Straw

I’ll never celebrate anything again. Ever. What for? Celebrating your fiftieth wedding anniversary with only sons to show for it, what was I thinking? Never again. Straw’s nowhere near as hard as you’d think. If you want to sit or lie down on straw you have to know how. You have to rub against it like a cow or a sheep and keep rubbing until all the sharp stiff bits have turned away. I’m an expert: three-quarters of a lifetime’s experience with straw. It’s not just a couple of bales, there are hundreds of them. What’s all this straw still doing here anyway? What’s it for?

She’s lying on her back and staring up at the spot where a few roof tiles have slid down. It would have been different with a daughter. She wouldn’t have just sat there drinking and stuffing her face. She wouldn’t have made any snide remarks about the zoo where they spent the afternoon. She would have made a scrapbook with photos and stories; she would have written a song ‘to the tune of’, a funny song that rhymed and would have been sung by a lot more grandchildren than just that one, who made things even worse by sulking and answering back. A daughter would have squatted down next to her, next to her chair, to ask quietly if she was enjoying herself. Those horrible boys just drank and roared with laughter even though there was nothing to laugh about and all Zeeger did was join in, even if he didn’t drink. Zeeger never drank.

Through the hole above her, a ray of dusty sunlight shines into the barn at an angle. An angle that tells her that it must be late in the afternoon. Friday afternoon.

Earlier in the day, just before climbing up the ladder, she’d turned on the light. It’s still light now, but tonight it will get dark. She anticipated that. She pulled the rickety ladder up behind her, leant it against the straw to climb further, then pulled the ladder up behind her again. Lying on a pricklier bale of straw next to her are a water bottle, a packet of Viennese biscuits, a bottle of advocaat and the parade sword that normally hangs from the bottom bookshelf. The rickety ladder is a little further away.

Even though the side doors and large rear doors are all open, the air in the barn is motionless, not the slightest hint of a breeze. She sits up and grabs the water bottle, one and a half litres. While drinking, she looks at the junk in the milking parlour attic diagonally opposite the straw loft. A washing basket, bulb trays, a rusty boiler, roof tiles, an old coat (light blue), zinc washtubs, a pedal car, a crate with sacks of wool. The three round windows with the wrought-iron frames – one up near the roof ridge, the other two a good bit lower down, above the doors at either end of the long corridor that runs the whole length of the barn – remind her of a church. Tiles have come loose all over the place and, despite the spare tiles she’s just seen, they haven’t been replaced. In those spots, stripes of sunlight shine in.

Beneath her she hears the bull shuffling and groaning. Dirk. A superfluous lump of meat. Otherwise it’s quiet, as quiet as only a hot day in June can be. The swallows flying in and out are almost silent. She screws the cap back on the bottle, holds it up to see how much water is left, then lays it back down next to her. When the straw stops rustling, she hears footsteps. Very quick footsteps. ‘Dirk!’ she hears. Dieke. The child doesn’t know her grandmother is up above her. A little later, when the footsteps have almost reached the barn doors, the child shouts, ‘Uncle Jan!’ Dirk starts to snort. Dieke says something else, but she can’t make it out. Soon after, it falls quiet again. She leans back carefully and, once she’s rubbed against it for a while, the straw is reasonably comfortable again. Inasmuch as anything other than a soft mattress can be reasonably comfortable when you’re the wrong side of seventy. She gives her belly a slow and thorough scratch, then rubs her face with both hands.

What’s that bull still doing here? Why doesn’t Klaas sell that enormous beast? She stares at the outside world through the hole in the roof. A very small, rectangular outside world. For now, that’s plenty. I’ll never celebrate anything again. Ever. We’re not cut out for celebrating. We always say exactly the wrong thing. The long faces of those boys as they tramped around the zoo. A daughter would have taken photos or said things like, ‘Look, a baboon. My first ever baboon!’

Somewhere in the barn something creaks. It’s a dull dry creaking, loud too. The timbers? The boards of the hayloft? The big doors?