Adri van der Heijden - Tonio - a requiem memoir

‘I take the blame, Tonio.’

‘Cut it out. I screwed up.’

‘If I hadn’t …’

‘Quit it! It was my own stupid fault.’

It ended with us reproaching each other’s self-reproach, and forbidding ourselves from blaming the other. When the mist of the daydream cleared, there was no longer a life-threatening conflict. He was dead. Only a hyena dragging around a carcass makes himself think he is still fighting with his prey.

20

On the way back to the exit, we rambled a bit through the cemetery, in search of the grave of the musician Hub Mathijsen. He had been a violinist in the salon-music ‘Resistentie Orkest’* and often played the violinophone, which had a metal resonator much like a gramophone horn, rather than a wooden sound box. Its melancholy sound would have been quite apt now, here.

[* A play on the name ‘Residentie Orkest’, the resident symphony orchestra of The Hague. Prior to founding the Resistentie Orkest, Mathijsen was 2nd concertmaster of the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra and was active in the Amsterdam ‘provo’ movement of the 1960s.]

If you wander around this small cemetery long enough, you’ll eventually pass every grave. Hub, I had forgotten, was buried next to his brother Joost, the pianist he had performed with all those years. His widow had told me Hub was deaf in one ear: she had him lovingly laid to rest with his good ear facing his brother.

21

The family came back to our place for refreshments. If Mariska held Daniel on her lap, then she, Frans, and Natan would fit perfectly on the back seat of our car. The buggy could fold up and go in the boot.

Halfway home, the car began to fill up with the smell of rot — no, not a dirty diaper or dogshit-packed shoe treads. Rot.

When we got out, Miriam held the earthenware pot in her hand that, filled with moss, slime, and the strands of sodden tobacco from the waterlogged cigarettes, had stood for weeks next to Tonio’s grave. It must have all started decomposing, together with the half-unrolled film spool that someone apparently wanted to give Tonio on his way to eternity.

‘That rotten-egg smell,’ she said. ‘Here’s the culprit.’

She put the stinking pot on the curb, but, remembering that we were forbidden to throw away anything having to do with Tonio, picked it up and put it back on the floor mat of the car. ‘So let it rot.’ I wanted her all to myself at that moment, if only for that expression of hopeless embarrassment.

The party had already gone upstairs when Miriam came out of the library. ‘I’ve just been out back. The veranda’s beautiful at the moment. The sun’s going to come out.’

A little while later, we were all sitting under the spent golden rain, which let loose a flutter of brown shreds at the least bit of breeze. Frans pointed to the huge growth of ivy, which, a good metre thick, was still covering the entire side wall of the houses on the Banstraat. ‘I don’t want to get on your case,’ he said, ‘but you really should think about trimming that thing. Otherwise …’

‘Not now,’ I said.

We ate and drank. As quiet as everyone was at the grave, they were now boisterously chatting. Except Natan. Seeing him sit for a while with his hands covering his eyes, Hinde asked if he was all right.

‘I’m thinking,’ he said, in his customary, somewhat singsong tone. Soon after that, he had Miriam drive him home.

I talked mostly to my brother, who was sitting next to me. He couldn’t remember a thing of the telephone conversation we had had the night before, after the football finals. His explanation was that the unexpected loss had made him twice as drunk as he really was.

Daniel swung like a monkey from chair to chair, never taking a moment’s rest. His blonde hair made me think of Tonio at that age, although there was a difference in energy level. O, horror … this little boy was in all things Tonio’s successor and surrogate. I hoped I could continue to love him as I now did, divorced from all thoughts of my own son.

The sky had gradually gone pitch-black again. I suggested moving the gathering indoors, to the living room, and started rolling up the awnings.

The upstairs television was on: it was nearly six o’clock. The news showed footage of the effect of thunderstorms in the east of the country — uprooted trees and collapsed party tents (there were festivals all over the place). The rest of the news was dominated by The Grief At The Defeat: a dejected Museumplein, which I had seen with my own eyes the previous night, and the arrival of the Boeing with the Dutch team, escorted by a pair of F-16s.

‘A dubious honour,’ Frans said. ‘This is how they usually escort a hijacked aircraft. The enemy of the people brought to the ground. Get down, you. Lie, dog.’

22

‘So. The stone’s there,’ I said after the visitors left. ‘Firmly anchored in the earth. His patch of ground.’

‘And, most importantly,’ Miriam said, ‘his second name is on it. Or, what’s it called … his middle name. Oh, my poor sweet father … he was really broken up.’

How do tears of compassion differ from tears of grief? They both leak out of the same ducts. It must be the facial expression that goes with it. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her simply moved to tears, rather than destroyed by grief.

‘Well, let’s see,’ I said, counting on my fingers. ‘We’ve found the bike, his watch, the photos … Jenny has been traced, and now she’s got her portfolio … the stone’s in place, his name is complete … Now all we need to do is visit the site of the accident.’

‘Do we have to?’

‘Yes, we have to. We owe it to Tonio. At that spot, he had his last thoughts of us. Of you and me. The word “dumb!” probably flashed through his mind, and that says it all. Also that he did something dumb to us . That’s how it must have gone. “Dumb!” To himself, to us. There, at that intersection, before he lost consciousness.’

‘All right, I reckon we can handle anything now. When?’

Today, nearly two months after Whit Sunday, it has finally got through to me that Tonio is dead. Until now they were just suspicions, followed by denials. Signs posing as the truth. Disbelief still held sway.

Everything is different now.

23

Acquaintances of ours, a couple, had repeatedly offered us a jaunt on their motor punt as a diversion, but until now we had not taken them up on it. On the morning of the team’s homecoming, the woman rang us. They were planning to take their boat out that afternoon, to meet the Dutch team’s boats out on the IJ harbour and, if possible, tag along through the Amsterdam canals toward Museumplein. Would we … on account of the historic aspect of the event … be interested …?

Miriam promised to confer with me and ring them back. We had already decided to keep half an eye on the TV broadcast of the whole travesty, not to spare the screen our ridicule and to wash down the taste of national duplicity afterwards with a glass of strong stuff. I suddenly saw the chance to break through the cast-iron bands that grief had forged around our house, and finally brave the city and visit the place where our boy had had his fatal accident.

Under cover of a dubious festivity. Incognito among the sham-jubilant crowds. No one would pay us any notice. Just what the doctor ordered.

‘Tell them we’ll go.’

Miriam arranged with the friends that we would drive to their place later that morning. They lived on KNSM-eiland, a residential development in the IJ, near where their boat was moored. We could watch the team’s reception with the Queen on television, where we’d see for ourselves when the players left The Hague for the Amsterdam canal procession.