Death Fit Through a Small Hole
In Twente, in the province of Overijssel in the east of the Netherlands, people told that the plague travelled like a little cloud past the farms near Enschede. People called the feared disease the Black Death. In this tradition, an entire farmstead could perish while almost nothing could be seen from outside.
A wisp of mist. Nothing more.
It slipped inside and stayed until everyone had died.
The grain stood ripe in the fields. No one cut it. In the meadows the cows waited for the maids who came to milk them. They walked to the place where the women always appeared, sniffed, lowed, and waited a little longer.
No one came.
Wolves appeared near the Aamsveen. At first they kept away from the farms. People could still fight back. But each day brought less resistance. The wolves came closer.
When winter came, the story says that fires still burned at only three farmsteads.
The survivors kept their doors shut. Outside, wolves howled. Inside, people listened for every sound by the door. At least you could hear a wolf coming.
Someone went to the abandoned Hölterhof to see if anyone was still alive. Something moved in the box bed. A she-wolf sprang out and raced into the barn. Her cubs lay in the people’s bed.
At the other farmsteads too, the animals moved indoors. Grass grew over the yards, moss over the roofs. The inhabitants were dead or had left.
One farmer continued to walk outside. He lived at the Lappe, and that was what people called him.
The Lappe searched for the cloud.
He had decided to catch it. He had not yet worked out how to grab a cloud. First he needed to find where it went.
He watched the roads and ditches. The cloud avoided him. Whenever he came close, it slid away. The Lappe waited. So did the cloud. It was quite willing to go to the Lappe, just preferably when the Lappe was not looking.
One night, mist hung over the fields. Death left its hiding place and slid between the veils of fog. A little along the ground. A little higher. Then it stopped again.
A farm. A door. People behind it.
By morning the little cloud lay in a ditch near the Lappe. It was slowly growing light. Now was the time.
The farmer stood outside and did not move. The cloud hovered for a moment. Perhaps he had seen nothing. Perhaps he was only looking at the weather, as farmers did. It rose.
The cows began to low. A sheep bleated, a pig grunted. The Lappe stayed where he was. He had been tracking the mist since midnight and did not intend to let it escape just before the door.
In the farm’s doorway stood a wooden post, a stipel. There was a hole in it.
The cloud crawled inside. Out of sight for a moment. Safe for a moment.
The Lappe sprang forward. He grabbed a wooden peg and drove it into the hole.
Fast. The cloud was trapped in the post and could not get out.
The wolves left the farmsteads. They withdrew from Schouwink, Groot Huntveld, Lutje Holzik, and Hölterhof, back into the open country. People returned and shook the Lappe’s hand, one after another.
Later, people still pointed out the site of Hölterhof in the Aamsveen, and the wolf pit that recalled those abandoned years.
And the little cloud?
Who can say? The Lappe was a decent carpenter.