June

Tuesday 17 June, but no school. Jan and Johan had their checked swimming bags on their backs, ready to leave. Assembling at school, going to the Polder House together, eating at school (something else neither of them had done before) and school swimming lessons in the afternoon. From the moment the new radio had been placed on the wide windowsill, there had hardly been a second’s silence in the kitchen. Only at night, really. They heard ‘Oh Happy Day’ coming out of the radio. Hanne was sitting with her back to the cold oil heater. There were plasters on two fingers on her right hand. A few days earlier she had stuck her hand in an empty apple-sauce tin. That went fine, but pulling it out again was less successful because the sharp-edged lid that had pushed down so easily came back up with her fingers between it and the side of the tin. Tinus was asleep in his basket, under the windowsill and the radio. Klaas had already left.

‘Get going,’ said Anna Kaan.

Sawing noises coming from upstairs.

‘Promise you’ll keep an eye on Johan.’

‘I promise.’ He did his very best to get the ‘r’ right, but nobody noticed.

Jan was seven and had a bike. Johan was five and already knew how to ride, but still had to make do with a blue scooter.

‘Slow down!’ Johan kept shouting. ‘Wait for me!’

Jan wasn’t listening to his little brother, he was busy saying all kinds of words with an ‘r’ in them. He found it difficult and because Zeeger had promised him a Dinky Toy if he could say it properly, he was desperate to get it right. The day before he’d suddenly figured it out and now he couldn’t stop.

The baker’s grey van was parked in front of the notary’s house. He swerved round it and suddenly had to swerve even further, because the baker had opened the door. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. The baker quickly pulled the door shut again. When Jan turned to glare at him, he saw the baker raising a hand and holding his head to one side. He guessed that meant he was sorry. The baker had a strange red face, a face that didn’t go with custard buns and almond cakes. Johan scooted around the van as fast as he could, not even noticing the baker. ‘Wait for me!’ he shouted again. Jan didn’t wait. He said a few more words with an ‘r’ in them and thought about the Queen. He decided to scowl as hard as he could and make a point of looking in the other direction. It was almost too much to bear that the butcher’s son and the baker’s daughter had been chosen to present the flowers instead of him.

Half an hour later the children were standing in neat lines along the Polder House drive. Class by class. Johan was standing right at the front, near the gate; he was still in the baby class. Klaas should have been somewhere near the door, but wasn’t. Everyone was really nervous. The year-four teacher squeaked once that they had to hold up their flags, but that was as far as their instructions went. The West Frisian folk-dancing group did a run-through without any music. An ancient man holding a violin down next to his knees stood and watched. He was wearing new clogs. A few children from year six burst out laughing when a farmer came walking up leading two pygmy goats and wearing overalls that were so new they still had creases in them. Everywhere there were photographers taking up position or walking around. Jan was in the front row. Next to him was his best friend, Peter Breebaart, who nudged him a few times without saying anything. They had to stand hand in hand, but of course you can’t do that and wave a flag at the same time. He did his best to stare down at the ground and got crosser and crosser and more and more indignant, especially after he saw the two flower-presenters standing there in their smart clothes, not lined up with the others, but at the gate. He thought his Norwegian cardigan, knitted for the occasion by Grandma Kaan, was stupid.

And then Teun Grint suddenly appeared. Even though year six were further along, under the linden espaliers at the front of the building. Just then the Queen’s car pulled up. Teun wormed his way into the line and took hold of Jan’s hand. He looked sideways at Jan. The Queen got out of the car and approached them. Jan suddenly remembered that he was angry, bowed his head and looked down at his feet. His mother had polished his sandals. He didn’t want to witness the presentation of the flowers at all. That hand around his. It was very quiet. Nobody cheered, nobody spoke. It was only when the ancient man began to play his violin that people started making noise and he heard the rustling of the traditional skirts. All at once Jan wanted to see the Queen after all, pulled his hand out of Teun’s and discovered that the lines of children had dissolved and all the mothers and teachers were standing in the way. He didn’t get to see her. A little later they lined up again, class by class, and walked back to the school building.

After eating at long tables in the gym, they rode bikes, ran or rode scooters in a disorderly rush to the swimming pool. Not a single teacher called out ‘let your food settle first’. Johan went looking for Jan, shouted, ‘Wait for me!’ a couple of times, and was relieved to find that his big brother really was waiting for him at the entrance, together with Peter Breebaart. Jan still looked miserable, his anger was still eating away at him. Silently they held up their season tickets at the ticket office. ‘Ah, if it’s not the Kaan boys again,’ said the ticket lady with the black hair. She was smoking a cigarette. That made Jan even crosser. It wasn’t his fault that there were three boys and one girl in his family and that they were all called Kaan. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. He gave the woman a dirty look. ‘Now, now,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘The Kaan boys are moody today.’

Johan wanted to go into a cubicle with Jan. Jan pushed him out of the way and went into one with Peter. Inside they quickly turned the lock.

‘Dickheads,’ said Johan, two cubicles down.

They changed and came out of their cubicles at exactly the same time, hanging their swimming bags, clothes and sandals up in the big changing room with the hooks. Then Jan and Peter crossed the imaginary line that divided the swimming pool grounds in half, indicated by a white sign with the words Experienced swimmers only past this point. Now they’d got rid of Johan, who had swimming lessons in zone two and wasn’t allowed to cross the line. Music was coming out of the funnel-shaped speakers on the ticket booth. The ticket lady had turned on the radio.

They hadn’t even bothered writing numbers on the temperature sign next to the sweet counter, just a drawing of the sun with a Dutch flag to mark the special occasion. The swimming instructor was already holding the long white pole with the hook on the end. Backstroke. Jan preferred swimming on his back to swimming face down. At least then you didn’t feel all that water pressing against your chest – in zone three it was at least a couple of metres deep. Deep water that, as he’d found out recently, could also turn inside out. And ever since Johan had asked the pool attendant if there was a bogeyman in the swimming pool and the pool attendant had just laughed, Jan couldn’t help thinking about that sometimes too.

‘Diving!’ shouted the swimming instructor.

They climbed out of the pool and lined up in position. Jan turned his head slightly. The ticket lady had turned the radio up and the song he’d heard earlier in the morning was playing. He sang along under his breath. Johan screamed something at him from zone two and he looked up and saw him waving. He didn’t wave back, of course. Peter nudged him. ‘See who can go furthest?’

Underwater, Jan realised that he hadn’t had enough to eat. He wondered if there’d be pancakes or French toast when he got home. He thought it was Saturday. Normally they had swimming lessons on Saturday mornings. Klaas isn’t here either, it suddenly occurred to him. No, he thought afterwards, it’s Tuesday today. And it’s not morning, it’s afternoon. Because he wasn’t thinking about the competition at all, he surfaced at least half a length past Peter.

He swam to the duckboards that separated zone three from zone four and pulled himself up to get his elbows on the wood, resting his chin on one arm and looking up at the diving board. Teun, the year-six boy with the yellow swimming trunks, bounced up higher than he was tall. Jan didn’t know what he’d done to deserve that hand earlier in the day. It was as if Teun wanted to protect him. But who from? The photographers? The Queen herself? It seemed like he was doing his best to bounce in time with the music until he pulled up his knees, wrapped his arms around them, did a somersault and plunged into the water with his body almost perfectly straight, not pressing his arms against his sides, but holding them out a little and bent slightly at the elbows. Did he already have his C? Jan stayed dangling there for a while, though it was quite tiring as the duckboards were fairly high up. He stared at Teun, who climbed up out of the pool and waited for a few other kids, mostly older than him, to finish their clumsy jumps. Again he got up to an incredible height and even from this distance Jan could see his hamstrings appearing and disappearing again, and that one knee pulled up in front of the other, and then both feet landing together again on the end of the diving board. This jump wasn’t as beautiful. Teun hit the water a bit crooked and sent thousands of orange water fleas flying up into the air. Jan shook the water out of his hair and lowered himself back down into the water. He wanted a pair of yellow swimming trunks too.

‘Come on, we’re not finished yet,’ the swimming instructor shouted.

Jan swam calmly over to the side of the pool. Peter was already up on dry land. He looked up at the big clock. Time was passing fast enough. Soon he’d buy a liquorice shoelace or a marshmallow. The ticket lady was nodding her head in time to the music. She was the mother of the boy with the yellow swimming trunks. They lined up again and waited for the swimming instructor’s signal. Behind the windbreak that separated the swimming pool from the fields beyond, a few lambs started bleating.

Jan had left Johan behind in one of the changing cubicles. A little later he left Peter behind, halfway through the village where he lived. By then they’d finished the liquorice shoelace he’d bought with the ten-cent coin in the front pocket of his checked swimming bag. ‘It’ll turn your teeth black,’ the ticket lady had said. The look he gave her in reply was just as dirty as when he’d arrived at the swimming pool. He rode through the village, making up words with as many ‘r’s in them as possible. Here and there, flags and pennants were still flapping in the wind; at the garage a man was standing on a ladder to take the flag out of the flag holder. It reminded him of that big bunch of flowers and he remembered that he was cross and sulking.

‘Jan!’

Who was calling him, now that he was almost home? Without realising it, he had almost reached the Braks’ big white house, which was just before his own. Only now did he really look around and ahead. What was the baker’s grey van doing there?

‘Jan!’

He braked, put one foot on the ground and looked back. Uncle Aris, Peter Breebaart’s father, was following him on his bike. I wasn’t supposed to eat at Auntie Tinie’s, was I? he thought. Wait, the baker’s van is parked right across the road, in front of the labourer’s cottage. But they were away. The baker was sitting at the wheel. Not properly, his legs were dangling down to the side, Jan could see that from the feet poking out under the door, which was wide open. The baker looked up: maybe he’d heard Uncle Aris calling too. First Jan felt like he was looking straight through him, but then he raised a hand very slowly and held his head a little crooked. Just like earlier that day. Then it had meant, I’m sorry. Except now the hand had gone up differently and his face, definitely from this distance, seemed even redder than usual. The wind was blowing on the right side of Jan’s face, the roadside elms were rustling. The sun was shining down on the road at an angle, but not now, because a cloud had drifted over. Jan kept his eyes fixed on the baker, mainly because he had no idea what he was going to do next, or what he was doing there in the first place. Since the baker had seemed to be waving to him, he too stuck his hand up in the air. They were both holding up a hand and Jan felt that this situation could go on for quite a long time, maybe the whole afternoon.

‘Come with me,’ said Uncle Aris.

‘Where?’ asked Jan.

‘To see Auntie Tinie.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll find out later.’

‘But I’m almost home.’

‘I know.’

‘What’s the baker doing there?’

‘Come on.’ Uncle Aris laid a hand on his shoulder.

He turned his bike around. The checked swimming bag slipped down off his shoulders. He looked back one last time. The van door was closed. Uncle Aris didn’t say anything.

‘I can say “r”,’ said Jan.

‘That’s clever of you. Say it then.’

‘I just did.’

‘Do it again.’

‘Rrrrrrr,’ said Jan.

‘Excellent,’ said Uncle Aris, staring straight ahead. ‘That’s a real “r”.’

Jan couldn’t be bothered any more. He felt like his ‘r’ had become completely meaningless. They turned left to ride back towards the village. Into a headwind.

‘Hi,’ he said to Auntie Tinie and Peter. But mainly to Johan. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Johan said. ‘Eating.’ He had his right elbow on the round kitchen table and was holding a spoon that was way too big in his right hand. His other arm was resting next to his body. He was sitting crooked and staring at Uncle Aris with big eyes. Jan looked away, ashamed that he had left Johan behind at the swimming pool and realising now, from the size of the spoon and how crookedly he was sitting, that he was still little. He was also ashamed of his sulking and his ‘r’. Auntie Tinie hugged him and kissed him as if it was the last chance she would ever have to hug or kiss him. She ruffled his swimming-pool hair. Then, after putting a bowl of Bambix on the table in front of him, she absent-mindedly smoothed it down again. She didn’t sit down. Uncle Aris did, but didn’t eat anything.

Peter was eating. The corners of his mouth were still black from the liquorice shoelace and he stared at the Kaan brothers. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ he asked his mother.

‘Shh,’ said Auntie Tinie. ‘Be quiet.’

Jan looked at the bowl of cereal in front of him. Whenever he ate at Auntie Tinie’s, he always got something yummy. He loved Bambix. He knew it was baby cereal, but he didn’t care, it tasted a lot better than the Brinta they had at home. Auntie Tinie’s fried rice was a lot better than his mother’s too, with lots of tomato paste and meat out of a tin you had to open by turning a key. He didn’t feel like Bambix now. It wasn’t even teatime yet. Uncle Aris and Auntie Tinie looked at each other. Johan was still sitting slumped on his chair. Peter had emptied his bowl and was about to say something. He opened his mouth, but thought better of it and leant back. Jan stared at his lukewarm cereal. It was quiet in the kitchen, the orange clock was ticking.

Then there was a sound. Auntie Tinie turned to face the window, both hands pressed to her chest. An ambulance drove past. Uncle Aris brushed something off the plastic tablecloth with a large hand. The sound faded quickly.

Peter couldn’t resist any longer. ‘What is it?’

Johan started crying. ‘I want to go home!’ he bawled.

Jan stuck a finger in the cereal. Almost cold and way too thick by now, anyway.

That evening Peter, Jan and Johan sat in a brand-new bath in a brand-new bathroom. There was something wrong with the tub: it didn’t seem to have been finished properly. The enamel was rough, very finely rough, but they didn’t realise until they got out again. Auntie Tinie rubbed them with a soapy flannel as if she was scrubbing potatoes, and washed their hair twice. Jan and Johan didn’t say a word; they liked Auntie Tinie. Peter whinged and moaned, and kept on shouting ‘Ow!’ After that it started to burn, sting and itch.

They had to stay the night. They wanted to know why, but got no answer. Nobody mentioned the Queen, it was as if she hadn’t even been to visit. They went to bed. Jan and Peter in one bed together and Johan in the other bed crossways at the foot of theirs. Peter soon fell asleep and Jan pushed him out onto the floor. He did that often, especially when Peter stayed at their house. He found it annoying, having someone next to him in bed like that, snoring contentedly or smacking their lips, while he couldn’t get to sleep because someone was next to him. Peter didn’t even wake up. Jan sat up straight and scratched his arms and legs. They kept on burning. He tore off the blanket and threw it on top of Peter. He pulled the sheet up to his chin, it was light and thin.

‘Jan?’

‘Yeah?’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m itchy.’

‘Me too.’

It was almost completely dark in the bedroom. Outside, it was still light. There were even birds singing. The curtains were thick and heavy. Johan started to cry softly. Jan’s head started to get itchy too; his hair was way too clean, his scalp rubbed dry by Auntie Tinie’s strong fingers. The phone rang, four times.

‘Johan?’

No sound from the other bed.

‘Come here.’ Jan heard Johan climb out of bed and, because his eyes were already used to the darkness, he saw him step carefully over Peter. He held the sheet up. Johan slid in next to him and sniffed loudly two or three times.

‘Something terrible’s happened,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ said Jan. ‘Maybe with Hanne.’

‘Where’s Klaas?’

‘I don’t know. Home, I guess.’

Johan scratched his neck.

‘The baker,’ said Jan.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s got something to do with it.’

‘With what?’

‘He didn’t look right.’

When they woke up the next morning, Peter was in the other bed. Jan and Johan stared at him until he woke up. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and looked around with surprise. ‘How’d I get here?’ he asked. An hour later he had to go to school while Jan and Johan were allowed to stay at Auntie Tinie’s. Peter shouted that it wasn’t fair. His mother gave him a whack.

Wednesday evening they went home. Klaas was already there. Or still there. They gathered in the hall, in front of Hanne’s bedroom. Anna opened the door and they went in one by one. There was a small coffin under the cracked window, as if the coffin had been positioned there deliberately to catch the light for as long as possible. Tinus sauntered in through the open door as well. He sniffed at the coffin and was about to jump up against it. ‘Get,’ said Zeeger, pushing the dog aside with one foot.

Hanging on the wall opposite the windows was a cloth of coarse material attached by rings to two bamboo rods, one at the top and one at the bottom. Grandma Kaan had made it. There were three Piccaninnies black as black on it, a fire with a pot, a few palm trees, a straw hut. The Piccaninnies were made of pieces of material and two of them had rings in their ears. The third Piccaninny only had one ring. The fire was made of pointy bits of yellow material, the trees from strips of green cloth. The roof of the straw hut was real straw and the poles holding up the cooking pot were satay sticks. There was a big orangey-red sun in one of the top corners, exactly the same kind of sun as the one shining in through the bedroom window at just that moment. The wall hanging had been there for a very long time. Klaas, Jan and Johan had reached the age of two in a bed under the three Piccaninnies black as black. No matter what happened outside, whether it was stormy or hailing, still or misty, nothing in the bedroom, nothing in the whole house was safer than Grandmother Kaan’s homemade wall hanging.

‘Go on,’ said Anna. She pushed her three sons towards the coffin. Jan mainly kept his eyes on Klaas and Johan because he was frightened by the strange yellow dress Hanne was wearing. Bought by the district nurse who, when she got to the children’s clothing shop in Schagen, didn’t know what exactly Anna Kaan had meant by ‘something smart’. Klaas and Johan couldn’t keep it up long either. Klaas stared out the window. Johan cleared his throat and looked up at Zeeger.

‘Was it the bogeyman?’ he asked.

‘No, Johan,’ said Anna, ‘it wasn’t the bogeyman.’

Tinus started whimpering. Zeeger grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him out of the room. They stayed standing there for a while longer. Jan didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help looking at Hanne’s fingers: no plasters, not even any cuts or scratches. The real sun was going down. Behind them the sun was fixed in the same spot and the leaves of the palm trees were still blowing in the same direction.

Later, Klaas, Jan and Johan went to the kitchen, where their four grandparents were sitting round the table. It was quiet; someone had finally turned off the radio. That must have been Grandma Kaan: she didn’t like radio, TV or anything that wasn’t calm and quiet. They were addressing each other by their first names and to the boys that sounded very strange. Grandpa Kooijman saying ‘Neeltje’ to Grandma Kaan and Grandpa Kaan calling Grandma Kooijman ‘Hannie’. Hannie and Neeltje. Hanne. The first girl and both grandmothers’ names covered. Even stranger was the baker coming to visit later that evening, when Jan and Johan were about to go upstairs to bed. The baker, on Wednesday evening, without any bread.

It wasn’t until the following Monday, two days after the funeral, that they went back to school. In no time Jan’s hand was up in the air.

‘Do you have to go to the toilet?’ the teacher asked.

‘No, sir. I want to tell you something.’

‘Yes?’

‘No, sir, just you.’

‘Come to the front.’

Jan stood up and set out for the blackboard. He felt important; everyone was staring at him. He looked at the butcher’s son and the baker’s daughter to make sure they’d noticed him walking up to tell the teacher something very important. The baker’s daughter looked down, which Jan misinterpreted, because even after six days he still didn’t know what exactly had happened. Hanne was playing with Tinus, that was about all they’d been told. He’d show them. Presenting flowers to the Queen, so what! When he got to the front, the teacher looked at him expectantly. Jan gestured for him to come closer. The teacher bent down towards him.

‘My little sister’s dead.’ He whispered conspiratorially, almost proudly. Loudly as well, so the whole class, and especially the two flower-presenters could hear. ‘Did you know that?’

‘Yes, Jan,’ said the teacher. ‘I knew that.’ He laid a hand on top of Jan’s head. ‘And it’s a terrible thing. Go back and sit down again now.’

Jan walked back to his seat, in the last row by the window. Next to an enormous pot plant that hung partly over his desk. It was still quiet in the classroom. On the way, he looked at his classmates and tried to work out what they were thinking. Did he see a gleam in the butcher’s son’s eyes? Was he smiling without raising the corners of his mouth? At least the baker’s daughter was still staring down at the exercise book in front of her. The conspiratorial feeling he’d just had was gone completely. Slipping in behind Peter to sit down again he felt, there’s something wrong here. Peter nudged him. He didn’t feel it.

In the schoolyard the marble craze was already over again. It was almost the summer holidays. Jan and Peter were standing near Klaas, who was telling tall stories about barges making waves in the canal. Peter was talking at him. If only Klaas would say something to him, but no, he blabbed away to his own classmates and made a point of looking in the other direction. Teun was leaning against the wall of the school building. Alone. Staring down at the paving stones under his feet. He glanced up, then looked back down at the grey paving stones, as if there was a lot to see there. It was dry, the drizzle of the previous weekend had blown over. Peter was talking; Jan heard the schoolchildren yelling and running and screeching around him, the clicking of a skipping rope, the wind in the hedge around the schoolyard, and the quivering thumps of the diving board.

On the third day after the funeral, Tuesday again, Jan and Johan did their sixth funeral drawings. Jan finished first and watched Johan add the finishing touches to his. ‘The coffin wasn’t black.’

‘Yes it was.’

‘Grandma Kaan didn’t stand there.’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘Why isn’t Klaas crying? Klaas was crying!’

‘I can’t do tears.’

‘The sun is yellow, not red. Why have you put in the sun? It was raining!’

‘Hey, you can do the “r”!’

Jan didn’t say anything.

‘The sun is red, anyway.’

‘Why don’t you use green? There’s a new green felt tip right here.’

‘What do I need green for?’

‘Are you stupid?’

‘What? What’s green?’

‘Trees are green. Dad’s coat’s green.’

‘Can you do the hands?’

‘OK.’ Jan drew hands on the stick figures that represented people according to Johan. He slid the drawing back over to Johan, who made a futile attempt to change the red sun to yellow by colouring it in again with a yellow felt tip.

In Jan’s drawing there were dripping trees. Big trees with fat drops. And Uncle Piet. Instead of simply standing on the ground, he was on the black ledge that stuck out at the bottom of the Polder House wall. It was a very narrow ledge and Uncle Piet had big feet. Jan had noticed it when they came around the corner behind Hanne’s coffin, which was being carried by four men wearing light-grey hats. A group of wet people were clustered together and Uncle Piet towered over everyone because he was standing on that black ledge. It was impossible. That was why he drew it. The brown shoes stuck out ridiculously far, and to leave no doubt about who it was, he had written UNCLE PIET next to him in big letters.

Both grandmothers had spoken. Grandma Kooijman recited something from the Bible by heart. That went in one ear and out the other for almost everyone. Grandma Kaan read something from a piece of paper that got so wet it fell apart before she’d finished. She paused, then did the rest from memory. She was wearing a light-grey jacket and her dark-grey hair drooped like the paper she was holding. She looked like a heron that could fall over at any minute.

It was a short funeral. The undertaker in charge of proceedings didn’t seem very sure of himself. After Grandma Kaan had rounded off her reading, there was brief, calm confusion. The rain was so light it didn’t make any sound. The undertaker asked if anyone else wanted to speak. He looked around. ‘May I then re –’ he said, and then Aris Breebaart started to cry. Tinie Breebaart took him by the arm and led him away. Grandparents followed, Uncle Piet, the baker. Klaas, Jan and Johan walked off too. Anna and Zeeger stayed behind.

In the evening they ate rice pudding with brown sugar. Something they usually only ate on Saturdays. During tea, a few flies flew into the sticky strip that hung from the fluorescent light over the table. They buzzed and buzzed and beat their wings furiously until their wings were stuck to the strip too. Then they just buzzed. Nobody thought of turning the radio back on.

After Johan discovered that yellow over red doesn’t work, his sixth funeral drawing was finished and the boys went looking for their mother. They couldn’t find her anywhere. Along the way they picked up Tinus, who was whimpering on the other side of the kitchen door. Finally they ended up in the bedroom that was no longer a bedroom, and sat down together on the floor under the cracked window. Tinus jumped up on Hanne’s bed. They stared at the wall hanging with the three Piccaninnies.

‘The sun is red,’ said Johan.

Jan didn’t say anything.

Tinus turned around on the spot a couple of times and, sighing, lay down on the pillow.

That evening Grandma Kooijman came.

Anna Kaan came down off the straw after one and a half days. ‘So,’ she said, nudging her mother, who was standing at the stove, over to one side.

Hannie Kooijman stared at her daughter as if she was Lazarus emerging from the grave.

‘I wish it would stop blowing,’ said Anna. ‘I hate it when it’s windy.’

Silently, her mother handed her the wooden spoon she had been using to stir the contents of a saucepan.

‘You can go back home now,’ said Anna.

The baker simply continued to deliver the bread, although he no longer whistled while he was at it and stopped doing his flourish with the one and a half loaves too. They milked the cows and did the second round of haymaking. Tinus grew quickly and the swimming lessons carried on as normal. Jan had no trouble at all getting his A, even if treading water took forever and he had cramp in his neck when he climbed up out of the pool. Anna sewed the badge on the front of his swimming trunks by hand. ‘The B goes here,’ she said, pointing to the other side.

‘Where’s C go?’ he asked.

‘On your bum!’ shouted Johan.

Johan can shout all he likes, thought Jan. Now he was allowed to cross all of the imaginary lines in the swimming pool whenever he liked, not just for swimming lessons. He was an ‘experienced swimmer’ too now, but not Johan. After long afternoons at the swimming pool, he cycled to the Breebaarts’ with Peter and, before he rode on, Auntie Tinie made him crackers with cheese he didn’t get at home, delicious cheese. She never said anything about Hanne. Neither did Peter. Nobody said anything.

The boy with the yellow swimming trunks was the only one who could jump higher than he could. Older boys tried too, without success. Jan, Peter and the others spread their towels out near the diving board. After all, that was where you hung out when you had the run of the whole swimming pool. A narrow strip of grass, wedged in between the pool and a ditch that formed a hairpin curve. At the bend in the ditch there was a pumping station that buzzed. Johan never got that far, he was right over on the other side of the pool, sometimes in zone three now, having his lessons.

They closed their eyes and listened to the poplars that bordered the pool like a rustling wall. Like that – with their eyes closed, the sun red through their eyelids, hearing the trees, the voices of boisterous children and worried mothers, the splashing, the buzzing of the pump and the sound of the big lambs in the fields behind the windbreak, still bleating like babies – it was as if the summer could last forever.

Jan learned to listen really closely, and after a while he was somehow able to tell when it was Teun up on the diving board, he didn’t even need to open his eyes. Teun touched the board less often before disappearing into the deep water of zone four with an upright jump, a somersault or a swallow dive. Sometimes Jan would sit up after all, the only one in the group of boys to put his hands on the grass behind him and watch. The Edwin Hawkins Singers stayed at the top of the charts, the summer days remained happy days. After a while the ticket lady stopped turning up the radio. The boy in the yellow trunks jumped, Jan watched and gradually started to think he was doing it all just for him.

Almost every day, no matter how delicious Auntie Tinie’s jam, cheese or homemade cake was, there came a moment when Jan was on his way back home and reached the spot where the baker’s grey van had stood, where Uncle Aris had caught up to him on his bike. Besides Johan, nobody had noticed that he could do a real ‘r’. Zeeger forgot to give him a Dinky Toy. Jan didn’t remind him.

Uncle Aris, the baker, the yellow dress, the diving board. June, July, August. A summer at the swimming pool, no bogeyman but plenty of water fleas. Johan, shivering sometimes at the edge of zone two. ‘Hey, Jan!’ he called, when his brother was on his way to the shop to buy liquorice shoelaces. Lips quivering, feet turned inward. Klaas, who only came to the swimming pool for lessons for his C, and otherwise swam in the canal. Or jumped off the bridge with his friends just as a barge sailed past.

The attic with the half-finished bedroom, the doorjamb without a door. Long, light nights. The painting at the top of the stairs, a grey painting. Of a woman with pursed lips holding a dandelion. Jan and Johan thought that it was Great-grandmother Kaan when she was young. Zeeger told them so. In Grandma and Grandpa Kaan’s house there was a similar painting but slightly later, the dandelion parachutes were blowing around and the young woman had a mysterious smile. Klaas made fun of them when they told him. Klaas slept alone in the small bedroom; Jan and Johan shared the big one with the balcony doors.

Behind the green curtains it refused to get dark and Johan had started snoring almost immediately.

‘Johan,’ Jan whispered.

Nothing happened.

‘Johan!’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ Now he was awake at least.

But not for long. Soon Johan was breathing deeply again.

Every evening Jan waited for Klaas. When he heard his big brother come upstairs and close the door of his bedroom behind him, his night could begin. He pulled the blankets up over his head and thought he was asleep. He also imagined himself waking up the next morning – when it had been dark for a little while after all – and saw people tumbling through a kind of infinity.

Auntie Tinie, the baker, the yellow swimming trunks, the hand around his, the invisible Queen, the swimming pool, June, July, August, September. The bedroom downstairs, with the strange crack in the window. Hanne’s bed, which was taken away at the end of summer. The bedless bedroom that was no longer a real bedroom, where the cloth with the Piccaninnies was left hanging on the wall. Johan, who, when he was awake, didn’t put any green in his funeral drawings. One morning, while fishing in front of Grandma and Grandpa Kaan’s house, he fell into the wide canal. Grandpa Kaan pulled him up out of the water, but he would probably have managed to climb up the side himself. He didn’t die and held on tight to his fishing rod, so that didn’t get lost either. Teeth chattering, he muttered something about ‘the bogeyman’; Grandma Kaan couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Jan, who thought he hardly slept but still dreamt much more than he suspected. One afternoon, his hands slid off the rung of the ladder he was climbing up to the hayloft and he fell backwards onto the concrete. It didn’t really hurt, the stinging white whack blocked out most of the pain, and a wet flannel eased the lump. He didn’t die. Klaas, alone in his small room with the soles of his feet hurting after jumping from too high up off the rail of the bridge. One evening after it had been raining, he slipped on the bridge’s wet boards, grazed his thigh so badly it bled and ended up almost upside down in the water. But he didn’t die. Anna, who was away for one and a half days, though no one even mentioned her absence. Zeeger, who mostly milked, made hay, shore sheep and cleared the banks of the ditches in silence. And started planting trees. That was something new.

Five summers later, anyone at the swimming pool who wanted to make out the lyrics of the song that had been number one for almost two months had to listen very carefully. The ticket lady didn’t like it. If she wasn’t busy checking a season ticket and there weren’t any children standing at the sweet counter, she’d turn the radio down when it came on, and by early August she’d begun turning the volume dial all the way to the left. ‘Sugar baby love, sugar baby love. I didn’t mean to hurt you. People, take my advice, if you love someone, don’t think twice.’

They all had at least two certificates and seemed to have established a permanent claim to the narrow strip of lawn between the diving board and the hairpin ditch. Jan had already begged for a new pair of swimming trunks a couple of times: the A and B badges sewn on the front were for kids. What’s more, the rubber cut into the tops of his legs, especially when his trunks were dry. Johan had two certificates too; he sat a bit further along with his own friends. He’d learnt to stop saying ‘Hey, Jan’. The moment Klaas had got his C, he stopped coming to the swimming pool at all.

As hot as the days got, the water wasn’t appealing. Lying around, talking and looking, that was appealing. Looking at the girls lying by the corner of zone four. Talking about dicks. Jan listened, but kept getting distracted by the diving board.

‘He did. He pissed spunk!’

‘You can’t piss spunk.’

‘Yes you can!’

‘Who told you that?’

‘He did.’

‘Who?’

‘Bram.’

‘His brother, you know who that is, don’t you?’

‘Oh, him. How old is he anyway?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘So your brother pisses spunk?’

‘Yep.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘It’s true.’

‘What’s it look like then?’

‘Well, kind of bit whitish. And thick.’

‘Thick?’

‘If you’ve got a hard-on then your, what’s-it-called, the tube your piss comes through. It doesn’t work any more.’

‘So you always piss spunk if you piss with a hard-on?’

‘Um . . .’

Jan only saw Teun in summer now. He still wore his yellow swimming trunks, although they were getting more and more faded. His jumps were still high, the water still swallowed him like a transparent plastic bag after a somersault. He climbed out of the pool and sat down, directly behind the diving board, without drying himself off. Alone. He always sat alone. With his knees up and his hands on the ground behind him. His black hair was like a helmet on his head, one wisp over his ear. Jan looked at the grass behind his back, at the hands supporting his weight. The pump started to buzz louder and burst into action, water gushing into the ditch. A girl walked up.

‘Here,’ she said, handing Jan a note that was folded up as small as possible.

It took him a moment to smooth out the paper. It said: Do you want to go out with me? Yvonne. He looked diagonally across the pool at the girls’ group and then at the messenger, who was staring down at him quizzically and a little impatiently.

‘OK,’ he said.

The girl walked back. It was that easy, the other boys didn’t even mention it. Because the messenger walked back past Teun with Jan watching her, he saw that Teun was staring at him. Then Teun stood up. He pushed a few boys waiting their turn at the diving board out of the way and walked out to the end of the board, raised one leg, jumped and dived.

‘I’m off,’ Jan said to Peter.

‘Already?’

‘Yep.’

‘To the girls?’

‘No, home.’

‘Same tomorrow?’

‘I’ll pick you up on the way.’

Teun surfaced at the end of zone four, pulled himself up onto the duckboards and slid back into the water on the other side. Then swam leisurely to the side. Jan walked alongside the ditch to the paddling pool. Johan was lying on his towel on his stomach and didn’t see him passing. Cutting through between screeching children and hushing mothers, he reached the changing cubicles, avoiding Yvonne. Tomorrow, he thought. Starting tomorrow I’ll go out with her. In the changing cubicle the rustling of the poplars sounded much louder than outside. He deliberately took his time getting changed. Teun’s mother was sitting behind the counter smoking. He was pretty sure that wasn’t even allowed. Her pitch-black hair stood out against the white planks. ‘Bye-bye, Kaan!’ she called as he walked towards the exit. Unbearable woman. Teun was waiting outside.

He lived near school. There were fields behind the house all the way to the north dyke. Jan never went to the north dyke; his dyke was the east dyke. It was a small house with a narrow kitchen and big furniture in front of a television set. ‘It’s boring,’ Teun said, ‘being an only child.’ And, ‘Tech’s OK, but all the way to Schagen on a bike, do you know how far that is? Especially when you’ve got a headwind. Soon,’ he said, ‘I’ll have a moped.’ He asked where Jan was going at the end of August (the state comprehensive) and whether he was hungry (no, Jan wasn’t hungry). It was muggy in the house, or did Jan think it was OK? ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk to the dyke. Leave the bag here, you can pick it up later,’ Teun said.

Jan let Teun lead the way. He didn’t know these fields, every now and then he turned and saw things he’d never seen before. The village houses from the back, with unexpected sheds, extensions and shrubs. The playing fields behind the school, the grass green and summer-holiday empty. The swimming pool through the windbreak (Yvonne on the other side of the trees, invisible from here), the yelling audible even at this distance. Past the swimming pool, a piece of land with a low embankment around it: for now a sheep field with lamp posts; in winter, the ice-skating rink. To the right, a strip of wheat, already changing colour. The north dyke itself, on the other side of a wide ditch, accessible across a narrow board that sagged badly. When they were standing up on the top, Teun pointed east. There, where the canal curved and three polders came together, there was a triangle of water, a small lake. The Pishoek. ‘You know it?’ Yes, Jan had heard of it. Klaas went swimming there sometimes; he’d never been himself. Strange name. Yeah, maybe people used to come here to piss. Jan tried to laugh, but it didn’t come out right. ‘Later, at home, I can show you on a map. It’s really called that,’ Teun said. ‘OK,’ said Jan. ‘Towels?’ Ah, no need, it was hot.

Jan followed in Teun’s footsteps, climbing over fences and walking past sheep that turned their heads away, but kept chewing their cud and didn’t run off down the dyke. As the crow flies, he was at most three kilometres from home, but it felt like a foreign country. After walking for some time they reached the lake but Teun kept going, along the top of the dyke.

‘How do we get into the water?’ Jan asked.

‘A bit further along there’s a place without reeds.’

Jan was scared that he wouldn’t be able to swim any more, that his certificates weren’t valid here. There weren’t any duckboards to climb up on in the Pishoek. And his swimming trunks were rolled up in the damp towel in his swimming bag, and the swimming bag was on a big armchair at Teun’s house.

Teun took off his clothes and threw them down in a heap. ‘Come on,’ he said.

Jan waited until Teun was in the water before taking off his own clothes.

It wasn’t deep and the bottom was like zone three in the swimming pool, a thin layer of gunk oozing up between his toes like custard. Teun swam to a red post that stuck up above the surface to mark the waterway for boats coming from the canal.

‘Can you stand there?’

‘No. But you can hold on to the post.’

Together they hung on to the waterway marker and gently trod water, their knees bumping against the post and each other’s. Jan did his best to look around. It was quiet, no barges sailing past and no waterbirds nearby. Lots of water in all directions, bordered by reeds everywhere. Deep water, as Jan imagined it, especially in the channel whose edge was invisible because of the lake all around it. Teun let his hand slide down the post until it was touching Jan’s hand. ‘I want to go back now,’ Jan said.

‘OK.’

A brace of ducks coming in to land were startled by the swimming boys and flew up again. Teun swam faster than Jan, spitting out mouthfuls of water the whole time. Sometimes he waited briefly, floating on his back. Jan took his time, following. He didn’t have much to say and let Teun do the talking. He hardly knew Teun’s voice. It had all started during the Queen’s visit, with that hand taking hold of his. Jan still felt its pressure, now that he was pushing the water of the Pishoek to the side and back and making such slow progress. He remembered how he had stood there that day. Grandpa Kaan had taken photos, even though he hadn’t seen him there at all. Tummy pushed forward, a scowl on his face. ‘I hope the Queen didn’t look in your direction right then,’ Grandpa Kaan said later. ‘Otherwise she would have said something. She’s like that.’ Sulking and angry, because of the baker’s daughter and the butcher’s son. And he was still sulking later when Hanne was run over and killed.

When Jan climbed up onto land through the gap in the reeds, Teun was lying on the slope of the dyke with his head resting on his hands. ‘There you are,’ he said.

June, July, August. Yellow dress, the baker, a doorjamb without a door. Flowers for the Queen. Foreign country, here. Uncle Aris, the fly strip over the kitchen table, Auntie Tinie, Grandmother Kaan as a toppling heron, the window with the crack in it in the bedroom that wasn’t a bedroom any more. Teun in his yellow swimming trunks, the raised knee. Sulking and cross, while Hanne was run over and killed.

Jan reached Teun and started to cry.

Teun sat up and grabbed him by his calf. ‘Jan,’ he said.

Jan started crying even louder, he couldn’t understand where it was coming from. He didn’t mind. Jan, Teun had said. That was him. Jan. He wasn’t ashamed of crying, he wasn’t ashamed when he grabbed Teun’s hand. A big hand, with strong fingers, short nails that even long afternoons of soaking in the swimming pool hadn’t cleaned of the remnants of dirt from the technical-college practical week.

Half an hour later the brace of ducks landed after all, or maybe they were different ducks. The birds weren’t bothered by the boys, who were apparently less frightening lying on the dyke than they had been swimming near the post.

‘What were you crying about?’ Teun asked.

‘Nothing,’ Jan said. The back of his throat was itching, it was a feeling he knew from the days he sometimes lay down next to a calf and let it lick him with its rough tongue.

The next day Jan lay down in a different part of the swimming pool for the first time. There were two other year-six boys there. Peter wasn’t there, he didn’t have a girlfriend. Jan tried not to look over to the narrow strip of grass where he’d lain before. Things were very different here with the girls. When Yvonne got out of the water, using the ladder, she gave him a little kiss. He gave her a little kiss back, while keeping his eye on the diving board over her shoulder. Maybe he’d go back to the dyke later in the afternoon. Or tomorrow, or next week. He stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. He listened to the noise around him, which sounded just that little bit different from here. Strange, those girl kisses: so light, so easy. So girly. Teun’s mother was busy and didn’t have time to turn the volume dial to the left. ‘All lovers make, make the same mistakes, yes they do. Yes, all lovers make, make the same mistakes as me and you.’ A whiny bloody song.

Some days Jan took a detour on his bike. Never in the morning, because in the mornings he was always standing on the Kruisweg corner waiting for the large group heading from the village to Schagen. Like birds or cows, they sought cover and safety in numbers, cycling the ten kilometres to Schagen in a long column. In the afternoon he sometimes took a detour; there wasn’t a big group then because not everyone went to the same school. It was at least two kilometres further to go through the village, but he didn’t care. It led him past Teun’s.

There, in the cramped attic above the garage, was a pile of burlap bags. The smell was faintly reminiscent of the big barn where the Wool Federation collected the wool once a year. On a day that was usually warm, all the farmers who kept sheep would come with trailers full of wool to be pressed into bales by a big machine. It wasn’t warm now. September, October. The garage attic couldn’t possibly smell of sheep’s wool, Jan knew that too, but the smell still hung there. If Teun could smell like fresh hay, which he sometimes did, the attic could also smell of wool. Now and then it smelled like wet dog instead, when it was damp from rain or mist or sweat.

Sometime that autumn Teun’s mother’s head popped up through the trapdoor opening. There was nothing he could do about it. Just lie there calmly, acting as if he wasn’t there, hoping nobody would say anything, while inside his head he couldn’t avoid hearing an annoying ‘Ah, if it’s not the Kaan boys’. Somehow she had looked at him as if that was what she was thinking and, for the first time, the ticket lady and Teun’s mother really were one and the same person. Her face turned red, all at once, and slowly retreated back down again, until he had a more or less free view of the open trapdoor. It seemed to take minutes, but that was an illusion. He didn’t have the impression Teun had noticed anything at all.

It happened over a weekend. One Friday in winter he came by and pretended not to be looking in, as if he couldn’t see the little attic window above the garage. It was easy enough, he knew when he and Teun would be seeing each other again. The Monday that followed he was able to look straight through the house at the sheep in the fields behind it; he could even see the north dyke in the distance, despite the drizzle. There were no curtains up, the windowsill was bare, the lightshades had disappeared. Big holes in the front garden – they’d even dug up the perennials. The swing-up door to the garage was open, it was horribly empty. The window above it looked as if it had been cleaned, but that must have been his imagination.

‘Now I’m going to run,’ Brecht Koomen says. The train still looks like it’s been hijacked, the door is still open. She starts to hurry over to it. ‘Are you coming?’ she asks, without looking back.

‘Yes,’ the man says.

Just before jumping the ditch, she sees the woman who was fanning herself with the magazine standing at a window with both hands up against the sides of her face to block out the light. ‘I’m coming,’ Brecht calls, as if the woman has beckoned her, as if she could somehow hold back the train if it started to move right now. She tosses her bag over the ditch. The Rubettes pops into her mind. She reserves judgement on whether or not it was a whiny bloody song. Either way, she never liked it. She jumps, lands well and walks across the gravel to the door with her arms stretched out in front of her. When she puts her hands on the floor of the vestibule the PA starts to hiss.