Gerbrand Bakker - June

The packet of butter on the sink, the frying pan on the stove, all much too early, but I couldn’t sit still. The Queen spoke to me, I thought, covering the pancake batter with a tea towel. I wanted to keep it to myself. For me and Hanne. I thought I’d seen the baker scuttling around. With a camera? It was high time he came, we were almost out of bread. An hour later, or two, he finally showed up. And left again, and how on earth did Hanne and Tinus get out? I heard it. I heard a car, a bang and then the brakes. I had to go out to see what it was. Zeeger was busy hammering and sawing, he didn’t hear a thing. The baker. Everywhere that whole day long, the baker. I’d planned to tell them about the Queen later, maybe that evening over the pancakes. But then it was already too late.

The creaking and groaning has grown duller, the cobwebs woollier, Dirk’s thudding muffled. It’s inside of me after all, she thinks, that creaking and groaning. I’ll… Shall I call out? She tries to open her mouth but her lips feel stiff. She wants to run her fingers over her mouth to rub them and manages to lift one arm. The elbow bends, the hand flops down onto her stomach. She’s able to stroke herself lightly with her fingers; scratching is beyond her, let alone lifting her arm up again. The rectangle — the hole directly overhead with however many tiles to the right of it and a few more to the left, she counted them not long ago — no longer gives her a view of the outside world. Yellow, she thinks. Rain, after all? A real drop, after all?

Someone comes into the barn, she hears them despite the muffling of her ears. ‘Mum?’ she hears, even though she needs to summon all her strength to make out the word. Jan. No, wait, she thinks as the cold reaches her shoulders and pelvis, there’s something I have to tell him. I don’t want to let him go like this. She pricks up her ears, ignoring all the other noises. ‘I’m off.’ He leaves. Then all of the dead appear. Griet Kaan first, in her three-quarter bed, the fire cold, the paraffin lamp empty, the Frisian clock that won’t stop ticking, Zeeger who’s ignoring her; her parents and parents-in-law, she sees their eyes, sees them walking and riding their bicycles, eating cake on birthdays, hospital beds, flowers; she sees time too, racing by, the unbearable duration of a human life, but also the little things, seemingly insignificant, and through it all everyone’s eyes; then someone must have turned on the radio because she hears ‘Oh Happy Day’ and instead of Hanne, who should appear too, Anna Kaan sees the hanging, the enormous wall hanging her mother-in-law made — it hung in the children’s room for years, with palm trees made of green felt, cooking pots, Piccaninnies with real rings in their ears — and, although the cold has now reached her midriff, her lethargic brain starts wondering where on earth that hanging’s got to; the old Queen’s empty study, her legs suddenly buckling when the tour guide said ‘Juliana lay in state here’; and now she adds something to those images she saw earlier of girls making preserves and the boys from nearby farms: all dead — grandparents, parents, girls, farmhands — now she feels that this barn, this place once smelled of fresh wood, of resin, that countless people who can no longer walk have walked here, and that she is a part of that countlessness; and then back to the borers and the woodworms, seething and teeming without a sound. It gets quiet, very quiet, no dog, no Barbary duck, no husband and no children, beyond the dead, the light coming in through the three round windows at the front of the barn, very vague thoughts like Did I really just knock back a whole bottle of advocaat? and Gravel? You buy that at a garden centre, where else? ; the rectangle in the tile roof — she can no longer move her head — changes from yellow to white, the cold that has crept from her toes and fingertips into her core seems to be trying to get out again through her nose, slowly, more and more slowly, and changes from cold to smell, as if that’s ultimately the most important thing, overshadowing everything else, and now it turns sweet.

As sweet as autumn.

Stewed pears.

Is that it?

The smell of stewed pears, in June?

‘Dinie,’ he says simply.

‘Herm,’ says the cemetery caretaker. ‘Come in.’

He steps into the hall, puts his stick in the umbrella stand and walks through to the living room. The dog doesn’t look up, but thumps the rug once with its bushy tail. The beast pants and drools. As usual the place is spotless. He glances at the photo of Dinie’s late husband as if asking his permission to come in and sit down at his wife’s dinner table and, later, possibly — it’s something he can never count on — kiss her and lie down next to her in bed. Dinie follows him into the living room and closes the lace curtains. She does it every time and the baker’s never mentioned it, though he wonders why she doesn’t do it before he arrives. The table is already set, as tastefully as ever, with a runner, silver cutlery, crystal wine glasses. Wine. He thinks of the three glasses of lemon brandy he’s already knocked back. It will probably be white wine, lightly sparkling, he likes that and so does Dinie. He’s put on a clean shirt, but the armpits already feel damp. The window behind the lace curtains is a single large pane, without any small windows above it or to the side to let in some fresh air. Not that there’s much difference today, inside or out, it might even be cooler inside.

‘I’ll serve dinner straight away,’ Dinie says. ‘It’s all ready.’

He sits down on the chair that gives him a partial view out onto the street through the lace curtains.

‘Take your jacket off, for goodness’ sake. It’s stifling in here.’ She sets the dish of potatoes down on the table and walks back to the kitchen.

He half rises and worms his arms out of the jacket before hanging it over the back of his chair. He was right: now that the shirt has been strangely twisted by his contortions, a wet spot has appeared over his breastbone.

Dinie brings in a dish of runner beans and two plates with two beef olives on each. ‘God, I’ve forgotten the wine.’ And she’s gone again. The dog doesn’t seem interested in the food. The baker sucks up the smell of the beef olives. It’s been the kind of day he forgets to eat. Not counting breakfast, but that seems a lifetime ago. Dinie returns with a bottle of wine — white, because it’s in a cooler.

‘Delicious,’ he says.

‘You can’t say that yet.’

‘Knowing you.’

‘ Bon appétit. ’ She fills the two wine glasses

Before starting on his meal, he raises his glass and looks at her. ‘To?’

‘You tell me.’

‘To today.’

‘Has it been a good day?’

‘I’m not sure yet. I think so.’ The shell grit hurt, but that was superficial. Now the pain is deeper, in his kneecaps, which feel numb and hard. Less stiff now after the short walk from his house to Dinie’s, but he’d needed to use his walking stick again.

She doesn’t ask for details. Or what’s happened. She drinks her wine almost grimly. ‘I’m glad it’s over.’

‘Whoa, not so fast, there’s a lot to go yet.’

Soon he’ll ask why, that’s the kind of man he is. Herm Blom. Retired baker. A baker with a past. She studies him over the rim of her wine glass. An old man with a dry neck. Dry from shaving day in, day out. She never looked at Herm Blom the way she looked at Albert Waiboer almost forty years and a few hours ago. Herm Blom was always delivering bread, and if he wasn’t delivering it, he was baking it. She never saw him in his trunks at the swimming pool with a firm young body. Sometimes when he’s lying next to her in the double bed in the dark and she’s in the mood she can guide her hands with thoughts of someone else. She coughs, glugs down the last mouthful of wine and refills their glasses, although Herm’s was only half empty. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she asks.