The Mammoth skull
reading time: approx. 9 mins

Bent over the potato field, bony men stuck their spades into the ground simultaneously, as if a drummer was beating time. Always with the same sound. Whoosh.
When one of them hit something hard, they all jumped up, stretched their aching backs and leaned on the handle of their tool stuck in the clay. Silently they took off their caps and wiped the sweat from their heads with a red handkerchief. They left their spades in the ground and approached the thing sticking out of the ground with steps, heavy with mud on their clogs. The silence, when the rhythmic digging stopped, slid past the back doors like a message of fate and the women hurried across the field to the place where the work had stopped. Grown-up boys in blue smocks and wenches in heavy woolen skirts hurried excitedly between the upright stalks until the circle of elders stopped them. Everyone turned their gaze to the thing that sealed their fate. White it lay there in the dug-up earth, pushed up by sub-island currents: the dirty white skull of a mammoth, still in possession of a single ivory tusk.
“Mammuthus primigenius,” whispered a farmer’s son, mindful of the charcoal study of a woolly mammoth in the schoolroom. His gaze eagerly hooked on the ribbed molars in the jawbone, the same as those found sporadically among the silver wriggling of the fish in the trawls.
The men pulled up their Manchester trousers. Jacob Krauwel put his index finger to his lips. Everyone knew what was imposed on him by this: silence. With slumped shoulders, the boys hid their excitement behind the high collars of their smocks. The decision had been made: the mammoth skull was to be returned to oblivion. The wooden clogs pushed the spades into the ground and soon the ivory bone was buried under sea clay again. Large sea birds swung away on the air currents and took the secret with them.
Fish was eaten at every kitchen table that afternoon, because it was Friday. Riek from Theunis and Mina bit her lower lip, her hands clasped together on her lap during the table prayer. Her simple brother – his head devoutly bowed – peered mischievously through his eyelashes. In the busy kitchen of Nelis and Dien the tension of the young people crackled back and forth above the plates, but none of them dared to touch upon the subject that filled their minds.
Jacob Krauwel, as much as the village elder and church father, addressed the men urgently that evening in the meeting room. “We are still not allowed to draw attention to ourselves.”
Everyone knew why, although some had to search in the dusty recesses of memory.
“For so many years safely hidden in the veils of time, the event of our past must not be brought to light.”
A shock wave went through the smoky room at this unvarnished mention of the old crime.
“It is still the case that the mistake of one man falls on the head of all,” Jacob Krauwel argued forcefully. “Secrecy! Or prying eyes, looking for the ivory bone, will flood our fields and turn the earth. They will dissect every lump of clay and consequently bring to the surface what must remain buried.”
The followers of Jacob Krauwel returned home, accepting his will and law. Never again would a word be spoken about the skull.
But the order to maintain secrecy carried the seed of sneakiness within it. Distrust raised its ugly head above ground and itched like a scabies mite under the skin of the villagers. Neighbors, who had lived on good terms during the expiration of the old sin, watched each other with dismay at the sudden danger of exposure.
Hannes, the one-armed veteran from the overseas territories, called it 'kabar angin', the rumour on the wind. For there was whispering in the morning dew and around the crates in the potato sheds. No one spoke aloud, but still the secret refused to become quiet.
A few days later he was there, a towering archaeologist with an aura of learning around him. He was even taller than Hannes the veteran and he was so black that he was almost invisible in the dark. He wore a fedora and his silk scarf fluttered behind him as he cycled along the sea wall. Jonas Withooft looked sharply out of his eyes and the expression around his mouth betrayed a strong will.
He turned to Jacob Krauwel first, but Jacob managed to survive the interrogation without divulging even the slightest detail.
The large family of Nelis and Dien were just eating lunch when he, fedora in hand, showed up at the back door. Here too he encountered a wall of silence.
He politely extended his left hand to Hannes when he noticed that the veteran could not shake his right hand. But Hannes cleverly managed to turn the conversation to the overseas territory where he had lost his arm in a lost war. And dug up… no, nothing special was dug up overhere.
Nevertheless, the villagers saw the unwanted visitor crouching over the fields in the twilight and Jacob Krauwel angrily spat his tobacco stream into the spittoon, powerless to turn the tide of events.
Riek from Theunis and Mina felt a hot sensation behind her breasts when she spied on the giant man. She wanted his deep stentorian voice to ask her about the secret. She would let him dangle from the rope of his curiosity and in the meantime she would make him yearn for the caress of her breath on his dark skin. But Jonas Withooft asked her nothing and when he had not noticed her presence even after a week, her lust turned into a sultry sulk.
Theunis kept his simple son inside when the phlegmatic scientist was in the immediate vicinity of his farm, while Mina seriously wondered whether neighbor Nelis had enough authority to silence all his sons and daughters.
Once again Jacob Krauwel called his followers together. “No suspicion of each other! It is of the utmost importance that we form a united front, one kongsi!” He inquisitively took in the faces raised towards him. “He is here now, that sanctioned busybody, nothing will change that, but whatever he discovers, we will all have to make sure that he does not tell anyone.”
The men were silent and stared in shock at the cap on their knee. The passing around of Jacob's box of Havanas had to smooth their trepidation, as if the sturdy Cuban cigars could soften the burden of his words.
Afterwards he walked with them through the dark evening. With a broad gesture he put his arm around Theunis' shoulders as he picked the band of his cigar for his son.
Suddenly alerted by a glow on the potato field, they stopped. In the light of an oil lamp, Jonas Withooft was digging at the spot where the mammoth skull lay in the ground. He had thrown off his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt up to the sleeve cuffs. The men gathered mutely around Jacob Krauwel. At the sign of their leader, each went to his own barn to seize a spade. Women and young folk, again attracted by the sound on the wind, joined them in silence. Silently, like the dead risen from the grave, they surrounded the black man and closed him in.
Jonas Withooft, completely unaware of any approaching disaster, thrust his spade vigorously into the ground and laid bare the skull, shovel by shovel. When the curled tusk protruded above the ground in all its glory, he threw his fedora into the air and stretched his mighty arms heavenward. Deep in his chest, his laughter of joy rang through the night.
“You  cheered too soon, stranger,” growled Jacob Krauwel.
With one accord, the farmers raised their spades and brought them down with force on the head of the great man. He went down like a forest giant. Whoosh.
Then they took up their tools and once again covered history with thick lumps of clay.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    © marian puijk