Chestnut

Klaas is sitting on the lawn next to the big plastic paddling pool, keeping an eye on his daughter. The pool is on the south side of the house. By the sound of it, there are two trees down already, but he can’t see from here. He’s dying to know what’s happening, but Dieke’s in the pool and although she already has a swimming card, water’s dangerous even when it’s less than knee-deep. The screech of the chainsaw is hellish in the quiet afternoon. Apparently there’s a third tree that needs cutting down.

‘What’s Grandpa doing?’ his daughter asks.

‘Cutting down trees.’

‘Why?’

‘Grandpa thinks trees are stupid.’

‘No!’

‘No. I think Grandma must have complained, Dieke. That it was getting too dark in her kitchen.’

‘Why does Grandma go up on the straw?’

‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘I did. I said, “Grandma, what are you doing up there?” but she didn’t say anything.’

‘Maybe she’ll tell you one day.’

‘Has she got something to drink?’

‘I hope so, otherwise she’ll be getting pretty thirsty.’

‘When’s she coming down?’

‘Oh, it won’t be long now.’

‘I don’t care if she stays up there.’

‘Dieke, it’s not that Grandma dislikes you. You know that, don’t you?’

She doesn’t answer, she’s too busy staring down at the warm water.

He watches her and wonders when people lose the ability to take things in their stride like that. She’s already forgotten about the trees and now, in front of his eyes, she’s forgetting her grandmother.

‘Daddy . . .’ she says.

‘Yes?’

‘Why does Uncle Johan talk so funny?’

‘Do you think he talks funny?’

‘Yes. Slow.’

‘I’ve told you before, haven’t I?’

‘Mm.’

‘I told you. About the accident he had on his motorbike . . .’

‘He rode over cars.’

‘See? You do know.’

‘I kind of forgot.’

‘It’s called trial riding. And one day he fell off one of the obstacles.’

‘Obsta . . . ?’

‘It was a lot of tree trunks piled on top of each other.’

‘Oh, yeah. And then it was like he was asleep.’

‘Yes, for about ten days. Wait a sec, will you, Dieke? I’m just going round the corner to see what Grandpa’s doing. I’ll be right back. Will you stay sitting there like that? Exactly like that? Not lying down?’

‘No,’ says his daughter.

‘What do you mean, no? Do you mean you are going to lie down?’

‘No, not lying down. Will you get in the swimming pool too?

‘Yep. I’m boiling.’ He stands up. Before disappearing around the corner of the house, he quickly looks back. His daughter is doing her best to stay sitting exactly as she was sitting. As he walks under the balcony he looks up. Knowing his luck, a beam or a chunk of concrete will crash down just when he’s walking under it. But the balcony doesn’t drop anything. The privet that separates the lawn from the yard is much too high to see over, it hasn’t been pruned for years. The smell of the flowers is unbearable. Stupid, he thinks, if I cut the hedge it will stop flowering. He goes up next to the hedge and breathes through his mouth. The middle tree is lying angled into the vegetable garden; he must have cut that one down first. The second is lying in the middle of the front garden; that makes sense, because the tree that was there is now gone. And he can tell from where his father is standing that the third tree is going to come down on top of the second one. He’s only cut them down, he hasn’t stripped them yet. This was the coarse work. Klaas’s heart misses a beat: his elderly father, bent over next to the third chestnut with a potentially lethal machine in his hands. When the third tree falls, he’s had enough and shuts off the chainsaw. Rekel, sitting in the middle of the bridge, immediately stands up and pads over to his master. Klaas turns and heads back past the front of the farmhouse. He looks in each window and doesn’t see his wife through any of them. Dieke hasn’t moved a muscle and looks at him contentedly.

‘Is he finished?’ she asks.

‘Yep. He’s finished.’

‘Are you going to get in too?’

Klaas pulls off his shoes, socks and trousers, and steps into the pool. The water stopped being cool long ago. He can’t quite stretch out full length in the pool. Dieke sits on his stomach.

‘You’re an island,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m an island. With underpants.’

She’s forgotten Grandma, she’s forgotten Jan at the cemetery, she’s forgotten Johan and now she’s forgotten the chestnut trees too. ‘Texel,’ she says. She hasn’t entirely forgotten Jan, then.

I’ll just lie here like this for a bit, Klaas thinks. Breathing in the old-fashioned plastic smell: pungent, like water wings and inflatable beach balls in the old days. Then I’ll go.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘That auntie, at the cemetery . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Why is she dead?’

‘Dieke . . .’

‘Aren’t I old enough?’

‘Yes. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’

‘Where were you?’

‘Where was I?’

‘Yes, when she died.’

‘Oh, that’s so long ago now. I don’t remember.’

He was standing at the side window, two metres from where he is now lying in the pool.

He’d skipped school that morning as he had no desire to stand in front of the Polder House holding hands with his classmates or waving a stupid little flag. ‘If I want to see the Queen, I’ll watch TV,’ he’d told a friend, and together they’d ridden their bikes to the canal to go for a swim near the white bridge. They knew the Queen would be coming from Slootdorp and it was no coincidence they were standing on the railing in sopping-wet trunks and that both jumped just when the big car was crossing the bridge. They’d agreed that neither of them would look, that they’d act as if they were just going for a swim like any other day. They didn’t manage it; their curiosity got the better of them. Klaas saw the Queen sitting in the car, a woman with a little hat on top of her head. Afterwards he’d gone to his friend’s house for something to eat and then he went home, where he made sure his mother didn’t see him.

That afternoon he was sitting under the workbench in the barn, fiddling around with nuts and bolts, bits of wood, chicken wire and nails. He wanted to make something, but didn’t know exactly what. The three young bulls were standing with their heads against the bars of the bullpen; a ginger tom was lying next to him on an empty burlap bag. It ended up being a kind of cart, with twine spools as wheels. Then he heard his mother scream, ‘Zeeger!’ That was no teatime call. He jumped up, banging his head on the workbench. The tom shot off, the young bulls took a step backwards. He didn’t take the shortest route – through the barn – but went out around the back. By the dairy scullery he heard his mother call his father again. He made his way through the vegetable garden at the side of the farmhouse to the front garden. He stopped at the side window, where he could look straight through the house and see the road framed by the front windows, above a row of cactuses and the privet. In the distance he saw the baker’s Volkswagen van.

He didn’t move. He saw his mother, his father, he heard Tinus yelp once, as if he’d been kicked. The baker got out of his van; they bent down – behind the hedge – and they talked, but they were too far away for him to make out any words. He heard a siren, the baker disappeared, the van stayed where it was, half on the road, an ambulance manoeuvred past it and then a police car drove up as well. Men in white coats in the yard, men in uniform standing on the causeway and next to the baker’s van, and Klaas still didn’t understand what was going on. His mother called his name a few times.

Eventually, only the Volkswagen van was left, though he wasn’t sure if the baker was still sitting in it. His eyes were fixed on the cactuses, the grey woolly ones with vicious barbs on them. Something bumped up against his legs: Tinus. Together they walked straight through the vegetable garden to the back of the house; he heard the beans cracking under his boots. He arrived at the barn, not knowing what to do, walked into the cowshed and pulled the door of the calf pen open. Tinus stumbled in behind him, and just before he closed the door the ginger tom slipped in too, frightening the calves. After he’d sat with his back against the wall for a while, the calves came up and started to sniff him cautiously. Tinus licked their wet noses. No longer standing with their heads pointing into the barn, the three young bulls pushed against the bars on his side. He stuck his hand in a calf’s mouth and a little later he stuck his other hand in a second calf’s mouth. He thought of a brochure from the Stompetoren Artificial Insemination Station his father had recently given him. It included a bull called Blitsaert Keimpe. Blitsaert Keimpe! That was a cut above Dirk. Dirk followed by a number, the name shared by all three of the young bulls. It was a long afternoon. The tomcat spent hours dozing in a corner, even Klaas nodded off for a moment. Tinus was restless. Then the cows came into the shed. Was his father going to do the milking? Was everything back to normal? Slowly he climbed up onto his feet – not wanting to wake up Tinus, who had fallen asleep with his head on his thigh – and opened the door of the calf pen. Grandpa Kaan was standing there. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said.