WHEN René along with the other children crosses the threshold of the nursery school, Karel and I race over to him and press the child to our hearts.

It is as if we experience a miracle; our hearts thump in our throats, its red colour is in our faces and we behaved in a very exaggerated manner according to the other fathers and mothers, but we did not care.

‘René ...

Little René ...’, we utter.

There is René!

Karel is the first to reach the child.

René fumbles with his hand and wriggles loose.

He looks up, looks at me and jumps into my arms.

Karel blushes because of it.

I behave a bit shy, but say:

‘If only you had not made me a schoolmaster, Karel, I cannot help it.’

We are home.

Erica and Anna cuddle the child.

René dashes here and there, he has never been kissed like that before, but it does not affect the life.

He looks a bit bedraggled, his little face is pale, his quiff stands on end.

In his little eyes I can see little lights, which were not there before, proof that there is tension in the life.

The soul trembles, the little body looks fearful, it is as if he has been given a good shaking there.

Already?

It is a very different child which is lying in my arms, it is no longer our René.

And that within a few hours.

Erica and Anna are occupied with him.

Karel has gone again, he has his own opinion, for the rest he does not care.

The three of us are involved and we will make sure that the child has a good life.

René talks a bit, wants to tell about what happened, but suddenly he cannot speak another word and begins to stammer.

Then weeping and female laments.

What on earth should we do with him?

It is Anna who asks me to solve this problem.

I say that it will be okay, she must not worry yet.

Everything will be okay, this as well!

After the boy has eaten something, he plays.

I am with him and take part.

We have not been able to have a word in confidence the past few months, the child closed himself off completely.

Now I feel that he has something to tell me.

I ask:

‘And, René, do you like it there?’

Now you must have some patience, he is starting to think.

It always takes a while before you get an answer.

Sometimes he stammers, it is also possible that you suddenly get such a sharp answer that a boy of twelve could not better him.

He looks at you first several times, he tries to pull it from your life, in order to collect together all his powers to answer the question.

You are now faced with a backward child.

You would want to turn yourself inside out to help that life, but it does not work, you stand there powerless.

For Erica that is still the worst thing there is.

She cannot cope with it either, mostly you see her walking away.

René once came to me and asked:

‘Why does mother run away from me, Uncle Frederik?’

Now I was left speechless and really did not know what I should say.

Now he is ready, but his lips tremble from emotion, yet I hear:

‘They are rotters, Uncle Frederik.’

‘Now, now, and where did you learn that nice word?’

I get from him that they have already called him a ‘rotter’!

He does not even know what the word means, but it sounds very smooth, it touches him, it means something to him.

Now he is silent and thinks about it.

I try to make it clear to him that everything is becoming very different, but that he has to get used to it.

I also give him the assurance that he must love his little friends and must make sure that he gets as many as possible.

He has to understand that he will get back what he gives himself to his little friends.

He quickly utters through his thin lips:

‘But I did not do anything.

I have done nothing.

Nothing!’

‘And then you got hit, didn’t you?’

‘Right in my face, here, Uncle Frederik.’

In the late afternoon I went with him to the woods.

He is interested in nature, he imitates the birds, chirps and grunts like the pigs, flowers are miracles to his life, trees are bogymen ... I do not yet know the secret about this.

When I wanted to put him under a giant tree like that, he started to walk away and he did not show himself again.

Ah, I thought, you are afraid of a tree!

It took me back to my dream: his sitting down there, falling and getting up and disappearing over his hill.

How can it be, I thought, so it’s reality after all?

Has his soul really experienced that?

He is afraid of big trees ...

He experienced the same as me and I can see the consequences of it before me.

There goes René ...

Here is the same child ... it walks next to me and he is not there.

It lives here and the child lives somewhere else and people call that backward.

In his head there is nothing ... it is the soul, the personality.

Yet so deep.

I now know why he got blows this morning.

The boys do not think that imitating is necessary.

I have opened his heart in my way.

I know that he is short-tempered and unmanageable if he is faced with himself and has to accept from other people that it is not the done thing.

Erica says that he has that short temper from Karel and he resigns himself to it, which surprises Erica.

Yet he suddenly said:

‘As long as you will admit that he has inherited that backwardness from you, I will not mind anything.’

Erica was on the run, she stayed away the whole day, she was angry, but still had to accept the deformed character of her child.

I now believe that René’s short temper plays tricks on him, that those characteristics will break his character, that he will completely dissolve as a result, so that we will be faced with problems again.

I know one thing: what is now still backwardness for him, will soon be the untameable in and for his being.

Whether he will then still belong in society?

When I see him like this and follow him, I get the feeling that the life leads itself to the material awakening and we cannot change anything about it.

What Erica and Anna feel as anxiety, is to me the natural development ... even if I admit that there is a question here of supernatural abilities, which the child cannot deal with.

His head has now become narrow, that unnatural thickness has gone.

It is a remarkable change, almost incredible, because the skull cannot be reformed and does not allow any human treatment.

Yet this process took place under our very eyes, for which no academic has a name.

Something new?

The boys in the street who knew him even spoke about it.

They said that his head had been drained.

Afterwards René shut himself away and did not go outside anymore.

In a way I got it out of him and I understood why he feared the street.

His father has drained his head ... it is called!

Then he asked me:

‘Why, Uncle Frederik, did Father have to drain my head?’

He did not trust either Erica or Anna with his secret.

This life continues to worry about all these things, he deals with them, but I saw that the personality did not make progress.

Irritation revenges itself.

For days he lives shut away in himself and feels alone in the world.

Not a word passes his lips, even if you were to beg him to do so, he does not understand or hear you.

Unobtainable to everything.

Karel has already learned to control himself, which has cost a lot of effort.

Erica sometimes falls out of her role.

Anna never forgets herself.

René knows exactly who he has to have, who forgets themselves, who snarls, he is afraid of that, it is as if he gets a severe beating.

At a harsh or severe word this life trembles and shakes.

He is therefore over-sensitive, so sensitive that a word can destroy him like a stalk of straw and beats him to the ground.

Next to that lives brutal violence.

Sometimes he cannot be controlled, he races through the house like a wild man, flings things all over the place, makes a terrible mess and breaks everything there is to break.

Erica is also afraid of that.

‘Oh dear’, she says to me, ‘we will have to buy ourselves furniture made of iron and steel.

What do you think about it, Frederik?’

What was expressed a short time ago in letters has now changed into visible tension, severe action and being mixed up in himself.

The life has awakened, it is searching for itself and it wants to experience itself.

However, there is no progress.

It will not do him any good, it changes his life and the personality, but characteristics start to work of which I do not expect very much.

I therefore believe that all of this will become his downfall in society, at school and whatever awaits this life.

I think that this teacher will soon not know what to do with him and she will say: just take that little chap away again, wild bulls are no use to me here, my children lose their peace.

But then what?

We must do everything to prevent that.

You talk for hours to him, he gives you answers which amaze you and a moment later pretends to be deaf and dumb.

The life starts to rotate at full power and is immediately a cause of anxiety.

I do not yet know this machine, I also hope to get to know its construction better.

When we are sitting next to each other on a bench looking at everything which passes by, which nature gives us, it is as if death is sitting next to you.

It could also be the ice-cold wind from the North, which shoots through marrow and kidneys and creates such a chilly feeling.

He stares at the ground, does not hear you talking, the soul of this body is everywhere and nowhere.

Even if you shake him awake, it does not help any.

Now all that light from his eyes has disappeared.

Now you are involved with his mask or another mask and the life extinguishes itself.

He sits for hours on end in the same position, quietly thinking or, what I make of it ... apathetically recovering.

But where will it take us?

You either have him or you don’t, you sit outside and you sit inside, you are not outside and you do not sit in his room either ... I heard Anna say ... he eats and he does not eat, he drinks his milk and asks a moment later when he will get some milk.

Then it is an adult. Anna got him out of the bath ... ten minutes later he asks her when he has to have a bath again.

Karel drives with him through the woods, five minutes later he asks whether father will take him along some time, he would love a drive.

Then you are faced with a mad person?

Is this child off his rocker?

An hour later he confronts you with other facts and asks:

‘Does a dog have a soul, Uncle Frederik?’

When he asked me that, Karel jumped up out of his chair.

‘Ask me again, René ...!’ Karel asked.

The child asks:

‘What did you say?

What do I have to ask, Father?

Did you ask me something?

Oh, I thought that you asked me something.

Then I will just go.’

Karel says to me: ‘God damn it, that is not a child any more, but an old man.

Did you see that, Frederik?’

I saw it, I heard it, I experienced it.

I do not think that this was René.

But then what?

Karel continued on the subject.

I hear:

‘I believe, Frederik, that this boy is fooling all of us.

If you ask me, I believe that we will end up at Hans’, in other words: he is going mad!’

His politeness has suddenly disappeared without trace.

He is using ‘thou’, the polite form of speaking.

A politeness is shown which you do not possess yourself and usually do not use, because you don’t do that amongst friends, don’t consider it necessary, but which you force him to use. A politeness, which suddenly changes again into the familiar form, which takes you straight to the street gutters and lies there for the taking, but which is not looked at by anyone with any sense.

A rascal now appears, a broken mentality, which stands before you a moment later and recites a poem.

Karel says:

‘You could make a play out of it.

People would enjoy it, I assure you of that, it is such a comedy.

However, we are bothered by it.’

You know the rascals of the street, there are different types.

If René has those airs and graces, I do not see one of them who is like him, even if I have to go to Paris for it or New York, Vienna or Berlin ... this one cannot be improved upon.

He is like a wild man then.

Then you can also hear:

‘May you destroy mice, Uncle Frederik?

May you poke out a louse’s eyes, so that the beast is no longer able to find you?

May you pull pigs’ tails, because that animal can scream so terribly?

May you pull out chickens’ feathers, if you want them to get a new suit, because you always see them in the same clothes.

Does that not get boring?’

Anna saw him one day busy with the chickens.

When she asked what he was doing, he replied:

‘I am giving this animal a new suit, Anna, after all I always get new clothes too.’

After he had said that, he immediately becomes another child and he runs away from the chickens.

He has asked me hundreds of questions and they all came down to whether he was allowed to do this or that, in order to give all those lives some joy.

And that for a while, a few months; then we saw a different personality again.

One afternoon – we are sitting together, tea and cake on the table – he utters:

‘How well-off we are, mother, aren’t we?’

When Erica says: ‘You are right’, he continues:

‘You have to thank God for that, don’t you, mother?’

Erica looks at us and replies: ‘Of course, little René ... every day.’

And now he adds: ‘But I will be damned if I will.’

Who taught René those words?

It is the boys who live close by, he says, they will be damned if they do either.

We know enough.

He comes towards me at the same time and asks:

‘Do you want to hear a poem of mine, Uncle Frederik?’

‘Well, I would like to.

Just let me hear it!’

He immediately rushes to say:

‘I was building a bridge.

And that bridge was long.

I destroyed that thing again myself.

Because I did not do it right.

I should not have said be damned.’

Bridge and poetry, the word damned, they are one concept for this soul.

They are linked to each other and are separate from each other, knock each other down ... talk to each other and have arguments, feel that it is wrong and start again.

There is no order, Karel says, that head is a mystery to me.

It is full of nonsense!

And rottenness ...

I do not intend to make a fool of myself: that is the way it is!

When he has said that poem, he lays down at Erica’s feet and behaves like a dog.

He licks and smacks his lips ... the animal in him longs for something ...

Does he get nothing from the master?

The animal jumps up, runs to Anna, pulls her apron from her body, steals something nice to eat from her and goes upstairs.

You do not see that life again for hours.

When you come upstairs this life is lying on the ground in a deep sleep.

Or is it something else?

That also lasted for months.

Then this soul changed again.

From this life another awakened, because this life presents you with problems, with masks, with inhuman things.

That is now sitting next to me on the bench and is not saying anything.

This life is not here, is not of this world, it does not belong here!

It does not live here!

It is everywhere and nowhere, it has nothing to do with this rotten world, it goes its own way.

We say that: it is a mad person!

This is an apathetic child.

It is an impossible character.

It has everything and it has nothing!

What is it?

Are you still trying to kid me that this is a ‘spiritual child prodigy’, Frederik?

The miracle is sitting next to me and is depressed?

The miracle went to school this morning and got blows?

Why?

Because this miracle imitates everything and everyone there.

This miracle cannot do any more.

They will soon kick it out the door, no one in this world wants to be involved with this miracle.

It is a poor comfort to me.

And for him it is a terrible world.

That is our René, little René ... oh, yes, our child!

‘Should you not go home, my boy?’

‘What?’

‘I just asked you whether you want to go home yet, René.’

‘What is it, Uncle Frederik?’

‘I said that those wild ducks can flap their wings so nicely.’

‘They’re lovely, aren’t they, Uncle Frederik?

I would love to be a duck.

Do those animals never get to wear a new suit?

And why do they lay their eggs outside?

Why do they not come and bring you the eggs at home?

You can eat them, after all?

Why must those animals get everything and we get nothing?

Why do chicken’s eggs cost money and the animals do not get any of it?

Why does that teacher talk so much nonsense to us?

Why does she not tell us about Our Lord?’

‘That will come, René, that will also come, just wait and see.’

He is already sleeping again.

A moment later I ask:

‘Do you not have to go home yet, René?’

‘What do those people want from you, Uncle Frederik?

Do they want to have our bench?

I won’t have any of it, we have only just arrived.’

‘Do you not want to go home yet, René?’

‘Do we have to leave already, Uncle Frederik?

What does Anna say?

Does she have a pudding?

Which pudding is she making?

Is there enough to eat today?

What time is tonight, Uncle Frederik?’

‘Tonight it will be one o’clock, two o’clock and also five past three, six and seven o’clock.

But then you will already be awake, won’t you?’

‘Precisely ...

Uncle Frederik, and then the daily tasks begin.

Eating, washing, tea, playing for a while and then to school.

Oh, yes, to school, what fun you will have there with the other children, won’t you, dear?’

That is Anna and there a bit of Erica in it.

The rest is rubbish?

The child is thinking, the child is there and the child is not there ...

But do we not know this mask, this phenomenon?

My God, Frederik, have you slept in?

Are you dozing?

René, little René ...!

What an angel you are, what a science you bring to this world.

My God, how can it be.

In my diary there is added:

This afternoon I got the foundations!

They are amazing, great, awe-inspiring.

I know René and I am together again with him.

We were busy laying foundations, we worked on it in our own way.

It went really well.

Erica, everything is wonderful, everything, Karel ... everything, gentlemen, EVERYTHING!’

Erica said: ‘You are there, doctor, and you are not there.

You walk in the street and you sit inside.

You talk to yourself and it is like a physical conversation with yourself.

Do you not think that is a phenomenon, doctor?

Do you have to laugh at that, doctor?’

Does the doctor think it is nonsense?

Yes!

However, does the doctor not think that this is mad?

Is strange?

Yes, that is fine, Erica, you are here and you are not here.

René is not here either, he passed this onto you!

My God ... what a miracle it is ... how can it be.

But I will wait and see, I promise You that.

René thinks of a thousand things at the same time.

He is good and he is evil, but it lives in one hand, in one head and wants to be a part of the huge whole.

He stumbles there over himself.

However, I am starting to believe that the life of Karel, his effect and nature, can think, even if it is like a bit of slime which I once held in my hand in order to become wiser through it.

It is a brilliant day today, such and such a day of the such and such month of the year 1900 and something.”

Then it was evening, the sun set and little René slept like a baby.

I sat in my room in order to record this incredible thing and to keep it for this so rotten humanity, in order to force the academics later to bow their empty heads to this miracle.

Oh, my ‘spiritual miracle’ lives and it gets wings ...

A duck lays eggs, René, but they were not laid by the wind, they are worth their weight in gold and you will find the papers for them on your bank.

I will guarantee it.

When it was three o’clock at night, I went to bed, although I would not be able to sleep anyway, it had got to me so much ...

When sleep comes to me I am awake again as well.

I see René lying in the middle of his little room, the child is sleeping.

What is it doing there?

I follow him and I also go to sleep.

A moment later we are standing outside.

We are at a school, there are many children.

He looks at the children, he follows them one by one and he knows them.

He asks them to be polite to him, because then he will not need to say such bad things about them.

They laugh at him.

He asks again whether they will not say such rotten words, that hurts him.

It is as if they prick him, stab him, and with a sharp knife into the bargain.

Will you stop it?

No ... we won’t stop it, you shouldn’t be so backward then.

Weak animals must be destroyed.

However, I am not destroyed, I mean, I am not weak!

But you cannot think, can you?

Did you think that we did not know that your father has drained your head?

Rotter?

Get lost.

We will pester you away from here.

There!

Ouch, oh, Anna ...

Ouch, why must they hit me?

Anna runs up to the boy, she asks:

‘What was the matter, René?

Why are you lying on the ground?

Why do you not lie in your little bed if you want to sleep?

Come on, no one will hurt you, as long as Uncle Frederik and I are here.

Good, that is better.’

I awake with a fright.

I jump out of bed, light a pipe and start to write.

The words flow from my pen:

‘I know!

When René sleeps he dreams and those dreams come true.

He dreamt about school.

Anna told him that, but Anna does not know what is going to happen now.

I even believe that I could now already write, could tell what will happen.

What will they do to him?

Oh, that poor boy ...

This world is no good to your sensitive soul, but I will continue to help you.’

I experienced a wonderful day and a wonderful night.

Now I will really go to sleep.

When René lies on the ground like that, he is flying, he is outside and he is inside.

Well, well, what is it?

The child experiences good and evil and absorbs it.

The child experiences this world!

The child experiences the animals!

The child experiences life differently from us.

It is there and it is not there?

You can’t fool me, can you?

Oh, how happy I am!

The third day at school brought misery home.

René already has a black eye.

The teacher says that she did not see where it happened.

They could have killed René, she did not see it.

She walked there in front of the boys and girls with her nose in the wind.

She did not see what happened behind her.

The children run across the street, they roll over the ground, kill each other, and she does not see it!

When we come home with him, Erica shouts at me:

‘Oh, Frederik, how merciless youngsters are!’

Yes, they are.

But what can you do?

Must we teach René to defend himself?

Should I give the child boxing lessons, so that it can hit out?

Can defend himself?

Karel likes that that idea and tries it.

René stands before him, his father, and looks, for just a moment!

Then he runs away fast.

Karel shouts: ‘Come here ... stay here, René ...’

However, the child runs off.

He does not want anything to do with boxing.

When Karel gets hold of him, the life says:

‘Our Lord wants nothing to do with it, Father.’

‘What are you saying?

Has this to do with Our Lord?

Come on, hit out, René, just give me a beating.

You have to show the boys what you can do.’

The end result is that Rene slumps onto the bed, he is so tired.

‘How tired that makes you’, he utters an hour later, so that Anna asks:

‘Why are you so tired, René?’

‘I saw that father was boxing, Anna.

I became so tired, oh, so tired, and then I went to sleep.’

Do you understand this, Frederik?

I understand it, dear Anna, it is a miracle.

And because it is a miracle and has to do with my ‘spiritual miracle’ I just keep it to myself.

However, René gets tired watching.

He gets tired from everything which he perceives as harshness, this life, this child this machine, is so sensitive.

Did you think that?

Did you see that?

I saw it and am grateful to you for it.

However, there will be no boxing.

It will be experienced in sleep and now the own defence follows.

However he will run away, you will see, and we will get him home again for good.

Now it is me, but I do not want to be it, the life goes its own way.

You will see, Frederik!

Oh, that Anna!

What is the reason, I wondered the next morning, that the life already has the power to inspire the mother during her pregnancy and to pass on thoughts?

I also let myself believe that a mother who wrote to me at that time, had become clairvoyant during her unity with the child.

Does this have bearing on all of this?

I do not know yet.

It is becoming clear to me that the phenomena of Erica completely agree with the being that is René.

I now have to accept that this is the miracle that I discovered.

The foundation!

We will carry on, René!

There is a road which leads there ... that will be the state of purity.

You are continually faced with new questions.

What we as creators give the mother during what is called fertilisation, is that inspired?

Is the soul present there, which then later becomes a ‘human being’?

Is that all so close to each other?

I mean, do soul and material at that moment already live in one world?

It is a great miracle.

However, what do we know about it?

What does science know?

Is it admissible to ask such questions?

Is it fantastic to search for yourself and your birth as a person?

If I follow all those mothers, remarkable phenomena appear, which I now see again in René.

Erica was inspired by it, she reacted irrevocably to what ... is now the life of René.

She was not there and René is not there now.

What an embryo.

What strength such a small material little cell has and a penetrating capacity, it allows itself to rain in the daily consciousness of the mother.

Such an embryo smashes everything there to pieces, it shakes the mother about, firm personalities are snapped as if they are blades of straw, so badly that they are capable of ending their lives.

That same insignificant cell life sends the longing for a drink to the mother, it passes on the longing to imitate Franz Liszt and thousands of other things, which, now that I see this before me, it appears to be capable of.

If ‘personality’ is already present there, we are faced with incredible wisdom and I and thousands of people along with me may know how God has composed our human machine, where it concerns us.

Good grief, Frederik, what foundations you can see!

That again through our René!

René lives in thousands of things at the same time.

I have to accept that.

Can his life deal with that?

I do not think so.

All those personalities represent an own world, but then we end up in our great dictionary.

What sensible people like us have given a name to, lives in him, naturally in everyone, but for him those characteristics receive a shape and they wear a mask.

High and low lives in him and outside of him in order to say something, and in between that you see something of Our Lord.

I know one thing: he has a great love in him.

He loves God and His life.

He has a feeling for religion and he is open to nature.

We will allow this life to awaken calmly.

What I have to do is follow him and stand by him.

Youth is awakening, Anna said a few days ago, also in René.

It is just as the child saw in advance.

The boys do not tolerate weak people!

They almost destroyed him.

Five of those lads did not like him.

I heard that they wanted to beat him black and blue, because he interfered in everything.

The teacher did not see it.

They attacked him so much that we got him home with holes in his head.

Yet he took on three of them.

It happened so unexpectedly that the boys thought that they were fighting with a lunatic.

They do not know where that little lad got the strength.

In few seconds he had beaten three of them to the ground, then the others ran away.

Then the nice teacher saw what a blood bath her pupils had created.

Karel got involved in it.

He thought that René was great, if there had not been a question mark.

It happened like this ...

They walked outside with the teacher.

They go into the woods every morning.

The children love that, they enjoy the weather and can please themselves for a while.

We now know that there is supervision.

They are squabbling a bit.

René is called water head with a straw in it, which leaks.

He asked Anna what all of this meant.

He felt intuitively that it meant something terrible.

"We saw his eyes beaming with fire", one of the boys said.

‘First we saw tears.

However, he can also call names, he also looks you up and says something horrible.

Then those stupid rotten stories.

What does it matter to us whether ducks lay their eggs outside and chickens never get another suit!

How we laughed.

Chickens in a Sunday suit, we do not understand that.

Then he became furious at us.

That is what happened, sir.

Then ... then there were blows.

He thought that he could fight against all of us.

We let him feel that he could not do that, a moment later we were lying on the ground.

I will never do that again, Mr Wolff, I am sorry.’

Karel had to accept that he was made a fool of right under his nose.

René let rip like a real lunatic.

His mouth was foaming, he screamed like a machine could not and was everywhere at the same time.

Yet then he had no longer a face.

His nose and mouth were bleeding, his hands were crushed, his legs broken.

He was lying on the ground like a wild pig, grunted and screamed as if they wanted to butcher him.

René has strange airs and graces.

At that moment it was a madman which they walloped ... that’s what lunatics do.

They can fight ten people at the same time.

René could do that ... but now he is lying upstairs, broken, dead tired, wounded and you do not get a word out of him.

Anna does everything, Erica is very upset by it. Karel has taught the teacher a lesson, but became furious when he also learned how helpless his child is.

The whole neighbourhood knows.

Those intellectuals are now laughed at.

A farmer from the country brings academics into the world, that one there a lunatic.

Where are those people now with their learnedness?

Did those people think that they could bring academics into the world?

Did those people think that they could ask God?

You should hear those stories.

The hassle is a torture to Karel.

You cannot do anything about it, it is slander.

The ordinary man is thinking for himself.

The stupid person acts for himself.

If this trashy town had been a bit bigger, such as Rotterdam, for example, then an intellectual would not have been so well-known.

Now everyone knows the Wolffs and the family is talked about.

In one day this childish fight has turned into a great scandal.

Everyone talks about it.

One person is on our side, another is against us and wish the doctor well with his lunatic.

Erica does almost not dare to leave the house anymore, Anna braves everything, she challenges people as it were.

I go my way and think about it.

However, you should hear that gossip.

I can also see and hear my foundations in that gossip.

I call that ‘the gutter philosophy’, the gutter philosophical systems, where awesome truth lives, however, which people throw away just like that and which cannot be seen by anyone.

This is just the way I am, I have been collecting all these antiques for some time, my whole house is full of them.

I heard that Gerrit van Ess drinks like a fish, but just look at his boys.

One is a clerk, the other has worked himself up to altar boy, the oldest has gone to Indonesia, and his two daughters got a husband, whose fingers the aristocracy would lick.

They are ladies.

That learned doctor now gets a lunatic in his house.

Just as well, then that will be the end of the high and mighty airs.

Madam surely does not feel like horse-riding anymore?

Would Doctor not like a ride?

You cannot buy everything with money.

I am just saying it, I have my own worries and you never know what hangs above your head, but that will be the end of his high and mighty airs.

He can now go and work for his child.

Whether you drink and are eternally in a drunken stupor or not, all those people do not believe anyway that it has nothing to do with getting children.

Gerrie from the old Van Knoop, who goes out with Tom, Dick and Harry, who does not shy away from sacred motherhood, who has had so many men in a year that another person would need ten lives for it, has triplets, all healthy, they are beautiful children.

A doctor and his wife bring a lunatic into the world, a child with the airs and graces of a pig.

Brains have no meaning.

Even if you lie under the silk, even if there is central heating, even if there are flowers beside the bed and you can have a nice bath beforehand, it does not matter, it does not help you any, ‘nature’ still does its own thing.

Even if you lie on the heath and even if you have not been able to wash yourself properly for years – that appears to be the case if you see Betsy de Krom, who has lived her whole life under the ground – conceiving children and having them, is not in the hands of any human being.

Nature tricks you anyway!

Betsy stinks from the dirt, her husband who is ten years older is just like a pig, but just look at their sons.

Just see those boys.

What men they are.

They have heads on their shoulders, they know exactly what they have to do!

They do not drink.

The old Krom has given up drinking, his sons tell their father: we have other things to do, we want to leave this hovel.

Stop that drinking or we will twist your neck.

However, you should see that doctor and his wife.

What poverty.

I am certainly not laughing about it, a human being does not know what is hanging over his head, but is this not the truth?

I tell you, God punished them.

Those people fussed like nobody’s business.

That showing off has now been revenged.

That lady thought that she lived alone in this world.

Don’t you know that they always had parties there?

There are always people there and the curtains are open, they want you to feast your eyes.

I was so bothered when I walked past there.

You should see them sitting there.

You should see what a fuss those people make.

But from my money and yours.

The money a doctor like that must earn.

And I do not like that other smart alec who is in the house.

That man greets everyone in a friendly way, but I do not trust that man.

If you ask me, that man is having an affair with the maid.

I really do not trust that lot.

So you see, what has a name, can also break its neck like us.

What is rich does not mean that it has a head.

I only mean – and I will leave it at that – those things are not for sale.

It is awful, that is true and you do not need to laugh about it, but Our Lord knows how to find His children.

Whether you possess intellect, or whether you live under the ground, carrying the dirt behind you, it does not help, nature goes its own way.

When life awakens you are faced with problems.

Praying does not help!

Even if you pray until you drop, it does not help.

Corry de Leeuw has proved that.

She went day after day to communion ...

She was in the church for days in order to thank God for her blessed pregnancy.

I believe that she laid a hundred guilders worth of flowers at Mary’s feet.

Her face looked sacred, you would have sworn that she was right at that time.

And now?

They had to pull the child out of her body in bits and pieces.

I know that it sounds very harsh but is it not true then?

Mary thought: just get lost, I do not want your flowers.

I see that you cannot buy that holy family with money.

If something is beautiful and very natural, why do you want to have it even more beautiful?

There she goes, she looks like a drowned cat.

Just a little while and you will not see her again ... then we will find her in a madhouse.

If only that woman could put it out of her head that God does not even see her.

If only she could imagine that the world and live carry on anyway.

I talked to her.

She says: I am destroyed, life has no meaning anymore for me.

She prayed and felt so holy that this is a disappointment which you will never overcome.

If you are mistaken in God, you will be finished.

She made every effort!

Poor Corry, just go and act the part of nurse.

She scratched out her husband’s eyes when he said that there was still the chance of having a child.

However, one thing leads to another.

She locks herself up, she does not want anything more to do with men, everything in this world deceives you.

Mary let her down, communion is silent ...!!!

Her forget-me-nots, I thought, when I heard all that gossip, lie in the street.

There go the Wolffs!

Gossiped about!

People want to say something.

They want the Wolffs to have this misery.

Erica wants to move house.

Karel says: ‘Let them gossip.’

I have my own opinion and Anna takes better care of René than any mother could.

She does not leave his side for a second.

However, are all these people wrong?

Does gossip mean anything?

Can you lay foundations for a new university from gossip?

The diary says:

I gained amazing truths and I got them just like that for nothing.

People in the street talk.

All of this area talks about René and his intellectual parents.

From everything it appears that these things are not for sale, you cannot bring God down by praying and bringing flowers for Mary and Joseph.

It does not make any difference whether you are bitten by the cat or the dog, nature or God just continues.

It does not help you whether you drink, pray or take a bath.

Whether you conceive children in full consciousness or whether you have supper in a drunken stupor, let rip like a wild one, all of this does not help you, you get what is set aside for you, and not a jot less.

Even if you stink to high heaven, this is as pure as crystal.

It will be the truth, this does not pay any attention to human thoughts, but it bothers Erica and Karel.

Anna and I, we are all talked about.

I tell you honestly, I had not foreseen this, I could never have got it into my head, I have never thought of such a thing.

Now it is there!

It is strange.

It tells me that inherited defect has no debt.

I mean, for the life of the soul.

Of course, the body can be influenced, diseases will later emerge, we have worked that out long ago and it is known.

However, why is such a soul not contaminated?

When the father drinks like a fish, a girl sells herself to all and sundry, knocks about like a wild cat and is then still able to bring three children into the world at the same time, which are one for one darlings, you can’t help asking yourself: what does He wish to achieve with people like us?

Does all of this have to be destroyed with violence?

He sows hatred and malice amongst people.

He curses one life and blesses another.

He throws charity about precisely for those people who have not earned it?

Have Erica and Karel not earned this?

Have those sluts prayed for it?

Then Corry would have had a saint; but she got nothing and goes to Hans, for certain ...

She succumbs under it.

You see, these are masks!

New ones?

Oh, no, not that, but they are there.

Erica is already almost mad.

She does not dare to go out and yet she has to.

We must not pay any attention to the people.

I will go for a walk today and precisely where there will be a lot of people.

I will show them that everything is actually perfectly ordinary, even if we are stuck with a lunatic.

Of course my talk appears muddy.

I insisted up until yesterday that René was a child prodigy.

I do not dare to say another word and they are right when they say: Frederik, stop it, I can no longer bear that, for goodness sake stop it or I will commit suicide.

That flows just like that from Erica’s lips.

Karel now looks at me from behind his glasses and Hans wants to talk to me about it.

I will go to him!

It also says: All in all a gain for me!

I shall convince them one by one, only it is a pity that people interfere in it.

However, this is because we live amongst good and evil, they are devils, who enjoy the suffering of other people.

Even if there is some love involved, the satan speaks through it.

However, it will all be okay!

Hans wrote to ask me to come soon, he had to go to Leipzig for a few months.

I shall come when I am ready.

René is lying in bed and is playing as if there is nothing the matter.

I even believe that the events have done him good mentally.

When I asked:

‘What made you beat up those boys, René?’ I immediately got as answer:

‘I asked those rascals, Uncle Frederik, to leave me alone.

They did not do that.

They continued to pester me.

Then they were already hitting and from that moment onwards I do not know anything anymore.

Now I am with you, with Anna and with Mother.

Where is Mother?

Call Mother, Uncle Frederik?

Call Mother?’

Anna goes downstairs.

When Erica is sitting next to him, René took her hand in his and said:

‘Just look me in the eye, Mother.’

Erica laughs and weeps.

The mad child says:

‘Look at her.

Did you really think, Mother, that I would let myself be hit?’

Erica’s hand is shoved away somewhat roughly, René continues to play and has forgotten her.

We now see again that the child can think of thousands of things at the same time, or suddenly forgets everything:

‘Where is Mother, Uncle Frederik?’

‘Your mother is here.’

‘I saw her in the woollen pieces of fluff.’

He looked or stared into the woollen blanket.

He sees Erica in it.

I believe that he drew her likeness in it and no longer needs the real one.

Erica was upset by it again.

Not Anna.

She looked at me and understood.

I told Anna one thing and another, she now believes everything from me.

She no longer falls, she can cope with everything, I only have to tell her something about his inner self now and again, she has asked me, then everything happens as it has to happen.

Erica had to look him in the eye.

However, Erica did not see anything, did not feel anything.

She only thought: my child is raving mad, where will this end; God forgive me, but I did not expect this.

It does not help you if you behave like a learned person.

It does not help you if you come from royal blood.

It does not help you any if you weep or let things run their course, this sense crushes you or it does not crush you.

Now it is a question of how you experience your own misery.

When you see this marked child playing, you could weep.

When you think about the words it says, you could weep.

However, if you follow this life and can sense what it is about, you will no longer weep, even if they had brought him home for dead, you will know then that everything is right in the way it comes to you.

One thing is true: his soul was mad at the time of the fight.

This was no longer a child!

This was a hooligan, a bantam, as strong as a boy of twenty, who possessed the power to take on about ten men.

Now, like a silent night, like a dream he sits there playing with nothing in particular, because you see nothing in his hands and yet there is so much there.

That day, it was an hour after dinner, he asked me:

‘Uncle Frederik, will you listen to me properly?’

Anna let slip: ‘What will we experience this time?’ Yet I simply said:

‘Well, what is it, René?’

‘Listen.

I would like to have some chalk so that I can draw.

I like to paint, Uncle Frederik.’

An adult says what the life wants to do.

Sort that one out, Frederik.

‘Where did you suddenly get that from, René?’

‘I have always wanted it, Uncle Frederik.

But I was afraid that Father would not approve.

Will you help me, Uncle Frederik?

I do not want to be a doctor, as long as you know, not me, ugh, not me, never, ugh, ugh, not me, never me, ugh, dirty!

I think it is dirty, ugh!!’

It could have gone on for an hour, that ‘dirty’ and that ‘ugh’, but thank God it stopped.

He has also forgotten his question.

However, I know the life will come back soon, it will awaken for this and it will have it as well.

And why not?

Does Karel wish to make a doctor out of a lunatic?

I think that this is the best thing for René.

In the evening, before going to bed, he says to Anna:

‘You see, Anna, those boys have nothing and that is envy.

I will get them.’

When Anna tries to answer him and tries to say that he has to love his little friends, he already says:

‘I will rub pooh into them, Anna.’

Anna sinks under the ground, she is afraid of that ‘pooh’.

René goes to bed, closes his eyes and is immediately asleep.

He did not even have anymore time to say goodnight to Anna.

Anna says it is just as if he expects something in his sleep.

It is as if someone is waiting for him, who says: let those dopes just work it out for themselves.

Come on, I have waited long enough already.

Have you ever seen a child, Frederik, who falls asleep so quickly?

I haven’t.

Then you can see Anna running back and forth.

She creeps round on socks as if she is haunting.

It is little René.

She cannot believe that the child is not normal.

Just look, Frederik, what a sleep, what rest.

He is a lovely boy.

Would you say that he is mad?

That this child is ... psychopathic?

Anna laughs, she cannot remember that learned word, yet she wants to absorb all those strange words and she is already managing well.

She calls the parapsychologist ... ‘the parade horse’.

Hans is called a pissologist, she knows the others, they are simple good-for-nothings.

They know nothing.

She no longer has any respect for professors.

Only for Karel still, because he said from the beginning: ‘Effect is effect, nature is nature ... and I also know nothing!’

That is the most natural thing of all.

However, René is a mystery to her.

She watches over him and continues to watch over him!

Erica really has no child to take care of, Anna does everything!

In his sleep, René had said:

‘Why do you not come, Uncle Frederik?’

I felt that the child was calling me.

However, I was wide awake, I was smoking my pipe and reflecting.

He was somewhere and he is waiting for me there.

Anna says that he is like a saint in his sleep.

‘You can hear him saying the nicest things.

He behaves just like an academic.

You would swear, Frederik, that René has many souls.

Is that not possible?

If a mother can bring triplets into the world, can a soul not be cursed with several souls?

You know what I mean.

Can René not possess two souls?

Can he perhaps not have two people in him?

I do not know how to find the words for it.

However, you will just have to see for yourself.

When he is sleeping, Frederik, he is a different boy.’

We were waiting for hours next to his bed when the family was out.

I heard him say:

‘Where are you now, Uncle Frederik?

Are you not coming to the ‘meadow’?

Are you not coming to the tree?

Are you leaving me alone?

I am waiting, I am waiting, I can see blossom and I will pick some of it for you, also for Anna.

Mother has not earned it.

Neither has Karel yet ... but he is different.

I want to draw!

I will draw!

I will do what I want to do, Uncle Frederik, Anna?

I can see it, I can hear it, oh, it is so beautiful here.’

You could see that his closed eyes ... see, look, see everything, only it is not of this world.

We go away!

We weep, and we left our hearts open.

That was one evening.

There was no more and no more was coming yet.

I now know that he is expecting me.

I also know that deep within this life everything is all right ... everything, everything!

If that awakens ... that?

Then we will experience something totally different.

Despite everything I insist that René is a spiritual child prodigy!

However, we shall see where the ship will strand.

I believe that it will not be stranding, but it will mean going ashore, getting in supplies for a long journey ...

Oh, how it will bang there!

I will go along, Anna as well, Erica and Karel are there, but they see nothing, they have to subject themselves to a sleep therapy.

It is the sacred truth.