‘What was he doing?’
‘Klaas, I dropped Dieke off and left again.’
‘Where have you been, then? Riding there and back can’t take more than quarter of an hour.’
She doesn’t say anything else, just turns and walks out of Dieke’s room. Halfway down the stairs she does say something, just loud enough. ‘I’d rather be out on my bike, even if the tyres are melting, than stuck here.’ Silence. ‘Will you go and pick Dieke up in a minute? She won’t last more than half an hour there.’ The staircase door closes quietly.
Klaas stands up. Dieke’s treasure bag was under her bed. Not in a blanket of fluff, but on spotless carpet. He didn’t look in it. When he straightens his back, the window cracks. For a fraction of a second he feels it in his lower back, then wonders how something like that can happen out of the blue. The heat? A structural defect? The crack is in the outside pane of the double glazing and will be sure to cause condensation in autumn. He does some calculations. The window was fitted almost forty years ago. Old age? He pulls on the mechanism to see if it still opens and closes properly. Just before closing it again, he thinks he hears his mother’s shrill voice calling him. He shakes his head, but can’t block out a muffled echo of his name.
Three years ago he resumed work where his father had left off, removing thick layers of dust and grime with a vacuum cleaner and a soft broom. His wife never came upstairs. There was plenty of everything. Wall planks, laths, skirting boards, and more than enough nails. No floor covering. He drove to the Carpet Giant in Schagen and Dieke went with him. With a very determined expression, she pointed out a roll of light-green carpet. Zeeger Kaan would have varnished the planks, everyone did that in the late sixties, but Klaas painted the bedroom lime green. In four weekends he was finished. His father didn’t lift a finger. He came to have a look now and then, mumbled something or other, but didn’t do a thing. That must have taken willpower, because he’s the kind of father who can’t bear to stand by and watch. The sight of his children repairing punctures made him huff and puff until he snatched the puncture repair kit out of their hands to do it better and faster himself. Once the bedroom was finished, he showed up with five letters, capitals he’d sawn out of a piece of wood in his shed. The letters were different colours and he’d screwed eyelets into the tops. Dieke moved from Klaas and his wife’s bedroom to the new room, after he’d installed a gate at the top of the stairs first. DIEKE slept in the new room for the first few weeks, but after that it was always someone else, because she had found a box on the landing she could stand on. IKDEE slept there for a while, and so did IDEEK.
Nobody asked why he had finished off the third bedroom when the two old bedrooms at the front of the house had been empty for years.
Before leaving the bedroom, he takes DEKIE off the door and rehangs the letters in the right order. Very far away, he can still hear his mother calling his name right at the back of his mind. It could have just as easily been five other capital letters, he thinks. In black. Or grey. No, four others. He walks past the stair gate to the front of the house and has a quick look in the other two bedrooms. In each room there’s a bed with just a mattress and a pillow without a case. Nobody ever stays overnight. In the largest room, with the balcony, the air is thick and there’s too much sunlight. He opens the balcony doors, steps out onto the green-stained rectangle and plants his hands on the rail. The crown of the red beech in the middle of the lawn is thinning. That’s something he hasn’t noticed before. The wrought iron of the railings is crumbling under his hands. Cautiously he steps back into the bedroom, where he closes the balcony doors again, equally cautiously. He pulls off his shirt and dries his face with it. Motes of dust spin in the thick air. Thick, he thinks. Nobody breathes it. I’ll go and get Dieke.
Shit
What’s that girl doing there? Why doesn’t she react to my tapping? She picks her glasses up from the worktop and puts them on for a better look. The girl has turned around and is walking off between the headstones. Red hair. Isn’t that the girl I just saw on the back of that bike? What’s she doing at the cemetery? Where’s her mother? What’s going on? ‘Benno!’ she calls.
Fifteen minutes later, she’s on her way. She curses herself for having pulled on a jacket. It’s a summer jacket, but this is weather for being out in a billowy dress. Actually, it’s weather for floating in the sea or lying in the back garden under a beach umbrella. If there weren’t houses left and right and the tall hedge around the cemetery, she’d probably see the sky shimmering. Benno is hardly moving. She tugs on the leash, but it doesn’t help. Every few steps she has to push up her glasses.
The girl and the man are on the ground behind the first row of headstones. They’re busy with water and something — sponges, perhaps? The girl turns, sees the dog, jumps up and runs off. She stops a bit further away, near the monument to the four English airmen whose plane crashed. Her light-grey dress has dark patches on it. Benno ignores her. The man, who was hunched over, has now raised himself onto one knee. He looks at the girl. Dinie sees who it is immediately.
‘You’re a Kaan, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ the man says with a sigh. ‘I’m a Kaan.’
Benno raises his big head and, without her urging him on, takes a few steps towards the man. She gives him some slack. ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘I’ll come and have a look. I saw some movement and there’s been some nasty goings-on here recently. I live there.’ She points at the hedge and realises that from here, nobody can see her house. The Kaan boy doesn’t even look in the direction she’s pointing.
‘And I keep my eye on things a little. If I don’t, who will? They don’t do anything here at all! There, that hole in the hedge, it’s been there two years now. My husband’s buried here too, over there.’ Now she points at her husband’s grave, a tall narrow headstone topped with a granite weeping willow. She’s got lots more to say, but for the moment she can’t bear to look at the Kaan boy, and keeps her eyes fixed on the stone willow instead. ‘What if the little bastards knocked over his headstone? They were in here again last week. They didn’t knock over any stones, but they smeared filth all over them. Shit! Cow shit! Isn’t that disgusting? At least it was easy to clean off. Fortunately they didn’t touch my husband’s grave. It was in the paper. Didn’t you read about it? No, you don’t live here, you probably read other papers, ones that don’t have that kind of petty village news. Nobody’s been arrested. They don’t know who it is. I’m sure they haven’t spent much time on it, either.’ Now she has to look at him again. ‘If I see anything out of the ordinary, I come and have a look. With the dog. I saw a girl, and I thought, let’s go.’ She pushes up her glasses and wants to take off her jacket, but can’t, because there’s no reason to, besides her feeling hot, at least. ‘Or are you cleaning that stone because there was filth on it too? It’s your little sister, isn’t it? I haven’t forgotten, such a little girl, buried here amongst all these adults. Look, um… Over there they’ve made a special children’s corner, that’s much better… I just mean, all those children together, with cheerful teddy bear headstones and little suns and stars and…’
‘Can you get this dog out of here?’
She’s changed the subject to the children’s graves, but she thinks of the baker. In his brand-new, light-grey Volkswagen van. She’ll have to tell him about this tonight. Or should she keep quiet about it? Drool drips off one of the Kaan boy’s knees. Benno is standing very close to him, he must be able to feel the dog’s hot breath. She feels like turning around and leaving the cemetery. The dog could just stay standing there. Benno’s a softie, but people don’t know that. They see an enormous beast, a kind of mountain dog with lots of fur. Let that Kaan boy sweat for an hour, or longer. ‘Benno, here!’ she says.