The Twin Read online

  High time to end this telephone conversation. I try to say, “No, we’ll manage” as conclusively as possible. For a while now I’ve been gazing restlessly at the wallpaper.

  “I’ll ring again next week.”

  “Fine.”

  “Bye, Helmer.”

  “Bye, Riet.” I hang up.

  I once went to Heiloo, to the Marian shrine. Mother wanted to see it, even though she didn’t have a Catholic bone in her body. I drove her there on a weekday in May, about twenty years ago. “To Jesus through Mary” was written on the front wall in big letters (a mosaic, I think). Why am I suddenly remembering this? Riet is confusing me. I stop staring at the wallpaper and walk into the kitchen. Outside it’s February. Hail, sleet and the odd bit of sun.

  32

  After Henk had urged me to be quiet and tiptoed out of my bedroom in his big, white underpants, I got up on my knees on my bed. I crossed my arms on the windowsill, rested my chin on them and stared out. There was a smell of warm ditch water and old, sun-baked roof tiles. The moon was shining so brightly I could see a hare in the field on the other side of the canal. The hare was alone, it seemed to be looking for something, walking back and forth and standing up now and then to listen, forelegs drooping. Behind the hare the field was empty as far as the dyke. No cows, no sheep. The colts are separate now, I thought.

  The window of Henk’s bedroom was open too. They were whispering, so quietly I couldn’t understand a word. I imagined myself squatting barefoot in the gutter, tightly grasping the open window, head as close as possible to the windowsill. It was impossible just to lie down again and pull the sheet back up. I got out of bed, walked to the door, opened it cautiously and slipped out onto the landing. I waited a moment until my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I took a few steps and knelt down in front of Henk’s bedroom door. They’re old panel doors, with oversized keyholes. At first I only saw movement, after a while shapes became visible too. Riet was hidden except for her lower legs, Henk filled almost the entire keyhole. I was down on one knee with the other leg up. I slipped a hand into my underpants. Back then we used to wear big, white underpants with strong elastic. Always clean, because - as Mother said - you never knew when you might end up in hospital. I was concentrating so much on watching that the warm throbbing of my penis against my belly took me by surprise. I began following Henk’s movements, with my eyes and with my hand. Until I got a cramp in the leg that was raised. I had to stand up. In the process I looked at the small skylight at the end of the landing, which showed me moonlit poplars and myself, getting up in front of a closed door with one hand still in my underpants. I curled my toes to get rid of the cramp in my calf.

  For some reason I couldn’t go back to my own bedroom. Maybe because I could hear them there, and knew I would see them before me. I tiptoed to the ever-open door of the new room, went in and lay down on the blue carpet under the window. I fell asleep and woke up very early the next morning. Only then did I return to my own bed. Henk hadn’t come back yet.

  August 1966, almost forty years ago. Sometimes I don’t understand how I could have grown so old. If I look into the mirror, I still see the eighteen- or nineteen-year-old behind my weather-beaten mug. And I still ask myself who I was watching that night.

  33

  “Where do you come from?” asks Ronald.

  “Brabant,” says Henk.

  “Hey,” says Ronald, looking at me, “that’s where that lady came from.”

  “That’s right,” I say, “that lady was Henk’s mother.”

  “Do you work here?” asks Teun.

  “Yep.”

  “Where do you sleep then?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Is that lady here too?”

  “No, Ronald,” I say. “Just Henk.”

  “Can we have a look some time?” Teun asks Henk.

  “Sure.”

  Teun and Ronald jump up immediately. I can’t remember them ever going upstairs before. This is their chance. Ronald even leaves half his cake for it.

  “Come on,” says Henk. Suddenly he looks very big. Or is it Teun and Ronald who look small? They walk out of the kitchen. “These stairs are really steep!” I hear Ronald call a little later.

  I go over to the side window and try to look into Ada’s house. Her kitchen window is just a little too far away. Then I do something I’ve never done before. I walk to the bureau and take out the binoculars. From upstairs I hear the voices of Henk, Teun and Ronald, I can’t make out what they’re saying. I go back to the side window, this time with the binoculars. More than five hundred yards away, at the kitchen window of the next farm, Ada is peering at me through her binoculars.

  Apart from the fact that we both have something before our eyes and can’t look at each other directly, there is nothing advantageous about this situation. I don’t know what to do, Ada doesn’t know what to do. We are welded together by two pieces of plastic and a few lenses. The first one to lower their binoculars has lost and knows that the other will watch them slink off. Then Ada raises her hand and waves cautiously. I wave back, half-heartedly. “Let me go first,” I hear Henk say on the landing. Without another thought about winning, losing or slinking off, I lower the binoculars, hurry over to the bureau and put them back where they belong.

  “Henk let me try his Walkman!” shouts Ronald.

  “And?” I ask, while pretending to look for something in the bureau.

  “Henk needs posters on his walls,” is Teun’s assessment.

  “They thought it was a bit bare,” says Henk.

  “And we’re going fishing,” says Ronald.

  “When spring comes,” says Henk.

  “That’s right,” I say, “the fish are all in the mud now.”

  “The boys were upstairs a minute ago,” says Father.

  “Yeah, Henk showed them his room.”

  “They didn’t come in to see me.”

  “Ronald is scared of you, didn’t you notice that on New Year’s Eve?”

  “Scared? Why?”

  “Because you’re an old man.”

  “He never used to be scared of me.”

  “You used to be able to walk.” I’m using Father’s bedroom as a hiding place. Henk, Teun and Ronald are still in the kitchen. They drink tea and eat cake. I can’t get a thing down, wet or dry, I’m too nervous. Ada and her binoculars, Henk and the boys together, the telephone conversation with Riet a few days ago. I had to get out of the kitchen and it’s still too early to go and milk. Up here I’m surrounded by the old days, the dull ticking of the clock, the photos, the parental bed. Father himself. I sit on the chair at the window. On the branch in the ash, the hooded crow is washing its feathers. Even the bird is familiar now.

  “How’s it going with that Henk of yours?”

  “Good.”

  “I never see him in here either.”

  “Does that seem strange to you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Soon I’ll get him to help me re-fence the donkey paddock.”

  Father is sitting up against the headboard with two pillows behind him. His eyes are clear today. He picks up the glass on the bedside cabinet and takes a mouthful of water. The glass shakes until he presses it against his lips. He has kept his eyes on me from the instant I sat down on the chair. “If only it were spring,” he says.

  “Don’t drink too much. If you drink you’ll have to piss.”

  “I do realize I’m finished.”

  “But?”

  “I want one more spring.”

  Diagonally below us Teun and Ronald laugh.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” he asks. “Why don’t you call the doctor? Why do you tell Ada I’ve gone senile?”

  My hiding place no longer provides any shelter. Until now the lethargic ticking of the grandfather clock has suggested an atmosphere of timelessness, now it changes into the ominous pulse of disappearing time. I stare at the six watercolor mushrooms and wonder who brought them into the house, and when.<
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  “Helmer, what did I do?”

  He asks me what he did and he calls me by name. The mushrooms blur, I have to get a hold on myself. Then a new voice sounds downstairs.

  “There’s Ada,” says Father.

  I look at him. He still has the glass in his hand, the hand is resting on the blanket. I clear my throat. “Just what we need,” I say.

  “I want to know, Helmer.”

  “A TV!” exclaims Ada, so loud we hear it upstairs.

  “A TV?” asks Father.

  “Yeah, Henk wants to watch TV, otherwise he gets bored at night.”

  “It seems like you’d do anything for him.”

  “Ah . . .”

  “I want to know.”

  “You will,” I say. “Now I’m going downstairs.”

  “You would have done anything for your brother as well. Anything at all.”

  “You too,” I say. “For your son.”

  “Yes,” he says. “Me too.” Finally he puts the glass down on the bedside cabinet. It clatters on the marble top.

  Henk is alone in the kitchen. He’s standing at the front window. His long arms hang next to his body.

  “How do you like it here, Henk?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Will you do the yearlings soon?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where’s everyone got to?”

  “That woman with the harelip has gone to get a rug.”

  “A rug?”

  “Yes. She thought it was bare in the living room.”

  “Her name’s Ada.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll get to work.”

  “Fine.”

  We both pull on our overalls in the scullery. I can tell how much Father has shrunk from the way his overalls sit on Henk. They ride up in the crotch, the sleeves are too short, a button is missing. There is something rectangular in one of the breast pockets; that’ll be a packet of cigarettes. I see that the washing basket is full, I’ll do a load this evening. We walk into the milking parlor together. I stay there, Henk carries on through the barn to the yearling shed.

  Half an hour later Ada comes into the milking parlor with a rolled up rug under one arm. I’m sitting between the cows and only see her when she says my name. She blushes. “I’ve got a rug for you,” she says.

  I plug the tube into the milk line and step out from between the cows. “Put it in the scullery,” I say.

  “All right.” She stays standing there.

  “Caught out,” I say.

  “Yes, caught out.”

  Otherwise there’s nothing else to say about it. She can say she’s never done it before (which isn’t true, I think), and I can say the same (and that is the truth). Or we can say that we’ll never do it again. But what difference does it make?

  “Nice lad.”

  “Henk.”

  “Teun and Ronald have already started playing farmhands.”

  “He showed them his room.”

  “Teun’s given me a poster for him. It’s in the rug.”

  “Put it in the scullery.”

  Ada walks past me. When she’s almost at the door, she turns around. “Helmer?”

  “Yes?”

  “I . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Forget it.” She leaves the milking parlor and doesn’t come back. A little later, when I’m back between the cows and look out at the road through the window, I see her outside. The road is wet, she’s crossed her arms and that makes her gait a little jerky. Having waved to each other makes it less terrible, but it hasn’t erased it. The two cows next to me raise their heads at the same time, the chains rattle on the rails. Get out of here, they say.

  I walk to the open shed door. Henk is at the muck heap. The wheelbarrow is on its side next to the plank, the contents have spilled out. He’s using a pitchfork to scrape the manure from the ground and throw it up onto the heap with a big swing of his arms. When he’s finished, he scratches his head, rights the wheelbarrow and pushes it back to the yearling shed. He hasn’t noticed me. What the hell is he doing here? I wonder. I put my hands in my warm pockets and look at the sky. It’s cloudy, on the verge of rain, but the days are clearly lengthening.

  Later I walk to the shed door again. He’s leaning on the wall of the yearling shed, around towards the sheep shed. One leg is raised up with the foot flat against the wall. He’s smoking a cigarette and staring past the muck heap at the donkey shed. He looks like a cowboy in an old cigarette ad.

  Before dinner I roll the rug out in front of the sofa. It’s ocher with a border of light-blue shapes: circles, squares and crosses. Henk unrolls his poster. It’s a pouting girl with long blonde hair. She is very scantily clad.

  “Who’s that?” I ask.

  Henk smiles. “Britney Spears,” he says.

  “Who?”

  “A singer.”

  “So this is Teun’s idea of what your room needs.”

  “Seems so.”

  “Pretty girl.”

  “Hmm. Childish.”

  “You going to put it up?”

  “I’ll take it upstairs. How old’s Teun?”

  “Nine? Ten?”

  “He’s not a Britney Spears fan anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “If he was he’d have put the poster up himself.”

  We cross the hall to the kitchen. While I’m thinking about whether or not to draw the curtain in front of the side window, Henk does it.

  “What’d you do that for?” I ask.

  “That window’s like a mirror when it’s dark.”

  “So?”

  “I have no desire to look at myself constantly while I’m eating.”

  “In a month it’ll be light when we eat.”

  “A month?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a very long time.”

  We’re watching TV. I’m sitting on the sofa, Henk is lying on his side on the rug, resting on one elbow. He’s got the remote control and races through the channels. I feel like shouting “hold on! stop!” the whole time; how can you know what it is if it’s only on the screen for two seconds? I give up and watch Henk watch TV. After a while it starts to bore him. Before getting up, he lets out a few deep sighs. He hands me the remote control without a word and walks out of the room. I turn off the TV and go over to stand in front of the softly hissing fire. From her framed photo, Mother looks at me with that strange, mixed expression, at once seductive and haughty. For the first time I also see some degree of alertness. From up there on the mantelpiece she is keeping her eye on everything. I’ve seen Henk look at the photo a couple of times, but he hasn’t asked who it is.

  Just when I’m loading the washing machine, Henk emerges from the bathroom. He has a towel wrapped around his waist, his shoulders are still wet. “I’m almost out of cigarettes,” he says.

  “You’ll have to go to Monnickendam.”

  “Is that far?”

  “About three miles. We can go tomorrow by car.”

  “Maybe I’ll take the bike,” he says. He walks over to the staircase door, leaving wet footsteps on the cold floor.

  “Doesn’t that towel need to go in the wash?”

  He turns. “Now?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  He pulls off the towel and bends to dry his feet. Then he straightens up and tosses me the towel. I catch it, the warm, damp material flaps around my forearm. For a moment he stands there, proud and embarrassed at once. The scar over his left ear is more visible than usual, maybe because of the hot water. Then he opens the door and disappears upstairs. His first steps up remind me of the supple way the young tanker driver leaps into his cab.

  34

  Henk and Helmer. At primary school here in the village there were twin girls in our class. Henk and I had a desk near the window, next to an enormous potted plant with dusty, leathery leaves. The twin girls sat behind us. Of course, we were boyfriends and girlfriends, that was expected. They were relationships in al
ternating combinations, and we were the ones who alternated. The twin girls looked a lot less like each other than we did.

  Henk was faster than me; my reactions were always too slow. When I think back on those days, Henk is always doing something - turning onto the road on his scooter; jumping up from his school desk; answering a question while the headmaster stands waiting in his mustard dustcoat, fingertips brown from Camel Plains - I still have to say “eh?” before following him. I was never really with it. I daydreamed; he acted. After a while the twin girls knew when we switched. They didn’t mind and neither did we, we had a role in the class to fall back on.

  Henk and I wore the same clothes and got our hair cut one after the other by the village barber - “Nice and easy,” he said every time to Mother or us - and we both had red scooters. But still, there were differences. When we wore shirts, Henk’s was always hanging half out of his trousers or his collar was turned up. His hair was unrulier than mine (during the haircut he’d stop swallowing. Even before we were out of the door, he’d spit on his hand and run it through his hair. He didn’t care if the barber was watching) and his scooter was always ten feet ahead of mine.

  It was - looking back, always looking back - as if he knew exactly what he wanted, while I never had a clue. About anything at all. I can still see the bottle of birch lotion next to the barber’s mirror, a bottle with a rubber vaporizer. Henk thought it was foul, I wasn’t so sure. It had something, that smell.

  It wasn’t until we were eight that I moved to my own bedroom (where Father now spends his days). I lasted three nights alone. During the fourth night I sneaked back into my real bedroom and crept under the blankets with Henk. “What are you doing?” he whispered, just for something to say. I didn’t answer. He turned onto his side and I nestled up against him, pushing my feet between his. Even though it had been more than seven years since we were breast-fed and the layer of fat had long since disappeared from our feet, it is possible that it was on that night that I formed the memory I can’t possibly have: summertime, my feet feeling other feet and Mother’s face seen from below, above a pale soft swelling. Her chin and, most importantly, her slightly bulging eyes, directed not at me, but at a point somewhere in the distance: thin air, the fields, maybe the dyke.