May 1984. The back willow isn’t really taking. I’ve pollarded them twice now, the other four have formed a nice head. Leave it for now, it’s not dead. Tinus?
‘Should I start writing now, or wait a little?’ Zeeger Kaan asks Rekel. He’s sick of all those old things, the whole exercise book, but still feels obliged to keep it up. There’s not a single bird singing in the garden, which seems crushed by the heat. It’s no longer violin music coming from the radio, but talk, too soft to hear what it’s about. Now and then he makes out a word or two: Maartenszee, shipyard, volleyball. Rekel has sighed once, after hearing his name. He takes a pen from the pen cup, turns it between his fingers, taps the point on the open exercise book, then puts it back in the cup, which falls over, sending a few pens rolling over the desk. A couple end up on the floor. He closes the exercise book and puts it back in the drawer, then walks out into the garden in his socks. ‘So,’ he says, ‘come on, you.’ Rekel stands up and follows him reluctantly, as if he senses what’s about to happen. Zeeger slips his feet into his clogs at the side door, then lures the dog to the bank of the broad ditch between his house and the farm. He sits down and pulls the dog up onto his lap, then slides down until his clogs are resting on the wooden shoring. With some difficulty, he slides Rekel, who’s damn heavy and not cooperating, off his lap. The dog falls into the water sideways and goes under. Zeeger Kaan rubs his knees and leans back. Just to lie down for a moment. He doesn’t care that Klaas and his wife might be able to see him through their kitchen window.
Pygmy Goats
The baker with the chapped face is getting ready to leave the house. He wants to go. He doesn’t want to go. He puts it off. Radio North-Holland’s culture correspondent is discussing forthcoming events. Next week there’ll be a car boot sale in Sint Maartenszee, tonight there’s outdoor cinema at the old national shipyard in Den Helder, fairs in Harenkarspel and Middenmeer, a volleyball tournament in Schagen. Nice, he thinks. Lively. He puts his empty water glass down on the sink and goes through to the living room. The coffee table is covered with photos; the ashtray, table lighter and plant have made way and are now on the windowsill. In front of the dried-out newspapers.
He filled the time between looking at the calendar and spreading out the photos by going through the classifieds in the local paper. Under the heading PETS AND ACCESSORIES he couldn’t find a single puppy. Two old dogs for sale, because of the home situation. ‘Not them, then,’ he mumbled. He also drank a good few glasses of water, standing at the kitchen window looking out at the Polder House. Behind the Polder House there are several large chestnuts. The tall conifer hedge blocks his view of the cemetery.
He sits down with one hand on the small of his back, like a heavily pregnant woman. He never got round to putting the photos from the Queen’s visit in an album. The envelope that contained them – he can still see his daughter’s hands reaching out to grab it – is still the one from 1969, usually slipped between the pages of a reddish-brown photo album. He did stick in other, later photos, including those from the holiday in Schin op Geul: late August 1969. It wasn’t a relaxed or light-hearted holiday, despite the beautiful weather. Every day sun, and every night a gigantic thunderstorm. Only their daughter smiling – in two or three snaps. The album is lying on one of the easy chairs; the envelope, now torn, is on top of it. He can’t remember when he last looked at this album. Sad pictures, each and every one, and later they only got sadder, because his wife and daughter were no longer there to look through them, giggling and whispering.
He looks at the clock and thinks, what do I care? Then takes a bottle of lemon brandy out of the sideboard and pours himself a drink. This time he doesn’t sit down like a pregnant woman; he has to concentrate on his balance to keep the spirits from spilling down the side of the small glass. One of the photos even shows those bloody pygmy goats. He’d forgotten that. Over the years he’d even begun to wonder if he hadn’t just imagined them. A farmer in spotless overalls is holding them tight while accepting the old Queen’s expressions of gratitude. The goats are eating a bunch of Sweet William, inadvertently dangled in front of them by a woman who is staring at the Queen with big excited eyes. Lots of pictures of his daughter and the butcher’s son, together holding an expensive floral arrangement. He takes a sip. There’s only one other shot of the Queen, seen from behind on her way into the Polder House, passing between two lines of children with flags. Jan Kaan is in the photo: sulking, with his belly pushed forward, flag hanging. He’s wearing a grey cardigan with black trim and silver buttons. A brand-new cardigan. He appears twice, both times with that scowl on his face. Why? The baker takes another sip, then puts the glass down between the photos. His daughter’s beaming. She seems really happy. The butcher’s son looks bored, with one leg bent casually, as if he’s indifferent to the whole event. Yet he’s the one who gets to present flowers to the Queen. The baker studies Jan Kaan again. Was he jealous? Is that why he looks so angry? Had he sat up straighter than straight in the classroom with his arms crossed, hoping to be chosen? Or did he just think he looked ridiculous in that Norwegian cardigan?
The baker picks up the second photo with Jan Kaan in it off the table. Standing next to him is Dinie’s son. Teun, he thinks. What’s happened to him anyway? Dinie never says a word about her son. It’s actually a bit strange: Teun is a few years older than Jan Kaan, what’s he doing lined up there? They’re standing hand in hand. Wherever the Queen might have been in the instant he took the photo, Teun is definitely not looking at her. He’s looking slightly sideways, at Jan Kaan. The baker takes another mouthful, tipping the lemon brandy down his throat in one go. Teun Grint looks like someone who can’t keep his eyes off a deformed leg, even though he knows it’s not polite to stare. This evening he’ll have to ask Dinie what’s become of her son. His head starts to spin.
In one movement he slides all the photos together and dumps them into the album. He crumples up the envelope and tosses the ball into the bin. Then he takes the ashtray, the plant and the table lighter from the windowsill and puts them back on the coffee table. He pours himself another glass of lemon brandy and knocks it back in two gulps. After a couple of drinks, an old body doesn’t feel as old; it feels looser, freer.
Hanging on a wall in the empty shop is a large picture in a black frame with non-reflective glass. The light-grey VW van. Parked in front of the bakery. Blom’s Breadery. Him, his wife and their daughter at the rear of van. Beaming. With his left hand he carefully pulls the bottom of the picture away from the wall while holding out his right hand, but the photo that was wedged in behind the frame still floats down to the floor. He bends over – which really is a little easier after two glasses than it was earlier when he was doing the watering – and picks up the photo. This one is very special. But also unbearable to look at. And what good is hiding something if you know exactly where you’ve hidden it?
He’d made the delivery to the Polder House early that morning. ‘Nothing fancy,’ they’d told him. ‘Just plain loaves, bread rolls, fruit loaf. The Queen needs to eat and drink like everyone else. Just as long as it’s fresh out of the oven.’ He dropped the order off in the new van, wanting as many people as possible to get used to the name Blom’s Breadery painted on the side. The van was actually meant for the surrounding area. His elderly father did the village round on an equally elderly tricycle with a walnut box with the old name on it: Blom’s Bread & Pastries. He’d joked to his wife that they could, in all honesty, now add by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen under the shiny new letters on the window.
Later that morning he dropped a large quantity of white rolls off at the notary’s, from which he deduced that he hadn’t been invited to dine with the Queen and decided to organise a festive lunch of his own. He hadn’t looked in the wing mirror before opening the door and a boy shouted out ‘Hey!’ as he whizzed past on a bike. Startled, he jerked the door shut again. The boy straightened up and looked back over his shoulder as he rode off. It was Jan
Kaan, the second son of Zeeger and Anna Kaan. The baker raised a hand in apology just before Johan Kaan raced past on a scooter, trying to catch up with his brother. Driving back very slowly to the bakery after carrying in the bread rolls, it took him a while to get over the fright: his knees were weak and changing gears wasn’t going very smoothly either. The farm run would have to wait until later in the afternoon, the Queen was about to arrive. He parked the light-grey van at an angle in front of the bakery, and admired it from across the road: the Queen couldn’t miss it. There were already quite a few people in front of the Polder House and he could hear excited children in the distance. Half the village could think of nothing but the lunch. He went into the shop, said hello to his wife and fetched his camera from the living room.
He followed his daughter, one of the two chosen children, and pressed the shutter in the instant that she, completely overcome by nerves, handed the Queen the flowers. And again when she, relieved, stepped back into line. Jan Kaan was there too, a scowl on his face. The Grint boy was standing next to him, holding his hand. The West Frisian dance group started up, and he took photos of them too, and of a friendly-looking Queen watching the folk dancing, and of old Van der Hoes with his violin, eyes and mouth screwed up in concentration. That’ll be a good one, he’d thought. Afterwards he spoke to people, shook hands and enjoyed the beautiful June weather. People complimented him on his new van, and Blauwboer told him that the Queen’s secretary really had made an arrangement about when to pick up the goats. He kissed his daughter. There were less and less people in front of the Polder House; he stayed on. And because he stayed, he managed to take the most beautiful photo he could have hoped for.
‘What are you beaming about?’ his wife asked, when he was finally eating his own lunch before setting out on the postponed delivery round.
‘I’m happy,’ he said. He had never said anything remotely like that before.
His wife sniffed and walked through to the shop; the bell had rung.
Bread and leather. The baker had installed a radio in the van and it was playing. Music, window down, the smell of fresh bread and new leather. A west wind, he thought, looking at the elms along the long road. Always a west wind. He drove past the labourer’s cottage next to the Kaan farm. There was nobody there, they were on holiday. RC too, and maybe not even interested in the Queen because of it? For his part, the baker never felt much need of a holiday; the village was lively enough for him and, anyway, how could he relax in a holiday home in Overijssel or Drenthe while somebody else baked and sold the bread? Even if that somebody was his father? He turned into Kaan’s yard, parked the van in front of the new milking parlour, hopped out and slid open the side door. A loaf of brown and half a loaf of white. Behind him, something made a thwacking sound. He jumped and looked around. A wet sheet on the clothes line. He went into the milking parlour and walked through to the kitchen door. He didn’t close the door behind him, he wouldn’t be long. He laid the one and a half loaves on the table with a flourish. ‘Here they are again,’ he said.
Anna Kaan looked up. She’d been standing at the window staring out at the washing.
‘Anything else today?’ He always asked and the answer was almost always no. Very occasionally a roll of zwieback or a packet of Frisian rye. Once in a blue moon, Zeeger Kaan wanted six almond cakes.
‘No,’ said Anna Kaan.
‘Not even on this special day?’
‘No.’
‘What was the Queen like?’
‘Special.’
The look on her face told him he wasn’t going to get anything else out of her. The baker jumped again, this time from a loud banging overhead. ‘What’s going on up there?’ he asked.
‘Zeeger’s making a bedroom in the attic. For Hanne.’
‘Is she going upstairs? Is she already two?’ The baker knew that all the Kaan children slept downstairs for two years, in the bedroom next to the living room. After years of going to people’s houses you knew everything about them.
‘Just,’ Anna Kaan said. ‘And afterwards we’re getting rid of the wardrobes and the sliding doors.’
‘That’ll give you a really big living room.’
‘Yes.’
The young Irish setter came into the kitchen from the hall. Tinus. A strange name for a dog. The baker squatted down to pat it and let it lick his face. The sound of sawing was now coming from upstairs.
‘That will all take a while. The bedroom has to be finished first.’
‘Everyone seems to be renovating these days.’
‘And buying,’ said Anna Kaan. ‘Nice van.’
‘Thanks.’ It was the first time she’d mentioned his new acquisition.
He pushed the dog away, stood up and turned to leave without saying goodbye. He didn’t consider it necessary: he went into so many houses, in and out, in and out, there’d be no end to it. Whistling, he left the kitchen, closing the door this time. On his way to the van, he used a gnawed pencil to note the loaf of brown and half a loaf of white in his book. He could do that, the baker with the chapped face: walk, whistle and write at the same time.
Almost subconsciously he was whistling ‘Oh Happy Day’. He’d just heard it in the kitchen on a radio that looked brand new. It was a tune that stuck in your head. He backed out of the yard and only then did he think of the car door and Jan Kaan and that he should have mentioned it to Anna Kaan. Oh well, it wasn’t really necessary. His knees had stopped trembling. Between the Kaans’ and the next delivery he saw a bird of prey in the air. A buzzard, he thought. Or a harrier? He wasn’t sure, he’d have to look it up in his bird guide: how to tell the difference. A few more farms and then home. There are three kinds of harriers, he thought. Marsh harriers and hen harriers and another kind that’s named after somebody, so being able to tell the difference between buzzards and harriers isn’t enough. He started whistling again, changed gears smoothly and tried to think where in the bookcase he’d put the bird guide.
Half an hour later he passed the Kaan farm again, now going in the other direction, taking it easy on his way home. He was still thinking about buzzards and harriers and that’s why he was driving sedately, not paying too much attention to the road. It was very quiet, only a single car had obliged him to move over onto the verge. Then just before the causeway he hit something. He bent forward over the steering wheel, his foot pressing lightly on the brake. There wasn’t anything on the road in front of him. In the wing mirror on the right he could see something brown. A dog, Zeeger Kaan’s young Irish setter. Had he hit it? But if he had, how could the animal be sitting up like that? He felt the fright through his whole body once again, his knees started to shake. He slowed down and turned off the radio, still staring in the wing mirror. His left hand slid over the wheel. When the van came to a halt it was almost at right angles to the road. Silence. The smell of new leather and fresh bread. An unexpected gust of wind almost ripped the door out of his hand. The elms on the roadside bent towards him. Blom’s Breadery. Even before he’d rounded the van, he loathed himself for that lettering, hearing himself gabbling on about the seventies being just around the corner, about a new, different era.
There was nothing wrong with the dog. It hadn’t moved. It was sitting, but seemed to be pointing, as if the child lying half on the road was some kind of game. As the baker had driven on for quite some distance and was now hardly able to walk, it took him a while to reach the child and the dog. A wispy shadow slid over the road, the elms bent down lower over him, without rustling. The child looked unharmed. She was still, that was all, and her eyes were closed. When he squatted down, the dog thought he was doing it for its benefit, jumped against him and started licking his face. The baker pushed the young animal away roughly. A thin line of blood trickled out of one of the child’s ears. The dog started barking, shrill and piercing. The side door – which was actually a front door, as the door in the front wall of the
farmhouse was blind – opened. The baker stood up. Anna Kaan took a few steps into the yard and stopped. ‘Zeeger!’ she called. The young dog fell silent.
The baker’s eyes moved up the facade from the blind door. A few metres above the balcony he saw for the first time – despite knowing everything that happened in the house – a plaque. Anno 1912.
‘Zeeger!’
The dog began to whimper softly.
That night he didn’t go to bed. He sat in an armchair he’d slid over in front of the big rear window and didn’t even move when he heard his father starting work in the bakery – how had he got in? The bird guide was lying on his lap; he stared at the newspapers his wife had placed behind the pot plants. He now knew the precise difference between a buzzard and the three kinds of harriers. Montagu’s harrier, that was the name he hadn’t been able to dredge up earlier in the day. No, it was already yesterday. He didn’t care any more. And even if he did, the ‘dark bar across the base of the secondaries’ was something he’d never be able to spot in flight. Especially not if he was driving. At four thirty – it was now Wednesday 18 June – his daughter came downstairs.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Sitting,’ he said.
His daughter pushed hard to slide another armchair over in front of the window and sat down too. Then immediately fell back to sleep.
Is this what I’m going to remember? How to tell the difference between birds of prey? He looked at his little girl. Her cheek was still glowing from the touch of the Queen. Hanne Kaan’s cheeks would never glow again for any reason. He stared outside, where it was already light and lines of mist were marking the ditches.
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