She stops in front of the car and looks in through the windscreen. I wait for a moment, then open the door. She approaches with outstretched arms.
“Hello, Helmer,” she says.
“Hello, Riet,” I say.
Very old fury, a fury I can’t remember having, whose existence I didn’t even suspect, rises up inside me. Riet isn’t troubled by fury, I can see that. She is moved and confused, that’s what’s troubling her. The longer Henk is dead, the more I look like him, simply because there is no longer any comparing.
No, fury is too big a word, outrage is closer.
What is it like to have a relationship with a twin? I wouldn’t know — apart from some childish carry-on at primary school-I have never been involved in anything like it. That Christmas Eve was followed by a Christmas Henk filled with absent-minded humming, not even stopping during meals. Over the roast beef and cauliflower cheese, he answered all of our grandparents’ questions in such detail that Father looked up with surprise and Mother looked at me with an expression which would only become normal later, during our alliance. He was home on New Year’s Eve, but two minutes into the New Year he disappeared without telling me where he was going. Late at night, when I was crossing the bridge near The Weighhouse with the group of farm boys we had both been a part of until the week before, I saw them. They were sitting holding hands on a bench in the drizzle. I tried to hide behind the brawniest farm boy and spotted something further along-a snot-colored Volkswagen Beetle two or three steps away — that I might be able to reach without being seen. As the brawniest farm boy was also the one who had drunk the most, he pushed his way through the others to talk to Henk, leaving me exposed. I can still picture the snot-colored Beetle perfectly, I have no idea what was said. There are two other things I haven’t forgotten. One: Henk saw me there — at the back of the group, while he was talking to the drunk youth and keeping Riet’s hand firmly clasped in his — and wasn’t able to look me in the eye. That had never happened before. Two: a little later Riet noticed me as well and I realized that I was the last person she wanted to see, she wanted to forget that there was someone else walking around who looked just like Henk. I broke away from the group and turned down a lane behind the Beetle, fortunately Monnickendam is full of lanes. About a hundred yards later, I put a hand on a damp wall, bent forwards and spewed up all the beer and doughnuts. Then I went off in search of my bike, finally finding it where we had started our pub crawl. Someone had set off fireworks between the spokes of the back wheel. I hoisted the bike up onto one shoulder and walked home, swapping the bike back and forth between my right and left shoulders on the way. I licked drops of water off the bell to get the dirty taste out of my mouth. Late at night had changed to early in the morning. Drizzle isn’t much more than mist with delusions of grandeur, but I was still saturated by the time I got home.
It was months before Henk finally brought Riet home with him. Our farm was at its best for her first visit. It was the time of year when eager lambs dive at the ewes in the field next to the farmhouse, peewits and godwits call their own names while defending their nests, the willows have already sprouted and the crooked ash in the front garden is about to come into leaf. A light-green spring in which even a muck heap can look fresh. Father kept his distance; Mother welcomed Riet with moist eyes and open arms.
I had seen her a few times since New Year and been clumsy and insecure in her company. She was awkward and quiet in mine. Now that she was going to be in our house I had even less idea of how to act. Henk took her to the Bosman windmill, our windmill, that very first time. They came back with a peewit’s egg, and after that things were never really right between Riet and me.
Worse still, things between Henk and me were never right again either.
Later Riet spent her first night at our house, it must have been some time in August.
“Colts and fillies separate,” Mother announced one night at the kitchen table. The night before Riet was expected.
“What?” said Henk.
“Colts and fillies separate.”
Henk had to think it over for a moment. “But you’re a colt and a filly too?” he said with all the innocence he could muster, gesturing at Father.
Father snarled.
Riet slept in Henk’s room, Henk slept in mine. On a mattress on the floor. I couldn’t think of anything to say, I had trouble breathing, something I put down to the oppressive heat. The window was wide open, the curtains weren’t drawn, a full moon was shining straight into the room. Henk was lying half under a sheet, his upper body bared and bluish. He was beautiful, so beautiful. After a long silence, almost as oppressive as the temperature, he whispered something I didn’t understand.
“What?” I said.
“Shhh!”
“What did you say?” I whispered.
“I’m going next door.”
“To Riet?” I said numbly.
“Where else?” He sat up straight and pushed away the sheet. He pulled up his knees and stood up. He was wearing big white underpants. He walked to the door as if treading on eggshells and pulled it open inch by inch. It took a very long time before his body had left my bedroom and the door was shut again.
I’ve hated moonlit nights ever since. The bluish light that comes into bedrooms through curtains or venetian blinds and can’t be kept out is cold, even in summer.
No, give me coots, there’s something I like to hear at night. Their yapping drives away emptiness and next year they’ll yap again, even if they’re not the same ones, and ten years from now they’ll be yapping still. You can depend on coots.
21
Riet is sitting at the kitchen table, in Henk’s old spot. I can’t tell from her face whether she has sat there deliberately. She is staring at a photo on the front page of the newspaper of a group of Koniks standing on a strip of land surrounded by the waters of the Waal. Here it’s freezing, across the borders it’s raining, and washlands and banks everywhere are underwater.
“Polish horses,” she says to the newspaper.
“Coffee?” I ask.
Only now does she look up. “Yes, please.”
The sun is shining: low and cold, but a warm yellow. I have never been to Austria or Switzerland, but this is how I imagine the sun on ski slopes. The coffee machine is in full sunlight and I see that it needs a wipe with a damp cloth. I take my time, with my back to Riet I don’t have to worry about the expression on my face. From the corner of my eye I see something pass the front window.
“A hooded crow!” exclaims Riet.
I turn around. It’s back in the ash, perched on its old branch and rearranging its feathers. I see the knuckles of my hand, wrapped around the handle of the coffee pot, turn white. This is the moment for noise from upstairs. It stays quiet.
“Have you seen hooded crows before?” I ask, making more noise than necessary as I slide the coffee pot in under the filter.
“Sure, often enough. In Denmark. They’re almost all hooded crows up there.”
“Have you been to Denmark?”
“A few times. On holiday.” She thinks for a moment. “Four times.”
“What’s it like?”
“I don’t know what it is like, only what it was like. It must be eight years since we last went. The girls weren’t with us, they’d been going on holidays alone for years. It was just the three of us.”