Everything There Was Read online

  Everything There Was

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Day 91

  Day 5

  Day 95

  Day 7

  Day 11

  Day 13

  Day 92

  —

  Day 21

  Day 22

  Day 96

  Day 23

  Day 105

  Day 24

  Day 29

  Day 93

  Day 31

  Day 136

  —

  Day 41

  Day 50

  Day 53

  Day 54

  Day 55

  Day 57

  Day 94

  Day 107

  —

  Day 70

  Day 135

  Day 72

  Day 79

  Day 98

  Day 84

  Day 129

  Day 99

  Day 100

  Day 101

  Day 102

  Day 103

  Day 104

  Day 106

  —

  Day 97

  Day 108

  Day 109

  Day 110

  Day 111

  Day 115

  Day 131

  Day 118

  Day 130

  Day 120

  Day 132

  Day 124

  Day 145

  Copyright

  Everything There Was

  Hanna Bervoets

  Translated by

  Florian Duijsens

  Day 91

  I’m not entirely sure who first called the new situation “the new situation.” But I think it was Natalie. It must have been the eleventh, twelfth day, in any case after dinner: half a carton of school milk and a piece of shortbread. That’s what it was then.

  * * *

  “Just a question, right,” Natalie said that day. “How long do you think this will go on for? I mean, ‘the new situation.’”

  We all looked at her. Hours, afternoons, nights had been spent talking about this. Kaspar suggesting we should mentally and practically prepare ourselves for a period of weeks or even months; me saying we should first just wait and see; Barry yelling that this uncertainty drove him crazy; and Leo saying that Barry had better not do that, go crazy, as that wouldn’t make the situation any less uncertain, just a lot more unpleasant.

  Yes, Natalie knew how we felt about this. And that we knew she knew is something she also must have known. Her question wasn’t so much a question, but a statement. A way to make us think about it. I looked at her legs. Her heels Natalie hadn’t worn after day five, and there were black streaks on her skin-colored tights. I wondered when they’d start to ladder.

  “I think you’re trying to say that we’ll be here a while,” Leo finally said.

  “But how much longer, Mom?” Yuri asked. Natalie didn’t answer.

  For a while we all silently watched Yuri play with an empty carton of milk. He peeled up the flaps, blew air inside, and threw it to Leo. He caught it, “We don’t know how long, dude.”

  “But probably for quite a while,” said Kaspar. He was speaking to Yuri, but we could all hear him. I think that’s when Natalie nudged him.

  “So,” Kaspar said, “maybe it’d be nicer if we all had our own place.”

  “What do you mean exactly?” Leo asked.

  “There’s plenty of empty classrooms,” said Kaspar, “but here we are just sitting here in the gym. Why is that? Is there a logical reason we’re all sleeping in the gym?”

  Kaspar was only looking at Leo, who answered, “No, I don’t think there’s any logical reason.” And Kaspar smiled. His bushy eyebrows shot up, the triumphant smile of someone proven right after a long argument. There was no argument. There was no right. Yet the smile seemed appropriate.

  “I also wondered about those classrooms,” Barry now quietly said. I nodded slowly too.

  I had thought about those classrooms quite a bit. As early as the fourth day, after yet another bad night of Kaspar snoring, Yuri tossing and turning, and the walking and creaking and sighing of everyone who needed to go to the bathroom stepping on my mat or just missing it. All of us having our own classroom had seemed more practical to me for a long time. But I thought: I’ll wait and see. Maybe it’s just me. Might seem weird if I want to sleep alone. And on day eleven or twelve, things were still the same: weird.

  “So,” Kaspar said, “shall we divvy up the classrooms then?”

  Leo nodded. “If everyone agrees.”

  “If we don’t all agree, we can still divide up the classrooms between the people who do agree, right?

  “Yes, Kaspar,” Leo said, “that’s right.”

  “I think we all agree anyhow,” Barry mumbled. “Don’t we?”

  There are ten classrooms: four upstairs, six downstairs. The biggest classroom, the first-grade one, is downstairs. It seemed logical that Natalie and Yuri would get that one. But Yuri wanted the classroom with the foosball table.

  “Come on, Yuri,” Natalie said, “you could still play foosball even if we’re sleeping in a different classroom, couldn’t you?”

  Yuri shook his head. “What if someone’s lying underneath it?”

  In the end we decided no one would sleep in the classroom with the foosball table, so anyone could play with it whenever they wanted. This meant that at least one of us needed to take a classroom on the second floor.

  “I don’t mind,” said Barry. “But if I’m the only one sleeping on the second floor, then really I’d have four rooms to myself. Would that be fair?”

  I nodded. I knew what Barry was hoping for. Dividing up the classrooms had nothing to do with fairness, but everything with approval. Collective satisfaction always beats moral standards.

  Leo now also nodded. Natalie mumbled something that sounded like fine, but Kaspar said, “Maybe Kalim wants to sleep upstairs too.” He turned and said, switching from Dutch to English. “Kalim, do you want to sleep upstairs maybe?”

  As soon as we agreed about the classrooms—Kalim and Barry would sleep upstairs, the rest of us downstairs—we started talking about the tablecloths. We had three. Found on top of a closet in the teachers’ lounge. The largest sheet was also the thickest: a piece of red velvet, probably used for Christmas dinners. That was for Natalie and Yuri; we’d already decided that the first night. But that had left two of them. Plastic cloths, printed with little cars. Cars with ears and eyes. “I don’t need any,” Leo had immediately said. “Okay,” Kaspar muttered after that. “My coat is actually alright too.” And so Barry and I had ended up taking the cloths. “Tomorrow night we’ll switch,” we’d said, “really!” But from that night on everyone slept on their own mat, in their own place, under their own coat or tablecloth.

  “Is everyone taking their own blankets to their new classrooms?” Barry asked.

  Blankets, I thought. He calls the tablecloths blankets. The vocabulary of the new situation.

  “Yeah, dude,” said Leo, “you guys keep your favorite bedspread.” He laughed; I looked at Kaspar, “Ok?” Kaspar shrugged. “If you want…” Briefly it looked as though Kaspar was going to say something else, so Barry quickly asked, “And should we move our things now or tomorrow night?”

  * * *

  The entire discussion lasted about an hour, I saw on the clock above the climbing frame on the wall.

  The first weeks we did nothing without first discussing it extensively. Our discussions reminded me of the debates you have on vacation, in the morning on the rented cottage’s patio: Let’s go to the beach today, because tomorrow it might rain. But if we go to the beach, do we have lunch there or back at the cottage? Because if we have lunch he
re, we need to pass by the supermarket first, and then we might as well pick up stuff for the barbecue along the way, although the big supermarket would probably be nicer then, but if we drive all the way to the big supermarket, that would make lunching at the cottage very tricky, so let’s maybe just go to the supermarket first, then that’s done. Ok, who’s coming with, who’s driving, is there even any money left in the jar?

  Our talks in the new situation went just about the same way. Even though the subjects were different. “Where are we going to have lunch” was: “What do we eat first, the cookies or the oatmeal bars?” “Who’s coming to the supermarket” became: “Should we check out all the classrooms one more time?” And “Let’s go to the beach today, because tomorrow it might rain” now was: “Better start grilling that mouse, because what if the lights go out later?”

  Over time, the number of discussions did decline. Maybe because our choices ran out. Obviously also because there were fewer people.

  * * *

  I was talking about vacations earlier. Perhaps you don’t understand.

  The resorts, the theme parks, the pools with tube slides, the cabins with fireplaces; I don’t know whether they’re still there. Nor whether life will ever again mean thirty weeks of working and then two weeks off, and that then in those two weeks you take a train or a plane to a place that’s not home but where they do have towels, walk around there for a while, buy something, and take pictures for the people who weren’t there, because you want them to know what you saw when they didn’t see you.

  What’s more, to really understand it—vacation—you first have to know what work is. Work still exists, in the new situation. But there was a time when anything could be work. Sleeping, eating, drawing, or cartwheeling: As long as someone was paying you for it. And there was always someone like that somewhere.

  My work, for instance, was talking with Barry and other people about three-dimensional animations of RNA-mutations in a small room on the third floor of a tall building, then turning my chair around to stare at a screen full of hydrogen molecules, test subjects, or over-bred dogs for the rest of the day. Sometimes I would go outside for a bit to watch other people smoke. Sometimes I would read something full of charts that had been peer-reviewed by at least five professors. And sometimes, only sometimes, I would call one of those professors to hear if they could express themselves clearly enough to appear on our show.

  Work also meant that I had a weekend: Two days when I didn’t drink my coffee from a paper cup, but from a mug. I would meet up over that mug with people I didn’t see during the week to discuss the previous days. Exactly what I’d done on those days, those people would soon forget. But that didn’t matter. I’d forget it soon enough myself. And the old situation, full of phones, internet, Facebook, and dozens of other ways to share things, was organized to forget things together. That was better than to forget things by yourself. That’s what it seemed like.

  But it could be that none of it means anything to you: Mugs. Over-bred dogs. Facebook. I would love to explain it all to you; yes, I’d love to tell you everything about the life in which vacation and work followed each other and in which, at night, we tweeted that we were watching TV. I just don’t know what you want to know about it. Maybe it hurts to read about the old situation. So let me also tell you about what is still there.

  * * *

  Today, day ninety-one since the bang: Barry is still sick. When I came to bring him his portion this afternoon, I briefly thought he wasn’t there.

  It was so dark and quiet, like I’d walked into my own classroom. I switched on the light. Barry’s room—Barry calls his classroom his room—was exactly how I left it yesterday. Curtains closed, The Brothers Lionheart still opened to the first page.

  When Barry decorated his room he stacked the chairs and tables. On the floor is a blue square he cut out of the carpet downstairs; in front of the windows are two plants: one left, one right. “Nice and symmetrical,” said Barry. “Eat your heart out, Nest magazine.”

  This afternoon the plants still looked healthy. But the tips of the leaves were brown. As if someone had dipped them in primer. A song from a movie came to mind.

  Oh, painting the roses red. And many a tear we shed. Because we know they’ll cease to grow. In fact, they’ll soon be dead.

  The blackboard still had the drawing we made with Yuri. I had drawn a house, four flowers, and a sheep. Yuri drew some guys with spiky hair. He called them Bladebreakers and had written names underneath: Hiro Granger, Ray Kon, Hillary. Barry had just drawn a sun. A sun wearing sunglasses.

  “That’s not right,” said Yuri, “why would the sun need protection from itself?” “But it does,” Barry had answered, “everyone needs to be protected from themselves.”

  Carefully I stepped into the classroom. Barry was lying on the teacher’s desk, the thick red tablecloth covering him. There was just some hair poking out from underneath.

  “Barr,” I whispered, “how are you feeling?”

  “Merel?” Barry groaned.

  “Yes,” I said, and walked up to him. On the little chair beside his desk were three mugs. Still exactly where I set them down the days before, next to one another, teaspoons sticking straight up. I put the new mug down next to them.

  “How are you?” I asked again. Now the cloth started to move.

  “Sick,” Barry whispered, “still sick.”

  “But you have to eat,” I said. “Here’s your portion.”

  Barry groaned. “No, sorry, no, I really can’t, dear.”

  “How’s it going today?”

  I turned around. There, in the doorway to the classroom, stood Leo, almost hitting his head on the frame. In a few steps he was beside me. “Hey,” he softly said to Barry, “how are you doing?”

  Barry was silent; Leo drew down the cloth a little.

  “Do you think he has a fever?” I asked.

  Leo put his hand on Barry’s neck. “You have to eat something, man.” But Barry just groaned and drew the cloth back up over his head.

  Quietly Leo and I stood beside each other. And suddenly I saw that Barry had added something to our drawings on the blackboard. In the bottom right-hand corner, our names had suddenly appeared in white chalk. Not just mine, but Barry’s and Yuri’s, too: The people who’d made the drawing. No, also Kaspar’s, Leo’s, Natalie’s, even Kalim’s. I wondered what I was looking at. Roll call, end credits. Or a memorial plaque.

  Leo rubbed the cloth. “I think we should leave him alone for a bit.” And with one hand he lifted all four mugs off the chair.

  * * *

  “Did he feel feverish?” I asked when we were sitting around the fire downstairs.

  Leo didn’t answer.

  “Maybe it’s something from outside,” I said. “When Lotteke left, Barry was the one who closed the door and now he’s the only one who’s sick.”

  “Yes,” Leo said, “that’s right.”

  He stared into the fire, flames lighting up his face and at the same time drawing shadows on it: Dark streaks danced across his temple.

  “Do you also think it’s something from outside?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.

  “But what do you think?”

  Slowly Leo shook his head. Before I could say anything, he pointed at the mugs from Barry’s classroom.

  “They’re starting to get moldy. We’d better divide them up.”

  Leo tilted a mug so I could see its contents: a thin layer of sticky rice with green dots. With the tip of his little finger he scraped the green off the white. He scraped off the mold with a pencil, threw the pencil in the fire, and looked back at the layer of rice. “I’ll take this one.” Then Leo pointed at the portion we’d made today. “You take that one.” With a teaspoon he divided up the third portion: some grains for me, some grains for him, and some grains for the fourth, leftover cup. “Kalim!” Leo called out. He stood up, “Kalim, there’s more food for you!”

  * * *

  So day nin
ety-one was the day we got an extra portion. But that’s not how I wrote it down in Melissa’s diary. In Melissa’s diary, today is the day I discovered you’re on your way. And now that I’ve found that out, I want to do a better job of telling this story. How it went and how it came about. Yes, everything, from the beginning.

  I think that this means I already love you. Love means wanting to be known. And I want you to know everything about me. The difficult thing is that I don’t know if you will still love me after. After you know everything.

  Day 5

  This is our theory right now: There must be more people like us, people who’ve been stuck somewhere since the bang, at home, in a supermarket, at the gym, or in some other building. It happened on a Sunday afternoon. There must be people in churches.

  Some of those people have less food at their disposal. At some point they will ignore the instructions. Walk to the window, open the curtains, and eventually even go outside. If life outside is viable, then those people will find other people, people who will then come outside too and find other people who will also find other people who will find other people, until they find people who know how to get the internet working again.

  Maybe by that point we too will have been found. There are plenty of others who know where we are: Our editors; Barry’s boyfriend; the school’s management; Natalie’s husband, he’s called Erik. And if he could, Erik would definitely come for his wife and son. But Erik’s not here. And Lotteke is still gone. So when she left the building, life outside was probably not yet viable. And as long as no one comes by it still isn’t. And we’ll stay inside.

  It is of course possible that this is what everybody is thinking. That all the people currently stuck in their houses, supermarkets, or churches are thinking: We’re not leaving as long as we don’t see anyone else. But that’s not very likely. Or in any case not likely enough to take the risk. So we will have to wait until we’re found. Everyone agrees on that.

  * * *