“Leave it, Ronald,” I said.
“What happened?” asked Henk.
“I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
When I came back out through the milking parlor door, Ronald was standing over Henk with his hands on his hips and looking about. “He hasn’t said anything,” he said. “But he didn’t have to cry.”
I knelt down and dabbed the blood from Henk’s head with a clean, damp tea towel.
Ronald watched over my shoulder. “What a crack!” he shouted and I immediately realized there was no question of my taking care of it myself. I decided to skip the GP and drive straight to the hospital in Purmerend. There were a few people waiting at Accident and Emergency, but they gave Henk priority, probably because of the blood-drenched tea towel he was pressing against his head. They cleaned and stitched the largest wound - the beak wound - but only cleaned the scratches from the crow’s claws. The doctor wanted to know whether my son had had a tetanus injection in the last few years. I asked Henk and, because he couldn’t remember any injections, they gave him one. The doctor was glad he had such short hair. He covered the stitched-up wound with a thick piece of gauze and pulled a kind of elasticated fine-mesh bathing cap on over Henk’s head. He had never seen anything like it and didn’t even know that hooded crows existed. “Pretty exceptional really,” he told Henk with a smile, “getting your scalp ripped open like that.” Henk couldn’t see the funny side of it.
In the car on the way home, Henk sat next to me silently with a somewhat dazed look in his eyes. “My son,” I said. Instead of laughing, he sighed deeply. His hair was hidden completely by the strange bathing cap and if the cap hadn’t been there and he hadn’t sighed so deeply, I would have touched it. When I turned into the yard, prepared to drive around Father’s bike, I saw that it had been dragged over to the side of the house. Ronald had wanted to do something useful before going home. In the hall I took Henk by the elbows and turned him to face the mirror. He avoided his own eyes and for a moment it looked as if he was about to spit at his reflection.
Now he’s been sitting on the sofa in the living room for at least half an hour. He’s not saying anything, the TV isn’t on. Once in a while he rubs his left arm with his right hand. He doesn’t want any coffee, he doesn’t want anything to eat. The hooded crow hasn’t come back to its regular perch in the ash.
Of course, I don’t need anyone else to get the donkeys into their paddock. I open the gate, walk to the shed, open the gate there and saunter back to the paddock. They buck and bray behind me, but don’t pass. Just in front of the open gate, I make room for them. Only then do they leap past and start trotting in circles. When they’ve calmed down a little, they sniff the new fence. I close the gate, tie it fast and walk alongside the mesh to the road. The daffodils are about to come out around the trunks of the row of trees. I turn the corner and follow the new fence as far as the ruins of the laborer’s cottage. The donkeys walk beside me on the other side for the last twenty or thirty yards. Glistening from the drizzle, they scratch their chins on the new wooden rail. They are contented.
I take a run-up and jump over the ditch. The Forestry Commission wants to build a visitors’ center where the laborer’s cottage used to stand. The day is coming when there won’t be any farmers left in Waterland. Or one last farmer, to keep an eye on the Galloways or the Highland cattle, mow the grass, clear away empty soft-drink cans, cut the reeds and run tours from the planned visitors’ center, in neatly painted flatboats, for instance. The Forestry Commission already owns the rest of our land, I just lease it. In spring I turn the Bosman windmill away from the wind, flooding part of the land for the peewits, godwits and redshanks. In return I get a provincial grant. I do it every year when I bring the sheep in. It’s fine by me, but I still resist selling this bit of land.
Every six months a letter arrives from the Forestry Commission. Father’s keen to write back but I’m not. I didn’t even show him the last letter. It’s in one of the pigeonholes in the bureau.
The floor plan of the cottage is still visible in the foundations. I brush aside leaves, dead branches and clods of soil with my foot. This was the living room, the kitchen was here, the toilet and hall were here. The cellar doesn’t exist any more: it’s a hole full of bricks and earth. Weeds grow out of wide cracks in the concrete. A few feet above my head was the large attic with its two dormer windows. I don’t want children running around here screaming or a token farmer standing here giving his conservationist spiel. I want to come here now and then and rebuild the walls in my thoughts, see the ceiling close silently and fix the red tiles on the tile laths. I want to imagine the living room with open windows, bottles of beer and the smell of medium-strong rolling tobacco.
I run my fingers through my wet hair and rub my palm over my face. Water is good and clean, it washes away all kinds of things (dirt, dead skin, years), in water you’re weightless, water makes you reckless and ageless. Henk will always remain nineteen. I see him sitting on the sofa before me, a bottle of warm beer in one hand, the top buttons of his shirt undone, his other arm over the back of the chair. Henk kissing me as if someone has just died. Lonely music, soft. I shake my head and kick a clump of weeds away with the toe of my boot. Jaap. It was Jaap. Was he a substitute? A replacement for Henk, telling me all kinds of things would come in time?
What happened to Henk?
What happened to Jaap?
I take the road back to the farm, to Henk with his aching head, to my worn-out father who wants to see one last spring. The donkeys let me go, staying where they are in the corner by the cottage. I pick up Father’s bike, lift a leg up over the bar and cycle back in the reverse of the route Henk took earlier today. My muscles are still aching from the fencing. Inside the barn it is dark. Before going into the milking parlor, I turn on the strip lights over the workbench. I hang a pair of pliers up on the wooden board with the nails and the penciled outlines. What happened to me? I think, as I hang up the claw hammer in its outline.
“Where were you going?”
“Away.”
“You didn’t have anything with you.”
“So?”
“You hadn’t even taken off your overalls.”
“So?”
“How’s your head feel?”
“Itchy.”
“That’s good. Itchy’s good.”
He pours himself a second glass of wine. I cover my glass with my hand. We’re eating steak, with potatoes and green beans. It’s not completely dark outside yet, but I’ve already drawn the curtain over the side window.
“What makes a bird do something like that?”
I shrug.
“Why me?”
I shrug again.
“My arm’s numb.”
“Imagine if it had gone for Ronald, his head is still really vulnerable.”
“So it’s actually good that it attacked me?”
“In a way.”
“Thanks.”
I put the third steak on a clean plate and cut it into small pieces.
“You’ve actually got really big hands, you know,” says Henk.
I spoon a couple of potatoes and some beans onto the plate and push it over to him. “Will you take it upstairs?”
“Okay.”
He’s gone a long time. I do the dishes and when I’ve finished I get the nailbrush out from the cupboard under the sink. The tub of mechanic’s soap Mother bought when she was trying to get Father and me to take better care of our hands must be in here somewhere. After her death the tub moved deeper and deeper into the cupboard. I find it in a damp corner, under a threadbare rag. I scrub my hands with the sandy soap until my cuticles are almost bleeding.
In the scullery I take off my clothes and throw them into the laundry basket. I go into the bathroom, turn on the taps and step in under the hot water. It’s only when the boiler is almost empty and the water is cooling off that I turn the taps off again with my shriveled fingers. I dry myself, wrap the towel around my waist and walk to
my bedroom. On the way, I look at myself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, and at Mother, who looks back vigilantly. I was planning on putting on some clean clothes, but when I see my bed, I don’t bother.
Tossing the towel into a corner, I go over to stand in front of the map of Denmark. “Værløse,” I whisper. “Farum, Holte, Birkerød, Frederiksværk.” My penis starts to swell and I slip into bed. I hear Henk coming downstairs. He walks through the house and seems to pause in front of my bedroom door. Then he turns off the lights-I can tell from the route he takes. A little later he goes back upstairs. The house is peaceful.
41
I’ve walked into the field to count the sheep. The sight of a sheep is always enough to make me feel a bit melancholy. They’re such sorry animals. I often think of the three sheep I sold to buy the map of Denmark, mainly because I didn’t even check which sheep I was getting rid of. It could have just as easily been three different sheep. Twenty sheep in the rain is not a pleasant sight, unshorn sheep look terrible in a heat wave and a lame sheep is almost unbearable. Worst of all is a sheep on its back. Incapable of getting up again under its own steam, intestines bloated and pressing against the abdominal wall, coughing and rattling, and, if it’s windy, straining to hold its head up as long as it can while it slowly inflates. I try to remember when I took the ram out of the field. It must almost be time to take them in. I count nineteen sheep.
I’m not in the field just to count the sheep, I’m there to get out of the house. Riet rang. She asked again whether she shouldn’t visit, not for any particular reason, just to have a look, and maybe to do some “women’s work.” Father was coughing upstairs. I called Henk, gave him the receiver and walked out into the field.
I sigh and count again. Nineteen. I walk to the closest ditch. The sun is shining on the smooth water. The lack of ripples doesn’t mean very much: a sheep that falls into water gives up quickly, starts drowning and stands there calmly waiting for the end. Texel sheep are great drowners. Another point against them. I follow the ditch to the intersecting ditch. The nineteen sheep keep their distance, but follow. The sheep is in the third ditch. Almost everywhere the water is up to just below ground level: the banks of this ditch are no more than twelve inches high. I bury my hands deep in the wool and start pulling. Sheep legs are thin and fragile, but when those legs are stuck in mud, they’re like leaden barbs. The sheep sways back and forth a little, turning its head towards me; water splashes against the ruler-high sides of the ditch. I plant my feet wider and try again. A couple of seconds later I’m sitting on my bum in the grass with a tuft of wool in my right hand. The sheep is no longer waiting for the end. It goes against its nature by struggling and bleating, its panicked eyes roll in its head. I stop thinking and step into the ditch, without taking my rubber boots off first. It’s a shallow ditch, but when I squat down to get my arms under the belly of the sheep, I’m up to my neck in the muddy water. I struggle to lift the sheep, my boots sinking deeper and deeper in the sucking mud. Slowly but surely the animal rises, I’ve already got one of its flanks against the side of the ditch. Just when I think I’m going to manage it, the sheep feels solid ground and starts kicking wildly. I lose my balance, fall backwards, and the sheep rolls over on top of me.
My boots are standing upright in the mud as if in cement, I’m lying on my back with my legs bent, unable to exert any force. Just once I manage to get my head up above water - past the wet, enormously heavy fleece - and suck in a big lungful of air. Then the sheep’s body pushes me down again. I think I can feel its heartbeat, a furious pounding, but it could be my own. I try to wriggle my feet out of the boots. No recklessness at all, now I’m running out of breath. Sideways, I have to try to get out from under the sheep sideways. No agelessness either, now I’m a half-drowned animal stuck under another half-drowned animal. The other way, to the left, pushing my left shoulder up and hoping the sheep will slide off. Strange, all of a sudden I see Jaap swimming away from me with his powerful strokes and myself, kicking awkwardly and thrashing my arms with my mouth wide open and great gulps of IJssel water disappearing into it. Clean? This filthy, stinking water? What is there to wash away? His hair floated back and forth like seaweed. I have to open my mouth, I can’t help it. I don’t see Henk, I see myself sitting in the Simca and my hair floats back and forth like seaweed while Riet looks in through the window. Not shocked, not frightened, not panicking. Smiling. She doesn’t even do her best to open the door. I have to open my mouth. I can’t get my arms between me and the sheep. Even if I tried to roll it up over my head to get it off me, I couldn’t.
III
42
Helmer,
You lied to me. Henk told me about your father. I thought he’d lost his mind. But he’s dead and scattered, I said. No, he’s not, Henk said, he’s upstairs in bed, I can hear him coughing now. He even told me he quite often takes his dinner up to him. Why did you lie to me? I didn’t expect that sort of thing from you. Henk (your brother, my fiancé) would never have lied to me like that. I always thought of you as a nice, honest, gentle guy, but it turns out I was wrong. I sat in your house and walked around with your father there as well, behind closed doors! It puts my visit in a brand new light. I hate your father, he sent me packing, he ruined my life. (Or do you think I spent dozens of years happy and contented with Wien? That I like living in Brabant?)
Why did you do it? Because you thought I wouldn’t come otherwise? You only think of yourself. There isn’t a day goes by I don’t think of Henk. Henk was a boy, but he was a real man as well, and he gave me what I wanted. Wien was completely different. In a way he was more interested in his pigs than in me. I came second. If only you knew the pictures that haunt me every night. Always that car and Lake IJssel. You’re more like Wien than Henk. And to think that I found some degree of peace on the farm in the days after Henk’s death. Your mother was a comfort to me and I thought there was also some kind of connection between us (you and me). There was something we could build on, I thought.
And something else: I want Henk back (not your brother, my son). Having him round the house wasn’t easy but I see now that not having him is even worse. I want to learn to talk to him, I want to understand him. He’s my son. What’s more, I realize now that he doesn’t belong there with you, because you’re a liar and a cheat, and a bad example for him. And what’s this story about the crow? Didn’t you realize it was such a dangerous animal? Why did you expose my son to that kind of danger? Did he at least get proper treatment at the hospital? You’re an irresponsible man.
I’ll write to Henk as well, telling him he has to come back to his mother, that she needs him.
It can’t go on like this.
Yours,
Riet.
43
Fog. All I can see are the bare branches of the ash. Empty branches. Beyond that, nothing. It’s always a bit damp in Father’s bedroom. I can’t remember it being clammy when I slept here. It’s still March, but to me it feels like it could just as well be May or even June. Father agrees entirely.
“I’ve had enough.”
“You just said that.”
“It’s taking too long.”
“It’s not spring yet.”
“I know. That’s why.”
I look at the crowded walls: the photos, the samplers, the watercolor mushrooms. Do people take photos for later, for when they’re gone? “And?” I ask. “What do you want to do about it?”
“Stop eating.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to eat any more. I’ll just drink.”
“But . . .”
“Is that so bad?”
“If I don’t bring you any food . . .”
“You’ll be guilty of killing me? Bah. If it bothers you so much, bring up the meals anyway. I just won’t eat’em.” He’s lying there cheerfully, as if it’s a joke. Maybe he’s thinking, If my son can joke, so can I.
The last few days I’ve kept looking at Henk’s wrists. He has strong, broad wris
ts. Covered with fine ginger hair. After ending the telephone conversation with his mother, he followed me out. He hung around for a while at the causeway gate, where he couldn’t see me, but noticed the sheep clumped together and staring in the same direction. There was something funny about it, he said later. In retrospect I think that must have been the moment I managed to get my head above water for the last time. He climbed over the gate just in time, and walked just fast enough to reach me before I drowned. He saw the sheep lying there and a limp arm draped over its flank. He too stepped into the ditch, slid the sheep off me with ease and pulled me upright with those strong wrists. My boots stayed behind in the mud; they’re still there now. He heaved me up out of the ditch. When I opened my eyes I saw an ear, a hand and a scar. He kissed me on the mouth, I thought, and the next thing I knew a powerful stream of air was forcing its way into my lungs-I felt like I was suffocating. There was nowhere else for the air to go, he had my nose pinched shut. I made a noise and Henk’s head moved away.
My diaphragm contracted and the next thing I knew I was lying on my side - helped by his strong wrists - and vomiting a wave of muddy body-warmed water. “Just stay there, don’t move,” said Henk. I obeyed. I was gasping and glad to be breathing air instead of water. A little later a few drops splashed onto my face from a bale of wool that came wobbling by. He’d even managed to get the sheep up out of the ditch.
Now he’s in bed. He says he’s come down with something. I see his wrists on a background of African animals. I vomited a few more times in the course of the day and that was that.
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