Authors: Gerbrand Bakker

The Twin (18 page)

'He can't walk.'

'No?'

'No.' I can tell from the look of him that he's too scared to come in. It's his room, with his things in it. His eyes keep returning to the packet of cigarettes. It must be at least two hours since he's had a smoke.

'Maybe I should get moving then,' I say.

'May I . . .'

'It's your room, isn't it?'

'You're lying on my bed.'

'That's true.'

He comes in, picks the cigarettes up off the bedside cabinet, takes one out and lights it. I sit up straight and swing my legs off the bed.

'Are you going to do the yearlings?'

'Of course.'

'And are you going to help me tomorrow with the new fence along the side of the donkey paddock?'

'Sure.'

'Good. Have you been in there with Father the whole time?'

'Yes. But he falls asleep a lot.'

'He's very old.'

'He sure is. Christ.' He stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray.

'Come on,' I say.

Going out onto the landing he looks over his shoulder quickly, as if to make sure nothing has changed in his bedroom. I see it because I have turned around to make sure he is following me.

'About time,' Father mutters in his bedroom.

'Mind your own business,' I say, closing the door.

'It is my business,' he shouts.

'How old are you actually?' Henk asks me on the stairs.

'Fifty-five.'

'Really? Your hair's still completely black.'

In the scullery we pull on jumpers and overalls. Henk puts the packet of cigarettes in his breast pocket and runs his fingers through his hair. We set to work, the farmer and his hand.

'Henk?'

Henk turns and lets go of the concrete post he was trying to wrench loose. The sun is shining on the back of his head, it's a few degrees warmer than yesterday. Teun and Ronald are standing next to each other on the road like classic brothers: big and small; the oldest with a serious expression on his face, the youngest irrepressibly happy; the same hair, the same noses. All they need to do is hold hands. Teun is too old for that, but I can imagine Ronald still doing it. They could be orphans.

'Yeah?' Henk says.

'Have you put the poster up yet?'

Henk looks at me. I rest the head of the sledgehammer between my feet. Henk shakes his head.

'Don't you like it?'

'I like it a lot,' Henk says, looking miserable.

'The poster got ruined by accident,' I say.

Teun turns around to face me. 'Ruined?' he says.

'Yes.'

'By accident?'

'Yes.'

'How?'

'Did you do it, Henk?' asks Ronald happily.

'No,' I say. 'I did it.'

'But . . .'

'Did you want it back again?' asks Henk.

'Yes. I was lending it to you, didn't my mother say that?'

'No,' I say, 'she didn't say that.'

'Can't you fix it?' Ronald asks Henk. 'With sticky tape?'

'No, it's very ruined.'

Teun looks from Henk to me and back again.

'Shall I buy a new one for you?' asks Henk.

'No,' says Teun. 'Forget it.' Next to his right foot a lonely yellow crocus has come up in the verge. He doesn't see it and squashes it underfoot when he turns around. 'Come on, Ronald,' he says.

'I don't . . .' says Ronald.

'Come on . . .' Teun says. 'We're going home.' He takes Ronald's hand and pulls him away. A little further along, he lets the hand go again. Ronald looks back one last time, a bit less happy than usual.

'I want to do the pounding for a while,' says Henk. He's managed to lever the post out of the ground and the new one is loose in the old hole. I give him the sledgehammer, bend my knees and hold the post halfway down. He hits the top of it so hard I can let go after a single blow. A rip appears in the armpit of his old overalls, but he doesn't seem to notice. 'Fucking hell,' he says, swinging for the third time.

Of the thirty concrete posts in the fence along the road, eight need replacing. We did five this morning, now we're doing the last three. We started on the farm side and are working towards the north-east, to the remnants of the labourer's cottage. Once the posts are in place we will string green plastic-coated mesh along the whole length and put a rail on top.

'How was I to know?' he says.

'It's my fault,' I say.

'It doesn't matter whose fault it was.' He pulls on the concrete post as hard as he can.

'That's fine,' I say. 'One left.'

We walk over to the last post that needs replacing.

'What's that?' Henk asks, pointing at the half-wall and the overgrown garden.

'That used to be the labourer's cottage.'

'Did it blow over?'

'Burnt down.'

Henk slips the packet of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and lights up. Then he walks past the last post and up onto the road. A little later he's standing in the garden of the labourer's cottage. 'Did the farmhand live here?' he shouts, tugging on a branch of the bare magnolia.

I nod.

From the garden he walks onto the concrete floor of the cottage. 'It's tiny,' he shouts.

I nod.

He looks around, walks to the half wall and tries to push it over with one foot. It's the wall the wooden staircase was once attached to. Henk is about the same age I was then. 'Just a farmhand or a whole family?' he asks.

I shake my head.

'What?' he shouts.

'Just the hand.'

He stubs his cigarette out on the wall, takes a run-up and jumps over the narrow ditch that separates the small patch of land from the donkey paddock. He walks up to the last post and starts jerking it back and forth. 'If we just go at it for a while we'll be done,' he says.

I see his neck muscles quivering.

*

Before starting the milking, I walk to the causeway. I see him riding towards me on Father's old bike. An Albert Heijn's bag is hanging on the handlebars. He's been to the hairdresser's and done some shopping, that's why he's been so long. He gets off the bike. 'Food,' he says, gesturing at the bag. I raise a hand but he jerks his head away, as if he sensed that my hand was on its way to his cropped hair before I knew it myself.

'Why do you keep your hair so short?' I ask.

'No reason,' he says. 'Nice and easy.'

I see the old village barber (dead more than twenty years now), swiping the comb over his white coat with a supple wrist to remove the hairs, and in the barber's mirror I see a Ford drive slowly past, blocking the view of the budding shrubs in the garden of the house across the road. An old Ford with wings at the back, the same colour as the old ferries, light green. I smell the tingling smell of birch lotion and I see Henk's face, twisted into a grimace.

He's bought mince at Albert Heijn's, pale mince. Before he starts cooking I take him into the scullery to show him the freezer. 'Open it,' I say.

He raises the lid. 'Christ,' he says. 'Is that all meat?'

'It's half a cow,' I say. 'Packed in bags.' I pull out a rockhard frozen bag with a red seal. 'Red's mince: beef mince. Blue is steak, green is for roasting.'

'What did you do with the other half?'

'The butcher sold it.'

He lowers the lid again. 'I've eaten pork all my life,' he says.

*

Henk makes something with tomatoes, red peppers, onion, garlic and spices. It's ready in twenty minutes. I open the first bottle of South African wine with a corkscrew I had to search hard to find.

'Let me smell it,' Henk says when he hears the cork pop.

I stick the bottle under his nose.

'No, the cork.'

I hold the cork under his nose.

'Fine,' he says, as if he knows what he's talking about.

I set the table and fill two glasses with wine. I had already noticed the days getting longer, but this is the first time dinner's ready before dark. I can't close the curtain in front of the side window yet.

'You'll have to take a plateful up to Father yourself later,' I say.

'Why do I have to do it?'

'I don't know how he's going to react to this.'

'He must have had red peppers before?'

'Never.'

I like his food. I like the wine too. When I refill the plates, Henk tops up our glasses.

'If that house was still standing,' he says after a while, gesturing over his shoulder with a thumb, 'would I have to live in it?'

'No, of course not.'

'Why not? I'm the farmhand, aren't I?'

'We're not living in the sixties any more.'

'I might have liked it.'

'Living alone?'

'Yeah. In a tidy little house.'

'Isn't it to your liking here?'

He doesn't answer but sighs and scrapes his spoon over his plate. Then he takes a third helping.

I'm drunk from the wine and think of beer. Beer straight from the bottle, sitting in an easy chair in a house that only exists inside my head. Jazz. There's something lonely about jazz, especially when it's quiet and coming from a radio somewhere in a corner.

Why did I let it all happen like this? I could have said 'no' to Father and 'do it yourself' or just 'sell up'.

Grandfather van Wonderen lived in Edam, he survived Grandmother van Wonderen six years. I visited him once a week for half an hour. He lived in an old people's home in a small room with a view of a pond that had a fountain in the middle. No matter where the sun was, it always seemed to shine in through his windows. Grandfather would pour me a coffee and I could never think of anything to say. I was glad when the half-hour was over. In the car on the way home I always thought, wouldn't it be kinder if I didn't come at all, because then he wouldn't know any better. That half-hour of mine made him a lot lonelier than no half-hour. If you don't know any better, you haven't got anything to miss. It's as if I already know that Henk is going to leave again. Of course he's going to leave, why should he stay? There's nothing for him here.

'More wine?'

I cover my glass with a hand.

'Do you ever go out?'

'Out?'

'Yeah, out. To a pub or . . . My father used to play cards, once a week.'

'No,' I say.

'I'd like to go out sometimes.'

'You should go to Monnickendam on a Saturday night.'

'Is that fun?'

'It used to be.'

'A village like that must be really boring.'

'You could always go to Amsterdam.'

'I don't know . . .'

I stand up and clear the table. Henk disappears into the living room and turns on the TV.

After doing the dishes, I sit down at the bureau to do some paperwork, but my eyes keep wandering from the documents; I still feel light-headed. After a while he turns the TV off again. He walks into the hall and goes into the scullery, and a little later I hear the water running in the bathroom. I try to concentrate on the work in front of me, but actually I'm waiting to hear him go upstairs.

He doesn't go upstairs. He comes into the kitchen, a towel wrapped around his waist. He holds the door with his left hand. 'I'm glad my father is dead,' he says.