Gerbrand Bakker - June

‘Yes.’

Jan walks off.

Johan stares up at the milky sky. When did the sun disappear? Before he’s able to come up with an answer, Jan’s back. He puts the bucket down on the path. Johan gets up and leans over it with his hands on the rim and drinks. When he’s finished drinking, he plunges his head into the water. And after he’s slowly lowered himself back down onto the stone he sticks his feet into the bucket. They don’t fit: he can’t put his feet flat. Instead he lets them dangle as loosely as possible, toes on the bottom.

‘Why didn’t you get someone to pick you up?’

‘D-unno.’

‘Did you even try?’

‘Forgot.’

‘Jesus, that bag weighs at least ten kilos.’

‘No, not ten. M-ore.’ He sits up and prises the packet of cigarettes out of his back pocket. It would have been easier if he was still lying down. Jan is standing opposite him; he doesn’t smoke. Klaas does smoke and Klaas’s wife smokes too. He lights a cigarette and looks at his brother. Does he look like me or not? No, I’ve got a lot more hair. But he’s better at thinking. Now he blinks and rubs his stomach. Oh, yeah, I’m not supposed to stare at him. That’s what he told me once. Or was that somebody else? And should I listen to them anyway?

‘Is “Piccaninny black as black” a he or a she?’

Johan keeps his eyes on Jan. He draws on his cigarette and lets the smoke billow back out of his nostrils. Something is floating up to the surface, something from the old days. A cloth on the wall in Hanne’s bedroom. ‘Pic-aninny? Cooking pot? The sun?’ Yes, a big cloth, with bits of mat-erial sewn onto it. With palm trees too. Jan turns around and sits down in front of the small headstone. He takes a brush from a small tin of paint. ‘I’ll w-ait till you’re ready, then we’ll tip in the stones.’ And little black kids. There were little black kids sewn onto the cloth too. Something else comes floating up, which is weird: there’s all kinds of stuff in your head, but it only comes to the surface when somebody else says something. Like a fish hook with a worm on it. ‘Once I pulled a ring off that c-loth. I wanted to give it to Han-ne. And… But that r-ing was too big, way too big.’ From the bedroom, long ago, Johan sees himself going into the kitchen. To the windowsill, where there were some scrawny pot plants. ‘Then I s-tuck it in a pot. I pushed down on it until it made a hole in the dirt and then I c-losed it up.’

‘How can you remember that?’ Jan says. ‘You were only four or five.’

‘I r-emember.’ Johan stubs his cigarette out on the stone, next to his knee. ‘I d-ream a lot about the old days.’ He pulls his T-shirt out from where he’s tucked it in under his belt, folds it and lays it down on the gravestone where his head will be if he lies down. Then he lies down. He turns his head slightly and sees a big tree, and when he turns his head a little further he sees a small bench under the tree. He hadn’t noticed that at all. ‘When things were s-till good.’

‘Yeah,’ his brother says. It sounds faint, as if he’s not just a few metres away, but a lot more than a few metres away.

Johan lights another cigarette after having scooped some more water out of the bucket and slurped it down. He tears off the filter; next time he’ll have to buy cigarettes without filters. Or tobacco. Klaas and Klaas’s wife smoke roll-ups. It’s hard though, rolling those fiddly little things. That’s true too. ‘Then I d-ream things like I’m lug-ging Hanne down the hall, but she’s a wo-man and r-eally heavy and I don’t know where I’m sup-posed to take her. So I keep lugging her up and down.’ Jan keeps his back stubbornly turned and doesn’t answer. But of course that’s because he hasn’t asked him anything. ‘H-ave you put on some sun block?’

‘Yes,’ Jan says, running his free hand over his neck. ‘Why?’

‘N-o reason.’ His brother’s neck is bright red. He must feel that? Wait a second: now he also sees three bare bottoms in front of him. Or rather: two bare bottoms. Seeing who’s got the best tan after a day on the beach. Although all three of them are so burnt they won’t sleep well tonight, and maybe longer. Red hair, freckles, sunburn. There’s something else, from around that time. Johan sucks hard on his cigarette. In a foreign language. ‘ One small step for man ,’ he says. That’s English!

‘What?’

‘Around Han-ne. Some body on the m-oon!’

‘Was that in the summer of nineteen sixty-nine?’

‘D-on’t you remember? I can see it in f-ront of me!’

‘We didn’t even have a TV.’

‘We d-id have a TV.’

‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember that at all. Wasn’t it in the middle of the night?’

‘Y-es.’

‘There you go.’

‘I s-till saw it.’

‘Fine. Whatever you say.’

Yes, thinks Johan Kaan. I say. I saw, I remember. He scratches his crotch. I remember! Being burnt, red, itchy, not just from the sun, something else too. He sucks hard on the cigarette again; the harder he sucks, the more he remembers, at least it was like that just now, but the cigarette is almost finished, so he burns his finger. ‘Ow! Jesus!’

‘What?’ Jan has turned around.

‘Nothing. Christ.’ He sticks his hand in the bucket of water.

‘Why are you swearing like that? Now I’ve gone over the edge.’

Johan stands up, walks over to Jan and shoves him out of the way. There’s a white smudge next to a number. There’s all kinds of things lying next to the grave’s raised border. Screwdriver, pieces of worn-down… pieces of worn-down… well, stuff, sandpaper. And a rag. He twists the corner of the rag into a tight point and pushes the paint carefully but firmly back into the curve of the 6 . ‘There,’ he says. ‘No problem.’ He throws the rag down onto the ground and has a good stretch, with his mouth wide open. Then he picks at his belly button. ‘I’m going to sit down on that bench o-ver there.’ He goes over to the bench. ‘Jesus H. Christ, it’s bloody hot!’ As he sits down, he adds something, quietly, as if he doesn’t want Jan to hear. ‘It’s g-oing to r-ain soon.’ He likes the feel of the sharp edges of the shells on his feet, but still brushes them off. Then he picks the remaining pieces of shell out from between his toes. When he’s finished, he casually knocks a dead bird off the bench. He’d already seen it lying there, but needed to get his feet clean first. He looks up into the tree. Sitting on a low branch is a second bird. ‘Oh dear-oh-dear,’ he says quietly. ‘H-ang in there, you.’ He looks back down at the dead bird on the shell path and then his phone rings. He pulls it out of the clip on his belt, looks at the screen and presses the green telephone. ‘Y-es?’ he says.

‘…’

‘N-o, Toon, I’m with my little sister.’

‘…’

‘I don’t. This one is dead, al-most f-orty years now.’

‘…’

‘Jan is here too.’

‘…’

‘Texel, y-ep.’

‘…’

‘It’s Saturday. Every body’s gone! Why do I need per-mission?’

‘…’

‘Y-es, ye-es.’

‘…’

‘I dunno. I’ll see.’

‘…’

‘Six o’clock? C-an’t make that.’

‘…’

‘I will.’

‘…’

‘Fuck off!’ He presses the red telephone, checks the time and puts the telephone back in the clip. ‘Toon says hel-lo,’ he calls out to his brother.

Jan stands up and uses the screwdriver to tap the lid back onto the paint tin. ‘Does he know I live on Texel?’

‘Yes.’

Jan gathers up everything and carries it to the path. He takes the bucket, tips out the water and dries it with the rag. Then he puts all the painting gear into it and finally takes the envelope out from under the band of his shorts and puts that in there too. ‘How’s he know that?’