Anna Kaan looked up. She’d been standing at the window staring out at the washing.
‘Anything else today?’ He always asked and the answer was almost always no. Very occasionally a roll of zwieback or a packet of Frisian rye. Once in a blue moon, Zeeger Kaan wanted six almond cakes.
‘No,’ said Anna Kaan.
‘Not even on this special day?’
‘No.’
‘What was the Queen like?’
‘Special.’
The look on her face told him he wasn’t going to get anything else out of her. The baker jumped again, this time from a loud banging overhead. ‘What’s going on up there?’ he asked.
‘Zeeger’s making a bedroom in the attic. For Hanne.’
‘Is she going upstairs? Is she already two?’ The baker knew that all the Kaan children slept downstairs for two years, in the bedroom next to the living room. After years of going to people’s houses you knew everything about them.
‘Just,’ Anna Kaan said. ‘And afterwards we’re getting rid of the wardrobes and the sliding doors.’
‘That’ll give you a really big living room.’
‘Yes.’
The young Irish setter came into the kitchen from the hall. Tinus. A strange name for a dog. The baker squatted down to pat it and let it lick his face. The sound of sawing was now coming from upstairs.
‘That will all take a while. The bedroom has to be finished first.’
‘Everyone seems to be renovating these days.’
‘And buying,’ said Anna Kaan. ‘Nice van.’
‘Thanks.’ It was the first time she’d mentioned his new acquisition.
He pushed the dog away, stood up and turned to leave without saying goodbye. He didn’t consider it necessary: he went into so many houses, in and out, in and out, there’d be no end to it. Whistling, he left the kitchen, closing the door this time. On his way to the van, he used a gnawed pencil to note the loaf of brown and half a loaf of white in his book. He could do that, the baker with the chapped face: walk, whistle and write at the same time.
Almost subconsciously he was whistling ‘Oh Happy Day’. He’d just heard it in the kitchen on a radio that looked brand new. It was a tune that stuck in your head. He backed out of the yard and only then did he think of the car door and Jan Kaan and that he should have mentioned it to Anna Kaan. Oh well, it wasn’t really necessary. His knees had stopped trembling. Between the Kaans’ and the next delivery he saw a bird of prey in the air. A buzzard, he thought. Or a harrier? He wasn’t sure, he’d have to look it up in his bird guide: how to tell the difference. A few more farms and then home. There are three kinds of harriers, he thought. Marsh harriers and hen harriers and another kind that’s named after somebody, so being able to tell the difference between buzzards and harriers isn’t enough. He started whistling again, changed gears smoothly and tried to think where in the bookcase he’d put the bird guide.
Half an hour later he passed the Kaan farm again, now going in the other direction, taking it easy on his way home. He was still thinking about buzzards and harriers and that’s why he was driving sedately, not paying too much attention to the road. It was very quiet, only a single car had obliged him to move over onto the verge. Then just before the causeway he hit something. He bent forward over the steering wheel, his foot pressing lightly on the brake. There wasn’t anything on the road in front of him. In the wing mirror on the right he could see something brown. A dog, Zeeger Kaan’s young Irish setter. Had he hit it? But if he had, how could the animal be sitting up like that? He felt the fright through his whole body once again, his knees started to shake. He slowed down and turned off the radio, still staring in the wing mirror. His left hand slid over the wheel. When the van came to a halt it was almost at right angles to the road. Silence. The smell of new leather and fresh bread. An unexpected gust of wind almost ripped the door out of his hand. The elms on the roadside bent towards him. Blom’s Breadery. Even before he’d rounded the van, he loathed himself for that lettering, hearing himself gabbling on about the seventies being just around the corner, about a new, different era.
There was nothing wrong with the dog. It hadn’t moved. It was sitting, but seemed to be pointing, as if the child lying half on the road was some kind of game. As the baker had driven on for quite some distance and was now hardly able to walk, it took him a while to reach the child and the dog. A wispy shadow slid over the road, the elms bent down lower over him, without rustling. The child looked unharmed. She was still, that was all, and her eyes were closed. When he squatted down, the dog thought he was doing it for its benefit, jumped against him and started licking his face. The baker pushed the young animal away roughly. A thin line of blood trickled out of one of the child’s ears. The dog started barking, shrill and piercing. The side door — which was actually a front door, as the door in the front wall of the farmhouse was blind — opened. The baker stood up. Anna Kaan took a few steps into the yard and stopped. ‘Zeeger!’ she called. The young dog fell silent.
The baker’s eyes moved up the facade from the blind door. A few metres above the balcony he saw for the first time — despite knowing everything that happened in the house — a plaque. Anno 1912.
‘Zeeger!’
The dog began to whimper softly.
That night he didn’t go to bed. He sat in an armchair he’d slid over in front of the big rear window and didn’t even move when he heard his father starting work in the bakery — how had he got in? The bird guide was lying on his lap; he stared at the newspapers his wife had placed behind the pot plants. He now knew the precise difference between a buzzard and the three kinds of harriers. Montagu’s harrier, that was the name he hadn’t been able to dredge up earlier in the day. No, it was already yesterday. He didn’t care any more. And even if he did, the ‘dark bar across the base of the secondaries’ was something he’d never be able to spot in flight. Especially not if he was driving. At four thirty — it was now Wednesday 18 June — his daughter came downstairs.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Sitting,’ he said.
His daughter pushed hard to slide another armchair over in front of the window and sat down too. Then immediately fell back to sleep.
Is this what I’m going to remember? How to tell the difference between birds of prey? He looked at his little girl. Her cheek was still glowing from the touch of the Queen. Hanne Kaan’s cheeks would never glow again for any reason. He stared outside, where it was already light and lines of mist were marking the ditches.
That was how his wife found him, after she too had come downstairs. She came over to stand behind his chair.
Their daughter woke up. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
His wife told her what had happened.
‘I have to go there,’ the baker said. He thought of his van. Just thinking of the smell of new leather and fresh bread made him feel sick. He saw himself making the journey to the Kaans’ on his bike.
‘Not now,’ his wife said.
‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Not now.’
Yes, he thinks, a dog. A schnauzer maybe. He looks at the photo in his hand. Finally he wants to go. He doesn’t want to go. He puts it off.
Piccaninny
‘What’s that?’
Uncle Jan feels his forehead. ‘A mosquito bite, I think,’ he says.
‘Oh.’ It really is starting to get a bit boring here. The bucket’s empty again and Dieke doesn’t feel like asking Uncle Jan to fill it up. She doesn’t feel like doing it herself either, because then she’d have to think way too hard about which way to turn the tap off. The wet rag isn’t wet any more, it’s draped over a stone where it dried in a couple of minutes; she could see it getting lighter and lighter before her eyes. She walks around Uncle Jan until she’s standing right behind him. Unbothered, he keeps filling in the letters with white paint. He’s already finished one word and started on the next. There’s a bald spot on the back of his head. No, not bald, it just has less hair than the rest of his head. His T-shirt is still damp. Because it’s rolled up, of course. Her father doesn’t have a bald spot like that. Uncle Jan hasn’t said a word for a long time and now she has to do her best to follow what he’s saying.