The Twin

by Gerband Bakker

  “Mr. van Wonderen?” the person asked.

  “Yes?” I said without looking at him.

  “I’m here.” He held out his hand and I accepted it. “My mother said you’d be wearing this sweater.”

  “Get in,” I say.

  “What shall I . . .”

  “Just put it on the back seat.”

  While he takes off his backpack, I watch the boy who looks so much like Riet. He has jumped onto the pannier rack of a bike and wrapped his arms tightly around the waist of the girl who is pedaling. He even rests his head on her back.

  “Get in,” I say again.

  We open the doors at the same time, but before he has settled down properly I’ve already started the car. A little later I overtake the girl on the bike. The boy is talking to her back and looks at me for a second. He looks at me the way people look at each other in passing: briefly, indifferently, their minds on something else. And still I’m thinking, Henk, why didn’t you get into the car with me?

  Instead of turning right at Zunderdorp, I drive straight on. In Volgermeer Polder heavy machines are tearing up knotty little trees. They’ve finally started cleaning up the contaminated ground. On the dead-straight road through the Belmermeer, the youth next to me says something.

  “This weather stinks.”

  I glance at him, the road is narrow and a car is coming from the opposite direction. He must look like Wien, I think, while pulling over. His listless voice doesn’t really go with his short, ginger hair. Maybe Riet sent him to the barber yesterday and when he saw the barber picking up scissors and comb, he said, “No, just use the clippers,” hoping to give her a good fright when he got back home. I still have the strange feeling something has gone wrong somewhere.

  Coming home doesn’t really help. Coming home after you’ve been somewhere very different is always strange. Is that because everything at home is just the way you left it? Whereas you yourself have experienced things, no matter how insignificant, and grown older, even if just by a couple of hours? I see the farm through his eyes: a wet building in wet surroundings, with bare, dripping trees, frost-burnt grass, meager stalks of kale, empty fields and a light in an upstairs room. Did I turn on the light or did Father manage it by himself?

  “This is it,” I say.

  “Uh-huh,” says Henk.

  I put the car in the barn out of the rain. Without looking around, he lifts his pack off the back seat.

  “Clothes?” I ask.

  “Yep,” says Henk.

  “I’ve got boots and overalls for you.”

  He stays there next to the car, backpack over one shoulder.

  Myself aside, I’ve never put anyone to work. Father put me to work. How do you do something like that? First, lead the way. If I start walking, he’ll be sure to follow. Like the outside, I now see the inside of the barn through his eyes. Sacks of concentrate feed, hay and straw in the shadowy heights, the harrow, implements on hooks, shovels, pitch-forks, hoes, the diesel tank on its stand, the messy workbench (screwdrivers, chisels and hammers scattered on the work surface and the wooden board with nails and penciled outlines, empty), the silver-gray poison cabinet. Next to the workbench Father’s bike is hanging on the wall. The tires are flat, the rear mudguard loose, the chain rusty. The spiders’ webs are old and gray. Rainwater is trickling in through the window frame over the bike.

  “You got a driver’s license?” I ask.

  “No,” Henk answers.

  The bike. That will be the first job.

  The bulb in the overhead light must be at least seventy-five watts. Henk’s backpack is lying on the dark-blue carpet under the window. Rain rattles on the glass. Henk is sitting on the bed. If there was anything to look at, he would probably be looking around. Only now do I notice how childish the duvet cover is, decorated with animals. African animals: lions, rhinos, giraffes and something else I don’t recognize. The walls around us are dazzling white, the marble top of the petroleum-blue bedside cabinet is empty. I want to say something but I don’t know what. Maybe Henk wants to say something too. It’s cold in the new room. Why does it have to be such lousy weather, today of all days? He has a scar over his left ear, a hairless inch-long gash.

  “Do you read?” I ask. “Would you like a reading lamp on the bedside cabinet?”

  “I’ve got a book with me,” he says.

  “I’ll see if I can find a reading lamp.”

  “That’d be good,” says Henk.

  “But first we’ll have something to eat.”

  I go out onto the landing. He follows, shutting the door of his room firmly behind him. From Father’s bedroom comes the sluggish ticking of the grandfather clock.

  28

  I scoop milk out of the storage tank with a measuring cup; Henk wants a glass of milk with his sandwich. Myself, I almost never drink milk - it’s my livelihood but about the only thing I ever use it for is making porridge. The door to the milking parlor is open, outside it smells of spring. The idea of the trees turning green again and daffodils flowering around their trunks suddenly makes my stomach churn. The image of lambs under pale spring sun drains the strength from my arms, for a moment I have difficulty holding up the lid of the storage tank. Yet another spring like all the previous springs. I don’t think it, I feel it. Before walking back to the kitchen, I stop to look out through the open door at the trees that line the yard. They are bare and wet. The rain keeps falling. It’s late January and in February you can still get severe frosts.

  When I come back into the kitchen Henk is sitting there exactly as he was a while ago, in my old spot, with his back to the door. There is a slice of bread on his plate, unbuttered, with nothing on it. I take a mug from the kitchen cupboard, fill it with milk and put it down next to his plate.

  “Thank you,” says Henk.

  “You’re welcome,” I say.

  I sit down. I realize there is no wardrobe in his room. Where’s he supposed to put his clothes when he takes them out of the backpack? “Aren’t you hungry?” I ask.

  “A bit.” He sticks his knife in the butter and spreads a thin layer on his bread. Then he puts it down to look at what else there is: cheese, peanut butter, jam, salami and ham. He settles for jam.

  “My next-door neighbor made that,” I say.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s blackberry.”

  Before he starts eating, he takes a mouthful of milk.

  “And?”

  “What?”

  “How’s it taste? Fresh cow’s milk?”

  He takes another mouthful. “Metallic,” he says.

  On second thought, his ears aren’t so very big. They just stick out a little. That makes them look big. When he chews they move up and down.

  “I milk twenty cows. That’s hardly any.”

  “It smells good here,” says Henk.

  “You think?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not like pigs?”

  He doesn’t answer. He looks at me and that’s enough. The shed door is open. I let him go first. He’s not much taller than me, but he’s a good deal bigger. Brawnier. I’ll stand on the trailer and stack the bales of hay, he can throw them up. Teun and Ronald will roll them to the trailer. Thinking about early summer doesn’t bother me: no churning in my stomach, no weak legs.

  “The yearlings are in here.”

  They sniff and raise their heads as we enter.

  “All they do is eat, sleep and shit,” I say.

  “Don’t you have a gutter cleaner in here?”

  He’s asked a question, that’s a development. “No,” I say.

  “How do you do it then?”

  “Nothing special. A shovel and a wheelbarrow.”

  “Oh.”

  I walk out and turn the corner. Before opening the side door, I point out the muck heap. “See that plank, you run the wheelbarrow up there.”

  “Bit narrow,” says Henk.

  We go into the sheep shed. The bricks and woodwork are saturated with the dry smell
of sheep and manure. Even if I left the door and all the windows open for months, you would still smell it. For most of the year it’s empty in here. Sheep can take anything: drought, rain, snow - although they do tend to go lame during extremely wet autumns and winters.

  “In a month or two we’ll bring the sheep in.” We, I say. The tour of the farm - with Henk in the cowshed, the yearling shed and the sheep shed - has evidently turned us into farmer and farmhand.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “Because they’ll start yeaning.”

  “What?”

  “Yeaning. Lambing.”

  “Oh, lambing.”

  “What do you call it when pigs have piglets?”

  He looks at me as if I’m not quite right.

  “Farrowing.”

  The donkeys leave him cold. Out of politeness he asks what they’re called. I tell him that they don’t have names. They have stuck their heads over the rail enthusiastically, but Henk ignores them, staring intently at the shelf with the farrier’s tools on it. When I say that I hope it turns dry so they can go outside again, he leaves the donkey shed. Of all the people who have ever been here on the farm, he is the first who hasn’t touched the donkeys. Even the taciturn livestock dealer strolls over to their paddock occasionally to scratch them on the head, even when I don’t have anything for him.

  “And?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think of it?”

  He looks around with a rather gloomy expression. “It’s all a bit bare.”

  “Do you want to get started?” I ask in the barn.

  “Sure,” he says.

  I point at the bike. “That’s my father’s, but it’s been ages since he could ride a bike. If you can fix it, it’s yours.”

  Henk walks over to the bike and wipes the cobwebs off the frame. “How old is this thing?”

  “Oh, about twenty years old.”

  “Christ,” he says.

  He looks around. “Bike pump?”

  I get the pump, which is probably pushing twenty as well, out from under the workbench and plug in the strip lights. “Come on,” I say. “I’ll give you some overalls.”

  “What do I do?” whispers Father.

  “Nothing special,” I say.

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

  “No, not any more.”

  “That boy’s mother . . .” He can’t bring himself to say her name.

  “Yeah?”

  “She thinks I’m dead.”

  “There were reasons for that.” I feel sorry for him. I don’t want to - when I’m in his bedroom I don’t want anything - but I still feel it.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in the barn fixing your bike.”

  Father is eating a cheese sandwich off a plate he tries to hold under his chin with one trembling hand. I’ve turned on the light. It’s just past three, but the clouds refuse to break. What was I thinking when I moved him upstairs? That it would be the first step to “upstairs” as Riet understood it when I told Ronald where Father was? That here, surrounded by photos, samplers, mushrooms and the ticking of the clock, he would lie back calmly and wait? I walk over to the grandfather clock, open the door and pull up the weights.

  I imagine Riet cooking in the kitchen; she’s already turned on the light. Everywhere something is happening: Father is lying here; for the moment I’m not sure where I am; Henk is in the barn, in the light as well, at work; the cows are standing calm and serene in the cowshed; in the donkey shed the donkeys are eating winter carrots out of Teun and Ronald’s hands; the twenty sheep are lying down near the Bosman windmill; Ada drops by, drinks a coffee with Riet and asks her whether she’d like to come over tomorrow to see her newly completed willow-shoot bank; the buzzing of the electric clock in the kitchen is less and less penetrating; the winter is far from over. And, of course, I know where I am too: I’m fixing the bike together with Henk, and Riet is more mother than wife.

  “That old rattletrap,” says Father.

  “Yes, but it’s not worn out yet.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “Whatever,” I say. I take the plate out of his hand and walk to the door. “Light on?”

  “Light on,” says Father.

  “I’ll send him in to you for a moment this evening.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “We can hardly act like you don’t exist?”

  “No.”

  The bike is upside-down in front of the workbench. Henk is squatting before it. He’s wearing a pair of Father’s old overalls, faded green with big patches on the knees, the collar turned up. He’s got the chain soaking in a container next to the bike, in diesel by the looks of it. The tires are pumped up. He looks up at me as I approach. There is a black smudge on his jaw. Now he’s down low, I see that he has his mother’s mouth.

  “It needs a new back mudguard,” he says.

  “I can buy one,” I say.

  “And the tires are almost perished.”

  “If they’ve really had it, I can buy new tires too.”

  “The chain’s soaking in diesel.”

  “Did you siphon it out of the tank?”

  “Yep.”

  Not once has he come to me with a question. What does that say about him? I don’t know.

  29

  We eat kale with smoked sausage and mash. Once I’ve started on the kale, I eat it at least twice a week. The supply in the vegetable garden lasts until deep into the winter. Mother always put a beef stock cube in with the potatoes, I use vegetable. I buy the smoked sausage from the butcher. I have a lot of stuff in the deep freeze, but no pork.

  “Mr. van Wonderen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have any wine to go with this?”

  “Wine?”

  “Red wine. It’s good with kale.”

  “No, I don’t have any wine. Only spirits.”

  He spoons a large portion of mustard out of the jar. After loading his fork with mash and kale, he smears a dab of mustard over it with his knife. He spears the sausage without mustard.

  “Listen, Henk . . .” Before I go on, I take a mouthful. Saying his name was an obstacle.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you stop calling me Mr. van Wonderen?”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s Helmer.”

  “Helmer,” he says. He takes a mouthful of water, then says, “Difficult.”

  “What’s difficult about it?”

  “It’s an unusual name. It sounds young.”

  “Henk’s a difficult name for me.”

  “Why?”

  “My brother was called Henk.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “You’re named after him.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “No?”

  “I’m named after one of my father’s uncles, but a generation back.”

  “A great-uncle.”

  “Is that a great-uncle?”

  “Yes. Who told you that?”

  “My father.”

  “Did you know that my brother was called Henk?”

  “Yeah, my mother told me a bit about him. But not when I was little, much later.” He thinks for a moment. “I think it was only last year.”

  “More sausage?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I cut off a piece of sausage and lay it on his plate. A car drives by.

  “Why aren’t the curtains closed?”

  “Who’s going to look in here?”

  Henk looks straight ahead, at the side window. I see him gazing at his reflection.

  “With a telescope I could look right into that house over there.”

  “The neighbor who made the jam lives there.”

  “Has she got a telescope?”

  “Probably.”

  We eat in silence fo
r a while.

  “In Russia they eat donkeys,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Donkeys. In Russia they eat them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I dunno, I read it somewhere.”

  “Russians are barbarians.”

  “Hmm.” He lays his cutlery on his plate and pushes it away. He crosses his arms and looks at himself in the window. I pick up the plates and put them on the draining board. I get the washing-up basin out of the cupboard under the sink and fill it with hot water.

  “There’s food left over,” says Henk.

  “That’s for my father.” I’m standing with my back to him. He doesn’t say anything. I slip the plates and cutlery into the washing-up basin. It’s still quiet behind me. I turn around. His arms aren’t crossed any more and he’s sitting straighter on the chair. He’s staring at me. If he hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have filled the washing-up basin with hot water yet.

  “My father,” I say again.

  “Is there someone else in the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father. I thought . . .”

  “What?”

  “When you said, “He can’t ride a bike any more” . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “And that bike’s so old. I thought . . .”

  “What did you think?”

  “I thought he died ages ago.”

  “No.”

  “Christ. Where is he then?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Where the light was on when we drove up?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is there something wrong with him?”

  “He’s old. His legs are clapped out.”

  “How old?”

  “In his eighties. He’s starting to go downhill mentally as well.”

  “Christ.”

  I picture Riet and Henk at home in the village in Brabant. They live there together, but I find it impossible to imagine them in one room. When one walks in somewhere, the other walks out, doors opening and shutting simultaneously. They hardly exchange a word. That’s good for me, I have less to explain than I expected.