While the ice wind blows over the Twente Canal Delden (7300 inhabitants, no village, city rights since 1333) quietly added. Some snow has stuck to the roof of a blue book house, but the structure is so robust that the books are sheltered inside. Good books, by the way: Binet, Houellebecq, Koch. And in a corner The surprisea collection of stories by Belcampo (1902-1990) who grew up as the son of a notary in Rijssen (15 kilometers away, city rights since 1243).
The cover features – surprise – Georgina Verbaan and Jeroen van Koningsbrugge. A film edition, made in 2015 when Mike van Diem filmed the title story. This starts off wonderfully with an awkward scene between a wealthy young man and his housekeeper, in which the latter reproaches her boss for never having lifted a finger on the handle of her bedroom door in years of living under the same roof; let alone her body. She adds action to the complaint about his lack of inappropriate behavior and resigns.
The listless man realizes that things cannot continue like this and decides to end his life. That turns out to be more difficult than expected. He hands himself over to a service provider, orders 'The Surprise' as a form of death and, in the nick of time, meets, you already saw it coming, a female companion who calls everything into question. Freed from their hopelessness, they flee together from death. As you read, you sense that there is no escape, and the fact that the recently ignited have ordered a surprise to end their lives leaves open the possibility that these two are each other's deadly surprise. When that thought also takes hold in their minds, it really becomes exciting.
The party is not just in the dancing plot, but also in the details; culminating in the first moment of intimacy between the lovers, when she tries on a coffin and gets stuck. (Definitely check out that movie.) In Belcampo's world, man must learn to live in a universe that can suddenly run wild. See also 'Being in control of things', also included in the triple-jumping collection of Belcampo's oeuvre, a classic story about which I was sometimes ashamed to admit that I had not read it “yet”. Now it is! If it were not from 1950, you could read it as an allegory on climate change (or the corona pandemic), although here it is not nature that takes control, but it is the things that, come to life, make people feel who is in charge. (In the sequel, nothing human appears to be alien to things.) The reason for the revolt is the atomic bomb: attacking things with things takes things too far.
Here too, the beautiful details tumble over each other: when the revived things leave the houses, a thick curtain drapes itself in front of a cupboard, so that the crockery can safely plop out. And when the clothes leave the people, Belcampo comes up with a beautiful image. “We had given up all thoughts of resistance and when our pajamas loosened themselves, we raised our arms to have them removed and stood like soldiers surrendering to the enemy.” It is the same with Belcampo himself: we can only lovingly surrender ourselves to him.
Would you like to have the reviewed copy of De Surprise? Send an email to [email protected]; the book will be raffled among entrants and the winner will be notified.
#Nontransgressive #behavior #Delden
