The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker Page A

keeps on tugging until I'm next to her, slide open the bolt on the back of the gate and, bending forward, swing it open for her. Without a word she walks into the cemetery.
     
When we're at the grave, I say, 'You're grateful to Father now, I guess.'
     
'Why, for God's sake?'
     
'He's the one who renews the rights to the grave every ten years.'
     
'Hmm,' she says.
     
To me Riet seems like the kind of person to run her fingers over the letters. She doesn't. Instead she sits down on a green bench on the shell path next to the church. I take a few steps backwards and stand with my back against the cold wall. I stick my hands in my pockets.
     
'I wasn't angry at your father,' she says. 'I felt humiliated. Later, sure. Later I got angry and I stayed angry.'
     
We're in the shadow cast by the church. Only now do I feel that the sun gave warmth.
     
'He was so sweet, Helmer,' she says.
     
'I know that,' I say.
     
'And beautiful. He was a handsome young man.'
     
It would be immodest of me to agree to that.
     
Riet looks at me, she sees Henk. 'You're a handsome man,' she says.
     
'Ah.'
     
'It's true. You can take it from me.'
     
'If you say so,' I say.
     
Mother was buried with Henk. I was very curious what I would see. I didn't see anything. Just a white sheet, hardboard by the look of it, at the bottom of a grave that went deeper. It poured with rain during the funeral, a summer cloudburst, the water splashed up high off the coffin, the flowers drooped.
     
They bury people three deep in this cemetery, so there's room for one more. I wonder who Riet finds handsome, me or the young man she sees in me. I also wonder whether she's noticed anything strange about the headstone.
     
'What were you talking about in the car?'
     
'Henk said, "Slow down", when he saw a car coming from the other direction. I did, but only slightly. My driving instructor was a real macho and he'd told me that you had to force the other traffic to make room. "You have to impose your will," he said, "through the way you act and the look in your eye."' She slides back and forth on the wooden bench. 'But she was more imposing.'
     
'What was the last thing he said?'
     
'"Dear oh dear".'
     
'"Dear oh dear"?'
     
'Yes. As if to say, silly goose, you can tell you just got your licence.'
     
I can hear him saying it, it fitted the Henk-and-Helmer pattern perfectly.
     
'That driving instructor tried to impose his will on me too by the way he looked at me. He wore a toupee. Of course I never took him up on it.'
     
'Of course not,' I say.
     
'Are you making fun of me?'
     
'No.'
     
'Your father's insurance did pay for the Simca, didn't it?'
     
'Yes.'
     
'Good.'
     
I'm leaning against a cold church wall, but I see myself standing on Schellingwoude Bridge. That's because I feel forgotten. I felt forgotten then too. Riet was the almost-wife, I was just the brother. Now she's the one who is remembering things and telling her story. No one's asked me a thing.
     
The ducks that jumped out of the water are quacking away on the other side of the church, maybe in front of the closed gate. So many people sit on the grass under the poplars in summer – cyclists from Amsterdam, canoeists, children from the sailing school in Broek – that they are completely fearless. They'll do anything for a piece of bread. Now and then a car drives past. It sounds as if one brakes, then pulls away again.
     
'Do you come here often?' asks Riet.
     
'Birthdays and the anniversaries of their deaths. Four times a year.'
     
'I could have come as well, of course. At first I didn't because I'd been sent away and I thought to myself: you needn't think you'll ever see me again. Childish. Later I didn't come because I had Wien, and my children, and I didn't want to be reminded of those days. I wanted to become a new person.'
     
'You can never become a new person.'
     
'Of course you can.'
     
Now the irritation is itching in my shoulders and I almost rub myself against the church