[About the translation:

‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is a story by Janneke Spoelstra from her Frisian collection of stories, In Jikse-libben (A Jiks’s life), published in 2008.
It was translated by Renée van Weringh, in collaboration with the author. Renée, who emigrated from Friesland as a child, lives in Canada. This English version will be published in four instalments in consecutive issues of ensafh. This is the third instalment]

Strawberry Fields Forever

II

He stood in the doorway. The racket in the kitchen stopped for a moment. They all began to shout at once.
‘Where did you leave Toni?’ asked Liz, standing by a sink.
And Hadi called from a table at the back, ‘Hey, I’ve just been writing you a letter!’
‘Did you miss us?’ called Laura from the corner by the ovens.
Mario only smiled a little and did not take his eyes off me. When they were done shouting, he walked up to me, stroked my hair and sat down beside me. Astonished, they looked at us. I wanted to ask all sorts of questions. ‘Shh,’ he said.
Laura came by and asked with a smile, ‘Will you be picking strawberries again tomorrow?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘He’s a bit soft in the head, I think,’ she said to Liz as they went out together.
‘Should we walk a little?’ I asked.
He nodded.
I set my things on the counter. My hands trembled. ‘I’ll just fetch my raincoat,’ I said in the yard, and ran into the girls’ dorm.
Liz was sitting on her bed and regarded me with wide eyes. ‘He came back for you,’ she said. ‘I saw it right away. He kept looking at you.’
We walked out the road, climbed over the gate. ‘What did Toni say,’ I asked, ‘and Mr. Barron and Rebecca; have you seen them yet?’
‘It is not important what someone else says about it,’ said Mario. ‘It is about you and about me. How do you feel about it? Are you not happy that I came back?’
I sighed, shrugged, and didn’t say anything. We climbed over the second gate and strolled through the woods. On the other side of the woods we stood there for a while.
‘Why did you say Friday night that you could cry?’ he asked.
I shrugged again.
‘Why?’ he persisted.
‘It felt so good standing there like that,’ I said.
Later we sat under a birch, on my raincoat. He told about how in London he had walked about without seeing most of it. How Toni had looked startled when he told him he was going back. It started to drizzle.
‘Haven’t you missed me?’ he asked.
Once more I shrugged.
When dusk began to fall, we walked slowly back to Twinklehill.
We sat in the kitchen for so long that we were the only two left. He pulled me to him and we kissed. His hand reached under my jumper, undid the button of my jeans. I let him. All at once he pulled back his hand and looked at me.
‘Why do you think I came back,’ he said. ‘I want to be with you; that is why I came back.’

Rebecca woke me up that Tuesday morning. ‘Good morning, quarter to seven,’ she called out, as always.
I stayed in bed. The others got up, got dressed, went to wash and to eat breakfast. At half-past seven I heard the bus’s motor start and the sound of running back and forth on the gravel. Somebody had forgotten something and came back in, took something out of a drawer. The door slammed shut; the wheels crunched on the gravel. Then all was quiet.
Mario was sitting in the kitchen when I got up. We ate something and then walked hand in hand down the hill and took a bus to Perth. There we strolled along a quay under tall trees. Beside us swirled a river. Above us, noble mansions looked out over the water.
We passed over a bridge and walked through the city to a castle. We joined a tour and let ourselves be led through rooms full of pottery and old furniture. When it was over, we signed our names into the guestbook. Together, side by side on the page.
We wandered into the garden. One corner had been equipped as a playground. I sat on a swing and Mario pushed me. We turned on the merry-go-round, swung on rings. A bit off to the side stood a slide. Mario went down first. At the bottom he stayed seated. I let myself sink down slowly, and slid against him. We sat like that for a while.
The wind rustled high up in the trees. The sun shone through the leaves on my hands which rested on his chest. Behind the bushes a peacock shrieked. Children squabbled over a swing.
‘There’s someone else,’ I said.
He leaned back. With his head on my shoulder, he looked at me. ‘And what does this someone mean to you,’ he said. ‘Do you love him?’
Tears rolled down my cheeks, fell on his face and on his sweater. ‘It is not a he,’ I said. ‘It is a she, and I haven’t told her yet, but I think she can mean everything to me.’ I looked at the ground.
‘These children would like to go on the slide!’ A woman holding two children by the hand stood before us and regarded us crossly.
We stood up and walked further into the garden, down a path through the bushes.
‘What should I do now,’ said Mario. ‘Should I run away? But nothing has changed. Everything is still exactly the same as it was.’

On Wednesday morning we went with the others to the fields again, had rows next to each other, walked together up to the wagon and back.
‘He always liked you, you could see that,’ said Rebecca when Mario stood over by Hadi for a moment.
In the afternoon we picked rasberries for the first time. We each did one side of a row of bushes. I looked at him through the branches. Sometimes our hands touched when we reached for the same rasberries at the halfway point. I talked with Sido. He told me that he was living with one of the Scottish women who worked with us.
That evening we strolled down the hill. On a stone beside the brook we sat a while. Small birds chased after flies. Later we stood on the little bridge. I leaned on the railing and stared into the water. Mario put an arm around me.
‘I am happpy,’ he said. ‘I am with the person I love.’
I said, ‘I never thought that there would be anyone who would love me.’
‘Why should there not be someone to love you,’ he said. Abdul and Mohm came down the hill. They winked as they passed by.
When they had rounded the bend, Mario asked, ‘Jiks, can you say that you do not love me?’
My spit formed ripples on the water. ‘I like you,’ I said, ‘but since I’ve known her… You can’t change that. I said I would write to you, nothing more. And your coming back, well, stupid…’
‘Maybe I am a stupid boy, to come back,’ said Mario, ‘and maybe you are a stupid girl. This is, anyway, a stupid week.’

Thursday we finished early because it rained constantly. Whoever wished could be let out in the village. We passed Rebecca and Rien. They were walking hand in hand.
‘Those two also,’ I said.
Mario shrugged. ‘So?’ he asked.
In the evening we lay in the straw under the barn’s lean-to. ‘Talk, stupid girl,’ said Mario softly.
And I talked about friends, both boys and girls. ‘And you,’ I asked, ‘who are your friends?’
‘My brothers are maybe my best friends,’ he said. ‘What we have not talked about, I do not know.’
‘And girlfriends?’ I asked.
‘I have loved only one,’ he said. ‘She was with one of my mates, but I love you more, much more.’
People came out of the kitchen. We lay still, listening, till the footsteps went away.
‘Others bore me,’ he said. ‘You can love someone’s laughter, or her hair, but I love everything about you.’
‘You would want to change me,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not want to change you.’
‘Then others will want to change me,’ I said.
‘I want to make you happy,’ he said. ‘It will be my happy, too.’
Later he slept. He woke when I stood up. He shot up, too. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I said.
‘Wait a bit,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said.

On Friday I walked ahead of him between the rasberry bushes.
‘Why did you leave,’ he asked, ‘if you thought she could be everything for you?’
‘This is my life,’ I said, ‘and she has hers.’
‘You will both be lonely,’ he said.
‘We will be together,’ I said, ‘and both have our own lives. Maybe I could also be with you, and maybe I will always wonder how that would have gone, but I’ve already found someone I want to be with. This is an episode, nothing more.’
‘Maybe that is what it is for you,’ he said.
We picked quietly for a while. Around us I heard the sound of other pickers. Through the leaves I saw the orange of the little boxes.
I said, ‘When other girls went out with boys, I looked at the stars all alone and learned their names.’
‘I always went running alone,’ he said. ‘That is just the same.’

‘You do not believe in yourself,’ he said that evening as we left the pub to walk back.
‘I do believe in myself,’ I said, ‘but not as the wife of a man, not as the mother of children. I’d like to continue like this, study during the winter, travel in the summer.’
‘Yes, I would not mind staying twenty-three, too,’ he said scornfully.

Saturday morning we went on the train together to Edinburgh. For the second time he had said his goodbyes to everybody, one by one.
‘You’re coming back, aren’t you?’ they said to me.
‘Of course,’ I said.
We left his rucksack behind at the station and walked to the castle. Between ancient walls we strolled and looked out over the city and the Firth of Forth. At the bottom of the hill stood a festive tent. The sun shone on the white canvas. A band played. We climbed up the narrow spiral staircase of a tower. Mario was ahead of me. Halfway up he turned round. I stood a few steps lower and looked up at him.
‘We belong together,’ he said, ‘ I feel it so…’
People were coming up behind us. We had to keep going. Later we walked through a busy street, holding hands, but there wasn’t room to walk side by side.
‘I did not ask for this,’ I said.
He turned round. ‘Did I then?’ he said. ‘It just happens.’
We were in a park, sitting on the grass.
‘When you’re back in your own country again, you’ll soon forget me,’ I said. ‘You’ll find someone else.’
‘Maybe,’ he said.
Further up walked a man and woman with a child between them. ‘Look there, Jiks,’ he said, ‘would you not want that?’
‘It’s not that I don’t want it,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t be my life.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how I can break down those strange barriers in your head,’ he said.
We parted on the platform near my train. He had to run to the platform where his train waited. He turned round once more and waved. Then he disappeared into the crowd.

(to be continued)