Read Online Ten White Geese by Gerbrand Bakker - Free Book Online

itself on the fresh scent of washing powder. Yesterday at the baker’s she had clearly picked up the smell of the old woman, perhaps because the walk had made her perspire, and she had stepped sideways to avoid her reflection in the narrow mirror behind the bread rack, scared as she was of seeing a different person.
    She made coffee, whisked milk, cut two slices of bread and spread them with salted butter. She spread one with blackcurrant jam and put cheese on the other, then sat down and forced herself to eat and drink all of it. She looked out, saw that the creeper, silhouetted against the clear blue sky, was growing more and more transparent, and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She wondered if she should go to the hairdresser’s for once. After washing the plate and mug, she went upstairs. Her diary was lying on the table in the study. She opened it and studied the dates, then workedforward from a date she was sure of and tore off a perforated corner. It was Friday 27 November.
    *
    She left the car in the deserted car park next to the castle and walked into town. In the street with the clock in the arch of the town wall – yet another clock – she found a hairdresser’s. It was between the doctor’s and the chemist’s; she hadn’t noticed it last time. If it hadn’t been 27 November, if this had been a normal stay, she would have enjoyed this: walking straight to a hairdresser’s in a foreign town as if nothing in the world could be more natural, as if she came here every month to have her hair done. Now the sun’s reflection on the large window was too bright for her eyes, the bread was weighing on her stomach like concrete and she felt on the point of surrender, as if she were delivering herself up to a torturer with gentle hands. And she hadn’t even gone in yet.
    There was just one other customer, the doctor. He was sitting there smoking. A second cigarette was smouldering in the ashtray next to the mirror.
    ‘Hello, love,’ the hairdresser said. ‘Sit yourself down. I’ll just finish off this gentleman. I’m almost done.’
    ‘Ah, the badger lady,’ said the doctor. Everything above the cobalt-blue hairdressing cape looked like a newly hatched chick. He studied her in the mirror.
    ‘What’s that?’ the hairdresser asked.
    ‘The badger lady. A badger bit her on the foot.’
    ‘No! That’s impossible.’
    ‘That’s what I said, but it did.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘Lying down on a big rock with bare feet.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yep.’
    The hairdresser stopped working, standing with her comb hand and scissor hand poised in mid-air. ‘I only ever see dead badgers. On the side of the road.’ She reached out to the ashtray and sucked so hard on her cigarette that the tendons in her neck stood out. She used her other hand to wave away the smoke she exhaled.
    ‘Me too. They’re stupid animals. They think they own the night. That’s why they never look out.’
    ‘Is that it, do you think?’
    ‘I don’t know. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen a live badger. Maybe you should ask the Dutchwoman.’
    Now the doctor and the hairdresser both looked at her in the mirror. The small salon was thick with smoke. Fortunately she’d already picked a magazine up off the coffee table, stunned as she was at being discussed like this, and began leafing through it randomly. Nobody actually asked her anything, so she didn’t need to answer. She tried to concentrate on an article about how to arrange pumpkins on a porch while the doctor went into detail about his patients’ complaints. He had a strange way of addressing the hairdresser as an equal, as if they were two middle-aged women who had known each other for decades, two friends discussing everyday life. Cackling back at him every now and then, the hairdresser snipped away until the moment she whipped the cape off his shoulders and called out, ‘Done!’ The doctor got up out of the chair and thanked her. The hairdresser showed no