Coming back into the house, I go straight to the bathroom. I leave the taps running until the boiler is empty. I dry myself and wrap the towel around my waist. It’s quiet in the house. Henk isn’t watching TV. He’s sitting at the kitchen table with his back to the side window. The curtain is drawn. He’s smoking. The table is completely bare except for the butt-filled ashtray. I walk into the living room.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“I’m going to bed.”
“Oh,” he exclaims indignantly, “I’ll go to bed too then.”
“Your own bed,” I say.
“Upstairs?”
“That’s right, upstairs, that’s where your bed is.”
“But. .”
“But what?” I’ve reached the bedroom door.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
I close my bedroom door and go over to stand in front of the map of Denmark. “Helsingør,” I say. “Stenstrup, Esrum, Blistrup, Tisvildeleje.” Five names spoken slowly are not enough tonight. I do a few extra islands. “Samsø, Ærø, Anholt, Møn.” The big bed is ready for me. When I pull back the duvet, I smell Henk. I lie down and tug the light cord above my head. It’s dark. I hear him enter the living room. I hear him walking up to the bedroom door. He breathes in front of the closed door, I breathe here in bed. Then he walks away from the door. A few seconds later the TV goes on. Cigarette smoke drifts into the bedroom through the cracks. He rips open a bag of crisps. An hour later the TV goes off. He stamps upstairs and slams the door of the new room behind him. He doesn’t think of Father, he doesn’t think of me. He is young and thinks only of himself.
50
Riet,
You’re right: I am a liar and a cheat. I said that Father was dead because I thought you wouldn’t come otherwise. And I wanted you to come. I wanted to see you and I wanted to talk about Henk. I was curious about you. Just like you — presumably — were curious about me. That’s why. But you didn’t ask me anything, you just talked about yourself in relation to Henk. That hurt. I felt forgotten then and I felt forgotten again now.
I could also question your motives for putting Henk in my care. Everyone wants something, but what you want is not entirely clear to me. Did you think he needed a father figure? Well, I can be all kinds of things if necessary, but I’m not a father. I’m not an uncle either. I’m a son. I’m a brother. But I don’t want to go into that. I think Henk’s “apprenticeship” is over, I believe — no, I am certain — that it is time for him to go back to Brabant. To you, or maybe to something of his own. He has been here for two and a half months now and I think he’s learned quite a lot, and I’m not just talking about looking after livestock or different kinds of farm work. He gets along well with Father. Lately they’ve spent a lot of time talking together, but that might be something you’d rather not hear. Either way: he has to leave.
If you ask me there’s not too much wrong with him or about him. I think that, if there is anything, he’s more than capable of working it out for himself. In time. I can’t do anything else for him. You’re his mother. It’s your responsibility. I suggest you come and get him. It’s hard for me to get away because of the cows and the sheep. Surely one of your daughters has a car? I’ll ring you up about the details. It is very likely — and this time I’m not lying — that Father really will be gone by then. He’s had enough and stopped eating a while ago.
Best wishes,
Helmer van Wonderen
Some things have ceased to amaze me. Henk hasn’t got up yet, so it wasn’t until after nine this morning that I sat down at the kitchen table. In the sheep shed the count is now thirty from nineteen. One sheep to go. After breakfast I put on some coffee and sat down at the bureau to write the letter to Riet, signing it with my full name. Maybe I did that to show her I’m serious. The letter is already in an envelope with a stamp on it; I’ll post it later today.
I’m sitting on the sofa in the living room. Mother watches from the mantelpiece while I smoke a cigarette. She was already seductive, haughty and alert, but now she is disparaging as well. The sunlight through the narrow slats of the blinds is beautiful. Last night Henk left his packet next to the sofa. I look ridiculous with the smoldering cigarette in my hand, I can see that in the mirror. A filter cigarette is slender and elegant, my hand is coarse and bony. No matter how I hold the cigarette the smoke drifts up to my left eye, which is watering. I look back at Mother’s photo. It’s impossible, I know-a photo is a photo and Mother is dead — but still I seem to see a mocking smile flit over her lips. Maybe I’m more a roll-your-own kind of bloke.
Father is sleeping. Without snoring. His chest, or what is left of it, is moving up and down very slightly. I have to look closely, otherwise I would miss it. It’s actually high time he had a shower, but I no longer dare to do it. I’d rather not have him die, like Mother, in the bathroom. Two parents dying in the bathroom, no. The plate of food Henk brought up last night is sitting on the bedside cabinet untouched. A couple of dry potatoes, shriveled green beans, a meatball. Next to the plate, a glass of water he’s hardly drunk from. He moves.
“Henk?” he says, with his eyes closed.
Which Henk does he actually mean? I wonder. Was he dreaming about his son? “No, it’s me,” I say.
“Have you been smoking?”
“Yes.”
He opens his eyes and looks at me. “You’re a weird one,” he says quietly.
“Yep.”
“Do you know what I keep thinking about?”
“No.”
“That drive on the Gouw Sea. Do you remember?”
“Yes. The ice was two and a half feet thick.”
“I wanted to go out onto Lake IJssel, but I was too scared. We sat there near the embankment for hours.”
“It wasn’t hours,” I say.
“It felt like it.” He closes his eyes again. His arms are lying next to his body like the legs of a dead calf. “I was too scared,” he whispers. “I was too scared.”
I don’t say anything. I listen.
“And you sat in the middle of the back seat like one boy.”
I stand up. It’s as if he’s fallen asleep again and is dreaming of that arctic winter forty years ago.
“Helmer?” he says, when I’m at the door.
“Yes?”
“I want to be buried with your mother and Henk. And don’t put a notice in the paper until afterwards.”
“You sure? No one there?”
“No one there,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
“And I want an egg.”
“What?”
“A hardboiled egg.”
“You haven’t eaten for weeks. It will kill you.”
“If I could laugh, I’d laugh. I feel like an egg.”
“I’ll bring you an egg later.”
I close the door and cross the landing.
Am I doing the right thing? I wonder.
When Father’s dead, I’ll be the only one left, I think, as my hand moves up to the handle of the door to the new room.
So be it, I think, as I open the door.
51
The Velux window faces north and casts a strange light in the new room. The only direct sun it gets is late in the evening in June and July. Henk doesn’t know yet that it’s summer outside, more so even than yesterday. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do this afternoon either. The duvet with dark-blue letters and numbers is pulled up to his ears.