Shit

What’s that girl doing there? Why doesn’t she react to my tapping? She picks her glasses up from the worktop and puts them on for a better look. The girl has turned around and is walking off between the headstones. Red hair. Isn’t that the girl I just saw on the back of that bike? What’s she doing at the cemetery? Where’s her mother? What’s going on? ‘Benno!’ she calls.

Fifteen minutes later, she’s on her way. She curses herself for having pulled on a jacket. It’s a summer jacket, but this is weather for being out in a billowy dress. Actually, it’s weather for floating in the sea or lying in the back garden under a beach umbrella. If there weren’t houses left and right and the tall hedge around the cemetery, she’d probably see the sky shimmering. Benno is hardly moving. She tugs on the leash, but it doesn’t help. Every few steps she has to push up her glasses.

The girl and the man are on the ground behind the first row of headstones. They’re busy with water and something – sponges, perhaps? The girl turns, sees the dog, jumps up and runs off. She stops a bit further away, near the monument to the four English airmen whose plane crashed. Her light-grey dress has dark patches on it. Benno ignores her. The man, who was hunched over, has now raised himself onto one knee. He looks at the girl. Dinie sees who it is immediately.

‘You’re a Kaan, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ the man says with a sigh. ‘I’m a Kaan.’

Benno raises his big head and, without her urging him on, takes a few steps towards the man. She gives him some slack. ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘I’ll come and have a look. I saw some movement and there’s been some nasty goings-on here recently. I live there.’ She points at the hedge and realises that from here, nobody can see her house. The Kaan boy doesn’t even look in the direction she’s pointing.

‘And I keep my eye on things a little. If I don’t, who will? They don’t do anything here at all! There, that hole in the hedge, it’s been there two years now. My husband’s buried here too, over there.’ Now she points at her husband’s grave, a tall narrow headstone topped with a granite weeping willow. She’s got lots more to say, but for the moment she can’t bear to look at the Kaan boy, and keeps her eyes fixed on the stone willow instead. ‘What if the little bastards knocked over his headstone? They were in here again last week. They didn’t knock over any stones, but they smeared filth all over them. Shit! Cow shit! Isn’t that disgusting? At least it was easy to clean off. Fortunately they didn’t touch my husband’s grave. It was in the paper. Didn’t you read about it? No, you don’t live here, you probably read other papers, ones that don’t have that kind of petty village news. Nobody’s been arrested. They don’t know who it is. I’m sure they haven’t spent much time on it, either.’ Now she has to look at him again. ‘If I see anything out of the ordinary, I come and have a look. With the dog. I saw a girl, and I thought, let’s go.’ She pushes up her glasses and wants to take off her jacket, but can’t, because there’s no reason to, besides her feeling hot, at least. ‘Or are you cleaning that stone because there was filth on it too? It’s your little sister, isn’t it? I haven’t forgotten, such a little girl, buried here amongst all these adults. Look, um . . . Over there they’ve made a special children’s corner, that’s much better . . . I just mean, all those children together, with cheerful teddy bear headstones and little suns and stars and . . .’

‘Can you get this dog out of here?’

She’s changed the subject to the children’s graves, but she thinks of the baker. In his brand-new, light-grey Volkswagen van. She’ll have to tell him about this tonight. Or should she keep quiet about it? Drool drips off one of the Kaan boy’s knees. Benno is standing very close to him, he must be able to feel the dog’s hot breath. She feels like turning around and leaving the cemetery. The dog could just stay standing there. Benno’s a softie, but people don’t know that. They see an enormous beast, a kind of mountain dog with lots of fur. Let that Kaan boy sweat for an hour, or longer. ‘Benno, here!’ she says.

The dog comes back to the shell path and immediately lies down, without taking his eyes off the Kaan boy for an instant.

‘But you’re not knocking over any headstones,’ she says.

He finally stands up. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m not going to knock over any headstones.’

He could have just as easily have said ‘Yes, I’m a Kaan’ again, it sounds exactly the same. Is he making fun of her? She looks at him. Shameless. Topless and wearing shorts in a cemetery. And what’s he got tied round his head? It looks like a T-shirt. Those pale eyes, hard eyes. No, no – don’t think about before, her son’s big penis, his cheeky face; no, not even cheeky, it was more unseeing, as if she didn’t exist, as if she was irrelevant.

‘Dieke, come back here. That dog’s harmless.’

Really? You think so? She looks at the mess on and around the child’s grave. A screwdriver, a bucket, a wet rag, and what’s that other thing? It looks like cuttlefish. There’s a big scratch on the headstone. The gravel is wet and dirty, a dirty green. What’s going on here? She doesn’t trust it, she doesn’t want to trust it. The girl has come up next to the Kaan boy. What an ugly little red-headed brat. ‘Who’s that?’ she says. ‘Your daughter?’

He doesn’t say anything, just gives a wry smile and takes the hand the girl is holding out to him.

‘You’ve both got such red hair.’

‘I’m Dieke,’ the girl says.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘This is Dieke, she’s helping.’

She tries to look as neutral as possible, but it’s not easy. She breaks the spell of her revulsion for that bare body, those pale eyes, by pushing her glasses up again. He must see who I am? Why didn’t I walk off right away, without Benno? ‘Fine,’ she says.

‘Fine?’ he says. ‘Who are you? The cemetery attendant?’

If this child is his daughter, was the woman on the bike his wife? Is he really being as contemptuous as he sounds? To her?

‘He’s not my father,’ the girl says. ‘This is Uncle Jan. Who are you?’

Yes. Jan Kaan. The green filth on the gravel is drying to a crunchy crackling layer. Benno is panting. The sun is shining, but not as fiercely as earlier.

‘I’ll be heading off then,’ she says.

‘Yep,’ he says.

‘Bye!’ says the girl.

She hauls the dog up onto his feet. ‘Will you keep an eye out?’

‘What for?’ she hears the girl saying, before she’s even taken a step.

‘Nothing,’ Jan Kaan says. ‘Do you know who that woman is, Diek?’

‘Nope. Just a woman, I think. A granny.’

‘Do you think she dyes her hair?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Come on, back to work.’

They’re doing it deliberately, she thinks, as she walks back down the shell path agonisingly slowly. This bloody dog! He’s acting like he’s twelve already! Through the gate with the two evergreens next to it. She looks back over her shoulder and sees that the dog’s tail has left a trail in the grit. She yanks off her coat and removes her glasses.