Summer Brother

by Jaap Robben

  Jean leans panting against the door. Henri grabs Dad by the throat. “Sort this, Maurice!”

  “How?” Dad yells, like they’ve asked him to blow out a fire. “How can I?”

  “Drive him to hospital, you idiot.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “And never come … back here again,” Jean puffs. “You’re finished, Maurice. Tonight … you pack up and leave. And never … come back.”

  “Or what?” Dad stokes his anger again.

  “Take the man to hospital, you dumb fuck!”

  “Or what?”

  “Or we’ll torch your caravan if we have to. Make damn sure you have nothing to come back to.”

  I can’t hear Dad’s answer. Lucien is calmer now. With Jean’s help, I get him into the passenger seat. We pull the seat belt tight across his chest. Dad steps back from the car but Henri forces him behind the wheel. “Anything happens to the tenant on the way and I’ll drag you into the police station myself. I’m calling the hospital in Saint Arnaque to tell them you’re coming. You’ve got ten minutes, Maurice. One minute late and I call the coppers. They won’t need a description.” Dad’s hand shakes as he tries to slot the key into the ignition. I lift Emile’s feet and slide onto the back seat.

  “Go!” Henri yells. The engine screams into life. Dad struggles to get the car into gear.

  Jean and Henri back away. Suddenly Rico leaps up at the window. I don’t understand where he’s come from. He tears after us, stands barking at the top of the rutted track as we pull out onto the main road. Emile’s legs feel strange and heavy on my lap.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Fuck,” Dad spits through clenched teeth. Lucien thumps his head against the window.

  “Emile?” I squeeze his hand but there’s no response.

  As Dad takes the bends, Emile’s head lolls and stains the grey fabric of the seat.

  “Listen, Bry.”

  “What?”

  “Your brother can help us out here.”

  “Lucien?”

  “I can’t lose you, Brian. I can’t lose you. I only went in there to put the wind up the tenant. But you smashed his head in, Bry. They’ll lock you up for that.”

  “It’s all your fault. Emile was only trying to help me.”

  “You’re not even fourteen.” He blasts the horn and cuts in at the roundabout. “If I take the blame, they’ll take you off me and you’ll end up in a children’s home. Or a foster home. I’m not going to lose you.” Lucien is slumped in his seat, wrestling with the belt under his chin.

  “Here’s what we’ll do … listen …” But he doesn’t say anything.

  “What will we do?” My voice is shaking.

  “Lucien did it.”

  I don’t understand what Dad’s saying.

  “I’m the only one who saw it happen. You were outside. You didn’t see a thing. Lucien grabbed a bottle. Hit Emile from behind.”

  “That’s a lie. He didn’t do anything. I’ll tell them the truth. Tell them I did it.”

  “You do that …” Dad looks at me in the rearview mirror, “… and I’ll tell them you’re lying. Lying to protect Lucien. Because you’re a good lad.”

  “But what will happen to him?”

  “Nothing. He’ll go back to his old bed at the care home. Back to his paper birds. His applesauce. His pills. Everything he needs. That’s where your brother belongs. Not with us.” Emile’s head looks like it’s stopped bleeding. His chest heaves, his breath comes in short bursts. “We’ll say the tenant tried to interfere with Lucien, that your brother flipped his lid.”

  Dad tries to pull Lucien straight in his seat. “Let him do this for you, Bry. For us. Let him give us something back for once. Who do we have if we don’t have each other, eh? No one.”

  “Lucien didn’t do anything.”

  “We can visit him every week. As often as you like. I promise.”

  Dad steers past a waiting car, bumps up onto the pavement.

  “And if they find a way to punish Lucien?”

  “There is no punishment for your brother, Bry.”

  “Yes there is!” I scream. “There is. He belongs with us now.”

  We drive into the shadow of Accident and Emergency and everything in the car changes colour. Two white coats are waiting with a stretcher.

  The car doors fly open. A man with a buzz cut asks me if there’s anything wrong with me. I shake my head and he pulls me from the car. I don’t want to let go of Emile’s hand, but I have to. Someone leans in through the other door. “Sir? Sir, can you hear me?” His hands feel Emile. “Pulse!” They slide a plank with handles behind the front seats. Someone has clamped a collar around Emile’s neck.

  “Sir?” A nurse comes hurrying out through the sliding doors. “Sir? Are you family?” She is talking to Dad, who stands hunched over the bonnet of the car. She taps him cautiously on the shoulder. “Are you family?” Dad shakes his head slowly and his red eyes appear from behind his hand.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Dad looks at me, then at Lucien. A tear tries to slip unnoticed down the side of his nose. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I can.”

  -

  53

  There is hardly anyone out in the grounds.

  The rain came last week and the grass is turning green again. The orange sunshades have been pulled in, the blinds thrown open. The building is wide awake and keeping tabs on me. I made it over the fence, now I’m sneaking through the bushes.

  A workman rinsing out a paint roller in a cement bucket turns to look at me, but he doesn’t say anything. Through every window I pass, I see residents lying in bed. Some spot me, one even waves. Most of them don’t notice a thing.

  I start to worry they might have moved Lucien to another room after the renovations. If he’s on a higher floor, my trip will have been for nothing. Dad swore he would visit my brother now that I’m not allowed. Afterwards he told me Lucien was doing just fine.

  “And? What else?”

  “Nothing. Fine is all.”

  Bastard. I eventually got him to admit that he wasn’t allowed to visit either. Mum saw to that.

  I arrive at the window to Lucien’s old room. There he is! Seeing him is a shock. His bottom lip is sticking out more than it ever did. He is sleeping. The wound on his forehead has healed to a patch of pink. His hands are limp but peaceful on the sheet. Is he doing okay? Is he sound asleep because he walked all morning?

  The magnet board with photos is propped up on the shelf above his head, still waiting to be hung on the wall. He can’t see it from where he is lying. In the middle there’s a new photo of Mum and Didier. Faces snapped in close-up, Mum kissing Didier’s cheek. The cuddly dolphin at the foot of the bed must be a present from them.

  Above Lucien’s head, the paper birds sway gently in the breeze coming in through the little top window. Someone has put Henkelmann’s glowing Christmas tree on the sill. The needles turn slowly from red, to green and white, and back again.

  “Lucien?” I tap a fingernail against the glass. “Lucien, it’s me. I’m sorry. Zoubida says I’m not allowed in.”

  Nothing moves but the breath in his chest. I climb onto the ledge and pull myself up on the frame of the open window.

  “Lucien!” His eyelids quiver and his fingers dig into the sheet. “I couldn’t come any sooner. Dad and me live kind of far away now, in the city. Lucien?”

  I hope he will look at me, if only for a second. I want him to know I haven’t forgotten him. I want to see in his eyes if he is mad at me, if he remembers what happened to Emile. Part of me is afraid they will burn hotter than the sun. Hot enough to hiss a hole in my eyes, to leave a black fleck on everything I see. But when they open at last, they are dull. Lucien has been folded up and tucked away
, somewhere deep inside himself. Everything we managed to do together was taken from him when they wheeled him back into this place. He stares at the birds on the ceiling.

  “Bro?” I tap the glass again. “It’s me.” I’d like to hold him, just for a moment. Take his hand and put it on my shoulder. Walk with him. Chuck a few bottles.

  I take a toy car from my coat pocket. “Remember?” I worm my hand through the gap of the open window and throw. “For you.” It lands beside the dolphin at the foot of his bed.

  Lucien flinches and his eyes roam around the room. It takes him a while to see me at the window. “Moo-wah-wah,” he says softly.

  “Yes!” I nod. “It’s me. And Rico’s at home. He’s sleeping.”

  “Moo-wah-wah.”

  “Rico misses you too. It’s no fun without you.” I shut my eyes for a second or two. Close them tight. “I’ll make it up to you one day, bro.”

  A wasp shoots past my cheek and in through the open window, circles Lucien’s open mouth. “Look out!” His fingers clutch the air, he twists his head away. “Where is it? Did it fly into your mouth?” I yell. “It’ll sting you.” Someone has to help. “I’m coming!” There it is, crawling up his arm. I thump the window. A shiver runs through Lucien’s body, and the wasp takes to the air again. It hovers around the spout of his beaker, then disappears through the open door and into the corridor. As far as I can tell, Lucien hasn’t been stung.

  “Feffe,” he says, with lazy lips.

  “Yeah! Feffe! Do you remember?”

  I wish Mum had seen our summer. That she knew what her two boys had done together. I don’t think she would believe me if I told her. Perhaps if she heard it from Emile. But I have no idea where he went after they released him from hospital.

  Lucien is getting restless. It won’t be long before a nurse comes in and finds me here. “I have to go, bro, but I’ll be back.” I hope Zoubida will let me visit before long. “When I’m old enough, you can come and live with me. I promise. And I’ll make sure you never have to take those pills again.” I drop from the ledge. “See you next time.”

  Now that I’ve woken my brother, I don’t want to leave him behind, awake and alone in bed.

  Then I notice a greasy mark on the windowpane. And below it a spot that’s been licked clean. I look closer and see her nose stamped from one side of the window to the other.

  Lucien has turned his face toward me.

  I flex my knees, press my nose to the pane, and lick the glass. He smiles and begins to rock gently from side to side. It’s still there. Lucien still has the universe in his eyes.

  -

  First of all, I would like to thank my editor, Ad van den Kieboom. You alone are reason enough to write another book. Thanks to Judith and Sander for your meticulous and painstaking reading of the drafts. Huge thanks to Nele, Jill, and Welmoed for your trust in me. The same goes to Paulien, Nathalie, and all the Singelaars. Thank you, Neeltje-Roos. And to everyone who spoke to me so openly when they heard what I was writing about. My loving parents, thank you for making me, for taking me with you, and for teaching me to look. And above all, thanks to my favourite human being, Suus.

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  On the Design

  As book design is an integral part of the reading experience, we would like to acknowledge the work of those who shaped the form in which the story is housed.

  Tessa van der Waals (Netherlands) is responsible for the cover design, cover typography, and art direction of all World Editions books. She works in the internationally renowned tradition of Dutch Design. Her bright and powerful visual aesthetic maintains a harmony between image and typography and captures the unique atmosphere of each book. She works closely with internationally celebrated photographers, artists, and letter designers. Her work has frequently been awarded prizes for Best Dutch Book Design.

  The letter used on the cover is Fonseca Black, a recent all-caps family with simple straight geometric forms, designed by Indonesian letter designer Nasir Udun. The width of this font enables the letters to form their own distinctive word image that fills the entire surface: text becomes image. The author’s name acts as a breathing space between the two words of the title. The bright colors have been chosen for their association with sun, flowers, and summer.

  The cover has been edited by lithographer Bert van der Horst of BFC Graphics (Netherlands).