“No, of course not.”
“Why not? I’m the farmhand, aren’t I?”
“We’re not living in the sixties any more.”
“I might have liked it.”
“Living alone?”
“Yeah. In a tidy little house.”
“Isn’t it to your liking here?”
He doesn’t answer but sighs and scrapes his spoon over his plate. Then he takes a third helping.
I’m drunk from the wine and think of beer. Beer straight from the bottle, sitting in an easy chair in a house that only exists inside my head. Jazz. There’s something lonely about jazz, especially when it’s quiet and coming from a radio somewhere in a corner.
Why did I let it all happen like this? I could have said “no” to Father and “do it yourself” or just “sell up.”
Grandfather van Wonderen lived in Edam, he survived Grandmother van Wonderen six years. I visited him once a week for half an hour. He lived in an old people’s home in a small room with a view of a pond that had a fountain in the middle. No matter where the sun was, it always seemed to shine in through his windows. Grandfather would pour me a coffee and I could never think of anything to say. I was glad when the half-hour was over. In the car on the way home I always thought, wouldn’t it be kinder if I didn’t come at all, because then he wouldn’t know any better. That half-hour of mine made him a lot lonelier than no half-hour. If you don’t know any better, you haven’t got anything to miss. It’s as if I already know that Henk is going to leave again. Of course he’s going to leave, why should he stay? There’s nothing for him here.
“More wine?”
I cover my glass with a hand.
“Do you ever go out?”
“Out?”
“Yeah, out. To a pub or . . . My father used to play cards, once a week.”
“No,” I say.
“I’d like to go out sometimes.”
“You should go to Monnickendam on a Saturday night.”
“Is that fun?”
“It used to be.”
“A village like that must be really boring.”
“You could always go to Amsterdam.”
“I don’t know . . .”
I stand up and clear the table. Henk disappears into the living room and turns on the TV.
After doing the dishes, I sit down at the bureau to do some paperwork, but my eyes keep wandering from the documents; I still feel light-headed. After a while he turns the TV off again. He walks into the hall and goes into the scullery, and a little later I hear the water running in the bathroom. I try to concentrate on the work in front of me, but actually I’m waiting to hear him go upstairs.
He doesn’t go upstairs. He comes into the kitchen, a towel wrapped around his waist. He holds the door with his left hand. “I’m glad my father is dead,” he says.
“What?”
“I’m glad he’s dead. My mother didn’t even ask me if I wanted to carry on with the pigs, she just sold up.”
“Would you have wanted to take it over?”
“No! Horrible. Selling up was fine by me.”
“But you were annoyed she didn’t ask you?”
“Not really. Maybe my sisters told her to sell. I don’t know. They always shut me out.”
“So you’re glad?”
“Sure.” He doesn’t sound glad.
“What kind of man was your father?”
He thinks for a moment and raises one shoulder. “He was actually a very nice guy. We got on well together.” He’s still holding the door and has kept his eyes on the table the whole time, bare now except for the almost empty bottle of wine. Now he looks at me. “Goodnight,” he says.
When I hear the door of the new room closing, I stand up and pour half a glass of wine. I see myself reflected in the side window and raise the glass - to myself or to Ada, I don’t know which. Suddenly I realize that Father hasn’t had any dinner yet and immediately I loathe that fellow in the window, who has raised his glass so preciously. Acting cool when he’s anything but. I creep upstairs and cautiously open the door to Father’s bedroom. He’s snoring quietly and calmly. Peacefully. I let him sleep, it’s already late. I go back to the kitchen and draw the curtain across the side window. Just when I’m about to sit down again at the bureau, Henk reappears at the door. Not with a towel around his waist, but wearing blue underpants and a yellow T-shirt.
“Your father hasn’t eaten,” he whispers.
“I know,” I say. “He’s asleep.”
“But . . .”
“He’ll survive.”
He nods and disappears.
The electric clock buzzes, the tap drips. It’s quiet in the house. I swallow something in the back of my throat and close the bureau.
“Ballerup,” I say a little later. “Stenløse, Taastrup, Frederikssund, Holbæk.” I run a finger over the top of the frame and blow the roll of dust off my fingertip. For the first time I see that Jutland could be a giant who is about to gobble up Funen, Zealand and all the smaller islands. I turn away, undress and slip into bed. Gradually my body starts to warm up the duvet. Upstairs something creaks, from outside there isn’t any sound.
38
We roll the plastic-coated mesh out in the opposite direction, from what’s left of the laborer’s cottage towards the farmhouse, from post to post. Again it’s a couple of degrees warmer than yesterday and now that I look I see more crocuses in the verge. The flower Teun trampled was less lonely than I thought. I keep looking up at the sky, expecting redshanks and black-tailed godwits, despite knowing full well that it’s not even March yet. The concrete posts are designed for wooden rails, which you are supposed to attach with a nut. We twist wire around the bolts in the posts to hold the mesh. Henk is enjoying the work, I think. He whistles while rolling out the mesh, twists the wire together and smokes the occasional cigarette. He raises an index finger for cyclists and says “Hiya” - sniffing when the cyclists don’t say anything in reply. Sometimes, while smoking, he stares at the high buildings and haze of Amsterdam. It’s as if he was born here. All Waterland smells like manure.
“Do you ever get any other cheese?” he asks at lunch.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s Edam from the dairy.”
“So?”
“I get it cheap.”
“It’s pretty bland.”
“You can always buy yourself some other cheese.”
He lays down the cheese slice. “I don’t have any money.”
I stand up and walk over to the bureau. The wallet is in one of the square drawers. I flick it open and pull out two hundred-euro notes. “Here,” I say.
He takes the money without a word, folds the notes in half and sticks them in his back pocket. He picks up the cheese slice and cuts some more slices.
The livestock dealer’s truck goes past slowly.
“We’ve got a visitor,” I say.
“You’ve got a visitor,” Henk says. “Not me.”
The livestock dealer knocks once on the jamb and appears in the doorway. “Afternoon,” he says.
Now that I look at him properly, seeing him partly through Henk’s eyes, even though he is sitting with his back to the door, I notice how old the livestock dealer is. He has a gray beard, the kind of beard you see in very old, severe photographs. The deep furrows in his forehead are dark along the edges. As usual he rubs the sole of one foot over the top of the other. He looks at Henk’s back.
“This is Henk,” I say.
“Nephew of yours?” he asks.
“A nephew? No, Henk works here.”
“Oh.”
Henk acts as if there’s no one else in the kitchen. He hasn’t turned around and keeps on eating. I’ve half turned my chair away from the table.
“Sit down,” I say, pointing at the chair opposite me.
“Ye-es,” says the livestock dealer slowly and unexpectedly. He takes his cap off and sits down. He glances sideways at Henk.
“I don’t have anything for you.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
When he doesn’t say anything else, I ask if he’d like a coffee.
“Yes, a coffee would hit the spot.”
I stand up and get a mug out of the kitchen cupboard.
“So you work here,” the livestock dealer says to Henk.
“Yes.”
“Do you come from Brabant?”
“Yes.”
Ada? Or is a single “yes” enough for him to hear where someone comes from? I put the mug down on the table in front of him.
He looks around the kitchen as if he’s never been here before.
“How’s old Mr. van Wonderen doing?”
“Fine,” I say. I slide my plate, with a half-eaten sandwich on it, away from me. “Even if he’s not all there any more.”
“Too bad,” says the livestock dealer. “I did a lot of business with him.”
“Yes.”
The electric clock buzzes, Henk fidgets on his chair.
“I’m here to tell you I’m quitting.”
“Really?”
“Do you have any idea how old I am?”
“Just turned sixty?”
“Sixty-eight.”
“Then it’s getting time to stop.”
“The wife said, ‘If you don’t stop now, I’m leaving you.’”
“Hmm.”
“She wants to travel.”
“Don’t you have a daughter in New Zealand?”
“Uh-huh. The wife’s already bought the tickets.”
“Nice.”
He sips his coffee. “Flying,” he goes on. “Can you see me on a plane?”
“Why not?”
He has a slow way of talking and hardly looks at me. I suspect that his feet are now at rest and flat on the floor, and I feel like looking under the table to check. He’s already become someone else. No longer a livestock dealer, he can speak freely.
Henk gets up. “I’m going outside,” he says. “Goodbye.”
“Bye, son,” says the livestock dealer. Once Henk is gone, he looks me straight in the eye. “So that’s your new farmhand.”
“Yes,” I say.
“Sturdy lad.”
“Yes.”
I hear the door to the milking parlor bang shut.
Finally the livestock dealer looks away, through the side window. “I was just at the neighbors’.”
“You dropping in on everyone?”
“Yeah. That will take me a week as well.” He puts the mug down on the table. “I’ll be off.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I’ll see you around,” he says in the scullery.
“Have a nice time in New Zealand.”
“It’s summer there now,” he says. He slips his feet into his clogs. “Say hello to your father.”
“I will,” I say.
He pulls open the shed door and walks around to the back.
I wait for a moment and then go out through the milking parlor. When the truck passes, I raise one hand. Henk is sitting on the donkey paddock gate, opposite the milking parlor. I only notice him after the truck has passed. A big plume of smoke is hanging over his head. He raises a hand to wave to me. A play without words for three men: one leaves without looking up, the second watches him go, the third looks at the second, and the second only sees the third after the first is gone.
It’s hot in the kitchen. The sun is shining on the table. A brace of ducks fly over. I butter two slices of bread, cover them with cheese and walk upstairs. Father doesn’t wake up when I come in. I put the plate down carefully on the bedside cabinet and sit down on the chair next to the window.
“The livestock dealer says hello,” I say quietly, but without any spite. “He’s going to New Zealand with his wife, to see his daughter.” The hooded crow in the ash is my only witness. “I can’t stand you because you ruined my life. I don’t call a doctor because I think it’s high time you stopped ruining my life, and I tell Ada you’re senile because it makes things that much easier. If you’re senile, then none of it makes any difference anyway. What I say, what you say. And you don’t know the half of what I would have done for Henk. Henk was my twin brother. Do you know what it’s like to have a twin brother? Do you? What do you actually know? In the months after you fired Jaap you didn’t visit him once because you refused to see him as an equal. I saw him as an equal. He kissed me on the fucking mouth. Have you ever kissed me? Have you ever said a kind word to me? Do you know what I want? No, you don’t know, because I don’t even know myself. The livestock dealer is never coming back, that’s why he says hello, and the tanker drivers are never coming back either, one’s dead, you knew that already, the gruff one, but maybe you forgot because you’re senile, and the other one, the young one who always smiles, is off to drive another route. That’s your fault too. Not him going away, but making me be here for him to go away from. If I hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have known him. And by the way, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much more of Ada, she prefers to spy on us from a distance and Ronald is the only one from next door who still comes here, we’re in Teun’s bad books because-”
“Helmer!” Henk shouts from the bottom of the stairs.
Father wakes up.
I stand up. “There’s something to eat next to your bed,” I say.
“Did I fall asleep?” asks Father.
“We going back to work?” Henk calls.
“Coming!” I shout. “Yes,” I say to Father.
“Didn’t even notice. I’m exhausted.” He sits up and looks at the plate. “Cheese,” he says. “Delicious.”
Henk is actually a kind of nephew, I think when I close the door to the stairs and see him standing there. He is pulling on his overalls, the ones with the crotch that rides up, the sleeves that are too short and the tear in one armpit. A half-nephew, a could-have-been-nephew, a nephew-in-law.
39
“I’m not going behind those donkeys. Do it yourself.”
“Go and stand in the yard over there then.”
“I don’t want anything to do with them.”
“If you go and stand there, just past the gate, they’ll walk straight into the paddock.”
“And if I don’t stand there?”
“Henk, they won’t even touch you. These are my donkeys.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“They’re not your father’s and they’re not miniatures.”
“What?”
“They’re not like the one that kicked you.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Your mother told me.”
“Fucking hell.”
“What’s there to swear about?”
“What else did she tell you?”
“Nothing. Listen: the smaller, the meaner. Shetland ponies are vicious too, they kick and bite. These are real donkeys, they won’t do anything. Teun and Ronald . . .”
“What else did she tell you? Why am I actually here?”
“I don’t know.”
“For no reason?”
“What?”
“Am I here for no reason?”
“No . . .”
“Why?!”
“Because you were at a loose end at home.”
“At home? At home where?”
“You know, Brabant.”
“Oh, fucking hell.”
“What is it? Don’t swear so much.”
“What kind of bullshit’s that! A loose end?”
“Yes, a loose end.”
“How long do I have to stay here?”
“You don’t have to stay anywhere.”
“So if I want to, I can go?”
“Of course.”
It’s March and the sun has disappeared. We’re standing in front of the donkey shed. It’s drizzling. The donkey paddock fence is finished.
“Are you fighting?” Ronald is suddenly standing next to us. Like a faithful dog.
“Not at all,” I say.
“We’re having a difference of opinion,” says Henk.
“What’s that?”
“When Helmer says something I don’t agree with.”
“And Henk says something I don’t agree with.”
“Oh,” says Ronald. “Are the donkeys going into the pasture?”
“Yep.”
“Great! Can I help?”
“Sure. Where’s Teun?”
“At home.”
“Didn’t he feel like coming?”
“No.” He looks from me to Henk and back again before deciding to take us into his confidence. “He thinks you’re stupid.”
“Go and stand in the yard over there.” I gesture in the direction of the causeway.
Ronald runs off straightaway - happy, always happy - and stops level with the door to the milking parlor. He holds up a hand to show he’s in position.
“So if I want to, I can go?” asks Henk.
“I’m not stopping you.”
He walks into the barn and comes out a little later on Father’s bike. He takes the curve wide and rides off towards the causeway. Ronald looks at him in astonishment. “Are you going?” I hear him asking Henk. Slowly I walk to the house.
Maybe Henk says something. I can’t hear because the hooded crow starts cawing. It comes swooping around the corner of the house and flies into the side of Henk’s head. It beats its wings wildly to stay in the air and pushes off against Henk’s skull with its claws, while the bike and Henk roll over beneath it. It stays hanging there for a moment, almost like a giant kestrel that’s spotted a mouse, then flies away, between the trees along the donkey paddock, towards Marken.
“Henk fell off the bike,” says Ronald.
40
“Henk fell off the bike,” said Ronald. It looked to me more like he was “flapped off it.” When I reached him he was trying to get up. He was still on all fours and blood was running down his forehead. I told him to stay put. Ronald pulled the bike upright but because it was Father’s old bike, a heavy, reliable bike, the handlebars slipped out of his grip. The seat hit Henk on the back.
The Twin Page 16
