Tommy Wieringa - Little Caesar

On the nightstand a votive candle was lit beneath a little copper bowl of aromatic oil. Draperies on the walls, Oriental covers on the bed. Her bedroom was a time machine, it took me back to the parts of my biography that were closed off with curtains.

She opened her eyes. Her hospital voice, ‘I guess I must have dropped off.’

The skin on her face was full of fine lines, as though she had walked through a cobweb.

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Please. Nice. And a paracetamol, please.’

‘Are you in pain? All we have is ibuprofen.’

‘My head hurts, a little. Ibuprofen is okay.’

The most pleasant memories have to do with time running short, with days that are numbered. Those weeks after the operation, the waiting at Kings Ness. The hallowed, white mood in the house. Finiteness is the precondition.

On the table lay a plastic folder with the punch card of patient M. Unger, and the confirmation of our appointment. The date was crawling closer, you could hear it breathing. Again that desk at which we sat side by side, and Dr. Rooyaards behind it. Her glasses were on the table. What it boiled down to was this: the scan showed metastases in the brain. My mother nodded. Kept doing that, a toy dog on the rear shelf. The voice from the other side, ‘I wish it could be different.’

The standstill of that moment, a frozen throne room, blue as the heart of a glacier; the king has icicles in his beard, the wine stands slanted and hard as steel in the chalices, the queen waits sadly for spring to arrive.

‘We all have to go sometime,’ my mother said.

My record button had been pushed; later — when I was once again present — I would play it all back again. How long? was a question, because nothing to do about it was a certainty now. Hesitation from across the desk, depends on so many factors, for example . . My mother was immediately decisive about forms of therapy that could prolong life. Oh no, not now, all of a sudden. . no, absolutely not .

A phrase came to mind, one I didn’t even know I knew: lingering terminal course.

It was the last time we went out through the revolving doors. Heading for the big thaw.

Which was then followed by life as predicted. The headaches. The infernal headaches. And, after a few weeks, the vomiting. Each morning the heartrending retching. With every passing day there was less of her left, it seemed as though she were being eaten during the night. There were conversations with the general physician, the making of preparations. The unthinkable. The GP dressed like an Englishman, drove a Land Rover. Dantuma, no first name. He would have preferred to express himself solely in punctuation marks. No more than three months, he told me.

‘I’d be surprised if it was any longer than that.’

If he recognized her at all, he never let on.

One morning I took the car to Bourtange. I had found the address in the phone book, I knew what I was looking for. I drove slowly along the canal. My memories took place in a different season, but I was that little boy on the scooter. The farm, the dismal bricks. I climbed out like someone in a film, and the events that followed were also part of the scenario I’d anticipated. A dog begins to bark, after a little while a stable door opens. A man comes out. Blue KLM overalls, leather clogs on his feet. It almost has to be him, but I don’t recognize him.

‘Uncle Gerard?’ I say.

A movement at the periphery of my vision, a face behind the kitchen curtains. I recognize that one.

‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘Ludwig, Marthe’s son.’

‘Ludwig. My oh my. Ludwig. I’m flabbergasted.’

‘Uncle Gerard.’

We shake hands. He, the giant, is as tall as I am.

‘Gerard?’

The woman pokes her head out the door. My aunt Edith.

‘It’s Marthe’s boy,’ he says.

We sit at the kitchen table. Only the people here have grown older, the oak furniture and thick tablecloth are ageless. Are the children of black sheep automatically black sheep themselves? I drink weak coffee from a cup that recalls the coronation of Queen Beatrix. Our lives in broken sentences; the locations, not the deeds.

‘My oh my oh my,’ Uncle Gerard says a few times.

My aunt says nothing, keeps her hands folded on the tabletop as though praying. They still farm, but a lot less than before . They’ve leased out some of their land, it was too much for them to keep up. The Natural Heritage Foundation bought a large chunk of it, which has now been left to grow wild.

‘Such good soil. .’

During a silence I say, ‘But the reason I came here. .’

The diagnosis, the prognosis, a few details from the files. They don’t know what to say.

‘And in Meeden all that time. Just up the road,’ Uncle Gerard says, shaking his head.

‘But what do you expect us to do?’ his wife says. ‘After all these years. .’

‘I understand that,’ I say. ‘But I just thought maybe the two of you would want to know. And now — there’s still a little time left.’

Uncle Gerard walked me to the car.

‘It’s a shock to her,’ he says.

A man accustomed to explaining his wife.

‘She just needs some time. We’ll call tomorrow.’

That is what happened. They wanted to see her, my uncle said on the phone.

Now I had to tell my mother. She was sitting on the couch, a magazine beside her, a shawl draped over her shoulders. She was cold all the time now. It was April, life outside was bursting at the seams.

‘Those people,’ she said. ‘What would they do here?’

And then that afternoon, out of the blue.

‘Let them come. If they want to so badly.’

An artery pulsed at the side of her neck, like a lizard’s. The heating was set at twenty-three degrees. She ate little, less all the time. We didn’t talk about what had gone before all this, it seemed never to have existed. We lived in the here and now-pain, now-tired, now-vomiting, now-tired-again, now-headache, now-sleep. We , because powerlessness is also suffering, a derivative form.

In the evening the couch was mine. I would wake up in the same position in which I had fallen asleep. Her shuffling about woke me. She was clutching the toilet, it seemed as though her body were doing its utmost to rid itself of its organs. I gagged with her. The pressure in her brain meant she could barely read. That was how it went, you stood there and watched. The devastation. This was what the end looked like. It was cruel and disgusting. And no-one anywhere with whom one could file a complaint. In how many houses, behind how many front doors, did this take place?

‘Try eating a little bit,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t appeal to me.’

‘As long as you eat more than the cancer, we’re still ahead of the game.’ She did her best. A few bites to humor me. I bought apple sauce, she liked ice lollies. Yogurt and custard pudding were often too rich for her. I ate the custard and searched the kitchen drawers for a bottle licker, which wasn’t there. Beneath her skin the anatomical model began to appear, the tendons, veins, bones. Slowly, the sick old woman shuffled around the house. The heat had already left her. Along with the heat, the color had disappeared as well. The layers were being peeled off, further and further.

‘Without the headache, this would be bearable,’ she said. ‘The headache is the worst part.’

‘You could always go in for radiation. That would ease the pain.’

She smiled faintly, shook her head. Echoes of the old struggle.

‘There they are,’ I said one Saturday morning.

An Opel Astra, gleaming in the sun. I opened the door, a rustle of springtime slipped past me into the house. Uncle Gerard was carrying the flowers. My mother had dressed for the occasion. (Unsinkability.) She got up and walked to the door. They were shocked when they saw her, how could they not be? The last time he had seen her was beside the canal where she had been swimming; I knew he was thinking back on her body.