The Twin (7 page)

I'm skating. After four nights of frost Big Lake has frozen over except for an oval-shaped hole in the middle. If I keep an eye on the ducks, coots and moorhens, I'm safe enough. The Amsterdammers haven't shown up yet, they don't know it's already skateable. During the last real freeze, years ago, I bought a pair of racing skates because I wanted to skate corners. You can't skate corners on Frisian skates. Now I'm skating corners, faster and faster, wider and wider. I go down a little lower on my stiff knees. The faster I go, the less cracks appear in the ice, which is black in places. Skating before Christmas – it's been a long time. About a dozen Shetland ponies watch me stupidly, they don't see ice, they see smooth water. When my knees and lower back can take no more, I finally have to brake to stop myself from flying into the bone dry undergrowth along the east side of the lake. If it stays this cold, I'll be able to skate to Monnickendam in a few days and maybe do a circuit around Watergang or Ilpendam.

I learnt to skate without Henk and without Father. Father is scared of frozen water, although he'd never admit it. We did everything together, Henk and I, except skating. The farmhand taught me how to skate, Mother encouraged me. She skated on figure skates, turning elegant pirouettes, doing figure of eights and regularly shouting, 'That's right!' The farmhand didn't pull me along, which I think is the usual way of teaching someone how to skate; he pushed me. His big hands enclosed my bottom like the seat of a chair, he bent his knees so much he was almost squatting. When I shouted stop, he braked and held me back by wrapping his hands around my hips. As I remember it, he skated around with me like that for hours. Long after Mother had finished her figure of eights. But it can't have been like that. Father must have strode out into the field to remind him sharply that he had more important things to do than entertain himself on the ice. He would have glared at me – a six- or seven-year-old kid – because Henk was doing the yearlings. Or collecting eggs, perhaps tail docking. Mother would have been downcast in the kitchen, back at work, because even she would have had an earful. Skating with the farmhand, what
was
she thinking?

That might have been the day that Father – simply because I was having fun doing something else – decided for himself that Henk would be the farmer, even though I was the oldest, if just by a couple of minutes. Henk helped Father, I went skating and treated the farmhand as an equal. Maybe it was just one incident in a series of events that made Father conclude I wasn't suited to succeed him. After Henk died Father had to make do with me, but in his eyes I always remained second choice.

A few long strokes carry me to the place in the reeds where I have left my clogs. I take my skates off and look out at the water birds. Father calls coots
and
moorhens 'water hens' because he always gets them mixed up. Later today I'll go and see how the frost flowers on his windows are doing.

Frost flowers remind me of Henk and his warm bed.

Even before I reach the road I see the livestock dealer's lorry turning into the yard. I don't hurry. He'll go looking for me but, before he's been everywhere, I'll be home. My thoughts catch on the word 'everywhere', and straightaway I see the livestock dealer standing on the blue carpet next to Father's bed, cap in hand, silent, wriggling his toes and looking serious. Father isn't silent, he jabbers and gabbles and keeps talking until I come into the room. I hurry, the frost-covered grass crunching under my clogs. I swing my legs over the last gate and run into the yard.

The livestock dealer emerges from the barn. When he sees me he makes to raise his cap but changes his mind. 'You've got a few good calves in there,' he says.

'Yes,' I say, still panting.

'Cold,' he adds.

'Yes.'

'Been skating?'

'Yeah. Big Lake's already frozen.'

'I sold your sheep.'

'That's fast.'

'Ah, one of those hobby farmers. A hundred and twenty-five a head.'

'Not bad.'

He pulls out his wallet, an enormous thing that's chained to his belt. He licks his thumb and index finger, pulls out five fifties and digs a handful of change out of his pocket. He takes thirty per cent, whatever the price.

'Thanks,' I say. 'You going to declare it?'

'No.'

'Good.'

He walks over to his lorry, parked in the middle of the yard. Before climbing into the cab, he says, 'Have a good Christmas.' He's talkative today.

I vaguely remember an art shop at the start of the Prooyen and park the car. It's called Simmie's. I notice that I'm feeling nervous and open the door without looking through the windows. A large woman in loose-fitting clothes approaches, the artist herself from the look of her. Was there something I wanted to ask? 'No, I'm just looking.' It doesn't take me long; if these colourful splotches are art, I'm a gentleman farmer from Groningen. Back on the street, I smell the wood fire from the smokehouse. I buy a pound of eel, which the fishmonger rolls up in old newspaper and puts in a plastic bag. Then I carry on along the waterfront. There's a gallery near the English Corner. The soapstone statues on the shelves along the wall are beautiful, especially to touch, but I am still thinking of a painting. I head back to the middle of town. Banners announcing 'FIREWORKS' have been hung everywhere. A crib with life-size cows and donkeys has been set up in the roofed outdoor section of The Weighhouse. A child touches the nose of a donkey and almost tumbles off the raised floor with surprise when its head rocks back and forth. In the old harbour there is an enormous Christmas tree on a barge, all lit up. The barge is stuck in the ice.

Walking back to the car, I pass an antiques shop. I go in, even though the last thing I'm looking for is more old junk; I've just tossed a load of that on the woodpile or stowed it away in Henk's room. An elderly man looks up from a dark corner, but doesn't say a word. I put the plastic bag with the eel down on a chair near the door and look around. There is a pile of old maps on an oak table. No idea what I would want with an old map, but I still leaf through the pile: North Holland, land reclamation, something I don't immediately recognise, Marken, the Beemster. I drop the maps one after the other until I'm back at the one I didn't recognise. It's Denmark, an old Denmark and mostly in green, with three insets: Iceland, Bornholm and the Faroe Islands. Iceland and the Faroes are in shades of brown. The map is in good condition, just slightly yellowed along the edge. I buy it and even get change from the fifty I give the old man. Then I cross the road to the picture framer's. I find a wide frame in the right size that has been painted with clear varnish. There is no one else in the shop; the frame-maker has time to cut a piece of non-reflective glass for me. He packs the frame and the glass separately. I don't get any change from the four fifties I give him. Before returning to the car, I pop back into the antique shop. In all the excitement I forgot my smoked eel.

Driving home I think of Jarno Koper. In Jutland.

I quickly eat a few slices of bread and cross the fields to Big Lake for the second time today. The light is different from this morning and a flock of geese have settled near the open spot in the ice. I pull on my skates. By my second lap around the lake, I'm going so fast that I don't need to skate any straight sections at all. I skate one big loop, a corner that never ends. I keep going until I'm exhausted.

After milking, I eat half of the pound of eel on bread. I drink a glass of milk with it. When I've finished I go upstairs with an apple. I turn on the light in his room. He is lying on his back with his eyes wide open, the blanket pulled up to his nose. He gives off almost no warmth, the bottom of the window is covered with frost flowers. Maybe he'll freeze to death in the coming night.

'I've got an apple for you,' I say.

'Cold,' he says.

'Yes, it's freezing.' I lay the apple on the bedside cabinet and leave the room. It's only on the stairs that I think of a knife. I'm not going back up again, not to take him a knife and not to turn off the light either.

The framer has stuck a paper bag with little nails in it to the glass. Now everything is spread out on the kitchen table I notice that something is missing. A back. I measure up the frame and go out to the barn with a pencil and tape measure. I find a piece of thinnish plywood among some old timber and cut it to size on the workbench under the silver-grey death'shead cabinet. The activity keeps me warm. I hammer two small nails into the plywood and attach a thin wire to hang it up with.

I lay the frame face down on the kitchen table, then slot in the piece of glass, followed by the map (which fits perfectly, so that most of the yellowed edge disappears behind the frame), finally laying the piece of plywood on top. I haven't left much leeway and four small nails are enough to anchor it tightly in the frame. Then I carry the framed map into the living room and hold it up against the wall here and there. It's lost between the windows and it can't go to the left or right of the mantelpiece without making the other side look empty. It will have to be the bedroom. I bang a large nail into the wall next to the door and hang the map where I can see it from my bed.

The donkeys are waiting for me, even though I don't go out to them every evening. I've left the light on and it casts a broad track into the yard. My very own crib. They snort when I enter the shed. I give them a couple of winter carrots and a scoop of oats. Their breath billows up out of the trough as a cold cloud. I sit on a bale of hay and wait for them to finish feeding. Quiet cackling noises come from the chicken coop next to the donkey shed. Strange.

I've got cold from sitting still. When I take off my clothes in the scullery, I do it slowly, to get even colder. I shiver in the bathroom until the water has warmed up. I wash my hair and clasp my hands together behind my neck to make a bowl that I empty again and again, splashing hot water over my shoulders and down my back. I dry myself off and walk to the living room, where I turn off the lights and turn up the fire. I stand up straight and study myself in the mirror in the light coming from the bedroom. This is my house now. I can stand naked in front of the mirror whenever I like. The warmth from the fire glows on my penis, the muscles in my bum and legs feel heavy and strong. It's as if I can feel the farmhand's hands on my bum again. The sensation is so real that I can't help putting my own hands there to make the imagined hands disappear. Riet's letter is on the mantelpiece. I take it to the bedroom and read it yet again in bed (under the second duvet cover, which I have washed in the meantime). Before turning off the light I look up at the map of Denmark. That's three sheep hanging there, I think, rolling onto my left side and pulling my knees up in the dark.

A second letter has arrived:

Dear Helmer,

 

Brabant is horrible. I don't know if you've ever been here, but take it from me: it's terrible. Nothing but pigs and sociable people, but their kind of sociable is nothing like what we used to have at home in North Holland. Carnival, for instance, can you imagine? Can you see me dressed up in funny clothes, a clown suit with a mask on? And everyone keeps on smiling the whole time, as if they've got anything to smile about.

 

Our two daughters are Brabant born and bred, but because they're our daughters, and I get on with them really well, it doesn't matter so much. They're both very warm and they both have nice husbands and young children (yes, I'm a grandmother!). They live a stone's throw away so I can drop by whenever I feel like it.

 

Our son (I've only just noticed that I've written 'our', although Wien has been dead now for almost a year) doesn't fit in quite so well in Brabant. I don't know why, maybe it's because he takes after me more than Wien. After Wien's death I sold up and now I live in the village, together with my son. That's strange: husband dies, you move, and then all you've got is time on your hands.

 

I'm writing this letter because you haven't written back or called. I'm curious about how life has treated you. I don't even know if you're married, but I suspect not, because just before my mother died, she told me you weren't. Yes, you can see that I tried to keep up with you as best I could. And there's something I'd like to ask you, but I'd rather not do that in a letter. Won't you write or call?

 

I'll just say it straight out: I would like very much to drop by. To see you, but also to see the farm I visited so often (and where I, if things had gone differently, would now live). But then the problem with your father (which I wrote about in my last letter) needs to be resolved.

 

Hoping to hear from you,

 

Love,

 

Riet

 

This time there is an address on the back of the envelope. The name of the village doesn't ring any bells. I don't understand what she wants from me. Like the previous letter, this one is muddled. The first time it was 'best wishes, Riet', now it's 'love'. It's as if she's trying to arouse my curiosity. Is the thing she wants to ask me about, which she also mentioned in her first letter, simply whether she's allowed to drop by? Or is it something else. The sentence 'and where I, if things had gone differently, would now live' (in brackets, of all things, as a passing comment) annoys me. I interpret the end of her letter as meaning that I have to inform her that Father is dead, otherwise she won't come.

A fitful thaw has begun. Now and then the temperature creeps above freezing. It's misty with occasional rain, but most of the day it stays below zero. There's a layer of water on the ice, but at the same time the yellowish-white frozen edges in the ditches keep widening. The mist is strange; with mist you expect warm air. I can forget about my Monnickendam– Watergang circuit, I've already put away my skates. The donkeys stay indoors. The chickens are hardly laying. The frost flowers in Father's bedroom have slid off the window, there's a pool of water on the windowsill. He ate the apple. I don't know how he managed it. He must have been very hungry.

Twenty cows. A pre-war tie stall barn. A few calves and a handful of yearlings. Twenty-three sheep. No, twenty. I'm not even a smallholder. But the paintwork is in good condition and the tiles on the roof are straight.

*

In the afternoon the young tanker driver arrives. I don't go into the milking parlour. I watch him through the round window, which was moved from the outside wall to the wall between the milking parlour and the scullery when the milking parlour was built. With the doors to the shed, hall and milking parlour shut, it's dark in the scullery, the only light comes in through that same round window. Mist seems to be streaming along the sides of the enormous tanker and into the building. The driver keeps smiling, despite the pitiful amount of milk flowing into his tanker through the hose from my tank. I've forgotten his name again and the harder I try to dredge it up, the further it sinks. There's an O in it, I know that much. He sticks a little finger in his nose; I actually feel like turning away. He doesn't look like he's waiting for me, he doesn't seem to care whether I come to make small talk or not.

Is it enough to have the paintwork in good condition and the roof tiles straight? The willows neatly pollarded and the donkeys warm and well fed in their shed?

Of course I am curious about Riet. Of course I want something to happen. I want to know what has become of the beautiful girl with long blonde hair – the young woman who was going to marry my brother. I want to hear what she has to say, I want to see the look in her eyes. I wait until the young driver has leapt up to his cab, as lithe as ever, before going into the parlour to spray the storage tank clean. The hot water drives the cold mist back outside.

After milking I go into the vegetable garden to pick some kale. It's had more than enough frost. I straighten up and look through the kitchen window into my own house. The lights are on in the kitchen and the living room. In the distance – I can see it because all the doors are open – the new bed is like a throne in a palace. It's Christmas Eve and in seven days the new year will start.