48
The magnolia is in flower. Like a glacé cherry on a cowpat. Its large flowers are neither white nor red, but pink with a white edge. If the laborer’s cottage was still standing, the top branches would be up to the dormer window. April has come and spring has gone away again. It’s sunny but cold, and at night the temperature falls below zero. But still the magnolia is in flower. None of it makes any difference to a tree and the frost doesn’t seem to have damaged the flowers. A very long time ago, maybe in the days when the farmhand was still living there, a night frost froze all the flowers. Two days later they turned brown, as if they had been scorched by a fire, and the petals, which normally fall from the branches one at a time, didn’t fall. It’s incredibly clear: from Father’s bedroom you can see the lighthouse on Marken. The wind is blowing from the north or northeast. From Denmark.
“When your mother died,” says Father, “you were the only one left.” He is lying on his side because I’ve told him not to lie on his back all the time. The piece of paper with the poem is next to the bed, halfway under the bedside cabinet, blank side up. “And now everyone’s gone. I would have liked another chat with the livestock dealer, even if he hardly ever said anything.”
“He must be in New Zealand by now,” I say, more to myself than to Father.
“Life is such a mess. Ada hasn’t been here for weeks because she watched you through a pair of binoculars, and you watched her. And why doesn’t Teun come any more? Teun is a nice boy. What are you playing at, Helmer?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
I look out of the window. “The ash is in bud,” I say.
“How many lambs?” No matter what happens, he doesn’t want to lose count.
“Fourteen.”
“From?”
“Ten.”
He sighs. “No one could tell you and Henk apart, not the barber, not your teacher, not your grandparents. Even I had to look closely sometimes. Only your mother and Jaap always knew who was who. Jaap always knew that you were Helmer and Henk was Henk. How did he know that? What did he see that I or other people didn’t see? I never trusted him.” He’s lying on the edge of the bed. His nails haven’t been cut for a long time, a clawlike hand hangs down next to the bed. He moves his fingers, as if reaching for the poem. I’m surprised that so many words can come out of such a worn-out person. With the bed up on blocks, his searching fingertips will never reach the ground. Then he rolls onto his back. His arm follows the movement of his body and falls next to him on the blankets like a dry branch. He’s panting slightly. “I don’t know what went on in the laborer’s cottage, but I was glad he left,” he says, almost inaudibly.
“What?”
“Kissing,” he sighs. “Men don’t kiss.”
Until this instant I hadn’t noticed the ticking of the grandfather clock. It’s ticking irregularly, slowly. It’s been a long time since I raised the weights. “He . . .” Then I let it be, I let him be. I stand up and open the glass door of the clock. After I’ve raised the weights, the ticking is as good as ever.
“You never said anything,” Father says. “You never said you didn’t want to.”
“You didn’t have much choice.” I walk back to the window and follow the line of the dyke until I can see the lighthouse again.
“No.”
I clear my throat. “I didn’t have much choice either.”
He doesn’t answer that. He’s still panting.
“And now Henk is here.” A car drives along the dyke, very slowly. The windows catch the sunlight so that it looks as if the sun is shining from inside the car. The chariot of the sun god. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” I reply.
“No, maybe not,” says Father.
The chariot corners and changes back to a car. I turn around.
Father’s eyelids droop, but his eyeballs are still moving. “I . . .” he says. Then it’s quiet for a long time. “I have almost no body any more.”
I knew it. I knew he had read the poem.