The deumallijer arrived exactly on time.
Nobody knew why he was called that. Perhaps he no longer remembered either. He placed a stack of forms on the table and looked gravely at the quantising machine.
“How is it doing?”
“Seventy-three.”
“Out of a hundred?”
“Of course not. Out of twenty-seven.”
That reassured everyone.
Meanwhile, the detection mechanism was warming up. That was not unusual. It always activated the moment someone began explaining how simple everything really was.
In the corner stood a problematising meter. It had read zero all morning, but as a precaution someone had fitted it with a red light. It looked more professional that way.
Outside, a mild form of metal fatigue hung in the air. Whether it truly was metal fatigue, nobody knew. In any case, it felt as though even the lampposts wanted to sit down for a while.
Fortunately, there was vending-machine aroma.
Not because the coffee was good, but because the smell made everyone believe that something important was about to be discussed.
After the second cup, spontaneous muntelfheid developed.
It happens to the best of us.
A trochgroeiklasser scribbled notes furiously, although nobody had asked him to. Now and then he nodded as if he were beginning to see the connection.
There was none.
At least, not yet.
Horsewei lay across the way.
You could only reach it once you stopped searching.
There, the sun always shone just wrongly enough for beautiful photographs and exactly right enough for nobody to be in a hurry.
At the end of the afternoon, the deumallijer looked at his watch.
“Have we worked it out?”
“Worked what out?”
“No idea.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
The quantising machine gave a satisfied beep.
The detection mechanism detected nothing.
The problematising meter concluded that there had never been a problem.
And somewhere, far in the distance, it still smelled of vending-machine aroma.
Nobody understood exactly what had happened that day.
But strangely enough, everyone was pleased with the outcome.
Perhaps that is the definition of a good story: not everything needs to be understood. Sometimes it is enough for it to linger.