[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 last instalment]

Strawberry Fields Forever

III

‘There’s mail for you’, Rebecca said to me in the kitchen, ‘a postcard from Mario.’
I’m in Leeuwarden now, he wrote. I travelled here from Amsterdam over the Alfus(?) Dike. Friesland is beautiful. Soon I shall return by train and then go to Paris. IK HÂLD FAN DY, it said at the bottom of the card, and in small letters: I asked a girl here how to write that.
Laura sat beside me, glancing over curiously.
I said, ‘Last week I had the feeling that I was suddenly playing the lead role in a really good film.’
‘And where will the sequel take place?’ Laura asked.
‘I don’t know whether there will be one,’ I said.
‘Sometimes it just clicks between two people,’ Laura said.

September, my friends ask when you are coming here. What can I tell them, wrote Mario. Did you arrive home safely? Now I am wondering what your friend said about all of this. I am sure that you have discussed it with her. Maybe she understands you better, but she can never love you as much as I do.

I did talk to her about you, I wrote, and I told her what I told you, that I thought she could be everything to me. I pleaded with her, just as you did with me. And it was done, just like that.

I was alone in Zagreb over Christmas, Mario wrote. I did not miss you as much as I had feared I would. I see that I cannot persuade you to love me in the way that I wanted. I see also that I can love you in a different way, not less, but like a brother cares about his sister. And a friend, a girlfriend, you can lose, but a sister stays always a sister, a brother a brother.

A brother, I wrote. Yes, that’s what you’ll be.

September again, I can’t say that I was searching, wrote Mario, but this summer I met a girl here in Zadar. I love her the way a boy loves a girl. She lives in Germany. Her mother comes from here and her father is German. I speak Yugoslavian with her. And now I have to say something to you that is truly not easy for me to say. She has asked me not to write to you anymore. She does not understand that to me you are like a sister, and to you I am like a brother. She is simply jealous. We will marry at Christmas.

I wrote, you will always be my brother.

June, what can I say, wrote Mario. As far as my health goes, I am well. But further, yes, we were married at Christmas, but at that time I already thought, no, she should not do that, she should not say that, but I thought, things will get better. Now I know that they will not get better, only worse. She is in Germany and in a couple of weeks we will divorce. I won’t say anymore about this. I only want to tell you that all this time you have had your place in my heart, that I have often thought that you understand me better than she does even though I can speak Yugoslavian with her.

You are still always my brother, I wrote, and a stupid boy.

November, 1991, this is me, wrote Mario on the back of a photo, as if he hardly believed it himself. His curls were gone; he wore a uniform. A rifle hung on his shoulder. As you probably know, there is a war going on over here, he wrote on a postcard, and I am playing my own small role in it. I thought, I shall write Jiks so that she knows that it goes well with me. I do not know what else to write. Later when this is all over, I will tell you about it.

IV

August 1992. Very slowly she opened the envelope. Dear Jiks, wrote Toni, it is my duty to tell you that our friend Mario…
‘Oh,’ she said softly.

‘He is dead,’ she said when Matty came home and saw the card with the photo standing on the mantel. Jiks said it without emotion, but that night in bed she cried her eyes out, and Matty comforted her.
She wrote to Thea, Piotr and Mirka, Ana. And they wrote back.
One evening I stood with him in the yard, wrote Thea. We stood there without speaking, just looking at the stars. He was the nicest boy after Ho.
That war isn’t far off, wrote Piotr. Suddenly it’s very close.
Ana sent a card. On the front were children dancing on a hill.

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