We have had a long, cold, wet winter.

Spring is now in sight, humans and animals are longing for different weather.

I do not yet know how all those months flew past.

However, that is because you are intensely busy, the problems demand your full attention and especially because you forget the everyday things.

Those are the worries for a human being, worries make you forget everything, and through suffering and sorrow, everything falls into nothing.

If you are faced with a mask like that for years on end, trivial matters no longer have any meaning, you are only open to the serious part, and it is precisely that through which you were beaten.

We lived well, there was scarcely anything that disturbed us, even if René remained quiet, listless and depressed, even if there was almost no life anymore in the child, we kept ourselves upright.

In this way, we struggled through that long winter.

We went horse riding very little, Erica and Karel no longer felt like it.

Hans worked so hard that he did not have a second to spare for anyone else; the patients had his full attention.

He is open to that.

I thought it was great, and there is nothing better for his personality.

What I had expected did not happen.

I had thought that he had come back with a blond girl from Vienna.

I heard one thing and another, but he does not appear to take the bait.

I think that sir also looks for the regal in this and would do anything to get it, but that is not so simple.

You usually have exactly the wrong one.

I hope for his sake that he does not buy a living corpse; it would kill him.

However, we do not know.

It remained summer within me.

When I walked somewhere in the middle of winter it happened that under those heaps of snow and ice the seed of the Lord spoke to me and started to recite poetry.

I could have made up poems, but I am not the type for it ...

I do not like that soothing language; I could not even stand it as a child.

I believe that it is a lack.

I am not sure about it.

I therefore did not go into it.

However, when it continued to work on me, I opened myself to it and I heard ...

“Tralala, tralala, tralala ... ”and to finish:

“I go into it dancing, I enjoy myself.

And then you are blissful

Sweeter than ever

Where are you going?”

I thought that was just the thing for a child.

However, under snow and ice the tralala from René reaches me.

There also followed:

“Get it out of your depths,

Try to catch it there

Pass it onto people

Or you will be hung by me!”

Not nice ... why do I have to be hanged?

What I understood was this.

Even if René is ill – the child is ill ...

Karel puts it down to polio, even if that is not correct, yet that wrong sense hatches out the eggs for him.

These are René’s eggs.

He sat there under the ice and the snow; I saw it.

In other words: enough to suffocate in the cold.

His being sick, this is misery.

Erica asked me then:

“Frederik, come and live with us, René needs you.”

That is true, I thought, but then I will have lost my freedom.

I want to do everything for René, but is that really necessary?

We talked about it.

Karel thought that it was not necessary.

Only the women thought it was better for René, because the child asked for me, the little that passed those little lips.

Yet ... something told me: do not do it yet, wait and see ... that soon they will need you here.

Therefore, we decided to just wait and see.

However, the room has already been prepared for me, I can move in immediately if I want to.

As far as my own house is concerned ... an old man will tidy things up, do some dusting, he has done nothing else in his life, for the rest I will go out and eat out.

Everything happens of its own accord, so that I really do not even see the man, even if he is walking about in my house.

I have therefore been lucky.

I know one thing: something has kept me there; otherwise, I would have been on a trip again long ago.

I have received my seat ... and my task, I believe, consciously and in peace.

However, René is very ill.

Perhaps that spring will bring a recovery.

I do not know.

Karel is already thinking of Switzerland.

Erica does not want to know about it, she does not want to leave here.

It is obvious that she means that she will then go along.

However, that has also been smothered again ... every day there is something else.

Now the doctors run into the house again, upstairs, downstairs.

There is no change to be seen.

If you ask me openly, then I would say that René appears to be deaf and dumb!

It is pathetic.

I hear many times:

“Where are you now with your ‘spiritual child prodigy’?”

Erica said, among other things:

“I just wish that I had an ordinary boy, that dirty carry-on is no good to me.”

Then you are left standing.

You have to accept it, there is nothing to say, you no longer have any legs under your body, and you lie like a piece of dirt in a corner.

I did not go out into the street, but that is the way it is!

What can you do?

Nothing!

Karel is exactly the same.

All in all my cockerel crows today like a king, and tomorrow it will be made into soup.

Karel gnaws at the bones, even eats low-fat soup from it, because the farmer thought that cockerel soup had a special taste, but we would not want to see the skeleton of it.

Anna therefore thought he was outlandish, you could never depend on that chap, there was always something else.

Karel laughs, he says little the past few months, he is worrying.

It is a pressure, he cannot cope with that cartload either, and it is taking too long.

In any case, I have to accept that this spiritual wonder shows symptoms of anaemia and polio.

His legs are so weak that you can see through them.

Even if polio is different, Karel says that it looks just like it.

It was exactly the same situation with the other gentlemen.

Dr. Ten Hove also came to have a look, but he does not go upstairs anymore.

Anna slams the door in the wagtail’s face, saying that the child is sleeping.

When the wagtail saw that René was lying fidgeting with a piece of paper, he knew immediately that Anna did not like him.

Now you see that the academic stays out of her way, ignores her completely, because we no longer see him.

René has become even sicker because of it.

Erica already thought that she would lose her child.

Now everything of mine went overboard.

Nothing was any good anymore.

I am a dreamer.

It hurt me, but what could I do?

At that moment, I knew why I no longer felt like moving into their house.

What kind of misery would I have created?

I found it a protection!

I am now still myself, if I had lived there, I would have been put out on the street with all my worldly possessions.

I would have got in the way of those women and Karel and would have had to accept the terrible end.

Everything gone, no one believed it ...

Yet our friendship died.

That is how unreasonable people are.

I do not know why I deserved that, but I did not want to.

I therefore assume that my inner self is also tuned to its own protection and it then passes it on to me just like that.

I heard by coincidence, no, I felt it, that delicate sensitivity exists.

However, René did not recover through it.

When this was told on stage, it creates misery in the hall, but it is a part of it.

It takes you to the new life, which we are waiting for.

Sometimes I thought that René would become better simply just because I was there.

Now I know better.

When an illness has to run its course, you can pray as hard as you like, it will not help you.

From that moment, I did not start to doubt the value of the prayer, but we had amazing conversations because of it and then saw things differently again.

We were sitting one evening round the fireplace, when Erica said:

“I will have a mass said for René.”

Karel jumps out of his chair, looks at her like a wild man and says:

“What do you want?

Am I hearing you properly?

Do you want to have a mass said for René?”

She looks at him bewildered and asks in turn:

“Is that so strange?

Is that so strange, I ask you?”

“But woman ...”, Karel objects, “have you gone crazy?”

“I am doing it through someone else, as long as you know.”

“That has nothing to do with it, Mrs Wolff, you are balmy.

A mass said for René?

Is the child going to die?”

“It is for his health.”

“If you do that I will break your neck!” Karel threatens and all hell immediately broke loose.

An argument of the worst kind!

Karel dashes out of the room, we hear him slamming doors upstairs.

Erica goes after him.

I sit alone on the stage and talk to myself.

What troubles are happening.

I hear Karel shouting.

He is talking about God here and there; the hothead in him has awakened again.

It is the roaring of his own character, that mask has not yet been destroyed; the animal part sticks to his life like a tapeworm.

First of all that head, Karel!

For years he has been able to control himself, now there is no stopping him, but reality washes his feet.

That will be really something!

He shouts, he swears, he talks about me.

A person always chooses the roughest words if he wants to be proved right.

That is not strange either ... suddenly a person like that smashes his own pedestal to smithereens, destroys what was built on for years, as if there is no longer any space, any thoughts, or feeling, in order to take care of such misery.

We are not dogs, not cats, but if only we had something, a bit of that patience, that goodness, such an animal character!

Ugh ... I have not yet worked it out!

Listen to that door slamming, oh Karel!

I hear Erica above it and I can also hear Anna.

What does the hothead want?

I hear that he intends to put René under observation.

Erica will not allow that, she is perfectly able to take care of her own child.

It is now a fight to the finish.

This will become relaxation, suppressed nerves get release, or, then just everything destroyed!

Everything!

But I still have to experience it.

Sir is coming.

He stands before me like a wild animal.

What do you want, Karel?

Now I hear:

“You with your damn, rotten psychology, get out of my house, go on, hurry up, get out of my house.

I am going mad seeing your face, out I tell you, dirty bastard!

I am kicking you out of my house!”

I do not answer him.

I am completely myself and let him blow off steam.

Erica and Anna attack him, they defend me.

He just has to try that.

Both mouths utter:

“If Frederik has to go, we will go as well, ugly hothead.”

Anna calls him a bulldog.

He does not hear it.

He lights a cigarette and immediately throws it away again.

It is very childish.

What a horrible creature a human is.

How pathetic Karel looks and that all of a sudden.

However, he does not give in.

“I am telling you again ... if you get up to things like that, I will break your neck.

Tomorrow afternoon René will go to Professor Van Loon.”

Erica does not accept that ...

It is something that she resists with all her being.

Father and mother fight without really knowing it.

Now one mask has taken them in; or is it thousands of them at the same time?

You would think so!

Anna has thought of a plan.

She comes over to me and says:

“Come on, Frederik, we have no business here anymore.

I will not lift another hand for that bulldog.

What am I doing?

I only want good!

What did you do?

You are goodness through and through.

And now this.”

There is nothing else for Anna to do but go to René.

She goes away, tears roll down her cheeks like never before.

She is really sorrowful.

Karel sits there and spits fire.

Erica patters about; she challenges him completely.

I sit in a corner of the room and do not consider leaving.

If I hear once more that I have to leave then I will think about it.

I do not yet know what the decision will be, because you cannot take on a person who is under a strain.

I know for certain that Karel will soon be sorry.

Or I would have to be horribly wrong.

However, if he insists that I have to leave, and then I will go and never come back!

I am not a doormat!

Karel is trembling; Erica almost faints.

I cannot say anything.

Anna comes to help us ...

She suddenly stands in the doorway and says:

“Here, ugly hothead ... maybe this will perk you up.”

She throws a letter at him, and Karel goes for it like a provoked lion at his prey.

The foam is not in his mouth but on his forehead.

We hear:

“Damn it, if that does not stop, I will murder ...!”

“Who will you murder?” Erica asks him.

“Who, I ask you!

Who, doctor!

Who do you want to murder?”

Erica is standing before him; she is fighting with her eyes.

Her lips tensed, she is ready for the jump, but she does not take it.

I see her like a wildcat.

Karel is looking grey and green, he is not reading, because his eyes are looking over the letter.

Erica tears the piece of paper out of his hand and comes over to me.

Karel races after her and takes it off her again.

I may apparently not know what is written on it.

Now it is a question of who gets it.

Yet, Erica has got hold of it again and gives it to me.

“Come, Frederik, we will just see what it is.”

We race upstairs.

René is sitting in his little bed.

Erica lifts the child and presses him against her bosom.

She sobs; the child caresses her with both hands.

I read:

“Boeha, boeha!

I cannot sleep, uncle Frederik.

It is boeha!”

This is something quite special, however, nothing for a child.

Erica says to René:

“So, my darling, can you not sleep?

Does boeha bother you?

Uncle Frederik will help you.

Just look, there is uncle Frederik.”

She gives me the child.

I sit down and talk a bit to this unprecedented life, which has to accept ‘lives’ according to the phenomena.

I notice that a great change has happened, there is more vitality in the child, and it appears that he is no longer so weak.

We are experiencing amazing things after all.

Is that perhaps his hill?

I walk back and forth with the child ...

René becomes sleepy, and the child rests in my arms.

I put him in the cot.

Erica collapses, we also have to take care of her.

Then the farmer comes storming upstairs.

He overviews the situation ... holds something under Erica’s nose a moment later, looks at René and squeezes himself into a chair.

With his head down, his hands support the heavy monster in which so many worries now live and all these things are thought out.

If we could only open it up in order to look and see how that human machine is really made up.

Perhaps then we would make progress.

However, I do not put any trust in human brains!

I believe that it is something completely different, but I do not know what it is.

Something lives somewhere in this house and from there we are attacked.

Erica jumps up and pulls me along downstairs.

The child is quiet.

Karel jumps up, the bully weeps, probably for the first time in his life, but he weeps.

I do not know whether they are real tears, but he has them!

I will never get to know whatever these things mean, but they are always there when something in the machine breaks, jams, or succumbs!

It looks like something strange, but it is not that either.

Nature also weeps, everything weeps, but you have to be able to see it.

I know that they have not experienced any ‘kiss’; I do not see any grave.

This is also a mask to me.

The bully only weeps for a few seconds, and then he recovers.

Just as I thought he would.

He wants to talk, but it is not possible.

I say:

“See you later, Karel, or tomorrow, I am just going into the woods.”

Erica holds me back, she holds onto my jacket.

I know that this is not masculine behaviour but I cannot do any differently.

I think it is so childish, so awkward, that I will suffocate in it.

I have to have some air.

“You have to come back, Frederik”, Erica says.

“You will come back, Frederik”, Anna says.

“I will come back, children, I will come back!

I will most certainly come back!

Just stay calm.”

I walk, and I do not need to think of anything, because there is nothing. René is getting better!

I now know for certain.

He just went over his little hill.

I sit on my bench and enjoy the dreadful weather.

What do you want, Frederik?

This day flew past.

I want to think, but I cannot.

Under my blankets scenes come to me, a moment later I went through a ‘death’.

Without a mask, I believe, but I do not know for sure.

In the morning flowers arrived, with a letter enclosed from Karel.

“Frederik, just forgive me.”

I thought so, that great possession also lives in Karel.

It is true, he can bow his head and now we can carry on.

It is the greatest possession of the human being, I now know, no, I have known it for so long.

Now you can immediately build further, or you stand still for a darkness, it can even be devilish.

I have also known it for some time already!

However, those flowers.

If there had been no flowers, then what, Karel?

How will it be now, Karel?

Just think about it, Karel.

If you had to compensate for all of this with your naked self, then what, Karel?

I can now see your awkwardness, because you possess none of this.

Ugh, ugh, how difficult it is becoming.

I hear:

“I brought some stone for myself in,

in order to build a Temple.

When I was finished, I saw how unhappy my little castle was.”

Really childish, but that comes from René.

I receive it just like that from the universe.

It is also for Karel, for all of us, for animal and plant, I believe.

Yes, it is the case.

I also run out to buy some flowers.

I am ashamed, because I have nothing else either.

I also attach myself to a flower or I would no longer be here, I believe!

René will get them ...

It will be the most beautiful thing that I have ever thought of.

Erica and Anna will get flowers, with a card enclosed for Karel ...!

I would prefer to send him a case full of radishes or a dry cow to milk ... whatever it takes, so that he learns how it should be done!

I write on the card:

“Everything is fine, Karel, also this!

As long as you do not lose the lights in your eyes, do not extinguish them, because that ...?”

Now I wait and see.

How strange people are.

I make a note:

“What a lot I have learned.

I have learned how ‘not’ to do it.

People do not wish to accept their worries.

I now see that it is their fall.

If they do not get their way, they become angry and the shouting begins.

They also swear then and they curse Him, from Whom they received so many beautiful things.

I will think about everything.

I now have the need to go out with Sientje.

I will do that.”

We are outside ... on our way and in harmony with the animal I think further about my soul and my personality!

We walk; Sientje enjoys herself.

It is as if the animal understands me even better than usually.

Does the animal sense human suffering?

You would say so.

People do not want sorrow.

Whether they are guilty of their own unhappiness ... I would like to know that.

I know, but I do not yet have the foundations.

However, I shall wait.

I can see the place where these foundations will be laid!

René improves, and that is my fortune.

How great it is.

I believe that this will be a blessing to all of us.

There is only one way, Frederik, one only and we have to find it.

Only then can you begin to build.

Many roads lead to Rome, but there is only one to universal truth.

Just one!

Karel bowed his bull’s neck to that.

Thank God!

Oh, how happy I am, only because of Karel.

It is the greatest gift in my life, for today I mean.

Tomorrow will be another day.

Also, the day after tomorrow and for months to come, I believe for years, I can already see it.

Then other tears will come, better ones!

Ugh, what a gap, what a pit I can see.

Karel gave me a flower from his heart, from his living heart.

I want to possess that.

This one will never wither, I now believe, if the nourishment is good and if the origin is not beaten.

Now just throw this life on a dung heap, later, much later you will see that you are still good for something after all, despite everything.

What a person!

I stayed away for two days ... then Erica and Anna were already standing at my door and I had to go with them.

I received a good telling-off too.

A moment later, we are sitting together as if nothing has happened.

However, Karel is serious.

He says:

“What a strange things a person can do.

Today you are strong, and tomorrow we betray our friends and kick them out of the house.

We call them dirty bastards and do not really know that we are doing it and that we are so awkward.

If you see the mask, you weep, you would do anything to make up for it.

However, are you capable of it?

We want to die for each other ... yet the cloud in the distance already makes you afraid.

No stakes!

On the run and fast as well!

You cannot think seriously, you no longer believe what is said, but it is you yourself!

Let bygones be bygones, Frederik.”

Karel pours a drink, we drink to it, Erica, and Anna also take part.

It is as ordinary and human as can be again.

Well ... the liquid is just a part of it.

I do not believe that we will still need it later.

Now it is a part of things.

People like us do not know any better.

Then Karel says:

“Do you know, Frederik, that René is much better?

I think it is a miracle.

Do you want to see him?”

We are upstairs. René dashes over to me and wants to be held.

The child now possesses another vitality, and this is uplifting for his body.

I do not know where those powers come from and Karel will not know anything about it either.

Erica and Anna think that it is I, who gave the child health and courage.

I do not claim these supernatural gifts ... I think I am still too dopey.

However, we are making progress, even if we do not understand any of it.

Yet, we are happy!

But what will the future bring?

Karel knows that René’s mentality is not normal.

Erica and Anna as well, we all know, but I do not believe it!

We are sitting downstairs again.

The stage is full of flowers, there are also those intended for René.

Anna also drinks something; she sits opposite me and looks.

What sweetness.

Erica is sitting opposite Karel ... she attracts him while she is looking at her naughty boy.

No one says anything, but we talk inwardly.

Lips closed, quiet, peace, unity has reached us inwardly.

Human hearts have been opened, struggle, suffering, sorrow in life binds hearts!

We also get something from Karel.

We do not say cheers anymore, we already know, it would sound banal now.

It is poorly!

Just a moment ago, it was still significant, now that has also been destroyed.

Another mask again, or an action, transformed through a deed, evolves and takes you a step higher ...

Where?

Where is the end, the final part to be experienced, so that you can say: now it is good?

Is this the good?

I do not know yet!

We think!

We all think of René.

What will happen tomorrow?

The day after tomorrow?

What will we be like next year?

As if Erica wants to interpret my thoughts, we hear:

“What will our future be like?

What will little René’s be like?”

Karel already reacts and puts an end to it.

He utters:

“I am going to a patient, he needs me.”

A new foundation, Karel, I feel, I now know.

He kisses Erica goodnight in a hearty way.

“See you soon, little one”, he utters.

What a flower!

Another kiss, this one did not have a mask.

What a lot we are learning, every second you are eternal!

Thoughtless things have not been created ... I also learned that today, now just a moment ago.

There was a grave, really, but these people flew over it.

Yet, I also believe that all the little cogs were working, operating for this moment.

What a human machine!

Erica lets him go, but says:

“Come on, Anna, we shall go and have a look.”

I remained alone on the stage.

The tension in the hall and in my heart can be felt ... because what is the final word?

Only then will people know that the play has ended.

You would like to know, but we have not yet worked it out.

Movement comes to me.

I have something else to say.

I say to myself:

“Was your own mask also there, Frederik?

Try to get to know it then, if you want to be ready for the next act.”

The curtain falls and I head for home without saying anything, because I have discovered new things in myself and in my friends, and they inspire me to write.

The play lasted approximately two and a half hours.

If you want to make it shorter, that is possible, but then you will learn nothing.

I tell you that I no longer dare to say that all fools are abnormal; from the phenomena, I was already able to establish that it is not the case!

However, can you see the depth of this mask?

I have the great longing in me to get to know that as well.

I know it is the state of purity.

Oh, little René ...

Yet I believe that I will soon move!

And then?

Yes, then what?

Or should I stay away a while, and forget you?

I cannot do that!

I can see your little face in front of me!

I am one with you, always ... between day and night we see each other.

I kneel at your feet, until my last breath, because I know how it was given to me.

Will it be you then who calls to me?

Only then will the others know ...

And I repeat:

René, you are a Spiritual Child Prodigy ...

End of Part One