35
‘He got that from me,’ I said. ‘When I was his age, people always said I was such a good listener. But some people didn’t trust it. They thought I was hiding something behind my attentiveness. That I was planning some evil deed. My willing ear made them nervous.’ (Right away, I felt like a bald-faced liar. Summer of ’93: I saw myself walking with the five-year-old Tonio through Pernes-les-Fontaines — the same route every day, to the restaurant in the courtyard of an old hotel. He chattered to me in melodious, complete sentences. Until he realised I wasn’t always paying full attention. ‘Adri, you’re not listening.’ His voice cracking: ‘You have to listen to me, Adri. Otherwise … otherwise …’ Can’t make it up to him now.)
‘Well, in Tonio’s case it was sincere,’ Goscha said. ‘I can vouch for it.’
‘Back to Trouw,’ said Miriam. ‘Did you all drink a lot?’
‘All those rounds,’ Goscha answered. ‘It went so fast, you could hardly keep up. And I felt guilty, ’cause Tonio paid the most.’
‘Didn’t you dance that night?’ I asked.
‘Hardly at all. The music was awful. Yeah, I do remember the three of us standing out on the dance floor. Dennis gave Tonio a dip. The music was so bad we left earlier than usual.’
‘What time?’ I asked. (I was tinkering with time again.)
‘About four. We sat outside Trouw on a bench for a while. Just to cool off. I think I was pretty tipsy.’
‘If you left the place at four,’ I said, ‘then you mustn’t have sat on that bench for very long. Tonio’s accident was, let’s say, imminent.’
‘We biked to Sarphatipark. Via Ceintuurbaan. At the corner of the park, we stopped to chat for a minute. Dennis wanted us to go to his place. Tonio said no. He needed to be getting home. Go to bed … or no, his friend Jim was waiting up for him, I think. Did they do that much, those guys, watch a film so late? Like I said, Tonio never left anyone in the lurch, so … Normally I’d have biked back to De Baarsjes with him. But I was so tired and … well, I guess I was pretty drunk. But Dennis and Tonio weren’t, really …’
‘We girls just have a smaller liver, that’s all,’ Miriam said.
‘I was of two minds,’ Goscha said. ‘I didn’t really feel like biking all that way by myself later. It would have been more fun for Tonio, too, if I’d …’
She shook her head with a sad smile. ‘Just listen to me: fun. Maybe that whole awful thing wouldn’t have even happened. Such a different ending. Small decisions, big consequences …’
I asked her a few more things I’d also asked Dennis. Whether Tonio weaved about when he cycled off.
‘No, I’d have noticed. Sure, we’d been drinking, kind of a lot. But he rode away completely normally.’ Goscha shut her eyes tight. ‘I can just see him … riding off. My last glimpse of him. He biked over the pavement and onto Ceintuurbaan.’
‘Say you had gone with him, Goscha,’ I asked, ‘what route would you have taken?’
‘Oh, the usual.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Ceintuur. Van Baerle. Left on Overtoom and then on to De Baarsjes. Same as always.’
‘So how did Tonio end up,’ Miriam asked, ‘at the corner of the Hobbemastraat and the Stadhouderskade?’
I had the impression that the question took Goscha by surprise: that she hadn’t yet asked it herself. She glanced a bit nervously from Miriam to me, and from me back to Miriam. ‘I couldn’t say.’
36
Goscha had said she didn’t fancy the long bike ride home on her own after that one last drink at Dennis’s place. If she was telling the truth, then she had not intended to spend the night with Dennis.
‘Did you and Dennis … enjoy yourselves?’ I hoped the question did not sound all too bitter.
‘I still have a weird feeling about it,’ she answered. ‘I fell asleep pretty much right away.’
‘You said you chatted more than you danced at Trouw,’ I continued. ‘Did Tonio mention anyone named Jenny?’
Goscha thought for a moment, and shook her head. ‘Not that I can remember.’
‘Nor about a girl he had done a photo shoot with a few days earlier?’
‘Hmm, now that you mention it … I picked up something about a girl from an exchange between Tonio and Dennis. A photo shoot, that might’ve been it. But I didn’t catch a name. Jenny … no.’
‘Dennis told us,’ Miriam said, ‘that Tonio came to him for girl advice lately. You know, how to go about certain things. He’d told both Dennis and Jim more than once recently that he felt happy.’
‘Yes,’ Goscha said, her eyes downcast, ‘he told me that, too, a couple of times. He obviously had to get it off his chest. He couldn’t hold it in. It was as though he couldn’t believe what had hit him … so intensely happy.’
I thought back on a few periods of my own irrational happiness between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Once again, I had stumbled upon an intimate parallel between his life and mine. And then again, not quite, because my unruly bliss had had the opportunity to run its course.
‘Tonio was wearing this neat T-shirt that night,’ Goscha said, the smile returning to her face. ‘A really special one. I’m glad I told him so. He obviously appreciated a compliment. He’d grin a little, shy and proud at the same time. Yeah, it feels good that I was able to tell him that, just before …’
I recalled Tonio’s bare shoulders that stuck out from the sheets in the ICU. That neat T-shirt was blood-soaked from his skid on the Stadhouderskade asphalt. Goscha’s compliment could not prevent them having to cut it off him in the ambulance. Must ask Miriam if they gave it back, together with the rest of his things.
37
‘When did you hear …?’ Miriam wasn’t able to finish the question. She bent over Tygo, who sat at her feet, and gave him a soft rap on his nose.
‘Monday,’ Goscha replied. ‘The next day.’
I took over from Miriam. ‘Who from, if I may ask?’
‘Yeah, it’s a dumb story,’ she said, blushing. ‘I heard it from my ex. He’s a bicycle repairman. I didn’t know he was a friend of Dennis, but that’s who he heard it from. I’d gone round to his place … to the bike-repair guy, I mean, my ex … and when I was back outside I felt myself go all queasy. My knees were like jelly. I had to hold on to something for support.’
Goscha rambled a bit, half to herself, timid and blushing. A comment by the bike repairman (or some other sign, it wasn’t really clear) had given her the impression that Dennis was angry with her. ‘Maybe because I’d fallen asleep in his room … while he’d just crashed that time, with Tonio and the blanket … well, anyway, I didn’t hear anything from him for days. That says enough.’
She looked at the floor.
‘No, wait, Dennis did tell me, the day after the accident, what had happened to Tonio. I got a text message from him … or maybe it was Facebook. I don’t know anymore.’
I got the impression that the dozy ‘afterparty’ with Dennis had given her a turn. Maybe she was wondering if it was worth it, ditching Tonio for that, and letting him ride all that way home alone … lost in thought, a target for unexpected traffic …
38
Since we weren’t sure if we would have the stamina for much longer (those were shaky days), Miriam had emailed Goscha that an hour would be enough. When the girl got up promptly and properly after an hour, I regretted the prescribed time limit. But Goscha, thinking perhaps that we’d invited her to stay longer just out of politeness, was unrelenting — for us, for herself.
As she saw her out, Miriam showed Goscha the small photo gallery of Tonio on the landing. I heard the two talking animatedly, but couldn’t catch what they said. I pondered a ruse to get her to stay longer. Aside from four fleeting onlookers (the driver of the car that hit him, his passenger, and two eyewitnesses), Goscha and Dennis were the last ones to see Tonio alive, for
hours on end, half a day at least. Of the two, Goscha had spoken about him in the most detail. She had managed to present us with a warm-blooded Tonio. We hadn’t heard her out sufficiently. We should have had her keep talking, until we, through her, had soaked up our boy’s last bit of warmth.
Goscha came back to shake my hand. Her emotions made her jittery and timid. From where I sat, it was only a couple of short steps to the living-room door. Still, she turned around three times, her eyes wet, to say goodbye.
‘Nice girl, didn’t you think?’ Miriam said when she got back upstairs. ‘And that she kept to the one-hour agreement. When you meet kids like these, you almost feel like there’s hope for the world.’
She went to fill our glasses. I suspect her of having sneaked double shots of gin and vodka in the tonic and orange juice tonight. Once she sat down next to me, she let herself go. ‘The pain … the pain.’
And later, settled back down somewhat: ‘If you want to reminisce about Tonio … go ahead, no matter how painful … you don’t have to spare my feelings.’
39
We drag ourselves, sluggish and lethargic, through the summer, as though since Whitsun we are surrounded by another atmosphere that slows down our natural pace of movement. At the same time, there is that constant agitation, pregnant with dark thoughts: though the worst is yet to come. It has already started to become this requiem’s refrain.
These aren’t just empty expectations, because the worst, the very worst, is still yet to come. Not an event worse than Tonio’s dying, but this: that the reality of his death will hit us head-on.
It is the fear of the pain of an eventual solution that occupies Miriam, night after night. The fear of a future that does not offer peace, nor acceptance, nor resignation, nor an answer to the pain. A future that will only knead and whittle the loss into a greater, more merciless clarity.
40
I tried to explain to a friend the cyclone of emotions we had experienced through Tonio’s death.
‘I’ll just name a few. They rear their heads in random order, overlapping unpredictably. Either all at once or in rapid-fire succession. For Miriam, of course, it’s slightly different.’
In the first place, there was that (seldom absent) feeling of being ON EDGE. It was often accompanied by rapid breathing, ditto motor functions, as though you thought something might still be salvaged (but what?).
A variant on this: extreme ANXIETY, comparable to paralysing exam-fear, or the insecurity that comes with being hopelessly in love. A sensation that Tonio’s death was just a portent for some greater calamity.
PAIN, wavering between ice-cold and searingly hot, like a storm raging across the plain of your heart. Sometimes it would abate for a moment, only to surge again all the more acutely. (As Miriam put it recently: ‘Just when you think you’re feeling reasonably stable, the pain suddenly hits again. Unfair.’)
RECALCITRANCE. To whom or to what, as long there was no authority where one could register a complaint? At the very least, to the brutal truth that Tonio would never again come sauntering in here with his sheepish grin. Without a worthy opponent, recalcitrance bashed its way inwards, wreaking havoc and destruction on the soul rather than the public domain.
41
And then a GUILTY CONSCIENCE, to be divided into rational and irrational feelings of guilt.
Irrational: that I was not there, at that very spot, to stop the car, or, in the event that I was too late for that, to be there for Tonio, to at least kneel next to him and lay my folded-up jacket under his head … hold his hand. ‘I’m here. Lie still.’
Rational: that we hadn’t taught him to cycle more responsibly. That I didn’t see to it that his bike had a light. I should have had LED lights and reflectors sewn onto all his clothes when they were here to be washed. (This last thought might tend toward the ‘irrational’ category.)
Irrational: that I was unable to squeeze a second into the reality of that night, and thus prevent the collision between bicycle and car. Perhaps I should have attributed my early-morning awakening, the result of a flood of saliva, as an alarm signal, which in turn should have resulted in a warning to him. My mobile phone lay on the bed, within arm’s reach.
‘Hello?’ His characteristic slightly harried voice, this time from pedalling. It also sounds a bit drunk.
‘Hi, it’s me … Adri. Where are you?’
‘Jeez, what the … Well, let’s see, I’m just cycling on the Ceintuurbaan with a couple of friends. Just crossed the bridge over the Amstel. We’ve been out.’
‘Yeah, so I hear. Where are you headed?’
‘Jeezus, you really have to know every … Okay, home, I think. Jim’s waiting up for me. We were going to watch a movie.’
‘At this time of night?’
‘You know Jim. Insomniac.’
‘And the people you’re with?’
‘They’re going to go chill at Dennis’s place, Govert Flinkstraat. I don’t think I’ll …’
‘Yes, do! Better to bike out to De Baarsjes in daylight.
‘Jesus, Adri, how old do you think …’
‘I’ve got a bad feeling, that’s all. I just woke up with a churning stomach.’
‘Jesus man, take a Rennie. We’re just on the Ceintuurbaan now. The others are about to turn off at Sarphatipark. I want to stop and talk to them first. Oi, oi.’
He’s already hung up. Say I did call him, and in doing so delayed his ride across town by just a few seconds … say he nevertheless got hit by a car … wouldn’t my guilt be demonstrably even greater? (‘I wish I hadn’t called him.’)
And so, in the eye of the storm of emotions, I piled guilty conscience upon guilty conscience.
Let’s not forget SHAME. For myself: you’ve fucked up, Van der Heijden, you’ve let him slip through your fingers. For Miriam: I begot a son with you, and he’s gone, and I wasn’t able to prevent his passing.
For Tonio himself: I let you loose on the world with insufficient warning, otherwise you would still be here (which itself is the proof of my failure).
Shame, lastly, before the entire world: from now on I will be the once-proud father who has lost his son. Shun him, the pariah, he stinks of grief like a wet dog stinks of dishrag. His pain is as contagious as the plague.
42
PRIDE, don’t forget: for Tonio.
When I stood at Tonio’s deathbed in the ICU, and watched him die, there was still, despite everything I was going through, a place for pride. He died. He did it well, too. He dealt with the task, and showed us how easy, in fact, it was. He demonstrated it to his father. See, Adri, this is how you do it.
In the weeks that followed, that pride branched out. We were proud of him: that he skipped blithely through life, had given so much love, was so helpful and generous, and kept difficulties as much to himself as possible. We were proud of him because he had done his best with a life that could, on the eve of a beautiful summer, abruptly be cut short, just like that. He lived as though it would not come to a premature end. A few days before his death, as though calamity were not on its way, he reassured his parents about his future plans. Media Technology. Master’s degree. Leiden. The Hague. Train.
We had the definite sense that he, and he alone, had known all along that his life would be short — and had kept quiet about it. That he had held that terrible information in solitude, so as not to saddle us with it — that thought alone filled us with pride.
ANGER: at everything and everyone, but not all at once. In the absence of a God, I unleashed my wrath at Fate. In my powerlessness I tried to unmask it by ripping away its blindfold, revealing only blind eyes. Ping-pong balls without an iris.
Other objects of my anger: daylight savings time, the manufacturer of BMW autos (because I knew for sure it was a garish BMW that had taken him down), my mother-in-law, who made a caricature of Tonio’s
death by incessantly announcing her own …
RESIGNATION: at times, briefly, to my own surprise. Resignation suggests something long-term, but in the present situation could not be more fleeting. It is quickly followed by a guilty conscience, because accepting Tonio’s death — that just won’t do.
43
FEAR in many forms. ‘I’m so frightened,’ Miriam said recently, her face contorting into a tearful cramp. ‘I’m eaten up by fear.’
I no longer had to ask her what of.
‘Before we lost Tonio, we used to discuss the problems and challenges of a novel … the series of attempts at a solution … it started to become old hat. In our day-to-day lives, too, we were always “solution people”. No problem was ever too daunting. And we usually found a solution. Problems weren’t safe around us. But now here we sit with an absolutely insoluble problem … Tonio’s death … and what can’t be solved is scary. It scares me more than my own death. More than anything. No matter how you look at it, there’s nothing you can do to make it better. It makes me claustrophobic. Like in The Vanishing by Tim Krabbé. Locked in an insoluble problem. And you know that nowhere in the future that lies ahead of us will there ever be a solution. The fear of the insoluble problem is also the fear of the future.’
Miriam could undoubtedly have added to the list of fears, just as I could. The fear of going mad from the loss. To want to follow Tonio to the grave. To be unable to write again. To be arrested for manslaughter …
I pointed out to my friend that I could expand the list with a whole bunch more emotions, and combinations of them, but that I wanted to limit myself to one last one. The feeling of utter DEFEAT. Your son has been taken from you by an unknown power that you, his father, were unable to fend off.
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