The Forestry Commission wants to buy the land.
I regret throwing my bed on the New Year’s bonfire. “Another bed?” the jovial shop assistant asked yesterday when I went in for a cheap pine bed. “Yes,” I said, “another bed.” Did I want a mattress to go with it? No, I didn’t need a mattress. In the other shop I wasn’t served by the young girl with the black braids, but by an older, weary looking woman. I bought a single duvet, two duvet covers and two white fitted sheets, all in a sale. I paid no attention to the colors or patterns. Satisfied with my purchases, I bought a pound of eel at the smokehouse. I poked the long sides of the bed out of the front passenger and rear left windows and tried to get home at an even speed, without accelerating or braking hard.
Before setting to work, I open the window and spread newspapers over the blue carpet. I have brought the transistor radio upstairs from the kitchen. It’s nice to paint with the radio on. When I’m painting outside in the summer, I always have Radio Tour de France on. I don’t care who wins or loses, it’s the commentary that matters. I start with the ceiling. It was already white so one coat is enough. The wallpaper on the walls is patterned, a sixties pattern. A tanker has turned over near Reeuwijk, four men in yellow suits are cleaning up the slaked lime. People living in the immediate vicinity are advised to keep all windows and doors shut. The paint dries quickly and as it dries the pattern grows fainter and fainter. I was only planning on doing the walls and ceiling but, now I’ve started, the varnished wooden frame of the window annoys me. Thom de Graaf of Democrats ‘66 explains the benefits of direct prime-ministerial elections. “Will they give us a prime minister with a cute bum?” the reporter asks. The question doesn’t faze De Graaf. “The only people who ever talk about cute bums are journalists,” he says. I look at the radio, unable to believe I’m hearing what I’m hearing. The door is white gloss. When I’ve finished the first coat, I walk to the barn to get the bluish-gray primer from the poison cabinet. Lifting the tin, I can tell that there is enough left to paint the door and window. I take the primer, a sheet of sandpaper and a brush back upstairs and sand the woodwork very carefully. The paint is still wet. Indonesians may not have a word for ice-skating, but at a shopping mall in Jakarta people are skating on an ice rink. There are no signs of an economic crisis in Indonesia, but the population has still had enough of President Megawati. When I’ve finished the primer, I do another coat of white on the walls. The pattern re-emerges under the roller. I’ll have to check tonight to make sure the second layer has really covered it. At the moment there are scattered showers across the country. Later, rain will move in from the west. Tomorrow will be overcast, clearing slightly in the course of the day.
I turn the light on in Henk’s bedroom and shift some old junk out of the way to get at the bedside cabinet. I pick it up and carry it through to the new room, where I give it a lick of primer as well. Then I look in on Father.
He sniffs. “You painting?”
“Yep.”
“What this time?”
“The new room.”
“Why?”
“For the farmhand.”
“The farmhand?”
“Yep. Didn’t I tell you?”
“I just lie here, no one tells me anything.”
“I did tell you, you’ve forgotten.”
“I never forget anything.”
“Have it your own way. I bought some eel, would you like a bit later?”
“Delicious,” he says, grinning. It’s still unbearable, but not as bad as usual.
In the evening I spend a long time in the shower. I want to be wet: warm and wet. I don’t even want to think about drying myself off. The walls of the new room are finished, the sixties pattern has disappeared completely. Tomorrow morning: the Velux window, the door and the bedside cabinet. Tomorrow evening I’ll assemble the bed, chuck my old mattress on top and put the bedside cabinet next to it. When I see that my fingertips have started shriveling, I turn off the taps. I dry myself quickly and hurry through the scullery. I comb my hair in front of the big mirror above the mantelpiece. The warmth from the fire glows on my legs and lower belly. I turn the knob down from 4 to 1 and walk over to my bedroom door.
“Krraa,” I hear from outside. And then four more times. I leave the bedroom door open and notice while climbing into bed that the leg I’m still standing on is trembling slightly. I lie back to listen, but find myself straining to hear only silence. Calling five times was enough for the hooded crow.
26
It’s ten thirty in the morning. Raining from low clouds. As usual, the weathermen had it wrong. The kitchen light is on. The crooked ash gleams. The hooded crow is hunched over on its branch. Now and then it ruffles its feathers without spreading its wings, which makes it look like a sparrow bathing in a puddle in the yard. A giant sparrow. I wait. The newspaper is lying on the table in front of me, but I can’t read. I sit and stare out of the window. The clock buzzes; it’s quiet upstairs, there are a few mouthfuls of cold coffee left in my mug. It’s not only quiet upstairs, it’s quiet everywhere, the rain taps softly on the window ledge, the road is wet and empty. I am alone, with no one to cuddle up to.
In February 1963 Father drove circles on the Gouw Sea with Henk and me sitting on the back seat. “This is once in a lifetime,” he chuckled. Henk and I were sitting far away from each other, glued to our own windows. Mother had stayed behind in Monnickendam; she was too scared. When we got back to the harbor she was standing waiting for us in exactly the same spot, little icicles on her eyelashes. During the third or fourth lap Father steered right instead of left at the end of the embankment. After about fifty yards he braked. The embankment is like a dyke from Marken to Volendam that the builders forgot to complete, leaving the island and the town separate forever. Father leaned over the steering wheel and stared at the end of the embankment, the gate to Lake IJssel. He sighed. The sun was shining, it was as if the sun had shone all through that long winter. Snow drifted over the ice like sand on a wet beach. Without looking at each other, Henk and I realized what Father wanted to do. We broke free from our windows and slid towards each other on the back seat. We were fifteen years old. We saw another car driving past in the rear-view mirror, we didn’t hear it. Father sighed again. The engine had stalled, it was quiet. “The ice is a good two and a half feet thick,” someone at the harbor had told Father. That was unimaginably thick. Father measured it roughly for himself with his hands and mustered the courage. Two and a half feet of ice, that would hold a truck. It was more than quiet, the silence was terrifying. Father didn’t know how thick the ice was past the embankment. While he sat there sighing, we crept even closer together on the back seat until we were like Siamese twins joined from the sides of our feet to our shoulders. If Father was brave enough for the big adventure, we would face it as one man, without fear, silently. Father started the car, it didn’t turn over until the fourth or fifth attempt. I no longer had any sense of my own skin, my own muscles, my own bones. He could have put the car into first. But he reversed, very slowly, as if taking the time to change his mind. Henk and I saw the four mounds of snow that had blown up against the tires grow slowly smaller. Then Father did a fourth or fifth lap at top speed, with the car slipping now and then and, for a moment, a very brief moment, disrupting our Siamese unity. It was only when we saw that Mother could see us, just before Father drove the car up the boat ramp in the harbor, that we let go of each other and became Henk and Helmer again. Mother couldn’t get a word out, her chin refused to lower, her lips were two strips of frozen flesh.