Shadow Sister

by Simone Vlugt

  Victor, one of my colleagues, was once punched by a father.

  ‘What should I do, Jasmine?’ I ask. ‘What would you do?’

  ‘I’d sleep on it.’ Jasmine gets up to make another coffee. ‘Think it over.’

  We sit there together, drinking our coffee in silence. I look at Jasmine over the rim of my cup. ‘I’ve got a headache.’

  She rests her hand on mine. ‘Just go home,’ she says. ‘I’ll call you this evening, all right? And whatever you decide, police or no police, I’ll stand by you.’

  4.

  I’m glad I never cycle to work, even though the weather’s lovely for the end of April. I can’t take my bike because I have to rush off at the end of the day to pick up my six-year-old daughter from school. To my shame, she is sometimes there waiting for me, holding the teacher’s hand. But not today. It’s Monday, early in the afternoon, and I’ve got plenty of time to tell my story to the police.

  If I decide to.

  As I cross the playground on my way to the car park, I catch myself looking around. The sight of every dark-haired, broad-shouldered boy gives me a jolt and I only feel safe once I’m in my car with all the doors locked.

  As I join the busy Rotterdam traffic, it all comes back to me, piece by piece.

  From the moment the lesson began, Bilal had been looking me up and down. I was wearing a skirt – not a mini-skirt, it was to the knee – and high black leather boots. Slouched in his chair, Bilal looked from my legs to my breasts and then back again.

  Ignoring things is always the best approach, so I carried on with the lesson. Until Bilal raised his hand.

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You look really hot today. Are you going somewhere?’

  There were some repressed giggles, but most of the room gave Bilal a cold stare.

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d keep such thoughts to yourself, Bilal.’

  ‘I bet you would,’ Bilal said. ‘You know what we call women in Morocco who walk around like that?’

  I gave him a warning look. I’d recently made clear to the class the consequences of swearing, specifically of using the word ‘whore’.

  Bilal sat up straight, leaned towards me as if in confidence, and said, ‘Prostitutes.’

  Anger coursed through me but I managed to control myself. ‘Do you have chewing gum in your mouth? Do be so kind as to put it in the bin.’

  Bilal worked his long body out from under the desk and walked, with the same sly grin, to the bin. He spat out the gum and went back to his place. As he prepared to sit down again, he stared leisurely, suggestively, at my breasts.

  That’s when I did something wrong. I should have told him to leave the classroom and report to the headmaster, but instead I looked at his crotch, my expression scornful. It happened so quickly – I shocked myself – I realised I was making a mistake, but it was too late. Bilal had seen it. His expression changed from sly to hard, his lips thinned and his eyes filled with a threat that set all the alarm bells in my body ringing. I stepped backwards and that’s when he pulled the knife.

  The memory fills me with a burst of confidence. I’m going to go to the police; of course I’m going to go to the police.

  I head back towards the centre, brave the traffic along the Coolsingel Canal and turn off into a side street called Doelwater Alley. I park there and look over at the ‘swimming pool’, as the mint-green tiled police station is known.

  But I don’t get out of my car.

  My eyes sweep the alleyway and the square in front of the police station, searching for Bilal. He isn’t here. Of course he isn’t here, but he might come out from behind a parked car once I get out of mine.

  I don’t really expect that to happen, but my heart pounds away all the same and I wonder whether I’ll be able to get any words out once I’m inside.

  I need to get a grip on myself. A glass of iced water would do me good, but all I’ve got is a mouldy tangerine lying next to the gear stick.

  I take a deep breath. Would Bilal really have stabbed me? I’ve known him long enough not to believe that. Yet, that look in his eyes when I provoked him…Who knows what I triggered in him? Even though I have a good relationship with most of the students from immigrant families, I’ll never truly understand them.

  I imagine Bilal being interrogated – he might have to spend some time in a prison cell – and then I see the Bilal I’ve always known, an arrogant but intelligent boy who is probably already regretting what he did. Maybe Jan is right and I’d only make it worse by reporting it.

  I don’t know how long I sit in my car, but at some point I wake up from my stupor and drive home.

  5.

  I’ve always felt the need to make the world a better place. As a five-year-old, I took the new kids at school under my wing, and this protectiveness carried on into middle and high school. For the bullied kids, my support made the difference between a quiet, unremarked existence and being the butt of classroom jokes. I was popular at school and other children followed my lead.

  When I was fifteen, I started working on the school magazine. Before that, no one read the magazine; afterwards I’d see copies in school bags and on the tables in the canteen. My complaints about teachers discriminating against the immigrant students made me a kind of school heroine.

  I’d take on anyone, whether it was about headscarves being tolerated in the classroom or smoking on school grounds.

  I’ve only ever wanted to help.

  As I drive home, I remember Bilal’s face as I fled the classroom, the aggression in his eyes, the complete arrogance of his manner. What I usually see with my Moroccan and Turkish students is that they’ve lost all sense of direction. These kids are born in the Netherlands, they grow up watching Sesame Street and Disney cartoons, but feel that they’re considered second-class citizens. They don’t feel Turkish or Moroccan, but don’t feel Dutch either. Caught between the culture of their parentage and the country they live in, they’re wrestling with their identity, anxious because there are no jobs to go to when they leave school, angry because they feel discriminated against.

  If a student is having problems, I offer to buy them a drink, sit down with them, and discuss what’s going on, while respecting their social codes. We almost always find a solution. My teacher training didn’t prepare me for today. We were taught pedagogy and maintaining discipline, not how to handle aggression or violence.

  I’m almost home when I think of how empty it will be there: the silent rooms, nobody to tell my story to. Should I go to Raoul instead? It’s ten past three, he’ll be in a meeting right now. To Elisa’s then? If she’s busy she’ll make time. You can always drop in on her.

  Elisa is my twin sister. We’re identical twins, but I’m fifteen minutes older; perhaps that’s the reason I’ve always protected her – first from the school bullies and later from a crowd who liked to spike your drinks with ecstasy and cadge money from you.

  When Elisa set up a photography studio, I soon realised that her lack of business acumen would stand in the way of success. She wasn’t assertive enough to get new clients and she let the clients she did have barter her prices down. In any case, the studio didn’t attract much custom. Not that it really mattered, neither of us has to work. We come from a wealthy family; wealthy and old and noble. It’s not something that particularly interests us – we never talk about it.

  But money can’t buy everything. Our parents always impressed on us that we should study and get jobs, that it was more comfortable to have wealth, but that shouldn’t be the guiding principle in life. We weren’t spoilt as children; we got the same pocket money as the others, did Saturday jobs and had to take on a paper round if we wanted extra money. It was an education I feel deeply grateful to my parents for.

  I would have got by on my salary, but my husband’s company would never have got off to such a flying start without the cash injection from my parents. I wonder whether Elisa could actually make a living from her photo
graphy.

  To help her along I regularly have a series of portraits of Valerie taken. She never wants to charge me, but of course I pay the going price.

  My husband has a successful software company and I asked him to give Elisa as many advertising commissions as he could. It turned out he’d been doing that all along, which I should have known because Raoul and Elisa get on really well.

  I’m happy about that because Elisa is just as important to me as Raoul, perhaps even more so. The idea that identical twins have a special connection is true for us.

  I’m often asked what it’s like being a twin. It’s a curious question. It’s not that I’m unaware of how unusual it is to have an identical twin, but other people’s reactions always remind me of how disarming our likeness is. I do see the physical resemblance, of course, but we are so different in nearly everything else. For example, Elisa is sportier than me. I rarely wear trousers, and she rarely wears a skirt. I’m extroverted, energetic and spontaneous; Elisa is relaxed and self-contained. I like shopping and going out, she’d rather go for a long walk in the countryside, and I could go on…

  Elisa’s studio is on Karel Doorman Street, next to the Coolsingel Canal and Raoul’s offices. I park at Software International because finding a parking space in the centre of Rotterdam is nigh on impossible. When I get out of my car, my eyes follow the fire escape up to the third floor, to Raoul’s office. I half expect his face to appear at the window, as if he might have sensed that I need him, but he’s not there. Should I text him? Perhaps the meeting has finished or was cancelled.

  I hesitate for a moment and then decide not to. Even if Raoul isn’t in a meeting, he doesn’t like to be disturbed at work. We made a deal about sharing the household chores and looking after Valerie and he never breaks it. If it’s my turn to do the shopping and I forget the milk, I have to go back to the shop to get it, I mustn’t bother Raoul. If I have a problem picking up Valerie from school, it’s not his problem. It works the other way too though: I can always count on him getting Valerie to school on time each morning, with her gym kit, a boxed drink and a biscuit. She’s just turned six and is in the second year of primary school. Two weeks ago she went on a school trip with her class. I was on a course that day, so Raoul was the one who carefully read the instruction sheet from the school and made sure that Valerie had everything she needed. They were first in the queue at the playground waiting for the bus, and when I got home from my course, she’d already had her bath and was eating her dinner. That’s what Raoul is like. You know exactly what you’re getting with him. Right now I only want one thing – to tell him what happened, and for him to comfort me and reassure me that I did the right thing by not going to the police.

  I cross the Coolsingel in low spirits and walk towards Karel Doorman Street. Elisa occupies the ground floor of a small, narrow building with Elisa’s Photographic Studio painted on its window in pretty black lettering. It’s not a very imaginative name for someone as creative as my sister, but she thinks it works.

  I push open the door and a bell tinkles. I always feel like I’ve wandered into an old-fashioned grocer’s shop, like the ones in the television adaptation of Pippi Longstocking. When we were children, Elisa and I used to be mad about Pippi Longstocking. For at least a year I got up to the same kind of tricks as Pippi, with Elisa following in my wake like a second Annika. Whenever I hear the theme tune, I get the urge to do something rebellious.

  The front room of the studio is empty. That’s to say, the walls are covered in photographs, but Elisa isn’t here.

  ‘Elisa?’

  ‘I’m out back.’

  I make my way out the back. She’s at her computer, dressed sportily as usual, wearing khaki trousers and a white sweater. Her brown hair is gathered up in a ponytail and she pushes one escaped curl away from her face.

  ‘Hey, sis,’ she says. ‘Don’t you always finish much later on Mondays?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say simply.

  My twin looks at me in alarm. ‘Has something happened?’

  Elisa

  6.

  The emptiness is waiting for me after the funeral, a terrible, apathetic emptiness. In the first few weeks after her death, I was too dazed for it to really sink in. It was as if I’d run full speed into a wall and just stood there swaying, too stunned to feel the blow.

  I didn’t hear a word of my father’s funeral address, which made me more keenly aware of his pallid face and quivering voice. I tried to listen, leaning against my mother, mute with distress. She gripped my hand; her other arm was wrapped around Valerie. Raoul sat doubled over, his face buried in his hands.

  Every pew in the church was full. And the sea of flowers! Lilies everywhere, giving off their heavy, sweet smell. The procession to the grave crossed a sun-drenched yard. It was early May and already twenty-five degrees.

  We stood around the coffin, Raoul in his black suit, holding Valerie’s hand. She wasn’t crying; she didn’t seem to understand. She clutched a lily, Lydia’s favourite flower, which she didn’t want to leave behind at the grave. We let her take it. She’d already done a drawing which we’d put inside the coffin.

  I remember the warmth, the birdsong, the fresh green leaves on the trees, and Raoul’s tears when he threw the first shovel of soil onto the coffin. My father’s contorted face, and my mother, who appeared impassive, a heavy dose of valium helping her get through that day.

  I was wearing an orange and pink skirt and a matching sweater, and the boots Lydia had bought for me. Both inside the church and in the graveyard, I’d been conscious that I looked like I was going to a party and I felt many shocked glances directed towards me, which made me feel ill at ease. Should I have worn black?

  It was only after the funeral, at the restaurant, as I caught my reflection in the window, that I understood the real reason behind those glances. I looked so much like Lydia right then. It shocked me too.

  The last time I saw my sister, I was aware of the irreversibility of each passing second. I studied her dead face through a mist of tears – my twin sister.

  They sometimes say that people who have died look like they’re asleep, but it’s not true. Lydia looked like what she was: dead. Her eyes were closed, her hands were folded and her skin pale. But the most shocking thing was the rigid way she lay on that white satin.

  Suddenly the meaning of the expression ‘deadly silence’ sank in. And of the word ‘forever’.

  Before the funeral I was numb. Afterwards my new reality began to take shape. Despair overwhelmed me and dragged me under. For the first few weeks, I barely felt like I existed. May had promised a beautiful summer, but I spent the month in bed, staring at the white walls and ceiling. White is a comforting colour: so calm, empty and pure.

  I found myself in a state that could be called neither sleeping nor waking. In any case, real sleep was elusive. The nights were only distinguishable from the days by a paper-thin film. Sometimes I barely knew whether I was awake or dreaming. I listened to the silence, to the indescribable lull in which I found myself, safe in my own little world.

  Before her death, I had felt that something was about to happen, something that would have far-reaching consequences for me and for those dear to me. Something unnameable, but nevertheless unavoidable. The feeling had been strongest when I woke up in the mornings.

  When I woke up that Monday at the end of April, I remained very still and didn’t open my eyes. As if my childish refusal to look at the day would have any influence! Of course I did have to open my eyes eventually. My gaze went first to the alarm clock – it was still early – and then to the ceiling. For a quarter of an hour I looked at that white surface and tried to rationalise my feeling of discomfort. Where was it coming from?

  Lydia.

  Something had happened to Lydia.

  I could have thought about any number of people who were dear to me: my parents or Thomas or Raoul. But Lydia’s name was the one that burned itself into my mind and, in a fit of panic, I grabbed my mob
ile from the bedside table and called her. There was no ring tone, it wasn’t switched on.

  But of course it wasn’t, it was a quarter past eight, her first lesson had already begun.

  Had I dreamed something that had made my head so full and heavy? It was possible; if only I could remember the dream, it might explain the feeling that something was wrong.

  That day I was going to Capelle aan den Ijssel, to photograph a wedding with Thomas. Thomas is a photographer as well, and his sister, Laurien, was the bride.

  By the time I got out of the shower, I was late. I raced out of the house dressed in green combats and a white sweater, my hair still wet. I grabbed my stuff, it was all there ready – my camera, tripod, light reflector. I was soon in the car; it belonged to my friend Sylvie. She lives and works in Rotterdam, where she can walk everywhere, so she lends it to me at times.

  If you are a photographer, there’s always some family member with something to celebrate and they remember you just in time. Because of course you don’t charge them the full rate – you wouldn’t do that to family. You’d be invited anyway, so while you’re there, you might as well take pictures, right?

  I’m positive that another professional photographer wouldn’t get as many requests for ‘just one more shot with Uncle Jim’ or of the five girlfriends of the bride with their children, who look so pretty in their new clothes.

  A commissioned professional records only the official events: the church, registry office, reception and a few posed pictures in the park. They wouldn’t be asked to stay until the bitter end, because that would be much too expensive. But you, dear friend or family member, you can’t leave until the grand finale – the guests standing in a ring around the married couple, waving their lighters in the air, bellowing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, which you can’t join in with because you’re supposed to be taking pictures of it.