The Twin Read online

  “How’s Henk?” Father asks.

  “Okay,” I say. “Better.” It’s as if I can still taste the mud in my mouth. Or feel the gritty soil between my teeth. I can well imagine death tasting like mud. I stare at the ash.

  “You were going to tell me why you hate me and what I did to you.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Why you tell Ada that I’m senile and why you refuse to call the doctor.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You put me upstairs as the first step. You keep people away from me.”

  I stop answering and stare out of the window.

  “At first you hardly brought me anything to eat. And now I’ve said I don’t want any any more, you start grumbling. Just let me go.”

  Slowly I turn my head towards him. He is no longer cheerful. He’s about to say things he’s never said before.

  “You tell people I’m senile so that whatever I say, no matter who I say it to, it won’t be true.”

  I stay silent.

  “That time you brought me bread and cheese, on that beautiful sunny day.”

  “Yes?”

  “And you thought I was asleep.”

  I don’t say yes again. He said, “thought,” that’s enough.

  “I know, son. I know.” He smoothes out the blanket next to his legs with one hand. It’s a strange, feminine gesture. “No,” he goes on, “I suspected it. And I don’t want to hear another word about it. Ever.”

  The fog is thinning out, thinning and paling. There is a silver glimmer to the road and almost imperceptible ripples on the surface of the canal. I get up and walk to the door. What exactly does he know or did he suspect? He doesn’t want to hear another word about it, ever, but that’s not as easy as stopping eating.

  I see myself kneeling next to the bed and laying my head on the blanket and I see Father’s old hand stop rubbing the blanket. He raises his hand, lifts it up over his legs and lays it on my head. The hand feels dry and the skin scrapes over my hair, and it feels warm as well. I open the door and look at the plate on his bedside cabinet. A cheese sandwich, an apple and a knife. I leave the plate where it is and go out onto the landing.

  Everyone else is in bed so I lie down on my bed too. It’s just gone midday. I feel even more that I don’t belong here. Henk should have lived here. With Riet and with kids. Despite the age difference, Riet would have been as thick as thieves with Ada, and her children would have gone to school with Teun and Ronald. No, her grandchildren. I should have been an uncle. Henk would have told the young tanker driver from his heart that he was sorry to see him go and wished him all the best, maybe even patting him on the shoulder. When I look in a mirror, I see myself. Sometimes I look through myself and see Henk, who generally looks back with a strange expression on his face. What would it have been like if the two of us had been standing there with Father just now, united? Would he still think we were conspiring against him? Would we have still been capable of provoking him by looking him straight in the eye? Would Henk have stood up for me or would he quietly but clearly have called me an idiot?

  I’ve been doing things by halves for so long now. For so long I’ve had just half a body. No more shoulder to shoulder, no more chest to chest, no more taking each other’s presence for granted. Soon I’ll go and do the milking. Tomorrow morning I’ll milk again. And the rest of the week, of course, and next week. But it’s no longer enough. I don’t think I can go on hiding behind the cows and letting things happen. Like an idiot.

  44

  His arms are next to his body, I can’t see his wrists. The fog has lifted and I have set the window ajar. The new room smells of illness, even though he’s been better for a day or two now. It also smells of cigarette smoke. He refuses to get up. The letter his mother sent him is lying next to the bed. The letter she sent me is downstairs, on the kitchen table.

  I changed the bandage on his head once, pulling the gauze cap back on over the top. When I went to do it a second time (he had already taken to his bed), I saw that the wound was dry and left it. The ends of the blue stitches are longer than his hair. “They always go for my head,” he mutters. “Animals.”

  I wonder when the stitches need to be removed. Is that something you can do yourself? I like the idea of doing it myself. I’d clamp his skull against my chest and use one steady hand to remove the threads with a pair of tweezers.

  I hear the milk tanker turning into the yard. The new driver is a determined woman in her mid-forties. I’ve only exchanged a word or two with her, she is standoffish and, like the old tanker driver, a bit surly.

  “Do you miss your brother?” Henk asks.

  “What?”

  “Do you miss your brother. Henk?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I don’t miss my sisters at all.”

  “They’re still alive.”

  “True. Were they really going to get married?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you looked like each other?”

  “You’ve seen the photos in Father’s bedroom, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “We were twins.”

  “Why did she fall in love with your brother and not with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Or did she see him first and you afterwards?”

  “No, both at the same time. We were at the pub together.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Henk. Things just happen like that.”

  “It could just as easily have been different.”

  “I’m not so-”

  “What if she’d-”

  “Stop it.”

  “I think she wants to marry you.”

  “I thought so too.”

  “Not any more?”

  “No.”

  “I think she’s even using me for that.”

  “How?”

  “By sending me here.”

  “You watch too much TV.”

  “She’s going to be disappointed.” He sniggers.

  I look at him. “It’s time you got up.”

  “No. I’m staying here.”

  “What’s she say?”

  “That she needs me and you’re a liar and I have to come home.”

  The tanker drives out of the yard. It grows quiet outside. I can feel from my back that I’m still standing under the window, under the sloping wall. I slide his clothes off the chair and sit down.

  “She’s angry. With my father, my sisters, me. Always has been. She’s angry with everything and everyone. Even the pigs. She’s probably angry with you too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you tell her your father was dead?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  “No, you don’t. We have to get the sheep in.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re about to yean.”

  “You mean lamb.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t you do that by yourself?”

  “No. I need your help.”

  “Will I have to run?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m ill.”

  “You were.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “You’re young, you should take things in stride.”

  “I want to stay here permanently. I don’t want to go back to my angry mother, to Brabant. I hate it there, there’s nothing for me in Brabant. What good are sisters?”

  “Is there anything for you here?”

  “Yes.” Two wrists appear. He fumbles for the packet of cigarettes on the bedside cabinet. “It must be weird,” he says. “Having a twin brother. Someone who’s exactly like you.” He lights his cigarette.

  I get up off the chair and open the window a little wider.

  “Exactly the same body.”

  “What are you actually scared of?”

  “Summer.”

&nbs
p; “What?”

  “Summer is long and lonely and light.” The duvet has slipped down a little, baring his chest. A smooth young chest with a timorous heart. He blows out a cloud of smoke. Not at the window, but straight in my face. “With a twin brother that’s not a problem. You’re always together.”

  Of course he runs twice as fast as I do. He runs too fast, scattering the sheep in all directions. I tell him to take it easy, reminding him that he’s dealing with pregnant animals. When I check after milking, two lambs are already walking around the sheep shed. A fence in the middle of the shed divides it into the drop pen on one side and the lambing pen on the other. I pick up the two lambs and an ewe starts to stamp. That is the mother. I put the ewe and the lambs in the lamb pen. Henk watches from the doorway. His face is flushed. Wisps of steam are rising from his shoulders.

  “Come on,” I say.

  We walk through fields that are sheepless but not empty to the Bosman windmill. Two graylag geese are standing next to the ditch. I also see two peewits, a flock of wood pigeons, a pair of white wagtails and a solitary black-tailed godwit. When I’m almost certain that the redshanks haven’t arrived yet, two fly past. The sun is about to set. The vanes of the mill are turning very slowly. I fold the tail forward to disengage it and wipe my hands on the legs of my overalls. Let the water come.

  “We spent a lot of time here,” I say, “in the summer.”

  “You and Henk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like now,” he says. “But it’s not summer yet.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s not summer.” The geese take wing, one flying higher than the other, the way geese do. “Your mother used to come here too, just after Henk died. With my mother.”

  That doesn’t interest him. “What did you do here?”

  “Hang around.”

  Hang around. Stand, walk, sit. Stare at the yellow water lilies in the canal, watch clouds drift slowly - always slowly - by. Watch the water bulging in the ditch. When we closed our eyes to listen to the larks, the squeaking of the windmill’s greased axle and the wind blowing through the struts, time stood still. All kinds of things flicked back and forth under our eyelids and it was never dark. It was orange. When it was summer and we were in another country here - almost like America - nothing else existed. We existed and even stronger than the smell of warm water, sheep droppings and dried-out thistles was our own smell. A sweet, sometimes chalky smell of bare knees and bare stomachs. Sitting on the itchy grass. When we touched each other, we touched ourselves. Feeling someone else’s heartbeat and thinking it’s your own, you can’t get any closer than that. Almost like the sheep and me, merging together just before it drowned me.

  “Helmer?”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s it like, having a twin brother?”

  “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, Henk.”

  “Do you feel like half a person now?”

  I want to say something, but I can’t. I even need to grab one of the struts to stop myself from falling. I’ve always been forgotten: I was the brother, Father and Mother were more important. Riet demanded - no matter how briefly - her widowhood, and now Riet’s son stands opposite me and asks me if I feel like half a person. Henk grabs me by the shoulders; I shake him off.

  “What are you crying about?” he asks.

  “Everything,” I say.

  He looks at me.

  I let him look.

  We don’t really eat. Henk has opened a bottle of wine, there’s bread and cheese on the table, butter and yogurt, a ripped-open bag of chips. “She acts like you set that crow on me,” says Henk. He’s got the letter his mother sent me spread out in front of him. “And here, ‘some kind of connection between us’ and ‘something we could build on.’ I told you she wanted to marry you. Then you would have been my father.”

  “Of course not,” I say. “If I was your father, you wouldn’t be who you are.”

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Not at all. Shall I fry a couple of eggs?”

  “No, thanks. What are you reading that for anyway? It’s rude to read other people’s letters.” I am tipsy and keep looking out of the side window. I hope Ada is watching through her binoculars and can see just what’s going on in here. Booze, bad food, general agitation.

  “I could have been your uncle,” I say. “But not really, because if Henk was your father, you wouldn’t be who you are either.”

  He gives me a fuzzy look. “Uncle Helmer,” he says slowly.

  I wonder where the tweezers are. In the first-aid kit, in the linen cupboard, somewhere under a pile of clean towels. “Henk,” I say. “Get the first-aid kit out of the cupboard, will you? And turn the light on.” He gets up and does what I ask. Keep watching, Ada, I think, digging the tweezers out of the first-aid kit. I push my chair back from the table and signal for Henk to come closer.

  “What are you going to do?” he asks.

  “I’m going to remove those stitches.”

  “You sure? Don’t I need to go to the hospital for that?”

  “No. Kneel down.”

  He kneels down in front of me and I use one hand to press his head against my chest.

  “Careful,” he says.

  “Of course,” I say. There are four stitches. Two come out without any real tugging. The third is more difficult.

  “Ow,” says Henk.

  “It’s already done.” The fourth stitch is another easy one.

  Before standing up, he runs one finger over the wound that has almost become a scar.

  Slightly befuddled, I stand in the sheep shed. Not much is happening. The two lambs are drinking from their mother, the rest of the sheep are lying down and quietly chewing the cud. There’s nothing for me to do in here and I put off whatever else might be about to happen by sitting on the floor of the lambing pen, my back to the fence. Sitting is easier than standing. A shed full of sheep in spring is just like a shed full of cows in winter. I tell myself that I mustn’t think like that any more. I don’t want to think like that any more. Henk pulled me out of that ditch and something has changed. The re-la-tion-ship, I think with my boozed-up brain. I wonder if you have to do something in return if someone saves your life. One of the lambs comes up to me, the ewe stamps a forefoot. Sheep in a shed aren’t as sorry as they are in a field. When I walk out of the shed I leave the light on.

  In the scullery I take off my clothes and throw them in the basket. The sound of TV is coming from the living room. I go into the bathroom, turn on the taps and start by washing my hair with Henk’s shampoo. Just when I’m putting the bottle back on the shelf under the mirror, the door opens. He comes into the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, wiping the lather out of my eyes.

  “I want to get in the shower,” he says.

  “Can’t you see I’m in here?”

  “Yes,” he says. He pulls off his T-shirt. “You using my shampoo?”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Go away, Henk,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so.”

  “Ha!” he says.

  “Who’s the boss here?”

  He’s standing opposite me, the T-shirt dangling from his right hand. He looks surprised. “What’s got into you?”

  “Who’s the boss here?” I repeat. The foam on my skull is starting to itch, my head is buzzing. I have become my father. I’m not embarrassed, I don’t have the slightest urge to conceal my nakedness. Henk keeps looking at me, I see him turning things over in his head, searching for something to say. But he doesn’t have any allies, there isn’t anyone standing behind me and off to one side.

  “You’re the boss,” he says. Very calmly, he puts his T-shirt back on before disappearing from the bathroom.

  When I emerge, all the lights are on. In the kitchen voices drift from the radio; in the living room the TV is on a music
channel. Henk is nowhere to be seen. I do a circuit of the house and turn off all the lights, the radio and the TV. Finally I turn the fire down to the lowest setting and go into my bedroom. I turn on the light and go over to stand in front of the map of Denmark. “Skanderborg,” I say quietly. Generally three or four other names follow, but not this time. I get into the enormous bed and close my eyes. A little later I hear the whirr of a passing bicycle. After that it gets very quiet.

  I wake up when someone climbs into bed with me. He sighs and shuffles back and forth. The pillowcase on the pillow next to mine rustles. He hasn’t turned on the light. I wait.

  “I don’t want to sleep in that room any more,” he says. “It’s cold and horrible.”

  I know that. It is cold and horrible. It’s also empty.

  He lies very still, I can’t even hear his breathing.

  “Your father hasn’t eaten,” he says after a while.

  I clear my throat. “He doesn’t want to eat any more.”

  “Does he want to die?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t,” he says, with a satisfied sigh. Then he turns over onto his side. It’s too dark to see which side.

  I have already said something else. I answered him. Now it’s too late to send him away. Maybe this is what you have to do in return for someone saving your life.

  45

  I sit on the side of the bed and look at him. He is lying on his back and wearing the T-shirt he had on yesterday. His chest rises and falls calmly. Exhaling, he puffs a little. He’s lying in my bed as if he’s never lain anywhere else. That annoys me. I get up and pull on my work trousers. “You going to come and do something?” I ask loudly. Wake up, Henk is something I can’t bring myself to say.

  He gives a slight groan, rolls over and snuggles down on his stomach. “Yeah, sure,” he mumbles into the pillow. “Not yet.”

  “It’s five thirty,” I say.

  It takes a while before he says anything else. “Those animals.”

  “What about them?”

  “The ones that go for my head.”