The Book of Everything Read online

  Every day, he had pinned Mrs. van Amersfoort’s letter to his clean shirt. Now he undid his shirt and unpinned the letter. He folded it open, read it, and sighed deeply. The world held its breath. Would Thomas do it? Would Thomas dare? The world did not know. The world was waiting in suspense.

  “Let this cut of suffering be taken away from me,” he thought. Thomas did not know what those words meant, but he knew Jesus had said them when He knew He was going to die. They were beautiful words that brought tears to Thomas’s eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he thought.

  He stood up with the letter in his hand. He crept down the stairs.

  When they had finished eating, Father opened the Bible. Thomas’s throat felt like a screw-top lid.

  “What is this?” Father asked. A sheet of paper lay in the Bible, right on top of the plagues of Egypt.

  Father read it. Then he turned the letter over, but the other side was blank. “So,” he said. He had turned pale.

  No one said anything, but Margot hummed a hit tune.

  “Good,” said Father. “I’ll read it to you.” He cleared his throat. He seemed calm, but his fingers trembled.

  “‘A man who hits his wife dishonors himself,’” he read. He put the letter down next to the Bible and smoothed it out. “I agree with that completely,” he said. “But there is something missing. It should read, ‘A man who hits his wife without good reason dishonors himself.’”

  “Tiddlyum, tiddlyum, tiddlyum-tum-tum,” hummed Margot.

  “Would you mind turning off that music, Margot?” Father asked.

  “Of course, Papa. Sorry,” said Margot.

  “All right,” said Father. “The letter itself doesn’t matter a great deal. The important question is why it is in the Bible and who put it there. It would seem that someone is out to turn us against each other. Someone who wants to draw our family away from God and His institutions. Entirely in the spirit of these times, of course.”

  Father looked first at Mother, then at Margot, then at Thomas. “So the question is, who put this letter in the Bible?” He took it between his thumb and index finger and waved it about.

  It was as if all life on earth had died out, it was so still. It woke the dead in the churchyards. They pricked up their ears, but heard nothing.

  “No one?” asked Father. He tapped his fingers on the table. “Someone at this table is lying. I do not know who it is, but nothing remains hidden from God’s eye. Let us ask Him for help.”

  He folded his hands on top of the Bible and closed his eyes.

  “Almighty God,” he said. “See our plight. Help this family to be strong in this time of great temptation….”

  Thomas closed his eyes. The sky turned clear blue and sand blew around his ears. “Jesus?” he asked. But Jesus was nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m here,” said Jesus.

  “Where?” said Thomas. “I can’t see you.”

  “That’s pretty obvious,” said Jesus. “You’ve got your eyes shut.”

  Thomas opened his eyes. Jesus stood in the room, in front of the chimney-piece with the copper geckoes. He looked at the praying man.

  “So that’s him?” asked Jesus.

  “Yes,” said Thomas.

  “He means well, I think,” said Jesus. “But he is afraid. He is really a coward, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t know,” said Thomas.

  “He hides like a scared child behind God’s broad back,” said Jesus.

  But Thomas thought, “How can you hide behind the back of someone who is no longer there?”

  “I have to tell you something,” he said.

  “Go on then,” said Jesus.

  “God the Father is not just not here,” said Thomas. “He has died. I’m telling You honestly.”

  Jesus was stunned, and for a moment He was speechless. “You really mean it!” he exclaimed.

  Thomas nodded. He thought it was sad for the Lord Jesus, but the truth had to be stated.

  “But how did this happen?” Jesus cried.

  “He was beaten out of me,” said Thomas. “And then He died, for He could not do without me.”

  Jesus had to think about that. Then He nodded and smiled sadly. Of course, that was how it had been. Without Thomas, nothing could exist.

  “We pray for this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen,” Father said.

  Jesus waved to Thomas and faded. Thomas waved back.

  “What are you doing?” Father asked.

  “I was waving,” said Thomas.

  “What for?”

  “I saw Jesus,” said Thomas.

  Margot giggled and Mother laid her arm on Thomas’s shoulder in fear.

  Father flushed. He hit the Bible hard with the flat of his hand, making the dust of three thousand years swirl. “I will not put up with this,” he shouted, red in the face. “In my house, there will be no jokes about our Lord and Redeemer. Is that understood?”

  Thomas bent his head. He hadn’t been joking. He didn’t feel the slightest bit like joking.

  “Is that understood?” Father repeated.

  “Yes, Papa,” said Thomas.

  “And now I want to know who put that letter into the Bible.”

  “I did,” said Margot.

  Everyone stared at Margot, but she did not stare back. “Tiddlyum, tiddlyum,” she hummed.

  Father shook his head. “I don’t believe a word of it,” he said.

  Margot shrugged.

  “Who wrote it?” Father asked. “I don’t recognize the handwriting.”

  “Found it in the street,” said Margot. “Tiddlyum, tiddlyum-tum-tum-tum.”

  “You’re lying,” said Father. “We all know who has done this.” He looked around the circle.

  Thomas’s heart missed a beat when he felt his father’s eyes on him. It lasted only a moment. Father looked at Mother. “Don’t we?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Mother. “I did it.”

  Thomas looked at her, horrified, and felt himself grow angry inside — so angry that his fear burst apart into a thousand pieces. “Not true!” he screamed. “It was me who did it! Me!”

  Father looked at him severely. “You are a liar, Thomas,” he said.

  “But —” shouted Thomas.

  “Silence!” Father thundered.

  “I did it! Me, I did it!” Thomas was weeping with fury. “There are pinholes in that letter. Pinholes! And do you know how they got there? I made them with a safety pin. This one.” He rummaged in his trouser pocket and tossed the safety pin on the table.

  Father, Mother, and Margot stared at the pin as if their lives depended on it. It glinted in the lamplight. “I could actually hear the safety pin,” Thomas wrote in The Book of Everything. “It made a high-pitched sound, like someone screaming in the distance.”

  Father stretched the letter between his hands and held it up. The paper was bright in the glow of the lamp.

  “It is true,” Father muttered. “There are pinholes in it.” He lowered the paper. “You were not lying, Thomas. I falsely accused you. Forgive me. But more important is that someone has used you, Thomas. Someone is trying to turn you against your father. Who is that, Thomas? Who wrote this letter?”

  “That is a secret,” said Thomas.

  “Aunt Pie?”

  “It is a secret,” said Thomas.

  “Thomas,” said Father.

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me who wrote this letter.”

  “No, Papa.”

  “Thomas, fetch the spoon, go upstairs, and wait for me.”

  A hot wind came up, scorching the earth. The trees shriveled up and the animals fled. Everything was desolate and empty. No one could live on the earth any longer.

  “Except perhaps the gnats,” thought Thomas. “And bubonic plague.”

  “No,” said Mother quietly. “Thomas stays where he is and you read from the Bible.”

  Father glared at her furiously.

  “I’ll get the spoon, Mama
,” said Thomas.

  Mother took his hand. “No,” she said. “My brave hero stays here sitting next to me.”

  “Tiddlyum, tiddlyam,” sang Margot. “How happy I am.”

  Thomas was frightened by the cold look in her eyes.

  “Woman!” said Father. “Do not contradict me!”

  “Mama,” said Thomas. “It’s all right, just let me go.”

  “No,” said Mother. “You have not deserved any punishment.” She kept a firm hold on his hand.

  “Tiddlydum, tiddlydim, I find no guilt in him,” Margot sang.

  Father stood up. His head rose like a balloon, higher and higher. The ceiling came down and the room became smaller and smaller. “Woman!” he thundered. “Let go of that child.”

  Mother got up too, pulling Thomas along with her. “No,” she said. Her chair tottered.

  Father walked around the table, gripped Thomas by his other arm, and tugged.

  “No!” screamed Mother.

  Father raised his hand at her threateningly.

  No one had been minding Margot. Suddenly, she was there, as if she came falling from the sky. In her right hand, the carving knife flashed, and her eyes blazed. She jumped in front of her father and pointed the knife at his throat. Father let go of Thomas and stared at the knife.

  “She looked like an angel,” wrote Thomas in The Book of Everything. “The most dangerous angel in Heaven. One of those with a flaming sword.”

  “Hands off,” Margot snarled. “I’ve had enough of this. I’ve had it up to here.” She brushed the knife along her throat.

  “Don’t, Margot,” Mother whispered. “Put that knife away.”

  But Margot wasn’t listening. “Goddamn it,” she said.

  The curse was worse than the knife. It cut through the soul.

  “Mama and Thomas have no reason to be afraid of God,” she hissed. “Because they are kind. You are not kind.” She made a stabbing movement with the knife. “Don’t think I won’t dare,” she growled. “I am like you. I am not kind either.”

  Father collapsed like a dying elephant and finished up on his knees. “This family is doomed,” he groaned. “The spirit of the time has poisoned you. Let us pray.”

  And he started praying loudly.

  “I don’t give a damn what you believe,” Margot shouted. “But there will be no more hitting.”

  The man was startled out of his prayer and looked at her wildly.

  “You know that it is wrong,” Margot said coldly. “But you do it anyway.” She took a deep breath. “As long as the neighbors don’t notice. As long as the family doesn’t notice. As long as nobody in the office finds out! Isn’t it true?”

  The man got up, turned furiously, and stalked to the door. He stopped and looked back into the room with his red eyes. “I cannot stay under the same roof as you,” he roared. “I AM GOING TO SLEEP IN A HOTEL.”

  He yanked the door open and disappeared into the hallway. Then he rumbled down the stairs. The front door slammed shut like a clap of thunder.

  “Tiddlyum, tiddlyum-tum-tum,” Margot hummed. She put the carving knife back on the table and sat down. She planted her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. Mother and Thomas stayed where they stood.

  Two sparrows played their piercing trumpets on the windowsill.

  “Child, what have you done?” Mother whispered.

  Margot lowered her hands. Her face was as white as a sheet. Her eyes showed nothing at all. “I’ve put a stop to it,” she said. Then she burst into tears.

  Mother sat down, shaking her head disconsolately. “You threatened your father with a knife,” she said. “What is to become of us?”

  Margot glared at her. “Would you prefer to be beaten up?” she sobbed. She jumped up. “Oh, yes. I nearly forgot.” She ran into the kitchen and came back with the wooden spoon. She rested one end of it on the threshold of the living room door and stamped it in half. “Out with it,” she said. She took the two pieces and opened the window. The sparrows flew up trumpeting.

  “Not from the window,” said Mother.

  But already the spoon was sailing through the air in two pieces.

  Thomas went across to Margot. She took him in her arms and held him tight.

  Father stayed out for an hour. Then he came back home. He crept up the stairs like a cat and withdrew into the side room. He said he had work to do.

  There had been a change of plans. Thomas didn’t know why. The first meeting of the reading-aloud club was not to be held at Mrs. van Amersfoort’s.

  “We’re going to have it at your house,” she said.

  It gave Thomas a bit of a shock. “But why?” he asked anxiously.

  “We thought it would be nice,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. “Me, your mother, and your Aunt Pie.”

  Mama? Aunt Pie? What was going on?

  Suddenly, Thomas didn’t think it was fun anymore. His house was not a house where he could bring his friends. And it was absolutely not a house for a reading-aloud club.

  “And we’re not doing it in the afternoon,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. “We’re going to start at seven o’clock in the evening.”

  Thomas didn’t want his cordial anymore. He put the glass down among the books on the table. “I felt worried in my stomach,” he wrote in The Book of Everything. “As if I had swallowed a rhinoceros.”

  “And … when?” he asked. His voice squeaked like a bicycle wheel.

  “You’ll be surprised,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. She looked at him mischievously over her steaming cup of coffee. “Shall I tell you?”

  Thomas nodded.

  “Tonight,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort.

  Thomas stared at her vacantly. “Papa is not going to allow that,” he thought but didn’t say.

  “Don’t worry, Thomas,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. “You must not be afraid. You wanted the plagues of Egypt, didn’t you? Not the frogs, not the gnats and not the bubonic plague, but we are the best plague, we women and children. No Pharaoh can resist us.”

  “Oh,” said Thomas. “I see.” Fear crept into his throat like a frog.

  “Shut your eyes, Thomas,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort.

  For a moment he didn’t understand what she said. “Shut my eyes? Oh, yes, shut my eyes.” He did as she said.

  “Breathe slowly and put your hands in your lap.”

  Thomas’s ears began to ring, and a moment later he heard music he had heard before, with lots of violins.

  “What can you see now?”

  “Nothing,” said Thomas. “Or … wait a moment. Yes, yes, there it is. I can see a desert.”

  “And what do you see in that desert?”

  “Sand,” said Thomas.

  “Nothing else?”

  “Yes,” said Thomas. “But I won’t tell you, for you’ll think I’m making fun of you.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. “Go ahead and tell me.”

  “I see Jesus,” said Thomas. “Do you think that’s awful?”

  “Not a bit,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. “I’ve faced worse things.”

  “There is something strange about Him,” Thomas muttered. “Hang on. Now I can see what it is. His beard is gone! But there is something else … Let me have another look.” Thomas frowned. “Oh no, I’m not telling you this. This is really impossible.” He shook his head. He didn’t dare say that Jesus looked very like his mother when she had her hair down, for no one would understand.

  There was a silence, singing like a safety pin.

  Then Mrs. van Amersfoort said, “Oh.”

  “He always talks to me,” Thomas told her.

  “Gosh,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. “Do you like that? Because we can just get rid of Him otherwise.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Thomas. “He is all alone, you know. I think He has no one else to talk to.”

  “Oh, that’s terribly sad,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. “What is He saying now?”

  “He says He is coming
tonight,” said Thomas.

  “The more the merrier,” said Mrs. van Amersfoort. “Thomas? You can open your eyes now.”

  Thomas looked at her. The rhinoceros in his stomach had disappeared and so had the frog in his throat.

  “Are you still scared?” Mrs. van Amersfoort asked.

  “No,” said Thomas.

  He heard a rustling above his head. It was the angels clapping.

  After the meal, Father read from the Bible. And these were the last sentences. “Moses said: Tonight, God will go out into the midst of Egypt. All the eldest sons of the Egyptians will die. Pharaoh’s eldest son, the Crown Prince, as well as the eldest son of the maidservant and also the first-born of all the beasts. And there shall be a loud cry throughout the land of Egypt, such as there has never been before nor ever will be again.”

  “Why did all these sons have to die?” Thomas asked. “Why not Pharaoh himself?” Father opened his mouth to answer, but Mother jumped from her chair.

  “Quick, let’s tidy up and do the dishes,” she said.

  Thomas and Margot stacked the plates and gathered the knives and spoons. Mother ran to the kitchen to get the dishwater ready.

  “What’s going on?” Father asked.

  “There’s people coming,” said Thomas.

  Father absently closed the Bible. “People? What people?”

  But Margot and Thomas were already in the hallway. Father stood up and went after them into the kitchen.

  “Quick, quick, quick,” Mother called. “I still have to get changed!”

  Suds splashed around merrily.

  “What people?” asked Father.

  “Aunt Pie,” said Thomas.

  “Perhaps you could push the table over to one side and arrange the chairs in a circle,” said Mother.

  “Just for Pie?” Father asked anxiously.

  “Of course not,” said Mother. “There are a lot more people coming.”

  “But who?” said Father. His voice was getting louder. “It isn’t anybody’s birthday, is it?”

  “Friends of mine,” said Mother. “Quick, quick, quick, perhaps you would like to get changed too?”

  “Why haven’t I heard about this before?” Father exclaimed. “Why doesn’t anybody tell me anything?”

  “Sorry, Papa,” said Margot. “Forgot.” She was drying the carving knife.