The Twin (9 page)

For Riet I make an exception: I drive south. South-west, to be precise. To the ferry in North Amsterdam. We have agreed a time and long before that time I am already parked in front of a chip stand on the IJ. Futuristic ferries cross back and forth, streamlined butter dishes in blue and white, nothing like the pale-green boats they had in 1967. Back then they still took cars, the ferries were sailing motorways. I see 'Municipal Ferry No. 15' before me, and the narrow, roofed sections for bikes and motorbikes. They were only pale green inside the deck, the outside was a filthy white. I'd forgotten that.

I try to think my way further into the city. Faces and names of fellow students don't come back and I can't even picture the building I had lectures in. It's all gone, there across the water.

I described the Opel Kadett to her, but, faced with the stream of pedestrians and cyclists, I start to worry. Who will discover who? Should I stay in the car or get out and stand next to it?

Earlier this morning, when I was in the middle of the yard with Father in my arms and he asked me through chattering teeth and trembling lips where I was taking him, I decided to carry him back to his bedroom. I was going to put him in the loft of the yearling shed. His question and the inquisitive looks from the donkeys (one of the two started to bray loudly, waking the chickens from their morning snooze) were enough to make me abandon the plan. How was I going to get him up the ladder anyway? The return journey went smoothly, all the doors were wide open. I put him back in bed (still warm) and was going to leave the room without a word. At the door I changed my mind.

'I'm going to pick up Riet,' I said.

He looked at me with a blank expression.

'At the ferry in Amsterdam. She's coming to visit.'

'Riet?' The name croaked out and he went a bit pale.

'Yes, Riet. And you're dead.'

'Dead?'

'I told her you're dead.'

'Why?'

Now
I
tried to look at
him
blankly. 'Do you need to ask?'

He thought about it.

'If I were you, I'd keep quiet,' I said ominously. 'Otherwise there's a chance she'll come upstairs.'

'What for?'

'Payback.'

'Oh . . .'

'And you're not all there, remember?'

'Oh . . .'

'I'm going now.'

Que sera, sera
, as Doris Day would say, I thought on the stairs. Whatever will be, will be
.

I'm old, I thought in the scullery.

A ferry arrives every six minutes: five since I've been parked here. A lot of women in their fifties have got off them, fortunately I can exclude the ones with bikes. They're all wearing thick coats and scarves. It's been a long time since I've seen a winter like this: the temperature has fallen below zero again and there is even snow on the ground. The sixth ferry approaches the quayside. I check my watch; this will be the ferry that brings her to me. Where are all these people going on an ordinary weekday? Riet is one of the last to get off the ferry. I feel a little dizzy, I was expecting someone who looks like Ada (why that should be, I don't know), but it is Riet just as she rode away thirty years ago. Without the long blonde hair, a little plumper, and with a different way of walking. I sit rigid behind the steering wheel, which I have involuntarily grabbed with both hands. She walks straight up to the car. I feel like falling to one side, crawling under the dashboard, putting the car in reverse and disappearing backwards into the IJ, straight through the chip stand if necessary. Maybe she'll try to save me.

She stops in front of the car and looks in through the windscreen. I wait for a moment, then open the door. She approaches with outstretched arms.

'Hello, Helmer,' she says.

'Hello, Riet,' I say.

Very old fury, a fury I can't remember having, whose existence I didn't even suspect, rises up inside me. Riet isn't troubled by fury, I can see that. She is moved and confused, that's what's troubling her. The longer Henk is dead, the more I look like him, simply because there is no longer any comparing.

No, fury is too big a word, outrage is closer.

What is it like to have a relationship with a twin? I wouldn't know – apart from some childish carry-on at primary school – I have never been involved in anything like it. That Christmas Eve was followed by a Christmas Henk filled with absentminded humming, not even stopping during meals. Over the roast beef and cauliflower cheese, he answered all of our grandparents' questions in such detail that Father looked up with surprise and Mother looked at me with an expression which would only become normal later, during our alliance. He was home on New Year's Eve, but two minutes into the New Year he disappeared without telling me where he was going. Late at night, when I was crossing the bridge near The Weighhouse with the group of farm boys we had both been a part of until the week before, I saw them. They were sitting holding hands on a bench in the drizzle. I tried to hide behind the brawniest farm boy and spotted something further along – a snot-coloured Volkswagen Beetle two or three steps away – that I might be able to reach without being seen. As the brawniest farm boy was also the one who had drunk the most, he pushed his way through the others to talk to Henk, leaving me exposed. I can still picture the snot-coloured Beetle perfectly, I have no idea what was said. There are two other things I haven't forgotten. One: Henk saw me there – at the back of the group, while he was talking to the drunk youth and keeping Riet's hand firmly clasped in his – and wasn't able to look me in the eye. That had never happened before. Two: a little later Riet noticed me as well and I realised that I was the last person she wanted to see, she wanted to forget that there was someone else walking around who looked just like Henk. I broke away from the group and turned down a lane behind the Beetle, fortunately Monnickendam is full of lanes. About a hundred yards later, I put a hand on a damp wall, bent forwards and spewed up all the beer and doughnuts. Then I went off in search of my bike, finally finding it where we had started our pub crawl. Someone had let off fireworks between the spokes of the back wheel. I hoisted the bike up onto one shoulder and walked home, swapping the bike back and forth between my right and left shoulders on the way. I licked drops of water off the bell to get the dirty taste out of my mouth. Late at night had changed to early in the morning. Drizzle isn't much more than mist with delusions of grandeur, but I was still saturated by the time I got home.

It was months before Henk finally brought Riet home with him. Our farm was at its best for her first visit. It was the time of year when eager lambs dive at the ewes in the field next to the farmhouse, peewits and godwits call their own names while defending their nests, the willows have already sprouted and the crooked ash in the front garden is about to come into leaf. A light-green spring in which even a muck heap can look fresh. Father kept his distance; Mother welcomed Riet with moist eyes and open arms.

I had seen her a few times since New Year and been clumsy and insecure in her company. She was awkward and quiet in mine. Now that she was going to be in our house I had even less idea of how to act. Henk took her to the Bosman windmill, our windmill, that very first time. They came back with a peewit's egg, and after that things were never really right between Riet and me.

Worse still, things between Henk and me were never right again either.

Later Riet spent her first night at our house, it must have been some time in August.

'Colts and fillies separate,' Mother announced one night at the kitchen table. The night before Riet was expected.

'What?' said Henk.

'Colts and fillies separate.'

Henk had to think it over for a moment. 'But you're a colt and a filly too?' he said with all the innocence he could muster, gesturing at Father.

Father snarled.

Riet slept in Henk's room, Henk slept in mine. On a mattress on the floor. I couldn't think of anything to say, I had trouble breathing, something I put down to the oppressive heat. The window was wide open, the curtains weren't drawn, a full moon was shining straight into the room. Henk was lying half under a sheet, his upper body bared and bluish. He was beautiful, so beautiful. After a long silence, almost as oppressive as the temperature, he whispered something I didn't understand.

'What?' I said.

'Shhh!'

'What did you say?' I whispered.

'I'm going next door.'

'To Riet?' I said numbly.

'Where else?' He sat up straight and pushed away the sheet. He pulled up his knees and stood up. He was wearing big white underpants. He walked to the door as if treading on eggshells and pulled it open inch by inch. It took a very long time before his body had left my bedroom and the door was shut again.

I've hated moonlit nights ever since. The bluish light that comes into bedrooms through curtains or venetian blinds and can't be kept out is cold, even in summer.

No, give me coots, there's something I like to hear at night. Their yapping drives away emptiness and next year they'll yap again, even if they're not the same ones, and ten years from now they'll be yapping still. You can depend on coots.

Riet is sitting at the kitchen table, in Henk's old spot. I can't tell from her face whether she has sat there deliberately. She is staring at a photo on the front page of the newspaper of a group of Koniks standing on a strip of land surrounded by the waters of the Waal. Here it's freezing, across the borders it's raining, and washlands and banks everywhere are under water.

'Polish horses,' she says to the newspaper.

'Coffee?' I ask.

Only now does she look up. 'Yes, please.'

The sun is shining: low and cold, but a warm yellow. I have never been to Austria or Switzerland, but this is how I imagine the sun on ski slopes. The coffee machine is in full sunlight and I see that it needs a wipe with a damp cloth. I take my time, with my back to Riet I don't have to worry about the expression on my face. From the corner of my eye I see something pass the front window.

'A hooded crow!' exclaims Riet.

I turn around. It's back in the ash, perched on its old branch and rearranging its feathers. I see the knuckles of my hand, wrapped around the handle of the coffee pot, turn white. This is
the
moment for noise from upstairs. It stays quiet.

'Have you seen hooded crows before?' I ask, making more noise than necessary as I slide the coffee pot in under the filter.

'Sure, often enough. In Denmark. They're almost all hooded crows up there.'

'Have you been to Denmark?'

'A few times. On holiday.' She thinks for a moment. 'Four times.'

'What's it like?'

'I don't know what it
is
like, only what it
was
like. It must be eight years since we last went. The girls weren't with us, they'd been going on holidays alone for years. It was just the three of us.'

I sit down, cross my arms and let her take her time.

Riet looks out. 'Do you remember the wooden electricity poles you used to have here?'

'Yes, of course.' Irritation itches in my forearms.

'They still have them there, but concrete. They're a bit behind.' She keeps on staring out, without seeing anything. The water sputters in the coffee machine. 'We were there in August, in the car. The farmers had set fire to piles of straw and there were swallows on the electricity wires.'

'Swallows.'

'Yes. Wien didn't get it at all. "Who on earth burns straw!" he said and, "What a waste!"'

'He's got a point.'

'I don't know about any of that. I thought those swallows were so beautiful. The electricity cables hung really low.' She starts crying quietly.

'What is it?'

'Ah, I'm chattering away and I actually feel very peculiar here.' She hides her face in her hands.

'Relax. First some coffee.' I stand up and get the best cups from the kitchen cupboard. Not the mugs, the best cups, that's what Mother would have done. Earlier this morning I put the matching milk jug and sugar pot on the table. I pour coffee into the cups and lay a silver spoon on each saucer. I arrange some biscuits on a plate. I put the coffee and the biscuits on the table. If it wasn't freezing outside, I would slide the window open. Specks of dust float through the kitchen.

'I feel strange too,' I say, sitting back down.

Riet smiles. 'We both feel strange.'

I feel light-headed. Unreal. Take Father, for instance: he's always been just like he is now. I've seen him every day my whole life long. Every day he has grown older, but because we have grown old together, it has all been gradual. When I see a photo of my father as a young man – like the photo on the wall of the bedroom upstairs – I know it's him, but it's distinct from the father I have now. I didn't really know him when he was young, because I was much younger at the time. We've both grown old without my noticing. I haven't seen Riet for more than thirty years. It's shocking, as if I'm in bed having a bad dream.

This is what I am thinking, what is she thinking? I feel like copying her and hiding my face in my hands. 'Who do you see when you look at me?' I ask.

'Henk,' she says.

'I'm Helmer.'

'I know. I still see Henk.'

Before we got to the kitchen, I showed her the new living room. She didn't like it. 'It's so bare in here,' she said. 'What happened to all the photos?' The door to the bedroom was shut and I had no plans to open it for her. 'And the curtains and the sideboard and the bookcase with your mother's books?' She looked at herself in the large mirror above the mantelpiece and used both hands to plump up her hair a little.

'Ah, the cows,' she says, as we walk through the shed. She's wearing jeans. Her hair is still blonde and even in the sunlight in the kitchen I couldn't tell whether she bleaches it. It's not permed like most women's in their mid-fifties. She walks a little stiffly. It is totally impossible for me to see her as the mistress of this house: making meatballs, running after sheep or heifers, cuddling up to Henk in bed at night, having her kids visit on Saturday mornings, a grandchild climbing the ash in the front garden.

'I broke a leg a long time ago,' she says when she notices me looking at the way she walks. 'It stiffens up in cold weather.'

Skiing? A bike accident? A wet floor in the pig shed?

'I was cleaning the kitchen ceiling and the stepladder slipped.'

Sunlight comes in through the square windows, a cow groans and a mangy cat shoots off. It's a cat I can't remember having seen before. Is it one that escaped last spring's motorised cull?

'What kind of animals are they, pigs?' I ask.

'They're not cows, that's for sure.' She rests her hand on the bundled lengths of baler twine hung up on an enormous nail. 'Piglets are cute, but the older they get, the nastier.'

'And then they're ready for slaughter.'

'Yes, then they're ready for slaughter.'

'And your husband?'

'What do you mean?'

'What kind of fellow was he?'

She thinks for a moment. 'He was respectable. He was a respectable man.'

'Respectable?'

'Yes.'

We walk into the yard. Riet pulls the collar of her coat tight. 'My daughters are respectable women. Maybe Brabant brings that out in people, respectability.'

'And your son?'

'What have you got there!' blurts Riet as she catches sight of the donkey shed. She walks up to it. 'This never used to be here. Did it?'

'No,' I say. 'The donkeys are new.'

'Donkeys!'

They've heard us and are standing inquisitively at the railing with their heads up. When they see us, one starts to swing her head. The light has been on all night.

'Would you like to feed them?' I ask.

'Yes, please.'

I take a few large winter carrots out of the box on the bale of hay and give them to Riet. She sticks two carrots through the bars at once. They disappear in the donkeys' mouths with a snap. I scratch the donkeys' ears. For a moment everyone is happy. There's something comforting about her having established that we both feel strange.

Riet walks from the donkey shed to the chicken coop. She waves a hand at the willows, a little impatiently, maybe to let me know that she can see they've been pollarded recently. And that Henk would have pollarded them if things had turned out differently. 'You used to have brown chickens here,' she says, peering in through the wire.

'That's right, Barnevelders.'

'And these?'

'These are Lakenvelders.'

'They're beautiful. Are they good layers?'

'They're okay, not as good as the Barnevelders.' The chicken coop leads inevitably to the causeway gate. She leans her forearms on it and stares out over the fields. It's incredibly light because of a thin layer of snow on the grass. The ditches are steaming. 'The windmill,' she whispers.

I'm not in the mood for that at all. I turn and start walking towards the milking parlour. A little later she follows, I hear her irregular footfall on the frost-hardened yard. Now, with my left arm, I gesture at the donkey paddock. 'In good weather they're out there,' I say. We walk through the milking parlour to the scullery. I cut straight through to the hall door, Riet stops in front of the door to the staircase.

'You coming?' I say.

She doesn't answer.

'I thought,' I try, 'if we eat an early lunch, we can go for a walk to the cemetery afterwards.'

She doesn't answer.

I keep at it. 'Then I can take you back to the ferry on time, before milking.'

She doesn't answer.

'What is it?' I ask.

'I want to go upstairs.'

'To Henk's room?'

'Yes.'

I pull the door open and lead the way upstairs. I open the door to Henk's room. Riet walks in expectantly. I stay in the doorway – it's so full inside there's only room for one of us. She looks around and sits down on the bed for a while.

Then I can't see her any more, she has disappeared completely under Henk and the January sunlight has made way for August moonlight. Henk's white underpants have got stuck at his knees and his body is going up and down, a movement that doesn't seem right for someone his age. I can almost smell him. He is holding his breath, the dimple above the crack of his bum is damp, he presses her deeper and deeper into the old mattress, his Achilles tendons are part of the up-and-down, as if the movement is a wave that starts in his toes.

'. . . his bed?'

'What?'

'Is this the bed Henk slept in?'

I blink a few times, it takes a while for the warm August night to turn back into a January morning. 'Yes.'

'I don't recognise it. There's so much junk in here.' She lays her hands beside her on the blanket – as if she has no plans ever to stand up again – and looks out of the window. 'That hooded crow is still there,' she says.

'Come on,' I say.

She stands up and leaves the bedroom.

'My old bedroom,' I say casually and fairly loudly as we walk past the second door. I notice the key and try to remember whether I locked the door. 'Full of junk as well.' I hurry on through to the new room, whose door is wide open. Riet follows.

She leans against one of the walls, knees bent slightly and her jumper bunched up around her shoulders. 'His face,' she says. 'His face in that cold water. His hair floated back and forth like seaweed.'