‘If lightning hits the swimming pool does it kill you?’
‘Yes, I think it would.’ Uncle Jan slides the T-shirt on his head back and forth a couple of times, as if it’s itchy underneath. ‘That headstone’ll be dry now, don’t you think?’
‘Is that your wife under the ground?’ Dieke asks.
‘You what?’
‘Your wife?’
‘I don’t have a wife. Never have.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because.’
‘Oh,’ says Dieke.
‘This is your auntie buried here.’
‘I don’t have any aunties.’
‘Um, no, you don’t. Because she’s here.’
‘Who?’
‘Oof,’ says Uncle Jan. ‘Hang on a sec.’ He tips everything out of the bucket and walks over to the little house with it. Then he comes back and puts the bucket, which is filled up almost to the rim, down in front of her. ‘Dip your head in here if you get too hot.’
‘Do it yourself,’ she says.
‘OK.’ He kneels down, puts his hands on the ground either side of the bucket and sticks his whole head in, T-shirt and all.
After a while, Dieke starts whistling. Sometimes things go faster if you whistle. ‘Uncle Jan!’ she calls. But he can’t hear her, of course. What else did he say a minute ago, when they were sitting on the bench? That when you’re dead, the world doesn’t exist any more? She pulls on his shoulder, which is oily, her hand slides off. She grabs the knot of the T-shirt and pulls her uncle’s head up out of the bucket.
‘At last,’ he says.
‘Not funny,’ says Dieke.
‘I was only joking. I was waiting for you to rescue me.’ He leaves the soaking T-shirt where it is, tied around his head. Water trickles out of his nose. ‘Ow,’ he says, brushing bits of shell off his knees. ‘Why don’t you go see if those blue tits are still in the tree?’
She bends forward, thinking of the day she got her swimming card, takes a deep breath and plunges her head into the bucket. She’ll show him. She can already feel the hand reaching to pull her out again, her shoulder’s itching a little. She opens her eyes and quickly closes them again. Why doesn’t Uncle Jan help? She’s had her head stuck in this bucket for at least a minute now. I should have breathed in more first, she thinks. Just a little bit longer now. She can do it, even if her chest already feels like it’s full of cotton wool. Come on, pull me out! She jerks her head back up and feels her wet hair slap her on the back. ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’ she bawls.
Uncle Jan stands there very calmly and looks down at her with his arms crossed. ‘You don’t want the world to stop existing yet, do you?’ he says.
He kneels down in front of the headstone and picks up the brush and the tin of paint.
‘What do I do?’
‘I just told you. Go and have a look at the blue tits.’
She waits a very long time before turning around and reluctantly setting out for the tree and the bench. She closes her eyes tight and pretends the world no longer exists. When she thinks she’s made it to the tree, she opens them again. Yes, the birds are still sitting on their branch, sucking air in and blowing it out again. She feels sorry for them, but she can’t do anything to help. The zip of her bag is open, she sticks an arm in and grabs an apple. ‘Do you want an apple now too?’ she calls.
‘Sure.’
She gets the second apple out and walks back. When Uncle Jan goes to take the apple, she pulls it back. ‘Never do that again,’ she says.
‘I promise.’ They eat their apples on opposite sides of the grave, facing each other.
‘The birds were still there,’ she says.
He doesn’t say anything.
‘How old is this auntie?’ she asks.
‘Two.’
‘Two? She can’t be. How old are you? Thirty?’
‘Ha! Forty-six. You understand that this auntie was one of Grandma’s children?’
‘Huh?’
‘I’m one of Grandma’s children too, right?’ He spits out a bite. ‘Yuck, that was a bad bit.’
‘Um . . .’
‘Don’t worry about it. We have to think of something for you to do. Or would you rather go home?’
‘No.’
Uncle Jan looks around. ‘Would you like to clean some of the other stones?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good.’
‘Do I have to do it with the cuddle bone?’
‘No, just water will be fine.’ He walks over to the path, picks up the wet rag and shakes out the shell grit. ‘Here’s a rag. Is there enough water in the bucket?’
‘Yes,’ says Dieke.
Uncle Jan comes back to the shell path and points out a stone, one that’s lying down, completely smooth and brownish.
‘Who’s under here?’ she asks.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘No.’ She dips the rag in the water, wrings it out and starts to rub the stone clean, the tip of her tongue soon appearing between her almost clenched teeth.
‘Daddy!’ He’d walked up without her noticing.
‘Hi, Dieke.’
‘There’s lots of dead people under here!’ she shouts excitedly. ‘I’m cleaning them.’
‘No.’
‘I am.’
‘Did your uncle tell you to do that?’
‘No, I thought of it myself,’ she lies.
Her father walks over to Uncle Jan. She stands up and follows him. He puts his hands on his hips and watches Uncle Jan at work. ‘You shouldn’t do it that way,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have to lie the stone down flat. That’d be a lot easier.’
‘Can we do that?’
‘We can try.’
Her father and Uncle Jan take hold of the headstone and wobble it back and forth a little until they’re able to lift it up. They lay the top part of the stone on the raised edge of the grave.
‘Are you taking it apart?’ she asks.
‘We’ll put it back later,’ her father says. ‘It’s not a problem.’ He sits down on a nearby grave, pulls his tobacco pouch out of a back pocket and rolls a cigarette.
She looks closely from one to the other. They really do look a lot like each other, but at the same time not at all. Her father’s older, at least she thinks he is, and that’s strange, because her uncle looks older. Uncle Jan dips the brush in the paint tin and bends over the stone. Her father lights his cigarette. One smokes, the other paints. She was cleaning and she goes back to that. Neither man says anything, but it’s still a lot nicer now. There’s something beautiful about working in silence; she can sense that. It means something. When, after a while, Uncle Jan says, ‘It’s no good like this, we have to stand it up again,’ she doesn’t even react. She only looks up when she catches sight of someone coming down the shell path. ‘Dog!’ she shouts. And that big lady with black hair. The dog and woman march past her without a word.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ the woman says. She talks loudly and the dog starts barking. ‘Quiet, Benno! You’re wrecking the place. I knew it. I was on to you. Do you plan on knocking over other headstones too?’
Dieke has stood up, but stays close to the stone she’s cleaning. Uncle Jan and her father are standing between the graves with the stone in their hands. The woman sounds angry and the dog’s not listening to her. He’s still barking.
‘This is our grave,’ her father snaps. ‘You keep out of it.’
Dieke’s shocked. The way he’s said it sounds really rude.
‘I’m going to report this! And what’s that girl doing? To that stranger’s grave! She’s dirtying the stone. Have you got a tub of cow shit here somewhere too? What are you doing? Be
nno, quiet!’
The dog barks, Uncle Jan and her father slowly lower the stone. ‘Up a little,’ her father says, ‘there’s some pebbles on the concrete.’ Uncle Jan bends down and brushes something away with his free hand and the stone moves down out of sight. Then the men straighten up, her father with a red face.
‘Well?’ the woman says.
Dieke looks at her father. Is he going to be rude again?
‘Go away.’
‘What?’
‘Just mind your own business.’
Her father stares intently at the big dog, and after a while it stops barking and skulks back behind the woman’s legs.
‘I have business here,’ the woman says, pointing at the tall narrow headstone she pointed out to Uncle Jan earlier.
Her father turns and looks carefully in that direction. ‘We’re not doing anything against the rules,’ he says slowly.
‘We’ll see about that,’ the woman shouts, now staring at Uncle Jan. ‘And you . . .’ she says.
‘Yes?’ says Uncle Jan.
It looks funny: Uncle Jan bare-chested with that T-shirt tied around his head, the woman and her dog on the shell path. Only now does she notice that the woman doesn’t have her jacket on. And wasn’t she wearing glasses before? Dieke is curious what she’s going to say to Uncle Jan. It’s gone very quiet, so quiet she thinks she can even hear the panting of the two birds. The woman doesn’t say another word. She just spins around and strides off. When she passes Dieke she gives her a dirty look. ‘Horrible boys,’ she says.
Dieke gives her a sweet little smile. ‘I’m a girl,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Bye-bye!’
The dog drags on the leash.
‘I actually came to pick you up,’ her father says a little later.
‘Did you?’ she says.
‘Yep. You ready to go home?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you want to go to the swimming pool?’
‘No.’
‘We could go to the beach instead.’
‘Yuck.’
‘When are you going to have lunch?’
‘I’ve already had a banana. And an apple.’
‘Me too,’ says Uncle Jan. ‘Let her stay if she wants to.’
‘Fine.’ Her father sticks his hands in his pockets. ‘You heading off again tonight?’
‘Yeah,’ says Uncle Jan. ‘What would I stay here for?’
‘Maybe we could do some fishing?’
‘In weather like this?’
‘Sure, why not? A worm’s a worm, or do fish stop biting when it gets too hot?’
‘Yay, fishing!’ Dieke shouts.
‘Have you already decided what you’re going to do?’ Uncle Jan asks her father.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Have you sold the land yet?’
‘No.’
‘But what are you going to do then?’
‘I dunno. It’s not your problem.’
‘No,’ says Uncle Jan. ‘So towards evening we’ll go fishing.’
‘We’ll see,’ her father says. ‘I’ll see you in a bit, Diek.’
‘Bye, Daddy.’
Her father strolls down the shell path to the Polder House. He walks a bit crooked, she notices. Almost like Grandpa. Quickly she throws the rag into the bucket, which is almost empty. ‘My water’s finished,’ she says.
‘I’ll get a new bucket. Shall I fill your drinking cup while I’m at it?’
‘Yes, please.’ She sits down on the stone she’s cleaning, although that doesn’t feel quite right. It’s not nice that her father’s gone again. She feels a bit lonely and wonders why she said no. Because now she is thinking of the swimming pool. And of Evelien, because she’s sure to be having fun there right now. Maybe with Leslie, though he hasn’t been to the pool that much lately. Of course, somebody else might come here, like Grandpa, and then she can go home with them. And then she can lie down in her big blow-up paddling pool. If a thunderstorm comes she’ll be able to get out of that a lot faster than the swimming pool. Even Grandma would be OK, although Dieke’s been doing her best to avoid her ever since that visit to the zoo and the dinner afterwards. It hurt like anything, her pinching her arm like that. The church bell rings.
‘What’s the church clock say, Dieke?’ asks Uncle Jan, coming back with a full bucket.
‘A lot.’
‘Twelve.’
Straw Book
I need new underpants, Zeeger Kaan thinks as he takes the dry washing off the line. He tosses the clothes in a laundry basket and sets it on the kitchen table. That’s as far as his duties go. He’s never folded them up or done the ironing. Rekel has followed in at his heels and stretches out under the kitchen table. Zeeger looks at the clock. Twelve thirty. Summer days can take forever. Klaas is back home. The car, filthy and clapped out, is parked next to the barn. He suspects that his oldest son has been to the cemetery. He goes over to the sliding patio doors and stares out at the garden, which has grown fuller and fuller over the years. All kinds of plants are in flower, not a single perennial clashes with the perennial next to it, but still it looks somehow drab on a day like today. He’d like to turn on the sprinklers, but doesn’t, because he doesn’t want a scorched lawn. The large leaves of the pipevine are dull and dusty. Already, and it’s not even July yet. He crosses the room and studies the front garden. Anna’s right, it’s gloomy, even now, at the start of summer. Early this morning it was already grey. But for some reason he finds it impossible to cut down things he planted himself. Anna’s not the only one to complain; Klaas has taken to commenting too, not that he pays him any attention: he doesn’t keep the farm garden up at all. He just lets things go to rack and ruin, not even taking the trouble to plant a few violets or African marigolds in the drinking trough next to the back door in spring.
He gets the exercise book out of the desk in the small room, intending to take it through to the living room, but changes his mind. Why not just stay here? It’s pleasant enough and has more or less the same view as the one through the sliding door, just a couple of metres further along. He opens the door to the garden. Not because he thinks it will make it cooler, but so he can hear the radio in the garage. Rekel starts to whimper; he doesn’t like being alone. Zeeger walks into the living room and says, ‘Come on, then,’ to Rekel, who’s standing with his front paws on the last row of kitchen tiles. That’s his limit, he’s not allowed in the rest of the house. Head down and tail between his legs, the dog comes up to him. He’s doing something that’s forbidden, but he’s been ordered to do it. That confuses dogs. He slips into the small room and slinks straight through it. He exhales deeply and slumps against the open door to the garden. ‘It’s not easy for you either, is it, boy?’ says Zeeger Kaan, who sits down on the desk chair and rubs his knees. Sometimes he has to tap his left knee when he wants to stand up, as if the joint won’t work without a jolt to get it going.
The fairly thin exercise book has a grey marbled cover. The label on the front is blank, he hasn’t given it a name. It’s not a diary, it’s a straw book. Before he starts writing, he leafs through it a little. The pages feel dry and brittle, but in other seasons they’re limp and clammy.
Thursday 9 October 1969. Anna’s back up on the straw. For the second time. Just after the funeral Jan and Johan couldn’t find their mother. Me and Klaas went looking. She was up on the straw. I asked her to come down but she didn’t say anything and wouldn’t come down. Mother-in-law came. On Saturday 5 July (1969), mother-in-law cooking, she came down. She sent her mother home. Yesterday (8 October) I leant the ladder against the loft. She kicked the ladder over when I was about halfway up. Broken wrist. Can still milk, but with difficulty. Plaster got dirty and wet. A few hours later she came down. No comment.
23 December 2003 (Tuesday). Klaas’s wife tried to get Anna down o
ff the straw. She stood there yelling like a fishwife. Anna said nothing, as always. She took her duvet, fortunately. It’s bitter cold. When Klaas’s wife walked out of the barn she said something after all, ‘Go to your child.’ Hours later she came in, it was already dark. She was very angry and asked me why I hadn’t decorated the Christmas tree yet.
21 March 2004 (Sunday). It was to be expected. The old Queen is dead. Instead of plonking down in front of the TV (the whole damn day), she was up on the straw. What’s left of it anyway, there’s only about three layers. Today too there was all kinds of stuff on TV. There’s been fifteen months between the last time and now, although until December 2003 I thought she’d never do it again. After all, the time before that was the end of June 1994. ‘So,’ she said when she came in this afternoon. And later in the evening there was more. ‘Everyone and everything’s starting to die off now. Just me left to go.’
30 March 2004 (Tuesday). My heart was in my mouth but Anna didn’t make any trouble. She just sat in front of the TV watching the gaudy purple coach and kept watching until someone drew the curtains in front of the hole in the church floor. Then she put the kettle on.
Despite the brevity of his notes, the exercise book is almost half full because he eventually started using it as a gardening book too. Careful records of everything that’s died in the garden. First everything around the farmhouse, then, after moving to the other side of the ditch, in the garden here. Two elms blew over on 24 December 1977, several hostas didn’t come up in the spring of 2001, a pear tree fell on 1 April 1994, both the buddleias froze at the end of March 2002, a conifer turned brown after the summer of 2003 (inexplicable, mould?), the orpine (fell apart) was removed in the autumn of 1993. And in between the downfall of trees, shrubs and plants, the occasional death notice:
12 October 1981. Klaas had the vet look at Tinus. Addled with cancer, he said. Give him a shot, said Klaas. In the afternoon the collection service came to pick up a dead calf. Klaas wanted to give them Tinus too. I wasn’t having it. Dug a hole at the base of the last willow and buried the dog there. The ground was still loose. Klaas snorted a bit, Anna seemed almost relieved. She always told the dog off, she kicked him, but he was her dog. The whole time I was digging she stood there right behind me. I think she felt like ripping the shovel out of my hands.
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