Gerbrand Bakker - June

He was standing at the side window, two metres from where he is now lying in the pool.

He’d skipped school that morning as he had no desire to stand in front of the Polder House holding hands with his classmates or waving a stupid little flag. ‘If I want to see the Queen, I’ll watch TV,’ he’d told a friend, and together they’d ridden their bikes to the canal to go for a swim near the white bridge. They knew the Queen would be coming from Slootdorp and it was no coincidence they were standing on the railing in sopping-wet trunks and that both jumped just when the big car was crossing the bridge. They’d agreed that neither of them would look, that they’d act as if they were just going for a swim like any other day. They didn’t manage it; their curiosity got the better of them. Klaas saw the Queen sitting in the car, a woman with a little hat on top of her head. Afterwards he’d gone to his friend’s house for something to eat and then he went home, where he made sure his mother didn’t see him.

That afternoon he was sitting under the workbench in the barn, fiddling around with nuts and bolts, bits of wood, chicken wire and nails. He wanted to make something, but didn’t know exactly what. The three young bulls were standing with their heads against the bars of the bullpen; a ginger tom was lying next to him on an empty burlap bag. It ended up being a kind of cart, with twine spools as wheels. Then he heard his mother scream, ‘Zeeger!’ That was no teatime call. He jumped up, banging his head on the workbench. The tom shot off, the young bulls took a step backwards. He didn’t take the shortest route — through the barn — but went out around the back. By the dairy scullery he heard his mother call his father again. He made his way through the vegetable garden at the side of the farmhouse to the front garden. He stopped at the side window, where he could look straight through the house and see the road framed by the front windows, above a row of cactuses and the privet. In the distance he saw the baker’s Volkswagen van.

He didn’t move. He saw his mother, his father, he heard Tinus yelp once, as if he’d been kicked. The baker got out of his van; they bent down — behind the hedge — and they talked, but they were too far away for him to make out any words. He heard a siren, the baker disappeared, the van stayed where it was, half on the road, an ambulance manoeuvred past it and then a police car drove up as well. Men in white coats in the yard, men in uniform standing on the causeway and next to the baker’s van, and Klaas still didn’t understand what was going on. His mother called his name a few times.

Eventually, only the Volkswagen van was left, though he wasn’t sure if the baker was still sitting in it. His eyes were fixed on the cactuses, the grey woolly ones with vicious barbs on them. Something bumped up against his legs: Tinus. Together they walked straight through the vegetable garden to the back of the house; he heard the beans cracking under his boots. He arrived at the barn, not knowing what to do, walked into the cowshed and pulled the door of the calf pen open. Tinus stumbled in behind him, and just before he closed the door the ginger tom slipped in too, frightening the calves. After he’d sat with his back against the wall for a while, the calves came up and started to sniff him cautiously. Tinus licked their wet noses. No longer standing with their heads pointing into the barn, the three young bulls pushed against the bars on his side. He stuck his hand in a calf’s mouth and a little later he stuck his other hand in a second calf’s mouth. He thought of a brochure from the Stompetoren Artificial Insemination Station his father had recently given him. It included a bull called Blitsaert Keimpe. Blitsaert Keimpe! That was a cut above Dirk. Dirk followed by a number, the name shared by all three of the young bulls. It was a long afternoon. The tomcat spent hours dozing in a corner, even Klaas nodded off for a moment. Tinus was restless. Then the cows came into the shed. Was his father going to do the milking? Was everything back to normal? Slowly he climbed up onto his feet — not wanting to wake up Tinus, who had fallen asleep with his head on his thigh — and opened the door of the calf pen. Grandpa Kaan was standing there. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said.

Shoes off, thinks Johan Kaan. Socks too. And fast. Somewhere, far away, somebody’s making a racket with a machine. In the village there’s a woman riding a bike and a man walking a dog. The man with the dog says something to him, but he doesn’t understand. It’s like he’s speaking a foreign language. There are tables and chairs set up in front of The Arms, nobody on any of the chairs. Three wasps are buzzing around an empty glass on one of the tables. He walks into the cemetery, holding the bag, on this final stretch, clamped against his stomach. It’s so heavy his shoes leave deep grooves in the grit on the paths. He can’t see anybody.

‘Hey! You here for me?’

He looks to the side. His brother emerges from behind a small building. ‘Hel-lo, Jan,’ he says, and stops still. Jan comes over to him. ‘What were you doing there? W-anking?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Why you got a h-ard on then?’

‘I had to piss.’

‘I’m not b-lind, am I? And you’re all wet with sweat.’

‘Water. There’s the tap. What have you got there?’

‘Are y-ou blind? S-tones, can’t you see that?’

‘What for?’

‘I had a hard on yes-terday too. In the living room. And then Toon said, w-ant me to get rid of that for you? You’d be f-ine with that, huh?’

‘Jesus, Johan.’

‘No?’

‘I don’t even know who Toon is.’

‘Y-es, you do. He’s a good looking guy, j-ust your type, and he’s got a v-ery big dick. That’s what you like, isn’t it?’

‘You’ve told me that a hundred times.’

‘See. You do know who he is.’

‘What are you doing with that bag of gravel?’

‘For Han-ne. Here.’ Johan pushes the bag into Jan’s hands. Finally he’s rid of it. He pulls off his T-shirt, rubs his shoulder and scratches his crotch. The gravestones around him are like tiled stoves with heat pouring out of them. ‘Jesus H. Christ! It’s bloody hot!’ He never knows how loud something like that’s going to come out, but at least he doesn’t have any trouble saying it.

‘Keep it down a bit,’ says Jan.

‘Shut your trap.’ Johan walks on. He has no idea how late it is. If he wanted, he could look on the mobile phone clipped to his belt. If he wanted. There’s a bucket on the path near Hanne’s grave. A bucket that reminds him of the car that passed him about an hour ago. Or two hours ago. The bucket’s empty. He sits down on a gravestone and pulls off his shoes and socks. He doesn’t stuff the socks into the shoes, but drops them on the ground under his feet. His brother comes up too, with the bag of gravel. ‘B-eautiful,’ says Johan. ‘V-ery nice. Well done. And al-most finished.’ He waves at the headstone and sees something strange on top of it. ‘What’s that?’

‘An envelope.’

‘Y-es, I can see that.’

His brother picks up the envelope. ‘The baker gave it to me.’

That’s such a mystery to Johan he just ignores it.

‘How did you get here anyway?’ Jan asks, sticking the envelope into the waistband of his shorts, at the back.

‘Walked.’

‘You walked? With that bag?’

‘Y-es.’

‘From Schagen?’

‘Yes. Where else?’ He lies down very carefully, letting each bit of skin get used to the heat first. Then he brushes his long hair out of his face and waggles his feet in the air.

‘Sore?’ Jan asks.

‘And hot.’

‘Should I fill up the bucket?’