Gerbrand Bakker: June

There’s been grass growing in it for years.

Dieke creeps down the stairs. She knows it’s really early, that’s why she’s creeping. It’s nice to be downstairs again. Not that she’s scared upstairs, but once she’s outside her bedroom there’s a lot of empty space, with a couple of empty rooms and a high-peaked roof with a crossbeam and a bare bulb hanging down that doesn’t give enough light.

The door to her parents’ bedroom is wide open. Inside it’s orange — that’s the curtains. She stares at her father and mother, who are bobbing up and down slightly on the enormous waterbed as they sleep. Her mother almost completely under the duvet, her father only half. She used to have her mother to herself at this time of day. She tugs on the arm her mother has out on top of the covers.

‘I already heard you,’ her mother says. ‘You don’t need to pull my arm too.’

‘Where’s Uncle Jan?’ Dieke asks.

Her mother looks at the alarm clock. ‘It’s six o’clock, Diek. He’s still in bed, where else would he be? Everyone’s still in bed at six o’clock. Except for farmers.’

‘When’s he going to get up, then?

‘Later,’ her mother sighs. ‘You go back to bed now too.’

‘I want to stay here with you.’ Without waiting for permission, she climbs in next to her. A wave passes through the bed. It’s almost like a swimming pool, and then being on a wooden raft, like the raft that floats in zone two, the part of the pool she’s allowed in with water wings.

‘But no wriggling, OK?’ her father says.

‘Can you do your legs?’

Her mother rolls over onto her side and pulls up her legs. Dieke slips her feet in between her raised thighs. It feels lovely, even now it’s summer, with her feet warm almost all the time, but in winter it’s even better and never gets clammy. She lies calmly on her back staring at the red curtain.

‘Is he staying today?’

‘Yes, Diek,’ her mother says in a sleepy voice. ‘I think he’s staying all day.’

‘Why isn’t he coming to the swimming pool then?’

‘Because he’s got something else to do,’ her father says.

‘I think it’s strange. If it’s this hot, you go to the swimming pool.’

‘Go to sleep, Diek,’ her father says. ‘Now.’

Dieke closes her eyes and folds her hands together on her stomach. Sleep, she thinks, now. And falls asleep.

Three hours later she’s standing on the wide windowsill in the kitchen; her mother is down in the cellar. Even the brown tiles under her feet are warm. She hasn’t got dressed yet, she’s still in just knickers and a vest. There is one plant on the windowsill. It’s a kind of cactus, she knows that, but it’s a cactus that doesn’t have prickles. She’s waiting for her grandfather to appear. ‘Where is Grandma? Where is Grandma?’ she hums. ‘Stay away. Stay away.’ Keeping her balance by pressing her forehead against the window, she rubs her right shoulder for a second. It’s still a bit tender. The grass in the rusty drinking trough isn’t moving.

Then she sees her grandfather, fiddling with something on the sideboard under his kitchen window. Maybe he’s going to put on some coffee. For Uncle Jan. She starts to wave, both hands at once, becoming more and more frantic. She only realises that her mother has come up out of the cellar when she falls over backwards and doesn’t end up on the floor. She feels hands under her arms and sends the cactus without prickles flying with a kick of her right foot.

‘Unbelievable!’ her mother says. ‘Why do you always stand on the windowsill?’

‘Ow!’ she yelps.

‘What?’

‘My foot!’

‘Look at all those dirty smudges.’

The cactus has fallen onto the floor and Dieke doesn’t even look at all the dirty smudges on the windowpane. There’s something between the roots, something that was once shiny. She kneels down in the soil, avoiding the bits of broken pot, and stretches a finger out to it.

‘And now you’ve got your knees dirty too!’

She’s not listening to her mother, who sits down at the kitchen table to light a cigarette. It looks like a ring. She rubs off some of the moist soil and cautiously pulls it. Roots snap.

‘Oh, go ahead, break it too. That Christmas cactus has been there since your father was a little boy.’

Dieke hasn’t really started listening yet. She spits on the ring, then rubs it clean on her perfectly white vest. A gold ring, but not for a finger.

‘Repotted just three years ago. As if I don’t have enough to do. Old junk. Do you have to wipe that thing clean on your vest?’ Her mother stands and, with the cigarette dangling between her lips, pulls the vest up roughly over Dieke’s head. ‘Back in the wash with this, then.’

‘Ow,’ Dieke says softly, but hardly feeling a thing. A gold ring. But not for a finger. Then she thinks, Christmas cactus. A plant like this is called a Christmas cactus.

Saturday, it’s Saturday today. He sits on the side of the bed, hands on knees, whistling softly. It’s ten to six. He looks down at his hands.

At five past six he pulls the bedding straight. The sun’s already up, the tall trees in the front garden look grey and ominously still. Zeeger Kaan fluffs up the pillow and lays it on the duvet cover. He’s had a window wide open all night, but you couldn’t really say it’s cooled off in the bedroom. It was a short night. Under the window the hydrangeas have started to flower. He walks to the toilet and sits down to pee. When he’s finished he doesn’t flush, but throws a few sheets of toilet paper into the bowl and closes the door as quietly as possible. The ticking of the inherited grandfather clock in the hall is loud and cavernous. He thinks of the tiled floor covered with walnuts. Some people eat their walnuts fresh; around here we always dry them for days on end first. Another four months or so and it will be that time of year again. No, more like five.

He doesn’t go back to the bedroom to get dressed. The front door needs opening. He turns the key and unbolts the upper half. The air outside is as still as it is in the house. He goes upstairs.

Jan is lying on his back, legs wide, one arm over his stomach. The curtains are open, the window is shut tight, the duvet has slid down to the floor. Sweat gleams on his nose; a mosquito, fat and red, is sitting on his forehead. He’s dumped his bag on a chair, his clothes are draped over the back. Zeeger Kaan stands there for a long time staring at his son, at the brown-checked curtains, at the trinkets on the coffee table, at the bed Jan is lying on, at the mosquito, which eventually takes slow flight and lands again on the sloping white wall.

At quarter to seven he gets the paper out of the letter box. There aren’t even any dewdrops on the flap. Still dressed in just his vest and underpants he walks, newspaper in hand, up onto the road. Empty. The chocolate Labrador watches from the path. ‘Food?’ Zeeger Kaan asks. The dog barks.

He throws two mugs of dry food into the dog’s bowl and goes into the living room with the paper. After reading the ‘Town & Country’ section, he lays the paper on the coffee table and notices the empty space under the bookshelves. ‘What’s she going to come up with next?’ he mumbles. He goes into the bedroom to get dressed. He wants to go outside, into the back garden, but a basket full of colours keeps him in the laundry just a little longer. He fills the washing machine, sets the temperature to sixty degrees and presses the button. After the machine has been running for about a minute, he goes out through the side door.

At the side and front of the house there’s lawn and trees; behind the house, perennials, and further into the garden, more trees. Anna’s been nagging him about the chestnuts in the front garden for years. She wants him to cut them down because it ‘gets so dark and gloomy’ in the house in summer. Water flows over an algae-covered granite ball and disappears between rocks in the ground. ‘Bloody slugs,’ he says, passing the hostas. He stops under the walnut tree. The dog walks on a little and sits down by the side of the ditch. It’s shady even there, from the row of pollard willows. Together they look at the farm. When a couple of jackdaws land on the roof ridge, a tile slides clattering down, catches the gutter and arcs down onto the gravel. If she wasn’t awake, she is now. There isn’t a single nut at his feet.