Father was laid out in the house for four nights. I didn’t touch him once.
When he went into the living room he immediately sat down on the kitchen chair next to the coffin. I stayed standing by the door. He rolled a cigarette, maybe because he saw an ashtray on the arm of the sofa. While smoking, he looked at Father. His glance moved from Father to the photos on the mantelpiece. “She was a beautiful woman, in her own way,” he said, nodding at the formal photo of my mother. “I don’t think many people saw that.” A horizontal layer of smoke formed in the living room. All the times I sat there smoking next to the open coffin, I didn’t manage that once.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Things have changed a lot in here.”
“I did that, a few months ago.”
“That recently?”
“Yes.”
He took a couple of deep drags from his roll-up then nodded in the direction of the mantelpiece again. “Dead brother,” he said. He stubbed out his cigarette and laid the backs of his fingers lightly on Father’s forehead. Then he stood up and shook my hand, with the fingers that had just touched the dead body. “Your father’s dead, Helmer,” he said.
He didn’t kiss me on the mouth, although someone really was dead now.
As if I didn’t know it yet myself: beautiful mother, dead brother, dead father. Twenty cows, some yearlings, two nameless donkeys, twenty sheep, thirty-one lambs and a few Lakenvelder chickens.
“Do I smell coffee?” he asked, crossing the hall to the kitchen, where he didn’t just sit down on the first chair he came to. He walked around the table and sat down with his back to the side window. Henk’s chair. He drummed on the tabletop, as if waiting impatiently for me to pour him a cup of coffee. He looked with mild surprise at the binoculars, the open packet of almond cakes and the mugs Ada and I had drunk out of. He said this was the first time he had sat at the kitchen table. Still standing there in the doorway of the living room, I looked from his drumming fingers to Father’s forehead and from Father’s forehead to my hand.
I didn’t pour him a coffee right away. I went over to stand by the front window. The hooded crow was staring at me from its usual branch. It lowered its head a little as if shrugging its shoulders. I wondered whether birds have shoulders, whether you can call the elbows of folded wings shoulders. It looked like an animal that can stalk, somehow feline. It had been sitting there since autumn. Sometimes I forgot about it and some days I noticed it again and felt like I had the first time I saw it, the day I sat down on all four chairs, as if trying to avoid eating alone. It pulled its shoulders up a little bit more and fell forwards, not spreading its wings until just before it would have hit the ground. I stepped back; it looked like it was going to sail straight through the windowpane. During the sharp turn it had to make, its wingtip touched the glass. It flew off towards the dyke, the Lake IJssel dyke. I watched it go until there were tears in my eyes.
He cleared his throat. I turned around. Yes, he would like some coffee — black with sugar — and yes, he wouldn’t say no to one of those almond cakes either.
Dead is dead. Gone is gone, and then I won’t even know about it. That’s why I wasn’t the only one to attend Father’s funeral. A funeral is not for the dead, it’s for those left behind. It was egotistical of Father to want to be buried on the sly. Jaap was there, Ada and the boys (not Wim, he hates death, and what’s more he had something else to do, something important) and the young tanker driver. “How did you. .” I started and Ada, who was standing behind him, formed a telephone receiver with her little finger and thumb and held it up to her ear and mouth. She shrugged apologetically, holding her head a little to one side.
“Solidarity, that’s important,” he said to Jaap.
“You’re right about that, lad,” Jaap replied, “absolutely.”
I didn’t mind, even if I was beginning to suspect the young tanker driver of making a habit of going to as many funerals as possible, which was something of an aberration. Once again there was a white sheet, hardboard by the look of it, at the bottom of a grave that actually went deeper. It didn’t last long, there weren’t any speakers. The sun was shining and the temperature was around average for late April. I threw earth in the grave. Not a handful, a shovelful. Because I like that at funerals. I don’t regard a handful of earth that blows away before it hits the coffin as any kind of conclusion. Only Ronald followed my example.
“How do you like the new driver?” Galtjo asked when we were sitting in the kitchen later. Ada had put on some coffee and I had bought marzipan castles at the baker’s in Monnickendam. All in honor of Father. There was jenever for the men. Teun and Ronald drank something with bubbles.
“She’s a bit mouthy for me,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, smiling as ever. “I’ve heard that.” His smile no longer moved me.
“Are you farmers too?” Jaap asked Teun and Ronald.
“We’re kids,” Teun corrected him.
What surprised me was the number of cards that appeared in the green letterbox on the roadside in the days after the death notice appeared in the paper. Dozens of cards. There was one from the livestock dealer, who returned from New Zealand two days after the funeral. There was even a card from Klaas van Baalen, the farmer who was the same age as me and had had his sheep removed because he neglected them. Jarno Koper’s parents sent one and so did the old tanker driver’s widow. And, of course, there were cards from all kinds of distant relatives, second and third cousins, none of whom I knew and none of whom were called Van Wonderen.
I sent a card to Riet and Henk, who obviously wouldn’t read our paper all the way down in Brabant. Riet didn’t respond at all, although it was from her that I had expected to receive a perhaps not-so-friendly card in return. If I never hear from her again, I won’t be surprised. Henk sent a postcard in reply. I already knew, he wrote on the back. And I think it’s a shame, because he was a nice man. I’m using his bike here now. I brought it with me because I couldn’t lock it up and it would have just been stolen otherwise. So I think of him now and then. Cheers, Henk. I had to smile at the card he had chosen, showing a tower of animals: a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster. “That’s cute,” said Ada. “They’re the Bremen town musicians. One of Grimms’ fairy tales.” The donkey in particular appeals to me. He didn’t just grab a card from the rack. I think.
Two weeks ago I turned fifty-six. In Germany. He wanted to drive over the Lake IJssel dam, I wanted to go through the new polders. Since the Opel Kadett would almost certainly have broken down halfway through Denmark, we took his car and drove over the dam. At the monument — we’d only been on the road for an hour — he pulled over. We smoked a medium-strong Van Nelle each, looking out over the Wadden Sea. Then we drove to his house — in a small village past Leeuwarden. He showed me the shed where he makes the owl boards he sells to customers from all over Friesland, without having to advertise them. “How do you think I can afford to buy my jenever?” he said, pouring two glasses. “From the pension?” He also took me out to where he’d buried the dog, in a far corner of the garden, under a gnarled pear tree that had long since lost all its blossom. He had welded two pieces of metal together to make a cross and stuck it in the ground. The turned soil was still raised. In his living room there was a large bookcase with at least twice as many books as he had had in the laborer’s cottage. He poured me another generous glass of jenever but no more for himself, because he was driving. I knocked it back: I didn’t want to be in Friesland, I wanted to go much further north.