Forty-two

Jane Austen was only forty-two when she died. I knew but I only started realizing it when I saw a commemorative plaque in the church of Steventon, Hampshire. The church where both her father and her brother disemminated the word of God. We will never know whether she'd already reached her apogee as a writer. Probably not, but we can only judge her by the works she left, not by what she left unwritten.

Most of the time I studied History together with P. He would definately do a Ph.D., but his work on it was interrupted by a dismal love affair in the wake of which a vicious variety of cancer manifested itself. P. died of it. At forty-two. He was a better student than me. He comes to my mind after distancing myself from the group of people I am travelling with. I walk among the crumbling graves in the ancient churchyard. It is deathly quiet. I notice two horsmen in the distance but they're too far away for me to hear the horses.

I think of Jane Austen and remember the enthousiasm with which Stella talked about her to Andreas Pappas who translated Emma into Greek. He was on a visit in Dordrecht. I haven't got his telephone number and neither his address. His e-mail doesn't work. It's over four years but I haven't yet been able to tell him that Stella passed away.

©C.A. Klok