Gerbrand Bakker - June

The baker with the chapped face is getting ready to leave the house. He wants to go. He doesn’t want to go. He puts it off. Radio North-Holland’s culture correspondent is discussing forthcoming events. Next week there’ll be a car boot sale in Sint Maartenszee, tonight there’s outdoor cinema at the old national shipyard in Den Helder, fairs in Harenkarspel and Middenmeer, a volleyball tournament in Schagen. Nice, he thinks. Lively. He puts his empty water glass down on the sink and goes through to the living room. The coffee table is covered with photos; the ashtray, table lighter and plant have made way and are now on the windowsill. In front of the dried-out newspapers.

He filled the time between looking at the calendar and spreading out the photos by going through the classifieds in the local paper. Under the heading PETS AND ACCESSORIES he couldn’t find a single puppy. Two old dogs for sale, because of the home situation . ‘Not them, then,’ he mumbled. He also drank a good few glasses of water, standing at the kitchen window looking out at the Polder House. Behind the Polder House there are several large chestnuts. The tall conifer hedge blocks his view of the cemetery.

He sits down with one hand on the small of his back, like a heavily pregnant woman. He never got round to putting the photos from the Queen’s visit in an album. The envelope that contained them — he can still see his daughter’s hands reaching out to grab it — is still the one from 1969, usually slipped between the pages of a reddish-brown photo album. He did stick in other, later photos, including those from the holiday in Schin op Geul: late August 1969. It wasn’t a relaxed or light-hearted holiday, despite the beautiful weather. Every day sun, and every night a gigantic thunderstorm. Only their daughter smiling — in two or three snaps. The album is lying on one of the easy chairs; the envelope, now torn, is on top of it. He can’t remember when he last looked at this album. Sad pictures, each and every one, and later they only got sadder, because his wife and daughter were no longer there to look through them, giggling and whispering.

He looks at the clock and thinks, what do I care? Then takes a bottle of lemon brandy out of the sideboard and pours himself a drink. This time he doesn’t sit down like a pregnant woman; he has to concentrate on his balance to keep the spirits from spilling down the side of the small glass. One of the photos even shows those bloody pygmy goats. He’d forgotten that. Over the years he’d even begun to wonder if he hadn’t just imagined them. A farmer in spotless overalls is holding them tight while accepting the old Queen’s expressions of gratitude. The goats are eating a bunch of Sweet William, inadvertently dangled in front of them by a woman who is staring at the Queen with big excited eyes. Lots of pictures of his daughter and the butcher’s son, together holding an expensive floral arrangement. He takes a sip. There’s only one other shot of the Queen, seen from behind on her way into the Polder House, passing between two lines of children with flags. Jan Kaan is in the photo: sulking, with his belly pushed forward, flag hanging. He’s wearing a grey cardigan with black trim and silver buttons. A brand-new cardigan. He appears twice, both times with that scowl on his face. Why? The baker takes another sip, then puts the glass down between the photos. His daughter’s beaming. She seems really happy. The butcher’s son looks bored, with one leg bent casually, as if he’s indifferent to the whole event. Yet he’s the one who gets to present flowers to the Queen. The baker studies Jan Kaan again. Was he jealous? Is that why he looks so angry? Had he sat up straighter than straight in the classroom with his arms crossed, hoping to be chosen? Or did he just think he looked ridiculous in that Norwegian cardigan?

The baker picks up the second photo with Jan Kaan in it off the table. Standing next to him is Dinie’s son. Teun, he thinks. What’s happened to him anyway? Dinie never says a word about her son. It’s actually a bit strange: Teun is a few years older than Jan Kaan, what’s he doing lined up there? They’re standing hand in hand. Wherever the Queen might have been in the instant he took the photo, Teun is definitely not looking at her. He’s looking slightly sideways, at Jan Kaan. The baker takes another mouthful, tipping the lemon brandy down his throat in one go. Teun Grint looks like someone who can’t keep his eyes off a deformed leg, even though he knows it’s not polite to stare. This evening he’ll have to ask Dinie what’s become of her son. His head starts to spin.

In one movement he slides all the photos together and dumps them into the album. He crumples up the envelope and tosses the ball into the bin. Then he takes the ashtray, the plant and the table lighter from the windowsill and puts them back on the coffee table. He pours himself another glass of lemon brandy and knocks it back in two gulps. After a couple of drinks, an old body doesn’t feel as old; it feels looser, freer.

Hanging on a wall in the empty shop is a large picture in a black frame with non-reflective glass. The light-grey VW van. Parked in front of the bakery. Blom’s Breadery. Him, his wife and their daughter at the rear of van. Beaming. With his left hand he carefully pulls the bottom of the picture away from the wall while holding out his right hand, but the photo that was wedged in behind the frame still floats down to the floor. He bends over — which really is a little easier after two glasses than it was earlier when he was doing the watering — and picks up the photo. This one is very special. But also unbearable to look at. And what good is hiding something if you know exactly where you’ve hidden it?

He’d made the delivery to the Polder House early that morning. ‘Nothing fancy,’ they’d told him. ‘Just plain loaves, bread rolls, fruit loaf. The Queen needs to eat and drink like everyone else. Just as long as it’s fresh out of the oven.’ He dropped the order off in the new van, wanting as many people as possible to get used to the name Blom’s Breadery painted on the side. The van was actually meant for the surrounding area. His elderly father did the village round on an equally elderly tricycle with a walnut box with the old name on it: Blom’s Bread & Pastries. He’d joked to his wife that they could, in all honesty, now add by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen under the shiny new letters on the window.

Later that morning he dropped a large quantity of white rolls off at the notary’s, from which he deduced that he hadn’t been invited to dine with the Queen and decided to organise a festive lunch of his own. He hadn’t looked in the wing mirror before opening the door and a boy shouted out ‘Hey!’ as he whizzed past on a bike. Startled, he jerked the door shut again. The boy straightened up and looked back over his shoulder as he rode off. It was Jan Kaan, the second son of Zeeger and Anna Kaan. The baker raised a hand in apology just before Johan Kaan raced past on a scooter, trying to catch up with his brother. Driving back very slowly to the bakery after carrying in the bread rolls, it took him a while to get over the fright: his knees were weak and changing gears wasn’t going very smoothly either. The farm run would have to wait until later in the afternoon, the Queen was about to arrive. He parked the light-grey van at an angle in front of the bakery, and admired it from across the road: the Queen couldn’t miss it. There were already quite a few people in front of the Polder House and he could hear excited children in the distance. Half the village could think of nothing but the lunch. He went into the shop, said hello to his wife and fetched his camera from the living room.