June

by Gerbrand Bakker

  Jan followed in Teun’s footsteps, climbing over fences and walking past sheep that turned their heads away, but kept chewing their cud and didn’t run off down the dyke. As the crow flies, he was at most three kilometres from home, but it felt like a foreign country. After walking for some time they reached the lake but Teun kept going, along the top of the dyke.

  ‘How do we get into the water?’ Jan asked.

  ‘A bit further along there’s a place without reeds.’

  Jan was scared that he wouldn’t be able to swim any more, that his certificates weren’t valid here. There weren’t any duckboards to climb up on in the Pishoek. And his swimming trunks were rolled up in the damp towel in his swimming bag, and the swimming bag was on a big armchair at Teun’s house.

  Teun took off his clothes and threw them down in a heap. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  Jan waited until Teun was in the water before taking off his own clothes.

  It wasn’t deep and the bottom was like zone three in the swimming pool, a thin layer of gunk oozing up between his toes like custard. Teun swam to a red post that stuck up above the surface to mark the waterway for boats coming from the canal.

  ‘Can you stand there?’

  ‘No. But you can hold on to the post.’

  Together they hung on to the waterway marker and gently trod water, their knees bumping against the post and each other’s. Jan did his best to look around. It was quiet, no barges sailing past and no waterbirds nearby. Lots of water in all directions, bordered by reeds everywhere. Deep water, as Jan imagined it, especially in the channel whose edge was invisible because of the lake all around it. Teun let his hand slide down the post until it was touching Jan’s hand. ‘I want to go back now,’ Jan said.

  ‘OK.’

  A brace of ducks coming in to land were startled by the swimming boys and flew up again. Teun swam faster than Jan, spitting out mouthfuls of water the whole time. Sometimes he waited briefly, floating on his back. Jan took his time, following. He didn’t have much to say and let Teun do the talking. He hardly knew Teun’s voice. It had all started during the Queen’s visit, with that hand taking hold of his. Jan still felt its pressure, now that he was pushing the water of the Pishoek to the side and back and making such slow progress. He remembered how he had stood there that day. Grandpa Kaan had taken photos, even though he hadn’t seen him there at all. Tummy pushed forward, a scowl on his face. ‘I hope the Queen didn’t look in your direction right then,’ Grandpa Kaan said later. ‘Otherwise she would have said something. She’s like that.’ Sulking and angry, because of the baker’s daughter and the butcher’s son. And he was still sulking later when Hanne was run over and killed.

  When Jan climbed up onto land through the gap in the reeds, Teun was lying on the slope of the dyke with his head resting on his hands. ‘There you are,’ he said.

  June, July, August. Yellow dress, the baker, a doorjamb without a door. Flowers for the Queen. Foreign country, here. Uncle Aris, the fly strip over the kitchen table, Auntie Tinie, Grandmother Kaan as a toppling heron, the window with the crack in it in the bedroom that wasn’t a bedroom any more. Teun in his yellow swimming trunks, the raised knee. Sulking and cross, while Hanne was run over and killed.

  Jan reached Teun and started to cry.

  Teun sat up and grabbed him by his calf. ‘Jan,’ he said.

  Jan started crying even louder, he couldn’t understand where it was coming from. He didn’t mind. Jan, Teun had said. That was him. Jan. He wasn’t ashamed of crying, he wasn’t ashamed when he grabbed Teun’s hand. A big hand, with strong fingers, short nails that even long afternoons of soaking in the swimming pool hadn’t cleaned of the remnants of dirt from the technical-college practical week.

  Half an hour later the brace of ducks landed after all, or maybe they were different ducks. The birds weren’t bothered by the boys, who were apparently less frightening lying on the dyke than they had been swimming near the post.

  ‘What were you crying about?’ Teun asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jan said. The back of his throat was itching, it was a feeling he knew from the days he sometimes lay down next to a calf and let it lick him with its rough tongue.

  The next day Jan lay down in a different part of the swimming pool for the first time. There were two other year-six boys there. Peter wasn’t there, he didn’t have a girlfriend. Jan tried not to look over to the narrow strip of grass where he’d lain before. Things were very different here with the girls. When Yvonne got out of the water, using the ladder, she gave him a little kiss. He gave her a little kiss back, while keeping his eye on the diving board over her shoulder. Maybe he’d go back to the dyke later in the afternoon. Or tomorrow, or next week. He stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. He listened to the noise around him, which sounded just that little bit different from here. Strange, those girl kisses: so light, so easy. So girly. Teun’s mother was busy and didn’t have time to turn the volume dial to the left. ‘All lovers make, make the same mistakes, yes they do. Yes, all lovers make, make the same mistakes as me and you.’ A whiny bloody song.

  Some days Jan took a detour on his bike. Never in the morning, because in the mornings he was always standing on the Kruisweg corner waiting for the large group heading from the village to Schagen. Like birds or cows, they sought cover and safety in numbers, cycling the ten kilometres to Schagen in a long column. In the afternoon he sometimes took a detour; there wasn’t a big group then because not everyone went to the same school. It was at least two kilometres further to go through the village, but he didn’t care. It led him past Teun’s.

  There, in the cramped attic above the garage, was a pile of burlap bags. The smell was faintly reminiscent of the big barn where the Wool Federation collected the wool once a year. On a day that was usually warm, all the farmers who kept sheep would come with trailers full of wool to be pressed into bales by a big machine. It wasn’t warm now. September, October. The garage attic couldn’t possibly smell of sheep’s wool, Jan knew that too, but the smell still hung there. If Teun could smell like fresh hay, which he sometimes did, the attic could also smell of wool. Now and then it smelled like wet dog instead, when it was damp from rain or mist or sweat.

  Sometime that autumn Teun’s mother’s head popped up through the trapdoor opening. There was nothing he could do about it. Just lie there calmly, acting as if he wasn’t there, hoping nobody would say anything, while inside his head he couldn’t avoid hearing an annoying ‘Ah, if it’s not the Kaan boys’. Somehow she had looked at him as if that was what she was thinking and, for the first time, the ticket lady and Teun’s mother really were one and the same person. Her face turned red, all at once, and slowly retreated back down again, until he had a more or less free view of the open trapdoor. It seemed to take minutes, but that was an illusion. He didn’t have the impression Teun had noticed anything at all.

  It happened over a weekend. One Friday in winter he came by and pretended not to be looking in, as if he couldn’t see the little attic window above the garage. It was easy enough, he knew when he and Teun would be seeing each other again. The Monday that followed he was able to look straight through the house at the sheep in the fields behind it; he could even see the north dyke in the distance, despite the drizzle. There were no curtains up, the windowsill was bare, the lightshades had disappeared. Big holes in the front garden – they’d even dug up the perennials. The swing-up door to the garage was open, it was horribly empty. The window above it looked as if it had been cleaned, but that must have been his imagination.

  ‘Now I’m going to run,’ Brecht Koomen says. The train still looks like it’s been hijacked, the door is still open. She starts to hurry over to it. ‘Are you coming?’ she asks, without looking back.

  ‘Yes,’ the man says.

  Just before jumping the ditch, she sees the woman who was fanning herself with the magazine standing at a window with both hands u
p against the sides of her face to block out the light. ‘I’m coming,’ Brecht calls, as if the woman has beckoned her, as if she could somehow hold back the train if it started to move right now. She tosses her bag over the ditch. The Rubettes pops into her mind. She reserves judgement on whether or not it was a whiny bloody song. Either way, she never liked it. She jumps, lands well and walks across the gravel to the door with her arms stretched out in front of her. When she puts her hands on the floor of the vestibule the PA starts to hiss.

  Waiting

  ‘I’m t-aking off my T-shirt,’ says Johan.

  ‘Then I will too,’ says Toon.

  They’re sitting on the last bench on Platform 1, a good distance from a group of passengers on the opposite platform. The train the other people got out of has been stopped for a long time; every few minutes there’s an announcement about an obstruction further up ahead. It’s been raining for a while. Not hard, but fat drops have started to fall from the crown of the elm behind the bench. On their shoulders. The platform lights are on.

  ‘N-ice,’ says Johan.

  ‘Yes,’ says Toon.

  ‘Ob-struction?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on either. They never say.’

  ‘But this way too?’

  ‘It’s a single track between here and Anna Paulowna.’

  ‘He’s s-till coming though.’

  ‘Of course he is. And if he doesn’t come now, he’ll come some other time.’

  ‘Attention all passengers, because of an obstruction between Schagen and Anna Paulowna, trains are not currently running. It could take some time for this to be rectified. Please keep listening to these announcements, we will provide more information as soon as possible.’

  Yells and swearing from across the track. ‘Bring in a bus, then!’ someone shouts. There are other people who are almost undressed too, mostly young.

  ‘You really don’t know, do you?’ Toon asks, looking at Johan. Long wet hair, gleaming shoulders, big hands resting on his thighs.

  ‘T-eun?’

  ‘That’s right. From the swimming pool.’

  ‘But why are you called Toon now?’

  ‘Yeah . . . There was a time I thought that if you changed your name you automatically became someone else. My mother thinks names are very important.’

  ‘Some one else?’

  ‘I used to know you Kaans very well. And then we moved. I know you from the old days too.’

  ‘Yeah? I don’t know you. I d-idn’t know you.’

  ‘That’s because of your accident, I think.’

  ‘But J-an knows you?’

  ‘Be funny if he didn’t. But what he doesn’t know is that I’m me.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Across the track a group of young people have started chanting, ‘Bus, bus, bus. Now, now, now.’

  ‘Do you remember the Queen’s visit?’

  ‘Wh-ere?’

  ‘To the village.’

  ‘N-o.’

  ‘The Queen came in . . . June nineteen sixty-nine . . .’

  ‘Just before the man on the moon!’

  ‘Yep. How come you remember that? I helped Jan then. I held his hand.’

  ‘Wh-y? Was he s-cared?’

  ‘No. He was angry. Your mother wasn’t there. He was all alone.’

  ‘J-ust like that?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you ever have that? A sudden urge to grab hold of someone?’

  ‘All the time,’ Johan says. ‘F-lower girl.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Once I w-anted to g-rab a flower girl.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘No.’ Johan looks down at his hands.

  It’s getting busier and busier on Platform 1. The red letters indicating the length of the delay disappear. Then all the place names and the departure time rattle out of sight and exactly the same place names reappear with a new departure time. ‘They’ve just cancelled a whole fucking train!’ a girl swears.

  Teun wraps an arm around Johan Kaan’s shoulders and pulls him closer. ‘And that same day your little sister died.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Johan. ‘But n-ow she’s got pretty s-tones. B-lue. And Jan made the letters white.’

  Teun licks the rainwater off his upper lip and thinks about his yellow swimming trunks, and then about his mother, who couldn’t understand why he didn’t want a new pair. Because of his mother, he thinks of his father’s grave, wondering if he should go there tomorrow morning to clean it himself. The diving board. His diving board. Johan stares across the track, a deep groove over his nose.

  ‘Poofters!’ someone shouts from the other side.

  ‘Shut your trap!’ Johan screams.

  ‘Easy,’ says Teun.

  ‘I’m no p-oofter,’ says Johan.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘D-irty bastard.’

  ‘Shall I let go of you then?’

  ‘N-o.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Attention all passengers, the obstruction between Anna Paulowna and Schagen has been resolved. The delayed train to Amsterdam and Arnhem will enter the station in several minutes. The delayed train in the direction of Den Helder will depart after the arrival of the previously mentioned train.’

  ‘Phew,’ says Johan. ‘F-inally.’

  Headlines

  ‘If it were up to me, Brouwer, we wouldn’t be mooring just yet.’

  The captain shrugs and looks back. ‘Unfortunately, it’s not up to you.’

  ‘No,’ the Queen says. ‘You are absolutely right there.’

  It’s a little colder than yesterday. There was a passing shower during the short crossing of the Marsdiep, but the sun is shining again now. The Piet Hein will arrive at ’t Horntje in plenty of time, wisps of brass-band music are already reaching them over the waves. Not a moment’s peace. Röell and Jezuolda Kwanten are sitting in the saloon, two deckhands are already standing on the fo’c’sle. Ten minutes ago, Röell was already huffing with today’s documentation on her knees. The others crossed on the ferry. Pappie didn’t come and Van der Hoeven spent the night somewhere else. If everything goes according to plan, he’ll be standing on the Ministry dock with Beelaerts van Blokland. Dierx will be joining them today too. She had a restless night, as she often does after eating in restaurants; she has the impression it’s caused by the butter or oil they use. She hadn’t had much of an appetite anyway, after visiting the fish market. Tossing and turning, she’d kept thinking about the square that bore her name, the one with the theatre on it. Rarely had she seen such an ugly, impersonal square, and lying awake in her bunk she couldn’t help but be annoyed about it. Surely it’s almost a snub, naming something like that after her?

  The Queen excused herself from the greater part of the fireworks that followed the dinner at the Bellevue Hotel. Röell and Kwanten did the honours and only people with binoculars would have seen that she was no longer on deck.

  The island looks like a photograph in a travel brochure, but those photographs never smell of fish. She turns and goes down into the saloon. One more day and things will be quiet again for a while. Rather than these work visits, she much prefers receiving people herself at Soestdijk.

  ‘Programme?’ Röell asks.

  ‘Go ahead,’ she says.

  ‘Arrival nine forty a.m.’

  The Queen looks at the brass clock. ‘We have a little time then.’

  ‘Shall we go through the details now?’

  ‘What’s he called?’

  ‘Sprenger. Flowers will be presented by Janneke Harting, ten-year-old daughter of the district head of the Ministry of Waterways and Public Works.’

  ‘Yesterday I received flowers from the baker’s daughter and the butcher’s son.�
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  ‘And?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  Röell starts huffing again.

  No, thinks the Queen, this is the last time I’m putting myself through this. Next time, Van der Hoeven.

  ‘After that, we’ll drive to the mussel-seed farm.’

  ‘God Almighty,’ she mumbles. ‘On an almost empty stomach. With a whole day to go.’ She sees a few newspapers on the gleaming tabletop, sits down and pulls them over.

  ‘Are you going to read the paper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the programme?’

  ‘We’ll be in the car the whole time. You can fill me in as we go.’ Ignoring Röell, who is angrily stuffing the papers into her handbag, she unfolds the newspaper.

  Although the Piet Hein has a sharp bow, the swell is very noticeable. Jezuolda Kwanten holds the edge of the table tightly. The Schagen Courier and the North Holland Daily. Before she has a chance to study the pictures on the front pages, the headlines leap out at her. Spontaneous character plays havoc with schedule. Great enthusiasm in the Head of North Holland. And, as expected: Queen cuddles pygmy goats. Almost all of the photographs show her walking, one foot in front of the other. She races through column after column of newspaper prose. ‘Look,’ she tells the sister, ‘here’s a long piece about you.’