The Twin

by Gerband Bakker

  “I wish I was dead,” he says softly.

  “Now you’re nice and clean?” I ask.

  “It’s that crow,” he says, pointing with a trembling finger.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s waiting for me.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Whatever,” I say.

  Father wouldn’t hear a word about central heating. Mother disagreed, but her vote didn’t count. There are two oil heaters: one in the kitchen and one in the living room. Now he can feel the consequences, upstairs. In the old days, when there was a frost outside, he’d leave the heater on low at night with their bedroom door ajar. When Henk and I woke up we couldn’t see outside, so exuberantly had the ice flowers blossomed on the window.

  Our hot water comes from a boiler. I haven’t wasted all that much on Father, so there’s nothing stopping me. I can’t remember the last time I showered in the middle of the day. Now I smell like menthol myself. I feel young and strong, but when I take hold of my penis, I feel strangely useless and empty. I can’t help comparing it to Father’s. Mine is larger and that conclusion alone is enough to make it grow. Just when I’m wondering what that signifies, the doorbell rings. I feel my balls shrink in my hand. Almost no one rings the bell here, at first I don’t even realize what it is. I turn off the taps and await developments. I can feel an artery throbbing in my throat, the water dripping on the tiled floor sounds like thunder. All quiet. I dry myself slowly and pull on a pair of underpants. My clothes are in the bedroom. I open the bathroom door and don’t see anyone standing in front of the rectangular frosted pane in the front door. Before going into the living room, I peer around the doorpost to see whether there is anyone at the window. No one. I walk to the bedroom where the blinds are closed. Pulling on dry clothes, I again notice the frayed edges of the blankets. Once I’m dressed, I walk to the hall and open the front door. The road is empty. The hooded crow stares at me.

  According to the handbook it makes a loud “krraa, krraa,” but I haven’t heard it do that once.

  All afternoon I hear the sound of the bell, echoing through the empty hall. I go to count the sheep and, although there are only twenty-three of them, I have to start again three times. A few days ago I separated the ram from the ewes and returned it to the farmer who lends me one every year. I’ve hung up the ram harness in the barn. It’s only in the afternoon, when it’s already dark and I’ve started milking the cows, that I think of the motionless figure I recently saw in front of the farm.

  10

  The other tanker driver, the young smiling one, is in the milking parlor.

  “Ah, Helmer,” he says when I come in. I generally stay away from the milking parlor when the old, gruff one is there. He’s leaning with one hand on the edge of the storage tank and keeps looking from the inside of the tank to the hose at his feet. I’d like to greet him by name but whenever I see him I forget what he’s called, and end up nodding hello.

  “Arie’s dead,” he says. Even news like this doesn’t dim his smile.

  “Dead? How?”

  “Heart attack.”

  “When?”

  “Day before yesterday. At home.”

  “Just the other day it occurred to me that he’d be retiring in a few years.”

  “Yeah, he wanted to stop at sixty.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Fifty-eight.”

  “Fifty-eight.”

  “Way too young.” The tank is empty. He unscrews the hose and the last bit of milk runs down the drain. Then he winds the hose around the reel on the back of the tanker. “Way too young,” he repeats. He comes back to stand in front of me with his legs apart and his hands on his hips. Always that smile, a crooked smile that shows his teeth. “You’ll have to make do with me for the time being,” he says.

  “God help me,” I say.

  Now the smile changes into a laugh, showing even more teeth. He doesn’t say goodbye as he walks to the cab. We’ve laughed off the news of the death and that’s not the kind of thing you follow with small talk. He opens the door and jumps up smoothly. His blue trousers tighten around his take-off leg, a leg that could belong to a skater. I walk out of the yard, following the tanker as it drives away. If he looked in his rear-view mirror he’d see me standing there, like the red-headed boy last summer. It’s raining, the donkeys are at the gate with their heads bowed. If it doesn’t stop I’ll put them in the shed. I look out over my wet farmyard.

  Old, gruff and dead, I think.

  Until his death we were Henk and Helmer, even though I was the oldest. Until recently I took regular afternoon naps on his bed. I’ve stopped doing that because of all the junk in his bedroom and because of Father’s proximity. I would lie on my side with my legs pulled up, like in the old days when we shared a bed. Now I use the sofa in the afternoons. Since Ada’s comments about my bed, I no longer feel comfortable in it, especially not in the daytime. A few days ago I went to Monnickendam to buy a new bed. I settled on the kind that’s really only two mattresses, with very short legs under the bottom one. They’re going to deliver it soon - they said they’d call me. “Definitely before Christmas,” according to the jovial bed salesman. From another shop I bought a duvet and two duvet covers, one light blue and one dark blue, I trust Ada’s judgment. The duvet is still wrapped in plastic in a corner of my bedroom. I haven’t unpacked the two pillows either. I asked for one pillow, but the female shop assistant (a young thing with black braids) said “One?” so emphatically that I had no choice but to say, “No, two, of course.” I won’t unpack it until the bed has been delivered and for now I carry on sleeping under the frayed blankets and the single sheet.

  Henk and Helmer, not Helmer and Henk. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t have any memories at all of the first four or five years of their life. And if I do have memories, I suspect them of being contaminated, suggested by things other people have told me. My memory only starts in the fifties. I don’t know how often Father beat us before then.

  He found the two of us together infuriating, he always had to deal with two boys forming a united front. He thought we were conspiring against him, that that was our goal in life, and that we met his eye to provoke him. I got the most blows because I was the oldest, so I “must have cooked it all up.” He’d pound away at us with his bare hands, and if he had time, he’d pull off a clog to hit us on the bum and sometimes on the back. It was partly to do with my name, I thought. Helmer is a name from my mother’s side. Henk was named after his father.

  Before doing the milking, I bring in the donkeys. There’s not much to it. I just open the gate and walk to the donkey shed. Before I get there, they’re standing waiting for me. I let them in, cut up a sugar beet and throw the pieces into the feeding trough. Then I stuff a few handfuls of hay into the rack. I’ve taught Teun and Ronald to always ask whether they’re allowed to feed the donkeys. If I gave them free rein the donkeys would be fat in no time, or ill. The rain taps on the corrugated roof. When I scratch their ears, they ignore it, they’re too busy eating. Before leaving the shed, I turn on the light. They don’t watch me walking away.

  11

  In Monnickendam I take the N247 and follow it to Edam, where I drive through the village to the dyke, because if I don’t get off here I’ll be stuck on the main road to Oosthuizen. Near Warder I stop the car for a moment to have a better look at a flock of birds: oystercatchers, crows, herring gulls and black-headed gulls. The horn of a car that wants to pass on the narrow dyke makes me jump.

  “Why did you stop on the dyke anyway?” asks Ada, who can’t tell a great tit from a blue tit. She’s wearing a black mid-length coat and looks a little pale.

  In Hoorn I have to leave the dyke for a while. The weather is still and misty, in the distance the water of Lake IJssel merges imperceptibly with the sky. Something is rattling under the bonnet of the Opel Kadett, I’ll have to take the car to the garage again. At Oosterleek I turn left and ten minut
es later I park the car in front of the Venhuizen funeral parlor, which is next to an old people’s home.

  “How could they come up with something like that?” asks Ada. “How can they be so cruel?”

  There are a lot of farmers, you recognize them right away from their clothes, they’re almost all wearing “a good sweater” over a clean shirt. From the funeral parlor we follow the hearse on foot to the Roman Catholic church, where Arie’s wife addresses the coffin, or rather, tries to address the coffin, because once she’s said, “Arie is dead,” she can’t go on. Two young women - her daughters, presumably - get up and lead her back to her pew. The priest takes care of the funeral service and a local choir sings a sad song. After a brief silence, six pallbearers in dark-gray top hats come in, lift the coffin onto their shoulders and carry it out. Ada walks beside me, as my wife. She has taken me by the arm and is crying. Wim, her husband, didn’t want to come. According to Ada he’s scared of death and always keeps a safe distance. What’s more, he had better things to do. The cemetery isn’t directly behind the church, we have to walk a fair distance. On the way we pass a De Boer’s supermarket. It’s a good funeral: the pallbearers lower the coffin and Arie’s wife and daughters throw earth into the grave. When we’re walking back to the church the young tanker driver comes up behind us. “I’m glad you could make it, Helmer,” he says. “And you too, Ada. Solidarity is a beautiful thing.”

  “Ah, Galtjo,” says Ada, her voice sounding more like cotton wool than ever, “it’s the least you can do.”

  I don’t say anything, I’m touched by the young tanker driver’s reaction. Galtjo, no wonder I keep forgetting his name. Even here, at the cemetery, he’s smiling. He can’t help it. We’ve fallen a little behind. When I turn around, I see that two men have started to fill the grave, not carefully one handful after the other but with enormous shovel loads.

  Then everyone returns to the funeral parlor to offer their condolences to the wife and daughters and the rest of Arie’s family. We drink coffee and Ada eats a slice of cake. I eat two.

  Ada wants to take a different route back. We drive through Hem and Blokdijk to Hoorn.

  “Let’s go through the Beemster,” she says. “The Beemster is lovely.”

  I cut through Berkhout to Avenhoorn and Schemerhoorn. I follow the signs for North Beemster. “The villages?” I ask.

  “The villages,” says Ada.

  I turn right and take the road through North and Middle Beemster. “Imagine living here,” Ada says. “Just look how much space there is. And the land is so nice and high, ours is always wet. Cramped and wet.”

  “Has Jarno Koper gone to Denmark yet?” I ask.

  “No, he leaves in January.” She looks around longingly. “Wim would love to have something bigger. Not a lot bigger, just a bit. Ten or so cows, a few hectares.”

  “You should go to Denmark too then.”

  “God, no. Can you see Wim ever leaving?”

  “No,” I say. “I can’t see that happening.” Wim’s lived next door all his life, but I hardly know him.

  Just before we turn off to Southeast Beemster, Ada asks me to slow down so she can have a good look at The Unicorn. “Yes,” she says, peering at the renovated farmhouse, “we drive off home, but they’re left behind, without a husband and without a father.”

  I stop the car just before the junction and get out. The bare branches of the windbreak bordering the field opposite The Unicorn are damp. I can’t see the end of the row of trees, the trunks blur in the thin mist. A car races past. Then it’s quiet again. On the other side of the junction, standing next to a less beautiful farmhouse, are three horses.

  Ada is right, the Beemster is lovely, even in late autumn, but I’m thinking of Denmark. I have the idea that it’s often misty in Denmark.

  Ada opens the car door and gets out of the car. “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “Nothing special, just standing here,” I say.

  She looks at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Funerals are weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Especially when it’s someone you didn’t know very well.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It makes you feel more alive afterwards than you did before.”

  “Where does this Galtjo guy live?”

  “No idea. I didn’t know that Arie came from as far away as Venhuizen either. What do we know about these people?”

  “Not much,” I say.

  “Shall we go home?”

  “Let’s do that.” I take the middle road to the North Holland Canal, which I follow past Purmerend, Ilpendam and Watergang, until Het Schouw. Then through Broek and home.

  Walking into the milking parlor, I hear the phone ringing. I hurry through the scullery to the hall to answer it. Nothing. “Hello?” I say. It stays quiet on the other end of the line, the kind of silence in which you hear someone holding their breath. “Who’s there?” No one responds and I hang up. The newspaper is lying unread on the kitchen table. I can’t sit down. I have to do something. It’s afterwards now: I’m more alive than I was before.

  I have a beautiful, small handsaw that is exceptionally well suited to pollarding willows. It’s stayed very sharp for a very long time and must have been expensive. There are willows on the south side and at the back of the farm, and I pollard them every two or three years. I haven’t got round to it yet this year and today is a perfect day for pollarding. Hopefully tomorrow will be too, because I can’t get it all done in just one day. Halfway through the first willow I’m warmed up and when I start on the second I’m already sweating. I don’t need a ladder, a potato crate is high enough. When it’s almost time to start milking, I’ve done the six willows at the side of the farm and have no idea what I’ve been thinking about the whole time. I throw a few shoots in the donkeys’ trough and phone Ada. She has started work on a wooded bank in what is intended to become Waterland’s most beautiful garden. I tell her that she can have my willow shoots if she comes and gets them herself.

  12

  Father is standing at the window. That’s not right. He is leaning on the narrow windowsill and his forehead is pressed against the glass. There is a washed-out light in the bedroom, the weather is like yesterday’s: misty with the sun trying vainly to break through.

  “How’d you get there?” I ask.

  He says something but I can’t understand him.

  “What?”

  He pushes himself up a little with his arms, straightening his back and pulling his head back from the glass. “The hooded crow’s gone,” he says.

  “What?”

  “The hooded crow, it flew away.”

  Looking past Father through the bedroom window, I now see what I didn’t see through the front kitchen window: the branch of the crooked ash is empty.

  “It wasn’t waiting for me.”

  “No, of course not, what kind of rubbish is that?”

  “That’s what I thought.” His arms start trembling and his head shakes.

  “But it would have been wonderful,” I say under my breath.

  “What?”

  “Walk back to bed,” I say.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not? You got to the window, didn’t you?”

  Slowly he turns around, keeping his right hand on the windowsill. He looks at his bed like a hesitant long-jumper eyeing the take-off board. Inch by inch he shuffles away from the window. “I’m not going to make it,” he says, halfway.

  “Yes, you will,” I say, “don’t give up.”

  He doesn’t make it. I’m there to help him. I lift him up and walk around the bed. When I’m about to lay him down, the phone rings. Let it ring. If I answer it, I’ll probably just hear that pent-up silence again. It rings seven times. I lay Father down on his bed.

  “I can walk,” he says, still panting.

  “You know who died?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Arie.”

  �
��Arie who?”

  “The tanker driver.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  There is no key in his bedroom door. There isn’t one on the outside of the door to Henk’s bedroom either. I walk in and sit down on his bed. The key is in the keyhole on the inside of the door. I lie down. The curtains are drawn, it’s dark in the room. Staring up at the ceiling I realize that everything would be very different if I had someone, if I was married with children. When you have a family, you can get rid of your father without feeling guilty.

  I stand up and pull the key from the keyhole. I go out onto the landing and stick the key into the lock of Father’s door. It fits, but it’s only when I turn it that I feel that it really fits. No remarks from inside the bedroom. I take the key out of the lock and stand there for a moment with it in my hand, then I put it back in the keyhole.

  The two bedrooms are on the right side of the landing. Opposite the staircase is a skylight that doesn’t let in much light: upstairs it’s always evening. At the end of the landing on the left, next to the skylight, is a third room, smaller than the two bedrooms. This room covers maybe a third of the milking parlor beneath it. “The new room,” Mother called it to the day she died. I can’t remember what the room was supposed to be for, but ever since it was built along with the milking parlor, some time in the sixties, it has remained unused. I never go in there. The door is always shut. The floor is covered with the same dark-blue carpet as the two bedrooms. It is a very strange room, I feel that when now, for once, I go into it. Although it’s musty, there is also a lingering smell of newness about it, of its being newly built. There is a fairly large Velux window in the sloping wall, making the room a good deal brighter than the landing. But it’s empty, there is no reason to go inside.