The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker Page B

wall like an old, moth-eaten sheep in the summertime.
     
Does she want something? What does she want? Does she want me to kiss her? Am I supposed to act as if I'm Henk? Does she want me to tell her she's still a beautiful woman? Am I supposed to ask her to marry me? Does she want me to forgive her?
     
She's still beautiful. She's not one of the hundreds of thousands of ageing women who walk around in the same blouse and knee-length trousers, with chemically tamed hair, a premature stoop and sagging eyes. In summer they cycle past the farm with their husbands, always wobbling a little on their solid, reliable-yet-inexpensive bicycles. No matter how different their blouses and jackets, they're always the same blouses and jackets.
     
Riet is almost as tall as I am and her face is a less firm, slightly sagging version of the face she had as a girl. In it I can very clearly see the Riet who was long ago half hidden by Henk's head in the pub in Monnickendam. Who, even then, I saw thinking, God, he's got a twin brother, there's someone just like him, how am I supposed to deal with that? In the eighteen months before Henk died, she didn't deal with it. In her awkwardness she kept a quiet distance, avoided looking at me and made sure the two of us were almost never alone together.
     
On 5 December 1966 her St Nicholas gift for me was accompanied by the traditional poem, but she had written something so trite and impersonal that I found it hard to keep back the tears of self-pity that welled up. Like an upset child, I read it out loud for the others with the parcel on my lap. Father noticed and – since he finds St Nicholas such a nice occasion – he rubbed it in a little by winking at Riet and telling her that I was used to grander things and was learning how to write poems full of long, difficult words 'down there in Amsterdam'. He's never had a clue. Riet looked at her feet.
     
'I'm starting to get cold,' she says.
     
'Let's go home then.'
     
She looks at the headstone once more. In her face I see the question I had expected to hear much sooner. 'Where's your father buried?'
     
'He was cremated.' The freezing air cools my hot face. 'And scattered.'
     
There is only one duck standing by the gate. The other one has been run over, steam rising from its warm body. That's how it goes, one minute you're alive and kicking and longing for a piece of bread, the next you're stone dead. Riet shudders as she steps over the dead duck. I nudge it to the side of the road with my foot. The remaining duck waddles to the water quacking loudly. When we pass the school on the way back, one of the classes is singing: fifteen or so children's faces turned to look up at their teacher in total concentration. I don't know the song they are singing and stop for a moment to listen. Riet walks on without a glance. I almost have to run to catch up with her before the bend in the road.
     
When Riet stayed for dinner we had to get a chair out of Father and Mother's bedroom. We put it next to Mother's chair, on the long side of the kitchen table. Consciously or unconsciously Riet has now moved her chair a little to one side before sitting down, almost to the corner of the table. The kitchen clock buzzes. 'It's so quiet here,' she says.
     
We're drinking tea. It's almost time to take her back. Is she imagining lively scenes? Children or grandchildren? Highchairs, different wallpaper, a modern kitchen?
     
'You were the oldest, weren't you?' she asks.
     
'Yes.'
     
'It was only later, when he was dead and I'd gone away, that I wondered why . . .'
     
'Yes?'
     
'Why I chose Henk. I mean, why do things happen the way they do?'
     
'Henk chose you.' She's annoying me again. Surely now, forty years later, she's not going to pretend she had it all under control?
     
She looks at me and picks up her teacup. A respectable, porcelain teacup. 'And later still, I thought, why was Henk the farmer? If you were the oldest?'
     
'I went skating with Mother and the