The Twin (14 page)

I go into the yard through the shed door and a cold north wind hits me in the face. Surely it's not going to start snowing? On the far side of the farm it's already turning grey. I always do the yearlings after milking. If Henk was up, he could have done them for me. The light is on in the donkey shed, the donkeys are standing with their rumps to the entrance. They know I'll come later. Donkeys aren't stupid. I give the yearlings their feed first. While that's occupying them I scrape the shit out from under them and scatter some fresh straw. Then I give them hay. Yearlings are a lot less patient than cows, they snort and tug on their chains until they've been fed. Some mornings three or four will start mooing together and then there's no stopping them until they've all got hay. I cart out the dung from the gully then sweep the shed floor. Henk isn't up because I've left him to it. Two hours ago I was on my way upstairs and changed my mind four steps before the landing. Father must have heard me, he called out. I hurried back downstairs.

The broom is fairly new, its red nylon brush is still stiff and rings on the concrete floor. No matter how much I dawdle, the sweeping is finished too soon.

When I come in it's quiet in the house. Eight thirty. Before switching on the radio, I turn down the volume. I make a pot of tea and set the table. The sky over the fields is sallow. Snow sky. I drum my fingers on the tabletop. Now it's taking too long, I go upstairs. I tiptoe across the landing to the door of the new room. When I get there, I don't know what to do. Never in my whole life have I got someone out of bed. I knock on the door with limp fingers, then wait for a moment. 'Henk,' I say. I knock with my knuckles. 'Henk!' Nothing happens. I stay there for too long without doing anything, motionless in front of the door. I don't dare to go into the room – in my own house, for God's sake. I walk back to the stairs seething with resentment.

'Helmer,' I hear from Father's bedroom.

'Yeah, yeah,' I mumble. 'I'm not calling you.'

In the kitchen I sit down at the table and start to eat. Only after a while do I realise that the radio is on.

I drive to Monnickendam and go in turn to the bike shop, a lamp shop and an electrical supplies shop. I pay cash for the mudguard, the reading lamp and the TV. The TV salesman wants to know whether I need a satellite dish and a decoder as well. 'A what?' I ask. Do I have a cable connection? I think about it and see council workers digging channels in front of the lampposts, I see coloured wires and I also see someone on his knees in a corner of the living room, a fatso with half his bum showing who's busy attaching a small box, more an electrical socket really, to the inside wall, after having drilled a hole in the outside wall first. I see a narrow strip of yellowed turf in the front garden. The TV salesman wants to know which road I live on. I tell him and he is sure that the cable was connected there a few years ago as a test run. I can't see Father, he must have made a point of avoiding the house that day. I'm lucky, the TV salesman adds. I ask whether I can connect the TV I just bought. Yes, I can, he just has to get a connector cable from the storeroom for me. Later, he says, the cable company will automatically send me a bill.

As I walk to the car, it starts snowing. Although it's not so very heavy, the cardboard box with the TV is awkward to carry. I pass a wine shop. I take the TV to the car, put it on the back seat and walk back. The snow isn't sticking to my shoes, but it's not melting straightaway either. When the shop assistant asks me what I'd like, I tell him a few bottles of red wine. And what kind of wine in particular? 'One that tastes good,' I snap. He sells me six bottles of South African wine for the price of five.

When I get home, the yard is white but not untrodden. A track leads from the milking parlour to the causeway gate next to the chicken coop. Henk is sitting on the causeway gate. He's smoking. I put the car in the barn and make my own track to the gate. The snow swirls around his red ears.

'How long do I actually have to stay here?' he asks.

'Huh?'

'How long do I have to stay here!'

'It's not a prison,' I say.

He takes a drag on his cigarette and after a pause blows out a big cloud of smoke.

'You smoke?' I ask.

'I gave it up the day before yesterday.'

'And now you've started again.'

'Yep.'

'I bought a TV,' I say. 'And a reading lamp and a rear mudguard and wine.'

'Do I get money too?'

'What for?'

'The work I do.'

'Have you done any yet?'

He looks at the cigarette he is holding between his thumb and his index finger, squinting a little. His eyes are grey. Then he flicks the cigarette away.

'Board and lodging,' I say. 'And pocket money of course.'

'How much?'

'I don't know.' I'm starting to get cold. If it keeps snowing like this, we'll have to move the sheep. From the field next to the windmill to here. And then throw some hay over the gate.

Henk jumps down and starts following my tracks.

'Where are you going?' I ask.

'Back to bed. I don't like snow.'

'To bed?'

'Where's the reading lamp? That bright light is driving me crazy.'

'I've got forty-watt bulbs.'

'Twenty-five.'

'Them too.' We walk into the barn. Under the bonnet, the Opel Kadett is clicking. I open the boot and get out the lamp and the mudguard. Henk takes the lamp and walks off immediately. He disappears into the milking parlour. I am left looking incredulously at the mudguard in my left hand.

He's lying on his side with his face to the wall, the duvet with African animals pulled up high. The reading lamp is on the bedside cabinet, the plug is in the socket. Did he only realise then that it didn't have a bulb in it? Henk doesn't move when I come in. I don't know what to say, so I don't say anything. I put the chair I got out of Henk's room under the ceiling light. With some difficulty, I manage to unscrew the frosted glass ball. I remove the seventy-five-watt bulb from the fitting and replace it with a twenty-five watt. Next to the reading lamp is a book. I've never heard of the writer. It's been a long time since I read a book. A torn strip of newspaper sticks out from between the pages. I screw a forty-watt bulb into the reading lamp. Henk stays lying there, I can't tell from his breathing whether or not he's asleep. This morning he was sitting on the causeway gate smoking like a man, now he's lying in bed like a child. From the shape under the duvet, I can see that he is lying there with his legs pulled up. I put the chair against the wall next to the door and put his clothes on the seat. After a moment's hesitation, I also pick a pair of white underpants up off the floor and drop them on top of the rest of his clothes like a dollop of cream. The backpack is still on the floor under the window, which is half covered with a thin layer of snow. Before going out onto the landing, I turn on the light. A gentle light shines on the bed, illuminating the yellow giraffes.

I drag the sofa, which is in front of the fire, back a little and turn it ninety degrees. Now it's facing away from my bedroom. Moving the sofa scratches the paint. The living room was long, now it's wide. Before putting the TV in the corner, I get a potato crate out of the barn, brushing it clean with a rough brush. I put the TV on the crate, plug the cable into the hole in the back and the other end into the socket in the wall – in the connection with TV written above it. There's another one with an R. I turn on the TV. The picture comes on immediately and it makes a hellish racket. Since I don't know how to turn it down, I turn it off straightaway. I get the instructions, sit down on the wooden floor and read the booklet from cover to cover. An hour later I know how the remote control works, I've programmed about twenty channels and I've got a numb bum. Then I paint over the damaged spots on the floor.

In the evening I sit alone at the kitchen table. I haven't seen or heard Henk since I was in his room this afternoon. In a minute I'll take up Father's dinner. Not Henk's, he'll come when he's hungry. Over dinner I went through the paper for news from Denmark. Nothing. And nothing about Sweden, Norway or Finland either. As far as the newspaper is concerned all of Scandinavia is nonexistent, as if it's undiscovered territory. Now the paper is open at the TV page, although I know I won't watch it alone. The TV is for Henk. If he watches it, I'll watch it with him sometimes.

The donkey shed looks beautiful. It's stopped snowing, the sky has cleared and the moon is almost full. The snow on the roof is about three inches thick and nicely rounded at the edges. It's just below zero, but I don't think the frost will last until morning. I put some hay in the rack and sit down on the bales. In the light cast by the lamp I see my own footsteps walking here from the cowshed. The donkeys' breath billows through the bars of the rack. Except for their noisy chewing it's deathly silent. The silence of winter. An almost forgotten longing to smoke rises within me. How long does it take to smoke a cigarette? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Ten minutes of breathing in and blowing out, thinking to the rhythm of smoking, while the cigarette smoke mixes with the clouds of donkey breath. If Henk doesn't stay in bed tomorrow, I'll have him muck out the donkey shed.

'The day before yesterday he stayed in bed all day.'

'See.'

'What?'

'That he does that, just lying in bed. He didn't say a word either, I suppose.'

'Sometimes he talks a lot, but when he stayed in bed he didn't say a thing.'

'No, it's like he's in a kind of coma.'

'You can say that again.'

'As if he turns himself off.'

'Yesterday he did the yearlings and put a new mudguard on Father's old bike.'

'Good.'

'But he refused to muck out the donkey shed.'

'Did he?'

'Yes. He said he doesn't want anything to do with donkeys.'

'I can understand that.'

'I can't. Everyone loves my donkeys.'

'He's scared.'

'Why, for God's sake? The kids from next door lie down under them in the shed.'

'Henk got kicked by donkey when he was little.'

'No!'

'Yes. Wien had bought a miniature donkey as a treat for the girls. We used to keep it on the lawn between the pig sheds. For some reason Henk crawled around it on all fours and it lashed out at him. Got him on the side of the head. He was in hospital for a week.'

'Is that how he got that scar?'

'Yes. He was four or five.'

'And the donkey?'

'Sold it the next day. "Just turn it into a big pot of glue," Wien told the dealer.' Riet is quiet for a moment. 'What's he doing now?'

'I don't know, he's out the back.' I'm quiet as well. 'He wants money.'

'What for?'

'The work he does.'

'You know I never even thought of that?'

'Me neither.'

'Don't give him any.'

'Why not? He's working, isn't he?'

'Yes, but you're feeding him and putting a roof over his head. You're not rolling in it either, are you?'

'Riet, I've hardly spent anything my whole life. My father didn't either.'

'Get him to do some of the cooking too.'

'Yeah?'

'He's a decent cook. What do you actually make of him?'

'He seems like a nice kid. Touchy though.'

'Yes, he's touchy all right. Is he . . . aggressive?'

'Aggressive? Not at all. Why do you ask?'

'No reason. When he's settled in a bit, shall I come too? Then I can do some of the women's work for a while. Cooking, washing . . .'

High time to end this telephone conversation. I try to say 'No, we'll manage' as conclusively as possible. For a while now I've been gazing restlessly at the wallpaper.

'I'll ring again next week.'

'Fine.'

'Bye, Helmer.'

'Bye, Riet.' I hang up.

I once went to Heiloo, to the Marian shrine. Mother wanted to see it, even though she didn't have a Catholic bone in her body. I drove her there on a weekday in May, about twenty years ago. 'To Jesus through Mary' was written on the front wall in big letters (a mosaic, I think). Why am I suddenly remembering this? Riet is confusing me. I stop staring at the wallpaper and walk into the kitchen. Outside it's February. Hail, sleet and the odd bit of sun.