Gerbrand Bakker - June

He followed his daughter, one of the two chosen children, and pressed the shutter in the instant that she, completely overcome by nerves, handed the Queen the flowers. And again when she, relieved, stepped back into line. Jan Kaan was there too, a scowl on his face. The Grint boy was standing next to him, holding his hand. The West Frisian dance group started up, and he took photos of them too, and of a friendly-looking Queen watching the folk dancing, and of old Van der Hoes with his violin, eyes and mouth screwed up in concentration. That’ll be a good one, he’d thought. Afterwards he spoke to people, shook hands and enjoyed the beautiful June weather. People complimented him on his new van, and Blauwboer told him that the Queen’s secretary really had made an arrangement about when to pick up the goats. He kissed his daughter. There were less and less people in front of the Polder House; he stayed on. And because he stayed, he managed to take the most beautiful photo he could have hoped for.

‘What are you beaming about?’ his wife asked, when he was finally eating his own lunch before setting out on the postponed delivery round.

‘I’m happy,’ he said. He had never said anything remotely like that before.

His wife sniffed and walked through to the shop; the bell had rung.

Bread and leather. The baker had installed a radio in the van and it was playing. Music, window down, the smell of fresh bread and new leather. A west wind, he thought, looking at the elms along the long road. Always a west wind. He drove past the labourer’s cottage next to the Kaan farm. There was nobody there, they were on holiday. RC too, and maybe not even interested in the Queen because of it? For his part, the baker never felt much need of a holiday; the village was lively enough for him and, anyway, how could he relax in a holiday home in Overijssel or Drenthe while somebody else baked and sold the bread? Even if that somebody was his father? He turned into Kaan’s yard, parked the van in front of the new milking parlour, hopped out and slid open the side door. A loaf of brown and half a loaf of white. Behind him, something made a thwacking sound. He jumped and looked around. A wet sheet on the clothes line. He went into the milking parlour and walked through to the kitchen door. He didn’t close the door behind him, he wouldn’t be long. He laid the one and a half loaves on the table with a flourish. ‘Here they are again,’ he said.

Anna Kaan looked up. She’d been standing at the window staring out at the washing.

‘Anything else today?’ He always asked and the answer was almost always no. Very occasionally a roll of zwieback or a packet of Frisian rye. Once in a blue moon, Zeeger Kaan wanted six almond cakes.

‘No,’ said Anna Kaan.

‘Not even on this special day?’

‘No.’

‘What was the Queen like?’

‘Special.’

The look on her face told him he wasn’t going to get anything else out of her. The baker jumped again, this time from a loud banging overhead. ‘What’s going on up there?’ he asked.

‘Zeeger’s making a bedroom in the attic. For Hanne.’

‘Is she going upstairs? Is she already two?’ The baker knew that all the Kaan children slept downstairs for two years, in the bedroom next to the living room. After years of going to people’s houses you knew everything about them.

‘Just,’ Anna Kaan said. ‘And afterwards we’re getting rid of the wardrobes and the sliding doors.’

‘That’ll give you a really big living room.’

‘Yes.’

The young Irish setter came into the kitchen from the hall. Tinus. A strange name for a dog. The baker squatted down to pat it and let it lick his face. The sound of sawing was now coming from upstairs.

‘That will all take a while. The bedroom has to be finished first.’

‘Everyone seems to be renovating these days.’

‘And buying,’ said Anna Kaan. ‘Nice van.’

‘Thanks.’ It was the first time she’d mentioned his new acquisition.

He pushed the dog away, stood up and turned to leave without saying goodbye. He didn’t consider it necessary: he went into so many houses, in and out, in and out, there’d be no end to it. Whistling, he left the kitchen, closing the door this time. On his way to the van, he used a gnawed pencil to note the loaf of brown and half a loaf of white in his book. He could do that, the baker with the chapped face: walk, whistle and write at the same time.

Almost subconsciously he was whistling ‘Oh Happy Day’. He’d just heard it in the kitchen on a radio that looked brand new. It was a tune that stuck in your head. He backed out of the yard and only then did he think of the car door and Jan Kaan and that he should have mentioned it to Anna Kaan. Oh well, it wasn’t really necessary. His knees had stopped trembling. Between the Kaans’ and the next delivery he saw a bird of prey in the air. A buzzard, he thought. Or a harrier? He wasn’t sure, he’d have to look it up in his bird guide: how to tell the difference. A few more farms and then home. There are three kinds of harriers, he thought. Marsh harriers and hen harriers and another kind that’s named after somebody, so being able to tell the difference between buzzards and harriers isn’t enough. He started whistling again, changed gears smoothly and tried to think where in the bookcase he’d put the bird guide.

Half an hour later he passed the Kaan farm again, now going in the other direction, taking it easy on his way home. He was still thinking about buzzards and harriers and that’s why he was driving sedately, not paying too much attention to the road. It was very quiet, only a single car had obliged him to move over onto the verge. Then just before the causeway he hit something. He bent forward over the steering wheel, his foot pressing lightly on the brake. There wasn’t anything on the road in front of him. In the wing mirror on the right he could see something brown. A dog, Zeeger Kaan’s young Irish setter. Had he hit it? But if he had, how could the animal be sitting up like that? He felt the fright through his whole body once again, his knees started to shake. He slowed down and turned off the radio, still staring in the wing mirror. His left hand slid over the wheel. When the van came to a halt it was almost at right angles to the road. Silence. The smell of new leather and fresh bread. An unexpected gust of wind almost ripped the door out of his hand. The elms on the roadside bent towards him. Blom’s Breadery . Even before he’d rounded the van, he loathed himself for that lettering, hearing himself gabbling on about the seventies being just around the corner, about a new, different era.

There was nothing wrong with the dog. It hadn’t moved. It was sitting, but seemed to be pointing, as if the child lying half on the road was some kind of game. As the baker had driven on for quite some distance and was now hardly able to walk, it took him a while to reach the child and the dog. A wispy shadow slid over the road, the elms bent down lower over him, without rustling. The child looked unharmed. She was still, that was all, and her eyes were closed. When he squatted down, the dog thought he was doing it for its benefit, jumped against him and started licking his face. The baker pushed the young animal away roughly. A thin line of blood trickled out of one of the child’s ears. The dog started barking, shrill and piercing. The side door — which was actually a front door, as the door in the front wall of the farmhouse was blind — opened. The baker stood up. Anna Kaan took a few steps into the yard and stopped. ‘Zeeger!’ she called. The young dog fell silent.

The baker’s eyes moved up the facade from the blind door. A few metres above the balcony he saw for the first time — despite knowing everything that happened in the house — a plaque. Anno 1912.