23
“Upstairs,” Riet says when we’re parked in front of the chip stand.
“Yeah,” I say.
“What a joy to be a child.”
“Yeah.”
“He must have died fairly recently?”
“Yes, not so long ago.”
We’ve been parked in front of the chip stand for a good while now. The sun hasn’t gone down yet, but it must be getting close. I can’t see it, the train station is in the way. It’s much busier than it was this morning. People are going home in both directions. If the ferries weren’t operating and the Rhine barges and tour boats weren’t sailing, the water of the IJ would be perfectly smooth. In the distance I see tall buildings in a place I remember as empty. It frightens me, the other side. This side frightens me less, because I know exactly which roads to take to get away as quickly as possible. Riet shows no signs of wanting to get out. Even the bag on her lap isn’t standard for women of her age. Although the double-fisted way she’s holding it is.
“Henk is a bit of a problem,” says Riet.
Is?
“He doesn’t do anything. He’s been hanging round the house for six months now. He hasn’t even got any friends.”
Doesn’t? Hasn’t?
“Sometimes he just lies in bed and then suddenly he’s gone. I have no idea what he gets up to.”
“Riet, what are you talking about?”
“Henk.”
“Which Henk?”
“My son.”
“Is your son called Henk?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”
“How would I?”
“Lying in bed like that, that’s what gets to me the most.”
“Henk? You called your son Henk?”
“Why not?”
“What did your husband think of that?”
“Nothing. Wien thought it was a good name. There was a Henk in his family too. Short and snappy, that’s what he said.”
A passing cyclist bumps the wing mirror. He half turns to raise a hand in apology.
“I was thinking, couldn’t he come and stay with you for a while? Working, I mean.”
Is this what she wanted to ask me? “With me?”
“Yes. You’ve got animals. Cows, sheep, chickens. I think animals would be good for him. And you’re alone, maybe you could make use of someone. As a farmhand.”
As a farmhand. She forgot to mention the donkeys.
“It will do him good. Working. Getting up early, going to bed early, regularity. Fresh air, although he gets enough of that at home, of course.”
“Really?” I say, “With all those pigs?”
“That’s true,” Riet says. “It smells better here.”
“What’s he think about it himself?”
“He doesn’t know about it.”
“When did you come up with this?”
“Oh, about a month ago.”
There’s no reflected sunlight visible anywhere any more, not on the water, not in the windows of the tall buildings. It’s getting dark quickly and the sky over the train station is turning orange. Riet lets go of her bag to open the passenger door.
“Will you think about it?” she asks.
“Of course,” I say.
Glancing over her shoulder to check for pedestrians, she opens the door. She hesitates. “I’ve lost him,” she says. “When he looks at me, it’s as if he’s looking at a stranger.” She leans to the right, ready to get out of the car. Cold air streams in. Then she leans back to the left and kisses me on the cheek. “Thank you,” she says.
I watch her go. During the interrogation Ronald subjected her to through me, I felt like I would be seeing her more often. Now I think I will never see her again. Dragging her leg slightly and not looking back, she disappears among the pedestrians and cyclists. She is crossing the harbor, soon she’ll be on the other side, walking among hundreds of people who will all be traveling in different directions. Thousands of people taking different trains that will carry them all over the country. There won’t be anything to see outside, it’s dark. What will she do? Read? Sit there quietly and think? Talk to the people opposite her? I don’t know. Before starting the car, I rub my hand over my cheek and look at my fingers.
While milking I rest my head on the cows’ warm flanks more often than usual, even when the teat cups are attached and the milk is being sucked into the tubes in a soothing rhythm. I will never stand in a white-tiled milking pit wearing a plastic apron while ten or twelve cows are milked simultaneously; there will never be a big free stall barn here where you spread sawdust instead of straw; here the gutter cleaner will always shuttle back and forth slowly and the muck heap will always grow a little every day until I spread the manure with my ramshackle muck-spreader; a woman will never work in the kitchen here every day, or hang out the washing two or three times a week on the clothesline on the strip of grass next to the vegetable garden. Here, my head moves in time to the breathing of the cows, it is safe and secure. But also empty.
I think of electricity cables hanging low with the weight of hundreds of swallows. I think of Denmark, but for the first time without Jarno Koper. I think of a farmhand who saw the swallows in Denmark.
“Old junk!” Father says indignantly when I take him something to eat after milking.
“You disputing it?” I ask, pointing at the grandfather clock, the photos on the wall and him.
“That crow’s back in the ash.”
“I saw it.”
“How was it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know yet?”
“No.”
“What were you two doing in the new room?”
“Talking.”
“About what?”
“Couldn’t you hear us?”
“No.”
It’s been a long time since he’s asked so many questions. Riet is on his mind, he might have spent the whole day thinking about the old days. I picture him lying here quiet as a mouse, breathing out when there’s talking on the other side of his door, and straining his ears when things get said further away. Is he lonely? I shake my head, I don’t want to think about things like that. All the same, the day suddenly feels like a competition with one player in concealment: Riet versus the Van Wonderens.
I draw the curtains. “Oh, one thing,” I say as casually as I can, “you were cremated. And scattered.”
He has to laugh. “You went to the cemetery.”
“Yes. And your name was missing.” Have I ever joked like this with him before? I stare at the pattern on the curtains, unable to remember any occasions.
He suddenly gets serious. “I’m dirty.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Where was I scattered?”
“I don’t know. In the fields, behind the chicken coop, under the ash.”
I let go of the folds of the curtain and turn around. His eyes are still wet from laughter. I think. He badly needs a shave. The white pillowcase is grayish.
“What did she come for?”
“Because.” I walk to the door. When I turn off the light, a better answer occurs to me. “No,” I say, “not because. She came for a job interview.”
Smiling, I go downstairs.
