Ten White Geese (9781101603055)

by Bakker, Gerbrand

  *

  The note was lying on the table in the interview room of the nearest police station. He had already admitted arson and had pulled the note out of his back pocket halfway through questioning. ‘I’ll break his neck,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not allowed,’ said the policeman who was taking his statement.

  ‘Then I’ll cut his dick off.’

  ‘That’s definitely not allowed.’ The policeman asked him where his wife was at that moment.

  ‘I don’t know. She’s gone. That’s all. In her car, and the trailer’s not in the shed any more either.’

  Did that leave him without transport?

  ‘No. We had two cars.’

  Had he tried to contact her?

  ‘What do you think? Of course I have! Her mobile phone just gives the engaged signal the whole time.’

  Were things missing from the house?

  ‘All her clothes and a coffee table, a hideous thing actually, I’m glad to be rid of it. A mattress, duvets. Lamps! And all kinds of odds and ends. Books, quite a bit of bedding, a portrait of Emily Dickinson –’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She’s an American poet. She was writing about her, doing a PhD thesis. Bit late, if you ask me, but she obviously had something to prove. Christ almighty.’

  Did they have kids?

  That was the only time the husband looked down.

  What was the state of their relationship?

  ‘What’s it to you? What am I doing here anyway?’

  The policeman reminded him that he had committed an act of arson in a university building.

  ‘So what! Just do your job and keep out of my private life.’

  The policeman ended up by asking him whether he wanted to register his absent wife as a missing person.

  The husband raised his head. ‘No,’ he said after a long pause for thought. ‘No, let’s not do that.’

  Would he like some coffee?

  He looked at the policeman. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ While he was drinking the coffee, the policeman waited patiently, a friendly expression on his face. Then the husband said, ‘A single.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The mattress she took was a single.’

  13

  She lived in constant expectation of a visitor showing up. Those geese belonged to someone, so did the black sheep along the road. Someone would come eventually, if only a lost hiker. The idea filled her with restlessness. After a few days her foot stopped throbbing and she could see the wound contracting. When it was drying off after the soda bath, she would run her thumb over the itchy teeth marks for minutes at a time, even though she had hardly dared look at it immediately after the bite. Along with the incompatibility of alcohol and antibiotics, she also remembered hearing that you had to complete a course of treatment, and continued taking the tablets. Her upper arm, which was still stiff, now bothered her more than her foot. It kept raining, but it was gentle rain; she didn’t even put on a coat to go out. One Sunday she heard a few shrieking whistles, from which direction she found it impossible to determine. She got out the map and discovered a railway line not far away, the Welsh Highland Railway. Next to Caernarfon there was a picture of an old-fashioned steam engine. Evidently it ran at weekends.

  14

  Several days after the other staff members pulled him out of the pond, her uncle started to make a cabinet. It was actually more of a wall unit. ‘See,’ her mother told her father, who was the uncle’s brother. ‘See. That’s how you do it. You do things. You get on and do them.’ He spent weeks on it, weeks of leave, as the hotel management had told him to come back when he was ‘feeling better’. Sawing, drilling, screwing, sanding, painting; sitting on a chair and staring at what he’d done so far. When he finished, he had a slight relapse. ‘I wouldn’t have put it past him to take the whole thing apart again,’ her mother said. ‘But he didn’t.’

  15

  She had bought the secateurs and the pruning saw on impulse because she wanted to do something about the creeper clinging to the front of the house. Cutting back the ivy had been enjoyable. She gazed out through the glass in the front door at the grass rectangle between the stream and the low stone wall the light brown cows sometimes gathered behind. Along the stream were a few overgrown shrubs and some strangely shaped trees. Right in front of the house, the grass ended at a wide, ragged-edged gravel path. No, it wasn’t gravel, she saw when she stepped outside and knelt down for the first time. It was pieces of slate, and she realised that the grey mound behind the house wasn’t just a grey mound, it was a supply of crushed slate. She rubbed her left upper arm and went back into the house to put on her oldest trousers. In the bathroom she pushed two paracetamol out of a strip and washed them down with a mouthful of water.

  In the pigsty she found a rusty spade and an even rustier pitchfork. She leant them against the low wall, placing the secateurs on top of it. The veils of rain faded into mist, as if a cloud had sunk to the ground. She sighed. From a number of spots along the front wall of the house, she took five steps forward and set a piece of firewood on the ground: one log ended up on the crushed slate, the others on grass. After sticking the spade into the ground and trying to push it down with her good foot, she immediately gave up. It was pointless, she needed clogs. Clogs and a wheelbarrow, cord and short stakes. She put the spade back against the wall. There was a strong smell of cow dung. I have to look carefully and think it through, she thought. That’s all it takes. If I wanted to – really wanted to – I could even put a wall unit together. Jobs like that go step by step. For now, the work was done. She took the secateurs and walked around to the side of the house, where some of the bamboo almost reached the roof. She cut it off at shoulder height and, half an hour later, glancing at the pile of bamboo behind her, realised she could cross the stakes off the list. She had uncovered a small window she hadn’t noticed inside, in the kitchen. Since coming outside she hadn’t smoked a single cigarette. Now she would find it difficult to get her right hand up to her mouth.

  *

  Later that day the cloud rose and the sun broke through. She walked slowly to the stone circle with the secateurs in her hand, cutting off branches that were in the way and removing ivy from the iron kissing gates. The path was looking more and more like a real path. After reaching the stone circle and before sitting down on the largest rock, she carried on in the same direction and came to a stile. It was wet here, really wet, marshy. With thick clumps of coarse grass sticking up between small puddles. The path led straight through the bog on a kind of natural embankment with rocks dotted here and there. Tomorrow, she thought. On the map she had seen a larger body of water, rectangular, as if it were man-made.

  She sat dead still, waiting, her arms around her raised knees. No badgers appeared. Two yellow butterflies fluttered over the gorse. Two butterflies, she thought. Two butterflies went out at noon, / And waltzed above a stream. An enormous wave of homesickness washed over her. She had felt a milder version a couple of times before in the enormous Tesco’s at Caernarfon, especially in the refrigerated aisles. She’d fought it, but here in the sun with the butterflies and the gorse, the memory of the street in De Pijp was impossible to resist. She saw it before her in black and white: the trees half as big as now, cars with rounded features and bodies, children in knitted cardigans with leather patches on the knees of their trousers, the steep stairs up to the front doors, the heady smell of St Martin’s sweets – St Martin’s Day! Just over a week ago. She released her knees and stretched her legs, hugged her belly and bent forward.

  Shortly after that, the badger shuffled out from under its gorse bush.

  16

  When she got back from the stone circle with an armful of tufted grass, there was a piece of paper on the front door. Came round, nobody home. I’ll be back, maybe tomorrow. Rhys Jones. The note was stuck on with a piece of chewing gum.

  She turned to look at what would be the garden. I can’t do this, she thought. I don’t even know wha
t those shrubs are called. I don’t know who Rhys Jones is. How can I protect seven geese from a fox? She dropped the secateurs and the bundle of grass. The sun was already low. Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn, / Indicative that suns go down; / The notice to the startled grass / That darkness is about to pass. Dickinson had seen what she saw now. The homesickness had ebbed. She walked into the living room, poured a glass of red wine, fluffed up some cushions and sat down close to the wood-burning stove. The cigarette she lit tasted like a first cigarette. It grew dark very slowly, as if the light was being sucked out of the window like fine dust. It made her feel a little dizzy. She lit a couple of candles and put three logs in the stove. She had left everything behind, everything except the poems. They would have to see her through. She forgot to eat.

  17

  The next morning she stumbled over the bundle of grass. Swearing, she put it in a big glass vase she found in a kitchen cupboard. She left the secateurs lying on the ground. Then she hitched the trailer to the back of the car and drove off in a random direction. This was the UK, she’d be bound to run into a garden centre sooner or later. After about an hour she found herself in a village called Waunfawr. There was no garden centre, but there was a bakery. She bought bread, biscuits and a cream cake. She didn’t have a clue where she was, even though the mountain she saw in the distance when she entered the shop looked familiar. To be on the safe side, she told the baker the name of her house.

  ‘Don’t you know where you are?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she answered.

  The baker didn’t say anything, he just shook his head gently.

  ‘I have a poor sense of direction.’

  The baker looked out at the car parked directly in front of the shop. ‘Start the car, drive straight ahead, follow the road, turn left after a mile, then left again.’

  ‘So close?’

  ‘So close. And from now on buy bread here.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘From now on buy bread here. Now that you know where we are.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We’re open Sunday mornings too.’ He turned to an open door. ‘Awen!’

  The baker’s wife stuck her head round the corner.

  ‘A new customer. She lives in old Mrs Evans’s house.’

  ‘Oh, nice,’ said the baker’s wife. ‘Hello, love.’ She disappeared again.

  ‘Thanks.’ She walked to the shop door. ‘Do you also know of a garden centre in the area perhaps?’

  ‘Bangor. Know where that is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘See you later.’

  ‘When you run out of bread.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘German?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ She walked out of the shop and put her purchases on the back seat of the car. She looked around. A few houses, hills, a crossroads. Not even Mount Snowdon was enough for her to get her bearings. ‘Godverdomme,’ she said to the mountain. ‘I’ll have to go home first.’ The baker had taken up position at his shop window and was standing with one arm stretched out like a signpost. The only part of him moving was his hand which, with a pointing index finger, was jerking up and down like a wind-up toy. She nodded, turned her collar up a little to conceal the hot patches on her throat and quickly climbed into the car.

  *

  She turned onto the drive and noticed immediately that the field was empty. It was only after taking the sharp curve that she saw the black sheep a good deal nearer the house. The seven geese were gabbling close together. She braked and got out. Six. She counted them again, even though they were close to the fence, and again she got no further than six. If it carries on at this rate, she thought, there’ll be none left by Christmas.

  The piece of paper was gone from the front door, replaced with a new message. Called again. I moved my sheep. I’ll try again. Tomorrow morning at 9. Rhys Jones. Fine, she thought bravely. A sheep farmer and a time. I’ve got a cake.

  She picked up the secateurs and went into the kitchen. The map was still spread out on the table; she no longer folded it up. She located Waunfawr. Incredibly close by. She stood there like that for a moment with her back bent, both hands flat on the map. After a while, the green dotted lines showing the walking paths all seemed to converge on her drive, on her land. That mountain, she thought, I have to keep an eye on Mount Snowdon, then I’ll know where I am.

  18

  That afternoon she didn’t just buy a wheelbarrow, cord and garden clogs. She also loaded a roll of chicken wire, a hammer and nails onto her trailer. There weren’t any students at Dickson’s Garden Centre, but there were elderly women and retired men with happy grandchildren, customers clutching long scrawled lists, who left nothing to chance. Soft classical music led them down the aisles. Babbling fountains and water features were equally soothing. She stayed longer than necessary, ordering a cup of coffee at the Coffee Corner, taking a second look at the roses and buying three flowering indoor plants, the kind her grandparents had on their windowsill thirty years earlier. She also bought a better pair of secateurs; the ones from the hardware shop were already loose and blunt. A gawky kid with red curls helped her hoist the wheelbarrow up onto the trailer. When she was about to get into the car, he held out a hand for her to shake. She couldn’t think of anything better to say than, ‘Thank you. That was very friendly of you.’ The boy didn’t say a word, he just grinned and shut the car door. In the wing mirror she saw him watching attentively as she drove off.

  *

  That afternoon she let the new garden rest, using the wheelbarrow to transport the chicken wire to the three ponds instead. The six geese were standing waiting for her. When she walked through the gate and into the field, they ran off. As if they’re expecting something from me, she thought. But what? She used one foot – the injured one, to test it – to push against different parts of the collapsed hut. After she had pulled away a few planks, the roof, which was covered with tarred sheets, rested on the ground as a triangle. More than enough room for the geese. She unrolled the chicken wire and realised that she would need something to cut it. As before, she found useful tools in the old pigsty. She walked back up the drive with a saw, a large pair of pincers and a roll of thin wire. First she closed off the back of the triangular shelter, fixing the chicken wire in place by nailing it tight under planks that weren’t completely rotten. Look carefully and think it through, she thought. If I do that, I could even put together a wall unit. Clucking quietly, the geese watched her. In the next field the black sheep had come closer and most of them were now lined up at the fence. She pulled the packet of cigarettes out of her coat pocket and lit one. A big bird, brownish red, swooped down into the boggy copse and landed on a branch of an oak, facing towards her. ‘Is it you?’ she called out in English, as if a bird wouldn’t understand her if she spoke Dutch. It stared at her unmoved. She threw the half-smoked cigarette into one of the ponds.

  She did the front differently, first cutting planks to size, then using them to close off the top of the triangle. She left wide gaps between the planks; there wasn’t enough solid wood. The chicken wire was 120 centimetres wide. Again she walked back to the pigsty, this time to look for staples. She found them too. She lined the wire up along the ground, folded the superfluous triangle down over one side of the roof, then attached it by pounding staples in with the hammer. Then she didn’t have a clue. She took a few steps back and considered the shelter. She looked at it and thought deeply. She felt like giving up. Everything in her body said: Stop it. Leave it. Go inside, have a drink, smoke a cigarette, lower your body into a bath full of hot water. There were two good planks left. The short one standing up and the long one on the ground, she thought, and after that I can work out how to close off that last bit of chicken wire, which has to serve as a kind of door. Just keep at it. After nailing the two planks to each other at right angles with another piece of wood at an angle as a brace, she put the structure up against the front of the shelter, then craw
led inside to staple the wire to the wood. With nothing to hold the horizontal plank in place, it was very difficult to get them in. ‘Godverdomme,’ she said. She had to put something behind the plank. She crept back out of the shelter and looked around. There were large rocks by the ponds. Much too heavy. The wheelbarrow, upside down. She pushed it up hard against the plank and tried again. The wheelbarrow started to slide away, but by hammering as lightly as she could, she managed to get the staples into the wood anyway. Her arm hurt, she could feel her foot. Cursing, she crawled back out of the shelter, wondering what in the name of God she was doing. She pulled the wheelbarrow out of the way, turned it upright and checked her handiwork. It seemed reasonably solid. Solid enough, she thought, to keep out a fox. A big bird definitely couldn’t get in. Now she just had to figure out how to close off the last bit without nailing it shut permanently. She had about ten large nails left and pounded six into the roof at intervals of about twenty centimetres, exactly opposite the triangle she’d stapled down on the other side of the roof. She cut lengths of wire and twisted them to attach them to the chicken wire, also at twenty-centimetre intervals. She made sure the lengths of wire were more or less aligned with the six nails and only then did she trim off the excess chicken wire. ‘Godverdomme!’ she said again. She stank of goose shit and her hands were bleeding.

  The geese refused to be herded into the shelter. They ran off the wrong way in a column or scattered, as if understanding that it was hard to choose between six separate birds. The sheep in the adjoining field remained unmoved. Most of them grazed on calmly; some looked up now and then. Panting, she scooped up a few pebbles and threw them at the geese. ‘Ungrateful, dirty, filthy, stinking, pig-headed creatures!’ she shouted. ‘I’m trying to bloody save you!’ She decided to try again one last time, very calmly. The geese were standing by the largest pond, close to the shelter. She lit a cigarette and sat down in the grass. The geese clucked a little, two of them drank some water. Not too fast, she told herself, I’ll let them get used to me first. She stood up and spread her arms, cigarette in mouth. Taking their time, the geese thronged away from the pond and walked past the shelter. She stayed where she was. The birds stopped four or five metres away from the bent piece of chicken wire. ‘Go inside,’ she said quietly. ‘Go on. It’s safe in there.’ She listened to herself speaking English and thought, I have to head them off. Very calmly. As quietly as she could, she crept around behind the geese, believing she was going to succeed: the birds stood still with their fat bodies pressed against each other, only their heads and necks turning. Now she walked towards the shelter, arms still spread. Yes, she thought. Yes. Smoke curled up into her eyes, making tears run down her cheeks.