According to the handbook it makes a loud “krraa, krraa,” but I haven’t heard it do that once.
All afternoon I hear the sound of the bell, echoing through the empty hall. I go to count the sheep and, although there are only twenty-three of them, I have to start again three times. A few days ago I separated the ram from the ewes and returned it to the farmer who lends me one every year. I’ve hung up the ram harness in the barn. It’s only in the afternoon, when it’s already dark and I’ve started milking the cows, that I think of the motionless figure I recently saw in front of the farm.
10
The other tanker driver, the young smiling one, is in the milking parlor.
“Ah, Helmer,” he says when I come in. I generally stay away from the milking parlor when the old, gruff one is there. He’s leaning with one hand on the edge of the storage tank and keeps looking from the inside of the tank to the hose at his feet. I’d like to greet him by name but whenever I see him I forget what he’s called, and end up nodding hello.
“Arie’s dead,” he says. Even news like this doesn’t dim his smile.
“Dead? How?”
“Heart attack.”
“When?”
“Day before yesterday. At home.”
“Just the other day it occurred to me that he’d be retiring in a few years.”
“Yeah, he wanted to stop at sixty.”
“How old was he?”
“Fifty-eight.”
“Fifty-eight.”
“Way too young.” The tank is empty. He unscrews the hose and the last bit of milk runs down the drain. Then he winds the hose around the reel on the back of the tanker. “Way too young,” he repeats. He comes back to stand in front of me with his legs apart and his hands on his hips. Always that smile, a crooked smile that shows his teeth. “You’ll have to make do with me for the time being,” he says.
“God help me,” I say.
Now the smile changes into a laugh, showing even more teeth. He doesn’t say goodbye as he walks to the cab. We’ve laughed off the news of the death and that’s not the kind of thing you follow with small talk. He opens the door and jumps up smoothly. His blue trousers tighten around his take-off leg, a leg that could belong to a skater. I walk out of the yard, following the tanker as it drives away. If he looked in his rear-view mirror he’d see me standing there, like the red-headed boy last summer. It’s raining, the donkeys are at the gate with their heads bowed. If it doesn’t stop I’ll put them in the shed. I look out over my wet farmyard.
Old, gruff and dead, I think.
Until his death we were Henk and Helmer, even though I was the oldest. Until recently I took regular afternoon naps on his bed. I’ve stopped doing that because of all the junk in his bedroom and because of Father’s proximity. I would lie on my side with my legs pulled up, like in the old days when we shared a bed. Now I use the sofa in the afternoons. Since Ada’s comments about my bed, I no longer feel comfortable in it, especially not in the daytime. A few days ago I went to Monnickendam to buy a new bed. I settled on the kind that’s really only two mattresses, with very short legs under the bottom one. They’re going to deliver it soon — they said they’d call me. “Definitely before Christmas,” according to the jovial bed salesman. From another shop I bought a duvet and two duvet covers, one light blue and one dark blue, I trust Ada’s judgment. The duvet is still wrapped in plastic in a corner of my bedroom. I haven’t unpacked the two pillows either. I asked for one pillow, but the female shop assistant (a young thing with black braids) said “One?” so emphatically that I had no choice but to say, “No, two, of course.” I won’t unpack it until the bed has been delivered and for now I carry on sleeping under the frayed blankets and the single sheet.
Henk and Helmer, not Helmer and Henk. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t have any memories at all of the first four or five years of their life. And if I do have memories, I suspect them of being contaminated, suggested by things other people have told me. My memory only starts in the fifties. I don’t know how often Father beat us before then.
He found the two of us together infuriating, he always had to deal with two boys forming a united front. He thought we were conspiring against him, that that was our goal in life, and that we met his eye to provoke him. I got the most blows because I was the oldest, so I “must have cooked it all up.” He’d pound away at us with his bare hands, and if he had time, he’d pull off a clog to hit us on the bum and sometimes on the back. It was partly to do with my name, I thought. Helmer is a name from my mother’s side. Henk was named after his father.
Before doing the milking, I bring in the donkeys. There’s not much to it. I just open the gate and walk to the donkey shed. Before I get there, they’re standing waiting for me. I let them in, cut up a sugar beet and throw the pieces into the feeding trough. Then I stuff a few handfuls of hay into the rack. I’ve taught Teun and Ronald to always ask whether they’re allowed to feed the donkeys. If I gave them free rein the donkeys would be fat in no time, or ill. The rain taps on the corrugated roof. When I scratch their ears, they ignore it, they’re too busy eating. Before leaving the shed, I turn on the light. They don’t watch me walking away.
11
In Monnickendam I take the N247 and follow it to Edam, where I drive through the village to the dyke, because if I don’t get off here I’ll be stuck on the main road to Oosthuizen. Near Warder I stop the car for a moment to have a better look at a flock of birds: oystercatchers, crows, herring gulls and black-headed gulls. The horn of a car that wants to pass on the narrow dyke makes me jump.
“Why did you stop on the dyke anyway?” asks Ada, who can’t tell a great tit from a blue tit. She’s wearing a black mid-length coat and looks a little pale.
In Hoorn I have to leave the dyke for a while. The weather is still and misty, in the distance the water of Lake IJssel merges imperceptibly with the sky. Something is rattling under the bonnet of the Opel Kadett, I’ll have to take the car to the garage again. At Oosterleek I turn left and ten minutes later I park the car in front of the Venhuizen funeral parlor, which is next to an old people’s home.
“How could they come up with something like that?” asks Ada. “How can they be so cruel?”
There are a lot of farmers, you recognize them right away from their clothes, they’re almost all wearing “a good sweater” over a clean shirt. From the funeral parlor we follow the hearse on foot to the Roman Catholic church, where Arie’s wife addresses the coffin, or rather, tries to address the coffin, because once she’s said, “Arie is dead,” she can’t go on. Two young women — her daughters, presumably — get up and lead her back to her pew. The priest takes care of the funeral service and a local choir sings a sad song. After a brief silence, six pallbearers in dark-gray top hats come in, lift the coffin onto their shoulders and carry it out. Ada walks beside me, as my wife. She has taken me by the arm and is crying. Wim, her husband, didn’t want to come. According to Ada he’s scared of death and always keeps a safe distance. What’s more, he had better things to do. The cemetery isn’t directly behind the church, we have to walk a fair distance. On the way we pass a De Boer’s supermarket. It’s a good funeraclass="underline" the pallbearers lower the coffin and Arie’s wife and daughters throw earth into the grave. When we’re walking back to the church the young tanker driver comes up behind us. “I’m glad you could make it, Helmer,” he says. “And you too, Ada. Solidarity is a beautiful thing.”