He has a slight headache, which is hardly surprising after three brandies in the middle of the day. He has a hat on the hat rack at home — he can picture it hanging there — but unfortunately he didn’t put it on. More than just protecting your face from the sun — something that’s not necessary now because the sun is hardly shining — the brim of a hat also casts a shadow over your eyes. Just act like you come here often, as if the cemetery is part of your regular afternoon walk. He looks at the inscriptions without reading a single letter. The shell grit under his feet sounds very different from the gravel in his front garden and he’s glad he brought the walking stick; he really is leaning on it now. There’s a bench over there, under a big linden. And now he sees Jan Kaan, or at least a gleaming back and a head with a cloth tied around it. He lowers himself onto the bench, in the middle at first, but there’s a brass plate that jabs him in the back, so he slides across to one side. He stands the walking stick between his legs, both hands on the ivory knob.
Then it gets so quiet he imagines he can hear panting. It seems to be coming from above. Damn it, there are two little birds in the linden. Two little birds that are really hot. If he’s not careful, one will topple over onto his head any minute. He slides back to the other side of the bench, drawing a line in the shell grit with the point of his stick. Jan Kaan rises up a little and looks in his direction. They look at each other, creating a brief possibility of speech, of greeting each other — then the moment is gone. By the time the baker decides to raise his stick up in the air, Jan Kaan is already sitting down again, hunched in front of the headstone.
Oh Happy Day
Dinie Grint is sitting on the sofa in her living room. She’s lowered the awning even further, making it even yellower inside the room, despite the main window no longer being in direct sunlight. Her bare feet are resting on a leather footstool and Benno is sitting in front of it, licking her heels. She’s crying. She’s already reached out to pick up the phone three times, and three times she’s pulled back her hand. You can’t call the police when you’re crying, they won’t understand what you’re saying, and if they do, they’ll think you’re soft in the head. ‘Yes, sweetie,’ she sniffs. ‘At least you’re nice to your mistress.’ The dog looks at her and stops his licking. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Don’t stop.’ The dog obeys.
People at the cemetery are generally nice and friendly. Sometimes they’re not very talkative and she understands that. Sometimes they’re the opposite and then she has to dam their flood of words, so she can have her say too. The council neglects its duties; she’s the one who has to keep her eye on everything, clearing away wilted flowers now and then, with Benno’s fat tail smoothing out the shell grit in the paths as a free extra. Those horrible Kaan boys sent her away from the cemetery. The red-headed monsters!
‘Bah!’ she says, pushing Benno away. She stands up, turns on the radio and looks at the clock. Yes, it’s the Golden Hours. Non-stop hits. She sits down again, swinging her legs back up onto the footstool. They just chased her off. What did they say again? ‘Just go away!’ And, ‘Mind your own business!’ But she does have business there, and she knows what sorrow is. And that cheeky little girl — Dieke, who on earth came up with a name like that? — with her stomach pushed forward and those bright eyes under pale eyebrows. The tone of that ‘Bye-bye!’ of hers was outrageous. They were wrecking the place, whether it was their own grave or not. For the fourth time she reaches out to the telephone. She’s stopped crying, but still doesn’t pick up the receiver. Even if there is someone at the station, they’ll only laugh at her, she knows that, her voice hasn’t calmed down yet. ‘Yes, sweetie,’ she says soothingly, to herself and the dog. She hikes her skirt up a little, then stares at the radio, stunned, as a familiar tune begins and the Edwin Hawkins singers launch into ‘Oh Happy Day’.
She closes her eyes and, instead of Benno’s tongue, feels the draught on her knees in the white ticket booth; the wind blowing in through a hole under the counter, mostly warm, but sometimes biting cold. This song, all through that long summer, and it didn’t bore her for a single minute. The smooth gospel flowing out over all of the heads in the swimming pool, singing about Jesus washing sins away and making no distinction between Christian and non-Christian heads. It was the first summer the radio had been connected to the speakers on the corners of the ticket booth. She sold singles, checked the season tickets, and fished sticky one- and five-cent coins out of children’s hands in exchange for yet another piece of liquorice, another marshmallow.
It was only when she hadn’t seen her son on the diving board for a while that she lifted herself up off her chair to get a better view out over the water, and then she immediately sneaked a glance at Albert Waiboer, standing in the paddling pool with his daughter, his back bent, his feet planted firmly on the bottom of the pool, muscles tensed. She used to daydream about Albert Waiboer. Him doing things to her that her husband couldn’t even imagine. If Albert Waiboer wasn’t there, and he didn’t come often, there was always some other man to look at. And yes, she’d smoked a cigarette now and then, even though that wasn’t strictly allowed; she just set the door slightly ajar and the smoke soon drifted out through the opening. The two little Kaans always came together, and she always greeted them with a cheerful, ‘Ah, if it’s not the Kaan boys again.’ One always pulled a bad-tempered, surly face and the youngest one always swore. They were always unfriendly, they were never fun, not happy or carefree like other kids. And Teun dived off that board so beautifully in his yellow swimming trunks. She didn’t see much of the oldest Kaan at the swimming pool, but the other one, Jan Kaan, who later… in the garage attic… with her son…
The song finished and they cut straight to another golden oldie. She’s glad to reopen her eyes.
The Kaans. Once she rode her bike past their farm in winter and there they were, the oldest son and Zeeger in the middle of six or seven nasty-looking men, shotguns broken over the crooks of their arms. Lying on a white tarpaulin were rows of hare, pheasants and ducks, poor creatures. The hunters were knocking back little glasses of schnapps with their free hands, out in the open air, in broad daylight! Strange people. She hardly knows Anna Kaan, but she must have a screw loose too.
Teun. Her hand wants to move towards the telephone again. ‘Benno, that’s enough now,’ she says. The dog doesn’t listen. Instead of the police, maybe she could call Teun? And then avoid saying ‘Teun’ by accident, but use the right name, otherwise he can get so angry. The baker: she could call him too, he’s always home. He’d be sitting in his back garden under an umbrella, a crossword puzzle on his lap. No, there’s no point, she’ll see him in a couple of hours. She starts crying again, this time more because she feels so helpless. It took all of her powers of persuasion, but she managed to get away from the village, the son respectably married in Den Helder with two children, and then he gets divorced. What’s more, he no longer wants to be a fitter, but retrains as a youth worker and ends up running some home for ‘difficult’ youths. And just hangs up if she phones him and accidentally lets slip with a ‘Teun’. But you are your name, surely? She and her husband didn’t call him Teun lightly. Names are important, that’s why it’s so horrible when people have an ugly name. Dieke? Terrible for that girl, somehow. She thinks of calling her ex-daughter-in-law, but rejects the idea, because she has a new husband now and there’s a chance he might answer and he doesn’t know her at all. Oh, yeah. ‘Does she dye her hair, do you think?’ That’s what that red-headed Kaan said to that ugly child. And he’d asked, ‘Do you know who that woman is?’ as if he didn’t see who she was. If I recognise him, he must recognise me too, surely? ‘Benno,’ she says quietly, so that the dog doesn’t even react.