53
The cows virtually ignore the shot. Cows are strange creatures: the least little thing can spook them, but they don’t look up or around when they hear a sudden noise. No, that’s not entirely true; the cow I am milking rolls her eyes back. Cows can roll their eyes a long way back, showing so much white that it looks as if they’re completely panicked. It just doesn’t occur to them to turn their heads. Father doesn’t like me saying so, but it’s true: cows are stupid. Even more stupid than sheep. The only clever animals around here are the Lakenvelder chickens and the two donkeys. The second shot comes as even less of a surprise than the first: if you’ve never fired a gun, there’s a good chance you’ll miss the first time. I pull the tube out of the milk line, pat the cow on her side and put the claw down on the dirty floor. No more shots follow.
When I open the door between the scullery and the hall, I see that the front door is open. Sunlight from the east is falling into the hall at an angle, the gleam of the copper-tipped cartridges is bursting out of the box. There’s a sour smell in the hall - sour and metallic. The kitchen door is open too, all the doors are open. Henk’s backpack is on one of the kitchen chairs. I walk up to the front door. A feather floats down, a black feather that spins like an ash key as it falls. It must have been balancing on a twig for quite a while because at least four minutes have passed since I heard the shots. The hooded crow itself is still sitting on its branch. With its back turned towards us, as if insulted. Father’s bike is leaning against the iron railing of the bridge. Henk is standing under the ash, more or less level with my bedroom window. From that distance he could have hit a mouse. He’s got his coat on. It’s colder than it was at the same time yesterday morning, summer is a few degrees further away today.
He waves the gun around, as if he’s about to throw it away, but when he hears me he rests it on the ground next to him, clasping the barrel with his right hand. “I’m going,” he says.
“Where?”
“To the train station.”
“How?”
“On the bike.” He gestures at the bridge.
“And how’s the bike going to get back here?”
“Your father doesn’t need it any more.”
“Do you know the way?”
“I’ll follow the signs.” He’s talking to the crow. He doesn’t look at me.
“You got any money?”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “Plenty. What have I had to spend it on here? Even that shitty canoe cost almost nothing.” It’s not easy, but he does it, he tears his eyes away from the crow. He turns and walks into the hall. A little later he re-emerges with the backpack. He’s still holding the gun in his right hand.
“Didn’t you even wing it?” I ask.
“No. It just stayed sitting there. As if nothing had happened. When I fired again, it turned around, with a little jump. That bird is weird.”
“Why did you do it?”
“It’s as if things don’t exist unless you see them. You think it was me?”
“Who else?”
“You really think I’d shoot an animal dead like that off my own bat?”
“You had a score to settle,” I say.
He hands me the gun. He looks at me and smiles contemptuously. Then he walks over to the bike.
I don’t expect him to say anything else.
“Your father asked me to do it last night. ‘Blast that bird out of the ash,’ he said.”
I walk over to the bridge too. “And you thought, fine, I’ll do it.”
“That’s right. He couldn’t do it himself.”
“You could have just left it.”
“I think your father’s a nice guy. Nicer than you.”
“Maybe he is,” I say.
“‘Then throw the gun in the ditch.’ He said that too.”
“But you haven’t done that.”
“No. Because you suddenly appeared in the garden. And it actually seems like a waste.”
“Have you said goodbye to him?”
“Of course.” He takes the handlebars and pushes the bike onto the road. “Maybe I’ll see you sometime.”
“What are you going to do, Henk?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see.” He swings a leg over the back of the bike. “Thanks,” he says, riding off.
He came with one scar, he’s leaving with two.
He says, “thanks.” Not mockingly, not spitefully. He says it without any kind of emotion. But why does he say it? I don’t know how to answer, so I say nothing. He pedals hard and soon disappears behind Ada and Wim’s farm. An early Thursday cyclist passes, an old man, a bit older than me, in shirtsleeves. He rides onto the verge, and from the verge he almost crashes into the canal because he can’t keep his eyes off me and the gun. I wait until he’s back on the saddle and riding in a straight line again. I don’t throw the gun into the ditch, I walk up onto the road and throw it in the canal. On the way back I stop for a moment on the bridge. The crow turns around again. It preens itself and steps from side to side. “What do you want?” I ask quietly. It doesn’t answer.
Your father doesn’t need it any more. What did I say myself, months ago, when Father’s bike caught my eye and I knew what Henk’s first job would be? “That’s my Father’s, but he can’t ride a bike any more.” That’s not the same as “not needing it any more.” First I’ll finish milking, then I’ll go upstairs. The bloody cows always come first. Whatever you do, even if you know your Father is lying dead in his bed, you milk the cows first, idiot that you are.
People always want to know what someone has died of, even if their curiosity diminishes as the age of the deceased increases. But who can I tell that Father died of an egg? The GP I am about to call? The undertaker? Complete strangers or people I hardly know? I have to laugh, but suddenly the ticking of the clock annoys me so much that I open the glass door and seize the pendulum with both hands to stop it. Then I sit down on the chair by the window. The buds of the ash have burst open: tender, purplish-green plumes waving back and forth on the breeze. It’s early: the hands of the grandfather clock point to half past nine. I can’t look at him yet. First I’ll stay here in the chair and stare out at the dyke through the plumes of the ash.