Gerband Bakker - The Twin

It was months before Henk finally brought Riet home with him. Our farm was at its best for her first visit. It was the time of year when eager lambs dive at the ewes in the field next to the farmhouse, peewits and godwits call their own names while defending their nests, the willows have already sprouted and the crooked ash in the front garden is about to come into leaf. A light-green spring in which even a muck heap can look fresh. Father kept his distance; Mother welcomed Riet with moist eyes and open arms.

I had seen her a few times since New Year and been clumsy and insecure in her company. She was awkward and quiet in mine. Now that she was going to be in our house I had even less idea of how to act. Henk took her to the Bosman windmill, our windmill, that very first time. They came back with a peewit’s egg, and after that things were never really right between Riet and me.

Worse still, things between Henk and me were never right again either.

Later Riet spent her first night at our house, it must have been some time in August.

“Colts and fillies separate,” Mother announced one night at the kitchen table. The night before Riet was expected.

“What?” said Henk.

“Colts and fillies separate.”

Henk had to think it over for a moment. “But you’re a colt and a filly too?” he said with all the innocence he could muster, gesturing at Father.

Father snarled.

Riet slept in Henk’s room, Henk slept in mine. On a mattress on the floor. I couldn’t think of anything to say, I had trouble breathing, something I put down to the oppressive heat. The window was wide open, the curtains weren’t drawn, a full moon was shining straight into the room. Henk was lying half under a sheet, his upper body bared and bluish. He was beautiful, so beautiful. After a long silence, almost as oppressive as the temperature, he whispered something I didn’t understand.

“What?” I said.

“Shhh!”

“What did you say?” I whispered.

“I’m going next door.”

“To Riet?” I said numbly.

“Where else?” He sat up straight and pushed away the sheet. He pulled up his knees and stood up. He was wearing big white underpants. He walked to the door as if treading on eggshells and pulled it open inch by inch. It took a very long time before his body had left my bedroom and the door was shut again.

I’ve hated moonlit nights ever since. The bluish light that comes into bedrooms through curtains or venetian blinds and can’t be kept out is cold, even in summer.

No, give me coots, there’s something I like to hear at night. Their yapping drives away emptiness and next year they’ll yap again, even if they’re not the same ones, and ten years from now they’ll be yapping still. You can depend on coots.

Riet is sitting at the kitchen table, in Henk’s old spot. I can’t tell from her face whether she has sat there deliberately. She is staring at a photo on the front page of the newspaper of a group of Koniks standing on a strip of land surrounded by the waters of the Waal. Here it’s freezing, across the borders it’s raining, and washlands and banks everywhere are underwater.

“Polish horses,” she says to the newspaper.

“Coffee?” I ask.

Only now does she look up. “Yes, please.”

The sun is shining: low and cold, but a warm yellow. I have never been to Austria or Switzerland, but this is how I imagine the sun on ski slopes. The coffee machine is in full sunlight and I see that it needs a wipe with a damp cloth. I take my time, with my back to Riet I don’t have to worry about the expression on my face. From the corner of my eye I see something pass the front window.

“A hooded crow!” exclaims Riet.

I turn around. It’s back in the ash, perched on its old branch and rearranging its feathers. I see the knuckles of my hand, wrapped around the handle of the coffee pot, turn white. This is the moment for noise from upstairs. It stays quiet.

“Have you seen hooded crows before?” I ask, making more noise than necessary as I slide the coffee pot in under the filter.

“Sure, often enough. In Denmark. They’re almost all hooded crows up there.”

“Have you been to Denmark?”

“A few times. On holiday.” She thinks for a moment. “Four times.”

“What’s it like?”

“I don’t know what it is like, only what it was like. It must be eight years since we last went. The girls weren’t with us, they’d been going on holidays alone for years. It was just the three of us.”

I sit down, cross my arms and let her take her time.

Riet looks out. “Do you remember the wooden electricity poles you used to have here?”

“Yes, of course.” Irritation itches in my forearms.

“They still have them there, but concrete. They’re a bit behind.” She keeps on staring out, without seeing anything. The water sputters in the coffee machine. “We were there in August, in the car. The farmers had set fire to piles of straw and there were swallows on the electricity wires.”

“Swallows.”

“Yes. Wien didn’t get it at all. ‘Who on earth burns straw!’ he said and, ‘What a waste!’”

“He’s got a point.”

“I don’t know about any of that. I thought those swallows were so beautiful. The electricity cables hung really low.” She starts crying quietly.

“What is it?”

“Ah, I’m chattering away and I actually feel very peculiar here.” She hides her face in her hands.

“Relax. First some coffee.” I stand up and get the best cups from the kitchen cupboard. Not the mugs, the best cups, that’s what Mother would have done. Earlier this morning I put the matching milk jug and sugar pot on the table. I pour coffee into the cups and lay a silver spoon on each saucer. I arrange some biscuits on a plate. I put the coffee and the biscuits on the table. If it wasn’t freezing outside, I would slide the window open. Specks of dust float through the kitchen.

“I feel strange too,” I say, sitting back down.

Riet smiles. “We both feel strange.”

I feel light-headed. Unreal. Take Father, for instance: he’s always been just like he is now. I’ve seen him every day my whole life long. Every day he has grown older, but because we have grown old together, it has all been gradual. When I see a photo of my father as a young man — like the photo on the wall of the bedroom upstairs-I know it’s him, but it’s distinct from the father I have now. I didn’t really know him when he was young, because I was much younger at the time. We’ve both grown old without my noticing. I haven’t seen Riet for more than thirty years. It’s shocking, as if I’m in bed having a bad dream.

This is what I am thinking, what is she thinking? I feel like copying her and hiding my face in my hands. “Who do you see when you look at me?” I ask.

“Henk,” she says.

“I’m Helmer.”

“I know. I still see Henk.”

Before we got to the kitchen, I showed her the new living room. She didn’t like it. “It’s so bare in here,” she said. “What happened to all the photos?” The door to the bedroom was shut and I had no plans to open it for her. “And the curtains and the sideboard and the bookcase with your mother’s books?” She looked at herself in the large mirror above the mantelpiece and used both hands to plump up her hair a little.

“Ah, the cows,” she says, as we walk through the shed. She’s wearing jeans. Her hair is still blonde and even in the sunlight in the kitchen I couldn’t tell whether she bleaches it. It’s not permed like most women’s in their mid-fifties. She walks a little stiffly. It is totally impossible for me to see her as the mistress of this house: making meatballs, running after sheep or heifers, cuddling up to Henk in bed at night, having her kids visit on Saturday mornings, a grandchild climbing the ash in the front garden.