“You want me gone,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, lowering the milking claw to the floor.
“Shit.”
When will the swallows arrive? Or have they already come? I wonder. I’ve lost my sense of time. It’s summer outside.
52
“It’s almost over,” says Father.
“Yeah,” I say, thinking of earlier in the day.
The window is wide open.
I correct myself. “Yeah?”
“And I haven’t had a spring, but a summer instead.”
“Are you going to eat your egg?”
“Soon. I’m going to look at it for a while first.”
I have already shelled the egg for him. It is lying on a saucer and the salt dish is next to the saucer. Mosquitoes dance in front of the open window. I’ve sat down on the foot of the bed. He says he’s going to look at the egg, but he looks at me. The sheet of paper is no longer sticking out from under the bedside cabinet. I wonder where the poem has got to.
“Will you manage on your own?”
“I think so.”
“You’re a grown man.”
“Half a grown man.”
Now he looks at the egg as if he’s got a little marzipan cake in front of him, the kind the baker in Monnickendam calls “castles.” In the old days he would sometimes drive all the way into town on a Saturday to buy four. On some occasions he might have got five. Later it became three and, after Mother died, very rarely, he went in for two. I never told him that castles were not my favorite cake.
“I was second choice,” I say. “That was the worst. Always feeling I wasn’t good enough.”
“I did my best,” he says.
“And I didn’t?”
“Of course you did. We all did.” There’s a lot more life in him now than there was this morning.
“Where’s Henk?”
“I don’t know. Outside, I think.”
There is something I want to ask him. Despite everything, there is something I want his permission for. “Shall I . . .” I say. I stand up, go down on my knees and stick my head under the bed. There’s the poem, covered with fluff. I stand up and sit back down on the bed, close to his feet. He’s still staring at the egg, a bit frightened now.
“Father, shall I sell up?”
“Feel free, son. Feel free.” He takes the saucer off the bedside cabinet with his claw hand and puts it on his lap. The egg rolls onto the blanket. “Dead is dead,” he says. “Gone is gone and then I won’t even know about it.” He gropes for the egg and lays it back neatly on the saucer. “You have to decide for yourself.”
I stand up. Watching him eat the egg is too much for me.
For weeks now he hasn’t said a word about the hooded crow. It’s as if he’s forgotten it.
Henk isn’t outside. Henk is in the kitchen, half sitting on the worktop. In his right hand he is holding a torn-open envelope, in his left he has my letter to his mother, which I should have posted in time for today’s collection. He has already changed: exactly the same but different, the way a house seems strange when you’ve spent a day somewhere unfamiliar. The farmhouse seemed different to me after the old tanker driver’s funeral, after skating on Big Lake and after picking Riet up from the ferry. I realize now that I felt just the same when I came home after picking up Henk. I haven’t worked out why that is. Maybe because you yourself have grown older, even if just a few hours (I had already got that far) and everything at home has stayed still, except the hands of the clock. Then it takes a while to smooth over the time you’ve missed at home.
I’m not going to tell him that it’s rude to open other people’s letters. I notice now that his forehead and nose are burned as well. He turns away, screwing up the letter as he turns. I recognize the gesture, but unlike Father almost forty years ago, Henk is carrying a lighter. He pulls it out of his back pocket and holds the flame under the piece of paper, letting go just before he burns his fingers. The letter burns away in the sink.
“What kind of letter was that?” asks Henk. “Do you think my mother would have understood any of it?”
“The last bit, at least.”
“There’s no need,” he says. “You should be glad I’ve burned it.”
“What do you mean, there’s no need?”
He looks at me and raises his eyebrows. Then he strolls out of the kitchen. I hear him go upstairs and walk into Father’s room. Is he going to sit and watch Father eat the egg?
I look around. The buzzing clock says eight twenty. I’ve boiled an egg for Father, but I haven’t eaten myself. I don’t know whether Henk has eaten. It feels much too early for the sun to have set but I need to turn on the kitchen light. Summer in April.
Before going to bed I look in on Father. I don’t turn the light on, the light shining in from the landing is just enough to see the empty saucer. Father is lying on his back and I can hear him breathing in and out through his nose. The curtains are open. I tiptoe over to the window and close them.
53
The cows virtually ignore the shot. Cows are strange creatures: the least little thing can spook them, but they don’t look up or around when they hear a sudden noise. No, that’s not entirely true; the cow I am milking rolls her eyes back. Cows can roll their eyes a long way back, showing so much white that it looks as if they’re completely panicked. It just doesn’t occur to them to turn their heads. Father doesn’t like me saying so, but it’s true: cows are stupid. Even more stupid than sheep. The only clever animals around here are the Lakenvelder chickens and the two donkeys. The second shot comes as even less of a surprise than the first: if you’ve never fired a gun, there’s a good chance you’ll miss the first time. I pull the tube out of the milk line, pat the cow on her side and put the claw down on the dirty floor. No more shots follow.
When I open the door between the scullery and the hall, I see that the front door is open. Sunlight from the east is falling into the hall at an angle, the gleam of the copper-tipped cartridges is bursting out of the box. There’s a sour smell in the hall - sour and metallic. The kitchen door is open too, all the doors are open. Henk’s backpack is on one of the kitchen chairs. I walk up to the front door. A feather floats down, a black feather that spins like an ash key as it falls. It must have been balancing on a twig for quite a while because at least four minutes have passed since I heard the shots. The hooded crow itself is still sitting on its branch. With its back turned towards us, as if insulted. Father’s bike is leaning against the iron railing of the bridge. Henk is standing under the ash, more or less level with my bedroom window. From that distance he could have hit a mouse. He’s got his coat on. It’s colder than it was at the same time yesterday morning, summer is a few degrees further away today.
He waves the gun around, as if he’s about to throw it away, but when he hears me he rests it on the ground next to him, clasping the barrel with his right hand. “I’m going,” he says.
“Where?”
“To the train station.”
“How?”
“On the bike.” He gestures at the bridge.
“And how’s the bike going to get back here?”
“Your father doesn’t need it any more.”
“Do you know the way?”
“I’ll follow the signs.” He’s talking to the crow. He doesn’t look at me.
“You got any money?”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “Plenty. What have I had to spend it on here? Even that shitty canoe cost almost nothing.” It’s not easy, but he does it, he tears his eyes away from the crow. He turns and walks into the hall. A little later he re-emerges with the backpack. He’s still holding the gun in his right hand.
“Didn’t you even wing it?” I ask.
“No. It just stayed sitting there. As if nothing had happened. When I fired again, it turned around, with a little jump. That bird is weird.”
“Why did you do it?”
“It’s as if things don’t exist unless you see them. You think
it was me?”
“Who else?”
“You really think I’d shoot an animal dead like that off my own bat?”
“You had a score to settle,” I say.
He hands me the gun. He looks at me and smiles contemptuously. Then he walks over to the bike.
I don’t expect him to say anything else.
“Your father asked me to do it last night. ‘Blast that bird out of the ash,’ he said.”
I walk over to the bridge too. “And you thought, fine, I’ll do it.”
“That’s right. He couldn’t do it himself.”
“You could have just left it.”
“I think your father’s a nice guy. Nicer than you.”
“Maybe he is,” I say.
“‘Then throw the gun in the ditch.’ He said that too.”
“But you haven’t done that.”
“No. Because you suddenly appeared in the garden. And it actually seems like a waste.”
“Have you said goodbye to him?”
“Of course.” He takes the handlebars and pushes the bike onto the road. “Maybe I’ll see you sometime.”
“What are you going to do, Henk?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see.” He swings a leg over the back of the bike. “Thanks,” he says, riding off.
He came with one scar, he’s leaving with two.
He says, “thanks.” Not mockingly, not spitefully. He says it without any kind of emotion. But why does he say it? I don’t know how to answer, so I say nothing. He pedals hard and soon disappears behind Ada and Wim’s farm. An early Thursday cyclist passes, an old man, a bit older than me, in shirtsleeves. He rides onto the verge, and from the verge he almost crashes into the canal because he can’t keep his eyes off me and the gun. I wait until he’s back on the saddle and riding in a straight line again. I don’t throw the gun into the ditch, I walk up onto the road and throw it in the canal. On the way back I stop for a moment on the bridge. The crow turns around again. It preens itself and steps from side to side. “What do you want?” I ask quietly. It doesn’t answer.
Your father doesn’t need it any more. What did I say myself, months ago, when Father’s bike caught my eye and I knew what Henk’s first job would be? “That’s my Father’s, but he can’t ride a bike any more.” That’s not the same as “not needing it any more.” First I’ll finish milking, then I’ll go upstairs. The bloody cows always come first. Whatever you do, even if you know your Father is lying dead in his bed, you milk the cows first, idiot that you are.
People always want to know what someone has died of, even if their curiosity diminishes as the age of the deceased increases. But who can I tell that Father died of an egg? The GP I am about to call? The undertaker? Complete strangers or people I hardly know? I have to laugh, but suddenly the ticking of the clock annoys me so much that I open the glass door and seize the pendulum with both hands to stop it. Then I sit down on the chair by the window. The buds of the ash have burst open: tender, purplish-green plumes waving back and forth on the breeze. It’s early: the hands of the grandfather clock point to half past nine. I can’t look at him yet. First I’ll stay here in the chair and stare out at the dyke through the plumes of the ash.
54
I’ve taken a photo of Henk from the wall in Father’s bedroom and put it on the mantelpiece - on the other side of the mirror. The photo is in an old frame, the kind you can either hang or stand up. Dressed in brand-new overalls, my brother is sitting on a milking stool next to some bony hindquarters and beaming as if nothing in the whole world is more beautiful than milking a cow. Now we’re all together in the living room.
This morning I left Father alone to go to the tobacconist’s in Monnickendam. It didn’t really feel right, leaving him in the living room like that. That’s why I locked the hall door and the front door before I left. There were two people in front of me at the tobacconist’s and I was nervous. When it was my turn the shop assistant asked me what I wanted and I hadn’t had time to study the shelves behind her. “I’d like a packet of rolling tobacco,” I said. Fortunately no one had come into the shop after me. All right, which brand? I didn’t know. Which brand did I usually smoke? Van Nelle, I read, to the right of her hip. “Van Nelle,” I said. Strong or medium strong? “Medium strong,” I said, no longer guessing, because suddenly I saw the almost empty pouch of rolling tobacco on the coffee table in the laborer’s cottage. Papers? Mascotte, of course, they’d lain next to the pouch that first time and I had seen them later in his hands, when his practiced thumb brushed the shag off the packet after he opened the pouch. “So, have you worked it out yet?” the shop assistant asked. “Mascotte,” I said. It came to four euros and eight cents. That was a shock, I had no idea tobacco was so expensive.
Afterwards I searched the bureau for Father’s papers and found the letter from the Forestry Commission. I’ve put it on top of a pile and soon, but not now, I will go through it again thoroughly. Then answer it. The second part of Lodewick’s history of literature was still lying on the desk. I didn’t need it any more. I went up to Henk’s bedroom and put it back in the box - which was still sitting on Mother’s dressing table. I re-taped the box carefully and put it back in the wardrobe.
I locked all the doors yesterday as well - before driving to the ferry. By the time I arrived it was getting dark. It had occurred to me that Henk wouldn’t have taken the bike with him on the ferry, because what use would it have been to him on the other side? You only have to cross the road and you’re in the train station. I wanted Father’s bike back. Henk wouldn’t have bothered to lock it (I wasn’t even sure it still had a lock), because you only do that if you’re coming back to use it. I drove a circuit, but from the car all the bikes looked the same. Although there were less of them than I had expected. Then I walked past all the bike racks twice. Father’s bike wasn’t there. Could Henk have taken it onto the ferry with him after all? No, it must have been stolen. After a ferry had left, I stood for a while on the bank of the IJ. The other side was white with ships, the kind of ships that take elderly people on river cruises. I wondered why Riet hadn’t called. Or had she called, but I wasn’t at home? I wasn’t home now either. I pictured the hall and heard the telephone ringing. A telephone ringing in a house where there’s no one to answer it. When a ferry came sailing towards me, I felt it was time to leave.
The last lamb was born last night. Thirty-one lambs from twenty ewes.
I’ve finally managed to roll a cigarette that looks reasonable. I should have bought two packets of papers. I turn the roll-up around in my fingers. The cooling unit clicks on, Father shudders. They didn’t mention that: that the deceased shudders when the cooling unit clicks on or off. I’m sitting on a kitchen chair next to the coffin, I don’t know where else to sit. The box of matches is lying on the edge of the coffin. I light the roll-up. “You’re a weird one,” he said. When was that? The day before yesterday? Three days ago? Everything is different when you have a coffin in your living room. I wonder, for instance, whether it’s proper to have the blinds open? I definitely remember the curtains being half drawn when Henk was laid out in here. I’ve forgotten how the curtains were with Mother. On the other hand, I’m hardly going to sit here with the blinds closed, am I? It’s Sunday tomorrow and Monday will be like another Sunday. Two Sundays in a row. Easter. I inhale the smoke. It’s not too bad. I breathe out through my nose and, for the first time in my life, smoke comes out of my nostrils.
Someone’s in the scullery. “Quiet, now,” she says as the door between the scullery and the hall opens. She comes into the room, the boys stop at the door.
“What are you doing?” she asks in astonishment.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re smoking!”
I look at the roll-up in my hand, then stub it out in the ashtray on the arm of the sofa. I get up.
Ada doesn’t say anything else. She comes up to me and wraps her arms around me. Her hair smells nice and fresh, she presses her fingers int
o my shoulder blades. Teun and Ronald look at me with big eyes. I wink at them over Ada’s shoulder. Ronald thinks it’s funny and starts grinning. Teun’s expression stays serious. Ada lets go and plants a wet kiss on my lips at the same time. Then she looks at Father.
“I’ll put some coffee on,” she says. Although Ada is still Ada, nothing has been quite the same since the day she brought me the rug and Teun gave Henk the poster of the singer whose name I’ve forgotten. She walks to the kitchen saying, “If you’d like to, it’s all right. You can have a look.”
Teun and Ronald approach very slowly. Teun stops at the foot of the coffin and pretends to look. Ronald comes closer. He’s not as tall and has to stand on tiptoes to see over the side.
“Is it scary?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “Do you think it’s scary?”
“A bit.”
“When’s the funeral?” Ada calls from the kitchen.
“Tuesday,” I call back. “You don’t look scared,” I say to Ronald.
“Did you have to cry?”
“No.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Ada calls from the kitchen.
“Why not?” asks Ronald.
“Well . . .” I say. “You either have to cry or you don’t, there’s not much you can do about it.”
“Why is he dead?”
“He ate an egg, Ronald.”
It makes him laugh. “I eat eggs, they don’t kill me.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I say. “Come on, let’s go into the kitchen. Would you like an almond cake?”
“Yes!” shouts Ronald.
“Please,” Teun says politely.
We go into the kitchen. The coffee machine is on, its gurgling drowns out the buzzing of the electric clock. Ada has put out two mugs. I get a packet of almond cakes out of a kitchen cupboard and tear it open.
The Twin Page 21
