Читать книгу His Name is David - Jan Vantoortelboom - Страница 17

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‘THE FOUR OF us together like this is just right,’ Father said after dinner one day, tilting his chair on its back legs, his belt loosened. Mother was picking beans out of Henri’s hair and wiped his face with the dish cloth.

‘Four is a magical number, you know,’ he said to me.

I was chewing on a tough piece of pork, shoving it from left to right with my tongue.

‘Do you know why?’

He slowly lifted his left hand to his right and swatted a fly that had landed on it. The squashed insect stuck to the hairs on his arm, a yellowish pulp oozing from its abdomen. With a flick of his hand, he swept the fly under the table.

‘Because there are four of us,’ I said happily. I had finally managed to swallow the piece of meat.

‘Yes, that is true. But if you give the number four a bit more thought, you’ll find it is a very special number.’

Mother lifted the kettle from the stove and poured the hot water into the sink. Then she started scouring the pots and pans, tossing her hair over her shoulder from time to time. It was long and loose that evening. She usually wore it tied up in a ponytail. She had a collection of coloured ribbons for that purpose. And a white one for Sundays.

‘David,’ Father said when he noticed I was daydreaming, ‘how many wheels on a cart?’

‘Four!’ I said.

‘How many legs on a table?’

‘Four!’

‘A chair?’

‘Four!’

‘A horse?’

‘Four!’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because the cart, the table, the chair and the dog would fall over otherwise,’ I said.

‘The horse,’ Father said.

‘Yes, the horse!’

‘That’s correct,’ he said, pleased I had followed his train of thought. ‘Four creates stability, it allows things to stand firm.’

‘We don’t have four legs,’ I said.

Mother glanced at me over her shoulder.

‘True. And we are nowhere near as steady on our feet as all the other mammals. Push someone unexpectedly and he will fall. You can’t push over a horse or a cow, even if they don’t expect it,’ Father said. ‘Besides, we do have four limbs.’

I agreed with him, but added that I would be able to push over a mouse.

‘Other things come in fours, too,’ he went on.

‘Have you been chatting with some professor again?’ Mother asked. He ignored her question, eager to finish his lecture on the number four. But the word ‘professor’ was used regularly at mealtimes.

‘There are four seasons, four points of the compass, four elements and four temperaments.’

I wanted to ask what elements and temperaments were, but had the feeling he was now talking to Mother, as he was watching her backside as he spoke. The Friday ribbon was red. This ribbon was different from the others: it was perforated and had scalloped edges, like the leaves of our oak tree. Ratface, who had been strapped to his chair all this time, was getting bored. He tried to clamber out. Mother asked Father to unfasten Henri and put him down on the floor.

‘David, do you know what else makes four so special?’

‘No, Dad.’

‘It’s the only number whose meaning is identical to the number of letters in its name. F-o-u-r. Four letters.’ He laughed.

I understood, and looked up at my father in awe.

‘The entire visible world is based on the number four,’ he philosophized. I picked at a dried-up piece of food on the table top.

‘And even more than that—there’s a fourth dimension, namely time.’

‘That’s enough now,’ Mother said. ‘It’s too much for the boy to take in. And for us,’ she added, laughing.

‘May I leave the table?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she answered.

Ratface started to scream and batter his chair with his fists. Finally, Father stood up, unfastened him and put him down on his hands and knees. He immediately crawled after me. Father took the dish cloth from the shelf, joined Mother at the sink and starting drying the pots and pans.