ALS: Underground

underground

In the 60s of the previous century, I knew a young man who lived under the ground. He was studying biology and was interested in bats. He lived in a cave in South Limburg where great clusters of bats hung.

The student slept on a mattress and worked at a small table, sitting on a wooden kitchen chair. A heavy but portable storage battery provided energy. He had stuck a label with a number on it on the back of each sleeping bat. Whenever they flew in and out they were automatically photographed. The elapsed time was also registered. After a year the sticky labels fell off and back home in Delfzijl he wrote a standard work on bats. I visited him in his cave on one single occasion, after which I had nightmares that took place underground. That’s sixty years ago now, but last night they struck again – a gruesome adventure in the earth. I had been giving a reading in Arnhem at the Hijman Ongerijmd bookshop and had parked my car in an impenetrable parking garage where I found a space in the Dance A section. The bookdealer accompanying me urged me not to forget this code — there were other categories apart from Dance such as Fashion, and you could also end up at B, C and D. It was deathly quiet, there was not a soul to be seen. The cars had been brought to their various places in an unknown dimension of reality without drivers. When I started my hunt for my car towards midnight, it did not surprise me that my worst premonitions had turned into reality. There was not a soul to be seen, all the cars stood waiting there like corpses. I suspected that I would only succeed if I thought intensely of the simplest form of life: running like an innocent child through countryside on the edge of a town. The sun is shining, the fruit trees are in blossom, my mother is calmly watching from a close distance. A man-sized bat lands next to me, I don’t scream, it has a sticky label on its back with the words Dance A. It lifts me up and takes me to my car.