arts, literature

Aska Hayakawa: Reading Lesson

Eighteen young Flemish and Dutch authors drew inspiration from the collection held by the Mauritshuis in The Hague. They looked at seventeenth-century paintings through the lens of an alternative history, which they then brought to life in short but powerful texts. Aska Hayakawa wrote a short story in response to the painting The Education of the Virgin by Michaelina Wautier from 1656. ‘Sometime between the setting of the sun and its rising again a little later, in that silence, it must have been round about then’

Reading Lesson

Before I came into being, my mother wrote me down. She began to write me after a visitation. That’s no lie—things like that still happened back then. They still do, but only to very special people, people like my mother. The visitation went like this: after drinking vodka all evening, she’d staggered home through the snow, and once she was in bed and everything started spinning, right then, at that glorious moment, an angel landed on the window ledge. The angel wore a fur hat and a long fur coat. She wore fur-lined boots up to her knees, and her skin glowed—almost translucent, misty, as if she were made of sugar crystal. The angel said to her: a child will grow inside you and it will need wo…. And vanished before she could utter the final word. The window was open. Snow drifted in. Winter blew cold air into the room.

The very next day, she began to write. She lined up all the words she could think of. And when she ran out, she went in search of more. In dusty bookshops, markets, libraries where the books stood in endless rows and non-alphabetical stacks. She asked people – in the street, in the pub, in the evening at the dinner table – for their best words, proverbs, quotes. She wrote them all down. It must have been very meaningful. A source for a whole life.

The book was lost before I was even born. During the move, she thinks. She really tried to find it, there… and there. She’d only put it away for a moment. Sometime between the setting of the sun and its rising again a little later, in that silence, it must have been round about then. It was gone by the time the sun came up.

When I was born, it was immediately clear that something was wrong. There was a gale blowing during the delivery, and once I’d come into this world, and the show started, and everybody was waiting for me to cry, it remained quiet. Eventually, I learned to read and write and speak, but I never cried. The words and the signs and the spaces between the lines had not been collected for me. I’ve never been able to use them, let alone be moved by them.

Many things are lost during moves. For very long, distant journeys, especially, you need to rid yourself of as much baggage as possible. Desires must be left at the border, and all the beautiful and meaningful words are in a big book that’s too heavy to carry with you. You leave it in your hometown. You come up with a fairytale. People are constantly losing things and telling each other fairytales.

Last night, an angel alighted on my window ledge. She wore a black trench coat and pointy heels, and her body was made of sugar crystal. She said: a word will grow inside you and it won’t be lo–. Through the open window, the warm summer drifted into my room.

• deBuren
• Mauritshuis
• Michaelina Wautier