Gerbrand Bakker - June

The Eating Corner. Boarded-up windows, tall fences, weeds.

‘That lady should work here,’ she says.

‘You’re not wrong there. Do you want to go through the new estate or shall we go past the Polder House?’

Dieke has to think about that. Usually there’s more happening and more to see in the new estate. The swimming pool is behind the new houses, near the football pitches. Her bottom’s starting to hurt from sitting on the pannier rack, she wants to get off the bike sooner rather than later, but she doesn’t know which route is shorter. And she thinks of Evelien, who might already be at the swimming pool.

‘Well? We haven’t got all day.’

‘New estate,’ she says.

‘Linquenda.’

‘Yes!’

‘Yes, what?’

‘Just yes.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

‘What’s Linquenda mean?’

Her mother doesn’t answer. Dieke feels her hips grow and shrink a little more urgently. In the new estate hardly any of the houses have names. There is one, just before they get to the cemetery. The Old Stamping Ground.

‘What’s a stamping ground?’ Dieke asks.

‘A place.’

‘A place?’

‘Somewhere you spend a lot of time. The old stamping ground means a place from the old days.’

‘But this house is new, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Diek.’

‘It’s not old.’

‘Would you like to go back? You can ring the doorbell and ask what exactly they’re referring to. Does that mouth of yours ever stop?’

‘No! Don’t go back!’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Don’t you have to go to work?’

‘No, otherwise I wouldn’t be taking you to the cemetery right now, would I?’

‘Yes,’ says Dieke. Then she says, ‘No.’

‘And you do realise that you have to stay with Jan, I hope. I can’t just pop back to pick you up, and if you want to leave, nobody will know.’

‘Doesn’t Uncle Jan have a phone?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I want to stay there anyway.’

They arrive at the cemetery’s rear entrance. A narrow gate, with two very straight trees next to it. Dieke jumps off the back of the bike and dashes onto the deserted lawn on the other side of the gate.

‘Wait!’

She waits, without turning back to look at her mother. It’s just like a football pitch. A bit further up there’s a hedge, with an opening for the path. Uncle Jan must be behind that hedge. As soon as her mother has caught up, she walks on.

‘What’s this?’ she asks.

‘This is for when there’s no more room on that side.’

When she reaches the opening in the hedge, Dieke recoils. In front of her is a wheat field of stones, stones everywhere. But there are also plants and bushes and shrubs. Uncle Jan is nowhere in sight. The path goes in two directions. She feels a leaf in the hedge. It’s the same as along the side of the yard at home, only there it’s not trimmed.

‘Jan!’ her mother calls, but not very loudly.

He appears in front of them, popping up between all those stones. ‘Here,’ he says, raising an arm in the air. They walk over to him, Dieke more slowly than her mother, listening to the shells crunching under the soles of her sandals. The shells under her mother’s shoes crunch a lot louder. Uncle Jan comes out onto the path.

‘Hi, Jan,’ her mother says.

‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Dieke wants to be here with you, she doesn’t want to go to the swimming pool.’

‘Why not?’

‘She goes there every day. She gets bored.’

Dieke keeps quiet, twisting the toe of one sandal down into the crushed shells and not looking at her mother or Uncle Jan. Her face is blank.

‘She can stay here then. It’s fine by me.’ He looks at her. ‘I’ll take care of her. Will you be careful too?’

‘Uh-huh,’ says Dieke.

Her mother starts to turn away. ‘I’ll come back to pick her up a bit later. You can count on her wanting to go to the swimming pool in half an hour.’

‘I won’t,’ Dieke says.

Her mother walks past her without looking at her. Crunch, crunch, crunch and she’s gone.

Dieke keeps staring at the path.

‘Is your mother a bit cross with you, Diek?’

‘I broke a plant,’ she says.

‘Did you?’

‘And I got up too early. She said.’

‘How early?’

‘Five o’clock?’ she tries.

‘That is really early. But it was probably light by then too. It hardly gets dark now.’

‘I don’t know.’ She looks up. Uncle Jan looks a lot like her dad, but at the same time he doesn’t look like him at all. ‘You haven’t got a top on.’

‘No, I was hot.’

‘Is that your T-shirt on your head?’

‘Yep.’

‘Look. I’ve got my grey dress on.’

He clears his throat.

‘Sleeveless.’

‘Smart thinking.’

‘With purple flowers.’ Dieke looks around cautiously. Now she’s here, she sees that it’s not just stones standing up, there are stones lying flat on the ground too. They’re like radiators, she can feel the heat coming off them. The cemetery is more or less completely flat. It only has one tree, but it’s a very big one.

‘What have you got in your rucksack?’ Uncle Jan asks.

‘A drink.’ Dieke unzips the rucksack and pulls out a Jip and Janneke drinking cup. ‘See?’

‘Aha.’

‘And two apples and two bananas. They’re for you too.’

They’ve already had a really long talk and Uncle Jan started it.

Now he steps off the path and goes over to a small stone in the second row. He kneels down next to it.

Dieke doesn’t know what to do. First she puts the cup back in her bag. Then she takes three steps towards Uncle Jan, and that takes her up to a stone in the first row. She lays a hand on it, but jerks it back straight away. Too hot. There’s a tin of paint and a green bucket with a wet rag draped over the side on the ground next to her uncle, along with a few sheets of paper and some white things she doesn’t recognise. A paintbrush just like the ones she uses with her watercolours is balanced on top of the tin. Her uncle picks up a screwdriver and starts using it to chip away at the white paint on the stone. Something goes wrong: the end of the screwdriver makes a scraping noise and Uncle Jan starts to swear.

‘You’re not allowed to swear,’ she says.

‘Who says so?’

She takes another step forward. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

It takes a while for her to find an appropriate blouse. She’s not looking for an appropriate blouse at all. She shakes her head, but that doesn’t help get rid of the Negro and the word ‘rape’. She has to stretch out on the bed for a moment, closing the bedroom door first to keep Benno out on the landing. Her bra straps are pinching, that thing has to come off, and while she’s removing it, both hands accidentally touch her breasts. She does her best to think about the baker with the chapped face — it’s Saturday, they’ll be seeing each other this evening — but fails. He has a name, just like everyone else, but she thinks: baker. There’s an open window but the warm air isn’t stirring.

The Negro climbs in through the open window like some kind of big African cat. Her skirt and girdle are pinching too, they need pushing down. Why is it so hot? It’s June but it feels like an oppressive day much later in the summer, as if there are already brown leaves littering her front garden. He’s wearing a kind of apron, a loincloth but otherwise naked. Naked and gleaming with sweat or oil, some magical African lotion. Benno barks. The Negro’s lips part, revealing teeth and an astonishingly pale, pink tongue. Dinie Grint opens her mouth too and lays her hands by her sides. After stretching out beside her on the bed, the Negro tears off his loincloth and she feels his penis pressing against her thigh. ‘I don’t want this,’ she mumbles. ‘No, no.’ The Negro shuts her up and she grabs at his penis, which, in contrast to the rest of his body, is matt, not gleaming. Her mouth fills with saliva that tastes of bitter leaves, her fingertips glide over veins that… Benno barks. ‘Quiet!’ she shouts. The Negro was gone for a moment, but now he’s back again, bigger and harder than ever. Swelling, pumping male blood under her fingers, yes. It’s as if she’s offering her throat to this African feline, her throat, her lower body, pushing up and forward, she wants him inside her, she wants to grab and pull and guide, but instead she grips the side of her double bed with one hand and he’s in her anyway, he can manage that fine by himself. She’s happy for him to go very deep and fast, or slow, whatever he likes, and he doesn’t need to be told twice — God, he’s so big — and now she wants him to get out of her and stick it in her mouth. He does that too, of course. But not right away. Slowly he crawls up on all fours. ‘No, don’t,’ she murmurs. ‘Stop it, now.’ The Negro has become his penis, a penis with heavy balls dragging over her nipples. The head already pushing against her lips. The baker, she thinks. The baker.