On the Bright Side

by Hendrik Groen

  ‘Cake-biting is such an important royal family tradition,’ someone sighed yesterday.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Leonie, ‘if there’s to be no koekhappen, what else is there to do?’

  I think I’ll go for a nice long ride tomorrow.

  Monday, 27 April

  I’ve decided to join my House of Orange-loving compatriots downstairs later to watch the royal family’s procession through Dordrecht for an hour or so after all. I am no great supporter of the monarchy, but I still can’t help gazing with a mixture of tenderness and pity at the King and Queen, princes and princesses, for having to put up with all the nonsense. I’ll make sure I sit next to Evert, who always enjoys the opportunity to enrage as many fellow residents as possible. Never deliberately, it goes without saying.

  I am for an elected monarchy. Elections held every five years to choose a new King or Queen. No one should be allowed to serve more than one term. The winner would have just five years to cut ribbons, ride in a golden carriage, read the King’s or Queen’s Speech and live in a palace. I suspect the Dutch populace, having no imagination, would just plump for Willem Alexander and Maxima, our current pair, again.

  Mrs Van Hooidonk woke up the other day and said to her husband, ‘Cor, Jan, you’re so cold!’ He did not answer. He was dead.

  She’s been telling everyone who’ll listen: ‘I says to my husband, cor, Jan, says I, you’re so cold!’

  Mrs Van Hooidonk has dementia. Her Jan had been keeping her in check and out of the locked ward with great patience and devotion. He used to have one night off a week, when his daughter came to babysit so that he could play billiards. That’s how I know him. He was a nice, modest chap who never complained.

  Mrs Van Hooidonk is hopelessly confused, and will probably be given a one-way ticket to the locked ward very shortly.

  Tuesday, 28 April

  Evert had two names for Princess Alexia: Princess Dyslexia or Princess Anorexia.

  People kept throwing him dirty looks.

  ‘Those little princesses seem to have inherited their daddy’s chubby cheeks, too,’ he remarked.

  ‘So in that case you shouldn’t call her Anorexia,’ the lady seated next to Evert snapped, scooting a little distance away from him.

  I took a good look at our King. Willem Alexander looked pained. The smile wasn’t real. The waving wasn’t real. Nothing was real. The same went for the rest of the dignitaries. Not only was every hat, every dress, every shoe a deliberate calculation; every step they took seemed rehearsed.

  Those little princesses are the only ones for whom there may yet be hope. Their waving was a bit lacklustre, their heads turned the other way. Their childish honesty will be knocked out of them soon enough though, mark my words.

  And for the first time in sixty years, the Queen Mum, Princess Beatrix, is putting her feet up in front of the telly at home. From time to time she waves at the screen. It’s a reflex.

  Yesterday afternoon Geert and I rode our scooters over to Ransdorp, and all of a sudden found ourselves slap bang in the middle of the Orange parade. A moment of inattention and we were hemmed in between two festively decorated farm vehicles and had to follow the procession. We promptly acquired some fans, who insisted we try our hand at jousting on our scooters. And so we did. The spectators loudly cheered us on. Geert captured a respectable fourth place, and of course we had to drink to that. We had quite a few drinks, in fact. It was lucky we didn’t encounter any police checkpoints on the way home. Geert and I agreed: this was the best Queen’s Day we’d had in many years. Long live the King.

  Wednesday, 29 April

  Last night I asked Evert where he was yesterday afternoon, as I’d stopped by for a game of chess and found only Mo. He replied that he’d gone for a little constitutional in his wheelchair.

  ‘Aren’t you fibulating a bit, Evert?’ (I just made up a new verb: to fibulate.)

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Are you fibulating me?’

  He stared at me nonplussed.

  ‘Fibulating is telling fibs you even start believing yourself. It’s a common condition in Alzheimer’s patients,’ I said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  I told him I happened to have seen the Connexion minibus drop him off, wheelchair and all, at about 4 p.m. There was a brief silence.

  ‘OK, Henk,’ he finally said, ‘since you insist: I went to see the doctor.’

  After a great deal of insistence on my part, he finally admitted that for the past few months he’d been losing about a kilo every two to three weeks, and if that were to continue, he’d be down to zero kilos eighteen months from now.

  The GP had referred him to an internist.

  ‘That will set me back a couple of kilos,’ he said with a grin.

  He made me promise to keep my mouth shut about it.

  I did not sleep well.

  Thursday, 30 April

  ‘We live in a land of milk and honey,’ said Mrs Hoensbroek.

  ‘I don’t like milk, and I don’t like honey either, come to think of it,’ said Mr Bakker.

  Bakker is an eternally dissatisfied fellow. Mrs Hoensbroek is a woman who is always content. She once tried to return the portion of her state pension that was left unspent at the end of the month, slipping two twenty-Euro bills in an envelope addressed to the government, and putting it in the post. It created bureaucratic mayhem. It took months for those forty euros to find their way back into Mrs Hoensbroek’s bank account. The entire operation must have cost the state hundreds.

  As far as the land of milk and honey goes: we have dropped from fourth to seventh place in the ranks of happiest countries in the world. Overtaken by Finland, Canada and Iceland. Switzerland is number one. All of Scandinavia is in the top ten. Africa isn’t doing so well. Of the twenty unhappiest nations in the world, seventeen are in Africa. It’s no wonder, then, that quite a few Africans come looking for happiness in Western Europe. The numbers are from the 2015 World Happiness Report.

  I don’t know which politician I trust less: Bram Moszkowicz or Henk Krol. It’s amazing how many votes they stand to receive, going by the latest polls. It’s always astonished me to see the wide support clowns and crooks are able to muster. Watching old newsreels of that loudmouth Mussolini, you’d think, now there’s a bloke only his mother could love. But no, millions of Italians loved him.

  Friday, 1 May

  The Director’s Office and Board of Trustees are pleased to congratulate the new members of the Residents’ Committee:

  Mrs L. van der Horst

  Mrs R. Travemundi

  Mrs E. Lacroix

  Mr H. Groen

  Mr G. Gorter

  We trust that we will have a fruitful collaboration.

  Mrs F. H. Stelwagen, MA, Director

  This brief missive was distributed to all the residents this morning. Mrs Stelwagen, MA, did not bother wasting too many words on us. We are having our first official meeting this evening at 7:30, and have been assigned a conference room downstairs. I’m especially curious to see what E. Lacroix has to say for herself. What kind of ideas does our fifth committee member have? Is she good for a laugh? Does she enjoy a glass of wine or two? And what does that E stand for?

  There’s all sorts of gossip about the new resident. Our first Turk. They say he’s a Muslim. A rumour immediately started going round that from now on there would be a halal choice on the menu.

  I did a quick Internet search on halal (good) and haram (forbidden) food, and came to the conclusion that it’s all a bit complicated. All kinds of things are prohibited: pork, of course, but they’re not allowed to eat any carnivores either. Or any animal that has died a natural death, hasn’t been bled to death, is nursing, or is an insect (a Muslim on a bicycle had best keep his mouth clamped firmly shut). Shrimp are problematic; one Muslim sect says you can have a shrimp cocktail, another says you can’t. Not all Muslims agree about roasted mule either. One thing is certain: Cook won’t know his way around all those rules.
/>   What is it about gods and their daft diet restrictions? Don’t they have anything better to do than to make food preparation more complicated than necessary? Let them pay more attention to the commandment against murder and manslaughter for a start. And get on with it please!

  ‘My god forbids me to eat Brussels sprouts,’ Leonie likes to say when they’re on the menu. See, now that is a sensible god. I can’t eat oysters, but oysters are never on the menu here, so He doesn’t have to go to the trouble of issuing a commandment about that.

  Saturday, 2 May

  The E is for Eugenie, she enjoys a glass of rosé, she’s good for a bit of a laugh, and her suggestions are somewhat self-serving.

  Mrs Eugenie Lacroix, besides being an artist, is a very strange bird. She actually had no idea what kind of committee this was, but did hope that ‘something to do with art’ could be made to happen for the residents. Her first notion was to have an art show to exhibit her own work, and then, once everyone was sufficiently inspired by that, an exhibition of the other inmates’ artistic efforts.

  The Old-But-Not-Dead members exchanged glances. It couldn’t do any harm. And it would buy our committee one very happy artist …

  ‘Good idea, Mrs Lacroix,’ said Ria, ‘that’s definitely something we’ll consider.’

  After that Eugenie didn’t have much to say for herself, but, smiling benignly, managed to drain a bottle of rosé. Edward raised a glass to her more than once: ‘To art!’

  Great. For once we don’t have Evert, but find ourselves saddled with another sponge. At the end of the night she proposed a toast: ‘To arssht!’

  The Old-But-Not-Dead members, on the other hand, drank sparingly and had a serious discussion. An invitation has gone out for our first meeting with Stelwagen. We decided it was best not to weigh down the first agenda with too many items at once. Three is a good start.

  The vacancy rate, and its possible consequences

  Art exhibits for and by the residents

  A monthly high tea to be organized by the residents

  We expect quite a bit of resistance in the form of rules, regulations and statutes. And if those don’t do it, the director can always hide behind ‘objections made by the board’.

  The Turkish gentleman whose arrival had been met with some concern isn’t Muslim at all. He can eat everything, halal or haram, he doesn’t give a damn.

  ‘Pass me that ham please. Allahu Akbar.’

  He’s Christian-Orthodox something or other, but only at Easter and Christmas, he says. The rest of the year he keeps his worship to a minimum. Nice bloke. His name is Okcegulcik, but it’s possible I’ve got some of the letters mixed up.

  Sunday, 3 May

  There’s been yet another eavesdropping scandal. At first the Germans were spied on by the Americans, and now the Germans have helped the Americans by listening in on the French. It’s France’s turn to be outraged. The Russians are even more brazen. They gave the G20 heads of state a little present each: a USB stick loaded with sightseeing tips, as well as a bunch of secret hacking-thingies.

  ‘Everyone listens in on everyone else, given the chance,’ was Edward’s take. ‘And in fact the most worrying part is that we hear about it so often,’ he went on, ‘because that means there’s much more of it going on which never comes out.’

  ‘If you can’t see the tip, you don’t know where the iceberg is,’ Mrs Schansleh sighed, queen of the creative proverb.

  Our home is not immune to eavesdropping or spying either. A great number of the inmates are profoundly curious. Whenever the Old-But-Not-Dead gather round a table, some old biddy invariably comes shuffling along whose support hose just happens to need pulling up right beside us. The fact that most of the spies around here are a bit deaf and myopic makes the espionage rather less subtle than it might be. We definitely don’t have any Mata Haris in here. I don’t want to sound like a misogynist, but the surveillance of fellow residents is largely a female occupation. The ladies form a close-knit intelligence network of independently operating spies, out to collect juicy material for gossip and scandalmongering.

  To these intelligence professionals, we are a problematic stronghold to conquer, since bugging phones or hacking computers is tough when there are so few phones or computers to break into. Lucky bastards, really. Because listening in on us would be very boring work.

  Evert has been ill for several days. This means I have to take his dog out. He is being looked after by a sister from the nursing floor. I bumped into her this morning and asked how Evert was. She wasn’t permitted to say, ‘but he’s not very well’.

  According to Evert, it’s just a touch of the flu.

  Monday, 4 May

  The municipality of Alphen aan den Rijn has refused to provide a ninety-year-old citizen with a stair lift.

  What it really means is that the council is saying that he ‘should have moved to the ground floor long ago, shouldn’t he?’

  That hasn’t gone down very well here. Three of the residents have sent the mayor of Alphen aan den Rijn a stern handwritten letter. Therefore I’m sure those people in the town hall will soon see the error of their ways.

  We are blessed! At least we only have to deal with Mrs Stelwagen. If an independently living senior wants to have his windows washed, he has to deal with the Social Insurance Bank, the Central Administrative Office, various local agencies and the Tax Authority. All for one measly grant request. With the result that one washed window may easily wind up costing €100, if you count all the bureaucrats’ salaries.

  Thousands of caregivers have been waiting months to be paid, courtesy of the new Health Care Law.

  So: hooray for the old people’s home! We enjoy a wonderfully carefree existence – at least as far as window washing goes.

  Edward has asked if I’ll come with him to the WW2 memorial ceremony at the war monument here in our neighbourhood. I said it sounded like a good plan, but then asked him why he wanted to go. He tried his best to explain, but his aphasia is becoming more and more trying. Finally he wrote it down on a notepad: it’s because he’s getting so annoyed at the residents always going on about their own trivial deprivations in the war. They seem to think the poverty of their childhood, with nostalgic war stories about bicycles with wooden tyres, is more compelling than Auschwitz.

  Tuesday, 5 May

  It was a good idea to escape the home on Remembrance Day and attend the memorial ceremony in the square instead. Out in the open air (the chirping of birds and the shouts of toddlers notwithstanding), the two minutes of silence seemed quieter and far more affecting, as well as more hopeful, thanks to the considerable turnout. Afterwards the local brass band played the national anthem. I was genuinely moved. Edward thanked me, but I had just as much reason to thank him. Back home we raised a glass to freedom, and, as if he’d smelled it, along comes Evert in his wheelchair to join us in our toast. He was still looking a bit pale, but ‘There’s nothing that kills the bugs like a wee dram,’ he said. It wasn’t long before our artist friend Eugenie wandered over and asked us if we wouldn’t mind if she joined us for a glass of rosé.

  ‘I have my own bottle.’

  We weren’t that keen on her joining us, actually. Edward and I are too well brought up to tell someone she’s not welcome to sit with us, but Evert has no such compunction, fortunately.

  ‘My dear Lacroix, we do mind terribly. We’re talking shop, men’s business, you know. You’re welcome to join us tomorrow. That is, if we happen to be discussing women’s business then.’

  Eugenie was rather taken aback, and shuffled off.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit mean?’ I sputtered.

  ‘Stop whining, Groen; if you don’t put your foot down now, you’ll be saddled with a crazy artist with a drinking problem for the rest of your days. And one alcoholic in the bunch is enough. Pour me another.’ Evert leaned back, contented, in his wheelchair.

  Wednesday, 6 May

  This morning I had another visit with Grietje.

 
‘Oh, how nice! Have you come to see me?’ she said, cheerful as ever. She is always happy to receive visitors, which makes it easier to bear. But a little problem has arisen of late. The moment I set foot in the nursing wing and Mrs Van Tilburg spots me, she’s all over me. She’ll sit down on my lap given half a chance, so I am forced to remain standing until a nurse gently steers her away. Sometimes it takes a while, and I’m standing there having to undergo her caresses.

  ‘Come, Mrs Van Tilburg, you’ll make your husband jealous,’ says the sister when she finally shows up. Then, sending me a wide, toothless smile, Van Tilburg toddles out of the lounge on the nurse’s arm. Sometimes she’ll turn and look back at me with a sly wink.

  Grietje watches the whole performance with solemn interest.

  Then we’ll have a cup of tea and a macaroon. They’re her favourite, and I always bring her some when I visit.

  ‘How did you know they’re my favourite?’ she says every time.