Ria and Leonie were a charming sight in their bathing costumes, and rarely have I seen such orderly lap-swimming. Edward, on the other hand, displayed a rather more choppy style. There was a great deal of splashing, both above and under the water, and a lot of noise to go with it, but I couldn’t tell what kind of stroke it was. Each of his limbs seemed to be doing something different. ‘Free-style butterfly’ may come closest to defining it. A novel swimming method not exactly designed for rapid forward propulsion.
Antoine came along to keep us company. He sat on the bleachers, proudly watching his wife. He would have liked to go swimming, but, to put it in his own words, he ‘sloughs off’ too much. When it comes to old people and swimming pools, it’s best not to dwell too much on what ends up in the water.
It was invigorating, and we’re going to do it more often.
Friday, 14 August
‘How long have you lived here?’ I asked out of politeness rather than interest. Mrs Schaap’s forehead puckered. It seemed the answer wasn’t so simple.
‘Long,’ was the reply, at last.
‘And how long might that be, approximately?’ I asked.
She had no idea. One, two, five years? I decided not to insist.
Schaap is not the brightest bulb, but the fact that she’s lost her sense of time says something about life here in this home. Many of the residents rarely venture outside, if ever. It’s fear, lack of interest or no one to push your wheelchair. And if you never go out, you lose your connection to the seasons. The days grow longer or shorter, but it happens so gradually that it doesn’t really register if you only see it through the window. The same goes for the colour of the leaves on the trees. Sometimes the world on the other side of the glass is suddenly white as snow. That may provoke one of them into remembering, with a little shock, winter as it used to be. Inside, each day is the same as any other day. The same people, the same food, the same room with the same furniture, the same temperature, 23 degrees (unless there’s a heat wave, like yesterday). So then what’s a week, a month, a year?
I should count my blessings, even if it’s only because I can still experience summer, autumn and winter by sight, sense and smell.
Saturday, 15 August
Mr Helder is a nice bloke who still has all his marbles, but he does have a strange habit: whenever he sees a knife, fork, scissors, anything that’s sharp, in fact, he hides it out of sight. I asked him yesterday why he does that. He told me that when he was a boy of ten, he accidentally stabbed his brother in the eye with a pair of scissors while they were wrestling.
‘The trauma has haunted me all my life,’ said Helder. ‘I can’t bear to have anything sharp around me. Seeing knives or scissors makes me break out in a sweat, something compels me to banish them from sight. That’s the reason I usually take my meals in my room. I eat with a spoon.’
It’s a foible to which he is resigned.
‘I can hardly ask them to remove every fork and knife from the table at dinner time, can I?’
I was moved by his candour.
It’s a pity, because I wanted to nominate Helder for the Old-But-Not-Dead Club. I told him so.
‘I am honoured, but must, alas, decline. I fear I would be a disrupting presence. Perhaps you could involve me indirectly from time to time?’
Judging from that reply alone, the Old-But-Not-Dead Club would have been lucky to have him.
This morning there was a dark spot on the back of Mrs Van Diemen’s frock shaped like a boat viewed from above. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think what. Edward provided the answer.
‘Mrs Van Diemen, perhaps you shouldn’t iron your frocks yourself in future.’
She looked embarrassed.
‘I was listening to a song by Willeke Alberti on the radio, and went to turn up the volume, but I forgot to lift the iron off my dress.’ She asked us please not to mention it to the nurse. No, of course we wouldn’t, but why not cut that dress up for cleaning rags? Mrs Van Diemen thought that was a waste. She’d only had the dress seven years.
Sunday, 16 August
If you pinch ageing skin between your fingers, it sticks together and stands up.
Now that I see it written down, I wonder if I haven’t already mentioned it before.
(I frequently forget whether I’ve said something before. The possibility that I’m repeating myself is something I’ll just have to live with; I don’t have the energy to reread 500 diary entries to check if I’ve written the same thing before.)
A lady on the nursing ward does that all day long: pinching the old flesh on her arm, letting go and observing that it’s still standing up. She stares at it until it subsides. Then she does it again, but this time it’s the other arm. It does keep her occupied.
It has been a while, but next Sunday we’re off again: the Old-But-Not-Dead Club is going day-tripping. Ria and Antoine are the organizers and refuse to lift even the very edge of the veil of secrecy. A 10 a.m. departure and home just in time for dinner.
There was an altercation at the billiards table. Mr Dickhout was accused of cheating.
‘It’s possible I didn’t count it right,’ Dickhout admitted in hopes of avoiding a lengthy discussion. But his opponent had already walked off in a huff.
‘I’ll never play with you again. Never.’
Feuds are quick to emerge in here. There are people who refuse to look at each other for years on account of coffee accidentally spilled on a dress, a handkerchief disappearing into the wrong pocket, or a cheated card at Klaberjass. How petty can you get?
Monday, 17 August
Evert showed me his new bracelet, which says: ‘DO NOT RESUSCITATE ME’. His son Jan purchased about five of them for him on the Internet. So Evert has a few extra to give away. Not just to people who want one, but also to people Evert thinks ought not to be resuscitated. He’s thinking primarily of his arch-enemy, Mrs Slothouwer.
‘I’ve offered her the bracelet twice now, but she refuses to take it, the old witch. I’m trying to find a way to snap it on unnoticed, while she’s dozing or something.’
I am in charge of seeing that the directive on his own bracelet is followed. I have heard from an unreliable source that Stelwagen isn’t particularly fond of these bracelets. She thinks it’s bad for the home’s reputation if some old crock keels over and the staff just stands there watching, arms crossed, until the victim finally stops moving. According to Sister Morales, who is fond of spreading Stelwagen gossip, our director has charged the staff with making sure the non-resuscitation happens out of sight of the other residents if at all possible. And to double-check what it says on the bracelet. There’s a story making the rounds that two attendants stood by as a lady wearing one of those bracelets breathed her last, but later found that she had written the names of her dead cats over the original text in magic marker.
Evert has given me one of those bracelets as well. About time too. I kept putting off getting one for myself. ‘Why do today what you can postpone until tomorrow?’ the ostrich in me would whisper in my ear. ‘It’s not as if today is the day you’ll die of a heart attack.’
Who are you kidding, Groen? If you knew ahead of time when you’d be having a heart attack, you know you’d find a quiet spot well in advance and wait for it. In your own bed, for example.
Tuesday, 18 August
Yesterday was the second time the Residents’ Committee met with the director. Two important items on the agenda: the growing vacancy rate and the bottlenecks at the lifts.
Sadly, I must once again tell you that we were fobbed off with much hemming, hawing and empty platitudes.
The future plans for our home are still under discussion with the local council, the board of directors and the supervisory board. Transition, tailored care, revenue, humanitarian considerations, structural adaptations, budget cuts in the field of Public Assistance; Stelwagen just nattered on and on.
‘But does the board want to close down our home, or not?’ Graeme asked when she was fi
nally finished.
That was something to which she could not, with reference to all that she had just said, give an unequivocal answer.
‘So you can’t guarantee that our care home will not be closed?’ Leonie insisted.
She could not at this moment make any guarantees.
As for the bottlenecks at the lifts, she was fully aware of the problem, and she was also in a position to tell us she was setting up an investigative committee to thoroughly examine traffic flow issues inside the building. She did not deem it necessary for now to have any resident representatives on that committee. However, she could definitely assure us that the residents’ safety had never been out of consideration, not even for a moment.
All our objections, arguments and suggestions were either drowned in a swamp of managerial jargon or put off until a next meeting. It was enough to make you tear your remaining hairs out.
At a certain point Leonie couldn’t stand listening any longer. ‘Are you taking the residents seriously, or aren’t you? I can’t help having the sense that the management and the board tend to think that the residents are here to serve them, instead of the other way round.’
Stelwagen did not blanch. ‘If I have given you that impression, I am truly sorry. I can assure you that blah blah blah …’
In conclusion she complimented the committee at length on setting up the no-ailments table. She knows: always wrap up the meeting on a positive note. Then she looked at the clock. Our time was up.
She didn’t seem her usual self to me, actually. I can’t put my finger on what was different about her. A bit distracted, perhaps?
Wednesday, 19 August
Evert came to tell me he’ll be picking up a vial of fresh blood from the hospital every three weeks. As if it was a gift.
He has been to the internist, who found that he was anaemic.
‘That’s to be expected, with colon cancer, so I’m not going to get too excited about it. Apart from that, given the hopeless situation, everything’s fine.’
I didn’t know if I should say something comforting or something funny. Neither one came out.
‘You can close your mouth again, you know, if you have nothing to say.’ He went on, ‘Death is snapping at my heels, but we shall ignore that as much as possible. I always say, in the words of my old friend Carel: Carpe diem, but … memento mori.’
I was again left with nothing to say.
‘Takes you by surprise, don’t it, that I know Latin?’
‘Doesn’t it.’
‘I knew you’d say that, you old school-prig.’
I asked if he would like to come with me tomorrow to the Ij River, to watch the big ships come in for Sail Amsterdam. ‘Geert can let you borrow a mobility scooter. His son will bring one over if we ask.’
I saw him flinch a bit. It’s a sore spot for big-mouth Evert: he’s scared of getting on a scooter.
No, he wasn’t very interested in boats. And he’d already seen the sailboats, five years ago. And there would be far too many people to be driving round in one of those things.
‘Just admit it, you’re too chicken, old friend.’
‘I’m not too chicken, I just don’t want to go tomorrow.’
‘OK, then let’s go Friday, to watch the fireworks.’
He protested that he could see the fireworks perfectly well from his room, but in the end he gave in. We’re going to have a scooter practice session Thursday afternoon in the park, and Friday evening we’ll go. Geert is asking his son to bring us a user-friendly motor-chair.
Thursday, 20 August
The reaction to two old grandpas on their mobility scooters varies. Either people think it’s ‘cute’ or you can see them thinking: ‘What are those two old codgers doing here? Let them get in people’s way somewhere else.’ Yesterday, however, we were received with nothing but sympathy.
Geert and I had made our way to the banks of the Ij to watch the tall ships come in. Geert is mad about boats, and I don’t mind spending an hour or so every five years watching the big sailing ships go by, even if they’re not actually sailing.
The weather was beautiful, there were sandwiches, coffee, cake and sweets in the scooter’s front basket, and we set off early to find a nice spot along the water among the throng of thousands. It went off without a hitch. The people were in the best of moods. Everyone was being nice to one another. People were kind enough to let us through, and we wound up in the front row. It was a shame that the one time in years when my old binoculars would have come in handy, I had left them at home. A little boy next to me let me borrow his from time to time, whenever he had his hands full managing an ice cream cone, a Mars bar or a Coke. The boy was already much too fat, but in this case I thought it best not to mention it.
We even joined the parade on the water for a little while. From our vantage point on the shore, I could tell that the ferry, which makes the crossing in a long diagonal line, was much less crowded than you’d expect. A few crushed toes (‘Oh, don’t worry, I have ten of them, one more or less doesn’t matter’) and a clipped post later, we managed to make our way to the ferry. We made the crossing twice, in the midst of an armada of thousands of little boats teeming round the great three- and four-mast vessels. We were made to get off when we got to the other side, but immediately joined the queue for the return trip again, taking full advantage of our scooters’ tight turning radius. It astonished me that of the many thousands of spectators on shore, there weren’t more with the same idea. The common herd is sometimes hard to fathom.
At night the Old-But-Not-Dead gathered on Graeme’s balcony to watch the fireworks. It was a bit of a squeeze, but convivial as always. With wine and nibbles.
‘You have a better view of it from here, actually, than making the trip all the way over there,’ Evert remarked casually.
‘Wanker! Trying to get out of your first scooter ride, aren’t you?’ That was Geert, who had uttered virtually nothing but monosyllables or two-word sentences the entire day: ‘Nice’, alternating with ‘Very nice’.
Friday, 21 August
Beyond belief: Mrs Quint complained at elevenses that she hadn’t slept a wink on account of the fireworks.
‘Oh, poor you! The fireworks lasted all of fifteen minutes. That’s a long time to be kept awake,’ I commiserated. ‘You must be so tired.’ An angry stare was the answer. It has taken a while, but I find myself more and more often leaving the meek, polite old Hendrik behind.
Yesterday afternoon Evert tried driving the mobility-scooter, but I can hardly say it was a successful effort … My chum had a bad motorcycle accident at the age of seventy, which left him with an irrational fear of anything with an engine. His fear is greater than his big mouth, and that’s saying a lot. At the same time, he realizes that he soon won’t be able to get out of the house any more in his manual wheelchair. His illness is taking its toll, sapping his strength. With an electric wheelchair or a mobility scooter, he could be mobile a while longer.
Evert had helped himself to a bit too much Dutch courage before trying out the scooter Geert lent him, resulting in a rather bizarre driving style with a great deal of erratic manoeuvring. He kept just barely avoiding collisions, but did finally wind up crashing into Geert, who was quite rattled by it. He tried to pretend he wasn’t mad, but couldn’t help cussing and swearing like a drunken sailor. Which, in turn, startled Evert so much that he forgot to be afraid and resumed the lesson as meek as a lamb and slower than a turtle. On arriving home, looking rather pale, he hopped back into his wheelchair.
‘I’ll just go and take a little nap.’
Geert inspected the damage. It wasn’t too serious. Evert had already offered to pay for it four times. ‘For the psychological damage as well. And the emotional.’ That came out sounding not quite right.
Later Geert and I went out to reconnoitre the route for this evening’s fireworks. Piece of cake.
Saturday, 22 August
Impressive! We had front-row seats, right under the firewo
rk smoke with the brilliant colours raining down all over us, so close that you felt the thuds in your belly.
Once we got home, Evert had to grant that it had all been worth it. Not just the fireworks, but rather this late-day victory: notwithstanding his fear, he had managed to ride a mobility scooter. Safe out, safe home, as they say, without one drop of alcohol. Exceedingly slowly, granted. There was one extra hurdle on the way back: the darkness. The dark makes many old folk feel insecure. In old age, it’s the same as when we were kids: when the street lights go on, it’s time to hurry inside.
Sunday, 23 August
We are urged to be prompt. Nephew Stef will arrive with the minivan in fifteen minutes. I had my beige summer suit dry-cleaned specially. I’m also bringing my Maurice Chevalier boater.
Monday, 24 August
After an hour in the van I had worked it out: we were on our way to High Veluwe National Park. It was a splendid day, the perfect temperature for the aged: between 22 and 25 degrees. A fresh breeze was the icing on the cake. Antoine and Ria had it planned down to the last detail. There were three wheelchairs waiting for us at the entrance to the Kröller-Müller Museum, as well as three extra wheelchair-pushers: nephew Edwin, and Evert’s son and grandson. The latter was persuaded to come with the enticement of a small remuneration. The wheelchair parade rolled past the magnificent Van Goghs and other masterpieces, all purchased by Mrs Müller 100 years ago with her husband Kröller’s money. I must say the woman had great taste and foresight. Apparently Van Gogh sold only one painting while he was alive. Dead at the age of thirty-seven, and never aware of the millions of fans he has had since. Sad.
On the Bright Side Page 22