Thirteen Read online

  To E, who resides in the woods and in our hearts.

  Skin and Paper

  — Adrienne J. Odasso

  In exchange for your marrow, I’ll give you

  a cloak and the name of this road. Don’t expect

  to take the right turning at first. There’s sorrow

  down every single one. Tell me, do you think

  that I know not what I’m doing, that these bones

  are any but my own? My hair is dyed red

  to hide the blood my fingers trail through it.

  I slit the ribbon at my throat and dropped the mask

  long miles behind us. Are you running

  to escape or catch me up? The ties that bind

  hold only in slipping. What I love is always just

  around the bend. And would you mind much

  if I lost the trail on purpose, let the birds find

  the bread, chucked the spool that holds the thread

  into the river? It’s only gold spinning, and starlight

  is all we’ll ever have. There’s no such thing

  as the sun, so mark me. Learn it. Cast the dice

  as hard as you can at the mirror. Smash it.

  Where you’re going, you’ll have no need

  for the sight of who you are not.

  With Musket and Ducat

  The Dutch Trading Company in Nineteen

  Sketches, Paintings, and Luminos

  — Tais Teng

  1—every newborn is pleasing to the lord god’s eyes

  Sketch in sepia, 1893.

  Description: A room in a humble working-class cabin, in the center a midwife holding a baby by the ankles, in the background the father of three daughters.

  Shan-Pier, 0 years old:

  It was Wiersma’s day: the crying of the newborn baby was only just a little bit louder than the gun salute in the distance. According to tradition, the cannons of gunship Gijsbrecht van Amstel had been loaded with provender and party favors: on the roofs of Port Zuyderhoudt a rain of gingerbread clattered down, ships-biscuits in the shape of the prophet Wiersma, candied herrings. Roasted blackbirds followed, and finally a swarm of blood sausages no larger than a toddler’s finger.

  The midwife lifted the baby between two deafening gunshots and inspected the crotch. "God bless you, Mister Memling," she said, "you have a son."

  "Another mouth to feed," Memling grumbled.

  "Do you want me to write down the name of your son?" The midwife pulled a form from her blood-spattered apron. She shook her fountain pen to wake the mutated cuttlefish and get the ink flowing.

  "Seems a bit premature. Well, call him Shan-Pier. I named my last two sons Shan-Pier as well."

  "Is that not confusing for them, all having the same name?"

  "The last two kids died within a month. No. Shan-Pier it is. That name has been in our family for centuries. Shame to waste a good name."

  Nobody paid attention to the woman on the bed. Julia-Sabijntje had been Memling’s fourth wife and was now as dead as her three predecessors.

  2—little children in a winter landscape

  Tempera on varnished pine, 1899

  Description: As in the title: four poor children in a winter landscape. Walking across the railroad these wretches are gathering the mangled beet chunks and battered corncobs which the living trains have spilled while chewing the crud.

  Shan-Pier, 6 years old:

  The express train bellowed. The warning cry filled the sky, made the frozen earth tremble. In Pier’s ears even Gabriel’s trumpet could barely have sounded louder.

  "Away, away!" his older sister cried. "She is coming!" The children instantly stopped picking and stumbled from the rails. On the top of the verge they crouched in the snow and they squeezed their hands against their ears. A signal at full strength would burst your eardrums and make the blood run from your ears.

  The train didn’t bellow a second time now that she saw that the rails were free. She slipped past in an eerie silence, almost as if in a dream. Pier caught a glimpse of meters-wide horns, calm, amber eyes as big as goldfish bowls. Hundreds of hooves rose and fell in an endless stampede. Well-lubricated crankshafts drove the rubber and iron-wood wheels.

  Pier watched the cabins until they merged with the swirling dots in his vision. The rails stretched all the way to Albion: two stripes in the endlessly flat, endlessly white polder.

  He blew on his fingers. "The newest locomotive no longer eat beets. They drink blood."

  "Don’t natter. What does a brat like you know about trains?" His older sister pushed him roughly aside, reached between his feet. "There, a beautiful chunk of sugar beet! You almost trampled it with your clumsy clogs."

  "Master Peter said it himself! Brunel has ordered to abolish the oxen. The new express trains are now cultured from vampire bats. On the benches grows the softest, warmest fur. Even in the Third Class."

  Frieda righted her headscarf. "What does it matter? We are working class children, Shan-Pier, proles. We will never ride on a train."

  3—the hasty oath

  Oil on canvas, with gold leaf in the emblem, 1906.

  Description: A boy seen from the back. He lifts his right hand. An officer of the Dutch Trading Company is gazing straight at the viewer. On the wall hangs a tapestry with the emblem of the Trade Company: two lions, the first holding a ducat and the second lifting a musket. Above the famous motto: Met Musket ende Ducaat—with musket and ducat.

  Pier, 13 years old:

  "Young man," the recruiter said, "I don’t believe for second that you are really eighteen. There isn’t even fuzz on your cheeks."

  Pier’s fingertips touched his chin instinctively. "I, uh, I’ve just shaved, sir. Half an hour ago. In the, uh, inn."

  The recruiter burst into laughter. "Do not bother. Uh, Pier is it? A man is as old as he feels. That is what the Trading Company earnestly believes." He raised an eyebrow, a trick that Pier would have loved to learn. Just like snapping your fingers. Master Peter did that so well.

  "You are sure you want to sign on? Five years is a long time."

  "I am sure, Mijnheer. And the longer the better."

  Pier had pulled the bag with guilders for his father’s coffin from behind the fireplace stone, emptied the wooden clog with kitchen money. Even combined it had just been enough for a third class ticket to Greater Amsterdam. There was no way back to Port Zuyderhoudt: they cut off the thumbs and index fingers of a thief.

  "Fine. Say after me: In the name of all the gods, goddesses, totem animals, demons bright or dark, I promise to serve the Trading Company faithfully."

  Pier repeated his words.

  "And to obey my superiors unconditionally."

  The ceremony took fifteen minutes.

  "You’re a sailor now in the eyes of God and the Trading Company," the recruiter said. "Here are the four ducats, which the Admiralty pays every new sailor when he signs on."

  The coins rolled across the tabletop. They glistened in the slanting sunlight, a yellow as rich as clover honey. Pier hardly dared touch them.

  The man waved to the window, to the Great Market, swarming and pulsing like an ant heap. Pier could just hear the cries of hawkers and dancing girls, thin as cricket-song behind the thick glass. "Go into the city, boy. Dance and kiss the maidens. Fill your mouth with succulent partridges. Yes, and munch on cinnamon sticks." He folded his arms, and his voice sounded suddenly a lot colder. "Tomorrow you are expected on our merchantman the Velvet Fist. At the first cock crow."

  4—the attack of the savages!

  Dutch Trading Company poster,

  colored ink on pressed seaweed, 1909.

  Description: A horde of bloodthirsty natives storms a ship. Along the railing stand a dozen sailors, seemingly unfazed by the overwhelming numbe
r of attackers, their old-fashioned crossbows held in readiness.

  Pier, 16 years old:

  "Moluccans," the sergeant said. "Brave men, that bestimmt, but unfortunately often too ambitious, just that little bit too bold."

  "May I ask a question, Mijnheer?" Pier said, though he knew how stupid it was to draw attention to yourself. Before you knew it you found yourself a volunteer, scraping barnacles from the rump while the ship was still in the middle of the sea.

  "Ask away. That is what an sergeant is for."

  "What, uh, what exactly have these people done to us? That we must burn their villages and slaughter all their water-buffaloes?"

  "They raised the price of nutmeg by nine stuyvers. Unilaterally."

  Pier nodded. He was now a good and salty sea dog and knew what a truly unforgivable crime was in the eyes of the Trading Company. "I understand completely, Mijnheer."

  The sergeant leaned over the railing. "You see them there waiting. Our Moluccans with Chinese cannons, Aztec fifty-shot-muskets." He grinned and raised his crossbow. "But we have these. They do not stand a chance." He licked his lips and fitted a paper cartridge in the groove. "I count to five. Then: Fire!"

  One of the sailors was grazed, the sail showed a dozen bullet holes.

  The cannoneers of the enemy didn’t even get a chance to aim their weapons. Each of the sailors launched a paper nest with cobra wasps. Every nest contained some two hundred enraged insects and unlike inanimate bullets and arrows they sought their own targets and each sting meant almost instant death.

  Pier lowered his crossbow. None of the enemies moved any longer.

  "And now?"

  "We burn some villages. Chop off buffalo heads until their rice fields color red. Then we have a serious talk with their elders." He nodded. "We quite understand that they have to make a profit, too. But more than three stuyvers isn’t in it for them."

  5—the return of the prodigal son

  Lithograph on rag paper, 1914.

  Description: A sailor with knapsack knocks on the sagging door of a workman’s hovel. A young woman eyes him from the single, unglazed window.

  Pier, 21 years old:

  "Open up!" he cried. "Open the door, Verdemme, or I’ll kick it in!"

  "Why should I open the door? Who are you, you rascal?"

  "Frieda?" She sounded so mature. Mature and dead tired.

  "How do you know my name?"

  "I am your brother—I’m your only brother! Pier!"

  "Pier? Shan-Pier?" The door opened a crack, and their eyes met. Her eyes still a beautiful calm gray, and his own a rich hazel.

  Pier felt a stab of pure joy, of intense relief. His sister had always been quite bossy: as her sea gray eyes looked at you, your bones changed into dough and the bottom fell out of your stomach. But Frieda had always some clever plan ready when you were sure that the sky was really falling down this time, could tell you exactly what you had to do to set things right.

  "Come inside. But you’re not my only brother anymore. You have two more." She shook her head. "Three in one throw. Two made it."

  "Father remarried?"

  I should have known. That lecherous goat never sleeps longer than six months in a cold bed.

  "Esmée ran away after eighteen months. She left the children behind. Both very wise."

  And now you’re the mother again, Pier thought. He said it out loud.

  "Why did you come back?" she asked. "If a gardist recognizes you, an hour later you are walking around without thumbs. Father trumpeted around that you are the worst kind of thief. taking his grave money, leaving your siblings to die of hunger."

  "I, uh . . ."

  She inspected him from crown to toe. "A knapsack," she said thoughtfully, "those Aztec rubber shoes. You’re a sailor, were a sailor." She smiled radiantly, and he knew it had nothing to do with him, just pleasure at a successful deduction. "You deserted!"

  "I couldn’t stand it any longer. I am through with wormy hardtack and screeching seagulls. With stinking drink-water, with the hookworms wriggling around. But when I wanted to leave, the captain waved a thirty-year contract under my nose. It had my thumb-print, my blood code." Pier dropped with a sigh in the only chair. "Someone must have spiked my drink, mesmerized me."

  "You bailed, left ship." She shook her head. "So if they catch you now, they chop off not only your thumbs, they also put a nice hempen noose around your neck."

  "Can you help me?"

  "Do you have any money? Without ducats we don’t stand a chance."

  "Enough. Five thousand ducats. I was promoted to steward. They gave me money to buy the provender and liquor for the next voyage."

  "We leave with the next train," Frieda decided. "But first you have to get rid of your shoes, dump your knapsack."

  "No, not the knapsack. I took some secret trade stuff. Sealed boxes from the armory. Weapons so new, so secret only our flagship had them."

  "A cunning plan. So now I have two thieves in the family." The voice rattled and hissed and sounded barely human.

  "Father, I thought you were unconscious! You were in a coma for the last three days."

  The curtain of the bedstead was pushed aside, and a foetid wave rolled across the room.

  "I may have cancer and rot in my whole body, but it didn’t kill me yet." He lifted a leg over the edge of the bed and staggered into the room. "I’ll walk straight to the sheriff." He grinned. "Do not worry, Frieda. I will not say a word about you."

  "So you are not dead yet," Frieda said. "That can be remedied." She pushed him back into the bedstead. "Hand me the pillow, Pier."

  6—a man of the world

  Lumino, monochrome, with the stereo effect only apparent at an angle of sixty degrees, 1916.

  Description: A room with French doors. Two men and a woman who clearly belong to the upper middle class, bending over a table on which a jam jar and an antique silver snuff box are displayed.

  Jean-Pierre, 23 years old:

  "My wife Frédérique."

  The Parisian businessman bent over Frieda’s hand and murmured: "Enchanted."

  Frieda was right, Pier thought. No, it was Jean-Pierre and Frederique now. Learn a brand new language, preferably that of the largest competitor of the Trading Company. Speak then with an accent that oh so subtly betrays your rural background. Nouveau riche from the French provinces. There is no better disguise because people will nod at every hesitation, every mistake and hide their smiles and no one will ever suspect that your cradle didn’t stand in Limes-sur-Saone, but in Port Zuyderhoudt.

  "My sons, Emile and Pascal."

  "Such delightful little guys!"

  "The gentleman and us, we need to talk," Frederique told them. "You guys go play outside."

  A maid brought three glasses, a rock crystal bottle with the stopper sealed with beeswax.

  The Parisian leaned back in the python chair, which promptly began to massage him with languid undulations.

  "Let us get down to business, as countrymen among ourselves. There are certain items, certain kinds of knowledge on which the Trading Company has placed an embargo."

  "I know exactly what you mean." Jean-Pierre opened a wall safe and put a jam jar down. It was made of smoked glass, and from underneath the lid came an angry buzzing.

  "A cobra wasp. The Virgin Queen, whose genetic code has not yet become unreadable." Next to the jam jar he placed a silver snuffbox adorned with trumpeting elephants. "The mutated seeds of an iron tree. Each leaf hardens into a knife or a spearhead of stainless steel. Ideal for supporting indigenous guerrilla forces in the colonies of your opponents."

  "Yes, yes!" the man exclaimed, "this is exactly what I mean! Do you have any more of these?"

  "We just might," Frederique said. "But first let us talk about the price of these two."

  7—a truly devout man

  Lumino, full color, stereo image at any angle, 1918.

  Description: The window of an Aztec airship, overlooking the Alps. An Aztec priest in f
ull regalia lowers a sacrificial knife. In his other hand he is clutching a decapitated rooster.

  Jean-Pierre, 25 years old:

  The Aztec spy wiped the obsidian blade on the hem of his feather cloak and held his hands in the cheerfully bubbling fountain to wash away the blood.

  "As you can see I made a sacrifice for the satisfactory outcome of our negotiations. A black rooster, a gibbon, a white guinea pig without blemish. As their blood flows, so will our words flow. In complete harmony. Unfortunately, in the lands of your Trading Company newborn babies are rather difficult to purchase. "

  "We appreciate your efforts," said Jean-Pierre. "I’m, uh, yes, delighted to see you took our offer seriously."

  "No, no, it was you who made the effort, who agreed to meet me on my own ground, on an Aztec airship. All to keep my identity secret." He rubbed his chin. "Sages say that the enemies of my enemies are my friends. Now, when the French and the Nipponese became so so excited about your deliveries . . ."

  "Well," said Jean-Pierre, "the knife tree, the wasps, the Mirror of Madness: such secrets can only be sold once. Then they are secrets no more."

  "These things we have now, too. But your—lets call it your treasure room—they say it isn’t quite empty yet."

  "No, fortunately not. And I have made some new contacts. At the highest levels of the Company."

  Not that these levels needed to be that exalted. Quartermaster or armorer, who wasn’t strapped for cash or willing to go for the easy money? Thanks to his stint as a sailor Jean-Pierre spoke their language.

  This is going wrong, Frederique saw. The spy was rubbing his chin, fingering his jade earrings. Unlike the French the Aztecs hated too subtle an approach, preferred plain talk to coy hints.

  "What my husband means is that we still have quite a lot of those secret weapons left." It was a gamble: among the Aztecs women only rarely spoke up. Upon entering the spy’s cabin, though, Frederique had noticed a statue of Coatlicue. It stood at the place of honor, at the foot of his bed. Coatlicue was a snake goddess who ate human hearts for breakfast and wore a skirt of baby skulls. Her followers certainly wouldn’t see women as frail dolls?

  "Ma’am," the man said, "I’m listening."