A Roof That Catches the Wind

The first tub leaked. A crack in one corner was hidden under a label. As soon as Wim poured a little water in, a thin stream ran across the kitchen worktop.

‘That one’s for paper,’ Farah said.

She fetched another from the stack. Bente held the old one over the sink while Wim inspected the new one. Noor brought a cloth. She was glad they were still in the little kitchen, not beside her books.

Soon a plastic cloth covered the cleared table. The shallow tub stood on top. Wim had put only a little water in it. He held two roughly equal pieces of cork from the box of building materials.

‘Not proper boats,’ he said.

‘I can see that,’ Sami said.

Bente folded a little roof from a scrap of cardboard, holding it beside the photograph to judge the height. Wim set it on one piece of cork. The other he left bare.

Noor pushed the chair holding her books further back. She put the receipt on the windowsill, under her pencil case.

The pieces floated side by side. The roof sagged to one side. Bente gave it a smaller nudge than Noor expected and it stayed upright.

Wim bent over one end of the tub and blew. The bare cork moved a little. The one with the roof turned, slid further and tapped the other side.

Sami bent until his nose was almost over the rim.

‘Again.’

Wim waited for the water to settle and brought the cork back. This time he blew more gently. Noor watched the edge of the roof. It caught the air, and the cork beneath reached the other side first again.

‘So that’s where it went,’ she said.

Bente looked up. ‘Mine’s much bigger.’

Noor was still pointing at the cork. There weren’t any reeds in the tub either. No island. No current going towards the lock. Only a few ripples from Wim’s hand.

‘So it could happen,’ she said. ‘Because of the roof.’

‘That much we can see,’ Wim said.

The cardboard roof fell over. Bente fished it out and laid it on a cloth. A dark patch crept upwards from the bottom.

‘That’s why I painted the proper roof,’ she said.

Sami helped dab the cork dry. The experiment was over. Noor had expected a great discovery, something that would make everyone rush to the table. Farah only came to ask if they could put the tub away soon. Tomorrow the cups needed to go there.

Daan came in with his shopping. A baguette stuck out of the bag. He put it on the floor, away from the wet table.

‘Have you been making rain?’

‘Wind,’ Sami said. ‘Less to clear up.’

Noor took out the map. In the afternoon sun the rubbed-out patch looked like an old bruise. There was a bend now, an island and two stretches of water. But so many lines crossed each other.

‘I need to draw this again,’ she said.

She looked at the blank sheets beside the counter, then picked up her pencil instead. Tomorrow they might find something else to add along the way. She could keep working on this one.

Bente put her wet roof on the plastic cloth. ‘My boat wouldn’t have gone as fast as that cork, would it?’

‘We don’t know,’ Noor said. ‘We only know it went left while I was watching.’

She pointed to the receipt. Daan studied the small arrow, then looked outside.

‘From the bridge towards the windmill,’ he said. ‘You saw that before I did.’

Noor wrote Friday beside a short line on the map. She made the line no longer than the stretch she had actually watched.

Wim pointed to the narrow channel. ‘If the wind took it that way, it could have drifted on through the sheltered water here. Away from that broad stretch.’

‘Then that’s where we need to look,’ Bente said.

Noor drew little dots from the bridge to the island and along the channel. She stopped at the old landing stage.

‘Why dots?’ Sami asked.

‘Because we didn’t see it there.’

‘Write that down. Or I won’t remember tomorrow.’

Noor wrote: perhaps this way. Beside the thick east-pointing arrow she added: water usually goes this way. There was no need to remove the flow towards the lock from her map. Above it she drew a thin arrow pointing west, for the wind. Now she had two different arrows. Above the wind arrow she wrote: yesterday and today, east to west.

She held the sheet beside the map on the wall. The windmill was on the left, the lock on the right. Bente slid her finger along the channel to the landing stage, then lifted it away.

‘The barrier comes down at ten tomorrow,’ she said.

Wim looked at Farah. ‘I’ll be here at nine to put the old photographs up.’

‘Me too,’ Bente said.

‘Can we help before we go?’ Sami asked.

Farah counted the loose labels on the counter. ‘Please do. You can leave for the landing stage with Wim at quarter to ten. Then I’ll finish whatever’s left here.’

Daan nodded. Noor wrote the times on the back of the map. Library at nine. Leave at quarter to ten. Look at ten. No earlier, however early she woke up.

Sami took out his phone to ask at home. Bente went with Wim to the blue board to discuss a photograph they still needed. Noor let them talk. She gathered the cloths, wrung them out over the sink and took the empty tub back to Farah.

When she returned, the cardboard roof was still drying. Bente wrote a little B on it in pencil.

‘Can I keep that?’ Noor asked.

‘For you? Or for tomorrow?’

‘For tomorrow. If you want it on display.’

Bente looked at the empty space on the river. ‘Let’s look first. Then we’ll see.’

Noor put the roof on a dry card. She slipped the receipt between two clean sheets in a folder, with the map beside them. No books on top this time. Before closing the folder, she checked the times on the back once more.