“There’s Ada,” says Father.
I look at him. He still has the glass in his hand, the hand is resting on the blanket. I clear my throat. “Just what we need,” I say.
“I want to know, Helmer.”
“A TV!” exclaims Ada, so loud we hear it upstairs.
“A TV?” asks Father.
“Yeah, Henk wants to watch TV, otherwise he gets bored at night.”
“It seems like you’d do anything for him.”
“Ah. .”
“I want to know.”
“You will,” I say. “Now I’m going downstairs.”
“You would have done anything for your brother as well. Anything at all.”
“You too,” I say. “For your son.”
“Yes,” he says. “Me too.” Finally he puts the glass down on the bedside cabinet. It clatters on the marble top.
Henk is alone in the kitchen. He’s standing at the front window. His long arms hang next to his body.
“How do you like it here, Henk?”
“It’s okay.”
“Will you do the yearlings soon?”
“Sure.”
“Where’s everyone got to?”
“That woman with the harelip has gone to get a rug.”
“A rug?”
“Yes. She thought it was bare in the living room.”
“Her name’s Ada.”
“I know.”
“We’ll get to work.”
“Fine.”
We both pull on our overalls in the scullery. I can tell how much Father has shrunk from the way his overalls sit on Henk. They ride up in the crotch, the sleeves are too short, a button is missing. There is something rectangular in one of the breast pockets; that’ll be a packet of cigarettes. I see that the washing basket is full, I’ll do a load this evening. We walk into the milking parlor together. I stay there, Henk carries on through the barn to the yearling shed.
Half an hour later Ada comes into the milking parlor with a rolled up rug under one arm. I’m sitting between the cows and only see her when she says my name. She blushes. “I’ve got a rug for you,” she says.
I plug the tube into the milk line and step out from between the cows. “Put it in the scullery,” I say.
“All right.” She stays standing there.
“Caught out,” I say.
“Yes, caught out.”
Otherwise there’s nothing else to say about it. She can say she’s never done it before (which isn’t true, I think), and I can say the same (and that is the truth). Or we can say that we’ll never do it again. But what difference does it make?
“Nice lad.”
“Henk.”
“Teun and Ronald have already started playing farmhands.”
“He showed them his room.”
“Teun’s given me a poster for him. It’s in the rug.”
“Put it in the scullery.”
Ada walks past me. When she’s almost at the door, she turns around. “Helmer?”
“Yes?”
“I. .”
“Yes?”
“Forget it.” She leaves the milking parlor and doesn’t come back. A little later, when I’m back between the cows and look out at the road through the window, I see her outside. The road is wet, she’s crossed her arms and that makes her gait a little jerky. Having waved to each other makes it less terrible, but it hasn’t erased it. The two cows next to me raise their heads at the same time, the chains rattle on the rails. Get out of here, they say.
I walk to the open shed door. Henk is at the muck heap. The wheelbarrow is on its side next to the plank, the contents have spilled out. He’s using a pitchfork to scrape the manure from the ground and throw it up onto the heap with a big swing of his arms. When he’s finished, he scratches his head, rights the wheelbarrow and pushes it back to the yearling shed. He hasn’t noticed me. What the hell is he doing here? I wonder. I put my hands in my warm pockets and look at the sky. It’s cloudy, on the verge of rain, but the days are clearly lengthening.
Later I walk to the shed door again. He’s leaning on the wall of the yearling shed, around towards the sheep shed. One leg is raised up with the foot flat against the wall. He’s smoking a cigarette and staring past the muck heap at the donkey shed. He looks like a cowboy in an old cigarette ad.
Before dinner I roll the rug out in front of the sofa. It’s ocher with a border of light-blue shapes: circles, squares and crosses. Henk unrolls his poster. It’s a pouting girl with long blonde hair. She is very scantily clad.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
Henk smiles. “Britney Spears,” he says.
“Who?”
“A singer.”
“So this is Teun’s idea of what your room needs.”
“Seems so.”
“Pretty girl.”
“Hmm. Childish.”
“You going to put it up?”
“I’ll take it upstairs. How old’s Teun?”
“Nine? Ten?”
“He’s not a Britney Spears fan anyway.”
“Why not?”
“If he was he’d have put the poster up himself.”
We cross the hall to the kitchen. While I’m thinking about whether or not to draw the curtain in front of the side window, Henk does it.
“What’d you do that for?” I ask.
“That window’s like a mirror when it’s dark.”
“So?”
“I have no desire to look at myself constantly while I’m eating.”
“In a month it’ll be light when we eat.”
“A month?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a very long time.”
We’re watching TV. I’m sitting on the sofa, Henk is lying on his side on the rug, resting on one elbow. He’s got the remote control and races through the channels. I feel like shouting “hold on! stop!” the whole time; how can you know what it is if it’s only on the screen for two seconds? I give up and watch Henk watch TV. After a while it starts to bore him. Before getting up, he lets out a few deep sighs. He hands me the remote control without a word and walks out of the room. I turn off the TV and go over to stand in front of the softly hissing fire. From her framed photo, Mother looks at me with that strange, mixed expression, at once seductive and haughty. For the first time I also see some degree of alertness. From up there on the mantelpiece she is keeping her eye on everything. I’ve seen Henk look at the photo a couple of times, but he hasn’t asked who it is.
Just when I’m loading the washing machine, Henk emerges from the bathroom. He has a towel wrapped around his waist, his shoulders are still wet. “I’m almost out of cigarettes,” he says.
“You’ll have to go to Monnickendam.”
“Is that far?”
“About three miles. We can go tomorrow by car.”
“Maybe I’ll take the bike,” he says. He walks over to the staircase door, leaving wet footsteps on the cold floor.
“Doesn’t that towel need to go in the wash?”
He turns. “Now?”
“Sure, why not?”
He pulls off the towel and bends to dry his feet. Then he straightens up and tosses me the towel. I catch it, the warm, damp material flaps around my forearm. For a moment he stands there, proud and embarrassed at once. The scar over his left ear is more visible than usual, maybe because of the hot water. Then he opens the door and disappears upstairs. His first steps up remind me of the supple way the young tanker driver leaps into his cab.
34
Henk and Helmer. At primary school here in the village there were twin girls in our class. Henk and I had a desk near the window, next to an enormous potted plant with dusty, leathery leaves. The twin girls sat behind us. Of course, we were boyfriends and girlfriends, that was expected. They were relationships in alternating combinations, and we were the ones who alternated. The twin girls looked a lot less like each other than we did.