Gerband Bakker - The Twin

The alliance held until her death. It was an alliance of glances, not words. Mother and I looked at each other when he disappeared into the bedroom after calling her a romantic soul; when he growled while cutting the gristle off a piece of braised steak; when he raged across the fields while moving the yearlings or sheep from one field to another; when he went to bed at ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve; when he barked the day’s jobs at me (as if I was a fifteen-year-old kid and not a forty-year-old man); when he said “I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole” in discussions about anything at all, before going to sit in his chair in the living room like a lump of rock.

On very rare occasions she avoided looking at me, and that was almost always after Father had asked if it wasn’t time for me to start looking for a wife. I took that to mean that for once she agreed with him.

After her death I didn’t have anyone left to look at, to look with — that was the worst of it. The alliance had been unilaterally dissolved. I found it — and find it — very difficult to look Father straight in the eye. In Mother’s eyes I always saw Henk’s shadow and I assumed that she saw the same in mine. (Of course, she also saw Henk in my body as a whole, in my eyes she saw him double.) Father’s eyes never gave away anything — after Mother’s death even her shadow was absent.

For Riet I make an exception: I drive south. South-west, to be precise. To the ferry in North Amsterdam. We have agreed on a time and long before that time I am already parked in front of a chip stand on the IJ. Futuristic ferries cross back and forth, streamlined butter dishes in blue and white, nothing like the pale-green boats they had in 1967. Back then they still took cars, the ferries were sailing motorways. I see “Municipal Ferry No. 15” before me, and the narrow, roofed sections for bikes and motorbikes. They were only pale green inside the deck, the outside was a filthy white. I’d forgotten that.

I try to think my way further into the city. Faces and names of fellow students don’t come back and I can’t even picture the building I had lectures in. It’s all gone, there across the water.

I described the Opel Kadett to her, but, faced with the stream of pedestrians and cyclists, I start to worry. Who will discover who? Should I stay in the car or get out and stand next to it?

Earlier this morning, when I was in the middle of the yard with Father in my arms and he asked me through chattering teeth and trembling lips where I was taking him, I decided to carry him back to his bedroom. I was going to put him in the loft of the yearling shed. His question and the inquisitive looks from the donkeys (one of the two started to bray loudly, waking the chickens from their morning snooze) were enough to make me abandon the plan. How was I going to get him up the ladder anyway? The return journey went smoothly, all the doors were wide open. I put him back in bed (still warm) and was going to leave the room without a word. At the door I changed my mind.

“I’m going to pick up Riet,” I said.

He looked at me with a blank expression.

“At the ferry in Amsterdam. She’s coming to visit.”

“Riet?” The name croaked out and he went a bit pale.

“Yes, Riet. And you’re dead.”

“Dead?”

“I told her you’re dead.”

“Why?”

Now I tried to look at him blankly. “Do you need to ask?”

He thought about it.

“If I were you, I’d keep quiet,” I said ominously. “Otherwise there’s a chance she’ll come upstairs.”

“What for?”

“Payback.”

“Oh. .”

“And you’re not all there, remember?”

“Oh. .”

“I’m going now.”

Que será, será, as Doris Day would say, I thought on the stairs. Whatever will be, will be.

I’m old, I thought in the scullery.

A ferry arrives every six minutes: five since I’ve been parked here. A lot of women in their fifties have got off them, fortunately I can exclude the ones with bikes. They’re all wearing thick coats and scarves. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a winter like this: the temperature has fallen below zero again and there is even snow on the ground. The sixth ferry approaches the quayside. I check my watch; this will be the ferry that brings her to me. Where are all these people going on an ordinary weekday? Riet is one of the last to get off the ferry. I feel a little dizzy, I was expecting someone who looks like Ada (why that should be, I don’t know), but it is Riet just as she rode away thirty years ago. Without the long blonde hair, a little plumper, and with a different way of walking. I sit rigid behind the steering wheel, which I have involuntarily grabbed with both hands. She walks straight up to the car. I feel like falling to one side, crawling under the dashboard, putting the car in reverse and disappearing backwards into the IJ, straight through the chip stand if necessary. Maybe she’ll try to save me.

She stops in front of the car and looks in through the windscreen. I wait for a moment, then open the door. She approaches with outstretched arms.

“Hello, Helmer,” she says.

“Hello, Riet,” I say.

Very old fury, a fury I can’t remember having, whose existence I didn’t even suspect, rises up inside me. Riet isn’t troubled by fury, I can see that. She is moved and confused, that’s what’s troubling her. The longer Henk is dead, the more I look like him, simply because there is no longer any comparing.

No, fury is too big a word, outrage is closer.

What is it like to have a relationship with a twin? I wouldn’t know — apart from some childish carry-on at primary school-I have never been involved in anything like it. That Christmas Eve was followed by a Christmas Henk filled with absent-minded humming, not even stopping during meals. Over the roast beef and cauliflower cheese, he answered all of our grandparents’ questions in such detail that Father looked up with surprise and Mother looked at me with an expression which would only become normal later, during our alliance. He was home on New Year’s Eve, but two minutes into the New Year he disappeared without telling me where he was going. Late at night, when I was crossing the bridge near The Weighhouse with the group of farm boys we had both been a part of until the week before, I saw them. They were sitting holding hands on a bench in the drizzle. I tried to hide behind the brawniest farm boy and spotted something further along-a snot-colored Volkswagen Beetle two or three steps away — that I might be able to reach without being seen. As the brawniest farm boy was also the one who had drunk the most, he pushed his way through the others to talk to Henk, leaving me exposed. I can still picture the snot-colored Beetle perfectly, I have no idea what was said. There are two other things I haven’t forgotten. One: Henk saw me there — at the back of the group, while he was talking to the drunk youth and keeping Riet’s hand firmly clasped in his — and wasn’t able to look me in the eye. That had never happened before. Two: a little later Riet noticed me as well and I realized that I was the last person she wanted to see, she wanted to forget that there was someone else walking around who looked just like Henk. I broke away from the group and turned down a lane behind the Beetle, fortunately Monnickendam is full of lanes. About a hundred yards later, I put a hand on a damp wall, bent forwards and spewed up all the beer and doughnuts. Then I went off in search of my bike, finally finding it where we had started our pub crawl. Someone had set off fireworks between the spokes of the back wheel. I hoisted the bike up onto one shoulder and walked home, swapping the bike back and forth between my right and left shoulders on the way. I licked drops of water off the bell to get the dirty taste out of my mouth. Late at night had changed to early in the morning. Drizzle isn’t much more than mist with delusions of grandeur, but I was still saturated by the time I got home.