Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 15

Finn watches the countryside blur past; canals, cows, wind turbines that look like modernist sculptures. The train hums like a lullaby for the skeptical. He traces the outline of the prophecy in his notebook, though the ink refuses to settle.

Susie reads a pamphlet she picked up at the airport, “Het Huis van de Verloren Tijd” - “The House of Lost Time.” She doesn’t translate the title. She doesn’t need to.

At Utrecht Centraal, the station is a cathedral of glass and motion. People move like algorithms, purposeful and unreadable. Susie leads Finn through the crowd, past vending machines and silent advertisements for cheese.

Outside, a car awaits. Not the Volvo. A rental. Black, forgettable, with a GPS voice that speaks in riddles.

As they drive toward the castle, the road narrows. Trees lean in, whispering. The sky shifts again; less gray now, more colorfully ceremonial. Nestled at the end of a tiny peninsula which jutted into the Loendenweense Plas, a lake, sat 13th century De Haar Castle, entirely renovated in 1880.