On the Bright Side

by Hendrik Groen

  But it’s not all carping and spite. Mrs Ligtermoet just cooed, hanging up, ‘Such a dear, that one.’

  I don’t know to whom I should entrust my funeral wish list, now that Evert has given it back. Who should be saddled with it? I can’t make up my mind. I don’t want to wait too long to decide either, because you could die before you know it. Which would be a blessing in disguise, actually. But I don’t want them playing Mieke Telkamp’s warbled version of ‘Amazing Grace’ at my funeral. Even though at that point I won’t be able to hear it, I am entitled to my posthumous pride.

  Monday, 29 June

  Next Friday Evert and I are off to Uden, to visit his son Jan and daughter-in-law Ester. I am sure it will be fun, but I rather dread having to witness Evert telling them he is terminally ill. It isn’t right, I know, but I am an ostrich and prefer to hide from the truth.

  In Greece the cashpoints are empty and the country is on the verge of bankruptcy. The newspapers are urging people who’ve booked a Greek holiday to bring plenty of cash. I imagine that every Bulgarian pickpocket under the sun must also be planning a working holiday to Greece. Never before has so much loose cash been expected to traipse along Greece’s shopping streets.

  Actually, Mrs De Roos is leaving for a Cretan holiday next Saturday. We’re hugging ourselves with glee, and not only on account of the felicitous pun (Cretan/cretin). De Roos, the head of housekeeping, is a spiteful woman who doesn’t like people, has no sense of humour and very little patience. It’s a mystery how she ever chose a career in the service industry, and then, to make matters worse, ended up in a home for the aged. Let’s just put it this way: she isn’t exactly doted on here. The fact that she’s now fretting about her holiday on Crete does not elicit much sympathy. We wouldn’t wish her to be mugged, but a lengthy air traffic controllers’ strike, once she is stuck on that island, would be met back home with muffled cheers.

  A heat wave is in the offing. On Friday it will get to 33 degrees.

  ‘There will be deaths,’ sighed Evert, with a wicked grin. ‘Every time there’s a heat wave, our population is decimated.’ His table companions stared at him in horror.

  Tuesday, 30 June

  It’s getting serious: the National Heat Wave Plan is going into effect!

  I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but what a sense of security it gives me! With a plan like that in place, surely nothing bad can happen to us.

  France is another country that could use a heat wave plan; I read that during the last heat wave, in 2003, 20,000 people died within two weeks. (It didn’t say how many of them would have died anyway, but the consternation was sown.)

  The Heat Wave Plan is aimed largely at the elderly, the sick and the obese. We have a good number of residents here who are old, sick and obese, so getting them through the heat all in one piece is quite a job. The body’s air conditioning doesn’t work very well in the elderly, nor for that matter does the body’s central heating system. Many oldies are therefore always too hot or too cold.

  The main thing is to have plenty to drink, but we sometimes forget, because we’re so busy sitting at the window. We tend not to feel thirsty. What makes it even harder is that drinking a lot also means having to go to the loo a lot. Peeing is a strenuous undertaking, which we like to postpone as long as possible. Some people just do it in their nappy, whether by accident or on purpose. It doesn’t make the air smell any fresher, especially when it’s hot, but it does save a laborious trip to the loo.

  Other National Heat Wave Plan recommendations: don’t sit in the sun, and avoid unnecessary exertion. Well, there you are! Finally, people are advised to open their windows at night.

  ‘So I didn’t sleep a wink because of all the mosquitoes,’ Mrs Slothouwer complained.

  ‘Mosquitoes are very fond of sour blood,’ Evert cheerfully explained.

  Wednesday, 1 July

  The heat has claimed its first victim: a zebra finch. Mrs Bregman had withdrawn to her sleeping alcove, with the curtains closed and the fan going, but she’d left the birdcage out on the windowsill in the sun. The poor zebra finch couldn’t take it. Sister Morales, whose Spanish blood makes her more able to resist the heat, took it upon herself to take a temperature reading: right inside the window, it was 57 degrees. A case of slow cooking.

  ‘But it’s a tropical bird, isn’t it, so shouldn’t it be able to take the heat?’ Bregman blubbered to anyone willing to listen. It could be that it simply died of old age, of course. The parakeets in the hall downstairs are still alive. There’s a sign on the cage saying they shouldn’t be fed prawn crackers. Apparently someone once did.

  ‘It doesn’t say you can’t feed them any other Indonesian food, such as rijsttafel … or sambal …’ Graeme once remarked.

  The trip to visit Evert’s son in Brabant has been postponed for a fortnight. Management has advised us not to travel on account of the heat. According to the National Meteorological Institute, on Friday it will be 31 degrees, and Saturday 35 degrees. Not the most pleasant weather for outings or socializing. If you’re trying to move as little as possible, you might as well do it in your room, with the blinds drawn. Our home doesn’t have air conditioning; too expensive, probably, or it wasn’t standard when this place was built back in the 1960s. Which means that during the day the temperature in my room fluctuates in the region of 27 degrees. Management did make a fan available for every resident, and downstairs in the conversation lounge there’s a portable air-conditioning machine. That helps by a few degrees. Other than that, there isn’t much to do about the heat wave but calmly sit it out. Literally.

  Thursday, 2 July

  The branch manager of the supermarket yesterday wanted to have a word with Mrs Duits.

  ‘Good afternoon, Ma’am, may I help you with something?’

  ‘Help me?’

  ‘My colleague tells me you’ve been sitting here all afternoon.’

  Mrs Duits had gone to the Albert Heijn supermarket after lunch because it’s so nice and cool in there. She sat down at the little table where customers are invited to enjoy a free cup of coffee or tea. It’s become a gathering spot for people down on their luck and women in headscarves. One wonders if that was what old Albert had in mind. After three cups of free tea, Mrs Duits had nodded off a bit, until the manager came along to wake her up.

  It must be said: in the Albert Heijn it’s a good 7 degrees cooler than in our home.

  Mrs Van Dam is especially affected by this heat. She suffers from the chills, and so possesses only winter clothes. She pays for it during a heat wave. Yesterday afternoon she was a pitiful sight. After perspiring all day, white salt stains had formed under her armpits, and the heavy synthetic material had given her neck a nasty red rash. Since she’s already all black and blue from her Parkinson’s, she looked like a walking national flag.

  ‘You’d better watch out that your dress doesn’t spontaneously burst into flames in this heat,’ Leonie said.

  ‘Oh, could it?’ Van Dam squealed in alarm.

  Friday, 3 July

  Life in here never offers a wide range of exciting events to start with, but now it all boils down to one thing: the heat wave.

  ‘Oh, I wish I was dead,’ Mrs Slothouwer wailed.

  Ha, if only you were, I couldn’t help thinking after hearing her say it for the tenth time. ‘You might perhaps consider expressing your death wish just a little less insistently,’ I suggested as genially as I could. She stared at me in surprise, and then sent me a look that intimated she wouldn’t mind seeing me keel over first before her own departure for the happy hunting ground.

  I received support from Mrs Smit: ‘I wouldn’t mind either if Our Dear Lord came for me now, but there’s no need to shout it from the rooftops.’

  Nicely put, Mrs Smit.

  Tomorrow is the start of the Tour de France, in Utrecht. The forecast says it will be 34 degrees.

  ‘The Pope continues to surprise us,’ said Graeme. ‘This time he’s going to try chewing coca leav
es when he visits Colombia. It seems the Father of the Church is keen to sample the pleasures of this world. Maybe he should try a woman too, some time.’

  ‘Tssk,’ came the sound of indignation from nearby. That was the Catholic sector.

  ‘Sorry, that wasn’t very respectful of me,’ said Graeme, who was on a roll. ‘I mean, in regards to the poor woman.’

  Saturday, 4 July

  I had a restless night, with little sleep and lots of mosquitoes. I am too slow now to swat and kill them. The slipper kept landing uselessly against the wall, and I had no citronella. I’ll have to go out and buy some.

  I plan to have a morning siesta right after coffee, then back downstairs for a light lunch, after which I shall install myself in front of the box at 2 p.m. Blinds lowered and curtains drawn, glass of water and pack of biscuits within reach. When it’s over 30 degrees, there’s nothing more soothing than allowing the Tour de France to wash over you gently for hours, like a cool footbath. I like to change the channel every thirty minutes, switching back and forth between the Dutch and Belgian sportscasters. I don’t need any company, they’ll only drown out the commentary with misinformed observations. There are very few cycling experts here; Mr Pot is the only one who’s quite knowledgeable on the subject, but he’s a fount of cranky opinions, so I’m not inviting him. If anyone knocks on the door, I won’t answer.

  Besides, there’s very little chance that someone will be dropping in. During this heat the corridors are deserted in the afternoon. Everyone’s in their room dozing in the dark. Every ounce of strength is frugally saved for breathing and for withstanding the high temperatures. Sometimes we don’t even come down for tea. We don’t even have the energy to talk about the weather. The nurse looks in on us twice a day, just to check if we’re still alive. If we are, she urges us to stay hydrated – drink and keep drinking!

  Sunday, 5 July

  Another similarity between little children and the elderly: they can’t eat without making a dreadful mess. Bibs are de rigueur, and plastic tablecloths too. Not a meal goes by without trails of gravy stains from the pan to the plate. Potatoes are dropped on to laps, peas roll off the table and pudding drips on to trousers and skirts.

  Our champion food dribbler is Mrs Langeveld, the time she ate a Magnum at 32 degrees. It was fascinating, and also rather disgusting, to see her doughy tongue extend slowly towards the ice cream, then pull in again equally slowly, only to have most of the ice cream and chocolate coating land on her chin, hands, neck and frock. You couldn’t make a bigger mess if you tried. After that ice cream she really needed a shower.

  To be honest: I am not a stranger to clumsiness myself. In the past three days I have knocked over one container of yoghurt, spilled one cup of coffee and found myself sharing a seat with a potted plant.

  ‘Groen in clover,’ was Edward’s reaction to that last mishap. The plants in here are luckily quite used to that sort of thing. I have the sense that the hot weather is making me even slower and more ungainly than I normally am.

  Monday, 6 July

  It’s become a great new tradition: half an hour after the end of each stage of the Tour de France (there have been two so far), I join Evert in a glass of something very good, actually, something that’s the finest of the fine. The money must be spent as quickly as possible. Then Evert asks for a short summary of that day’s Tour.

  ‘I’m not a big fan of cycling myself, but I do like to hear you talk about it.’

  Then I’ll tell him what happened that day, and we drink a toast to the winner, no matter what nationality he is. Then we’ll play a game of lightning chess, in order not to be late for the evening meal.

  The Greek population’s ‘No’ has not gone unnoticed here. Extra cash is being stuffed into socks, more biscuits and sweets are being squirrelled away, and people are expressing a great deal of sympathy for poor Nana Mouskouri. The threat of a shortage of feta or raki, however, is unlikely to affect most of the residents that much.

  On to the order of the day: the weather. Fortunately the heat has died down somewhat. Except for the zebra finch, there are no victims to mourn.

  ‘Stelwagen said it’s all due to the precautionary measures she took,’ Sister Morales confided to me. ‘That’s what she told us in the staff meeting. Well, isn’t that something! She didn’t do a thing!’

  Morales is growing less and less enamoured with Mrs Stelwagen. Something to do with a less than stellar performance review. Since that happened, she has been gossiping even more enthusiastically than before. I don’t really like it, but I haven’t yet wanted to confront her with it. Add to that the fact that even though I dislike gossip, I do want to find out as much as I can about Stelwagen.

  Tuesday, 7 July

  The director has informed the Residents’ Committee, in a letter, that there is no financial leeway in the 2016 budget for the construction of a boules court, but she will do her best to clear the necessary financial decks for 2017.

  ‘Therefore the court could be ready as early as the summer of 2017.’

  AS EARLY AS!?

  I am considering writing back that, statistically speaking, a third of the current residents won’t be able to use the court because they’ll be dead by then.

  ‘We may live slowly, but with death snapping at our heels, haste is of the essence.’ I think that’s a rather good ending for my letter to Stelwagen; that ‘of the essence’ sounds elegant, although I’m not sure if that’s the right use of it.

  Mrs Schansleh recently put it this way: ‘Time is slipping through my fingers like a ripe banana.’

  Several fights that have recently broken out at a German swimming pool have led to security screenings. I suspect it’s to prevent people from trying to smuggle in baseball bats in their swimming trunks.

  I would love to go swimming again. After a thorough memory search, I came to the conclusion that it must have been about eighteen years since my last foray into a pool.

  ‘You never forget how to swim, same as riding a bike,’ someone remarked recently. I would suggest that the person in question, if he’s thinking of climbing on a bike again, start off not far from the A&E entrance. He’ll never stay on for more than 20 metres. And so now I’m told that one doesn’t forget how to swim either. Yet I would advise someone in his eighties against climbing up to the high diving board. Best stick to the paddling pool instead.

  Actually, maybe swimming would be something for the Old-But-Not-Dead. Surely they must have an hour reserved for the elderly at the local pool? Not as one of our mystery tour outings, but simply as an activity for anyone who’d enjoy it. I’ll find out if there’s any interest. Meanwhile I shall have to dig around to see if I still have a bathing costume somewhere.

  Twenty-six years ago the wall separating East and West came down, to great jubilation. Now Hungary has started building a 150-kilometre-long fence along its border with Serbia. There’s a great call for new walls and fences. Even here in our care home, despite the fact that, for many of the residents, the outside world is already an impenetrable fortress.

  Wednesday, 8 July

  I stare, amazed, at all the tattoos one sees in the shopping centre when the weather’s nice. Modesty and good taste have flown out the window a bit: eagles, snakes, flags, hearts, cars, naked women. I have to ask myself what one of those great big eagle tattoos will look like when it’s soaring across the mottled, wrinkled skin of an eighty-five-year-old grandpa. A most bedraggled sort of raptor, I expect. Nor will the inked portrait of a loved one be a spitting image fifty years later. No, pity the nurses who some fifty years from now will have to wash the wrinkled creases and hides of the garishly tattooed in their dotage.

  For that matter, you see more and more people who even in their forties and fifties seem to think they’re improving their appearance by adorning their bodies with tawdry cartoons. I have yet to see anyone tattooed with a lovely reproduction of Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring. Or with Paulus Potter’s Young Bull – nice and macho.
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  Ria’s take on it: blame it on the footballers, who are the role models for the young. They don’t train hard enough, and so have too much time to spend at the hairdresser’s and tattoo parlour.

  I have also seen youngsters with great big holes in their earlobes. I wonder if those saucers in the bottom lip favoured by some African tribes could also become fashionable in the Netherlands? I can’t rule anything out.

  Thursday, 9 July

  The resident with the longest track history here has left us: after ninety-eight years, Mrs Schepers yesterday breathed her last. She lived here for twenty-four years, longer than she had ever lived anywhere else. When she first came here in 1991, the rules about moving in were far more lenient. You could apply when you turned seventy, if I’m not mistaken, and there would be a place for you. Mrs Schepers outlived hundreds of other inmates, and saw dozens of attendants come and go. She also outlasted five directors and seven cooks. She kept a close eye on everything, and never expressed any dissatisfaction. On the other hand, she never let a day go by without remarking, ‘Such a shame my husband can’t be here to enjoy this.’ She came here as a widow, so she must have said it at least 8,500 times since then.

  This past year she’d become a ghost-resident: the ones who seldom leave their rooms. Meals and beverages were brought up to her. She had just barely enough energy for the transfer from bed to chair and back again. There are about twenty others in here whiling away their last days that way. On weekdays they see no one but the nurses; on the weekend they see only their offspring. If they’re lucky they die peacefully in their own beds, and so never have to go into the nursing home.