Everything There Was

by Hanna Bervoets

  “Shoot!”

  That’s what Natalie whooped. Perhaps because she thought that was the way I talked.

  Some people say: If women aren’t friends, they’re enemies. I think there’s also something in-between. Natalie and I aren’t friends – I don’t even know whether we like each other – but we do try to adapt ourselves to the other’s vernacular. Adaptation seems to me the opposite of enmity. And at the same time a bad basis for friendship.

  “Do you take the pill or anything?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Natalie answered. “I got sterilized, after Yuri was born.” Before I could ask more, she said, “But I don’t think I’m doing so well, hormonally speaking. I’ve got shooting pains in my breasts and headaches and stuff. You?”

  I nodded, “Undernourishment disrupts your hormonal balance.”

  Now Natalie lifted her dress, “Look at my legs! For a year I had them lasered every month, and suddenly there’s hairs growing everywhere.”

  Together we studied Natalie’s lower leg. Thick black hairs. Natalie carefully rubbed them with her index finger, as if she was petting a frightened little creature.

  “Yes,” I said, “That’s the same thing. Your liver function has been disrupted. And the liver regulates the binding of androgen.”

  “Hmm,” said Natalie.

  We didn’t talk about the sterilization after that.

  * * *

  “So I don’t know why she had it done.”

  “But it is a fact that many women absolutely do not want to get pregnant again after suffering a postnatal psychosis, depression, or something else that needs to be suppressed with Halopax,” said Barry, nodding like he wanted to agree with himself. “They could well be Natalie’s”

  “In any case not Leo’s.”

  * * *

  Leo is the most consistent in his behavior. Not unmoved, but calm nonetheless. I haven’t heard him cry, yell, never really seen him look angry. The others, me as well, all have days when we don’t understand why we should get off our mats. Why we should sit up, why we should move, should want to read something written for children, should do anything at all but sleep and eat. Those are also the days when the coloring books, the fishing game, and the basketball aren’t distracting but infuriating. The days we complain that we cannot bear the complaints of others. “I’m just having a bad day,” we say then – I think that’s Natalie’s. “Just having a bad day.” By now all of us have said those words. All but Leo.

  Leo gets up every morning at eight, exercises, prepares the breakfast portions, wakes whoever’s still sleeping, and, every morning, asks everyone how they’re doing. If we answer “I’m just having a bad day,” then Leo looks at us, puts a hand on our shoulder, squeezes, and says, “Sorry, dude.” Then he asks what exactly is the matter and nods when we start up again about being hungry or our arms and legs suddenly feeling weak. Afterwards we feel better. Because someone looked at us and saw that it wasn’t good.

  * * *

  “No,” said Barry, “not Leo, I don’t think.”

  “Maybe they’re yours,” I said.

  “Who knows,” Barry smiled. “Or yours, right?”

  Day 96

  Sometimes I wonder how I would have spent these days if Leo hadn’t been there. I think: The same way, but without speaking. And yet everything would’ve been different without Leo. Without Leo I couldn’t have written you this.

  A while ago it struck me again: If there’s an after, it could be that one of us won’t make it there. In that case I won’t be able to tell you about him. That he was there for me. How he was there for me. That’s why I’m doing it now.

  * * *

  I used to know Leo like most people who knew him did: As a colleague. After his basketball years in North Dakota, Leo freelanced for different production companies, accumulating more colleagues than friends. All those colleagues saw the same thing: a kind, charismatic presenter who could talk to anyone anywhere anytime. He made his interviewees feel comfortable, but also greeted the cable puller, asked the sound guy how his sick wife was doing, easily chatted away half an hour with the owner of the truckers’ diner where we got stranded on our way to Waddinxveen.

  “Great coffee, dude!” “Is that you in the picture?” “But how long has it been in your family?” “Yeah, that can be really hard, dealing with your dad.”

  What’s more, Leo would always briefly touch the people he was talking to. A tap on their hip, a hand on their back. Probably he wanted to give people the sense that they were equals. And perhaps they were, objectively speaking. But people probably didn’t think so themselves. And we, Leo’s colleagues, didn’t actually think so either.

  Leo didn’t just talk to people; he also remembered them. Faces, names, which names belonged to which faces, and which faces to which stories. It always impressed me, given the number of people that latched on to him everyday, as well as the number of people he approached himself. At parties he would ask those people about their new project until he was tapped by someone he’d asked about their new project at the last party, at which point he’d offer them a drink only to talk to four more people on the way to the bar. And before he left he would say goodbye to all those other people as well. All of them. So if Leo announced his departure at ten, he’d still be saying his goodbyes at ten forty-five. People kept him talking: “Ok, see you later, oh, and will there be another season of your show?” Always more questions, they didn’t want to let him go: Sometimes it seemed as if they were at customs seeing off their son before a long trip to a country with very few telephone poles.

  And when Leo had eventually left the party, they stayed behind with reddened cheeks, these people. Rosy, as if they’d spent a sunny autumn day on the beach. They smiled blissfully. “He’s nice, isn’t he, in real life.”

  “Real life” meant a lot of different things in the old situation. But in this case people meant: now that the person I’m always looking at sees me too.

  * * *

  To understand Leo’s life, it is important to know this: In the old situation people could be divided in two groups. Us: the watchers. And them: the watched.

  Us watchers usually did so because we’d seen the watched before. On the internet or on television, places those people could be seen doing something exceptionally well. Often that was speaking words that other people had written. But sometimes it was playing sports or singing. There were also people who were watched without doing anything exceptionally well. We watched them because other people watched them. We thought: If everybody’s watching, there must be something worth seeing.

  In any case: The watched were famous. Although we thought “fame” was too big a word in the Netherlands, more something for Americans or dead people. So we didn’t call famous people “famous.” We called them “well-known.”

  In the old situation most people were known. But the well-known were those who didn’t know the names of the people watching them. This granted them privileges. They were invited to parties where they were always handed full glasses and, on departure, an elegant paper bag with shampoo, mascara, or a coupon for a treatment to make them even more beautiful than they already were. But what was even more important: Well-known people were heard. Often the things they said were also written down, recorded, and sent around the internet countless times. This way, well-known people were constantly confirmed in their existence; they could always be certain that they were really there.

  That certainty was what we all pined for, in the old situation. And what you desire for yourself, you don’t necessarily believe other people really deserve.

  So we demanded that the watched paid for their privileges; we made them pay for their full glasses and free mascaras. We did that by also watching them when they weren’t at parties. The moments when they couldn’t get the kids in their bike seats, were upset over a wheel clamp, or stood in front of some restaurant red-eyed. We captured and distributed those moments, so that us watchers could see the watched suffer.

/>   This made it less bad that no one was watching when we ourselves were suffering.

  And if well-known people suffered too little or too much, then we averted our eyes: the ultimate punishment. Because without our attention they couldn’t remain who they were. If we closed our eyes to them, they were no longer the watched. Nor were they one of us watchers. They became completely new beings: The “once watched.” A terrible position even lower than our own. We at least could live off our hope. Hoping for something you don’t have is less bad than losing what you once hoped for. That’s why some well-known people chose to die before we could avert our eyes. That often helped.

  There also were plenty of well-known people who complained. They said: “I’m always under such pressure.” Or: “If I don’t let someone go ahead of me in line at the supermarket, they immediately think I’m an asshole.” I would then think: We’re all under pressure and as long as people are ahead of us in line at the supermarket we think everybody is an asshole. But then, I didn’t know what it was like. I belonged to the watchers. I often said I didn’t mind that, and sometimes I even meant it.

  But Leo – Leo belonged to the watched.

  Though he never talked about people who thought he was an asshole. He actually never talked about the fact that everybody was always gawping at him. Not that he needed to. We saw. Any time, any place, people would call his name, wave at him, cross the street to ask for an autograph.

  And afterwards they’d think he was so nice. “In real life.”

  In the beginning I thought: It’s an act. A role that well-known people will often assume in the play that is their life. The actress playing the diva, talking and laughing just a bit too loudly and smoking in places where it’s not allowed. The presenter who was always so nice in real life. At night, I thought, with his brother or with his friends, Leo must cast off that role. Then he would complain about the woman who asked him for an autograph during the shoot, or laugh about the ugly coffee pot at the truckers’ diner.

  But after that half a year working together, I started to believe that Leo’s behavior wasn’t a role, but character. And by character I mean: the only role we play so well that we start to believe it ourselves.

  Since we’ve been here I’ve only seen him shed that role a few times. The first time was also the first day the lights went out. Afterwards, Kaspar said: Now all of you can see what he’s really like. But I no longer believe in real or not real. I only believe in something, and in something slightly different.

  Day 23

  Today already existed yesterday. I knew what I would say, which expression I’d have, what the others would say, which expressions they’d have. I had repeated it in my head so many times it had already become an anecdote. That the anecdote had yet to take place didn’t matter. I felt exactly the way I’d feel as if it had already happened. Relieved. The anecdote went like this:

  * * *

  Tuesday, around eight thirty, we gathered in the kitchen for the evening portion. The mood was good, because the mood’s always good before dinner. We start smiling as soon as we smell boiled rice, like the smell is some inside joke.

  Like always, we ate slowly. Bite by bite, never more than three, four grains on our teaspoons. To stretch out the meal, we talked. Kaspar told us he’d almost succeeded in charging the phones, Yuri asked Leo if they could slide down the stairs on the mats again tomorrow, Barry, meanwhile, checked one more time whether the saucepan really was completely empty. Then, right before the last bite, I took the empty pill bottle out of my pocket.

  “Guys,” I said, “I found this in the trashcan in my classroom. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I think that it concerns us all.” Leo looked at the label. “Gosh,” he said, “have you been carrying that around for a while?” At which point Kalim pointed to the pill bottle, determined and wildly nodding. “I found that!” he exclaimed. “In a corner of the hallway, almost three weeks ago. I thought: I better throw it away.”

  Relieved, I looked at Barry. “See?” he said, “that thing isn’t ours, it’s just been lying in the hallway for God knows how long.” He laughed. And I laughed. Leo laughed, Kaspar laughed, Natalie laughed, and, though he didn’t understand our laughter, Yuri laughed along as well.

  There were two more varieties of the anecdote I had in my head: versions in which Kalim didn’t point to the pill bottle. In the first version, Natalie blushed when I took it out of my pocket. She coughed, picked at her hair. “I have to tell you something, guys,” she said, “I’m afraid that bottle is mine.” Nervously she tapped the tabletop, we looked at the last bits of polish on her nails.

  In the second version, Kaspar immediately snatched the bottle from the table, “How’d you get this?” he mumbled. “This is nobody’s business…” At which point he angrily stuffed the pill bottle in his pocket.

  In both versions I wrapped my arm around the owner of the bottle, and Leo put his hand on his or her shoulder. “Hush,” we said, “don’t worry. We’ll help you, really we will.”

  I should have known it wouldn’t go this way. Things never happen the way you imagine in advance. That’s because you’ve imagined them in advance. In the end this is how it went today:

  * * *

  Natalie shrieked. Briefly but loudly. I knew the shriek. It was the shriek I shrieked three days earlier.

  When I walked in to Kaspar’s classroom the mouse was already laying on the table. I didn’t see what the creature had died of, but it was clear that Kaspar had killed it. He picked the mouse up by its tail and held it next to his face, the way weekend fishermen hold up their largest pike so their wife can take a picture; sometimes proof of murder is nice for later.

  “It smells like chicken nuggets,” Yuri said when we entered the kitchen that night.

  Kaspar laughed, “Yes, and it tastes even better.”

  He was right. The mouse was tasty, especially because of the ginger marinade he’d made. We didn’t mind that the minuscule pieces of meat had been fried a bit too long, to the contrary. The tougher the better: Here we prefer chewing our food as long as possible.

  Barry kept his eyes closed. Perhaps he was afraid that the sight of our gaunt faces would make him forget that he was eating. Me, I mainly thought about what was in the pocket of my vest. I had to pull out the pill bottle before the rice was served; people who are looking forward to something don’t let themselves get stirred up too quickly. My hand slipped into my pocket, I clasped the hard, cold plastic. Guys, I’d say: Guys, I found something.

  Barry opened his eyes.

  Then. There. That’s when I should have done it. Gotten the pill bottle from my pocket and put it on the table. It was the only right time. Sadly you often don’t recognize the right time until the wrong time has arrived.

  “Shall we start on the rice?” Barry asked.

  And that was that. With that one sentence Barry unknowingly started down a new path: One where people began to talk, all at the same time, louder and faster, until they raised their voices and got angry. And I was standing by the side of that path, the pill bottle in my hand, waiting for a time to cross. A time that wouldn’t come because it’d already raced past.

  Shall we start on the rice?

  “Yeahhhh!” yelled Yuri.

  “Then let’s start serving,” said Leo.

  “Boy, I’m hungry,” said Natalie.

  “And thanks a lot,” Kaspar mumbled.

  “What?” asked Barry.

  “Nothing,” Kaspar said.

  “Sorry, I just couldn’t hear what you were saying,” said Barry.

  “He said: ‘And thanks a lot,’” said Yuri.

  “Hmm?” asked Natalie.

  Using a teaspoon, Leo started dividing up the rice.

  “It actually took quite a bit of effort to skin that thing,” Kaspar now said. “And the entrails also had to be taken out. The bowels and stuff, it turned out to be quite a piece of work. And the marinade, you need to get that going an hour in advance.”

  We
all stopped eating.

  “And now it’s immediately about the rice again,” he continued. “That’s fine though.”

  We said nothing, knowing that there’s always a “but” after a “though” like that.

  “But you guys never even said what you thought of the meat.”

  “Oh, but it was delicious,” Natalie immediately said.

  Barry and I nodded, but Kaspar was looking at Leo, “Did you think so too?”

  “Yes,” said Leo. “It was really tasty.”

  Between the words “Yes” and “It was really tasty” was a pause. A brief silence that wasn’t entirely silent. What the sound was that Leo made I can’t say with any certainty. It could have been a sigh. But also a cough, a gulp, a sniff, or just the sound of someone taking in oxygen; the sound of someone who’s alive. Whatever it was, Kaspar was under the impression that Leo had sighed. And again what someone thought grew more important than what had actually happened.

  “What are you sighing about?” asked Kaspar.

  “I wasn’t sighing,” said Leo.

  “But I heard you, like I’m boring you or something”

  “That’s not true. I wasn’t sighing.”

  Kaspar sighed. “Is it that weird I just wanted to know what you guys thought of the meat?”

  We all looked at him. He was clenching his jaw.

  “But Leo just said he liked it,” Natalie said. “Right, Leo?”

  Kaspar rolled his eyes, “Don’t you start too.”

  “Start what?”

  “That tone in your voice. You’re acting as if I’m crazy. As if I’m some petty little man who needs constant affirmation. That really isn’t the case. But if someone spends hours and hours going out of their way for other people, you’d think they’d at least say thank you at some point.”