"Bonjour!"
And, in this singular dreaming and waking and suffering and walking, he knew things which nobody had told him, knew them for certain: knew that a woman had drowned herself last night in Paris, in the lake in the Bois; knew that Van der Welcke and Constance had gone to fetch her body and were now bringing it back to him in a rushing express-train, but a train that came rushing through the sky on whirling aerial rails, cutting through the contortions of a huge snake-thing which wriggled round the clouds and filled the whole sky. Oh, how full the sky was! For round the snake wriggled like corkscrews the whirling rails, all aslant and askew, tangled into iron spirals; and the express, in which Van der Welcke and Constance sat with a coffin between them containing a woman's blue corpse, had to follow all those turns and came rushing and puffing along them, constantly curving round its own track and covering them a thousand times, as though that aerial express were climbing and descending endless wriggling corkscrews. Then the rails and the dragon-coils were all tangled together; and the rails became dragon-coils; and the express flew and flew along the twisting dragon-thing, flew along every curve of its tail. The train became a toy-train; the dragon was enormous and filled the firmament; the town underneath was a toy-town; and Gerrit walked and walked with hurrying legs; and his head towered colossally large; and his brains became like heavy clouds: he saw his lump of brains massing in curling clouds outside him. Nevertheless he was propelled by instincts and energies of assured consciousness, for, when he turned down the Kerkhoflaan and left the Kerkhof, the cemetery, behind him, on one side, he knew quite well that there lay in it a blue woman who had been dragged out of the Kanaal by policemen; but he also knew, with equal certainty, that, up in the sky above, the express flew and flew over the body of his dragon and along its every curve; and he also knew that he was now standing outside Van der Welcke's villa: so small a house, such a toy-house that Gerrit's head stuck out above the roof of it and that his own voice sounded to him like distant thunder as he asked the person who opened the door:
"Telegram? From your master and mistress? Telegram?"
He did not at once recognize who was at the door nor at once understand the reply:
"Telegram? Telegram?" he repeated.
And the thunder of his voice sounded distant and dull compared with the rattle of the express-train right through the sky.
"What do you say?" he now repeated. "What do you say?"
"Uncle, are you ill?" asked Addie.
"Ill? Ill? No, I'm not ill, my boy. But ... telegram? Telegram?"
"Papa and Mamma will be back to-morrow morning; they're bringing Henri's body with them, Uncle; and they're bringing Emilie; and I've been to the undertaker's ... to arrange to have the body fetched at the station at once.... I've seen to everything.... And I must go to all the uncles now: to Uncle Karel and Uncle Saetzema.... I've telegraphed to Otto; I don't know if Aunt Bertha will come or not.... It's very sad, Uncle, and it'll be very sad for Grandmamma when she knows everything: Henri ... Henri was murdered; he was drunk, it seems; and...."