Peter Buwalda - Bonita Avenue

His options are few. Aside from himself, only Joni knows of his “involvement,” maybe Aaron too — and he’d sooner bite off his tongue. He rules out either of them being behind these perverse texts. So one of them must have blabbed. Or is he underestimating Aaron? Could he have pissed Aaron off? What were you doing in my house? What kind of vacation did you treat us to? Something like that? No, it can’t be. The kid isn’t crazy. No, one of them talked. The person who is hounding him is well informed, knows that Joni is Linda and knows about him — in other words, knows everything , and that infuriates him, he’s mad at the asshole himself, but at Joni and Aaron too: why did they talk?

Wait a sec … He scrutinizes the text messages again. Could they be from someone who recognized Joni, just like he recognized her — why not? — and is now taking a shot in the dark? A wild guess? Who would do something like this? Somebody at Tubantia? A student?

In any case, it hits the mark. His old fear returns, a paralyzing combination of panicky self-preservation, that first and foremost, and an overwhelming fatherly concern. Not only is his ass on the line (a mutated ass, Siem Sigerius’s ass has expanded into a network of interests, contacts, expectations, responsibilities; a reputation like a crystal chandelier that under no circumstances may be allowed to come crashing down), but Joni’s too. The illusion that Joni would come out of this unscathed, that everything would eventually return to how it was, a cautious flicker of hope that has provided him with some relief these past months, has been destroyed.

During his next obligatory question hour, exactly what he is afraid of happening, happens. Perhaps that is why the text message hits him right in the gut. I can see you, wanker. You’re looking pale. Been jerking off too much or just sleeping badly?

When, later that afternoon, his chauffeur drives him through an autumn storm to Utrecht, where he has to address a meeting of the national Student Union, he asks him to stop at a roadside restaurant. Although he has resolved to ignore the stalker, he retreats to the men’s room and, trembling with rage and hardly in the mood for a friendly chat, calls his old secretary. Who has asked for his telephone number recently? Only journalists. No one else? No, not that she can recall, and anyway she never gives out telephone numbers, he knows that.

He’s completely at a loss. That evening, as he sits in his furnished apartment, the walls start to close in on him. Rain falls in sheets on the sidewalks in the depths of the Hooikade and he stands with his legs against the warmth of the radiator. He is imprisoned in a glass cell, he has never been so visible before, so vulnerable. All eyes are fixed on him, he is fighting for the confidence of parliament, of the media, of the party, of the voter. His stalker has chosen his moment well, he’s got to hand it to him. He tosses and turns, the wind whistles around his foreign, anonymous bedroom, he thinks of home, of Tineke, of their life before — and suddenly it hits him.

Wilbert. Who else?

God, that took him long enough. How could he be so blind? His son gets out of jail, his son calls for Joni. The only man on earth who has a score to settle with him. He switches on the lamp next to the bed and looks into the small bedroom. He can’t say the thought puts his mind at ease. “Dumb bitch,” he hisses. Could Joni have told him? How incredibly, terribly, unbelievably stupid . The room is chilly and yet the sweat is pouring off his shoulders.

Or did Wilbert first threaten her ? If it’s him at all. So there he is, in the dead of night. He stares into space for several minutes. Then he takes his cell phone, locates that 06 number, and dials.

“Wilbert,” he says after the beep, “I know it’s you, kid. Apparently you’re angry. After ten years you’re still angry. I respect that. I’m angry too sometimes. But realize you’re playing with fire. On top of it, you’re talking crap. You insinuate all sorts of things, but can you prove anything? Of course not. There’s nothing to prove. Get a grip on yourself, kid. Get a life.”

The dreams were relentless. They picked at him with their sharp beaks, and when he woke up the ravens landed on the lampshades, waiting for him to doze off again. He found himself everywhere: in bed, on the sofa, at the table with his stubbly cheek in a cold slice of pizza, on the stairs with a cramp in one of his feet.

It felt as though he didn’t sleep for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch, but sometimes it was suddenly pitch-dark, or conversely, an unexpectedly bright ray of light sliced through the gap in the curtains. He made space-time journeys through all the houses that had featured in his life. Often he was at home in Venlo with his parents, in creepy variations on the row house he grew up in, and there was always someone — usually his father — who was pissed off about something; then he lived with a malignantly or terminally ill Sigerius family member in his little room at his great-aunt’s in Overvecht, or he lay on his own deathbed; he often had the same dream, in a room in the otherwise abandoned farmhouse. Sometimes awoke to guinea pigs pissing on him, having placed them on his chest in another epoch. He listened to distorted sirens in the city.

Twice he had visitors. Somewhere in time he woke with a start to an electric drumroll that repeated itself three times as he lay on the sofa, swallowing and blinking, a container of lukewarm pasta carbonara on his chest. He slid to the floor and crept toward the radiator. In the shadows he could make out a pair of figures, a man and a woman. The man wore a blue suit and tie, the woman an ash-gray ensemble, they both had scarves around their necks but no overcoats. They each gripped a leather portfolio under their arm. Jehovahs. He would keep an eye on them until they pushed a Watchtower through the letter slot and then tried their luck with the neighbors. But they didn’t. The man’s gaze glided up and down the front of the house, the woman rang again, louder, it seemed. Aaron ducked farther down, kept so quiet he could hear them whisper. When they rang for the third time he got up and went to the front door.

His visitors introduced themselves with names he forgot straightaway. They claimed to be from the Ministry of Justice, they wanted to ask him some questions about “Mr. Sigerius.” For a brief moment he was certain they had come to tell him his ex-father-in-law was dead.

“Do we look that gloomy?” the man asked kindly. He looked sympathetic too: well-meaning wrinkles folding across his rock-hard head, but his handshake betrayed him: a hydraulic vise-grip. He smelled like a mixture of subtle aftershave and the brown oil he used to grease his firearms.

“Your friend has been nominated for an important position,” the woman added. She did not smile, but slid the toe of her shoe over the threshold. Something told him he had to make a solid, upright impression on these people. “Come in,” he said.

In the passage he distinctly heard the woman inhale sharply through her triangular nose. “Horses?” she asked as he led them into his house; strangely, it was as though all three of them were entering his house for the first time. He was dreaming, it seemed, he dreamed the smell of fresh manure, a scent he’d hardly noticed until now. It felt like he was watching himself from the sofa, he saw himself walk into the freezing-cold living room, and immediately noticed that he looked very strange indeed, in Sigerius’s judo jacket, which he wore like a bathrobe that used to be white but was now smeared and stained with bits of old food. He also realized, from his racing heartbeat, that his living room did not exactly radiate stability and solidity; he was busy emptying out his bookshelves, everywhere there were stacks of books he was planning to use to stoke his multiburner the coming winter, it was getting cold and his central heating got tepid at best. On top of it, he needed to buy garbage bags. “Don’t mind the mess,” he said, in fact to himself.