Gerbrand Bakker - June

‘I t-alk to him some times, don’t I? He really does have a v-ery big dick.’

‘You told me. Anyway how do you know?’

‘I’m not b-lind! How many times do I have to tell you?’

‘Keep it down, will you?’ Jan comes over to the bench.

‘You have to visit some time.’

‘And what makes you think I like big dicks?’

‘You’re a poofter, aren’t you? They like them.’

‘Oh.’

‘You have to visit me some time.’

‘Hey, what happened here?’ Jan picks the dead bird up from the path.

‘That s-parrow’s dead. It was lying on the bench here.’

‘It’s not a sparrow, it’s a blue tit.’

‘It’s s-till dead.’

Jan looks at the dead bird, takes a couple of steps towards the tall hedge and hurls it over. They hear a splash. ‘Apple cores, banana peels, a dead bird,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Sometimes Johan thinks his big brother isn’t altogether right in the head. Banana peels? Where? Jan sits down next to him and he looks at him. Jan doesn’t look back. First he looks up at the bird that’s still alive, then he looks at a hole in the hedge opposite the hedge the dead bird disappeared behind.

‘What did this Toon guy want?’

‘He said I’m not al-lowed to be here.’

‘And now?’

‘N-othing.’ Johan worms the packet of cigarettes up out of his back pocket again. ‘He says he knows you. Toon.’ He lights a de-filtered cigarette.

‘I don’t know any Toons.’

‘How come you don’t have a b-oy friend?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If you ask me, you m-ust be about f-orty five.’

‘Yep, about that.’

‘It’s b-eautiful weather, you should be sunbathing on the n-udist beach with a nice b-loke. But, no, his lord ship is sitting in a b-oiling church yard.’

‘Cemetery.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. You don’t have a girlfriend either.’

‘No, but…’ If Jan is about forty-five, then I’m, then I’m… a couple of years younger, thinks Johan. He sucks on his cigarette and blows out a cloud of smoke that only slowly rises. He sees himself standing next to his mother in a flower shop. Grandfather Kaan was dead and they needed to order a bunch of flowers from the grandchildren. The girl in the flower shop had gulped, he’d noticed that. His mother had asked him what to write on the ribbon. Something like, ‘Thanks, Grandpa, see you later,’ he’d said, but he wasn’t thinking about it and he wasn’t looking at the flowers either. He was looking at the girl. He sucked hard on his cigarette again. ‘Nice,’ his mother had said, but he’d scratched his dick — now, here, he sees it clear as day in front of him — and the girl turned red. He didn’t want to do it, but it happened, his hand did something, as if it had a mind of its own. What a beautiful girl she was. And her gulping and turning red, that must have had something to do with him. He must have been the reason. But they placed the order and his mother left the shop and he followed her. Jan coughs and slides back and forth on the bench. Oh yeah, he was saying something, something about… ‘But it’s r-ight, isn’t it? You coming here to p-aint the head stone. There’s no n-eed.’

His big brother stands up and pulls off his T-shirt. He hangs it over the back of the bench and walks back to the bag of gravel.

‘Jan?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Am I u-gly?’

Jan turns around. ‘No, Johan. You’re not ugly. Far from it.’

‘Far from it,’ says Johan. That girl should have… No, he should have gone back to pick up the flowers. But when had his mother done that? How was he supposed to know? Couldn’t she have rung him up? But I can do it myself, he thinks. I can go back to the flower shop myself, can’t I? But it’s already… ‘How long’s G-randpa been dead?’ he asks.

‘About ten years.’

‘Ten.’ That’s a long time, thinks Johan. Is that shop even there any more? He throws the butt away, jumps up and strides over to the bag of gravel, pushes his brother aside, tears the bag open in a single movement, picks it up and walks over to the grave.

‘Slowly!’ Jan cries. ‘That paint’s still wet, don’t make too much dust.’

There’s something else he wants to say, from before the girl in the flower shop butted in. He has to retrace his steps: Grandfather Kaan, the flower-shop girl, banana peels. ‘A-ny way, I knew it was a blue tit. I know a lot a-bout birds.’

‘I know that, Johan. You were just joking.’

‘Yes, j-oking.’ He empties the bag within the upright border of the grave. While smoothing out the pebbles with one hand he feels Jan’s arm against his. ‘Do you feel better?’ he asks. Now he feels Jan’s hand too, bumping into his own while brushing over the gravel.

‘How so?’

‘N-ow you’ve done this for her?’

‘Somebody had to do it. We agreed on it at the get-together.’

‘Oh, the zoo. When was that a-gain?’

‘A fortnight ago.’ Jan takes the empty bag from his hands and stuffs it into the bucket. ‘What did you tell Mum?’

‘What?’

‘Yesterday. On the phone.’

Yesterday, on the phone. Johan stands still and thinks back to the hall of the house in Schagen, where the phone is. ‘Oh, y-eah. I asked if you were already there.’

‘How did you know I’d be here?’

‘Well… D-ad told me.’

‘And nothing else?’

‘Nothing else.’

‘You must have. She’s up on the straw. You must have said something.’

Did I say anything else? The hall, the sound of the TV that’s always on in the communal living room, the telephone, his mother’s voice. Johan looks around. What did I say? Then he sees the blue gravel at his feet. ‘Y-es! I w-anted to know where to buy these s-tones!’

‘What did she say?’

‘She h-ung up.’

Klaas obeys his mother, but takes his time. After he’s finished breathing in the smell of the inflatable pool, he gets out and pulls his clothes on over his wet underpants. He looks in through the side window. There are still cactuses, just not woolly ones any more. He sends Dieke inside. She doesn’t want to go. ‘You can watch TV,’ he says.

‘Can I close the curtains?’ she asks.

‘Of course you can. You have to close the curtains, otherwise you won’t see anything except the reflection of the windows.’

‘But what are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to pick Uncle Jan up from the cemetery. And if all’s well, Uncle Johan will be there too.’

‘Uncle Johan!’

‘Yep.’

Dieke disappears inside. Normally he’d take the car like he did earlier in the day, but it was parked in the sun and the shadows have only just crept over it, so he grabs the bike. At his most leisurely, like a little boy sabotaging his mother’s orders, he pedals into the village, greeting people along the way.

Bloody hell, Johan is there. How could she have known that? His brothers are standing right in front of the grave. Jan with a bucket in his hand, white as white can be. Johan is bare-chested too, but nice and brown, which is quite an achievement for someone with such red hair. What’s the point of that? Klaas wonders. Johan’s hair is thick, long and gleaming. His body is broad and muscular. His teeth are white and his lips are full. Who decided that someone like him should be so good-looking? His youngest brother who, after crashing down from a pile of tree trunks on his KTM, became both uninhibited and slow. They look up when they hear him coming, and all at once he sees what his mother said to him yesterday. ‘You’re all in league with each other. You and your father and Jan. And Johan too.’ He doesn’t understand exactly what she meant, but he sees it, in those two faces turned towards him.