The Twin (27 page)

Driving along I had a sense of having been here before, I knew almost all of the place names on the signs. We stopped to buy something to eat in a roadside restaurant outside Copenhagen and only then did we discover that we couldn't pay with euros in Denmark. The guy at the cash register accepted them, but grudgingly, it seemed to me. Past Copenhagen ('Much too big,' he said. 'Much too busy, we'll drive on.') I put a bank card in a cash machine for the first time in my life, typed in my PIN number, and pulled Danish kroner out of the slot. He doesn't have a bank card; either that or he hasn't brought it with him. I pay for everything. Since we didn't know where we were going, we decided to keep driving until we couldn't go any further. That was how we ended up in this village with the unpronounceable name.

Here there are rolling hills and no ditches. There are hardly any cows either, apparently they're mostly in Jutland. With Jarno Koper. When we do see cows, they're usually brown. 'Beef,' he growls and we look the other way. There are wheat, barley and rye fields. And rapeseed: entire hilltops covered with yellow flowering rape, bordered by cow parsley. A few days ago I saw a rhododendron and a purple lilac in flower in a garden, next to a few red tulips. Everything here seems to flower at the same time.

When it starts to get dark we hear the melancholy call of a wood owl.

Dead is dead. Gone is gone, and then I won't even know about it. The new livestock dealer couldn't have come at a better time. He was driving the old livestock dealer's lorry, he said he'd been able to take it over at a good price. He was a young tearaway, there were dents in the lorry that hadn't been there two months before. He was a windbag too. He called me Helmer from the word go, as if we were old friends. I asked him whether he could offload twenty cows, some yearlings, twenty sheep and a whole lot of lambs at short notice.

'Easy!' he shouted.

'How are you going to do it then?'

'I'll see.'

'It has to be fast, and preferably all at once.'

'Just leave it to me.' On his way back to the lorry, something occurred to him. He turned around. 'And your milk quota?'

'That's none of your business.'

'Okay, fine.'

Two days later he roared back into the farmyard. Stonyfaced, he quoted a price. 'But then you're done with it in one go,' he shouted immediately after. 'And I'm sticking my neck out, I have to make sure I can shift the whole lot before too long, my sheds aren't that big—'

'I've changed my mind,' I said.

'What?!'

'I'm keeping the sheep, and the lambs too.'

His eyes seemed to pale a little while he was doing the calculations. After a while, he came up with a lower total. 'But it's still true,' he said, 'that I'm the one sticking my neck out and if—'

'Fine,' I said.

'Really?' he asked, stunned.

'Yes.'

'Oh, well, then—'

'When?'

'Soon,' he said, running out of steam. 'Soon.'

I spent the day the animals were picked up in Father's bedroom. I put the photos, samplers and watercolour mushrooms neatly in a potato crate. I stripped his bed, washed the sheets and pillowcases, took down the curtains, cleaned the windows and vacuumed the blue carpet. When I stuck the nozzle under the bed, the vacuum cleaner almost choked on the poem that was lying there.

A weird one. He told me I was a weird one. Coming from him, at that moment, it almost sounded like a term of endearment.

I sat down on Father's bed and read the words once again. I felt ashamed. Giving an old wreck of a man a poem to read. I folded it in half and shoved it in my back pocket. A week later I took it out of my newly washed jeans as papier-mâché. I didn't look in the shed until evening, when it was already getting dark. It was emptier than empty: everything was still there – straw, shit, dust, warmth – except the cows. The yearling shed was the same. No – it was even emptier, because going in I was just in time to catch sight of the tail of a mangy cat, shooting off.

The next day I wrote a letter to the Forestry Commission. I informed them that I was not in the least inclined to sell them the land on which they wanted to build a visitors' centre. And that I would be grateful not to receive any further correspondence on the subject until I contacted them again. Up to the day of our departure for Denmark I hadn't received a reply. Just as I had requested.

I looked around for something to put my travelling things in and found a suitcase in a cupboard in the barn: a massive, old, leather thing. I soaped the leather to make it a little suppler. I haven't had a single holiday in thirty-seven years of milking day and night. I wonder when in God's name Father and Mother used it. They never went on holiday either.

I also went to the Rabobank to apply for a bank card. If you go to other countries you need a bank card. I had to wait two weeks before I could go and pick it up. I still don't understand why, but I used the time to do up the kitchen. I repainted, threw out the old curtains and put up venetian blinds. I cleared out the bureau. I almost drove to Monnickendam to look at kitchens in a furniture shop. 'Did you have a bonfire?' asked Ronald when he came by the next day and found a smouldering heap behind the donkey shed. 'Without calling us?' added Teun, who was there as well.

We're sitting outside, on the roofed patio. Earlier in the day it rained, but it's not cold now. The garden is steaming and the bamboo along the side of the holiday home rustles gently against the wooden planks. For dinner we had beetroot with meatballs you buy ready-made at the Spar. During the meal we drank a bottle of red wine. Wine is expensive in Denmark.

'What are we going to do tomorrow?' I ask.

'Whatever we feel like. We'll start by getting up and drinking some coffee.'

I've asked him about his nose, his parents, Friesland and his dog. About how he came to work for Father and Mother. 'You've got a lot of questions, Donkey Man,' he says. 'What are your intentions?' The only thing he was willing to discuss was his dog. It died just before the New Year. On a Saturday night, after he'd come home from playing cards with three friends. He sat down on a chair and the dog laid its old head on his lap. All at once the dog's head turned heavy and it was as if he felt its blood stop flowing under his hand. 'He just folded up,' he said, 'like one of those toys, one of those little puppets you collapse by pressing the button under its feet.'

'So you do have friends in Friesland?' I asked.

He sighed and didn't say another word.

He points at the damp cherry tree in the middle of the garden. 'We'll have to stay here at least another month.'

'Fine by me,' I say. 'I like cherries.' I go inside and pour two cups of coffee. When I come back I see that the dark clouds have disappeared. The sun is shining again. Here in the north it doesn't get dark until very late. I put the coffees down on the garden table and lay a bar of dark chocolate next to them.

'Why didn't you get a new dog?'

'You can't go on forever.'

'No?'

'It hurts. Every time one dies.'

'I believe that.'

'It was because the wife of one of my card buddies died. He came over to my place and drank my jenever and talked about "not wanting to lose her" and "having to let her go". It got on my nerves: someone either dies or they don't, wanting doesn't come into it. My dog felt his sorrow and laid his head on his lap, something he never did otherwise. The guy just ignored him. I couldn't bear it. That dog was close to death himself, but he took the trouble and was kind enough to lift his head to someone who was grieving and that person didn't react.' He breaks off a square of chocolate, lays it on his tongue and takes a mouthful of coffee. His mouth is shut, but I can see the chocolate melting. 'Friends,' he goes on, with a wry smile. 'Is that enough? Friends to play cards with, a well-kept house and garden, messing around in the shed, a dog, jenever and a bit of money in the bank?'

He no longer has that one chipped tooth. A crown?

'How did you actually know that Father was dead?' I ask.

'I didn't.'

'So it was just coincidence, you coming back on that day of all days?'

'Yep.'

'There's no such thing as coincidence.'

'Of course there is. I thought: I'll go, and I went. I wanted to see the West Friesland orchards in blossom. But it was misty so I didn't see very much. I might just as well ask you why you came out of your house just when I arrived at the labourer's cottage.'

Coincidence, I think.

'I might not have gone to the house at all if you hadn't come to me.' He repeats the chocolate ritual. In the distance the wood owl starts to call. For the first time it is answered, from very close by. 'And where would you have been now, in that case?'

'Yes,' I say. 'Where would I have been now?'

We both stare into the garden. I think about Riet and Henk. Little Henk. The young tanker driver, the livestock dealer (who he had known as well), Ada. I wonder what kind of things I am going to tell him, or will want to tell him. Suddenly the time between his departure and return no longer interests me. Or even the time of his arrival. What difference does it make? Tomorrow we'll 'start by getting up and drinking some coffee', and afterwards we'll do 'whatever we feel like'.

'I've never actually learnt how to do things by myself,' I say.

Slowly he turns his head towards me. 'Drink your coffee, Donkey Man. It's time for a game of cards.' He gets up and walks inside.

He's right, it's time to play cards. I roll a medium-strong Van Nelle, light it, stand up and walk around the garden with my head back. I stick the pouch of tobacco and the lighter in a back pocket. I like smoking, it suits me. He hasn't mentioned it, maybe he thinks I've been smoking for years. He has turned the light on over the table. Not because it's necessary, but because he's used to having a light on over a card table. I feel like I could reach out and touch the wood owl, its mournful call sounds that close. It might just as well be a long-eared or short-eared owl. I don't know a thing about owls; there are lots of woods here, that's why I think it's a wood owl. Hearing it call is even worse than seeing wet lame sheep or unshorn sheep during a heat wave. It gives me an empty feeling in my chest. As if I haven't just eaten.

'You coming?' He's standing at the open door, but doesn't sound impatient.

I don't say anything, raising one hand.

He calls me Donkey Man. Now that I'm away from the donkeys for the first time ever. Teun and Ronald have promised to look after them. No, not too much mangold, carrots or stale bread. Yes, inside if it rains for a long time. Yes, always check the big water trough. ('But a bucket of water's heavy,' says Ronald.) They're also looking after the Lakenvelder chickens. Their mother can use the eggs in cakes and pancakes. Teun will walk through the sheep field once a day. He is strong enough to help an overturned ewe up on her feet, and maybe even strong enough to get a lamb that's fallen into a ditch back onto dry land. If not he can fetch his father. Ada has promised 'to keep an eye on things' and 'run the hoover around the house now and then'. She wanted to know how long I would be gone. 'I don't know,' I said. Just before I left, she came on Wim's behalf to ask what I was planning to do with my milk quota.

'This is his chance,' she said. 'Our chance,' she added.

I told her I wanted to think about it and asked why Wim hadn't come himself to ask me what I was planning with my quota.

She looked at me as if she was about to make up another excuse for him, then said, 'He doesn't have the nerve.'

A little later she asked me why I'd kept the sheep.