Gerbrand Bakker - June

That evening Grandma Kooijman came.

Anna Kaan came down off the straw after one and a half days. ‘So,’ she said, nudging her mother, who was standing at the stove, over to one side.

Hannie Kooijman stared at her daughter as if she was Lazarus emerging from the grave.

‘I wish it would stop blowing,’ said Anna. ‘I hate it when it’s windy.’

Silently, her mother handed her the wooden spoon she had been using to stir the contents of a saucepan.

‘You can go back home now,’ said Anna.

The baker simply continued to deliver the bread, although he no longer whistled while he was at it and stopped doing his flourish with the one and a half loaves too. They milked the cows and did the second round of haymaking. Tinus grew quickly and the swimming lessons carried on as normal. Jan had no trouble at all getting his A, even if treading water took forever and he had cramp in his neck when he climbed up out of the pool. Anna sewed the badge on the front of his swimming trunks by hand. ‘The B goes here,’ she said, pointing to the other side.

‘Where’s C go?’ he asked.

‘On your bum!’ shouted Johan.

Johan can shout all he likes, thought Jan. Now he was allowed to cross all of the imaginary lines in the swimming pool whenever he liked, not just for swimming lessons. He was an ‘experienced swimmer’ too now, but not Johan. After long afternoons at the swimming pool, he cycled to the Breebaarts’ with Peter and, before he rode on, Auntie Tinie made him crackers with cheese he didn’t get at home, delicious cheese. She never said anything about Hanne. Neither did Peter. Nobody said anything.

The boy with the yellow swimming trunks was the only one who could jump higher than he could. Older boys tried too, without success. Jan, Peter and the others spread their towels out near the diving board. After all, that was where you hung out when you had the run of the whole swimming pool. A narrow strip of grass, wedged in between the pool and a ditch that formed a hairpin curve. At the bend in the ditch there was a pumping station that buzzed. Johan never got that far, he was right over on the other side of the pool, sometimes in zone three now, having his lessons.

They closed their eyes and listened to the poplars that bordered the pool like a rustling wall. Like that — with their eyes closed, the sun red through their eyelids, hearing the trees, the voices of boisterous children and worried mothers, the splashing, the buzzing of the pump and the sound of the big lambs in the fields behind the windbreak, still bleating like babies — it was as if the summer could last forever.

Jan learned to listen really closely, and after a while he was somehow able to tell when it was Teun up on the diving board, he didn’t even need to open his eyes. Teun touched the board less often before disappearing into the deep water of zone four with an upright jump, a somersault or a swallow dive. Sometimes Jan would sit up after all, the only one in the group of boys to put his hands on the grass behind him and watch. The Edwin Hawkins Singers stayed at the top of the charts, the summer days remained happy days. After a while the ticket lady stopped turning up the radio. The boy in the yellow trunks jumped, Jan watched and gradually started to think he was doing it all just for him.

Almost every day, no matter how delicious Auntie Tinie’s jam, cheese or homemade cake was, there came a moment when Jan was on his way back home and reached the spot where the baker’s grey van had stood, where Uncle Aris had caught up to him on his bike. Besides Johan, nobody had noticed that he could do a real ‘r’. Zeeger forgot to give him a Dinky Toy. Jan didn’t remind him.

Uncle Aris, the baker, the yellow dress, the diving board. June, July, August. A summer at the swimming pool, no bogeyman but plenty of water fleas. Johan, shivering sometimes at the edge of zone two. ‘Hey, Jan!’ he called, when his brother was on his way to the shop to buy liquorice shoelaces. Lips quivering, feet turned inward. Klaas, who only came to the swimming pool for lessons for his C, and otherwise swam in the canal. Or jumped off the bridge with his friends just as a barge sailed past.

The attic with the half-finished bedroom, the doorjamb without a door. Long, light nights. The painting at the top of the stairs, a grey painting. Of a woman with pursed lips holding a dandelion. Jan and Johan thought that it was Great-grandmother Kaan when she was young. Zeeger told them so. In Grandma and Grandpa Kaan’s house there was a similar painting but slightly later, the dandelion parachutes were blowing around and the young woman had a mysterious smile. Klaas made fun of them when they told him. Klaas slept alone in the small bedroom; Jan and Johan shared the big one with the balcony doors.

Behind the green curtains it refused to get dark and Johan had started snoring almost immediately.

‘Johan,’ Jan whispered.

Nothing happened.

‘Johan!’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ Now he was awake at least.

But not for long. Soon Johan was breathing deeply again.

Every evening Jan waited for Klaas. When he heard his big brother come upstairs and close the door of his bedroom behind him, his night could begin. He pulled the blankets up over his head and thought he was asleep. He also imagined himself waking up the next morning — when it had been dark for a little while after all — and saw people tumbling through a kind of infinity.

Auntie Tinie, the baker, the yellow swimming trunks, the hand around his, the invisible Queen, the swimming pool, June, July, August, September. The bedroom downstairs, with the strange crack in the window. Hanne’s bed, which was taken away at the end of summer. The bedless bedroom that was no longer a real bedroom, where the cloth with the Piccaninnies was left hanging on the wall. Johan, who, when he was awake, didn’t put any green in his funeral drawings. One morning, while fishing in front of Grandma and Grandpa Kaan’s house, he fell into the wide canal. Grandpa Kaan pulled him up out of the water, but he would probably have managed to climb up the side himself. He didn’t die and held on tight to his fishing rod, so that didn’t get lost either. Teeth chattering, he muttered something about ‘the bogeyman’; Grandma Kaan couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Jan, who thought he hardly slept but still dreamt much more than he suspected. One afternoon, his hands slid off the rung of the ladder he was climbing up to the hayloft and he fell backwards onto the concrete. It didn’t really hurt, the stinging white whack blocked out most of the pain, and a wet flannel eased the lump. He didn’t die. Klaas, alone in his small room with the soles of his feet hurting after jumping from too high up off the rail of the bridge. One evening after it had been raining, he slipped on the bridge’s wet boards, grazed his thigh so badly it bled and ended up almost upside down in the water. But he didn’t die. Anna, who was away for one and a half days, though no one even mentioned her absence. Zeeger, who mostly milked, made hay, shore sheep and cleared the banks of the ditches in silence. And started planting trees. That was something new.

Five summers later, anyone at the swimming pool who wanted to make out the lyrics of the song that had been number one for almost two months had to listen very carefully. The ticket lady didn’t like it. If she wasn’t busy checking a season ticket and there weren’t any children standing at the sweet counter, she’d turn the radio down when it came on, and by early August she’d begun turning the volume dial all the way to the left. ‘ Sugar baby love, sugar baby love. I didn’t mean to hurt you. People, take my advice, if you love someone, don’t think twice .’

They all had at least two certificates and seemed to have established a permanent claim to the narrow strip of lawn between the diving board and the hairpin ditch. Jan had already begged for a new pair of swimming trunks a couple of times: the A and B badges sewn on the front were for kids. What’s more, the rubber cut into the tops of his legs, especially when his trunks were dry. Johan had two certificates too; he sat a bit further along with his own friends. He’d learnt to stop saying ‘Hey, Jan’. The moment Klaas had got his C, he stopped coming to the swimming pool at all.