But he sat back, let his fingertips wander over the arm of the chair and, for a moment, seemed very far away. Then he straightened up again. “You’re not a hunter,” he said. His head came up slowly, until he was looking me straight in the eye. His expression was accusatory and shy at the same time. I felt the urge to say that I was a hunter, that I would like nothing better than to march into the dunes with one of his rifles and kill something. “Your father wasn’t a hunter, either.” I realized that he meant something different than I had thought. “I had a word with my good friend Van der Molen last week.” That was the old lawyer, one of the men he played bridge with, chased small game with. “I’ve made my will.” He was looking at me closely now. “A will is a…” I nodded. “You know. All right. I have set up a fund whose goal is to buy up this land, piece by piece.” He gestured vaguely behind him, to where the dunes lay. “In due course, all that will become a shooting ground. This house will be the office and the home of the proprietor, the director.” He paused. “You will be the director.” He fell silent. Outside was a whispering rain, above us was the sound of footsteps on wooden floors.
“The director?”
“Yes.” He sprang to his feet, unexpectedly buoyant, rubbed his hands together, and began pacing to and fro. “The director! Imagine!” He ran his eyes over the walls, over the colored etchings, the dented bugle that a long-forgotten prince consort had flung to the ground, after an unsuccessful hunting party, during which they had hit only rabbits and hares, and left behind. He raised his right arm, his hand on a level with his face, and said, “One day. All this. Will be yours.”
I suddenly saw myself standing in front of the house in a kind of red-and-green elf costume, watching a troop of exuberant hunters on horseback as they disappeared into the dunes to slay a dragon.
“I’m only twelve,” I said.
“Nonsense!” He thrust out his chin. “A man’s character is formed in his early youth. At your age, in fact. Playtime is over. Port?”
I was in no shape to answer. My grandfather walked over to a low cabinet, on top of which was a silver tray with bottles and decanters, and filled two glasses with syrupy, reddish-brown liquid. He handed one to me and then, sipping from his own glass, resumed his pacing. “A man has got to make something of himself. Some men go to college, some work their way up, others need a guiding hand…” He clenched his fist and held it out in front of him, as if he thought it was important that I saw it. “…the guiding hand of an experienced older man.”
My eyes followed him back and forth, back and forth. I wanted to tear myself away from this mad conversation, from his self-absorbed pacing, but I couldn’t. I was mesmerized by the bizarre flight his thoughts had taken.
“That was what your father lacked. Because of the war, many young men were hurled into the thick of it. Left to their own devices. Without law and order. Without the…the soothing effect of civilization.” He was on my side of the room now and stopped right in front of me. He peered into my eyes from under his bushy eyebrows. “Drink your port.”
I wrenched myself away from him, raised my glass, and poured it down my throat. A sudden warmth exploded in my chest, shot up to my head, and filled my ears. My grandfather turned around like an old tortoise and started back toward the other end of the room. I waited, my eyes wide open, for the fire in my throat to die.
Outside, a storm had come up. The wind tugged at the young trees along the path to the beach and the clouds blew across the village like shreds of unwashed curtain. My grandfather’s voice came from far away. He was holding forth about civilization and “the Huns” (whoever they were), about the hunt…Slowly I began to lose the thread of his story. The warmth of the port had nestled in my stomach and feet and the chair had become soft and embracing. I closed my eyes and saw myself standing in the doorway of the house again, in a green jerkin and a little red jacket, while Robin Hood’s Merry Men armed themselves with bows and arrows and set off for the dunes. I remember thinking that this wasn’t quite what my grandfather had had in mind when he had told me about his plans for a hunting reserve. After that I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again, the windows were black and the room was empty.
OUR VISIT LASTED ten days, but I can’t say I remember much of it. Most mornings I’d wriggle my way into a pair of Wellington boots and head for the dunes. There I’d sit, on the roof of a bunker that was half buried in the sand, gazing out at the gray sea. The sky was dead and dreary, like the sea, and the sand was wet and dark and it felt as if the whole world were sitting by roaring fires in warm, comfortable living rooms, waiting for the next storm. Sometimes my mother would come with me and then the two of us would sit there in silence, gazing out at the slow raging of the surf. One afternoon, when we were looking out at that pencil-sketched world from the roof of the bunker, she fished a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and took out a Lucky. She had a hard time getting it lit. I watched her and waited for her
