Adri van der Heijden - Tonio - a requiem memoir

Miriam shook her head, crying inaudibly. ‘Just like that …’ I thought I heard her say. ‘In the middle of the road …’

What struck me all the more was the loneliness of what had occurred here. After a bike ride on his own … blind fate grabbing him by the horns … being flung into the air and smacked against the asphalt. How long did he lie there like that? Did he groan, or were his lungs already too wrecked to provide sufficient air to cry out?

I studied the area carefully. The curve in the Stadhouderskade, the mouth of the Hobbemakade, the crosswalk from the Park Hotel to the Singel … indeed, it really did look, as Dick had said, open and orderly. Blindfolded and all, fate had had quite a chore bringing together a cyclist and a car right here. Exacting work in the early-morning darkness.

In my imagination these past weeks, The Spot had gradually shrunk — until it became a narrow, indistinct, one-way tunnel in which a bike and a Suzuki simply had to have a fatal encounter.

38

Tonio, the finest thing you gave me is the sense of self-esteem. Before you made your entrance, I always had to act out a form of confidence, such was the low self-regard I secretly harboured. As I watched you develop, so too grew my sense of pride — in you, of course, but also in myself. I was, for a not-inconsequential part, in you. Whoever could have a hand in producing such a magnificent creature, must certainly be worth something .

Now that I’m forced to release you so abruptly, my self-esteem is in a sorry state, as though it was not only created out of you, but has vanished along with you. I begat you, but was unable to preserve you. I’m not worth crap anymore.

39

It is a night

you normally only see in films

Night was apparently a thing, an object, which could usually only be made visible cinematographically, but also occurred once in a blue moon — in the form, for instance, of the Brabant balladeer Guus Meeuwis. He was on stage at the far end of Museumplein, rounding off his act for the rapturous mob. After this, the national team would be given its official tribute; the players were now just about stepping off the boat at the pier across from the Rijksmuseum, in order to be reunited with their loved ones.

On the floor there’s an empty bottle of wine

and clothes that could be either yours or mine

My Dutch grammar teacher would probably take more umbrage at that ‘empty bottle of wine’ than ‘there’s clothes’. Gerard van der Vleuten is no longer with us in this life, but through the years I often hear his undaunted voice: ‘A bottle of wine, Guus, is a bottle full of wine. If the bottle is empty, Guus, the wine is finished, leaving us with an empty wine bottle. An “empty bottle of wine”, Guus, is like “the corner of a round table”: a contradictio in terminis . Got it? Guus …?’

Meeuwis closed with the stupidest number to ever emerge from the history of Dutch song: ‘Kedeng, kedeng’, the title offering an onomatopoeic depiction of a train chugging along the rails. The audience hollered the refrain in over-the-top ecstasy, enriching it with an improvised arrangement for a thousand vuvuzelas. Here a loser lifted up the hearts of the losers — and necessary it was, too.

The players were now allowed to take the stage. Van Bronckhorst, the captain, announced each of his men one by one, all twenty-two of them. The cheering from below elevated the athletes ever further above their flop. The vox populi had the last word.

40

The neighbour who had recorded the live broadcast for us warned me that the video and sound quality was ‘godawful’, with pixelated block faces and wrung-out heads.

Filmed from the air, the fans looked even more like a herd of cattle at round-up time. If they got squashed hard enough against the bridge railings, their fervour would get squeezed out by itself. This mass display of rapture about absolutely nothing — this can’t be what life, civilisation, Tonio’s death, was all about. It was not so much that people sought out emptiness — they sought out echoing emptiness, so they’d feel less alone. Nothingness had to be an echo chamber. You tossed in a bass, and got back an ass, without having to do any more than scream at the top of your lungs.

The boats disappeared under the Marnixstraat’s wide bridge at the end of the Leidsegracht, and stayed under it for so long that one might think they had just evaporated into the darkness. The helicopter’s camera could only film the fans who desperately raced from one side of the bridge to the other, in disbelief that their heroes might be gone for good.

And yet the team boat re-emerged into the full sunlight, and turned left onto the Singel toward Leidseplein and the Hotel Americain. Before the vessel once again vanished into the darkness of the bridge alongside the hotel, you could see Robin van Persie being manoeuvred into an advantageous position for his turn as interviewee. Again the helicopter filmed as the herd galloped from one side of the bridge to the other. I knew that we, too, had crossed the road — not to the railings on the opposite side, but to the Leidsebosje, but I wasn’t able to make us out: it was filmed from too high up.

The broadcast switched to the camera on board the boat and the interview with Van Persie. His handsome face had become, as the neighbour said, a Picasso cubist image, and his ear bled into a series of coloured squares.

‘So how does this all make you feel?’

‘Yeah, great, fantastic. All these people. This sea of orange. I’m starting to believe we actually won the championship.’

The boat cruised past the Holland Casino, under the footbridge. The helicopter briefly filmed the dome of the casino from above. Armando has written of the ‘guilty landscape’.* Well, this here was a ‘guilty cityscape’. Security cameras, meant to guard the casino’s lucre, had registered the last moments of Tonio’s life. The disc with the film was in the CD-ROM tray in Miriam’s computer. I should try to convince her — and myself — to watch it together: this, too, we owe to Tonio.

[* Armando is a Dutch painter, sculptor, and writer.]

‘So, Robin, does this lessen the loss any?’ the interviewer attempted again.

‘I don’t believe in “loss” anymore,’ Van Persie replied. ‘These people lining the canals, on the bridges, it’s their call. If they want to act like we’ve won, then we’ve won .’

‘In other words,’ I said to Miriam, ‘the national fan-club has unilaterally elected the Dutch football team world champions. If the hoi polloi want a shindig, they’ll twist the facts as long as they need to, until they come up with a reason for one.’

Miriam shrugged. The interviewer mumbled something about second place.

‘When you see this,’ Robin said, ‘coming in second’s not so bad.’

The boat parade approached the scene of the disaster.

‘Second place is just the first-place loser,’ I said. ‘An American sports slogan. The Dutch spin on it is: a first-place loser is still in first place. A water-tight argument, if ever I’ve heard one.’

Miriam shrugged her shoulders again, this time shaking her head, too, but without taking her eyes off the TV. Where the Singel followed the curve of the Stadhouderskade, the team’s boat started manoeuvring to the left.

‘Minchen, don’t you feel like shouting at them: wait here … stop … out of respect … throw some of those flowers up onto the street … do something … have somebody say something … even if just a moment of silence …’

‘With a city full of Dam Screamers?’ Miriam said. ‘Fat chance.’