Hydrangeas

The baker with the chapped face is standing in his neat front garden. A gravel path leads from the road to the front door and is flanked on both sides by low box-hedge squares. Insides the squares are hydrangeas, which he manages to keep blue with copper scrap and some other stuff he picked up in a garden centre. They’re just starting to flower, but the leaves are drooping, they could do with a few watering cans.

‘What are you doing there, twiddling your thumbs?’ A fellow villager with a little dog.

‘What about you?’

‘At least I’m taking the dog for a walk.’

‘I don’t have a dog.’

‘I know. Why don’t you get one?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then you’d always have a reason to go outside.’

‘Aren’t I allowed to stand in my own front garden?’

‘Of course, why not? It’s unbearable inside anyway.’

The men are quiet for a moment. ‘Off on holiday soon?’ the baker asks.

‘Already been. A week in Burgh-Haamstede. Beautiful. You?’

‘I might go yet.’

‘Bye, then.’

‘See you.’

On the other side of the street there are tall fences around the snack bar, the Eating Corner. Have been for months. The windows are boarded up too. According to the large sign on the patio, two new apartments are going to replace it. The baker sighs and goes inside. The radio in the kitchen is playing classical music. That’s strange, Radio North-Holland never has violin music at this time of day. Although there’s nobody in the house to change stations, he checks that the radio is still tuned to Radio North-Holland, then walks through the hall to the living room, where he stands at the large back window. Two or three kilometres away there’s another road parallel to this one, recognisable by the young elms planted along it, and between his back garden and that road – the Kruisweg – nothing but drab green grass with a kind of desert sky above, that’s how he imagines it. He has jammed some newspapers behind the pot plants on the windowsill. He doesn’t know exactly what purpose they serve, but it’s something his wife always did and that’s why he does it now.

His daughter lives in Limburg. South Limburg. He’s started to hum along to the violins. A dog. Why not actually? Not a big one, but medium-sized, one of the ones with a German name. A schnauzer, that’s it. Or is that the kind of dog you have to get trimmed every couple of months? Suddenly he’s had enough of the view. He goes into the hall and opens the door to the shop. It’s darker here than anywhere else in the house, with yellowed lace curtains hanging in the enormous window. Nothing’s changed in this room. The counter’s still there; the cabinet that used to contain the zwieback, rye and gingerbread hasn’t been moved. Everything’s just empty. He flicks the lights over the counter on and off a couple of times. He reads Blom’s Breadery in mirror writing through the curtains. ‘Blom’s Breadery?!’ He can still hear his wife saying it, much too long ago. ‘What’s wrong with Blom’s Bread and Pastries?’ He’d mumbled something about the seventies being just around the corner. A new era, a different era, elegant lettering on the Volkswagen van. ‘You’re weird,’ she’d said, but without any real spite.

A gleaming, light-grey 1968 Volkswagen van, Type T2a. Tailgate and sliding side door, packed full at the start of the round with bread and pastries, cakes and white rolls, and everything still within easy reach. The streamlined VW logo prominent on the front, beautifully central between the two headlights; the chrome hubcaps and door handles; the red leather seats and front-door lining. The dealer in Den Helder told him, not without pride, that the chassis had Y-shaped steel supports and that ‘in the event of an accident’ the steering column would fold forward to prevent him from being crushed. The Saturday farm run in particular was fantastic at the start. At the start. Fresh bread and fresh leather, as if the two smells belonged together and were inseparable, made for each other.

He flicks the lights on and off once again, then strides through to the kitchen, where he pulls the large watering can out of the cupboard under the sink.

While emptying it between the hydrangeas for the third time, he sees a cyclist approaching on the other side of the canal that bisects the village. With difficulty, he straightens up; the watering cans are heavy and his back is old. A man with a green bucket on the pannier rack, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Short red hair. Early forties. ‘Hmm,’ goes the baker with the chapped face, putting the half-emptied watering can down on the gravel. He keeps watching the red-headed man until he turns off and rides onto the grounds of the former Polder House, where he slowly rounds the rose bed on the left before disappearing around the side of the building. The baker sticks a hand into the watering can and scoops up some water, bends forward a little and rubs his face with it, even though it’s no longer that cool.

‘So! At least now you’re doing something.’ The villager with the little dog is on his way back home.

‘What kind of dog is that anyway?’

‘This? Jack Russell. Rough coat. Have I got you thinking?’

‘Ah.’

‘Jesus, man, the sweat’s pouring out of you. I’d sit down if I were you.’

‘Yes, I’m about to.’

‘We’re going to get some rain. At last.’

‘You reckon?’

‘I do. You can put that watering can away. We’ll be getting gallons of the stuff and you won’t have to pay a penny for it.’ The villager walks on without saying goodbye.

Not one like that anyway, the baker with the chapped face thinks. Too small. He pours the remaining water out over the gravel path without noticing, then walks in through the open front door, puts the watering can on the draining board and sits down, both hands neatly placed on the table in front of him.

The old Queen. She was there once, in front of the Polder House, long ago, when the light-grey Volkswagen van was still gleaming. She was presented with two pygmy goats. By the district council if his memory serves him right. What happened to those goats? Did the driver stuff them in the boot of that big black limo? Did they spend years eating grass in the back garden of Soestdijk Palace? I’ve got photos of them somewhere, of that whole visit, he thinks. Lots and lots of photos. She was inside the Polder House too, of course. I saw the table, he thinks. White tablecloth, plates and glasses, vases with sweet peas. I delivered freshly baked bread there in the morning. Ordinary bread, nothing special, that’s what the district clerk said. Brown and white rolls, fruit loaf. It was only after she left that I started on my round of the surrounding farms. Yes, there are photos. Later. Now I’ll sit down.

He looks at the calendar, hanging between the two narrow windows. Saturday. There are words written there that he can’t read from this distance, but he knows what they say. Dinner at Dinie’s. He sweeps imaginary crumbs off the tabletop.