28
I scoop milk out of the storage tank with a measuring cup; Henk wants a glass of milk with his sandwich. Myself, I almost never drink milk - it’s my livelihood but about the only thing I ever use it for is making porridge. The door to the milking parlor is open, outside it smells of spring. The idea of the trees turning green again and daffodils flowering around their trunks suddenly makes my stomach churn. The image of lambs under pale spring sun drains the strength from my arms, for a moment I have difficulty holding up the lid of the storage tank. Yet another spring like all the previous springs. I don’t think it, I feel it. Before walking back to the kitchen, I stop to look out through the open door at the trees that line the yard. They are bare and wet. The rain keeps falling. It’s late January and in February you can still get severe frosts.
When I come back into the kitchen Henk is sitting there exactly as he was a while ago, in my old spot, with his back to the door. There is a slice of bread on his plate, unbuttered, with nothing on it. I take a mug from the kitchen cupboard, fill it with milk and put it down next to his plate.
“Thank you,” says Henk.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
I sit down. I realize there is no wardrobe in his room. Where’s he supposed to put his clothes when he takes them out of the backpack? “Aren’t you hungry?” I ask.
“A bit.” He sticks his knife in the butter and spreads a thin layer on his bread. Then he puts it down to look at what else there is: cheese, peanut butter, jam, salami and ham. He settles for jam.
“My next-door neighbor made that,” I say.
“Oh.”
“It’s blackberry.”
Before he starts eating, he takes a mouthful of milk.
“And?”
“What?”
“How’s it taste? Fresh cow’s milk?”
He takes another mouthful. “Metallic,” he says.
On second thought, his ears aren’t so very big. They just stick out a little. That makes them look big. When he chews they move up and down.
“I milk twenty cows. That’s hardly any.”
“It smells good here,” says Henk.
“You think?”
“Yes.”
“Not like pigs?”
He doesn’t answer. He looks at me and that’s enough. The shed door is open. I let him go first. He’s not much taller than me, but he’s a good deal bigger. Brawnier. I’ll stand on the trailer and stack the bales of hay, he can throw them up. Teun and Ronald will roll them to the trailer. Thinking about early summer doesn’t bother me: no churning in my stomach, no weak legs.
“The yearlings are in here.”
They sniff and raise their heads as we enter.
“All they do is eat, sleep and shit,” I say.
“Don’t you have a gutter cleaner in here?”
He’s asked a question, that’s a development. “No,” I say.
“How do you do it then?”
“Nothing special. A shovel and a wheelbarrow.”
“Oh.”
I walk out and turn the corner. Before opening the side door, I point out the muck heap. “See that plank, you run the wheelbarrow up there.”
“Bit narrow,” says Henk.
We go into the sheep shed. The bricks and woodwork are saturated with the dry smell of sheep and manure. Even if I left the door and all the windows open for months, you would still smell it. For most of the year it’s empty in here. Sheep can take anything: drought, rain, snow - although they do tend to go lame during extremely wet autumns and winters.
“In a month or two we’ll bring the sheep in.” We, I say. The tour of the farm - with Henk in the cowshed, the yearling shed and the sheep shed - has evidently turned us into farmer and farmhand.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because they’ll start yeaning.”
“What?”
“Yeaning. Lambing.”
“Oh, lambing.”
“What do you call it when pigs have piglets?”
He looks at me as if I’m not quite right.
“Farrowing.”
The donkeys leave him cold. Out of politeness he asks what they’re called. I tell him that they don’t have names. They have stuck their heads over the rail enthusiastically, but Henk ignores them, staring intently at the shelf with the farrier’s tools on it. When I say that I hope it turns dry so they can go outside again, he leaves the donkey shed. Of all the people who have ever been here on the farm, he is the first who hasn’t touched the donkeys. Even the taciturn livestock dealer strolls over to their paddock occasionally to scratch them on the head, even when I don’t have anything for him.
“And?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think of it?”
He looks around with a rather gloomy expression. “It’s all a bit bare.”
“Do you want to get started?” I ask in the barn.
“Sure,” he says.
I point at the bike. “That’s my father’s, but it’s been ages since he could ride a bike. If you can fix it, it’s yours.”
Henk walks over to the bike and wipes the cobwebs off the frame. “How old is this thing?”
“Oh, about twenty years old.”
“Christ,” he says.
He looks around. “Bike pump?”
I get the pump, which is probably pushing twenty as well, out from under the workbench and plug in the strip lights. “Come on,” I say. “I’ll give you some overalls.”
“What do I do?” whispers Father.
“Nothing special,” I say.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“What?”
“I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“No, not any more.”
“That boy’s mother . . .” He can’t bring himself to say her name.
“Yeah?”
“She thinks I’m dead.”
“There were reasons for that.” I feel sorry for him. I don’t want to - when I’m in his bedroom I don’t want anything - but I still feel it.
“Where is he?”
“He’s in the barn fixing your bike.”
Father is eating a cheese sandwich off a plate he tries to hold under his chin with one trembling hand. I’ve turned on the light. It’s just past three, but the clouds refuse to break. What was I thinking when I moved him upstairs? That it would be the first step to “upstairs” as Riet understood it when I told Ronald where Father was? That here, surrounded by photos, samplers, mushrooms and the ticking of the clock, he would lie back calmly and wait? I walk over to the grandfather clock, open the door and pull up the weights.
I imagine Riet cooking in the kitchen; she’s already turned on the light. Everywhere something is happening: Father is lying here; for the moment I’m not sure where I am; Henk is in the barn, in the light as well, at work; the cows are standing calm and serene in the cowshed; in the donkey shed the donkeys are eating winter carrots out of Teun and Ronald’s hands; the twenty sheep are lying down near the Bosman windmill; Ada drops by, drinks a coffee with Riet and asks her whether she’d like to come over tomorrow to see her newly completed willow-shoot bank; the buzzing of the electric clock in the kitchen is less and less penetrating; the winter is far from over. And, of course, I know where I am too: I’m fixing the bike together with Henk, and Riet is more mother than wife.
“That old rattletrap,” says Father.
“Yes, but it’s not worn out yet.”
“What’s he like?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“Whatever,” I say. I take the plate out of his hand and walk to the door. “Light on?”
“Light on,” says Father.
“I’ll send him in to you for a moment this evening.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“We can hardly act like you don’t exist?”
“No.”
The bike is upside-down in front of the workbench. Henk is squatting before it. He’s wearing a pair of Father’s old overalls, faded green with big patches on the knees, the collar turned up. He’s got the chain soaking in a container next to the bike, in diesel by the looks of it. The tires are pumped up. He looks up at me as I approach. There is a black smudge on his jaw. Now he’s down low, I see that he has his mother’s mouth.
“It needs a new back mudguard,” he says.
“I can buy one,” I say.
“And the tires are almost perished.”
“If they’ve really had it, I can buy new tires too.”
“The chain’s soaking in diesel.”
“Did you siphon it out of the tank?”
“Yep.”
Not once has he come to me with a question. What does that say about him? I don’t know.
