The Discomfort of Evening

by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

  ‘Anyone who gets it in their head one day to brave the bridge will never return,’ he says in a loud voice. Ever since that first day when Matthies didn’t come home, he’s been warning us and making the city out as a slurry pit that would suck you down if you went into it, and intoxicate you.

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ I say in a whisper, ‘I wasn’t thinking about what I said.’

  ‘You know how things ended for your brother. Do you want that too?’ He pulls his spade out of the ground and walks away from me, giving the wind the chance to come between us. Dad squats next to the last trap.

  ‘Tomorrow you’ll take your coat off. I’ll burn it and we won’t mention the matter again,’ he cries.

  Suddenly I picture Dad’s body between the blades of a mole trap, us sticking a branch in next to his head so that we know where the pawn died. Rinsing the trap with the garden hose in the barrel in the rabbit shed, I shake my head to get rid of the nasty image. I’m not afraid of molehills but I am afraid of the darkness they grow in.

  We return to the farm without any loot. On the way back, he whacks some of the molehills with the spade to flatten then.

  ‘Sometimes it’s good to frighten them a bit,’ Dad says, following this with, ‘Do you want to be as flat as your mother?’

  I think about Mum’s breasts, which are as slack as two collection bags in the church. ‘That’s because she doesn’t eat,’ I say.

  ‘She’s full of worries, there’s no space left for anything else.’

  ‘Why has she got worries?’

  Dad doesn’t reply. I know it’s got something to do with us, that we can never act normally – even when we try to be normal we disappoint, as though we’re the wrong variety, like this year’s potatoes. Mum thought they were too crumbly and then too waxy. I don’t dare say anything about the toads under my desk and that they’re about to mate. I know it’s going to happen and then they’ll start eating again and everything will be all right.

  ‘If you take your coat off, she’ll fill out again.’ Dad gives me a sideways glance. He attempts to smile but the corners of his mouth seem frozen. I feel big for a moment. Big people smile at each other, they understand each other, even when they don’t understand themselves. I lay my hand on my coat’s zip. When Dad looks away, I pick some snot from my nose with my other hand and put it in my mouth.

  ‘I can’t take my coat off without getting sick.’

  ‘Do you want to make us look like twits? You’ll be the death of us with that funny behaviour of yours. Tomorrow it’s coming off.’

  I slow my pace until I’m walking behind him and look at Dad’s back. He’s wearing a red jacket and has a trapper’s pouch on his back. No moles in it or anything else. The grass crackles under his feet.

  ‘I don’t want you to die,’ I scream into the wind. Dad doesn’t hear. The mole traps he’s carrying in his hand gently knock against each other in the wind.

  11

  The toads’ heads rest on the surface like floating sprouts. I cautiously use my index finger to push the plumper of the two down in the milk pan I’ve secretly taken from the kitchen, until it plops up again. They’re too weak to swim, but floating is going well.

  ‘Just one more day and then we’ll leave for good,’ I tell them, getting them out of the water. I dab their bobbly skin dry with a stripy red sock. I can hear Mum shouting downstairs. She and Dad are arguing because one of their old milk customers has complained to the congregation. This time not about the milk that was too pale or too watery, but about us, the three kings. I look pale in particular and my eyes are a bit watery. Mum said that it was Dad’s fault, that he didn’t give us any attention, and Dad said that it was Mum’s fault because she didn’t give us any attention. After that they both started threatening to leave but that turned out to be impossible: only one person could pack their bags at a time, one only person could be mourned at a time, and only one person could come back later and act like nothing had happened. Now they’re arguing about who’s going to leave. Secretly I hope it’s Dad because he usually comes back around coffee time. He gets a headache if he doesn’t drink coffee. I’m not so sure about Mum: we can’t tempt her back with sweets. We have to beg her and make ourselves vulnerable. It seems they’re moving further and further apart. Like when they cycle over the dike to the Reformed church on Sundays, and Mum goes faster and faster and Dad keeps having to close the gap. It goes the same way with arguments – Dad has to solve them.

  ‘They’re going to take my coat off me tomorrow,’ I whisper.

  The toads blink, as though they’re shocked by this announcement.

  ‘I think I’m just like Samson, though my strength isn’t in my hair but in my coat. Without my coat I’ll be Death’s slave, do you get that?’

  I get up and hide the wet sock under my bed with the wet knickers. I put the toads in my coat pocket and go to Hanna’s room. The door is open a chink. She’s lying with her back to it. I go inside and lay my hand under her nightdress on her bare back. Her skin has goose bumps – it feels like a Lego sheet. I could click myself onto it and never let go again. Hanna turns over sleepily. I tell her about the moles and Dad saying I have to take off my coat, about the argument, them threatening to leave, always threatening to leave.

  ‘We’ll be orphans,’ I say.

  Hanna is only half listening. I see in her eyes that her thoughts are somewhere else. It makes me nervous. Usually we roam around the farmyard when we’re together. We think of escape routes, we fantasize about better lives and pretend the world is like The Sims.

  ‘Has a mole trap gone off or is the mercury out of the thermometer?’

  Hanna doesn’t reply. She lights up my face with the torch; I hold my arm in front of my eyes. Can’t she see we’re not doing very well? We’re slowly floating away from Mum and Dad on a lily-pad instead of the other way around. Death hasn’t only entered Mum and Dad but is also inside us – it will always look for a body or an animal and it won’t rest until it’s got hold of something. We could just as easily pick a different ending, different from what we know from books.

  ‘I heard yesterday that you can fantasize yourself dead, that more and more holes will appear in you because it will nag away at you until you break. It’s better to break by just trying it – that’s less painful.’ My sister brings her face close to mine. ‘There are people waiting on the other side who can only lie on top of you in the dark, like the way night presses day to the ground, only nicer. And then they move their hips. You know, the way rabbits do. After that, you’re a woman of the world and you can grow your hair as long as Rapunzel in her tower. And you can become anything you like. Anything.’ Hanna begins to breathe faster. My cheeks grow warm. I watch as she lays the torch on the pillow and lifts up her nightdress with one hand. She pushes against her colourful spotted underpants with the other. She closes her eyes, her mouth open slightly. Her fingers move against her knickers. I don’t dare move when Hanna starts to moan and her little body curls like a wounded animal. She pushes it backwards and forwards a bit, the way I do with my teddy bear, only this is different. I don’t know what she’s thinking about, only that she’s not longing for a Discman or thinking about mating toads. What is she thinking about then? I pick up the torch from the pillow and shine it on her. There are a few droplets of sweat on her forehead, like condensation from a body that has got too warm in a space that is naturally cold. I don’t know whether I should rush to her assistance, whether she’s in pain or whether I should fetch Dad from downstairs because Hanna’s feverish, maybe even hitting forty degrees.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ I whisper.

  Her eyes are glassy. I see she’s somewhere that I’m not, just like that time with the can of Coke. It makes me nervous. We’re always together.

  ‘Naked man,’ she says.

  ‘Where did you see him then?’

  ‘In Van Luik’s shop, the magazines.’

  ‘We’re not allowed there. Did you buy Fireballs? The hot one
s?’

  Hanna doesn’t answer and I begin to worry. She raises her chin, squeezes her eyes shut, sinks her teeth into her bottom lip, groans again and then lets herself fall back onto the bed, next to me. She’s covered in sweat – a lock of hair is sticking to the side of her face. It looks like she’s in pain but also isn’t. I try to think of explanations for her behaviour. Is this because I pushed her into the water? Will she break out of her skin like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon and then batter herself to death against the window, against the insides of Obbe’s hands? I want to tell her I’m sorry, I hadn’t meant it that way when I pushed her into the lake. I wanted to see how Matthies sunk under the water, but Hanna’s body wasn’t my brother’s. How could I ever have got them confused? I want to tell her about the nightmare and ask her to promise never to skate on the lake, now that winter is coming to the village on a sled. But Hanna looks happy, and just as I’m about to turn away from her angrily, I hear the familiar crackle. She takes two red Fireballs from the pocket of her nightdress. We lie next to each other, contentedly sucking and blowing and laughing at each other when our Fireballs get too hot. Hanna presses against me. I hear the sitting room door slam next to us, Mum’s crying. Apart from that it’s quiet. I used to sometimes hear Dad’s hand patting her back like a carpet beater to get out everything she’d inhaled during the day: all that greyness, the dust of days, layers of sadness. But the carpet beater has been missing for a long time.

  Hanna blows a big bubble. It pops.

  ‘What were you doing just now?’ I ask.

  ‘No idea,’ she says. ‘It’s just been coming over me recently. Don’t tell Mum and Dad, will you?’

  ‘No,’ I say softly, ‘of course not. I’ll pray for you.’

  ‘Thank you. You’re the sweetest sister.’

  12

  When I wake up my plans always seem bigger, just like how humans are bigger in the morning because of the moisture in your intervertebral discs which makes you a couple of centimetres taller. We’re going to the other side today. I don’t know if that’s why I’m feeling strange and everything around me seems darker. Obbe and I stand behind the cowshed as the first snow falls on us, fat flakes sticking to our cheeks, as though God is sprinkling icing sugar the way Mum did over the first doughnuts of the season this morning. The grease drips from the corners of your mouth when you sink your teeth into them. Mum was early this year – she’d fried them herself and built up in three layers in a milk pail: doughnuts, kitchen roll paper, apple fritters. She took two full buckets to the basement, to the Jewish people, because they deserved a new year too. Her fingers were totally bent after peeling the apples for the fritters.

  Obbe’s hair is white with snow. He promised that if I make a sacrifice he won’t tell anyone that I still wet the bed, so the Day of Judgement can be delayed. He’s taken one of the cockerels from the coop. Dad is so proud of the creature, sometimes he says, ‘As proud as a cow with seven udders.’ This is because of its bright red saddle feathers and green hackle feathers, its large earlobes and shiny comb. The cock is the only being that has remained unaffected by everything and now parades around the farmyard, its chest thrust out. It’s calmly watching us now with leaden eyes. I feel the toads moving in my coat pocket. I hope they don’t catch a chill. I should have put them inside a glove.

  ‘You can stop once it’s crowed three times,’ Obbe says.

  He hands me the hammer. I clench its handle for the second time. I think about Mum and Dad, about Dieuwertje, my brother Matthies, my body filled with green soap, God and his absence, the stone in Mum’s belly, the star we can’t find, my coat that has to come off, the cheese scoop in the dead cow. It crows once before the claw hammer sticks into its flesh and the cockerel lies dead on the flagstones. My mum made me smash my piggy bank with that hammer. Now it’s blood not money that comes out. It’s the first time I’ve killed an animal with my own hands – before this I was just an accessory. When I once stood on a spider in Granny’s sheltered housing that didn’t have a shelter, Granny said, ‘Death is a process that disintegrates into actions and actions into phases. Death never just happens to you, there is always something that causes it. This time it was you. You can kill too.’ Granny was right. My tears begin to melt the snowflakes on my cheeks. My shoulders jerk irregularly. I try to hold still but don’t manage it.

  Obbe casually pulls the hammer out of the cockerel’s flesh and rinses it under the tap next to the cowshed, saying, ‘You’re really sick. You did it too.’ Then he turns around, picks up the cockerel by its legs, and walks toward the fields with its head dangling softer back and forth in the wind. I look at my shaking hands. I’ve made myself small in shock and when I stand up again, it’s as though there are split pins in my joints that keep everything connected but also moving independently. And all of a sudden a magpie moth flutters around me, black patches like spilled ink on its wings. I guess it has escaped from Obbe’s collection. It’s the only possibility; you don’t see butterflies or moths in December – they hibernate. I catch it in my palms and hold it to my ear. You’re not allowed to touch anything of Obbe’s, not his hair or his toys, otherwise he gets furious and begins to swear. You’re not even allowed to touch the crown of his head, while he presses on it the whole time himself. I hear the moth fluttering in panic against the inside of my hands and clench them into a fist, as though holding a scrap piece of paper with irreverent words on it. Silence.

  Only the violence inside me makes noise. It grows and grows, just like sadness. Only sadness needs more space, like Belle said, and violence just takes it. I let the dead moth fall out of my hands and into the snow. I slide a fresh layer over it with my welly: it’s an icy grave. Angrily I punch the shed wall, skinning my knuckles. I clench my jaw and look at the stalls. It won’t be long before they’re filled again – my parents are waiting for the new stock. Dad has even given the feed silo a new lick of paint. I’m worried it will stand out too much and attract Mum, a glimmer in her death wish. The problem is it’s going to seem as though everything has gone back to normal, as though everyone is just continuing with their lives after Matthies and the foot-and-mouth. Except for me. Maybe a longing for death is infectious, or it jumps to the next head – mine – just like the lice in Hanna’s class. I let myself fall back into the snow, spread my arms and move them up and down. I’d give a lot to be able to rise up now, to be made of porcelain and for someone to drop me by accident so that I’d break into countless pieces and someone would see that I was broken, that I can no longer be of any use, like those damned angels wrapped in silver paper. The clouds coming from my mouth lessen. I can still feel the hammer’s handle in the flesh of my palms, hear the cock crowing. ‘Thou shalt not kill nor avenge thyself.’ I took revenge and that can only mean one more plague.

  I suddenly feel two hands under my armpits and I’m lifted to my feet. When I turn around Dad is standing before me – his black beret isn’t black but white. He slowly raises his hand to my cheek. For a moment I think we’re going to start slapping our hands like at the cattle market, that we’ll assess my meat as healthy or sick, but his fingers curl and stroke my cheek so fleetingly that I wonder afterwards whether it actually happened and whether I haven’t invented a hand made of our misty breath from the cold, that it was only the wind. Trembling, I stare at the blood patch in the yard, but Dad doesn’t see it, and the snow slowly hides the death.

  ‘Go inside. I’ll come and take off your coat in a moment,’ Dad says, as he walks to the side of the shed to work the beet crusher. He turns the handle firmly – the rusty wheel squeaks as it turns, bits of sugar beet fly around him, most of them landing in the metal basket. They’re for the rabbits – they love them. As I walk away, I leave a trail behind in the snow. My hope that someone will find me is growing steadily. Someone to help me find myself and to say: cold, cold, lukewarm, warm, getting warmer, hot.

  When Obbe comes back from the fields, there’s nothing noticeable about him. His back to Dad, he stop
s in front of me, puts his hand on my coat zip and roughly jerks it upwards, catching the skin of my chin. I scream and step backward. I carefully pull the zip down again and touch the painful patch of skin, abraded by the metal hooks of the zip.

  ‘That’s what betrayal feels like, and this is just the beginning. You’ll be in for it if you tell Dad that it was my idea,’ Obbe whispers. He makes a cutting gesture across his throat with his finger before turning around and holding up a hand to greet Dad. He is allowed into the cowshed with him. For the first time in ages, Dad is going back into the place where all his cows were exterminated. He doesn’t ask whether I’d like to join them and leaves me behind in the cold, bits of skin stuck in the zip and one cheek burning from his touch. I should have showed my other cheek, like Jesus, to see whether he meant it. I walk back towards the farm and see Hanna rolling a ball of snow.

  ‘There’s a giant sitting on my chest,’ I say once I reach her. She pauses and looks up, her nose red from the freezing cold. She’s wearing Matthies’s blue mittens the vet had brought with him from the lake, and which lay defrosting on a plate behind the stove like pieces of meat for the evening meal. My brother had thought it childish that Mum had tied a string to them because she was worried he’d lose them, and frozen fingers were the worst thing, she said, not thinking about a heart that stayed cold for too long and how bad that was.

  ‘What’s the giant doing there?’ Hanna asks.

  ‘Just sitting there, being heavy.’

  ‘How long’s he been there?’

  ‘Quite a long time, but this time he’s refusing to get off again. He arrived when Obbe went into the cowshed with Dad.’