‘Who asks the questions around here?’ he said.
‘You do,’ I said.
‘Wrong. God does.’
I had a good think. Had God ever asked me a question? I couldn’t remember one, though I thought of lots of answers to questions people could potentially ask me. Maybe that was why I didn’t hear God.
‘You can hang there until Matthies comes back.’
‘When’s he coming back then?’
‘When your feet are back on the ground.’
I looked down. From my earlier experiences of growing, I knew this could take quite a long time. Dad pretended to leave but came back after a few seconds. My coat zip was digging into my throat painfully, breathing was difficult. I was set back down on the floor and never asked another question about my brother. I deliberately built up a big fine at the library and sometimes read the stories out loud under my duvet in the hope that Matthies could hear them in heaven, ending with a hashtag the way I did when using my Nokia to leave a message for Belle about an important test.
*
I cycle along the dike behind Hanna; her case is on her cargo rack. We pass our neighbour Lien halfway. I try not to look at her son who is sitting on the back of her bike, even though I know I’m not a paedophile. There’s something angelic about him with his blond hair and I love angels, whether they’re older or younger than me. But Granny says you should never leave the fox to watch the geese. Granny doesn’t have a fox or any geese, but I can imagine it not going well if you left the two together. Lien greets us from a distance. She looks worried. Now we have to smile back cheerfully so she doesn’t ask any questions, not to us or our parents.
‘Pretend to be happy,’ I say quietly to Hanna.
‘I’ve forgotten how to.’
‘As though it’s for the school photo.’
‘Oh, right.’
Hanna and I smile our broadest grins, and the corners of my mouth pull. We pass Lien without any difficult questions. I glance back for a moment at her son, suddenly picturing him dangling from the rope in the attic – angels always have to be hung up so that they can spin on their own axis and offer everyone around them the same support. I blink a few times to get rid of the horrible image and think about what Reverend Renkema said last Sunday during the service. It was from Luke: ‘Evil does not enter us from the outside but from the inside. Therein lies our ailment. The tax collector beat his breast and prayed. He beat his breast as though to say: here is the source of all evil.’
I press my fist to my chest for a moment, so hard that all of my body tenses and I begin to lurch on my bike, whispering to myself, ‘Forgive me, God.’ Then I put my hands back on the handlebars to be a good example to Hanna. She’s not allowed to cycle no-handed. When she does, I tell her off, just like how every time a vehicle wants to pass us, I cry ‘Car!’ or ‘Tractor!’
There’s a gap between Hanna’s front teeth like a planting machine. I feel more air enter my tense chest momentarily. Sometimes it’s like there’s a giant sitting on me, and when I hold my breath at night to get closer to Matthies, he sometimes watches from my desk chair, with big eyes like a newborn calf. He encourages me, saying, ‘You have to hold on for longer, much longer.’ Sometimes I think that the Big Friendly Giant has escaped from my book because I once left it open on my bedside table and fell asleep. But this giant isn’t friendly, more angry and domineering. He doesn’t have gills and yet he can hold his breath for ages, sometimes all night.
When we reach the bridge we throw our bikes onto the verge. There’s a wooden sign at the start of the railings that has the following painted on it: ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’ It’s from Peter. There’s an empty chewing gum packet in the grass. Someone wanted to get to the other side with fresh breath. The lake is calm, like a pious face in which no lies can be found. There’s already a thin layer of ice here and there at the water’s edge. I throw a pebble at it. It lands on top of the ice. Hanna steps onto one of the boulders. She puts her case down next to her and stares at the other side, her hand sheltering her eyes.
‘I’ve heard they hide themselves away in pubs.’
‘Who?’ I ask.
‘Men. And you know what they like?’
I don’t reply. Seen from behind, my sister isn’t my sister but someone who could pass for anybody – her dark hair is getting longer. I think she’s deliberately let it grow so long so that Mum has to plait it every day, meaning Mum has to touch her every day. My hair is always fine as it is.
‘Chewing gum that doesn’t lose its taste.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I say.
‘You always have to be sweet and stay sweet.’
‘Or they should chew less.’
‘In any case you mustn’t be too sticky.’
‘Mine always loses its taste really quickly.’
‘But you do chew like a cow.’
I think about Mum. Her jaws chew so much each day, there must be increased tension, and increased tension is a reason to jump off a feed silo, or to break the thermometer Mum uses to measure the temperature of the cheese and swallow the mercury – Dad has been warning us about mercury since we were very small: it would be a fast death, he said. It taught me that you die fast or slowly and that both things have their advantages and disadvantages.
I stand behind Hanna and lay my head against her anorak. She is breathing calmly.
‘When do we leave?’ Hanna asks.
The cold wind blows right through my coat. I shiver.
‘Tomorrow after the coffee break.’
Hanna doesn’t reply.
‘The vet said I was complete,’ I say then.
‘What does he know of those things? He only sees complete animals – the incomplete ones get put down.’ Hanna’s voice suddenly sounds bitter. Is she jealous?
I put my hands on either side of her hips. One push and she’d just topple into the water. I’d be able to see then how Matthies got underwater, how it ever could have happened.
And then I do it. I push her from the boulder into the water and watch her as she gets a ducking before coming back up again spluttering, her eyes wide with fear like two black fishing floats. I shout her name, ‘Hanna, Hanna, Hanna.’ But the wind beats my words onto the boulders. I kneel at the water’s edge to pull her out by her arm. After that nothing is the same any more. I lie on top of my wet sister with my entire weight, repeating, ‘Don’t die, don’t die.’ We don’t get up until the church bell tolls five times. Water drips from my sister from every side. I take her hand and hold it tightly, squeezing it as though it’s a wet dish-cloth. We’re as empty as the Queen Beatrix biscuit tin on the breakfast table we once won on the Postcode Lottery: no one can fill us up. Hanna picks up her overnight case. Her body is shivering as much as the red and white wind sock blowing next to the bridge. I’ve almost forgotten how to cycle, how we’re ever going to get home. I no longer know where we’re going. The Promised Land on the other side has suddenly become a drab postcard.
‘I slipped,’ Hanna says.
I shake my head, hold my fists to my temples and force my knuckles into the skin.
‘Yes, I did,’ Hanna says, ‘that’s the story.’
9
That night my dreams are feverish again, but this time they’re about my sister. She is skating over the lake with her hands behind her back, puffing out clouds. Reverend Renkema has parked his Volkswagen on the side of the ditch with its headlights pointing across the ice. The strip of light indicates how big Hanna’s laps should be. Renkema is sitting on the bonnet in his black vestment, the Bible on his lap. Everything around him is white from snow and ice.
Then the headlights slowly start to move towards me. I’m not a person but a folding chair that has been abandoned next to the jetty. No one needs me any more to hold on to as they skate. My legs are cold to the touch, my back misses hands. Every time Hanna comes past and I hear her skates scraping
the ice, I want to shout to her. But chairs can’t shout. I want to warn her about the treacherous wind holes in the ice but chairs can’t warn people. I want to hold her, press her to my back, take her in my lap. My sister glances at me each time she comes round. Her nose is red and she’s wearing Dad’s ear muffs that we sometimes put on when we’re longing for his hands to be wrapped around our cold heads. I want to tell her how much I love her, so much that my back, the chairback, begins to glow for a moment – the wood becomes warm like after a day of having borne a visitor. But chairs can’t say how much they love someone. And nobody knows it’s me: Jas disguised as a piece of furniture. A little way off, some coots slide past. I’m reassured they don’t sink through the ice, though my sister must weigh about thirty-five coots. When I search the ice again, I see that Hanna has moved outside the strip of light and is disappearing from sight. Renkema begins to toot his horn and flash his headlights. My sister’s yellow knitted hat slowly sinks like the setting sun. I don’t want her to go under. I want to be an ice-pick and bore myself into her, pinning myself to her. I want to save her. But chairs can’t save people. They can only be silent and wait until someone comes to have a rest on them.
10
‘Where you see sticks in the ground, that’s where the mole traps are,’ Dad says, handing me a spade. I take hold of it by its middle. I feel sorry for the moles, falling into traps in the darkness. I’m just like them: during the day it seems to get blacker and blacker, and in the evening I can’t see my hand in front of my eyes. I dig a little around my feet, turning up everything we’ve pushed under the turf. This morning I turned on the globe on my bedside table and there was a brief flash of light before it went pitch black. I pressed the switch again but nothing happened. For a moment the ocean seemed to flow out of the globe – my pyjamas were soaking wet and smelled of piss. I held my breath and thought about Matthies. Forty seconds. Then I let some fresh air in and unscrewed the globe. The bulb still looked perfect. I thought briefly: this is the darkness, the last plague, then we’ll have had them all. I quickly dismissed the idea.
The teacher had been right when she told my mum and dad at parents’ evening that I had an overactive imagination, that I built a Lego world around myself. It was easy to click it together and apart – I determined who was an enemy and who was a friend. She also told them I’d given a Nazi salute at the door to the classroom – I had indeed raised my arm in the air and said ‘Heil Hitler’ as Obbe had told me to. He said it would make the teacher laugh. The teacher didn’t laugh but made me write up lines after school: ‘I shall not mock history, just as I shall not mock God.’ And I thought – you don’t know that I belong to the right side, that Mum is hiding Jewish people in the basement who are allowed to eat sweets, including mini biscuits, and drink an infinite amount of fizzy drinks. I tell her the mini biscuits have two sides: one is chocolate and the other is gingerbread. I’ve got two sides too – I’m both Hitler and a Jew, good and evil. I’d taken off my wet pyjamas in the bathroom and spread them over the floor, which was heated. Wearing clean knickers and my coat, I was leaning against the bath, waiting for them to dry, when the door opened and Obbe came in. He looked at my pyjamas as though a corpse was lying there.
‘Have you pissed your pants?’
I shook my head firmly. I clutched the bulb from the globe tightly in my hand. It was a flat little bulb.
‘No, the water came out of my globe light.’
‘Liar, it didn’t have any water in it.’
‘It did too,’ I said. ‘There are five oceans.’
‘Why does it smell of piss here then?’
‘That’s just what the sea smells like. Fish pee too.’
‘Whatever,’ Obbe said. ‘It’s time for the sacrifice.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I promised him.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘tomorrow’s the day.’ He glanced at my pyjamas again and then said, ‘Otherwise I’ll tell everyone at school that you’re a little piss monster.’ He’d closed the door behind him.
I’d lain flat on my belly on the bathroom floor and practised butterfly stroke, which turned into just moving my crotch against the fluffy mat as though it was my bear, as though I was swimming in the ocean among the fish.
*
I follow Dad into the field. The frost has turned the grass rock hard under my wellies. Since the cows no longer go into it, he’s been checking the traps every day; he’s holding a couple of new ones in his right hand to exchange with the old ones that have clapped shut. When I’m doing my homework, I can see him through my bedroom window often taking the same path across the fields. Some days Mum and Obbe go with him. From above, the land looks just like a ludo board and I feel the same relief when they’re safely back in the farm, in the stables, like pawns. Even though it’s getting more difficult for all of us to be in the same place. Each room in the farm can only tolerate one pawn, and as soon as more come along there’s an argument. Dad will lay his mole traps inside then, too. He hasn’t got anything else to do and sits in his smoking chair all day like a stuffed heron, not saying anything until he can turn us into his prey. Herons love moles. If he does say anything it’s often an interrogation about the Authorized Version. Who lost his hair and therefore all his powers? Who turned into a pillar of salt? Who was swallowed by a whale? Who killed his brother? How many books are there in the New Testament? We avoid the smoking chair as though it’s the plague but sometimes you have to go past it, just before a meal for example, and then Dad keeps on asking questions until the soup’s gone cold and the breadsticks soggy. One wrong answer and you’re sent to your bedroom to reflect on things. Dad doesn’t realize there are already so many things to reflect on, that more keep on turning up, that our bodies are growing and that these contemplations can no longer be switched off with a peppermint, like in the church pew.
‘In the olden days, you used to get a guilder per skin. I’d nail them to a plank to let them dry,’ Dad says. He squats down next to one of the sticks. Now he feeds the moles he catches to the herons behind the cowshed. They dip them in the water first – they can’t swallow them dry – and gulp them down without chewing, as though they’re Dad and God’s word, which slips down in the same way.
‘Yes, kiddo, you have to keep your head doing this – if it claps shut you’ll be as dead as a doornail,’ Dad whispers as he pokes the stick deeper into the ground. Nothing in it. We go to the next trap: again nothing. Moles like to live alone. They go into the darkness alone, like everyone has to fight their dark side in the long run. It’s pitch black more and more often inside my head. Hanna digs herself up from time to time, but I don’t know how to get out of that damned tunnel system where I can block Mum and Dad at every corner, arms like weak springs next to their bodies, trapping them like the rusty mole traps in the shed.
‘Much too cold for those animals,’ Dad says. A drip hangs from his nose. He hasn’t shaved for a few days. There’s a red scratch on his nose where he scraped himself on a branch.
‘Yes, much too cold,’ I agree, pulling up my shoulders like a wind-break.
Dad stares at the sticks in the distance and then suddenly says, ‘People are gossiping about you in the village. About your coat.’
‘What’s wrong with my coat?’
‘Are there molehills growing under it? Is that it?’ Dad grins. I turn red. Belle’s have slowly started to grow now. She showed me in the changing rooms during gym; her nipples were pink and swollen like two marshmallows.
‘Now you,’ she’d said.
I shook my head. ‘Mine grow in the dark, just like cress. You mustn’t disturb them otherwise they’ll get drowsy and go limp.’ She understood, but it wouldn’t be long before she became impatient. Even though Obbe and I had shut her up for a while. She hadn’t told her parents what had happened, because there’d been no angry phone call. Only at school now there was a history book between our tables, like the Berlin Wall. She hadn’t wanted to speak to me since the incident and had lost all interest i
n my collection of milk biscuits.
‘Every healthy girl has molehills,’ Dad says.
He gets to his feet and stands before me. His lips are chapped from the cold. I quickly point at a stick a little way away.
‘I think there’s a mole in that one.’
Dad turns for a moment and peers at the place I pointed out to him. His blond hair has got long, just like mine. It stops just above our shoulders. Normally Mum would have sent us to the hairdresser’s on the square a long time ago. Now she’s forgotten. Or maybe she wants us to be overgrown, for us to slowly disappear like the ivy covering the whole of the front of the house. Then no one will be able to see how little we amount to.
‘Do you think you’ll ever be able to marry before God like that?’
Dad stamps his spade into the earth – one-nil to him. There isn’t a single boy in my class who looks at me. They only point me out when I’m the butt of one of their jokes. Yesterday Pelle had put his hand down his trousers and stuck his finger through the fly.
‘Feel this,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a stiffy.’
Without thinking about it, I’d taken hold of his finger and pinched it. I felt the bones through the thin skin that was yellowish from smoking. The whole class began to whoop. A little bewildered, I’d gone back to my chair next to the window, while the laughing became louder and the Berlin Wall shook in its foundations.
‘I’m never going to get married. I’m going to the other side,’ I say, with my thoughts still in the classroom. It just slips out before I realize. The colour drains from Dad’s face, as though I’ve said the word ‘naked’, which is worse than suggesting we’re talking about developing tits.
The Discomfort of Evening Page 20