Kort.

Eén keer, toen ik pauze had op het reclamebureau waar ik werkte, schreef ik voor de Duitse artdirector waarmee ik een team vormde een verhaal.
Hij duurde niet lang, die pauze.
Ik probeerde de artdirector in de taal die we beiden meester waren, te duiden hoe ik een filmpje voor me zag.
In mijn hoofd ontstond die pauze, tijdens het schrijven een man.
Aan het einde van de pauze was de man van het papier weggewandeld, het verhaal uit.
Maar het verhaal is niet uit.
Want een paar maal per jaar denk ik aan die man.
En waarheen hij eigenlijk is gegaan.
En waarom.
Dit is het verhaal:
 

‘Vern needs a hobby’, his wife told the neighbours.

On his next birthday, the neighbours gave Vern a big box, wrapped up in red christmaspaper. Outside it was really hot: the august sun had beaten the grass on the lawn for weeks. Verns birthdayparty was held inside. In the airconditioned shady livingroom, Vern tore the red christmaspaper.

A brown cardboard box came from underneath it.

‘What is it!’ Verns wife said in a high pitched voice. She clapped her hands twice. The neighbours smiled.

Vern opened the cardboard box. For a moment he thought nothing was in it. Then, when his eyes were used tot the dark shadows deep down in the corners of the box, he saw it wasn’t empty at all. In one of the corners Vern noticed a little book. He picked it up. His hands were sweaty.

‘What is it! What is it, Vern?’ his wife said.

He handed her the little book and saw it was a handbook on how to fish.

‘Oh Vern!’,  his wife said and smiled at the neighbours. ‘That’s so sweet. Now you can go fishing with Hank!’

Vern nodded and looked at his neighbour. Hank smiled. Vern smiled back. Suddenly the room felt very  hot. He stood up and turned up the airconditioner.

Vern had never caught a fish in his entire life. And he never intended  to. He went to the kitchen to get Hank a new beer. He stood in front of the refrigerator door, silently breathing in the cold air. He thought of the men he had seen fishing in his life. Stubborn, silent guys. Sometimes with the wife sitting next to them, knitting or reading.

Vern put his hand in the iced compartment where the beers were. He put his hand around a longneck. Suddenly, psalm 23 sprung to his mind. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadows of death’.

‘Yes’ he mumbled, into the refigerator, right to the stew his wife had made.

‘Yes. Though I walk through the valley of the shadows of death’, he thought, again.

In the livingroom, he could hear his wife talking to the neighbours. She was telling them about his retirement. And how he so desperately needed a hobby. And how fishing was so very much a Vern-thing. He closed the door of the fridge. He held Hank’s beer to his forehead. He longed for something and that longing reminded him of the Vern he was some forty years ago.

He had never intended to be the fishing type.

He hated fishing.

He hated fish.

Impulsively, he opened the door that led to the veranda.

He took Hanks beer with him and stepped into the garden and its brown lawn.

Heat grabbed his body with its suffocating fingers.

Vern started moving towards the street with the dried out trees. The merciless sun beat on the asphalt. Every tree in their goddamned street cast a black shadow on the white pavement. Water from the cold bottle in his hand started to drip down his pulse.

He felt like walking, walking on forever with the bottle untouched in his hand. He was never a fishing guy. Never had been. Never would be. He passed the first of many shades in the street he had been living in since his marriage.

‘Yes’ he thought again. ‘Yes  Though I walk through the valley of the shadows of death’. Soon he turned the corner of the street.