Gerbrand Bakker - June

‘ Piccaninny, black as black, took a walk without a hat, but the sun shone bright and yella, so he put up his umbrella .’ He finishes a letter and starts on the next one without looking up. ‘Do you know that song?’

‘Nope.’

‘It’s about a little black boy.’

‘Leslie?’

‘Is he in your class at school?’

‘Yep.’

‘Then it’s about Leslie.’

‘He’s at the pool now. I think. Evelien too.’

‘And maybe now you wouldn’t mind heading over there too?’

‘Mm,’ she says. ‘Leslie’s got a really big dad.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Big. Tall.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yep.’ Dieke starts singing softly and drawing circles in the shell grit with the toe of her sandal.

‘I think Grandpa will come soon. Then you can go home with him.’

‘Hm,’ she says.

The guy from the garden centre had asked him something really hard. Something about surfaces. So much by so much, so he could work it out for him. ‘N-ormal,’ Johan Kaan had said. ‘What fits on t-op of a little kid.’ After that it took a very long time before the garden-centre guy had figured it out, and after that , they had to fill a bag, separately and just for him, because they didn’t usually stock the kind of stones he wanted in bags. He had money, yes, of course he had money. Otherwise you can’t buy anything. ‘D-you think I’m c-razy or what?’ The guy had started speaking slower and slower — slower and louder.

Now he’s walking down long straight roads with the bag on his shoulder: first one shoulder then the next, sometimes draped across both on the back of his neck and, when it gets too much, very briefly clamped to his stomach. He doesn’t know how heavy the bag is, he’s forgotten what the guy said in the end, but it’s just as well, because what difference does it make — a number, an amount — if you still have to carry the bag? It’s really quiet, except for just now, on the stretch of bike track right after the white bridge over the canal, where a few cars passed him. He knows these long straight roads, and that one winding road before the white bridge too. He knows where the junctions and bends are, he knows the roadside ditches like the back of his hand. In the old days, yeah, in the old days, he’d ride long stretches with his eyes shut, keeping it up as long as he could, and then a bit longer. The Zündapp between his legs like a… well, like a moped. Since the day he turned sixteen, he hadn’t ridden a bicycle once. Out drinking in Schagen: sober on the way there, drunk home. He knows the roads in storms and in hail, misty, hot and cold, under a full moon, with the tang of ditchwater in spring, the sour smell of poplar leaves in autumn, a hint of metal when it rained (was that the Zündapp or did the rain itself smell of metal?), a sense of animals resting in the dark (along the winding road there were always sheep). And belting along, always. Never going off the road, never smashing into the rail when he crossed the white bridge they repainted every five years, never ending up in a ditch. No, not until he started jumping with as much control as possible over cars and tree trunks and slabs of…

He starts singing. Very loudly. There was something in his head just now that needed drowning out. The bright-blue stones are leaving dents in his flesh; that helps too. Along the side of the road are a few big trees, with yellow dots painted on two of them. Between the big ones there are smaller ones with shrivelled brown leaves. It’s getting too heavy, he has to put the bag down for a moment. Next to a causeway gate he takes off his trainers and sits down on the end of a culvert that runs under the causeway. He sees steam rising from his bare feet. In his head. He’s stopped singing and for a second forgets where he’s going. He pulls a pack of Marlboros out of the back pocket of his cut-off jeans; the cigarettes are squashed flat, but unbroken. On his right is the road, with patches of melted tar; on his left a field, two birds with long curved beaks walking in it. They pretend they haven’t noticed him. ‘Currrr-lew!’ he calls, and even then they don’t take off. Stupid things. Or is it too hot to fly today?

Today. Isn’t it today that Jan…? He thinks. He tries to think. He pictures Toon. Maybe that will help him get the day worked out. Did Toon say something before he left? No, because he made sure Toon didn’t see him go. He draws on the cigarette. He slaps the soles of his feet against the water in the farm ditch. Jan lives on Texel, he thinks. Boat. Seagulls. The cigarette’s finished, he draws on it once too often, the filthy taste of the filter gets stuck in his mouth. He slides down off the culvert and stands up to his thighs in the water, which was clear, but isn’t any more. He scoops up some water and uses it to rinse out his mouth. The filter taste is gone. Climbing back up out of the ditch he kicks the sludge off one foot and then the other, then uses his white socks to dry carefully between his toes before putting them back on, filthy and damp. Shoes too, and then he has an elaborate scratch of the crotch, it’s all a bit sweaty down there. Bag back on his shoulder. ‘Currr-lew!’ he calls again and walks on, in the middle of the road. A few minutes later a car beeps him over to the side. It’s like a giant apple driving past; never before has he seen a car this colour, a strange kind of green, it hurts his eyes. The car doesn’t brake; it wouldn’t have occurred to the driver to give him a lift. Johan Kaan rests his free shoulder against the trunk of an old elm. He looks up. Dead, he thinks. ‘Stone dead!’ he shouts.

Yes, the red beech has had it. The tree is just short of a hundred. Probably planted in 1912, just after the farmhouse was built, in the middle of the newly sown lawn. Directly in front of the blind door and the balcony over it. Zeeger Kaan looks at the tree through a kitchen window that gets no sun, because of the three chestnuts he planted in his own lawn. One of which is already showing signs of that new disease, bleeding dark sap from little holes. What’s it all about? he wonders. All these diseases trees get? What purpose do they serve? Shall I ride or drive? Taking the bike is good for his knees, but the car’s better on a day like today, it’s got air conditioning.

While backing up the drive a little absent-mindedly — earlier that day he hadn’t seen a soul on the road — he has to suddenly brake hard for a car that’s going at least thirty kilometres an hour over the limit. Stunned, he follows the green blur with his eyes. What kind of idiot buys a car that colour? He himself drives calmly up the road in the settling dust. In the village he slows down even more. Here and there he raises an index finger to people painting their eaves or letting out the dog, the odd cyclist. It’s only when parking the car next to the Polder House that he starts to notice the air conditioning. Stupid, he thinks, painting eaves in weather like this. They’ll have blisters in the fresh paint by evening.

‘Hey, Grandpa!’

‘Hi, Diek,’ he calls.

‘We’re over here!’

‘I see you.’ Dieke is standing on the path at the entrance to the new part of the cemetery. Every time he comes here it seems smaller and more cramped. Jan is sitting in front of the headstone. He’s finished Our little and is already working on the s of sweetheart . ‘It’s coming along.’

‘Yep,’ says his son.

‘Hungry?’

‘Nah.’

‘Dieke! You hungry?’

‘Yes,’ Dieke shouts. ‘Grandpa,’ she then adds, as if she hasn’t said hello to him yet, ‘come and have a look here.’

He walks away from his son. Dieke shouldn’t stay out in the sun much longer, her arms are already turning red. She points. Three large herring gulls are standing in a circle and stamping on the dry grass, staring down at their feet. They want worms, but on a day like today they’ll be waiting a long time. Even the red dots on their yellow beaks — here it is, come and get it — won’t lure any worms up. ‘Gulls on land, storm on strand,’ he says.