20
For Riet I make an exception: I drive south. South-west, to be precise. To the ferry in North Amsterdam. We have agreed on a time and long before that time I am already parked in front of a chip stand on the IJ. Futuristic ferries cross back and forth, streamlined butter dishes in blue and white, nothing like the pale-green boats they had in 1967. Back then they still took cars, the ferries were sailing motorways. I see “Municipal Ferry No. 15” before me, and the narrow, roofed sections for bikes and motorbikes. They were only pale green inside the deck, the outside was a filthy white. I’d forgotten that.
I try to think my way further into the city. Faces and names of fellow students don’t come back and I can’t even picture the building I had lectures in. It’s all gone, there across the water.
I described the Opel Kadett to her, but, faced with the stream of pedestrians and cyclists, I start to worry. Who will discover who? Should I stay in the car or get out and stand next to it?
Earlier this morning, when I was in the middle of the yard with Father in my arms and he asked me through chattering teeth and trembling lips where I was taking him, I decided to carry him back to his bedroom. I was going to put him in the loft of the yearling shed. His question and the inquisitive looks from the donkeys (one of the two started to bray loudly, waking the chickens from their morning snooze) were enough to make me abandon the plan. How was I going to get him up the ladder anyway? The return journey went smoothly, all the doors were wide open. I put him back in bed (still warm) and was going to leave the room without a word. At the door I changed my mind.
“I’m going to pick up Riet,” I said.
He looked at me with a blank expression.
“At the ferry in Amsterdam. She’s coming to visit.”
“Riet?” The name croaked out and he went a bit pale.
“Yes, Riet. And you’re dead.”
“Dead?”
“I told her you’re dead.”
“Why?”
Now I tried to look at him blankly. “Do you need to ask?”
He thought about it.
“If I were you, I’d keep quiet,” I said ominously. “Otherwise there’s a chance she’ll come upstairs.”
“What for?”
“Payback.”
“Oh . . .”
“And you’re not all there, remember?”
“Oh . . .”
“I’m going now.”
Que será, será, as Doris Day would say, I thought on the stairs. Whatever will be, will be.
I’m old, I thought in the scullery.
A ferry arrives every six minutes: five since I’ve been parked here. A lot of women in their fifties have got off them, fortunately I can exclude the ones with bikes. They’re all wearing thick coats and scarves. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a winter like this: the temperature has fallen below zero again and there is even snow on the ground. The sixth ferry approaches the quayside. I check my watch; this will be the ferry that brings her to me. Where are all these people going on an ordinary weekday? Riet is one of the last to get off the ferry. I feel a little dizzy, I was expecting someone who looks like Ada (why that should be, I don’t know), but it is Riet just as she rode away thirty years ago. Without the long blonde hair, a little plumper, and with a different way of walking. I sit rigid behind the steering wheel, which I have involuntarily grabbed with both hands. She walks straight up to the car. I feel like falling to one side, crawling under the dashboard, putting the car in reverse and disappearing backwards into the IJ, straight through the chip stand if necessary. Maybe she’ll try to save me.
She stops in front of the car and looks in through the windscreen. I wait for a moment, then open the door. She approaches with outstretched arms.
“Hello, Helmer,” she says.
“Hello, Riet,” I say.
Very old fury, a fury I can’t remember having, whose existence I didn’t even suspect, rises up inside me. Riet isn’t troubled by fury, I can see that. She is moved and confused, that’s what’s troubling her. The longer Henk is dead, the more I look like him, simply because there is no longer any comparing.
No, fury is too big a word, outrage is closer.
What is it like to have a relationship with a twin? I wouldn’t know - apart from some childish carry-on at primary school-I have never been involved in anything like it. That Christmas Eve was followed by a Christmas Henk filled with absent-minded humming, not even stopping during meals. Over the roast beef and cauliflower cheese, he answered all of our grandparents’ questions in such detail that Father looked up with surprise and Mother looked at me with an expression which would only become normal later, during our alliance. He was home on New Year’s Eve, but two minutes into the New Year he disappeared without telling me where he was going. Late at night, when I was crossing the bridge near The Weighhouse with the group of farm boys we had both been a part of until the week before, I saw them. They were sitting holding hands on a bench in the drizzle. I tried to hide behind the brawniest farm boy and spotted something further along-a snot-colored Volkswagen Beetle two or three steps away - that I might be able to reach without being seen. As the brawniest farm boy was also the one who had drunk the most, he pushed his way through the others to talk to Henk, leaving me exposed. I can still picture the snot-colored Beetle perfectly, I have no idea what was said. There are two other things I haven’t forgotten. One: Henk saw me there - at the back of the group, while he was talking to the drunk youth and keeping Riet’s hand firmly clasped in his - and wasn’t able to look me in the eye. That had never happened before. Two: a little later Riet noticed me as well and I realized that I was the last person she wanted to see, she wanted to forget that there was someone else walking around who looked just like Henk. I broke away from the group and turned down a lane behind the Beetle, fortunately Monnickendam is full of lanes. About a hundred yards later, I put a hand on a damp wall, bent forwards and spewed up all the beer and doughnuts. Then I went off in search of my bike, finally finding it where we had started our pub crawl. Someone had set off fireworks between the spokes of the back wheel. I hoisted the bike up onto one shoulder and walked home, swapping the bike back and forth between my right and left shoulders on the way. I licked drops of water off the bell to get the dirty taste out of my mouth. Late at night had changed to early in the morning. Drizzle isn’t much more than mist with delusions of grandeur, but I was still saturated by the time I got home.
It was months before Henk finally brought Riet home with him. Our farm was at its best for her first visit. It was the time of year when eager lambs dive at the ewes in the field next to the farmhouse, peewits and godwits call their own names while defending their nests, the willows have already sprouted and the crooked ash in the front garden is about to come into leaf. A light-green spring in which even a muck heap can look fresh. Father kept his distance; Mother welcomed Riet with moist eyes and open arms.
I had seen her a few times since New Year and been clumsy and insecure in her company. She was awkward and quiet in mine. Now that she was going to be in our house I had even less idea of how to act. Henk took her to the Bosman windmill, our windmill, that very first time. They came back with a peewit’s egg, and after that things were never really right between Riet and me.
Worse still, things between Henk and me were never right again either.
Later Riet spent her first night at our house, it must have been some time in August.
“Colts and fillies separate,” Mother announced one night at the kitchen table. The night before Riet was expected.
“What?” said Henk.
“Colts and fillies separate.”
Henk had to think it over for a moment. “But you’re a colt and a filly too?” he said with all the innocence he could muster, gesturing at Father.
Father snarled.
Riet slept in Henk’s room, Henk slept in mine. On a mattress on the floor. I couldn’t think of anything to say, I had trouble breathing, something I put down to the oppressive heat. The window was wide open, the curtains weren’t drawn, a full moon was shining straight into the room. Henk was lying half under a sheet, his upper body bared and bluish. He was beautiful, so beautiful. After a long silence, almost as oppressive as the temperature, he whispered something I didn’t understand.
“What?” I said.
“Shhh!”
“What did you say?” I whispered.
“I’m going next door.”
“To Riet?” I said numbly.
“Where else?” He sat up straight and pushed away the sheet. He pulled up his knees and stood up. He was wearing big white underpants. He walked to the door as if treading on eggshells and pulled it open inch by inch. It took a very long time before his body had left my bedroom and the door was shut again.
I’ve hated moonlit nights ever since. The bluish light that comes into bedrooms through curtains or venetian blinds and can’t be kept out is cold, even in summer.
No, give me coots, there’s something I like to hear at night. Their yapping drives away emptiness and next year they’ll yap again, even if they’re not the same ones, and ten years from now they’ll be yapping still. You can depend on coots.