By Pieter Thomassen

Don Carlo hails from Curacao. Axel can’t tear his eyes away from him when he looks with his neighbour for fern imprints on the stone dump near the Silver Stream. His skin is jet black, his lips and the palms of his hands are salmon pink, and he has a velvety accent. The mining engineer, clad in a bespoke suit, eagle-eyed inspects the Oranje Nassau III mine’s rubbish heap in search of fossils. With his showy stick he points out a long black stalk. ‘Look boy, that’s a Calamites, a bamboo from the Carboniferous. It could grow up to thirty metres in height, it’s three-hundred-million years old.’ He separates the seven last syllables in a pompous staccato to emphasise eternity. ‘Dug up from seven-hundred metres below the surface,’ he growls in a sonorous voice.
      He drops on his haunches in order to look Axel in the eyes. ‘Would you like to hear a marvellous mineworkers’ story?’ The boy looks at him dreamily. ‘In Sweden, they found the body of a young miner who had been missing for a very long time. His dead body still looked very much the same as on the day of the accident. Mine water had protected him from decay.’ Don Carlo pulls a bit of pollen from underneath a fern leaf. Thoughtfully he purses his lips coloured with the rising sun. ‘Nobody recognises the man, until an old lady faints. She was his fiancée 49 years ago.’
      At twilight, Don Carlo and his wife drink a glass of rum on the balcony. Axel, enjoying a glass of squash, studies a painting created by his host. He sees chimneys, mineshafts, and a vermilion mine dump.

© Pieter Thomassen
© Translation Holland Park Press

Axel 17 – Axel 16 – Axel 15 – Axel 14 – Axel 13 – Axel 12 – Axel 11 – Axel 10 – Axel 9 – Axel 8 – Axel 7 – Axel 6 – Axel 5 – Axel 4 – Axel 3 – Axel 2 – Axel 1