English excerpts from 'Kleihuid' by Herien Wensink

Excerpt from Kleihuid, p.16-17, translated by Paul Vincent HARVEY Four ivory fingers poked out of the parapet. Harvey Cole looked at the frozen sleeve which rose from the solid mud at shoulder height. The hand, or what was left of it, seemed to be stretching out to touch him. The skin was marbled in leaden grey, the same lifeless grey as the mud, their coats, the world.

‘Hey, Cole, I see you’ve already met Archie!’ Garett turned to him. ‘He turned out to have hidden in the mud in front of our bulwark. Of course, we only realised when we’d finished messing around. But if we release him now the whole bloody lot will collapse, so we leave him sitting comfortably.’

Garett was from the first batch: a tough, experienced war-horse. Harvey picked cautiously at the grey material of the sleeve. It crackled.

‘No idea if it’s one of ours or one of theirs, you can never tell once it’s over.’

Without hesitation Garett shook the frozen hand theatrically, grinned broadly and went on pacing up and down. ‘Don’t forget to say hello. He brings luck, man.’

Harvey stared at the hand, which now reached up into the sky again, always straining, always in vain. He raised his hand up to arm height, just above the marble fingers, but touched only air. He cleared his throat. ‘Give me a high five, Archie.’ Garett looked round. He wiped his hand emphatically on his trousers and pulled a face.

‘No, man, four!’ roared Garett, a cheerful giant, and stuck his thumb in the air. ‘Archie says nice to meet you.’

Harvey tried to laugh in his direction. He had scarcely recovered from the crossing, his first time on a boat; the ground surged beneath his feet. The base camp, where everything was new and at the same time obeyed ancient rules. And now this reserve line, no idea what he was supposed to do here. Shaving, for some reason that was important. Polishing your rifle and buttons, constantly. Fatigues.

Digging holes, scores of the bastards. Don’t make mistakes. Don’t get in the way.

Excerpt from Kleihuid, p.72-73, translated by Paul Vincent RUPERT It meant nothing to them that the influential art critics of The Times had devoted a full-page spread to a review of his first exhibition. He had made the mistake once of talking about his work. In no time the whole company knew that first lieutenant Atkins liked playing around with clay. For days he found obscene, phallus-shaped lumps of mud at the exit of his dug-out, sometimes accompanied by a sarcastic note – ‘Our lieutenant likes keeping things in his own hands,’ with a spelling mistake in every word.

How often had he asked for silence? All of these guys stared absently straight ahead. A blond, blushing lad at the end of the table had lost his right arm at the elbow. The wound had healed reasonably, and he seemed to have got used to the lack. So that was how it ended, that bloody chaos of the battlefield: clinically, properly. An absence, nothing else.

Next to the blond lad sat a tall dark man, with thin, sticky hair and by the look of it a severe head wound. The congealed blood was visible through his head bandage, which covered the top of his head like a turban. Couldn’t they dress it a bit more neatly? On his right sat a good-looking chap, with his head turned a little away. There was seemingly nothing wrong with him. But when the tall man spoke to him, and he raised his face, half of it turned out to be missing. Scorched black and red. One eye was closed, the other was now looking straight at him.

A convalescent home, why not. There was one eye patch, which belonged to a thickset, rather plump man, opposite the man with the burns. With his neighbour one trouser leg hung empty and useless by the chair. Behind him the crutches leaned against the wall as a proof. At the head of the table sat a ginger-haired man in a wheelchair. He tried not to look, but it was too late. No legs. The legs of his uniform had been neatly cut off and buttoned up.