June

by Gerbrand Bakker

  ‘What’s Linquenda mean?’

  Her mother doesn’t answer. Dieke feels her hips grow and shrink a little more urgently. In the new estate hardly any of the houses have names. There is one, just before they get to the cemetery. The Old Stamping Ground.

  ‘What’s a stamping ground?’ Dieke asks.

  ‘A place.’

  ‘A place?’

  ‘Somewhere you spend a lot of time. The old stamping ground means a place from the old days.’

  ‘But this house is new, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Diek.’

  ‘It’s not old.’

  ‘Would you like to go back? You can ring the doorbell and ask what exactly they’re referring to. Does that mouth of yours ever stop?’

  ‘No! Don’t go back!’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘Don’t you have to go to work?’

  ‘No, otherwise I wouldn’t be taking you to the cemetery right now, would I?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Dieke. Then she says, ‘No.’

  ‘And you do realise that you have to stay with Jan, I hope. I can’t just pop back to pick you up, and if you want to leave, nobody will know.’

  ‘Doesn’t Uncle Jan have a phone?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I want to stay there anyway.’

  They arrive at the cemetery’s rear entrance. A narrow gate, with two very straight trees next to it. Dieke jumps off the back of the bike and dashes onto the deserted lawn on the other side of the gate.

  ‘Wait!’

  She waits, without turning back to look at her mother. It’s just like a football pitch. A bit further up there’s a hedge, with an opening for the path. Uncle Jan must be behind that hedge. As soon as her mother has caught up, she walks on.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asks.

  ‘This is for when there’s no more room on that side.’

  When she reaches the opening in the hedge, Dieke recoils. In front of her is a wheat field of stones, stones everywhere. But there are also plants and bushes and shrubs. Uncle Jan is nowhere in sight. The path goes in two directions. She feels a leaf in the hedge. It’s the same as along the side of the yard at home, only there it’s not trimmed.

  ‘Jan!’ her mother calls, but not very loudly.

  He appears in front of them, popping up between all those stones. ‘Here,’ he says, raising an arm in the air. They walk over to him, Dieke more slowly than her mother, listening to the shells crunching under the soles of her sandals. The shells under her mother’s shoes crunch a lot louder. Uncle Jan comes out onto the path.

  ‘Hi, Jan,’ her mother says.

  ‘Hi,’ he says.

  ‘Dieke wants to be here with you, she doesn’t want to go to the swimming pool.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She goes there every day. She gets bored.’

  Dieke keeps quiet, twisting the toe of one sandal down into the crushed shells and not looking at her mother or Uncle Jan. Her face is blank.

  ‘She can stay here then. It’s fine by me.’ He looks at her. ‘I’ll take care of her. Will you be careful too?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ says Dieke.

  Her mother starts to turn away. ‘I’ll come back to pick her up a bit later. You can count on her wanting to go to the swimming pool in half an hour.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Dieke says.

  Her mother walks past her without looking at her. Crunch, crunch, crunch and she’s gone.

  Dieke keeps staring at the path.

  ‘Is your mother a bit cross with you, Diek?’

  ‘I broke a plant,’ she says.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘And I got up too early. She said.’

  ‘How early?’

  ‘Five o’clock?’ she tries.

  ‘That is really early. But it was probably light by then too. It hardly gets dark now.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looks up. Uncle Jan looks a lot like her dad, but at the same time he doesn’t look like him at all. ‘You haven’t got a top on.’

  ‘No, I was hot.’

  ‘Is that your T-shirt on your head?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Look. I’ve got my grey dress on.’

  He clears his throat.

  ‘Sleeveless.’

  ‘Smart thinking.’

  ‘With purple flowers.’ Dieke looks around cautiously. Now she’s here, she sees that it’s not just stones standing up, there are stones lying flat on the ground too. They’re like radiators, she can feel the heat coming off them. The cemetery is more or less completely flat. It only has one tree, but it’s a very big one.

  ‘What have you got in your rucksack?’ Uncle Jan asks.

  ‘A drink.’ Dieke unzips the rucksack and pulls out a Jip and Janneke drinking cup. ‘See?’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘And two apples and two bananas. They’re for you too.’

  They’ve already had a really long talk and Uncle Jan started it.

  Now he steps off the path and goes over to a small stone in the second row. He kneels down next to it.

  Dieke doesn’t know what to do. First she puts the cup back in her bag. Then she takes three steps towards Uncle Jan, and that takes her up to a stone in the first row. She lays a hand on it, but jerks it back straight away. Too hot. There’s a tin of paint and a green bucket with a wet rag draped over the side on the ground next to her uncle, along with a few sheets of paper and some white things she doesn’t recognise. A paintbrush just like the ones she uses with her watercolours is balanced on top of the tin. Her uncle picks up a screwdriver and starts using it to chip away at the white paint on the stone. Something goes wrong: the end of the screwdriver makes a scraping noise and Uncle Jan starts to swear.

  ‘You’re not allowed to swear,’ she says.

  ‘Who says so?’

  She takes another step forward. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

  Blouse

  It takes a while for her to find an appropriate blouse. She’s not looking for an appropriate blouse at all. She shakes her head, but that doesn’t help get rid of the Negro and the word ‘rape’. She has to stretch out on the bed for a moment, closing the bedroom door first to keep Benno out on the landing. Her bra straps are pinching, that thing has to come off, and while she’s removing it, both hands accidentally touch her breasts. She does her best to think about the baker with the chapped face – it’s Saturday, they’ll be seeing each other this evening – but fails. He has a name, just like everyone else, but she thinks: baker. There’s an open window but the warm air isn’t stirring.

  The Negro climbs in through the open window like some kind of big African cat. Her skirt and girdle are pinching too, they need pushing down. Why is it so hot? It’s June but it feels like an oppressive day much later in the summer, as if there are already brown leaves littering her front garden. He’s wearing a kind of apron, a loincloth but otherwise naked. Naked and gleaming with sweat or oil, some magical African lotion. Benno barks. The Negro’s lips part, revealing teeth and an astonishingly pale, pink tongue. Dinie Grint opens her mouth too and lays her hands by her sides. After stretching out beside her on the bed, the Negro tears off his loincloth and she feels his penis pressing against her thigh. ‘I don’t want this,’ she mumbles. ‘No, no.’ The Negro shuts her up and she grabs at his penis, which, in contrast to the rest of his body, is matt, not gleaming. Her mouth fills with saliva that tastes of bitter leaves, her fingertips glide over veins that . . . Benno barks. ‘Quiet!’ she shouts. The Negro was gone for a moment, but now he’s back again, bigger and harder than ever. Swelling, pumping male blood under her fingers, yes. It’s as if she’s offering her throat to this African feline, her throat, her lower body, pushing up and forward, she wan
ts him inside her, she wants to grab and pull and guide, but instead she grips the side of her double bed with one hand and he’s in her anyway, he can manage that fine by himself. She’s happy for him to go very deep and fast, or slow, whatever he likes, and he doesn’t need to be told twice – God, he’s so big – and now she wants him to get out of her and stick it in her mouth. He does that too, of course. But not right away. Slowly he crawls up on all fours. ‘No, don’t,’ she murmurs. ‘Stop it, now.’ The Negro has become his penis, a penis with heavy balls dragging over her nipples. The head already pushing against her lips. The baker, she thinks. The baker.

  Not the baker, her son. He’s lying on his back, his underpants down around his ankles, one knee raised, the other on the floor, the jeans with the leather knee patches in a heap next to him, black pubic hair that comes as a shock to her, and the Kaan boy, the redhead, and her own head, of course, sticking up through the trapdoor in the floor of the garage attic, thinking, I don’t want this, look away, go back down the ladder; and not reacting to that, continuing to stare at her son, that beautiful black-haired boy with an erect penis amongst that unexpected pubic hair, and that red-headed Kaan, naked, with his head on her son’s beautiful belly and his hand on his own crotch, and still her own head sticking up through that hatch, and the thought of that bloke of hers, the hopeless drip who never paid her any attention but preferred to go out and play pool or spend the whole evening slumped on the sofa staring at a conveyor belt with prizes on it, and a strange longing for her very own son, so young still, so unspoilt, but that longing comes up in her so intensely and so suddenly that she blushes and when that cheeky red-headed Kaan stares back at her – but probably doesn’t even notice her because her son’s penis is between them, the penis she doesn’t want to see, but can’t avoid seeing – the thought: get out of here.

  She sits up much too quickly, the blood rushes to her head, making her dizzy. The Negro dissolves in the hot air, but his tongue and penis have left their mark. She doesn’t want to think about her son when the Negro’s here. That’s not right. It’s not allowed. She suddenly feels sick. Not bitter leaves – bile. She no longer grabs at heavy balls, but at her bra, lying on the carpet next to the bed. She puts it on quickly and pulls her girdle and skirt on even faster. Despite the dizziness, she jumps up off the bed, pulls open the wardrobe door and grabs a blouse without even looking. Benno barks. She opens the door, pushes the big dog out of the way with one knee and goes into the bathroom. The first thing she sees is her raven hair in the mirror. The second is the wild look in her eyes. On the shelf under the mirror is a pot of Wella Dark Brown. Not Wella Black, that makes her look ridiculous. She bends forward and turns on the cold tap.

  Straw

  She’s heard him all right. Maybe he took off his clogs and is now standing on the concrete in dusty socks. He must have been there at least five minutes; is he staring the bull down to keep it quiet? She might as well say something for a change. ‘You never think of Mother’s Day.’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you even know when it is, Mother’s Day?’

  ‘December?’

  ‘The second Sunday in May!’

  Silence.

  A daughter knows things like that. A daughter would visit in May with presents, or at least ring. She would have come. She scratches her stomach again. Is it the straw that’s making her itchy? Her stomach’s never itchy otherwise. Or is it the heat? ‘What time is it?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Ten thirty.’

  She can’t help it, she has to laugh. To herself. She pictures him standing there with his head back. ‘Where is everyone? Have they all gone to the churchyard?’

  ‘The cemetery.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Is there a church there?’

  She’s still smiling. ‘You know that better than anyone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ten thirty. Way too soon to come down off the straw. ‘Have you been stirring them up?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Don’t lie.’

  ‘I never lie. And who exactly do you mean by “them”?’

  ‘Jan, of course. And Johan.’

  ‘Johan?’

  ‘Why does everyone down there keep shouting out “Johan” as if they’re so surprised?’

  ‘He’s not even here.’

  ‘No, not yet. But soon enough.’ She drinks some water. The bottle is starting to get quite empty. ‘So, where’s Klaas?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Swallows flying in and out. Spiderwebs, very old ones, like grey wool. And then suddenly the sound of concentrate sliding in the wooden silo that forms one pillar-like corner of the straw loft, even though it’s been a very long time since there was any feed in it at all.

  ‘And another thing, you’re not my mother.’

  ‘I’m your children’s mother.’

  ‘You’re not my mother.’

  ‘Ah, man, go back to your Christmas trees.’

  That’s shut him up. For a moment.

  ‘You coming down?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘Of course I’m hungry!’

  ‘Come down then.’

  ‘No.’

  Now it’s finished. She waits. Tilts the water bottle; the water sloshes back and forth, growing warmer and mustier. More sliding in the wooden silo. Is there a rat in there? The noise is drowned out by the swelling roar of a jet fighter. During exercises, the pilots do their best to fly as low over the trees and farmhouses as they can, and for a second Anna Kaan is scared the plane’s going to go straight through the barn. It doesn’t.

  ‘Talk to me!’ He’s waited until the sound of the jet has died away completely. She tilts the bottle one way, then the other. Beams, spiderwebs, a swinging rope that hasn’t been used for years, cane, tile laths.

  ‘Have you got the parade sword up there?’

  And of course the peepholes to the outside, even if there’s nothing out there to see.

  ‘What do you intend to do with that?’

  She takes one of its two red tassels in her hand. Nothing, she thinks. Or can she do better than that?

  ‘I’ll think of something. You’ll see.’ Oh yes you will, she thinks.

  ‘I’m about to go. I’ve fixed my tyre. Then you’ll be stuck here alone.’

  I’m already stuck here alone.

  ‘Talk to me!’

  It’s hard not to say anything. She has to be firm. Now he starts to sigh. The bull, which has been silent until now, joins in by snorting. It’s almost too much. And all that when she’s not even a hundred per cent about being up on the straw.

  ‘When’s Father’s Day?’

  She knows, but she’s not going to take the bait.

  ‘I’m going now,’ Zeeger calls.

  No, stay. Sit down somewhere, on a leftover bale of hay, on a sack of pellets, on the old workbench, on the tray of the hay wagon. On the concrete floor if necessary. Zeeger, don’t go.

  ‘If I’m not here, I’m off with Jan.’

  Anna Kaan stops tilting the bottle. She rests it on her stomach and stares at the rectangle of light over her head. Then she starts to count the tiles, first to the left of the gap, then to the right.

  ‘June!’ Zeeger calls up, already outside and with his clogs back on. ‘The third Sunday in June!’

  Birds

  Dieke thinks about what she says when someone like Grandpa asks her what she’s doing. It depends what she’s doing, of course. If she’s drawing, she’ll say, ‘I’m drawing.’ But sometimes she’s really deep into her drawing and then she doesn’t say anything, if only because the tip of her tongue is in the way. Grandma’s never once asked her what she’s doing. But
it’s not a hard question. Uncle Jan could easily come up with something. His shoulder blade goes up and down, he keeps scratching and poking, he keeps swearing under his breath. She takes a couple of careful backward steps until she’s back on the path with the broken shells. She squeezes her eyes half shut. There’s her rucksack. First, a drink. She gets the Jip and Janneke drinking cup out of the bag and shakes it from side to side before taking a couple of sips. The water’s already warm. An apple? No, she’ll save that for later. Anyway, she wants to eat the apples with Uncle Jan, not by herself. The bag shouldn’t be on the path, she needs to put it somewhere tidy. She looks over at the big tree. There’s a bench under it, in the shade. That’s a good spot.

  It’s not really that much cooler by the bench, but the white shells don’t hurt her eyes here and the wooden seat isn’t hot to touch. She thinks of her red sunglasses, lying around somewhere at home, although she can’t quite remember where. On the back of the bench there’s a metal plate with writing she can’t read. She sits down next to her bag and takes her time to look around. All she can see of Uncle Jan is his head with the T-shirt wrapped around it. He’s talking to himself, but she can’t hear what he’s saying. Now he scratches his head with his fingers in his hair. She rubs her knees, which are still slightly black from the soil in the pot with the . . . ‘Cactus,’ she says. ‘Cactus, cactus . . .’ No matter how hard she rubs, her knees won’t come clean. ‘Christmas cactus!’

  She looks up at the tree. Sitting next to each other on a low branch are two small birds. From this angle she can only see their heads. She stands up to get a better look. Both of the birds have their beaks wide open and she can almost hear them sucking the air in and blowing it out again. Are they sparrows? Or starlings? They must be a mummy and a daddy. Do they live in this big tree? She can’t see a birdhouse hung up on it anywhere. She takes another mouthful of warm water. As she’s carefully putting the cup back in her rucksack, a jet fighter tears overhead. She looks up at the birds in fright, but they don’t do a thing, not even rustling a feather or snapping their beaks shut. It’s like they don’t even hear the roar of the plane. ‘Hmm,’ she says, wiping her forehead with one hand and heading off to investigate the surroundings.