27
In front of the chip stand. A place both Riet and I know. But driving up, I see that the chip stand has vanished and the spot in front of the vanished chip stand is already taken. I park the Opel Kadett behind the other car, a shiny, expensive model with two men in the front.
Riet sounded very businesslike during the telephone conversation, as if my yes hadn’t surprised her at all. Henk already knew about it and he had said yes, too. No, she wasn’t coming with him. “He wouldn’t appreciate that, his mother dropping him off at a sleepover.” In answer to my question as to how I would recognize him, she told me to look out for his ears and said she would describe me to him. Just before hanging up, she was more specific about that “yes” of his: his exact words were “what difference does it make?”
I get out of the car. A little further along the walk-on ferry arrives and, with the boat, the name of the service looms up from the late sixties: the Eagle Ferry. The men in the expensive car are both smoking. They’re wearing suits. The kind of car and the kind of men you only see in the city. It starts raining again and I wonder what kind of behavior goes with “what difference does it make.”
“My mother said you’d be wearing this sweater.”
The teenager with short hair and big ears is shaking my hand. He found me, I was watching the young lad who walked off the ferry behind him and off to one side. I’m wearing my good sweater. The blue one with black stripes that I also wore during Riet’s visit, on New Year’s Eve, and to the old tanker driver’s funeral. The lad who came off the ferry behind him looked like Riet. He had the same color hair and was looking around shyly. I was so sure he was Henk that I stepped aside to look past the person standing in my way.
“Mr. van Wonderen?” the person asked.
“Yes?” I said without looking at him.
“I’m here.” He held out his hand and I accepted it. “My mother said you’d be wearing this sweater.”
“Get in,” I say.
“What shall I . . .”
“Just put it on the back seat.”
While he takes off his backpack, I watch the boy who looks so much like Riet. He has jumped onto the pannier rack of a bike and wrapped his arms tightly around the waist of the girl who is pedaling. He even rests his head on her back.
“Get in,” I say again.
We open the doors at the same time, but before he has settled down properly I’ve already started the car. A little later I overtake the girl on the bike. The boy is talking to her back and looks at me for a second. He looks at me the way people look at each other in passing: briefly, indifferently, their minds on something else. And still I’m thinking, Henk, why didn’t you get into the car with me?
Instead of turning right at Zunderdorp, I drive straight on. In Volgermeer Polder heavy machines are tearing up knotty little trees. They’ve finally started cleaning up the contaminated ground. On the dead-straight road through the Belmermeer, the youth next to me says something.
“This weather stinks.”
I glance at him, the road is narrow and a car is coming from the opposite direction. He must look like Wien, I think, while pulling over. His listless voice doesn’t really go with his short, ginger hair. Maybe Riet sent him to the barber yesterday and when he saw the barber picking up scissors and comb, he said, “No, just use the clippers,” hoping to give her a good fright when he got back home. I still have the strange feeling something has gone wrong somewhere.
Coming home doesn’t really help. Coming home after you’ve been somewhere very different is always strange. Is that because everything at home is just the way you left it? Whereas you yourself have experienced things, no matter how insignificant, and grown older, even if just by a couple of hours? I see the farm through his eyes: a wet building in wet surroundings, with bare, dripping trees, frost-burnt grass, meager stalks of kale, empty fields and a light in an upstairs room. Did I turn on the light or did Father manage it by himself?
“This is it,” I say.
“Uh-huh,” says Henk.
I put the car in the barn out of the rain. Without looking around, he lifts his pack off the back seat.
“Clothes?” I ask.
“Yep,” says Henk.
“I’ve got boots and overalls for you.”
He stays there next to the car, backpack over one shoulder.
Myself aside, I’ve never put anyone to work. Father put me to work. How do you do something like that? First, lead the way. If I start walking, he’ll be sure to follow. Like the outside, I now see the inside of the barn through his eyes. Sacks of concentrate feed, hay and straw in the shadowy heights, the harrow, implements on hooks, shovels, pitch-forks, hoes, the diesel tank on its stand, the messy workbench (screwdrivers, chisels and hammers scattered on the work surface and the wooden board with nails and penciled outlines, empty), the silver-gray poison cabinet. Next to the workbench Father’s bike is hanging on the wall. The tires are flat, the rear mudguard loose, the chain rusty. The spiders’ webs are old and gray. Rainwater is trickling in through the window frame over the bike.
“You got a driver’s license?” I ask.
“No,” Henk answers.
The bike. That will be the first job.
The bulb in the overhead light must be at least seventy-five watts. Henk’s backpack is lying on the dark-blue carpet under the window. Rain rattles on the glass. Henk is sitting on the bed. If there was anything to look at, he would probably be looking around. Only now do I notice how childish the duvet cover is, decorated with animals. African animals: lions, rhinos, giraffes and something else I don’t recognize. The walls around us are dazzling white, the marble top of the petroleum-blue bedside cabinet is empty. I want to say something but I don’t know what. Maybe Henk wants to say something too. It’s cold in the new room. Why does it have to be such lousy weather, today of all days? He has a scar over his left ear, a hairless inch-long gash.
“Do you read?” I ask. “Would you like a reading lamp on the bedside cabinet?”
“I’ve got a book with me,” he says.
“I’ll see if I can find a reading lamp.”
“That’d be good,” says Henk.
“But first we’ll have something to eat.”
I go out onto the landing. He follows, shutting the door of his room firmly behind him. From Father’s bedroom comes the sluggish ticking of the grandfather clock.
