Pinball Machines and the Inquisition …

For a moment, I wonder why nostalgia tries to grab power here, in the Catalan village of Sant Pere Pescador. Then, I surrender to that power grab, and I’m no longer a frustrated dwarf who just left a surf shop, but I’m a nine-year-old standing through the rolled-open roof of a Citroën 2CV—my eyes darting—as it passes through French villages so different from the half-built housing estate in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where I’m growing up.

Man, my life in that half-built housing estate is great, though madness called school seriously hinders my education. Every second I’m not in school, every second I’m roaming between unfinished houses—blowgun in hand, stack of torn-into-strips magazine pages to roll arrows from in my waistband—life is good, more than good. But life is at its best when, during the summer holidays, a 2CV chugs over the Maas River via the Van Brienenoord Bridge with me in the backseat.

The monotonous thumping of the 2CV’s wheels on the concrete slabs of the highway—laid by the Germans during the war. The stamp a Belgian customs officer presses into the booklet in which I collect border stamps. The landscape, which begins to ripple in Belgium. Dagedang, dagedang, dagedang on those concrete slabs all the way to the French border. Another stamp in my booklet. White license plates with red numbers and letters on cars give way to yellow license plates with black numbers and letters. Tractors and combines in cornfields—no cornfields in the Netherlands. The chaos on the Boulevard Périphérique around Paris.

Three-lane roads after Paris, every attempt to pass a truck an adventure. Castles, real castles, in the distance and ribbons of small, colored flags strung above the streets in the villages we pass through on the four-day-long journey to the French Dordogne. No two houses alike. Curved and sloped streets. Squares where, in the afternoon, people play jeu de boules. Shops, hotels, cafés, and in every village, at least one church—once built with dedication.

In the half-built housing estate where I’m growing up, the street plan that slowly unfolds is rather, say, boring. Shops are clustered in a mall, and the concrete box with the flat roof on top isn’t Jan-Willem Stoker’s karate school. That box, I discovered after following a group of darkly dressed, gloomy-looking people one Sunday morning, is a church, and Jan-Willem Stoker just rents a room in it.

Men with berets on their heads, baguettes tucked under their arms. Women in light blue and pink aprons, chatting on sidewalks. The pleasant smell of the cafés where my parents stop every now and then for coffee. The pinball machine in every one of those cafés …

Often, I dream of being left behind in France to wander from village to village, living life as never before. Not a chance. Every year, back from the Dordogne, I slide back into life in the housing estate, a life I have to create myself. Apart from the life I create, there is little life. Hundreds of people in the terraced houses all around me. I don’t know anyone. No one knows anyone. I eh… I know the boy next door’s name; he’s in my class at school. We never talk, never walk to school together. Five days a week, the men in the estate get into their cars or walk to the bus stop to travel to Rotterdam, which is out of reach for me, whether I walk or cycle. Late in the afternoon, they return to their houses. Women only seem to be on the streets on Saturdays. With their men, they head for the mall—by car if the family owns one—to be back a few hours later. On Sundays, the streets are even emptier than on other days, though on Sunday mornings there are always those groups of darkly dressed, gloomy-looking people walking the streets. Why doesn't anyone play jeu de boules in the afternoon? Why isn't every third or fourth house a shop, or a cobbler, or a café with a pinball machine?

Long before Michel Houllebecq draws my attention to the existence of atomized people, I live a fine life in that half-built Rotterdam housing estate as an atomized little fellow. But my hunting grounds are getting smaller. The pranks I pull are aimed at new residents, and getting smacked around the ears, sometimes worse, force me to move to the reclaimed land—the polders—north of the housing estate—I have a compass! I don’t care. Hunting grounds are hunting grounds. My blowgun is a Silver Gun, and vague at first, growing stronger with time, something stirs in my heart, something I only later come to appreciate as a lack of talent for conformity. That apart, every year, a 2CV chugs across the Van Brienenoord Bridge with me in the backseat.

Cheerful petrol stations in the middle of French villages—the words plein super, s’il vous plaît the first French words I learn—and, breathtakingly impressive, the statues in every village the 2CV passes through or sometimes stops for a moment because there’s a market, me knowing that lunch that day will be a big slice of melon. Statues of soldiers in bronze, marble, or stone. Soldiers on horseback, sabre in hand, epaulettes on their shoulders, and soldiers from the First and Second World Wars—mort pour la France the next French words I learn, words that never fail to set me pondering. No statues in the Rotterdam housing estate that is my world eleven months each year. No memory …

The journey never went farther than the Dordogne, which was far enough. Years later, though, I realized that the Spain of the ’70s—the Spain of Franco—would have impressed me even more. But the Spain of Franco, teachers taught me, was bad, because Franco was a dictator. When I remarked that, by that logic, all dictators were bad, teachers nodded approvingly, relieved, it seemed, I was thinking the way I was expected to. When then, I asked why it was that all dictators were bad, I was met with scorn; only stupid children didn’t understand that dictators were bad and democratically elected government leaders good. I kept my doubts to myself. A critical attitude, I discovered at a young age, is not easily tolerated in a democracy.

Sant Pere Pescador! Without a doubt a dream of a village in the Spain of Franco. Fifty years of democracy did it in, I realize, and again, I wonder why nostalgia tries to grab power here. End of January 2024. Streets as empty as those of a half-built Rotterdam housing estate. The few shops the village still cherishes—like most of the cafés, pizzerias, and kebab restaurants—are closed until May, when tourist will flock Sant Pere Pescador’s streets once again. People from Africa sit at tables on the terrace of the one café that is open, staring at their empty coffee cups, letting the beads of their tashbihs slide through their fingers, or listening to African music from their mobile phones.

I eh… I had thought I’d have to walk to the beach for the appointment I’d made with the kitesurfing school and assumed that I would now be busy handling a kite on that beach. Just before I left home, I found out the kitesurfing school is actually located in a surf shop in Sant Pere Pescador and booking a kitesurfing course turns out to be no easy task.

Bessie Turf—twenty-two or twenty-three years old, half a head shorter than I but one and a half times my weight, in an orange, camouflage-patterned outfit with the word blacknificent printed across the chest, frighteningly pale for a surf instructor, purple streaks in her black hair, her joyless eyes barely visible in a motley palette of eye shadow, piercings in her cheeks, her arms tattooed, her long, false nails yellow—ran me through the dos and don’ts of being a kitesurfing student. No dos and don’ts to do with wind or waves, but dos and don’ts to do with the environment, and… “Niñita,” I interrupted her, aware of the risk I took of misgendering her, “puede que seas buen profesor de surfing maybe you’re a good surf instructor, but if you want to educate people on the dos and don’ts with regard to the environment, you’ll have to start eating less.”

“No soy el profesor y I’m not the instrucor, and …” “Ciao.”

“No, no. Siéntate, siéntate.”

After I sat back down at the table where I was being taught, Bessie asked if I had my own helmet or wanted to rent one along with the rest of my gear. I asked if the course was taught on the Dnieper, in Ukraine, stood up again, and walked into the empty streets of Sant Pere Pescador—frustrated—where something I saw or smelled made nostalgia try to grab power.

On my way home, I’ve left Sant Pere Pescador behind. I wander through the fields, pondering how I will teach myself to kitesurf, and spot the chapel of Sant Onofre in the mountains above the village of Palau-saverdera, where Heidi and I will drive to this afternoon to fill our water bottles at a spring we found there. If the wind holds, I’ll walk into the mountains via the chapel of Sant Onofre—after filling our water bottles—my paraglider on my back. With a bit of luck, I’ll be floating above the ruins of the castle of San Salvador—once built with dedication—just as the sun sets, and ... sunlight reflects on the blades of scythes people are calmly swinging back and forth. Close to those people, a girl sits on the verge of the path I’m walking. Twenty-two or twenty-three years old. Her half-length dress, made of undyed wool I think, suits her well. Tanned, slim, and—judging from what I see of her arms and legs—muscular. Blonde hair, pinned up. Blue eyes. The turquoise-stoned metal pin in her hair is undoubtedly made with dedication. The same goes for the leather bracelets on her wrists and the leather sandals on her feet. Sustainable, if you ask me.

The invitation in her eyes is clear, and I sit down beside her on the verge of the path.

“Agua?” she asks, holding out a stone jar. I gratefully take the jar and drink a few sips of water, which taste even better than the spring water in Palau-saverdera.

“Quin és teu nom?” I stammer in Catalan. The girl laughs—her teeth white and strong—and answers in Castilian, “My name is Júlia. And I think we’d better speak Castilian, Aragonese, or Langue d’oc.”

“Bueno,” I say in Castilian, “soy Nikko.”

“And you’re from far away,” Júlia adds.

“I eh… I’m from 2024, from the time when that castle is a ruin,” I answer her implicit question, and as I point to the castle of San Salvador in the distance, stately and proud, I ask, “What year is it now?”

“1496,” Julia tells me to thoughtfully add, “You’re not a craftsman. You don’t work the land or the sea, and you’re not a peddler, a priest, or a nobleman.”

I smile and say, “Soy trovador.”

Júlia laughs, shakes her head, and says, “With your voice, you couldn’t fill a square singing, your movements are too stiff to dance well, and you don’t have animals.”

“Escri… cuento historias I tell stories.”

“About what?”

“Strange things are happening in my time,” I say. “Understandable, perhaps, because the Earth is becoming overpopulated. People eat and drink too much and keep buying things they don’t need. Some people encouraged that behavior—and got rich from it. Now, those same people are intervening, and I’m limping on two legs. I understand the need to intervene, but I have a problem with the way it’s being done, and I fear those who survive the intervention will end up in a digital prison. In the stories I tell, I warn of what I believe is coming, and I carefully suggest alternatives. Not easy, because in 2024 many subjects are forbidden to tell stories about.”

“Di… digit…?”

“Just call it a prison.”

“You can’t fit that many people in a prison!”

“In 2024? Most definitely.”

“But that’s abuse of power,” Júlia remarks. “Nobody tolerates that.”

“Well, that’s a bit rich! Your inquisition is wreaking quite some havoc, and you tolerate it.”

“The inquisition is wreaking havoc? Where’d you get that?”

“Learned it at uh… at school. You get locked up for no reason, tortured, and burned alive during autofades,” I mumble, trying to dodge Júlia’s mocking gaze, who bursts out laughing and says, “If that’s what you know about the Inquisition, you didn’t attend much school.”

“I did,” I fire back. “Fourteen years, not counting the time I was studying.”

“Fourteen years of attending school on Sunday mornings to then go on to study!” Júlia exclaims.

“No, no. I uh… I went to school five days a week.”

Júlia’s mouth falls open before she says, “No organization keeps better records of its actions than the Inquisition, and I’m quite sure those records will survive the next five hundred years. Just go through them once you’re back in 2024, then you’ll know what the Inquisition does and why it does what it does. Research, that’s called!”

“What do you know about research?” I snap. “You’re not even allowed to go to school. You can’t read or write, and without Columbus, you’d still think the earth is flat.”

Júlia shakes her head in despair. “Everything you hear and don’t research is worthless, and for your information, everyone here reads and writes. Twenty-six or twenty-seven letters in the alphabets of the languages we speak. How hard can it be? Besides, our parents and people in the village teach us to argue, to do math, astronomy, geography, history, biology, you name it. Anyone who wants to study at a university takes classes in Latin on Sunday mornings with the priest. By eleven or twelve, you’re old enough to travel to Montpellier, Toulouse, Salamanca, Seville, Lisbon, or even further. Everywhere in Europe, Latin is the language of universities. As for Cristóbal Colón: Isabella of Castile and Fernando of Aragón funded his voyage hoping he’d discover land to strengthen their hand in the negotiations they held with Juan of Portugal in Tordesillas two years ago. And the possibility that the earth is flat has never occurred to anyone.”

“Nonsense, whatever you say about study,” I throw at Júlia. “The church blocks science, and only rich kids get to study.”

“What a know-it-all you are,” Júlia exclaims, her cheeks flushing with anger. “The church encourages science. And I don’t understand what you mean by rich kids. Everyone has a home, enough to eat, clothes, and plenty of fun.”

“But how can you pay so much tax without being poor?”

“Do we pay a lot of tax?”

“Yes, you’re being squeezed by the aristocracy and monarchs.”

“You are completely bonkers,” says Júlia, genuinely angry now. “The church, the nobility, and our monarchs maneuver within the space we allow them. Quid pro quo, easier than an alphabet. The clergy sometimes slips up, but the Inquisition keeps a close eye on them. The nobility and our monarchs rarely misstep, because if they do, all hell would break loose, and we, the people, are always the majority.”

“Con todo respeto, Júlia,” I remark, feigning authority, “but only in a democracy does the opinion of the people count.”

The anger disappears from Júlia’s face, and she bursts out laughing again. “If you believe that in 2024, then you’ve learned little from history. A democracy works in theory. Almost any other system also works in practice, as long as administrators are trained on their jobs and the people resilient. What is a problem is that many people are lured to the cities, where merchant men are becoming increasingly powerful. Those merchant men are probably the ones you warn about in the stories you tell.”

I look at Júlia in surprise and say, “You listened to me.”

“Of course.”

“Funny, no one listens anymore in 2024, and …” Moos the German shepherd walks up to me and licks my face. Júlia fades away, and Heidi sits down next to me.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. “Moos and I were on our way to see you busy on the beach.”

“I have to wear a helmet while kitesurfing.”

“Better than a mandatory vaccination against sharks. Too bad, though. But why are you sitting ... never mind. We'll look for some second-hand gear and figure out how to get you kitesurfing. Now let’s go home. Some coffee and then to Palau for water. Are you taking your paraglider? Maybe you can fly to the beach at Roses and land there.”

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