He got up and, still chuckling, asked his mother: ‘Do you still get Surinamese takeaway on Sundays?’
‘A tradition since before you were born,’ Miriam replied.
‘Whitsun, too?’
‘We don’t do Whitsun.’
‘Sunday’s on then. Chow mein would be delicious.’
‘All right, just don’t cancel again because you’re so beat. Like last Sunday, when we were supposed to go into town.’
‘Oh yeah, that watch … we’ll have to make another date.’
In his quick, springy way, his shoulders hunched just a tad, he headed to the door, and said goodbye with his variable salutation, which this time sounded something like: ‘Oi.’
‘Have fun Saturday,’ I called after him. I don’t know if he heard it, as he was already passing through the kitchen on the way to the front door. How extraordinary: Tonio was going to drop by for the third time in the space of a week. The previous day he had laid out his future plans, but it was like he had something else to tell us. I hadn’t forgotten how proud of a new girlfriend I used to be. With the ongoing conquest still in full swing, I already wanted to show her off, not only to my friends but to my parents, too — even if only in words for the time being, and if at all possible with a picture as well.
9
After Tonio had left, Miriam called me to the kitchen. She stood at the open fridge. ‘Check this out.’
The shelves, the vegetable drawer, the door compartments — every nook and cranny was jammed with cartons of ice tea and fruit juice in all possible flavours. There was a litre of Lipton Ice in the freezer, in case the young lady liked hers extra cold. Neither of us knew that Tonio had done all this shopping. It amounted to half a week’s allowance spent on fruit juice and iced tea.
‘Tonio knows how to look after his models,’ I said.
‘It won’t be out of concern for lack of vitamins at his parents,’ Miriam replied. ‘I’ll take them with me next week along with his clean washing.’
In the corner of the living room, next to the glass display case containing Tonio’s rock collection, I saw two more styrofoam reflector sheets. A strong nicotine smell hung in the air. On the floor, a saucer with stubbed-out cigarette butts; I emptied it into the waste bin. So the girl — still nameless — was a smoker.
I came across the grainy white sheets elsewhere in the house. They gazed at me like monochrome paintings, telling me no more about the photo session than that they reflected sunlight or lamplight onto the model.
‘What are we supposed to do with all that styrofoam?’ Miriam asked.
‘Leave it,’ I said, ‘he can clean it up himself on Sunday.’
10
Before dinner, I went up to my office on the third floor — not to work, but to raise the awning on the back balcony. It had rained a few nights ago, and the irregular tick-tick and drumming of the rain on the open canvas had kept me awake for hours.
The electric button, to the left of the French doors, seemed to falter — until I noticed that the awning was already up, neatly rolled into its aluminium frame.
Wait a sec. I knew for sure I hadn’t raised it before we left for the Amsterdamse Bos — intentionally, to protect the parquet floor from the profuse sunlight that streamed in at that hour. I could have raised the awning and drawn the curtains, of course, but in order to air out the room I left the balcony doors wide open, and experience had taught me that the curtains would billow upwards, and on their way down sweep stuff from the nearby desk. The last time that happened, I had incited Miriam’s ire by accusing her cats of being the cause of the destruction.
All these deliberations were still clear in my mind — even now, three days later, in the back seat of the police van. It was not a matter of forgetfulness. I had left the curtains open, lowered the awning, and fastened the doors by their hooks on the balcony wall. Now, upon returning, I found the curtains still open, but the doors were closed tight and the awning raised.
Tonio? We had a deal: he was free to use the entire house, except for the floor where my office was, because I was busy sorting through material, and there were stacks of handwritten, as-yet unnumbered sheets everywhere. I had a good look around. There was no evidence of them having taken photos here. No styrofoam sheets. No film roll wrappers in the wastebasket. No sign of the unwelcome rearranging to which photographers from newspapers and magazines so enjoyed subjecting one’s home.
Was I hoping for signs of an amorous interlude? The book about Dutch police precincts, a reference aid for my novel that I kept stuck between the two seat cushions of the chaise longue, was still in place.
I opened the balcony doors. The slats and planks that used to be Tonio’s old bunk bed lay precisely as our handyman René had left them, only a bit more grey-green after exposure to the snow and rain. To the right, an aluminium fire-escape ladder led up to the roof.
‘Minchen, when we came back from the park … did you raise the awning in my office?’
‘No, you must’ve done it yourself. I can’t do everything.’
I was none the wiser. I decided to ring Tonio about it — tonight, or else tomorrow. Not to scold him for having invaded my workspace, but … well, maybe I’d find out some details of his love life. My God, what an old busybody I was becoming.
The phone call went by the wayside. Soon … later, while he was recuperating, I’d ask. God knows how many hours we would have to spend at his bedside until he was himself again. There’d be enough time to talk. I would jabber him through it.
11
A critical condition: what is that, actually? Perhaps they were quick to call someone’s condition ‘critical’ so that if it did turn out badly for the patient after all, they’d be safeguarded against the vengeful indignation of the survivors.
I was reminded of my cousin Willy van der Heijden Jr., who was declared clinically dead after a motorcycle accident. Illusionist-joker that he was, he rose from the dead, and six weeks later returned to business as usual, which in his case meant low- to medium-grade criminality. So it could swing that way, too.
No, bad example. Not even a year later, he was on the run, artificial knee joints and all, from the police, and crashed himself just as dead as before by smashing his car into a tree: no headlights on an unlit road. This time he skipped the ‘clinically’ phase.
I remember my mother calling me up with the news. ‘A bad egg, that boy, but I had to let you know.’
While I was on the phone with her ,I looked at the eighteen-month-old Tonio as he crawled across the rug, drooling from the exertion. No such thing would ever happen to him, I would see to that. With the upbringing I was going to give him, he would never have to flee from the police, let alone with his headlights off.
‘How’s Uncle Willy taking it?
‘He’s a wreck, of course. He’d put all his hopes into that boy. The neighbours said he wandered the streets the whole night with his dog. Talking out loud. Yelling.’
‘He might be dead already,’ Miriam moaned.
‘A critical condition,’ I said, ‘can mean anything. I’m sure they’re doing their best.’
‘He’s being operated on,’ the policeman said. ‘They’ve been busy for hours.’
Goddamn. That did sound critical.
CHAPTER THREE
Wrong hospital
1
The police van took several successive curves, which our speed made seem sharper than they were. I either nearly slid away from Miriam along the slick upholstery, or was thrust up against her with a sudden force, which evoked a gagging sound from her.
‘Sorry, baby.’
Three weeks shy of twenty-one years ago, we also embarked on a wild ride to a hospital, but in a much smaller vehicle: a Fiat Panda. Miriam had woken me at 4.00 a.m. with severe abdominal cramps.
‘Are you sur
e it’s your intestines?’
‘I haven’t been to the toilet all week.’
She held my hand. I could tell from her grip how much pain she was in, and how regularly the cramps came. She was trembling. We lay like this, in silence, for a good while.
That night, we had gone to bed arguing. Anticipating the increased washing needs, we had bought a washing machine a couple of days earlier. After the burly delivery men had left, their far-too-generous drink tip in hand, I noticed that the white casing was damaged. By the time I had got the manager of the appliance store on the line, my reserve of diplomacy was depleted: the jerks had screwed up, period. The same fellows returned later that day, now far less friendly, to exchange it. Only after they left did their revenge reveal itself. During the test run, the thing shuddered and stomped loose from the wall. Standing barefoot on the tile floor, I had no choice but to hop backwards away from the machine, lest its undoubtedly sharp bottom edge amputate my toes. While performing a life-saving jitterbug, I also had to find the off button in order to subdue the automatic monster.
Miriam was convinced that the delivery men had left the safety bolts in the drum on purpose. ‘You always over-tip, that’s why. Then they mess with you.’
It was approaching five-thirty. My hand was gradually becoming disjointed by Miriam’s constant squeezing. Her beautiful, smooth forehead, which seldom perspired, was now beaded with sweat. ‘This can’t be just a stomach ache,’ I said.
‘I’ll ring the midwife just to be on the safe side,’ Miriam said. She wasn’t due for another three-and-a-half weeks. The midwife had her explain in detail what exactly she felt. The call was brief. ‘She’s on her way. I might have to go to the hospital already.’
‘Minchen, your overnight bag … The folder says you have to have a bag packed and ready. We don’t have one.’
‘That’s just like you,’ she moaned, ‘to start whinging about an overnight bag at a time like this. I’ve got other things on my mind, you know.’
The stabs worsened. The midwife arrived, her face still lined with sleep, just after six. She put a rubber glove on her right hand and asked me to wait outside. I suppose I could have packed a small travel bag in the meantime, but just stood there inert in the hallway.
‘Now, honey,’ I overheard, ‘you’re dilating already.’
So they were contractions after all, and they were getting stronger. I helped Miriam into her bathrobe. ‘It’s more painful than I expected,’ she said.
The midwife’s Fiat Panda was double-parked downstairs in front of the house. Heavily pregnant, Miriam looked too big for the compact car, but she just fitted. With the midwife at the wheel and us in back, the Panda was more than full.
‘Help, my claustrophobia’s playing up,’ Miriam panted hotly in my ear.
The midwife turned left onto De Lairessestraat, where morning traffic, even this early, was already nervously picking up. The Fiat proceeded with little jerks — leaps, really — and Miriam whimpered.
‘Just get me to the VU,’ she whispered.
2
The van had a lot less traffic trouble now than the Fiat did back then. Morning rush-hour was usually not yet over at ten to ten, but this was Sunday. We drove past a tidily laid-out business park, out of which rose the terraced buildings of the Academic Medical Centre. Somewhere inside, amid the labyrinth of overlit corridors, masked surgeons were operating on Tonio.
If he was still alive.
Twenty-two years ago, just like now, Miriam sat to my left on the back seat of the Panda. Then, too, I hugged her tight, pressed her close to me, so that I felt every contraction pulse through my own body — well, on the surface, anyway, because I couldn’t really feel the pain. Miriam occasionally gave my sleeve a tug to indicate that I should loosen my grip, which did not absorb the contractions.
Twice earlier, I had experienced similar mortal fear in a tiny Fiat. The first time occurred in the winter of ’77, when Maria-Pia Canaponi, a young Florentine, drove me and a friend from the hilltop town of Fiesole down to Florence, hidden in the misty and shadowy depths of the Arno valley. As I recalled over the years, she didn’t so much as drive as allow the car to simply fall downhill, even though the wheels did touch the ground here and there on a hairpin curve, but more like the soles of a mountaineer’s boots graze the side of a cliff as he rappels down a rock face.
The other death-defying Fiat, also somewhere in the mid-seventies, bored its way through the hellish Parisian morning traffic. At the wheel was a local woman, her hat crumpled by the city’s night life. She was trying to impress me (in back) and her girlfriend up front by ignoring red lights or, at the very least, by blindly changing lanes with her brim pulled down over her eyes. Arriving at her house in a suburb of Paris, sheer terror and heart palpitations made it impossible for me to perform up to snuff.
But now the claustrophobic tin can was jostling an unborn life. The midwife manoeuvred her car down the Cornelis Krusemanstraat towards the Harlemmercircuit — and that is where I must have lost track of where we were, distracted as I was by Miriam’s birthing pains. I wasn’t paying attention, and Miriam even less, so neither of us noticed that the midwife had turned right onto the Amstelveenseweg towards the Zeilstraat instead of taking the roundabout to the other leg of the Amstelveenseweg that led to the VU hospital.
Yes, I do recall my impatience at the open drawbridge over the Schinkel, raised like an unbreachable rampart, but it still did not occur to me that our rolling maternity bed was heading the wrong way. Miriam herself realised the mistake only when we reached the hospital. Once inside, the midwife and I helped her into a wheelchair. As we wheeled her through the foyer towards the lift, Miriam whimpered: ‘This isn’t the VU … I was supposed to deliver at the VU.’
‘Oh, sorry, hon, sorry … sorry,’ cried the midwife. ‘My fault entirely. I must have looked at the wrong form this morning … Oh, how awful. Well, there’s no turning back now.’
She had taken us to Slotervaart Hospital.
3
The two police officers turned us over to a small group of nurses in a reception area at the top of a short set of stairs. I can’t remember which of the four or five of them handed me Tonio’s wallet. The grey billfold with snap fastener lay heavily in my hand: its change pocket was laden with coins. I imagined that it still retained some of his body heat — from his thigh, his buttocks, or his breast, wherever he had it at the moment of …
Stuck to the back of the wallet was a self-adhesive, computer-printed sticker bearing his name, a few series of digits and today’s date (how new and nearby everything was). In our absence, they were already busy transforming him into a series of numbers.
The two officers took their leave with a handshake, and wished us ‘sterkte’ — courage, strength. I took the opportunity to study their uniforms one last time. Once this was all behind us and we knew how long Tonio’s recovery would take, I could — no matter how shaken and depressed — return to my writing table and resume work on the police novel. I had pinned up a photo of a female police chief in standard uniform. Now I had been given extra information regarding how a rank-and-file policewoman looked in warm weather.
The policeman handed me a card from the Serious Traffic Accident Unit on the James Wattstraat, where I could request a more complete report on the collision. I had only to ask for the staff member whose name he’d written in with a ballpoint pen.
The officers raised a hand as they descended the stairs, heading towards the revolving door and their van, parked in the sun. Miriam and I followed the nurses to the Intensive Care Unit (Intensive Care, which was different than the Emergency Room. Ambulance, ER, ICU, OR: Tonio’s body had made a speedy series of promotions.) On the way, one of them apologised for the fact that we had been informed so late.
‘His wallet was full of cards, but we couldn’t come up with an address right away for … for h
is parents. At moments like that, a life-threatening situation, we have other priorities. Saving a life always comes first.’
Life-threatening situation. A doctor was waiting for us at the junction of two corridors. We were told that Tonio had been on the operating table for ‘hours’ (it was approaching ten o’clock) and was still in a critical condition.
‘The traumatologist will be out shortly to give you an update.’
I gathered we were now in the ICU. A young nurse, blonde and blue-eyed and as fresh as the morning, led us to a small waiting room and offered us coffee.
‘Just some water,’ said Miriam, who had already sidled against me on the three-seat sofa.
‘Coffee for me, please,’ I said.
The nurse left the room, leaving the door open. Above the doorway was a large kitchen clock: ten past ten.
‘Ugh, no coffee,’ Miriam said. ‘It reminds me of when …’
She reached for her forehead and cried, sputtering slightly. She didn’t need to finish her sentence. I knew she was referring to that June morning in ’88, when we mistakenly ended up at the Slotervaart maternity ward, and Miriam had gone into hysterics over my coffee breath.
I opened Tonio’s wallet. The billfold section contained nothing but a five-euro note. The coins, all told, probably added up to a sizeable amount.
A year earlier, in August, after the premiere of Het leven uit een dag, I had studied his bar behaviour during the reception at De Kring. Tonio and Marianne had retired to a dark corner somewhere alongside the dance floor where the crew were swinging to the house music, and whenever he went to fetch drinks for himself or the girl, he paid with a banknote and jammed the change into the pocket of his wallet (the very one I was now holding in my hands). Those slight tendencies towards disorderliness: I lamented them all the more because I exhibited them myself at his age, and long thereafter, and still had not managed to overcome them all. Continually confronted, in matters both minor and significant, with our similarities, I was forced to imagine myself as a twenty-one-year-old. It worried me. Not for myself, but for him.
Tonio Page 7