Jan saunters back and turns his shirt over in the grass. ‘Must get a bit more of a tan.’ He drops down full length, his brown knees sticking out above the tall green grass, his eyes screwed up tight against the sun.
‘Lovely Sunday tomorrow,’ he chants. ‘Lovely day off tomorrow.’ He turns over onto his stomach and stays there, arms and legs stretched out wide. I feel envious; he never seems to think of Amsterdam any more and looks completely at home here. I want to talk to him about our street, about our friends, but I am scared to. He is sure to say something sarcastic and laugh at me.
Once, when I had gone over to Scharl to find out what was wrong with Jan who hadn’t been to school for a whole week, the woman I met in the stables called out, ‘Jan, a visitor for you from Holland!’ Jan had come out dressed in dirty blue overalls and wearing muddy rubber boots. His hands were covered with cuts and scratches and he had a silly little cap on the back of his head that gave him a brash, old-for-his-years air. ‘Hullo. What are you doing here?’ He had given me a slightly incredulous look, as if he thought I was not quite right in the head.
‘Nothing. I was in the neighbourhood. So I thought to myself, why not see where Jan lives?’ I said it apologetically, as if I had done something that wouldn’t quite stand up to examination.
We were standing in the large, sunny farmyard, Jan plucking weeds out from between the stones with quick expertise, as if the yard belonged to him. Suddenly, I felt a townie all over again. What on earth was I doing here, what business did I have to be in this place? Jan had turned into a different person, taciturn and grown-up. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking around the place like a real farmer.
In Laaxum I had kept thinking about Jan, the mysterious, inaccessible Jan, the boy from my street. We would have so much to tell each other when we met, about our parents, the friends from our street, about how rotten it was for us here
‘D’you want to see around the stables?’
We had walked through the big doors and Jan busied himself raking some dry grass together with a pitchfork. Somewhere in a corner there was a goat, pulling impatiently at her rope, bleating like a crying child. Jan had squatted down to feel her udders.
‘Inflamed,’ he said, ‘that kid of hers bites the teat too hard.’
He scratched the animal lovingly between the horns and I felt a stab of jealousy.
For a while I stood there in the middle of the barn, totally redundant, looking on as Jan raked the fork to and fro, clouds of straw flying up in the air. ‘Well, so long then,’ I had said and Jan had raised a hand without looking up. ‘See you.’
‘Traitor,’ I had thought to myself as I walked outside, biting my lip hard. ‘Dirty, filthy traitor.’ I could have cried out with mortification.
Jan had stopped moving. I jump to my feet and race up the slope. The silence gives me a sense of great excitement: this is our afternoon. Jan is asleep and I am keeping watch, guarding him from danger.
At the top of the hill I look down at the sea which is covered with small white waves. Jan’s almost invisible body makes the shape of a cross in the grass. I let out a whoop, a shout like the ones we gave in the street in Amsterdam to call to one another in the evenings when we played cops and robbers or prisoners’ base. I see Jan raising his head.
‘Come on!’ I wave my arms and start leaping about like a madman. ‘Hey, hey, hey!’
He comes slowly up to the top, balancing with bare, outstretched arms. His body slanting forward and his head looking down, he takes huge steps.
‘Gosh, you’re so brown already.’
Jan wipes drops of sweat from his nose and lifts his arms into the air. Brown, scratched arms. He looks out over the yellow-green landscape, which he seems to be keeping at bay with a movement of his arm, like a general. He hitches up his sagging trousers and takes stock of the slope. ‘Let’s roll down.’ He gives me a playful shove. We had rolled down once before, but I had finished up at the bottom retching into the sea while the whole world seemed to spin in large circles around me.
I go and lie down at the edge of the slope. ‘Ready, steady… We’ll see who wins.’ I no longer care if it makes me sick, so long as we are together, so long as Jan plays with me.
‘Hang on, we’ll do it doubled, like this.’ He lies down on top of me and puts his arms around me. I can smell his acrid sweat. ‘Ready?’ He laughs and without any warning squeezes the breath out of me. Over we roll, slowly and lopsidedly, then faster and faster. Over and over I see Jan’s face against the blue sky and then against the dark grass. Our bodies bump into each other and I hear Jan catching his breath with excited laughter. I shut my eyes tight and cling to him as we drop like a stone into an unfathomable deep.
Stop, I think to myself, stop! and then we are lying still. Grass rustles and grey circles spin around in my head. I break into a sweat, feeling Jan’s body pressing stiflingly and stickily against me. He pants heavily into my ear. ‘Jesus,’ he sighs, ‘sweet Jesus.’ Are we never going to move again? Jan sits himself up and pins my arms to the ground. ‘Wanna fight?’ He smiles menacingly, his panting mouth half-open. He has straight teeth and a broad, glistening lower lip. ‘Wanna fight?’ I know about that game all right. I try cautiously to free myself from his iron grip. I realise that movement by stealth is more effective than fierce resistance. His arms at full stretch, he stares at me triumphantly. I twist about in vain and am ashamed of my cowardliness, of the humiliation. I don’t want to fight, I want Jan as a friend. But I also know that I can only be his real friend if I take up his challenge. ‘Mercy’, says Jan, ‘ask for mercy. Else I won’t let you go.’
‘Come on,’ I plead, ‘we were having such fun.’ With a lightning-like movement I try to wriggle out from under him, but Jan jerks my legs apart with his knees and starts to rub his body against mine. His smile has disappeared and he now has a look of deep concentration as he makes impatient, insistent movements with his hips. He is frightening me. ‘Hey, Jan. Listen…’ He isn’t listening to me. I can see his face above mine, his teeth clenched firmly together and his eyes shut. He has clamped his fingers around my wrists as if he wants to force my hands off. Suddenly he rolls over and kneels next to me. He pulls his trousers down and a stiff little shape swishes up with a slap against his belly.
The two of us stare in silence at the pale thing, raised like a warning finger. I can see the white belly between Jan’s dropped trousers and his pulled-up vest, a white, vulnerable belly. Jan’s prick looks strange, hard and straight with a shiny red rim on top. I wonder if it hurts and give a loud, convulsive swallow.
‘They say you’ve got to push and pull.’ Jan has suddenly become communicative. ‘It works if you do that.’ He begins to tug violently at the swollen thing. I have the feeling that I have ceased to exist, and turn away. What is he doing, what is the matter with him? I feel sorry for him. Is he ill, does he often go on like this? I press my forehead against the ground and inhale the sourish smell of the grass. What exactly was he trying to do? ‘It works if you push and pull,’ the words shoot through my head. What works? He has a secret he won’t tell me, won’t share with me because he thinks I am too childish, because I piss in my bed. When I turn back to him, Jan is standing up, tucking his shirt into his trousers. He holds a hand out to me and pulls me to my feet. ‘Let’s go.’
We trudge up the Cliff. There is no sign of the secret – Jan is his normal, easy-going self.
‘Have you heard anything from home?’
I did get a letter from Amsterdam. Mummy was back, my father had written, and all was well. Was I having a good time, was I staying with nice people? The lady with whom I lived had written to say that I had wet my bed. How had that come about, when I hadn’t done that at home for such a long time? And best regards to Jan, it was nice that we lived so close together. We ought to be pleased that we were away in Friesland because there was hardly anything left to eat in Amsterdam.