“Father, shall I sell up?”
“Feel free, son. Feel free.” He takes the saucer off the bedside cabinet with his claw hand and puts it on his lap. The egg rolls onto the blanket. “Dead is dead,” he says. “Gone is gone and then I won’t even know about it.” He gropes for the egg and lays it back neatly on the saucer. “You have to decide for yourself.”
I stand up. Watching him eat the egg is too much for me.
For weeks now he hasn’t said a word about the hooded crow. It’s as if he’s forgotten it.
Henk isn’t outside. Henk is in the kitchen, half sitting on the worktop. In his right hand he is holding a torn-open envelope, in his left he has my letter to his mother, which I should have posted in time for today’s collection. He has already changed: exactly the same but different, the way a house seems strange when you’ve spent a day somewhere unfamiliar. The farmhouse seemed different to me after the old tanker driver’s funeral, after skating on Big Lake and after picking Riet up from the ferry. I realize now that I felt just the same when I came home after picking up Henk. I haven’t worked out why that is. Maybe because you yourself have grown older, even if just a few hours (I had already got that far) and everything at home has stayed still, except the hands of the clock. Then it takes a while to smooth over the time you’ve missed at home.
I’m not going to tell him that it’s rude to open other people’s letters. I notice now that his forehead and nose are burned as well. He turns away, screwing up the letter as he turns. I recognize the gesture, but unlike Father almost forty years ago, Henk is carrying a lighter. He pulls it out of his back pocket and holds the flame under the piece of paper, letting go just before he burns his fingers. The letter burns away in the sink.
“What kind of letter was that?” asks Henk. “Do you think my mother would have understood any of it?”
“The last bit, at least.”
“There’s no need,” he says. “You should be glad I’ve burned it.”
“What do you mean, there’s no need?”
He looks at me and raises his eyebrows. Then he strolls out of the kitchen. I hear him go upstairs and walk into Father’s room. Is he going to sit and watch Father eat the egg?
I look around. The buzzing clock says eight twenty. I’ve boiled an egg for Father, but I haven’t eaten myself. I don’t know whether Henk has eaten. It feels much too early for the sun to have set but I need to turn on the kitchen light. Summer in April.
Before going to bed I look in on Father. I don’t turn the light on, the light shining in from the landing is just enough to see the empty saucer. Father is lying on his back and I can hear him breathing in and out through his nose. The curtains are open. I tiptoe over to the window and close them.
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.