Adri van der Heijden - Tonio - a requiem memoir

32

Grasping the gunwale, I crouch-walked to the stern. I had to step over two cross thwarts along the way. The host-captain made a beckoning gesture at the handle of the rudder, assuming, apparently, that I wanted to take over from him.

‘The Pulitzer’s mooring is just up ahead,’ I said. ‘Could you let us off there? Miriam and I want to go into town on foot.’

He looked disappointed, but nodded, ticking his finger against the brim of his cap. At the Pulitzer Hotel, I helped Miriam out of the boat. We thanked them for the enjoyable cruise, and watched as the punt cut its way, razor-sharp, through the khaki-coloured water.

Via two side streets and the bridge over the Keizersgracht, we approached the Herengracht as quickly as the unflagging stream of thronging supporters allowed. We needn’t have hurried, as the Museum Boat still had a couple of hundred metres to go before reaching the jam-packed bridge, where we tried to find a spot. The place was swarming with silver-white wigs, spray-painted to look like cloudish versions of the Dutch flag. Under the wigs, faces were caked with orange gunk, with mini-flags in red, white, white, and blue on their cheeks and foreheads.

The Revolt of the Clowns. They hung in clusters on lampposts. Something tickled my face: an orange wig, generously adorned with the kind of sticks you get at the herring vendor: a toothpick with a little Dutch flag at the end. The players’ boat appeared under the next bridge. The animalistic braying, which you thought couldn’t get any louder, only increased in volume. Again I noticed the lack of anything triumphant in the sound of the cheering. You only had to shake your head and it sounded like a mass yell for help, a crowd crushing itself to death.

The boat had now emerged from under the low bridge, and the blue training outfits all stood back upright, bottle or glass in their raised hand. The police force’s motorised waterbikes hastened to resecure the cordon. People jumped, or fell, into the canal, reminiscent of old black-and-white cinema newsreels of The Beatles on their canal tour through Amsterdam. Then, too, it seemed to me as though people were screaming in protest, because there was a fake Beatle, complete with signature haircut, cruising along as a stowaway.*

[* Drummer Jimmy Nicol replaced Ringo Starr, who had taken ill with tonsillitis, on the group’s June 1964 tour.]

The trio of young men who jumped into the water right in front of us wore orange life vests, ruling out a joint suicide born of desperate adulation. The boat drew nearer, and the cheering got even more deafening. Orange gorged itself on Orange, but the screaming suggested insatiability.

I held Miriam tightly, with her back pressed against me. We were now looking straight at the boat, insofar as the frizzy orange wigs allowed. Van Bommel’s goofy hat. A black player, whose name I didn’t know, wore a gold-coloured Roman victory helmet, I suppose in order to dispel any residual doubts. Another player was being interviewed on camera.

The spray-can orange mist thickened as the boat approached. Now, showers of orange confetti rained down upon the deck.

‘Heads down!’ cried the MC. The players crouched obligingly, just to be on the safe side — a pity, because after their scandalous performance against Spain, I thought they all, down to the last man, deserved a good head-butt. The boat glided under the bridge. I took Miriam by the hand and pulled her behind me.

‘What are you doing?’ she called out.

‘They’ll be going down Leidsegracht next.’

Despite colliding constantly with other spectators, we managed to keep ahead of the team’s boat. On the Leidsegracht, we found a surprisingly uncrowded spot across from number 22, where we had lived from November 1990 to July 1992. As if I hadn’t stopped here on purpose, Miriam pointed to the house across the canal, her finger singling out the second floor. I looked at her. It was the first time today I’d seen tears in her eyes.

Hysterical cheering along the canal wall broke the relative quiet. Through the arch of the bridge, led by two police boats, sailed our national pride.

33

With every tourist boat that turned the corner from Herengracht into Leidsegracht, we heard the loud honk of a ship’s horn. In time, it drove Miriam and me completely crazy, but Tonio ran excitedly to the window with each new blast.

‘Boat … boat!’

And then he watched contentedly as the flat, glass-topped vessel passed through the canal below, and the passengers’ heads turned from left to right on cue from the tour guide.

One pleasant spring day during our first year at that address, I knelt at the low windowsill and looked out the open windows to see if Miriam and Tonio were yet on their way back from nursery school. There they stood, on the stone steps leading to the front door. A rare sight: Tonio in tears. He kicked the lowest stair angrily while Miriam spoke soothing words.

‘No … I want to go to Bibelebons!’

He wasn’t faking it for effect. His crying seemed heartrendingly sincere in the serernity of that spring afternoon. ‘I want to go back to Bibelebons. Bibelebons! Not home.’

He plonked himself down at the bottom step and refused to go inside. Eventually she sat down next to him, an arm around his shoulder. I couldn’t make out the words, but the snivelling continued, softer now.

Sweet poppet. He was the only one of us who missed the Veluwe. A tour boat tooted its horn. Tonio wasn’t interested. He shook his head vehemently. Bibelebons — his beloved Veluwe nursery school. And we had just yanked him out of there, without asking his permission.

34

Tonio called me by my first name from the moment he could speak. If he wanted to indicate our familial relationship, he’d say: ‘This is my Adri. My Adri.’

And with it, he’d tug at my sleeve.

I sit in the small living room at Leidsegracht 22, with the glass door open to the short hallway and the stairs leading to the dining room. Reading on the sofa, I watch Tonio scuffle past, bearing a large bale of blankies. The entire house is laid with the same soft, thick, grey carpeting, including the stairs — it is Tonio’s greatest pleasure to climb up the stairs on his bare knees. From behind the pacifier comes a combination of humming, mumbling, and gentle groaning as he conquers the stairway. When he reaches the curve and is nearly out of sight, the ruffle of his limbs against the treads stops, as do the noises from his nose and mouth. I turn a page of my book, and observe out of the corner of my eye how he hangs motionlessly on the stairs, the pacifier now in his free hand. He is looking at me. I focus on the page, but have stopped reading. Each of us as stock-still as a grasshopper, we eye one another: he, straight at me; me, indirectly.

I can’t hold my pose any longer, and turn to him, looking straight into his wide-open eyes, which glisten teasingly.

‘Adri, you’re my fa-a-a-a-a-ather, right?’

‘Whether you like it or not, yes, I am your father.’

Before I’ve even finished my sentence, he sticks the pacifier back into his mouth and continues lumbering up the stairs. His panting laugh has something triumphant about it: as though he’s unmasked me, or at least has coerced a confession out of me.

I stare motionlessly at my book awhile, without reading.

35

When the homecoming boat had passed and the players crouched once again for the next arched bridge, we stood looking at the gable of our former home. All the way at the top, at the back, was Tonio’s attic room, which he proudly showed to every first-time visitor. ‘This is my house.’

I pointed at the wide canal-green door, which shone like a mirror. Next to the door was a lantern that would have gone down well at a brothel. ‘You think that lock is still the same?’