Village Squire, 1977-01, Page 10After an early Easter, it was a cold spring. The Dutch
landscape that day was like a faded tapestry, the kind of richly
woven painting of browns and greys that hangs on every old
Dutch wall. There have been such tapestries because there
have been such scenes as this. Three boys and a man worked
in a cold wind planting lettuce. Their clothes and skin were as
brown as the earth and their wooden shoes had long ago
faded to the colour of sand. They worked quietly, steadily,
with the same deliberate rhythm that would have woven the
picture in brown thread. It was 1944 and Holland was an
occupied country. After a long weary winter had come this
unpromising spring, and Jan Capel and his sons were
working hard to catch up with the lateness of the season.
"Bas", said the father to his only hired helper, "go get
some more plants from the shed." His voice was rough and
humourless, and his gaze was tired as he watched the boy
walk along the path. Not yet fifty, his shoulders were already
bending to what would be a stoop in his old age. But his face
was unwrinkled, his jaw was clean and determined, and his
eyes were like two calm blue pools in the otherwise rugged
face. That jaw was clenched tight now around an empty pipe,
and the blue eyes were troubled as they watched the boy go
down the path.
Piet, the oldest boy, ruffled his brother Kees' hair with a
muddy hand, and they scuffled, laughing for a moment. till
their father told them, curtly, to stop. They knew that tone in
his voice and left off playing abruptly. Again the three of
them moved along the rows that had been Tined out with
string. The rhythm was precise: cupped handholds back the
dirt, a limp young plant is thrust in and held there, the cold
earth is pressed close, again, again, again. Behind them they
left rows of tiny plants, along paths moving farther and
farther from the house.
There was water all around them, for the house and garden
8, Village Squire/January 1977
THE WEDDING
MASS
BY
Cecilia Pieterse
sat on an island, attached to the road by a footbridge over a
small canal. Each house on the road sat on such an island, and
each had its own bridge to the road. The canals were around
them on three sides. but at the back the water opened up to
the Plas, open water and marshes that stretched for miles.
Now that water rippled in the wind that ruffled the new leaves
of trees and darkened tl* grey sky with the threat of more
rain.
Bas returned with a wheelbarrow of plants and began to
toss them down in front of the workers. Jan Capel looked up
at him. from his knees, and the boy seemed long and thin in
the wind that was cutting through his long hair. Needs cutting
the man thought as he glanced way from Bas' open face and
preoccupied smile. The church bells began to ring, long and
low, pealing on the wind and over the blowing trees. In that
ringing the man looked away from the boys. back to his hands
and his work, and thought, in the ringing of the bells of the
conversation he had had with his wife Tinike the night before.
'Ja Jan," she had said. in the golden light of their bedroom
while she readied herself for bed and he smoked the one pipe
that the daily rations allowed him. "Ja, it's good to take care
of another, but your own is your own and you have to take
care of your own." Her insistence grated in the soft light.
Overhead he could hear the rustle of seven boys in their beds.
"Not so loud," he said. "The boy might hear."
"He's asleep long ago," she said, though softer, and then,
still softer as if she knew herself that she must bend from that
insistence, and yet still knew that she must hold her course
and speak. "It's not that I don't like him. You know that Jan.
A nice boy he is, but there just is not enough. Potatoes and -
cabbage. that's all we have left, with the milk that Wim
brings home from the farm on Saturdays, and only enough
flour for some pancakes. That and three chickens. From them
we need the eggs. It's not enough. It's not enough."