. Japi was just sitting there. Bavink wondered once or twice: Now what kind of guy is that? No one knew. He was always sitting by the water somewhere, just sitring, hour after hour, not moving. At noon and at six he went inside for an hour, to eat; the rest of the day he sat. That lasted about three weeks, then Bavink didn't see him anymore.

A couple of days later, Bavink was coming back from Rotterdam. Every now and then Bavink needed to have a lot of people around; he tromped along the Rotterdam harbor for a few days, then he'd had enough. On board the ship from Numansdorp to de Zijpe, there was Japi again, sitting. A stiff, cold wind was blowing pretty hard that morning and there were whitecaps on the water. Every now and then spray splashed up over the railing at the bow of the ship. The glass doors on the foredeck were closed; there was no one at the bow. Just Japi, peering out over the rail and getting completely drenched. "Look at that," Bavink thought, "if it isn't that same guy." He went and stood next to him. The boat pitched and rolled. Japi sat on his little bench, held on tight to his cap, and let himself get soaked. This lasted quite a while, until he noticed that someone was standing next to him. "Nice weather we're having," Bavink said. Japi looked at Bavink with his big blue eyes and kept a tight hold on his cap. Just then a big wave splashed on board. There were drops of water on Japi's face.

"It's all right," Japi said. The front of the ship crashed down onto the water with a jolt. Someone was trying to open the glass door of the salon, but the wind held it shut. "We're making good time," Bavink said, just to have something to say. "Well," Japi said. "Time doesn't mean much to me."

The conversation stalled. Japi looked at the waves. Bavink looked at Japi's gray cap and thought: Who is this guy? Suddenly Japi said, "Look, there's a rainbow in the water." There was part of the arc of a rainbow in the water, but nothing in the sky. Japi looked at Bavink again with his big blue eyes and was talkative all of a sudden.

"Damn pretty here, if you ask me," he said. "It's too bad it can't always be like this." "In an hour we'll be there," Bavink said.

"You going to Zierikzee?" Japi asked.

"Actually, I'm continuing on to Veere tonight," Bavink said. "I see," Japi said. "You're staying there?"

"Yes, I'm staying there and aren't you the gentleman from Amsterdam who always sits by the water?" Then Japi had to laugh and he said, "I do sit by the water a lot, but 'always' is a bit much. At night I lie in bed, I need an hour to get dressed and eat breakfast, I eat lunch for half an hour and at six I have to eat again. But I do sit by the water a lot. That's why I go to Zeeland. I still let the pressure get to me sometimes. Last week I went to Amsterdam. I had to, I was out of money."

"You're from Amsterdam?" Bavink asked. "I am, thank God," Japi said. "Me too," Bavink said. "You don't paint?" Bavink asked. It was a bizarre question to just ask someone, but Bavink was still trying to figure out what kind of guy this was. "No, thank God," said Japi, "and I'm not a poet and I'm not a nature-lover and I'm not an anarchist. I am, thank God, absolutely nothing."

That definitely appealed to Bavink.

The ship pitched, crashed, rolled, and swung from side to side; the water sprayed and poured over the rail; there was no one else to be seen on deck. Up ahead was an endless expanse of water, full of whitecaps; the shadow of a large cloud was a drifting island; far in the distance a black freighter pushed on, pitching wildly. "Look," said Japi, "the City of Ghent." You could see in the distance the water spraying up on either side of the bow; water churned and foamed and frothed around the propeller. The waves leapt with sharp crests in the hollow sea, green and blue and yellow and gray and white, depending on the depth and on the reflections of the clouds, nowhere and not for one single moment the same. A little tugboat was towing a barge and two tjalks.

"No," Japi said, "I am nothing and I do nothing. Actually I do much too much. I'm busy overcoming the body. The best thing is to just sit still; going places and thinking are only for stupid people. I don't think either. It's too bad I have to eat and sleep. I'd rather spend all day and all night just sitting."

This, Bavink started to think, was an interesting case. He nodded. Japi was holding his cap on his head with his right hand the whole time, his right arm propped up on the rail. The wind was blowing so hard that Bavink had to cover his nose with his hand to be able to breathe. Japi just sat there like he was sitting at home. Then Japi said that his plan was to stay in Veere for another few weeks, until his cash ran out.

Painting seemed nice enough to him, if you could do it. He couldn't do anything, so he didn't do anything. And after all, you can't express things the way you feel them. He had just one wish: to overcome the body, to no longer feel hunger or exhaustion, cold or rain. Those were the great enemies. You always had to eat and sleep, over and over again, you had to get out of the cold, you got wet and tired or miserable. Now look at that water. It has it good: it just ripples and reflects the clouds, it's always changing and yet always stays the same too. Has no problems at all.

All this time Bavink stood bracing himself with his walking stick, leaning into the wind, and nodding at Japi. He's onto something there, Bavink thought. And he drily asked if Japi was also going on to Veere. So the conversation turned to Zierikzee, Middelburg, Arnemuiden, and all the places where they had both done plenty of walking and standing and sitting around. For Japi had in fact done quite a bit more in his life than just sit by...