Gerband Bakker - The Twin

“Show me your hands.”

Now Henk has to go closer to the bed. From the moment he entered the room, he kept his eyes on the things on the walls and finally he noticed the gun leaning against the side of the clock. He’s been staring at it for a while now. He holds out his arms with the backs of his hands up, as if about to dive.

“No, the palms.”

Henk turns his hands over.

“Hmm,” says Father.

“Your bike’s fixed,” I say.

“Yes, my bike. Be careful with it,” he says to Henk.

“Yes, Mr. van Wonderen,” says Henk.

Father has put the plate with the kale, mash and sausage on the bedside cabinet. “Do you have any experience with cows?”

“No,” says Henk.

“His father had pigs,” I say.

“Pigs!”

“Yes,” says Henk. Almost imperceptibly he shuffles away from the bed again.

“There’s no comparison!” Father says. He shakes his head. “Pigs,” he says quietly.

“Henk comes from Brabant,” I say.

“I suppose that why he’s got a Brabant accent.”

I have to admit to being impressed. Rather than lying back like an old, decrepit man, Father is playing the part of a large landowner laid up with a dose of flu. In the spring of 1966 he fired the farmhand. Henk and I were eighteen and Riet was looking like a permanent fixture. He gave the hand six months to find somewhere else to live. That was very obliging of Father, considering the way he treated him otherwise.

“I’m the bloody boss here! You follow my instructions.”

Father and the farmhand were standing in the cowshed, opposite each other. I was behind Father and to one side, squirming, and when I dared to glance up quickly at the hand I saw that, like me, he was keeping his head bowed. I remember being surprised by the phrase “follow my instructions.” Father didn’t usually talk like that. I had no idea what the hand had done wrong.

“Who’s the boss here?”

“You are,” said the hand, not looking up but seething inside. “You’re the boss.”

I was young, young enough to get tears in my eyes. I couldn’t stand my father, I wanted to stick up for the man who had taught me how to skate. But I was young and had no idea what the disagreement was about. Not too young though to notice the trembling muscles in the farmhand’s neck. It was a recalcitrant trembling, somehow provocative. After his subjugation he straightened up, but he didn’t look at Father. He looked at me. His eyes were still smoldering.

Now Father is trying to resume his old role. Maybe he’s not even trying, maybe the master-servant relationship comes naturally. To him.

“Get out of here,” he says. “Then I can eat in peace.”

Henk reaches the door before I do. He dives down the stairs in front of me.

“Christ,” he says, walking into the scullery.

Henk wants to watch TV.

“We don’t have TV here,” I say.

“What? What do you do at night?”

“Read the newspaper, do the paperwork, check the animals.”

“Paperwork?”

“Uh-huh. Nitrate records, health records for the vet, quality control records for the dairy-”

“I get it. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

I don’t know how to answer that.

“You miss all kinds of stuff, you know, if you don’t have a TV.”

“Yeah?” We’re sitting in the kitchen. Henk doesn’t have anything else to say. I stand up and open the linen cupboard.

“Towels are in here. Come with me.” I lead the way to the scullery. “The washing machine’s here. You can throw your dirty clothes in the basket.” I open the door to the bathroom. “The bathroom,” I say. “The hot water is from a boiler. It’s a big boiler, but it doesn’t last forever.” We walk back to the kitchen. “Can you cook?” I ask.

“I can throw a pasta dish together.”

“Good.”

He walks straight through to the linen cupboard, pulls a towel from the stack and disappears into the hall. As if he’s following instructions. I hear him on the stairs. Then it’s quiet for a moment. He comes back down the stairs. A little later I hear water running in the bathroom. Ten minutes later he turns off the taps. From the instant he left the kitchen I haven’t done a thing. I’ve stayed sitting at the table with my arms crossed. The scullery door opens. “I’m going to bed,” he calls.

“Goodnight,” I call back.

“Goodnight.” He climbs the stairs again. It gets quiet upstairs.

He has taken up half of the shelf under the mirror. Shaving gear, toothbrush and toothpicks, shower gel, shampoo and expensive-looking deodorant. His damp towel is hanging over the shower curtain rail. I wipe the steam from the mirror. “A good thick head of hair,” I mumble. Black hair, even now.

I’m exhausted, but can’t possibly fall asleep. Not that far away a group of coots is swimming on the canal. The hooded crow is quiet and there is no rain drumming on the window ledges. Am I a kind of father now? What am I? Can he sleep in that room up there? It’s not just missing a wardrobe, there’s not even a chair. Thrown-together pasta. I can’t see Father being too happy about that. What is Father thinking about? Suddenly it’s full of breath and life, upstairs. For the first time since taking over Father’s bedroom, I feel some degree of regret about the move. Just before falling asleep, when all my thoughts are slipping away from me, I see the young lad who looked like Riet on the back of that bike. With his arms wrapped tightly around the girl.

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 gray. 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 realize 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 colored 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.