The donkeys are waiting for me, even though I don’t go out to them every evening. I’ve left the light on and it casts a broad track into the yard. My very own crib. They snort when I enter the shed. I give them a couple of winter carrots and a scoop of oats. Their breath billows up out of the trough as a cold cloud. I sit on a bale of hay and wait for them to finish feeding. Quiet cackling noises come from the chicken coop next to the donkey shed. Strange.
I’ve got cold from sitting still. When I take off my clothes in the scullery, I do it slowly, to get even colder. I shiver in the bathroom until the water has warmed up. I wash my hair and clasp my hands together behind my neck to make a bowl that I empty again and again, splashing hot water over my shoulders and down my back. I dry myself off and walk to the living room, where I turn off the lights and turn up the fire. I stand up straight and study myself in the mirror in the light coming from the bedroom. This is my house now. I can stand naked in front of the mirror whenever I like. The warmth from the fire glows on my penis, the muscles in my bum and legs feel heavy and strong. It’s as if I can feel the farmhand’s hands on my bum again. The sensation is so real that I can’t help putting my own hands there to make the imagined hands disappear. Riet’s letter is on the mantelpiece. I take it to the bedroom and read it yet again in bed (under the second duvet cover, which I have washed in the meantime). Before turning off the light I look up at the map of Denmark. That’s three sheep hanging there, I think, rolling onto my left side and pulling my knees up in the dark.
14
A second letter has arrived:
Dear Helmer,
Brabant is horrible. I don’t know if you’ve ever been here, but take it from me: it’s terrible. Nothing but pigs and sociable people, but their kind of sociable is nothing like what we used to have at home in North Holland. Carnival, for instance, can you imagine? Can you see me dressed up in funny clothes, a clown suit with a mask on? And everyone keeps on smiling the whole time, as if they’ve got anything to smile about.
Our two daughters are Brabant born and bred, but because they’re our daughters, and I get on with them really well, it doesn’t matter so much. They’re both very warm and they both have nice husbands and young children (yes, I’m a grandmother!). They live a stone’s throw away so I can drop by whenever I feel like it.
Our son (I’ve only just noticed that I’ve written “our,” although Wien has been dead now for almost a year) doesn’t fit in quite so well in Brabant. I don’t know why, maybe it’s because he takes after me more than Wien. After Wien’s death I sold up and now I live in the village, together with my son. That’s strange: husband dies, you move, and then all you’ve got is time on your hands.
I’m writing this letter because you haven’t written back or called. I’m curious about how life has treated you. I don’t even know if you’re married, but I suspect not, because just before my mother died, she told me you weren’t. Yes, you can see that I tried to keep up with you as best I could. And there’s something I’d like to ask you, but I’d rather not do that in a letter. Won’t you write or call?
I’ll just say it straight out: I would like very much to drop by. To see you, but also to see the farm I visited so often (and where I, if things had gone differently, would now live). But then the problem with your father (which I wrote about in my last letter) needs to be resolved.
Hoping to hear from you,
Love,
Riet
This time there is an address on the back of the envelope. The name of the village doesn’t ring any bells. I don’t understand what she wants from me. Like the previous letter, this one is muddled. The first time it was “best wishes, Riet,” now it’s “love.” It’s as if she’s trying to arouse my curiosity. Is the thing she wants to ask me about, which she also mentioned in her first letter, simply whether she’s allowed to drop by? Or is it something else. The sentence “and where I, if things had gone differently, would now live” (in brackets, of all things, as a passing comment) annoys me. I interpret the end of her letter as meaning that I have to inform her that Father is dead, otherwise she won’t come.
A fitful thaw has begun. Now and then the temperature creeps above freezing. It’s misty with occasional rain, but most of the day it stays below zero. There’s a layer of water on the ice, but at the same time the yellowish-white frozen edges in the ditches keep widening. The mist is strange; with mist you expect warm air. I can forget about my Monnickendam-Watergang circuit, I’ve already put away my skates. The donkeys stay indoors. The chickens are hardly laying. The frost flowers in Father’s bedroom have slid off the window, there’s a pool of water on the windowsill. He ate the apple. I don’t know how he managed it. He must have been very hungry.
Twenty cows. A pre-war tie stall barn. A few calves and a handful of yearlings. Twenty-three sheep. No, twenty. I’m not even a smallholder. But the paintwork is in good condition and the tiles on the roof are straight.
In the afternoon the young tanker driver arrives. I don’t go into the milking parlor. I watch him through the round window, which was moved from the outside wall to the wall between the milking parlor and the scullery when the milking parlor was built. With the doors to the shed, hall and milking parlor shut, it’s dark in the scullery, the only light comes in through that same round window. Mist seems to be streaming along the sides of the enormous tanker and into the building. The driver keeps smiling, despite the pitiful amount of milk flowing into his tanker through the hose from my tank. I’ve forgotten his name again and the harder I try to dredge it up, the further it sinks. There’s an O in it, I know that much. He sticks a little finger in his nose; I actually feel like turning away. He doesn’t look like he’s waiting for me, he doesn’t seem to care whether I come to make small talk or not.
Is it enough to have the paintwork in good condition and the roof tiles straight? The willows neatly pollarded and the donkeys warm and well fed in their shed?
Of course I am curious about Riet. Of course I want something to happen. I want to know what has become of the beautiful girl with long blonde hair — the young woman who was going to marry my brother. I want to hear what she has to say, I want to see the look in her eyes. I wait until the young driver has leapt up to his cab, as lithe as ever, before going into the parlor to spray the storage tank clean. The hot water drives the cold mist back outside.
After milking I go into the vegetable garden to pick some kale. It’s had more than enough frost. I straighten up and look through the kitchen window into my own house. The lights are on in the kitchen and the living room. In the distance-Ican see it because all the doors are open — the new bed is like a throne in a palace. It’s Christmas Eve and in seven days the new year will start.
II
18
“There’s no such thing as a pig farmer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pig keepers, maybe, but you can’t call them farmers.”
“Why not?”
“Did that husband of yours have land?”
“Yes.”
“How many acres?”
“A bit between the sheds and another bit around the side.”
“That’s what I mean. A farmer has land and he does something with that land. Pig keepers keep pigs in sheds for slaughter. That ’s got nothing to do with farming. .”