“Let’s take his dinner up to him now,” I say, “before it gets cold.”
“What, me too?”
“You too.”
He looks at me as if I’ve asked him to lay out a dead body.
“Show me your hands.”
Now Henk has to go closer to the bed. From the moment he entered the room, he kept his eyes on the things on the walls and finally he noticed the gun leaning against the side of the clock. He’s been staring at it for a while now. He holds out his arms with the backs of his hands up, as if about to dive.
“No, the palms.”
Henk turns his hands over.
“Hmm,” says Father.
“Your bike’s fixed,” I say.
“Yes, my bike. Be careful with it,” he says to Henk.
“Yes, Mr. van Wonderen,” says Henk.
Father has put the plate with the kale, mash and sausage on the bedside cabinet. “Do you have any experience with cows?”
“No,” says Henk.
“His father had pigs,” I say.
“Pigs!”
“Yes,” says Henk. Almost imperceptibly he shuffles away from the bed again.
“There’s no comparison!” Father says. He shakes his head. “Pigs,” he says quietly.
“Henk comes from Brabant,” I say.
“I suppose that why he’s got a Brabant accent.”
I have to admit to being impressed. Rather than lying back like an old, decrepit man, Father is playing the part of a large landowner laid up with a dose of flu. In the spring of 1966 he fired the farmhand. Henk and I were eighteen and Riet was looking like a permanent fixture. He gave the hand six months to find somewhere else to live. That was very obliging of Father, considering the way he treated him otherwise.
“I’m the bloody boss here! You follow my instructions.”
Father and the farmhand were standing in the cowshed, opposite each other. I was behind Father and to one side, squirming, and when I dared to glance up quickly at the hand I saw that, like me, he was keeping his head bowed. I remember being surprised by the phrase “follow my instructions.” Father didn’t usually talk like that. I had no idea what the hand had done wrong.
“Who’s the boss here?”
“You are,” said the hand, not looking up but seething inside. “You’re the boss.”
I was young, young enough to get tears in my eyes. I couldn’t stand my father, I wanted to stick up for the man who had taught me how to skate. But I was young and had no idea what the disagreement was about. Not too young though to notice the trembling muscles in the farmhand’s neck. It was a recalcitrant trembling, somehow provocative. After his subjugation he straightened up, but he didn’t look at Father. He looked at me. His eyes were still smoldering.
Now Father is trying to resume his old role. Maybe he’s not even trying, maybe the master-servant relationship comes naturally. To him.
“Get out of here,” he says. “Then I can eat in peace.”
Henk reaches the door before I do. He dives down the stairs in front of me.
“Christ,” he says, walking into the scullery.
Henk wants to watch TV.
“We don’t have TV here,” I say.
“What? What do you do at night?”
“Read the newspaper, do the paperwork, check the animals.”
“Paperwork?”
“Uh-huh. Nitrate records, health records for the vet, quality control records for the dairy-”
“I get it. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
I don’t know how to answer that.
“You miss all kinds of stuff, you know, if you don’t have a TV.”
“Yeah?” We’re sitting in the kitchen. Henk doesn’t have anything else to say. I stand up and open the linen cupboard.
“Towels are in here. Come with me.” I lead the way to the scullery. “The washing machine’s here. You can throw your dirty clothes in the basket.” I open the door to the bathroom. “The bathroom,” I say. “The hot water is from a boiler. It’s a big boiler, but it doesn’t last forever.” We walk back to the kitchen. “Can you cook?” I ask.
“I can throw a pasta dish together.”
“Good.”
He walks straight through to the linen cupboard, pulls a towel from the stack and disappears into the hall. As if he’s following instructions. I hear him on the stairs. Then it’s quiet for a moment. He comes back down the stairs. A little later I hear water running in the bathroom. Ten minutes later he turns off the taps. From the instant he left the kitchen I haven’t done a thing. I’ve stayed sitting at the table with my arms crossed. The scullery door opens. “I’m going to bed,” he calls.
“Goodnight,” I call back.
“Goodnight.” He climbs the stairs again. It gets quiet upstairs.
He has taken up half of the shelf under the mirror. Shaving gear, toothbrush and toothpicks, shower gel, shampoo and expensive-looking deodorant. His damp towel is hanging over the shower curtain rail. I wipe the steam from the mirror. “A good thick head of hair,” I mumble. Black hair, even now.
I’m exhausted, but can’t possibly fall asleep. Not that far away a group of coots is swimming on the canal. The hooded crow is quiet and there is no rain drumming on the window ledges. Am I a kind of father now? What am I? Can he sleep in that room up there? It’s not just missing a wardrobe, there’s not even a chair. Thrown-together pasta. I can’t see Father being too happy about that. What is Father thinking about? Suddenly it’s full of breath and life, upstairs. For the first time since taking over Father’s bedroom, I feel some degree of regret about the move. Just before falling asleep, when all my thoughts are slipping away from me, I see the young lad who looked like Riet on the back of that bike. With his arms wrapped tightly around the girl.
30
I go into the yard through the shed door and a cold north wind hits me in the face. Surely it’s not going to start snowing? On the far side of the farm it’s already turning gray. I always do the yearlings after milking. If Henk was up, he could have done them for me. The light is on in the donkey shed, the donkeys are standing with their rumps to the entrance. They know I’ll come later. Donkeys aren’t stupid. I give the yearlings their feed first. While that’s occupying them I scrape the shit out from under them and scatter some fresh straw. Then I give them hay. Yearlings are a lot less patient than cows, they snort and tug on their chains until they’ve been fed. Some mornings three or four will start mooing together and then there’s no stopping them until they’ve all got hay. I cart out the dung from the gully then sweep the shed floor. Henk isn’t up because I’ve left him to it. Two hours ago I was on my way upstairs and changed my mind four steps before the landing. Father must have heard me, he called out. I hurried back downstairs.
The broom is fairly new, its red nylon brush is still stiff and rings on the concrete floor. No matter how much I dawdle, the sweeping is finished too soon.
When I come in it’s quiet in the house. Eight thirty. Before switching on the radio, I turn down the volume. I make a pot of tea and set the table. The sky over the fields is sallow. Snow sky. I drum my fingers on the tabletop. Now it’s taking too long, I go upstairs. I tiptoe across the landing to the door of the new room. When I get there, I don’t know what to do. Never in my whole life have I got someone out of bed. I knock on the door with limp fingers, then wait for a moment. “Henk,” I say. I knock with my knuckles. “Henk!” Nothing happens. I stay there for too long without doing anything, motionless in front of the door. I don’t dare to go into the room - in my own house, for God’s sake. I walk back to the stairs seething with resentment.
“Helmer,” I hear from Father’s bedroom.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumble. “I’m not calling you.”
In the kitchen I sit down at the table and start to eat. Only after a while do I realize that the radio is on.
I drive to Monnickendam and go in turn to the bike shop, a lamp shop and an electrical supplies shop. I pay
cash for the mudguard, the reading lamp and the TV. The TV salesman wants to know whether I need a satellite dish and a decoder as well. “A what?” I ask. Do I have a cable connection? I think about it and see council workers digging channels in front of the lampposts, I see colored wires and I also see someone on his knees in a corner of the living room, a fatso with half his bum showing who’s busy attaching a small box, more an electrical socket really, to the inside wall, after having drilled a hole in the outside wall first. I see a narrow strip of yellowed turf in the front garden. The TV salesman wants to know which road I live on. I tell him and he is sure that the cable was connected there a few years ago as a test run. I can’t see Father, he must have made a point of avoiding the house that day. I’m lucky, the TV salesman adds. I ask whether I can connect the TV I just bought. Yes, I can, he just has to get a connector cable from the storeroom for me. Later, he says, the cable company will automatically send me a bill.
As I walk to the car, it starts snowing. Although it’s not so very heavy, the cardboard box with the TV is awkward to carry. I pass a wine shop. I take the TV to the car, put it on the back seat and walk back. The snow isn’t sticking to my shoes, but it’s not melting straightaway either. When the shop assistant asks me what I’d like, I tell him a few bottles of red wine. And what kind of wine in particular? “One that tastes good,” I snap. He sells me six bottles of South African wine for the price of five.
When I get home, the yard is white but not untrodden. A track leads from the milking parlor to the causeway gate next to the chicken coop. Henk is sitting on the causeway gate. He’s smoking. I put the car in the barn and make my own track to the gate. The snow swirls around his red ears.
“How long do I actually have to stay here?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“How long do I have to stay here!”
“It’s not a prison,” I say.
He takes a drag on his cigarette and after a pause blows out a big cloud of smoke.
“You smoke?” I ask.
“I gave it up the day before yesterday.”
“And now you’ve started again.”
“Yep.”
“I bought a TV,” I say. “And a reading lamp and a rear mudguard and wine.”
“Do I get money too?”
“What for?”
“The work I do.”
“Have you done any yet?”
He looks at the cigarette he is holding between his thumb and his index finger, squinting a little. His eyes are gray. Then he flicks the cigarette away.
“Board and lodging,” I say. “And pocket money of course.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.” I’m starting to get cold. If it keeps snowing like this, we’ll have to move the sheep. From the field next to the windmill to here. And then throw some hay over the gate.
Henk jumps down and starts following my tracks.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Back to bed. I don’t like snow.”
“To bed?”
“Where’s the reading lamp? That bright light is driving me crazy.”
“I’ve got forty-watt bulbs.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Them too.” We walk into the barn. Under the bonnet, the Opel Kadett is clicking. I open the boot and get out the lamp and the mudguard. Henk takes the lamp and walks off immediately. He disappears into the milking parlor. I am left looking incredulously at the mudguard in my left hand.
He’s lying on his side with his face to the wall, the duvet with African animals pulled up high. The reading lamp is on the bedside cabinet, the plug is in the socket. Did he only realize then that it didn’t have a bulb in it? Henk doesn’t move when I come in. I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. I put the chair I got out of Henk’s room under the ceiling light. With some difficulty, I manage to unscrew the frosted glass ball. I remove the seventy-five-watt bulb from the fitting and replace it with a twenty-five watt. Next to the reading lamp is a book. I’ve never heard of the writer. It’s been a long time since I read a book. A torn strip of newspaper sticks out from between the pages. I screw a forty-watt bulb into the reading lamp. Henk stays lying there, I can’t tell from his breathing whether or not he’s asleep. This morning he was sitting on the causeway gate smoking like a man, now he’s lying in bed like a child. From the shape under the duvet, I can see that he is lying there with his legs pulled up. I put the chair against the wall next to the door and put his clothes on the seat. After a moment’s hesitation, I also pick a pair of white underpants up off the floor and drop them on top of the rest of his clothes like a dollop of cream. The backpack is still on the floor under the window, which is half covered with a thin layer of snow. Before going out onto the landing, I turn on the light. A gentle light shines on the bed, illuminating the yellow giraffes.
I drag the sofa, which is in front of the fire, back a little and turn it ninety degrees. Now it’s facing away from my bedroom. Moving the sofa scratches the paint. The living room was long, now it’s wide. Before putting the TV in the corner, I get a potato crate out of the barn, brushing it clean with a rough brush. I put the TV on the crate, plug the cable into the hole in the back and the other end into the socket in the wall - in the connection with TV written above it. There’s another one with an R. I turn on the TV. The picture comes on immediately and it makes a hellish racket. Since I don’t know how to turn it down, I turn it off straightaway. I get the instructions, sit down on the wooden floor and read the booklet from cover to cover. An hour later I know how the remote control works, I’ve programmed about twenty channels and I’ve got a numb bum. Then I paint over the damaged spots on the floor.
In the evening I sit alone at the kitchen table. I haven’t seen or heard Henk since I was in his room this afternoon. In a minute I’ll take up Father’s dinner. Not Henk’s, he’ll come when he’s hungry. Over dinner I went through the paper for news from Denmark. Nothing. And nothing about Sweden, Norway or Finland either. As far as the newspaper is concerned all of Scandinavia is nonexistent, as if it’s undiscovered territory. Now the paper is open at the TV page, although I know I won’t watch it alone. The TV is for Henk. If he watches it, I’ll watch it with him sometimes.
The donkey shed looks beautiful. It’s stopped snowing, the sky has cleared and the moon is almost full. The snow on the roof is about three inches thick and nicely rounded at the edges. It’s just below zero, but I don’t think the frost will last until morning. I put some hay in the rack and sit down on the bales. In the light cast by the lamp I see my own footsteps walking here from the cowshed. The donkeys’ breath billows through the bars of the rack. Except for their noisy chewing it’s deathly silent. The silence of winter. An almost forgotten longing to smoke rises within me. How long does it take to smoke a cigarette? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Ten minutes of breathing in and blowing out, thinking to the rhythm of smoking, while the cigarette smoke mixes with the clouds of donkey breath. If Henk doesn’t stay in bed tomorrow, I’ll have him muck out the donkey shed.
31
“The day before yesterday he stayed in bed all day.”
“See.”
“What?”
“That he does that, just lying in bed. He didn’t say a word either, I suppose.”
“Sometimes he talks a lot, but when he stayed in bed he didn’t say a thing.”
“No, it’s like he’s in a kind of coma.”
“You can say that again.”
“As if he turns himself off.”
“Yesterday he did the yearlings and put a new mudguard on Father’s old bike.”
“Good.”
“But he refused to muck out the donkey shed.”
“Did he?”
“Yes. He said he doesn’t want anything to do with donkeys.”
“I can understand that.”
“I can’t. Everyone loves my donkeys.”
“He’s scared.”
“Why, for God’s sake? The kids from ne
xt door lie down under them in the shed.”
“Henk got kicked by donkey when he was little.”
“No!”
“Yes. Wien had bought a miniature donkey as a treat for the girls. We used to keep it on the lawn between the pig sheds. For some reason Henk crawled around it on all fours and it lashed out at him. Got him on the side of the head. He was in hospital for a week.”
“Is that how he got that scar?”
“Yes. He was four or five.”
“And the donkey?”
“Sold it the next day. “’Just turn it into a big pot of glue,’ Wien told the dealer.” Riet is quiet for a moment. “What’s he doing now?”
“I don’t know, he’s out the back.” I’m quiet as well. “He wants money.”
“What for?”
“The work he does.”
“You know I never even thought of that?”
“Me neither.”
“Don’t give him any.”
“Why not? He’s working, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but you’re feeding him and putting a roof over his head. You’re not rolling in it either, are you?”
“Riet, I’ve hardly spent anything my whole life. My father didn’t either.”
“Get him to do some of the cooking too.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s a decent cook. What do you actually make of him?”
“He seems like a nice kid. Touchy though.”
“Yes, he’s touchy all right. Is he . . . aggressive?”
“Aggressive? Not at all. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. When he’s settled in a bit, shall I come too? Then I can do some of the women’s work for a while. Cooking, washing . . .”
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