Gravel
Shoes off, thinks Johan Kaan. Socks too. And fast. Somewhere, far away, somebody’s making a racket with a machine. In the village there’s a woman riding a bike and a man walking a dog. The man with the dog says something to him, but he doesn’t understand. It’s like he’s speaking a foreign language. There are tables and chairs set up in front of The Arms, nobody on any of the chairs. Three wasps are buzzing around an empty glass on one of the tables. He walks into the cemetery, holding the bag, on this final stretch, clamped against his stomach. It’s so heavy his shoes leave deep grooves in the grit on the paths. He can’t see anybody.
‘Hey! You here for me?’
He looks to the side. His brother emerges from behind a small building. ‘Hel-lo, Jan,’ he says, and stops still. Jan comes over to him. ‘What were you doing there? W-anking?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Why you got a h-ard on then?’
‘I had to piss.’
‘I’m not b-lind, am I? And you’re all wet with sweat.’
‘Water. There’s the tap. What have you got there?’
‘Are y-ou blind? S-tones, can’t you see that?’
‘What for?’
‘I had a hard on yes-terday too. In the living room. And then Toon said, w-ant me to get rid of that for you? You’d be f-ine with that, huh?’
‘Jesus, Johan.’
‘No?’
‘I don’t even know who Toon is.’
‘Y-es, you do. He’s a good looking guy, j-ust your type, and he’s got a v-ery big dick. That’s what you like, isn’t it?’
‘You’ve told me that a hundred times.’
‘See. You do know who he is.’
‘What are you doing with that bag of gravel?’
‘For Han-ne. Here.’ Johan pushes the bag into Jan’s hands. Finally he’s rid of it. He pulls off his T-shirt, rubs his shoulder and scratches his crotch. The gravestones around him are like tiled stoves with heat pouring out of them. ‘Jesus H. Christ! It’s bloody hot!’ He never knows how loud something like that’s going to come out, but at least he doesn’t have any trouble saying it.
‘Keep it down a bit,’ says Jan.
‘Shut your trap.’ Johan walks on. He has no idea how late it is. If he wanted, he could look on the mobile phone clipped to his belt. If he wanted. There’s a bucket on the path near Hanne’s grave. A bucket that reminds him of the car that passed him about an hour ago. Or two hours ago. The bucket’s empty. He sits down on a gravestone and pulls off his shoes and socks. He doesn’t stuff the socks into the shoes, but drops them on the ground under his feet. His brother comes up too, with the bag of gravel. ‘B-eautiful,’ says Johan. ‘V-ery nice. Well done. And al-most finished.’ He waves at the headstone and sees something strange on top of it. ‘What’s that?’
‘An envelope.’
‘Y-es, I can see that.’
His brother picks up the envelope. ‘The baker gave it to me.’
That’s such a mystery to Johan he just ignores it.
‘How did you get here anyway?’ Jan asks, sticking the envelope into the waistband of his shorts, at the back.
‘Walked.’
‘You walked? With that bag?’
‘Y-es.’
‘From Schagen?’
‘Yes. Where else?’ He lies down very carefully, letting each bit of skin get used to the heat first. Then he brushes his long hair out of his face and waggles his feet in the air.
‘Sore?’ Jan asks.
‘And hot.’
‘Should I fill up the bucket?’
‘Yes.’
Jan walks off.
Johan stares up at the milky sky. When did the sun disappear? Before he’s able to come up with an answer, Jan’s back. He puts the bucket down on the path. Johan gets up and leans over it with his hands on the rim and drinks. When he’s finished drinking, he plunges his head into the water. And after he’s slowly lowered himself back down onto the stone he sticks his feet into the bucket. They don’t fit: he can’t put his feet flat. Instead he lets them dangle as loosely as possible, toes on the bottom.
‘Why didn’t you get someone to pick you up?’
‘D-unno.’
‘Did you even try?’
‘Forgot.’
‘Jesus, that bag weighs at least ten kilos.’
‘No, not ten. M-ore.’ He sits up and prises the packet of cigarettes out of his back pocket. It would have been easier if he was still lying down. Jan is standing opposite him; he doesn’t smoke. Klaas does smoke and Klaas’s wife smokes too. He lights a cigarette and looks at his brother. Does he look like me or not? No, I’ve got a lot more hair. But he’s better at thinking. Now he blinks and rubs his stomach. Oh, yeah, I’m not supposed to stare at him. That’s what he told me once. Or was that somebody else? And should I listen to them anyway?
‘Is “Piccaninny black as black” a he or a she?’
Johan keeps his eyes on Jan. He draws on his cigarette and lets the smoke billow back out of his nostrils. Something is floating up to the surface, something from the old days. A cloth on the wall in Hanne’s bedroom. ‘Pic-aninny? Cooking pot? The sun?’ Yes, a big cloth, with bits of mat-erial sewn onto it. With palm trees too. Jan turns around and sits down in front of the small headstone. He takes a brush from a small tin of paint. ‘I’ll w-ait till you’re ready, then we’ll tip in the stones.’ And little black kids. There were little black kids sewn onto the cloth too. Something else comes floating up, which is weird: there’s all kinds of stuff in your head, but it only comes to the surface when somebody else says something. Like a fish hook with a worm on it. ‘Once I pulled a ring off that c-loth. I wanted to give it to Han-ne. And . . . But that r-ing was too big, way too big.’ From the bedroom, long ago, Johan sees himself going into the kitchen. To the windowsill, where there were some scrawny pot plants. ‘Then I s-tuck it in a pot. I pushed down on it until it made a hole in the dirt and then I c-losed it up.’
‘How can you remember that?’ Jan says. ‘You were only four or five.’
‘I r-emember.’ Johan stubs his cigarette out on the stone, next to his knee. ‘I d-ream a lot about the old days.’ He pulls his T-shirt out from where he’s tucked it in under his belt, folds it and lays it down on the gravestone where his head will be if he lies down. Then he lies down. He turns his head slightly and sees a big tree, and when he turns his head a little further he sees a small bench under the tree. He hadn’t noticed that at all. ‘When things were s-till good.’
‘Yeah,’ his brother says. It sounds faint, as if he’s not just a few metres away, but a lot more than a few metres away.
Johan lights another cigarette after having scooped some more water out of the bucket and slurped it down. He tears off the filter; next time he’ll have to buy cigarettes without filters. Or tobacco. Klaas and Klaas’s wife smoke roll-ups. It’s hard though, rolling those fiddly little things. That’s true too. ‘Then I d-ream things like I’m lug-ging Hanne down the hall, but she’s a wo-man and r-eally heavy and I don’t know where I’m sup-posed to take her. So I keep lugging her up and down.’ Jan keeps his back stubbornly turned and doesn’t answer. But of course that’s because he hasn’t asked him anything. ‘H-ave you put on some sun block?’
‘Yes,’ Jan says, running his free hand over his neck. ‘Why?’
‘N-o reason.’ His brother’s neck is bright red. He must feel that? Wait a second: now he also sees three bare bottoms in front of him. Or rather: two bare bottoms. Seeing who’s got the best tan after a day on the beach. Although all three of them are so burnt they won’t sleep well tonight, and maybe longer. Red hair, freckles, sunburn. There’s something else, from around that time. Johan sucks hard on his cigarette. In a foreign language. ‘One small step for man,’ he says. That’s English!
&nbs
p; ‘What?’
‘Around Han-ne. Some body on the m-oon!’
‘Was that in the summer of nineteen sixty-nine?’
‘D-on’t you remember? I can see it in f-ront of me!’
‘We didn’t even have a TV.’
‘We d-id have a TV.’
‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember that at all. Wasn’t it in the middle of the night?’
‘Y-es.’
‘There you go.’
‘I s-till saw it.’
‘Fine. Whatever you say.’
Yes, thinks Johan Kaan. I say. I saw, I remember. He scratches his crotch. I remember! Being burnt, red, itchy, not just from the sun, something else too. He sucks hard on the cigarette again; the harder he sucks, the more he remembers, at least it was like that just now, but the cigarette is almost finished, so he burns his finger. ‘Ow! Jesus!’
‘What?’ Jan has turned around.
‘Nothing. Christ.’ He sticks his hand in the bucket of water.
‘Why are you swearing like that? Now I’ve gone over the edge.’
Johan stands up, walks over to Jan and shoves him out of the way. There’s a white smudge next to a number. There’s all kinds of things lying next to the grave’s raised border. Screwdriver, pieces of worn-down . . . pieces of worn-down . . . well, stuff, sandpaper. And a rag. He twists the corner of the rag into a tight point and pushes the paint carefully but firmly back into the curve of the 6. ‘There,’ he says. ‘No problem.’ He throws the rag down onto the ground and has a good stretch, with his mouth wide open. Then he picks at his belly button. ‘I’m going to sit down on that bench o-ver there.’ He goes over to the bench. ‘Jesus H. Christ, it’s bloody hot!’ As he sits down, he adds something, quietly, as if he doesn’t want Jan to hear. ‘It’s g-oing to r-ain soon.’ He likes the feel of the sharp edges of the shells on his feet, but still brushes them off. Then he picks the remaining pieces of shell out from between his toes. When he’s finished, he casually knocks a dead bird off the bench. He’d already seen it lying there, but needed to get his feet clean first. He looks up into the tree. Sitting on a low branch is a second bird. ‘Oh dear-oh-dear,’ he says quietly. ‘H-ang in there, you.’ He looks back down at the dead bird on the shell path and then his phone rings. He pulls it out of the clip on his belt, looks at the screen and presses the green telephone. ‘Y-es?’ he says.
‘. . .’
‘N-o, Toon, I’m with my little sister.’
‘. . .’
‘I don’t. This one is dead, al-most f-orty years now.’
‘. . .’
‘Jan is here too.’
‘. . .’
‘Texel, y-ep.’
‘. . .’
‘It’s Saturday. Every body’s gone! Why do I need per-mission?’
‘. . .’
‘Y-es, ye-es.’
‘. . .’
‘I dunno. I’ll see.’
‘. . .’
‘Six o’clock? C-an’t make that.’
‘. . .’
‘I will.’
‘. . .’
‘Fuck off!’ He presses the red telephone, checks the time and puts the telephone back in the clip. ‘Toon says hel-lo,’ he calls out to his brother.
Jan stands up and uses the screwdriver to tap the lid back onto the paint tin. ‘Does he know I live on Texel?’
‘Yes.’
Jan gathers up everything and carries it to the path. He takes the bucket, tips out the water and dries it with the rag. Then he puts all the painting gear into it and finally takes the envelope out from under the band of his shorts and puts that in there too. ‘How’s he know that?’
‘I t-alk to him some times, don’t I? He really does have a v-ery big dick.’
‘You told me. Anyway how do you know?’
‘I’m not b-lind! How many times do I have to tell you?’
‘Keep it down, will you?’ Jan comes over to the bench.
‘You have to visit some time.’
‘And what makes you think I like big dicks?’
‘You’re a poofter, aren’t you? They like them.’
‘Oh.’
‘You have to visit me some time.’
‘Hey, what happened here?’ Jan picks the dead bird up from the path.
‘That s-parrow’s dead. It was lying on the bench here.’
‘It’s not a sparrow, it’s a blue tit.’
‘It’s s-till dead.’
Jan looks at the dead bird, takes a couple of steps towards the tall hedge and hurls it over. They hear a splash. ‘Apple cores, banana peels, a dead bird,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
Sometimes Johan thinks his big brother isn’t altogether right in the head. Banana peels? Where? Jan sits down next to him and he looks at him. Jan doesn’t look back. First he looks up at the bird that’s still alive, then he looks at a hole in the hedge opposite the hedge the dead bird disappeared behind.
‘What did this Toon guy want?’
‘He said I’m not al-lowed to be here.’
‘And now?’
‘N-othing.’ Johan worms the packet of cigarettes up out of his back pocket again. ‘He says he knows you. Toon.’ He lights a de-filtered cigarette.
‘I don’t know any Toons.’
‘How come you don’t have a b-oy friend?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If you ask me, you m-ust be about f-orty five.’
‘Yep, about that.’
‘It’s b-eautiful weather, you should be sunbathing on the n-udist beach with a nice b-loke. But, no, his lord ship is sitting in a b-oiling church yard.’
‘Cemetery.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. You don’t have a girlfriend either.’
‘No, but . . .’ If Jan is about forty-five, then I’m, then I’m . . . a couple of years younger, thinks Johan. He sucks on his cigarette and blows out a cloud of smoke that only slowly rises. He sees himself standing next to his mother in a flower shop. Grandfather Kaan was dead and they needed to order a bunch of flowers from the grandchildren. The girl in the flower shop had gulped, he’d noticed that. His mother had asked him what to write on the ribbon. Something like, ‘Thanks, Grandpa, see you later,’ he’d said, but he wasn’t thinking about it and he wasn’t looking at the flowers either. He was looking at the girl. He sucked hard on his cigarette again. ‘Nice,’ his mother had said, but he’d scratched his dick – now, here, he sees it clear as day in front of him – and the girl turned red. He didn’t want to do it, but it happened, his hand did something, as if it had a mind of its own. What a beautiful girl she was. And her gulping and turning red, that must have had something to do with him. He must have been the reason. But they placed the order and his mother left the shop and he followed her. Jan coughs and slides back and forth on the bench. Oh yeah, he was saying something, something about . . . ‘But it’s r-ight, isn’t it? You coming here to p-aint the head stone. There’s no n-eed.’
His big brother stands up and pulls off his T-shirt. He hangs it over the back of the bench and walks back to the bag of gravel.
‘Jan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Am I u-gly?’
Jan turns around. ‘No, Johan. You’re not ugly. Far from it.’
‘Far from it,’ says Johan. That girl should have . . . No, he should have gone back to pick up the flowers. But when had his mother done that? How was he supposed to know? Couldn’t she have rung him up? But I can do it myself, he thinks. I can go back to the flower shop myself, can’t I? But it’s already . . . ‘How long’s G-randpa been dead?’ he asks.
‘About ten years.’
‘Ten.’ That’s a lo
ng time, thinks Johan. Is that shop even there any more? He throws the butt away, jumps up and strides over to the bag of gravel, pushes his brother aside, tears the bag open in a single movement, picks it up and walks over to the grave.
‘Slowly!’ Jan cries. ‘That paint’s still wet, don’t make too much dust.’
There’s something else he wants to say, from before the girl in the flower shop butted in. He has to retrace his steps: Grandfather Kaan, the flower-shop girl, banana peels. ‘A-ny way, I knew it was a blue tit. I know a lot a-bout birds.’
‘I know that, Johan. You were just joking.’
‘Yes, j-oking.’ He empties the bag within the upright border of the grave. While smoothing out the pebbles with one hand he feels Jan’s arm against his. ‘Do you feel better?’ he asks. Now he feels Jan’s hand too, bumping into his own while brushing over the gravel.
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