Gerbrand Bakker - June

Now everything’s finished. The biscuits, the advocaat, even the water. The advocaat ran out after Dieke had stood downstairs for a while, calling up. When was that? An hour ago? Half an hour? Things about Jan, who ‘was painting a stone with a really little brush’ and about ‘an auntie, but I don’t get that’. About someone called Leslie and Jan saying that Leslie is ‘a pick ninny’. Dieke herself had ‘cleaned all these stones with dead people under them’ and that had ‘felt a bit funny’. She hadn’t said anything in reply, of course, and eventually Dieke went away again. Dirk snorted for a while, then he too fell silent.

Anna Kaan has crept over to the edge of the straw and tries to look out through the open barn doors. He’s cut down a tree, but which one? She can’t see anything except a rectangle of gravel. And Rekel of course, hanging around the doorway: a paw on the concrete for a while, then a paw on the gravel. If she really wants to know what Zeeger’s up to, she’ll have to get down, and her whole body’s itching, she’s that keen. I’m not going, she thinks. Not yet. That raindrop. That’s what I’ve decided on. They can wait a bit longer.

Again she hears the chainsaw starting up. Another tree? A little later, Rekel reappears at the barn door. Why doesn’t that dog just come in? What’s all this indecision about? She rubs her hands to warm up her fingers. It’s because of lying still, she thinks. Her blood’s not flowing properly.

Fortunately no memories of earlier celebrations have surfaced. She had dozed off and was half asleep when her granddaughter woke her. The old Queen’s hat had appeared before her. It was a beautiful hat with a broad round brim, and made of fabric that complemented her dress. A dress with flowers on it, stems included. Leather gloves, but not for the cold, because it was beautiful early-summer weather. And the one glove she pulled off, and the words she said. The cheek she touched, briefly, with her bare hand. The two women behind her, one very posh with a yellow pillbox hat, and one who kept studying the Queen from close quarters, almost shamelessly. The one glove held loosely in the other, gloved, hand. ‘The Queen touched her,’ she was mumbling, as if it had just happened, when Dieke shocked her awake with a blaring shout of ‘Grandma! What are you doing up there?’ Incomprehensible, that child still wanting to talk to her, hoping for an answer.

Klaas is sitting on the lawn next to the big plastic paddling pool, keeping an eye on his daughter. The pool is on the south side of the house. By the sound of it, there are two trees down already, but he can’t see from here. He’s dying to know what’s happening, but Dieke’s in the pool and although she already has a swimming card, water’s dangerous even when it’s less than knee-deep. The screech of the chainsaw is hellish in the quiet afternoon. Apparently there’s a third tree that needs cutting down.

‘What’s Grandpa doing?’ his daughter asks.

‘Cutting down trees.’

‘Why?’

‘Grandpa thinks trees are stupid.’

‘No!’

‘No. I think Grandma must have complained, Dieke. That it was getting too dark in her kitchen.’

‘Why does Grandma go up on the straw?’

‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘I did. I said, “Grandma, what are you doing up there?” but she didn’t say anything.’

‘Maybe she’ll tell you one day.’

‘Has she got something to drink?’

‘I hope so, otherwise she’ll be getting pretty thirsty.’

‘When’s she coming down?’

‘Oh, it won’t be long now.’

‘I don’t care if she stays up there.’

‘Dieke, it’s not that Grandma dislikes you. You know that, don’t you?’

She doesn’t answer, she’s too busy staring down at the warm water.

He watches her and wonders when people lose the ability to take things in their stride like that. She’s already forgotten about the trees and now, in front of his eyes, she’s forgetting her grandmother.

‘Daddy…’ she says.

‘Yes?’

‘Why does Uncle Johan talk so funny?’

‘Do you think he talks funny?’

‘Yes. Slow.’

‘I’ve told you before, haven’t I?’

‘Mm.’

‘I told you. About the accident he had on his motorbike…’

‘He rode over cars.’

‘See? You do know.’

‘I kind of forgot.’

‘It’s called trial riding. And one day he fell off one of the obstacles.’

‘Obsta…?’

‘It was a lot of tree trunks piled on top of each other.’

‘Oh, yeah. And then it was like he was asleep.’

‘Yes, for about ten days. Wait a sec, will you, Dieke? I’m just going round the corner to see what Grandpa’s doing. I’ll be right back. Will you stay sitting there like that? Exactly like that? Not lying down?’

‘No,’ says his daughter.

‘What do you mean, no? Do you mean you are going to lie down?’

‘No, not lying down. Will you get in the swimming pool too?

‘Yep. I’m boiling.’ He stands up. Before disappearing around the corner of the house, he quickly looks back. His daughter is doing her best to stay sitting exactly as she was sitting. As he walks under the balcony he looks up. Knowing his luck, a beam or a chunk of concrete will crash down just when he’s walking under it. But the balcony doesn’t drop anything. The privet that separates the lawn from the yard is much too high to see over, it hasn’t been pruned for years. The smell of the flowers is unbearable. Stupid, he thinks, if I cut the hedge it will stop flowering. He goes up next to the hedge and breathes through his mouth. The middle tree is lying angled into the vegetable garden; he must have cut that one down first. The second is lying in the middle of the front garden; that makes sense, because the tree that was there is now gone. And he can tell from where his father is standing that the third tree is going to come down on top of the second one. He’s only cut them down, he hasn’t stripped them yet. This was the coarse work. Klaas’s heart misses a beat: his elderly father, bent over next to the third chestnut with a potentially lethal machine in his hands. When the third tree falls, he’s had enough and shuts off the chainsaw. Rekel, sitting in the middle of the bridge, immediately stands up and pads over to his master. Klaas turns and heads back past the front of the farmhouse. He looks in each window and doesn’t see his wife through any of them. Dieke hasn’t moved a muscle and looks at him contentedly.

‘Is he finished?’ she asks.

‘Yep. He’s finished.’

‘Are you going to get in too?’

Klaas pulls off his shoes, socks and trousers, and steps into the pool. The water stopped being cool long ago. He can’t quite stretch out full length in the pool. Dieke sits on his stomach.

‘You’re an island,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m an island. With underpants.’

She’s forgotten Grandma, she’s forgotten Jan at the cemetery, she’s forgotten Johan and now she’s forgotten the chestnut trees too. ‘Texel,’ she says. She hasn’t entirely forgotten Jan, then.

I’ll just lie here like this for a bit, Klaas thinks. Breathing in the old-fashioned plastic smell: pungent, like water wings and inflatable beach balls in the old days. Then I’ll go.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘That auntie, at the cemetery…’

‘Yes?’

‘Why is she dead?’

‘Dieke…’

‘Aren’t I old enough?’

‘Yes. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’

‘Where were you?’

‘Where was I?’

‘Yes, when she died.’

‘Oh, that’s so long ago now. I don’t remember.’