The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker Page B

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