stood there looking at it for a while. I saw you at the bedroom window upstairs (no sign of your father). I was staying at my aunt's in Monnickendam. (Yes, she's still alive, she's eighty-three. Do you know her? She doesn't know you.) I hadn't seen her for fifteen years and she couldn't understand what she owed the honour to. The next day I rang the bell, but suddenly panicked and left in a hurry. I also phoned you and then I heard your voice and hung up like a real coward. But I'm sure you'll understand that it's not easy for me to see or hear you. When I heard your voice, I pictured Henk standing there in your hall.
A letter seemed like the simplest solution, but now I'm writing it I find it difficult. Would you mind if I wrote you another letter later? Or shall we talk on the phone? I'll put my telephone number at the bottom of the letter.
That's all for now,
Best wishes,
Riet
P.S. There's something I'd like to ask you.
Like the envelope, the letter is handwritten. No address, just a telephone number. I don't open the bill.
In the afternoon – on a Saturday of all days – a council cherry picker arrives. One man operates the contraption from the ground while the other unscrews the lamppost cover. I stand behind the blinds in the living room to watch them, I don't think they can see me. It's only when they're finished that I leave my spot at the window. I lie down on the new bed. I'm restless, I have the same feeling in my body as the day I saw that flock of different birds and my sheep stared at me like the members of a firing squad. Sleep is out of the question, all kinds of things keep running through my head, nothing stays put. Painting the living room and the bedroom, pollarding the willows, Jarno Koper in Denmark, the old tanker driver's funeral, the hooded crow in the ash. Buying the new bed, which I am now lying on, and that should be enough to send me to sleep, but I'm too restless.
A letter from Riet.
15
On 19 April 1967 I was halfway through the third term of the first year of my Dutch language and literature degree. I think I was the hardest working student in my year, not because of any ambition or drive of my own, but to show Father. I wasn't eligible for a grant because he had too many assets. That was what it said in the rejection letter from the Ministry of Education and Science, Board of Study Grants, and he and I both knew what those assets were: land, buildings, cows and machines. 'Am I supposed to sell cows to send you to university?' said Father, when I showed him the letter. He didn't wait for an answer but screwed the letter up without another word and, since there were no bins to hand, threw it in the kitchen sink. If he'd had a lighter or matches on him, he would have set fire to it. Henk was standing in the kitchen too and didn't know how to look at me from under his dark eyebrows. Mother retrieved the letter from the sink and tried to smooth it out, then put it in the bin after all.
So I stayed at home, rode my bike to Amsterdam, attended lectures and did all kinds of jobs to pay the tuition fees. When I sat at the kitchen table in the morning bleary-eyed because I had come home late the previous evening after unloading a delivery lorry at a large department store, Mother would sometimes ask me what I got up to in Amsterdam – Amsterdam, the city you were better off avoiding. She didn't actually have a clue what to ask me, but at least she tried. Until that 19 April, Father might have asked me three times how many big words I'd learnt now, without waiting for an answer before resuming his conversation with Henk. Conversations about cows that had gone dry, yearlings that needed moving or other farmers in the neighbourhood. Things that really meant something. To him and to Henk.
Henk was the farmer. Henk was Father's son. What he was supposed to make of me or what I was supposed to make of myself were questions he could ignore.
And Henk had Riet.
A letter seemed like the simplest solution, but now I'm writing it I find it difficult. Would you mind if I wrote you another letter later? Or shall we talk on the phone? I'll put my telephone number at the bottom of the letter.
That's all for now,
Best wishes,
Riet
P.S. There's something I'd like to ask you.
Like the envelope, the letter is handwritten. No address, just a telephone number. I don't open the bill.
In the afternoon – on a Saturday of all days – a council cherry picker arrives. One man operates the contraption from the ground while the other unscrews the lamppost cover. I stand behind the blinds in the living room to watch them, I don't think they can see me. It's only when they're finished that I leave my spot at the window. I lie down on the new bed. I'm restless, I have the same feeling in my body as the day I saw that flock of different birds and my sheep stared at me like the members of a firing squad. Sleep is out of the question, all kinds of things keep running through my head, nothing stays put. Painting the living room and the bedroom, pollarding the willows, Jarno Koper in Denmark, the old tanker driver's funeral, the hooded crow in the ash. Buying the new bed, which I am now lying on, and that should be enough to send me to sleep, but I'm too restless.
A letter from Riet.
15
On 19 April 1967 I was halfway through the third term of the first year of my Dutch language and literature degree. I think I was the hardest working student in my year, not because of any ambition or drive of my own, but to show Father. I wasn't eligible for a grant because he had too many assets. That was what it said in the rejection letter from the Ministry of Education and Science, Board of Study Grants, and he and I both knew what those assets were: land, buildings, cows and machines. 'Am I supposed to sell cows to send you to university?' said Father, when I showed him the letter. He didn't wait for an answer but screwed the letter up without another word and, since there were no bins to hand, threw it in the kitchen sink. If he'd had a lighter or matches on him, he would have set fire to it. Henk was standing in the kitchen too and didn't know how to look at me from under his dark eyebrows. Mother retrieved the letter from the sink and tried to smooth it out, then put it in the bin after all.
So I stayed at home, rode my bike to Amsterdam, attended lectures and did all kinds of jobs to pay the tuition fees. When I sat at the kitchen table in the morning bleary-eyed because I had come home late the previous evening after unloading a delivery lorry at a large department store, Mother would sometimes ask me what I got up to in Amsterdam – Amsterdam, the city you were better off avoiding. She didn't actually have a clue what to ask me, but at least she tried. Until that 19 April, Father might have asked me three times how many big words I'd learnt now, without waiting for an answer before resuming his conversation with Henk. Conversations about cows that had gone dry, yearlings that needed moving or other farmers in the neighbourhood. Things that really meant something. To him and to Henk.
Henk was the farmer. Henk was Father's son. What he was supposed to make of me or what I was supposed to make of myself were questions he could ignore.
And Henk had Riet.
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