Dieke sticks her rod through the railing of the bridge and bends over the bucket. ‘I can’t count them, they won’t stay still.’
Klaas looks in the bucket too and starts to count out loud.
Zeeger Kaan has stopped listening. He looks at the sky. He can see a lot more of it now: looking west towards the village, at least half of the horizon is open again. A strange sky. It’s like a sea mist hanging over the land, which is something you almost never see in June. You get that kind of thing in August and usually it cools off immediately, unlike now. There doesn’t look to be any rain on the way, no rumbling in the distance either. He thinks of Anna. Soon everyone will leave again. He doesn’t want to be alone in the house, to have to go to bed alone. Just before dumping the chips in the fryer he’d hung the parade sword back up on the two hooks under the bookshelf. An ugly thing, really, but what can you do: an heirloom from some uncle or other who’d stood guard in front of an important building. He can’t imagine why Anna took it up with her.
‘Thirteen,’ says Klaas. ‘I’ve got two.’
‘F-our,’ says Johan.
He’s caught one himself. ‘You, Jan?’
‘Just the one. But a very big one.’
‘Then you’ve got five, Diek,’ says Klaas.
‘Does that make me the winner?’
‘If we stop now it does.’
‘N-o!’ cries Johan.
‘Why isn’t Mum fishing?’ Dieke asks.
‘Your mother thinks fish are slimy,’ Klaas says.
Zeeger looks at the farmhouse. Klaas’s wife is standing at the kitchen window with a tea towel in one hand. Isn’t that the second time he’s seen that today? A little further along, the old Barbary duck comes out through the side doors of the barn. Halfway across the yard it takes flight. That surprises Zeeger, who thought it was well past flying. The duck lands awkwardly in the ditch near Rekel, who finally looks up and barks.
‘Hey!’ Johan yells. ‘You’re s-caring the fish!’
Jan raises his rod, fiddles the worm off the hook and winds the line around a spool.
‘Had enough?’ Zeeger asks.
‘I want to go home.’
‘Home?’ Klaas asks. ‘But you’ve –’
‘Shut your trap,’ says Jan.
Rekel barks again. The Barbary duck swims in circles and hisses. It doesn’t mean anything. Zeeger once saw them in the yard with Rekel lying stretched out while the duck put on a courtship display for him. Rekel probably thinks the duck’s a dog and the duck probably thinks Rekel is a duck. By the sound of it, Dirk has banged his head against the bars of the bullpen again.
‘I want to go home,’ his second son says again. He looks at Klaas and rubs his forehead, back and forth over the mosquito bite Zeeger saw this morning. He’s still only wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
‘N-ow it’s no fun any more,’ Johan says.
‘Then I’m the winner!’ Dieke cries.
Jan walks over to the barn, goes inside and comes back out a little later with the green bucket. He stayed inside longer than necessary. He rummages through the bucket on the way back and pulls out something. Is that an envelope?
‘D’you get a letter?’ Zeeger asks.
‘Y-es,’ says Johan. ‘From the baker.’
‘The baker? Blom?’
‘Yeah,’ says Jan. ‘I’ll put all this away and then get changed.’ He walks over to the side door with Johan behind him.
‘Well done, Dieke,’ says Klaas, who leaves too.
Dieke has already forgotten her victory. She leans on the middle rail of the bridge and stares big-eyed at the gas well.
‘Something interesting down there?’ he asks.
‘I can see the bogeyman,’ she says. ‘He’s breathing.’
Straw
She really cannot remember why she was running so late. It doesn’t matter. Jan and Johan had already left for school, and would go to the Polder House from there. Klaas was already gone too. She’d been left behind with Hanne. Zeeger was working. Was that the day Hanne put her little hand in the empty apple-sauce tin with the razor-sharp lid still attached? When she’d had to hunt for iodine and plasters and scissors? When she’d had to comfort her? No, that was earlier. Why was I so late? But if I’d been on time, the Queen wouldn’t have touched Hanne or spoken to me.
It’s getting more and more difficult to think straight. The creaking and groaning, the sliding in the silo, the marching borers and woodworms, and the restless crashing of that superfluous lump of meat make it almost impossible. And the cold. She can’t understand where that’s coming from, she doesn’t have the impression the weather’s suddenly turned. If she’d known, thinks Anna Kaan. If she’d known that the child whose cheek she’d stroked after lunch would be dead that afternoon. But she was already in Anna Paulowna by then, and the next day she was on Texel. Noises make their way in from outside, where they are now fishing. She’s lying on her back with her arms by her sides, the straw has moulded itself completely to her body, not a single snapped stalk is poking her in the back. I want to go to the beach tomorrow, she thinks. Go to the beach again after all this time, and Zeeger’s coming with me, whether he wants to or not. Maybe Rie and Jenneke will be there too. Zeeger in the blue swimming trunks that are so old they’re almost disintegrating. Floating in the sea on my back with my toes sticking up out of the water. Just like I’m lying here now, but flapping my hands. I’ll try to lure Rekel into the water. It’s strange, Rekel doesn’t like salt water. I want to clean the old toilet bowl in the cowshed too, she thinks, and tear off the old calendar pages while I’m at it, so it’s today there too. ‘Rekel, here, boy!’ she hears Zeeger call. But Rekel won’t come. Besides disliking salt water he also hates fishing.
Only the empty biscuit packet is lying next to her now. And the ladder, of course. I can go down now, she thinks. Without a word – or maybe just a ‘See?’ to Johan and a quick dirty look at Jan – then cross the bridge and make some coffee. Slice some gingerbread cake. Coffee and gingerbread cake to round off the fishing. Then everyone can go home. Turn on the telly. Feed Rekel, hoping that Zeeger won’t ask or say too much.
When she tries to sit up, she can’t manage it. The cold has crept up through her arms and legs, numbing her limbs. She no longer feels like steak, cold water or crispy-fresh French beans. ‘N-o!’ she hears Johan shout. No? No, what? Then she doesn’t seem to hear anything at all for a while, until Rekel suddenly starts barking. I was too late, my bike fell down. Back home, I carried a basket full of washing out into the yard from the milking parlour. Clothes and sheets, washed in the Miele. It was quiet on the other side of the ditch: the labourer, his wife and two children were on holiday. I hung up Zeeger’s underpants with the pegs and thought, he buys a new radio and a new camera, he gets a new bulk tank and a new pipeline installed, but new underpants never occur to him. He was hammering away upstairs. Jan and Johan were at the swimming pool. Klaas might have been at home. Hanne was playing in the living room. I called out to her when I went into the kitchen. ‘Ah,’ I heard from the living room, so I went to check on her after all. She was kneeling down at the glass-topped table, scribbling on the back of a piece of wallpaper with two felt tips at once. She’d already forgotten about the Queen, she didn’t even know who the Queen was. Tinus was lying next to her, all four legs stretched out. I almost said, ‘Don’t lean too hard,’ because we’d already replaced the glass four times. A big mistake, that table – how are kids supposed to know how fragile a sheet of glass is? I walked back to the kitchen, got a mixing bowl out of a cupboard, shook a packet of flour into it, poured in some milk, broke a few eggs into the mix and added a couple of pinches of salt. A Saturday dinner. Because it felt like a Saturday.
The packet of butter on the sink, the frying pan on the stove, all much too early, but I couldn’t sit still. The Queen spoke to me, I thought,
covering the pancake batter with a tea towel. I wanted to keep it to myself. For me and Hanne. I thought I’d seen the baker scuttling around. With a camera? It was high time he came, we were almost out of bread. An hour later, or two, he finally showed up. And left again, and how on earth did Hanne and Tinus get out? I heard it. I heard a car, a bang and then the brakes. I had to go out to see what it was. Zeeger was busy hammering and sawing, he didn’t hear a thing. The baker. Everywhere that whole day long, the baker. I’d planned to tell them about the Queen later, maybe that evening over the pancakes. But then it was already too late.
The creaking and groaning has grown duller, the cobwebs woollier, Dirk’s thudding muffled. It’s inside of me after all, she thinks, that creaking and groaning. I’ll . . . Shall I call out? She tries to open her mouth but her lips feel stiff. She wants to run her fingers over her mouth to rub them and manages to lift one arm. The elbow bends, the hand flops down onto her stomach. She’s able to stroke herself lightly with her fingers; scratching is beyond her, let alone lifting her arm up again. The rectangle – the hole directly overhead with however many tiles to the right of it and a few more to the left, she counted them not long ago – no longer gives her a view of the outside world. Yellow, she thinks. Rain, after all? A real drop, after all?
Someone comes into the barn, she hears them despite the muffling of her ears. ‘Mum?’ she hears, even though she needs to summon all her strength to make out the word. Jan. No, wait, she thinks as the cold reaches her shoulders and pelvis, there’s something I have to tell him. I don’t want to let him go like this. She pricks up her ears, ignoring all the other noises. ‘I’m off.’ He leaves. Then all of the dead appear. Griet Kaan first, in her three-quarter bed, the fire cold, the paraffin lamp empty, the Frisian clock that won’t stop ticking, Zeeger who’s ignoring her; her parents and parents-in-law, she sees their eyes, sees them walking and riding their bicycles, eating cake on birthdays, hospital beds, flowers; she sees time too, racing by, the unbearable duration of a human life, but also the little things, seemingly insignificant, and through it all everyone’s eyes; then someone must have turned on the radio because she hears ‘Oh Happy Day’ and instead of Hanne, who should appear too, Anna Kaan sees the hanging, the enormous wall hanging her mother-in-law made – it hung in the children’s room for years, with palm trees made of green felt, cooking pots, Piccaninnies with real rings in their ears – and, although the cold has now reached her midriff, her lethargic brain starts wondering where on earth that hanging’s got to; the old Queen’s empty study, her legs suddenly buckling when the tour guide said ‘Juliana lay in state here’; and now she adds something to those images she saw earlier of girls making preserves and the boys from nearby farms: all dead – grandparents, parents, girls, farmhands – now she feels that this barn, this place once smelled of fresh wood, of resin, that countless people who can no longer walk have walked here, and that she is a part of that countlessness; and then back to the borers and the woodworms, seething and teeming without a sound. It gets quiet, very quiet, no dog, no Barbary duck, no husband and no children, beyond the dead, the light coming in through the three round windows at the front of the barn, very vague thoughts like Did I really just knock back a whole bottle of advocaat? and Gravel? You buy that at a garden centre, where else?; the rectangle in the tile roof – she can no longer move her head – changes from yellow to white, the cold that has crept from her toes and fingertips into her core seems to be trying to get out again through her nose, slowly, more and more slowly, and changes from cold to smell, as if that’s ultimately the most important thing, overshadowing everything else, and now it turns sweet.
As sweet as autumn.
Stewed pears.
Is that it?
The smell of stewed pears, in June?
Toasting
‘Dinie,’ he says simply.
‘Herm,’ says the cemetery caretaker. ‘Come in.’
He steps into the hall, puts his stick in the umbrella stand and walks through to the living room. The dog doesn’t look up, but thumps the rug once with its bushy tail. The beast pants and drools. As usual the place is spotless. He glances at the photo of Dinie’s late husband as if asking his permission to come in and sit down at his wife’s dinner table and, later, possibly – it’s something he can never count on – kiss her and lie down next to her in bed. Dinie follows him into the living room and closes the lace curtains. She does it every time and the baker’s never mentioned it, though he wonders why she doesn’t do it before he arrives. The table is already set, as tastefully as ever, with a runner, silver cutlery, crystal wine glasses. Wine. He thinks of the three glasses of lemon brandy he’s already knocked back. It will probably be white wine, lightly sparkling, he likes that and so does Dinie. He’s put on a clean shirt, but the armpits already feel damp. The window behind the lace curtains is a single large pane, without any small windows above it or to the side to let in some fresh air. Not that there’s much difference today, inside or out, it might even be cooler inside.
‘I’ll serve dinner straight away,’ Dinie says. ‘It’s all ready.’
He sits down on the chair that gives him a partial view out onto the street through the lace curtains.
‘Take your jacket off, for goodness’ sake. It’s stifling in here.’ She sets the dish of potatoes down on the table and walks back to the kitchen.
He half rises and worms his arms out of the jacket before hanging it over the back of his chair. He was right: now that the shirt has been strangely twisted by his contortions, a wet spot has appeared over his breastbone.
Dinie brings in a dish of runner beans and two plates with two beef olives on each. ‘God, I’ve forgotten the wine.’ And she’s gone again. The dog doesn’t seem interested in the food. The baker sucks up the smell of the beef olives. It’s been the kind of day he forgets to eat. Not counting breakfast, but that seems a lifetime ago. Dinie returns with a bottle of wine – white, because it’s in a cooler.
‘Delicious,’ he says.
‘You can’t say that yet.’
‘Knowing you.’
‘Bon appétit.’ She fills the two wine glasses
Before starting on his meal, he raises his glass and looks at her. ‘To?’
‘You tell me.’
‘To today.’
‘Has it been a good day?’
‘I’m not sure yet. I think so.’ The shell grit hurt, but that was superficial. Now the pain is deeper, in his kneecaps, which feel numb and hard. Less stiff now after the short walk from his house to Dinie’s, but he’d needed to use his walking stick again.
She doesn’t ask for details. Or what’s happened. She drinks her wine almost grimly. ‘I’m glad it’s over.’
‘Whoa, not so fast, there’s a lot to go yet.’
Dinner
Soon he’ll ask why, that’s the kind of man he is. Herm Blom. Retired baker. A baker with a past. She studies him over the rim of her wine glass. An old man with a dry neck. Dry from shaving day in, day out. She never looked at Herm Blom the way she looked at Albert Waiboer almost forty years and a few hours ago. Herm Blom was always delivering bread, and if he wasn’t delivering it, he was baking it. She never saw him in his trunks at the swimming pool with a firm young body. Sometimes when he’s lying next to her in the double bed in the dark and she’s in the mood she can guide her hands with thoughts of someone else. She coughs, glugs down the last mouthful of wine and refills their glasses, although Herm’s was only half empty. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she asks.
‘What, the wine? It’s fine. Refreshing.’
The beans are fine too, fresh, and the potatoes are just right, but she can’t enjoy it. Her visits to the cemetery have left a bitter taste in her mouth that even the juicy beef olives can’t displace. And this morning she had that bitter taste too of course, after the Negro . . . She hacks off a piece of beef olive, shoves it into her
mouth and chews fiercely. In a while, after dinner, she wants to suggest a stroll to the baker, a stroll that will include the cemetery. She wants to see what’s happened there, she doesn’t trust those redheads. She definitely wants to be the last person to visit the cemetery today.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Huh?’
‘To make you wish the day was already over?’
‘Ah, nothing special. You get days like that.’
‘Yes.’
They eat their meal in silence. After clearing the table and rinsing the plates and cutlery, she returns to the living room with two apples and two oranges. While she peels the first apple, Herm drains his glass. She quarters the apple, removes the core and hands him a piece. He should stay the night, she thinks.
‘I’m thinking of getting a dog,’ he says.
‘A dog? You? I’ve never seen you so much as touch Benno.’
‘Benno’s not the kind of dog I’m thinking of.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
Ridiculous. Herm with a dog. It’ll be the death of him. A broken hip first and then downhill from there. She pops the last quarter in her mouth and starts to peel the second apple.
‘That son of yours,’ he says.
The continuous strip of apple peel breaks. ‘Yes?’ she asks warily.
‘Where’s he live?’
‘What makes you think of my son all of a sudden?’
‘This afternoon I was looking at the photos I took on the day of the Queen’s visit.’
‘Oh, yes. When was that again?’
‘The seventeenth of June, nineteen sixty-nine.’
‘Almost forty years ago.’
‘Your son was in them too. Teun, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. I don’t have any photos of that at all. I know she was here, but I had to work. The swimming pool didn’t close just because the Queen was coming. Some people wanted to enjoy a quiet swim for a change. Maybe my husband took Teun.’
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