June

by Gerbrand Bakker

  ‘How so?’

  ‘N-ow you’ve done this for her?’

  ‘Somebody had to do it. We agreed on it at the get-together.’

  ‘Oh, the zoo. When was that a-gain?’

  ‘A fortnight ago.’ Jan takes the empty bag from his hands and stuffs it into the bucket. ‘What did you tell Mum?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yesterday. On the phone.’

  Yesterday, on the phone. Johan stands still and thinks back to the hall of the house in Schagen, where the phone is. ‘Oh, y-eah. I asked if you were already there.’

  ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

  ‘Well . . . D-ad told me.’

  ‘And nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing else.’

  ‘You must have. She’s up on the straw. You must have said something.’

  Did I say anything else? The hall, the sound of the TV that’s always on in the communal living room, the telephone, his mother’s voice. Johan looks around. What did I say? Then he sees the blue gravel at his feet. ‘Y-es! I w-anted to know where to buy these s-tones!’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She h-ung up.’

  Nature Reserve

  Klaas obeys his mother, but takes his time. After he’s finished breathing in the smell of the inflatable pool, he gets out and pulls his clothes on over his wet underpants. He looks in through the side window. There are still cactuses, just not woolly ones any more. He sends Dieke inside. She doesn’t want to go. ‘You can watch TV,’ he says.

  ‘Can I close the curtains?’ she asks.

  ‘Of course you can. You have to close the curtains, otherwise you won’t see anything except the reflection of the windows.’

  ‘But what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to pick Uncle Jan up from the cemetery. And if all’s well, Uncle Johan will be there too.’

  ‘Uncle Johan!’

  ‘Yep.’

  Dieke disappears inside. Normally he’d take the car like he did earlier in the day, but it was parked in the sun and the shadows have only just crept over it, so he grabs the bike. At his most leisurely, like a little boy sabotaging his mother’s orders, he pedals into the village, greeting people along the way.

  Bloody hell, Johan is there. How could she have known that? His brothers are standing right in front of the grave. Jan with a bucket in his hand, white as white can be. Johan is bare-chested too, but nice and brown, which is quite an achievement for someone with such red hair. What’s the point of that? Klaas wonders. Johan’s hair is thick, long and gleaming. His body is broad and muscular. His teeth are white and his lips are full. Who decided that someone like him should be so good-looking? His youngest brother who, after crashing down from a pile of tree trunks on his KTM, became both uninhibited and slow. They look up when they hear him coming, and all at once he sees what his mother said to him yesterday. ‘You’re all in league with each other. You and your father and Jan. And Johan too.’ He doesn’t understand exactly what she meant, but he sees it, in those two faces turned towards him.

  ‘You p-iss your pants?’ Johan shouts.

  Before looking down at his crotch, Klaas sees familiar names on an old headstone to his left.

  Zeeger Kaan 1858–1917

  Griet Kaan-van Zandwijk 1862–1957

  Why doesn’t Jan paint that stone sometime? Does he even know that this is his great-grandparents’ grave? He walks on and looks down. The shape of his underpants is visible as a wet mark on his jeans. ‘Yes, Johan, I pissed my pants.’

  ‘Ha ha ha,’ goes Johan.

  ‘You back again?’ Jan asks.

  ‘I’ve come to pick you up. Orders from your mother. And Johan has to leave here too.’

  ‘You M-ummy’s little boy again?’ Johan asks.

  Klaas stares at Johan calmly and pulls a crumpled tobacco pouch out of his back pocket.

  His youngest brother looks back equally impassively, if not more, and pulls out his pack of Marlboros. ‘S-moke first,’ he says.

  ‘Sure,’ says Klaas. ‘Always smoke first.’

  ‘You h-ave to take your s-hirt off too.’

  ‘Fine.’ He unbuttons his shirt and drapes it over a grave before rolling a cigarette.

  Johan still has his lighter out and offers him a light.

  ‘Why aren’t you wearing shoes?’

  ‘H-ot. And I’ve got b-listers on my b-loody feet!’

  ‘Did you get the gravel?’

  ‘Y-es.’

  ‘All finished?’

  ‘Y-es.’

  ‘So we’re not going yet?’ asks Jan, who feels excluded because he doesn’t smoke.

  ‘Nope,’ Klaas says. ‘Relax, we’ve got all the time in the world. I do, anyway.’

  The three of them stand there like that for a while: Klaas and Johan smoking, Jan still holding the green bucket. Klaas has another good look at the grave that’s brought them here. The fourth Kaan, his little sister, Dieke’s aunt, his parents’ daughter, lying here under a thin layer of sky-blue gravel with a headstone that should actually have a sign hanging from it, a sign saying WET PAINT.

  Our little sweetheart Hanne 1967-1969

  ‘M-e too,’ says Johan.

  ‘And you?’ Klaas asks Jan.

  ‘Are you bored?’

  ‘Quite.’ Let it go. Don’t take the bait, he thinks. It’s true anyway.

  ‘You’re n-ot going to sell the farm, are you?’ Johan asks.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You bastard! We were b-orn there!’

  ‘Don’t shout. I can’t take all that into account.’

  ‘Of course he’s not going to sell it,’ Jan tells Johan. ‘He can’t, anyway.’

  ‘Oh?’ says Johan.

  ‘No. He’d have to buy us out first.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ says Klaas.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Jan, who then tells Johan, ‘We have a say in it too.’

  ‘Wh-at do you mean?’

  ‘Klaas owes money to Dad, who didn’t just give it all to him. And probably to the bank too?’ Jan studies him.

  Klaas gives a curt nod. He shouldn’t have said he was at a loose end. And now Jan is stirring up Johan. Still, he thinks, it’s all true.

  ‘R-eally?’ says Johan. ‘Were you a-llowed to g-et rid of the cows?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Klaas.

  ‘It’s fine by me,’ says Jan. ‘I’m not stopping you.’

  Enough’s enough. ‘No, you’re on Texel. You’re not here. Why don’t you just mind your own business? Isn’t it really busy over there now? Do you even have time to be here?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘All that land!’ shouts Johan out of nowhere, a sudden spark in his drowsy eyes. He sends the filter of his cigarette flying with a flick of a finger.

  ‘Not that I even have a clue what you do over there on Texel.’

  His brother looks at him and raises his chin a little, probably to say something that’s not true.

  ‘That l-and!’ Johan cries again.

  ‘I don’t do anything there at all,’ Jan says.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘They sacked me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A while ago.’

  ‘Hey!’ Johan shouts. ‘Are you l-istening to me?’

  ‘What is it?’ Klaas asks.

  ‘That l-and, I said!’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Y-ou can do other things with it, too!’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A tree nursery,’ says Jan, relieved.

  ‘Y-es!’

  ‘A Center Parcs holiday village,’ says Jan. ‘With a sub-tropical swimming paradise.’

&nbs
p; ‘Y-es!’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Klaas says. ‘Both of you. You’ve been out in the sun too long.’

  ‘Some thing with f-lowers!’ Johan screams. ‘And then we sell them!’

  ‘Something with flowers? And who’s going to do that?’

  ‘Us! An-d a girl. For in the shop!’

  ‘Or give the land back to nature,’ says Jan.

  ‘F-lowers are better, but n-ature’s good too. With el-der shrubs and those b-ulls and c-ows with big horns.’ Johan scratches his crotch in excitement. ‘And p-aths!’

  ‘Highland cattle,’ Jan says. ‘That bit of land on the other side of the road already borders the wood that guy planted there, what’s-his-name, and if you plant trees and shrubs as well, you can turn it into a nature reserve.’

  ‘Y-es!’ Johan screams. ‘They always have those cows! Tons of them!’

  Klaas looks at his brothers. Paths? Highland cattle? A nature reserve? They don’t have a clue. They’re taking the piss. He stubs out his roll-up on the top of Hanne’s headstone.

  ‘Hey!’ Jan finally puts down his bucket. He brushes the ash off the stone, but can’t get rid of the black spot.

  ‘It’ll be gone the first time it rains.’

  ‘Why’d you do that?’

  ‘Because you two keep nagging.’

  Johan takes a step forward and stubs his cigarette out on the stone as well.

  ‘We’re not n-agging, we’ve got plans!’

  ‘For something that’s no concern of yours.’

  ‘T-oon says I have to do some thing. Work.’

  Jan picks up the bucket. ‘I’m going.’

  ‘Me too,’ says Johan. ‘G-et Mum down off the straw!’

  ‘That’s your job,’ Jan tells Klaas.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘You’re the oldest.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Then you have to do it,’ Jan tells Johan.

  ‘Wh-y?’

  ‘It’s your fault she’s up there.’ Jan walks off.

  Johan follows him. He picks his T-shirt up off the stone Dieke cleaned so thoroughly earlier in the day. ‘W-ait!’ he yells. ‘I s-till have to put on my shoes!’

  Jan waits under the linden, taking his T-shirt off the back of the bench and putting it in the bucket.

  Klaas picks up his shirt but doesn’t put it on yet. The idea of wrapping his body in checked flannel is unbearable. He looks up. The sun really has gone now, the sky is filthy, but not so you can tell what’s going to happen. A thunderstorm? Rain? It doesn’t feel like it, although it’s muggy and still. He waits until Johan has his shoes and socks on and has reached Jan. Jan who already has a slight stoop; Johan, straight, broad-shouldered, an unruly gait. He quickly bends down to the grave and runs a hand over the blue gravel, although it’s already as smooth as they’re going to get it. They’re beautiful, he thinks, the small, brightly coloured stones. Over time, the gravel had grown scruffier and sparser until it was almost all gone. Then he stands up to follow his brothers. Passing the bench he looks up into the linden. A solitary blue tit is sitting on a branch, panting its way through the hot day. Odd, Klaas thinks, you don’t usually see a blue tit by itself.

  Shit

  Now he’s busted. He can’t turn back. Well, he could, but they’d still see him. He heard shouting in the distance but thought it was somewhere off in the village. There’s never anyone here, especially not when it’s hot like today. ‘Wait!’ they shouted, so he’ll just have to stand here, there’s nothing else he can do. What should he do with the bucket? Hold it, hold it tight, it’s his bucket. Can I keep that up? he wonders. He has to. Putting it down would show him up.

  He’s six. Black hair, a fairly sharp, slightly freckled nose and sullen grey eyes that look bright in his dark face. His bike is lying on the ground behind him; there were already two bikes leaning against the trunk of the tree closest to the gate. He is wearing a light-blue T-shirt, shorts and wellies. Plasters on both knees.

  They stand opposite each other: him and three bare-chested men.

  ‘Hello,’ says one of the men after a while.

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Shit.’ There’s no point lying, it’s plain to see. He could have said ‘nothing’ or ‘none of your business’, but that wouldn’t get him very far either.

  ‘What’s your name?’ This time it’s another man who’s asking the question. They’re quite hard to tell apart. Only one of them, the biggest, with the longest hair, is different.

  ‘Leslie.’

  ‘L-eslie? Wh-at kind of name is th-at? Are you from Africa?’

  ‘Africa?’ he says. ‘Why would I be from Africa?’ This guy talks really weird. He looks at the man who said hello to him and gestures at the long-haired one with his thumb. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘What makes you think there’s something wrong with him?’

  ‘He looks a bit slow and talks funny.’

  ‘I never noticed,’ the first one says to the second one.

  ‘Me neither,’ the second one replies.

  The third one takes a step forward. ‘D’you w-ant me to grab you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘O-K.’

  It’s kind of scary, having three big ginger men in front of him. But he’s not going to let it show. He doesn’t care about any of it. It just makes him wish he’d gone to the swimming pool instead. It’s not as if they can do anything to him anyway.

  ‘If you ask me, Leslie’s a friend of Dieke’s,’ says the first one.

  ‘How do you know that?’ he asks.

  ‘And Dieke thought Leslie was at the swimming pool. But it turns out he’s not.’

  ‘No.’ He keeps looking from one to the other. Actually, he thinks they look a bit weird like this. Without tops on. Old men. And one of them is apparently Dieke’s dad. But which one? ‘The pool’s boring,’ he says, for the sake of saying something.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ the second one asks.

  ‘I wanted to make things dirty,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m bored.’ That’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. He started because he wanted to see what would happen. No matter what it was. And there was an article in the paper. About him. Without his name, of course, because nobody knows he’s the one who’s doing it. But still. In the newspaper. His father read it out loud. They called him ‘unknown vandal or vandals’. None of his classmates got called that.

  ‘Where’d you get the cow shit?’

  ‘A field.’

  ‘With your hands?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How come your hands aren’t dirty then?’

  ‘I washed them in a ditch.’ The bucket’s starting to cause problems. He feels a tendon in his arm start to vibrate. But he doesn’t want to put it down. If he does that, he might just as well turn around and walk away. ‘Are you brothers?’

  ‘Yep,’ says the first one. ‘I’m Jan.’

  ‘And I’m Klaas,’ says the second.

  ‘J-ohan,’ says the third.

  ‘Do you live in the village?’ asks the man called Jan.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ Jan asks the man called Klaas.

  ‘I’ve heard the name now and then.’

  ‘I haven’t lived here very long,’ he says.

  ‘Aren’t you scared someone will catch you at it?’ the man called Klaas asks.

  ‘No. Why? There’s never anyone here.’

  ‘Yeah? It’s p-retty busy here today. Are you really called Les-lie?’

  ‘Yes. Is that such a strange name?’ Now it really is time for these questions to stop; more tendons are starting to quiver. He moves th
e bucket to his other hand – why didn’t he think of that before? ‘Is there something wrong with your head or something?’

  ‘Y-es, there’s some thing wrong with my h-ead.’

  Klaas and Jan look at each other. It’s the same kind of look his father and mother give each other before deciding on something he’s not going to like. What were they going to do with him?

  ‘You see that headstone there?’ Jan says.

  He looks in the direction Jan’s pointing. It doesn’t help, the place is full of headstones. ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘Come with us a minute,’ says Klaas.

  They lead the way. The man called Johan stays put. A few yards into the cemetery they point again.

  ‘The tall one, see? With the weeping willow on top of it,’ says Jan.

  ‘Is that her husband’s grave?’ Klaas asks.

  ‘Yep,’ Jan says. ‘Can you see it now?’

  ‘I see it,’ he says.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Klaas says. ‘And if we find out that you smeared shit on any other stones at all, we know your name’s Leslie and it won’t be hard to find you.’

  Now they’re threatening him too. He hesitates.

  ‘Go on.’

  He stares at the men. ‘Don’t think I’m going to do something just cause you want me to.’

  ‘Of course we don’t think that,’ Klaas says.

  ‘No, OK then.’ Now he has to get away. They’re letting him go. He moves the bucket back again and walks over to the headstone the men have pointed out and puts the bucket of cow shit down on the ground. He looks at the writing on the headstone.There aren’t that many letters and he can read it, if slowly. K-e-e-s-G-r-i-n-t. B-a-c-k-H-o-m-e, it says. What’s that supposed to mean? Home? In the ground? As long as they don’t think he’s going to start with them still standing there. Maybe he’ll just go away or choose another stone. No, he’ll wait till they’re gone and then make a run for it through the back gate. Get rid of the bucket somewhere, circle around on the road, pick up his bike and ride home. Or somewhere else. He sees the three men pulling on their tops. He hears them laughing. Are they laughing at him? ‘What a f-unny little kid,’ the man called Johan says loudly. Then he yells ‘Pic-ca-nin-ny!’ at the top of his voice. ‘Will you stop shouting for once?’ says Klaas. Funny little kid? He’ll show them. Piccaninny, is that a swear word? When they turn their backs and disappear through the gate, he plunges his hands deep into the bucket.