Rot

Klaas was sitting in the old cow passage on an easy chair that an acquaintance had left there because the old cow passage is a cheap and dry place to store furniture. He was watching the swallows flying in and out and catching mosquitoes in their wide-open beaks. There were no noises coming from up on the straw. Unlike the bull’s pen. Dieke just ran past it. She’s terrified in the barn.

He was sitting there, now he’s stood up. The sliding door is open and when he goes to close it a little, it tilts slowly forward and bangs down on the concrete. The wood hardly splinters at all, the boards simply disintegrate from dryness and wood rot. He pulls a tobacco pouch out of his back pocket and pokes what’s left of the door with his foot while rolling a cigarette.

To his left is the old dairy scullery, rolls of sheep wire standing upright on the bone-dry floor. Houseleek is frothing out of the roof gutter like boiling milk, and under the roof gutter is the wheelbarrow with the dead sheep, four stiff legs sticking up in the air. He doesn’t remember how long it is since he pulled the creature out of the ditch. He’s forgotten why he didn’t call the collection service. He doesn’t know why he still hasn’t. The sheep has been here so long it no longer stinks and yet it’s still a sheep.

He sees his brother and his daughter sitting next to each other on the causeway gate. Jan’s back is wet. Dieke is wearing her yellow wellies. Slowly he walks over to them. He lays his forearms on the top board.

‘Hi, Dad,’ says Dieke.

‘Hi, Dieke.’

‘Klaas,’ says his brother.

‘Jan.’

‘Did you break something, Dad?’ Dieke asks.

‘No, Diek, it broke all by itself. Because of the weather, or because it was so old.’ Klaas pulls pieces of rotten wood out of the gatepost and suddenly sees it on fire, years ago, after he and Jan had stuffed leftover crackers into it on New Year’s Day. Lighting a cracker, watching the explosion, walking off, and half an hour later coming back with something else on their minds and seeing the gatepost calmly burning. Like a giant matchstick. Only now does he light his roll-up.

‘You want to get down?’ his brother asks Dieke.

‘Yes, please,’ she says.

Jan slides off the gate, lifts Dieke up and puts her down on the ground next to Klaas.

‘Uncle Jan’s really strong,’ she says.

‘What brings you here?’ Klaas hears himself asking. It’s something he almost always says, as if his brother would never come home without a specific reason. But he doesn’t mean anything by it.

‘Painting.’

Klaas looks at his brother. What’s that supposed to mean? He doesn’t pursue it. ‘Come on, Dieke, it’s teatime.’

‘Are you going to eat with Grandma?’ Dieke asks Jan.

‘Today I’m going to eat with Grandpa.’

‘Can he cook?’

‘I don’t actually know.’

‘Where’s Grandma?’

Klaas looks at his brother.

‘She’s not here just now,’ Jan says. ‘But I’m sure you don’t mind that.’

‘No. Are you going to be here tomorrow too?’

‘Yep, sure am. All day.’

‘Fun! Are you coming to the swimming pool?’

‘No, I’m not going swimming. I’m working.’

‘Did you go to the swimming pool a lot when you were little?’

‘They couldn’t keep me away.’

‘Why don’t you go now then?’

‘I’m going to do something else.’

‘Too bad.’ Dieke turns and runs off.

Klaas turns away too. ‘I’ll see you.’

‘No doubt,’ says Jan.

Dieke yells out ‘Dirk!’ again as she runs through the barn. It sounds muffled, as if the emptiness inside the barn and the dust of almost a hundred years are smothering her voice. All the bulls have been called Dirk, as far back as Klaas can remember.

‘I’ll be there in a minute, Diek,’ he calls out to his daughter, who has already reached the door of the old milking parlour.

She doesn’t answer, rushing on in her yellow wellies. Dirk has stuck his square head out through the iron bars of his pen.

‘Klaas?’ he hears from above.

‘Yes.’

‘Have you talked to Jan yet?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have to tell him to stop.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Just stop. Stop it. I never see him, he just stays on Texel. Of course, if there’s something to celebrate, he’ll come, and then he trudges round the zoo looking completely miserable. You boys are horrible.’

Klaas looks over his shoulder. He’s the only one here, isn’t he?

‘You still there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re all in league with each other. You and your father and Jan. And Johan too.’

‘Johan?’

‘Yes, Johan.’

‘When are you coming down?’

‘That’s for me to decide.’

‘Aren’t you hungry?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I’m going to eat now.’

‘Do what you have to do.’

Klaas stays standing there, waiting for more. He rubs Dirk between the eyes.

‘I’m never celebrating anything again. Ever!’

After that, nothing. He throws his roll-up on the floor and carefully crushes it underfoot. Then he walks through the side doors and into the yard. A young woman rides past on a bike and waves hello. He raises his hand, even though he’s too busy looking at her legs to see who it is as she flashes past. Rekel, his parents’ chocolate Labrador, is sitting waiting on the other side of the ditch. As if someone has forbidden him from crossing the bridge. His tongue is lolling out of his mouth and his tail beats listlessly on the paving stones of the path that leads from the wooden bridge to the side door of the house. He can’t see his father anywhere. When he walks over to the kitchen window to see if tea’s ready, he bangs his head on the drinking trough his father once screwed to the wall as a planter for colourful spring flowers.

‘Shit!’

There’s been grass growing in it for years.