That was how his wife found him, after she too had come downstairs. She came over to stand behind his chair.
Their daughter woke up. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
His wife told her what had happened.
‘I have to go there,’ the baker said. He thought of his van. Just thinking of the smell of new leather and fresh bread made him feel sick. He saw himself making the journey to the Kaans’ on his bike.
‘Not now,’ his wife said.
‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Not now.’
Yes, he thinks, a dog. A schnauzer maybe. He looks at the photo in his hand. Finally he wants to go. He doesn’t want to go. He puts it off.
Piccaninny
‘What’s that?’
Uncle Jan feels his forehead. ‘A mosquito bite, I think,’ he says.
‘Oh.’ It really is starting to get a bit boring here. The bucket’s empty again and Dieke doesn’t feel like asking Uncle Jan to fill it up. She doesn’t feel like doing it herself either, because then she’d have to think way too hard about which way to turn the tap off. The wet rag isn’t wet any more, it’s draped over a stone where it dried in a couple of minutes; she could see it getting lighter and lighter before her eyes. She walks around Uncle Jan until she’s standing right behind him. Unbothered, he keeps filling in the letters with white paint. He’s already finished one word and started on the next. There’s a bald spot on the back of his head. No, not bald, it just has less hair than the rest of his head. His T-shirt is still damp. Because it’s rolled up, of course. Her father doesn’t have a bald spot like that. Uncle Jan hasn’t said a word for a long time and now she has to do her best to follow what he’s saying.
‘Do you think it’s boring not having cows any more?’
At least he’s talking again. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like cows.’
‘Don’t you want to be a farmer when you grow up?’
‘Me? Of course not!’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know how to drive a tractor.’
‘You could learn.’
‘No, not me.’
‘Even I can drive a tractor.’
‘Really? Without a driving licence?’
‘On Texel, I drive one of those little tractors.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t count.’
He draws the brush back out of a letter, dips it in the paint and starts on the next one.
‘What letter’s that?’
‘This is an “l”. It says “little”. An “l” is easy, but the “e” is quite difficult.’
Dieke sighs. Very deeply.
‘Or would you rather work at a butcher’s? Like your mum?’
‘No, it’s smelly there.’
‘What do you want to be then?’
‘A painter.’
‘Like what I’m doing now?’
‘No. Paintings.’
‘Fancy.’
She sighs again and goes for a little walk. It’s like she can hear the noise from the swimming pool, far away in the distance. Shouting. What’s Evelien doing now? Is it no fun at the swimming pool because she, Dieke, isn’t there? Or is she not thinking of her at all and floating around next to Leslie with her water wings on? Maybe Leslie’s not thinking about her either? No, Leslie’s probably not at the pool anyway. When she arrives at the bench and sees her bag, she wonders what’s happened to her cup. Uncle Jan was going to fill it up again, wasn’t he? ‘Where’s my cup?’ she bawls.
It takes a while before the answer comes. ‘It’s still over at the tool shed.’
Oh no, does she have to walk all the way over there again? It really is boiling. She kicks the shell grit up as she goes. At the little house it’s a teensy bit cooler. The Jip and Janneke drinking cup is under the tap, but when she picks it up her arm feels funny, because the cup is still empty. ‘Ow,’ she says softly. And now? She walks a little bit further and looks around the corner of the house, where she finds a box, a fairly solid box. She picks it up, goes back to the front and puts it down on its side under the small window. Now she hardly needs to pull herself up on the ledge at all: the box is a lot higher than the bucket. There’s the bird. It’s spinning around in a very slow circle. What kind of bird was it again? A magpie. The kind of bird grandpa catches in a steel cage that’s already got one inside it. The decoy bird, that’s what Grandpa calls the other magpie. The bird spins back in the other direction, even more slowly. It’s dead. Dead as dead. But still moving. Otherwise there’s not much inside the little house. She can see a few shovels, some fence posts, a big wooden hammer and a kind of table with handles sticking out. She looks more closely at the magpie, sees that its legs are tied together, and follows the string up to the beam where it’s looped around a nail. Then she jumps down off the box, brushes the dust off the front of her dress and kneels down at the tap. First turn it on a tiny little bit, and then turn it off again straight away. Then a bit more and remember, with her hand on the tap, which direction’s off. When the cup is overflowing, she turns it off, clockwise, without having to think about it any more.
‘But you could marry a farmer instead. Then he’d drive the tractor.’
‘Nope,’ she says.
‘OK,’ says Uncle Jan. ‘I won’t mention it again.’
‘We have to leave.’
‘The farm?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who says so?’
‘Mum. She says the house is falling apart.’
‘Is that so?’
‘One day a bit of the balcony fell off.’
‘That’s dangerous.’
‘No it’s not. Nobody ever goes out on the balcony!’
‘Would you like to try to do some painting?’
‘After a drink.’ She drinks half the cup in one go. It would have tasted a lot better if Uncle Jan had said something about it. Oh well. She’s a bit scared to say that she wants to leave. She puts the cup down next to the grave and steps up onto the scraggly pebbles. Uncle Jan hands her the brush. Kneeling down, she notices that her hand is shaking. Quickly, she stands up again. ‘It’s too scary.’
‘That’s OK. I’ll do it.’
He picks her up under the arms and lifts her over to the dry earth next to the grave. Yes, she really does want to go now and she’s starting to get hungry too. A banana and an apple, that’s not enough to keep you going. Uncle Jan is sitting down again, painting again, he’s started humming. She wants to go so much, she wouldn’t care even if it was Grandma who came to take her back home. Then Uncle Jan starts singing.
‘Piccaninny, black as black, took a walk without a hat, but the sun shone bright and yella, so he put up his umbrella.’ He finishes a letter and starts on the next one without looking up. ‘Do you know that song?’
‘Nope.’
‘It’s about a little black boy.’
‘Leslie?’
‘Is he in your class at school?’
‘Yep.’
‘Then it’s about Leslie.’
‘He’s at the pool now. I think. Evelien too.’
‘And maybe now you wouldn’t mind heading over there too?’
‘Mm,’ she says. ‘Leslie’s got a really big dad.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Big. Tall.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yep.’ Dieke starts singing softly and drawing circles in the shell grit with the toe of her sandal.
‘I think Grandpa will come soon. Then you can go home with him.’
‘Hm,’ she says.
Gravel
The guy from the garden centre had asked him something really hard. Something about surfaces. So much by so much, so he could work it out for him. ‘N-ormal,’ Johan Kaan had said. ‘What fits o
n t-op of a little kid.’ After that it took a very long time before the garden-centre guy had figured it out, and after that, they had to fill a bag, separately and just for him, because they didn’t usually stock the kind of stones he wanted in bags. He had money, yes, of course he had money. Otherwise you can’t buy anything. ‘D-you think I’m c-razy or what?’ The guy had started speaking slower and slower – slower and louder.
Now he’s walking down long straight roads with the bag on his shoulder: first one shoulder then the next, sometimes draped across both on the back of his neck and, when it gets too much, very briefly clamped to his stomach. He doesn’t know how heavy the bag is, he’s forgotten what the guy said in the end, but it’s just as well, because what difference does it make – a number, an amount – if you still have to carry the bag? It’s really quiet, except for just now, on the stretch of bike track right after the white bridge over the canal, where a few cars passed him. He knows these long straight roads, and that one winding road before the white bridge too. He knows where the junctions and bends are, he knows the roadside ditches like the back of his hand. In the old days, yeah, in the old days, he’d ride long stretches with his eyes shut, keeping it up as long as he could, and then a bit longer. The Zündapp between his legs like a . . . well, like a moped. Since the day he turned sixteen, he hadn’t ridden a bicycle once. Out drinking in Schagen: sober on the way there, drunk home. He knows the roads in storms and in hail, misty, hot and cold, under a full moon, with the tang of ditchwater in spring, the sour smell of poplar leaves in autumn, a hint of metal when it rained (was that the Zündapp or did the rain itself smell of metal?), a sense of animals resting in the dark (along the winding road there were always sheep). And belting along, always. Never going off the road, never smashing into the rail when he crossed the white bridge they repainted every five years, never ending up in a ditch. No, not until he started jumping with as much control as possible over cars and tree trunks and slabs of . . .
He starts singing. Very loudly. There was something in his head just now that needed drowning out. The bright-blue stones are leaving dents in his flesh; that helps too. Along the side of the road are a few big trees, with yellow dots painted on two of them. Between the big ones there are smaller ones with shrivelled brown leaves. It’s getting too heavy, he has to put the bag down for a moment. Next to a causeway gate he takes off his trainers and sits down on the end of a culvert that runs under the causeway. He sees steam rising from his bare feet. In his head. He’s stopped singing and for a second forgets where he’s going. He pulls a pack of Marlboros out of the back pocket of his cut-off jeans; the cigarettes are squashed flat, but unbroken. On his right is the road, with patches of melted tar; on his left a field, two birds with long curved beaks walking in it. They pretend they haven’t noticed him. ‘Currrr-lew!’ he calls, and even then they don’t take off. Stupid things. Or is it too hot to fly today?
Today. Isn’t it today that Jan . . . ? He thinks. He tries to think. He pictures Toon. Maybe that will help him get the day worked out. Did Toon say something before he left? No, because he made sure Toon didn’t see him go. He draws on the cigarette. He slaps the soles of his feet against the water in the farm ditch. Jan lives on Texel, he thinks. Boat. Seagulls. The cigarette’s finished, he draws on it once too often, the filthy taste of the filter gets stuck in his mouth. He slides down off the culvert and stands up to his thighs in the water, which was clear, but isn’t any more. He scoops up some water and uses it to rinse out his mouth. The filter taste is gone. Climbing back up out of the ditch he kicks the sludge off one foot and then the other, then uses his white socks to dry carefully between his toes before putting them back on, filthy and damp. Shoes too, and then he has an elaborate scratch of the crotch, it’s all a bit sweaty down there. Bag back on his shoulder. ‘Currr-lew!’ he calls again and walks on, in the middle of the road. A few minutes later a car beeps him over to the side. It’s like a giant apple driving past; never before has he seen a car this colour, a strange kind of green, it hurts his eyes. The car doesn’t brake; it wouldn’t have occurred to the driver to give him a lift. Johan Kaan rests his free shoulder against the trunk of an old elm. He looks up. Dead, he thinks. ‘Stone dead!’ he shouts.
Ledge
Yes, the red beech has had it. The tree is just short of a hundred. Probably planted in 1912, just after the farmhouse was built, in the middle of the newly sown lawn. Directly in front of the blind door and the balcony over it. Zeeger Kaan looks at the tree through a kitchen window that gets no sun, because of the three chestnuts he planted in his own lawn. One of which is already showing signs of that new disease, bleeding dark sap from little holes. What’s it all about? he wonders. All these diseases trees get? What purpose do they serve? Shall I ride or drive? Taking the bike is good for his knees, but the car’s better on a day like today, it’s got air conditioning.
While backing up the drive a little absent-mindedly – earlier that day he hadn’t seen a soul on the road – he has to suddenly brake hard for a car that’s going at least thirty kilometres an hour over the limit. Stunned, he follows the green blur with his eyes. What kind of idiot buys a car that colour? He himself drives calmly up the road in the settling dust. In the village he slows down even more. Here and there he raises an index finger to people painting their eaves or letting out the dog, the odd cyclist. It’s only when parking the car next to the Polder House that he starts to notice the air conditioning. Stupid, he thinks, painting eaves in weather like this. They’ll have blisters in the fresh paint by evening.
‘Hey, Grandpa!’
‘Hi, Diek,’ he calls.
‘We’re over here!’
‘I see you.’ Dieke is standing on the path at the entrance to the new part of the cemetery. Every time he comes here it seems smaller and more cramped. Jan is sitting in front of the headstone. He’s finished Our little and is already working on the s of sweetheart. ‘It’s coming along.’
‘Yep,’ says his son.
‘Hungry?’
‘Nah.’
‘Dieke! You hungry?’
‘Yes,’ Dieke shouts. ‘Grandpa,’ she then adds, as if she hasn’t said hello to him yet, ‘come and have a look here.’
He walks away from his son. Dieke shouldn’t stay out in the sun much longer, her arms are already turning red. She points. Three large herring gulls are standing in a circle and stamping on the dry grass, staring down at their feet. They want worms, but on a day like today they’ll be waiting a long time. Even the red dots on their yellow beaks – here it is, come and get it – won’t lure any worms up. ‘Gulls on land, storm on strand,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘It’s a saying.’ He looks to the west. The hazy air is advancing, the sun no longer quite as bright.
Dieke whispers something.
‘What’d you say, Diek?’
‘I’d like to go home after all.’
‘Then you can come with me in a minute, OK?’
‘OK.’ They walk back together, holding hands. When they reach Jan, Dieke lets go of his hand and carries on to the bench under the linden. She picks up her cup and starts to drink. ‘Phew,’ she says, screwing the lid back on the cup.
‘That cuttlebone . . .’ Jan says.
‘What about it?’
‘What’s it for?’
‘To get it nice and clean.’
‘It’s useless. The stone’s way too rough.’
‘OK, we know that for next time then.’
Jan pulls the brush back out of the w and looks at him. After a while he says, ‘Yep.’
It’s not always easy, watching your children. They resemble you so much. Sometimes they come so close it’s frightening. Jan especially can get a look in his eye that makes Zeeger Kaan feel quite uncomfortable.
‘There’s an auntie of mine over there,’ Dieke yells from her bench. ‘Under the ground.�
��
Sometimes their faces merge and he’ll suddenly see Jan in Klaas, or Klaas in Jan, and have to close his eyes to get it right again. At other times he’ll see himself, and that gets stronger as they grow older: bags under their eyes, lines at the sides of their mouths, creases in their foreheads. Not with Johan of course, he’s the exception to every rule. Since the accident he’s developed into the best-looking Kaan by far.
‘Is “Piccaninny black as black” a boy or a girl?’
He looks away, opens his mouth to answer his son, then closes it again and hums until he gets up to ‘so she put up her umbrella’. ‘She,’ he says. ‘She’s a girl.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yep.’
‘Hey!’ Dieke yells. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Sure. Is it warm enough for you?’
‘Warm’s not the right word,’ Jan says.
‘I think it’ll be better tomorrow.’
‘I won’t be here tomorrow.’
‘We’re going fishing tonight!’ Dieke calls.
‘You don’t even have a rod,’ says Zeeger Kaan.
‘You do!’
‘Careful, that “e” isn’t going right.’
Jan stands up to hand him the brush.
‘No.’
‘Yes. Go ahead.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘Maybe you can do it better yourself.’
‘No.’ He pushes his son’s hand away.
‘What are you doing?’ Dieke calls.
‘My knees hurt.’
Jan lowers himself back down until he’s sitting on the gravel with his legs either side of the raised edges. ‘You asked me to do it. If you go on at me like that, I’ll just stop.’
‘OK,’ says Zeeger Kaan. It’s true, he thinks. I did ask him. He’s the best painter, he does the maintenance on all those holiday homes over on Texel, and he always used to criticise me when I was painting. And rightly so, I loathed all that scraping and sanding. But I never painted full in the sun.
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