Dimitri Verhulst - The Latecomer

And so I was delivered home by the police, to be reunited with my wife, who, having gulped back her forebodings of catastrophe, burst into fury at me for, once again, going out without a mobile and leaving her to wait with a saucepan full of cold stew for no good reason.

The representative of the forces of law and order: ‘Could we perhaps step in for a moment, ma’am? This doesn’t seem the kind of thing we should discuss on the doorstep …’

The entire conversation between the sympathetic officers and my wife (who began to look more and more despondent) was carried out in such a perfect whisper that I was only able to make out the word ‘doctor’. And just when I thought she was paralysed by utter dejection, Moniek De Petter, my warden, shrieked, ‘Dementia? Dementia, you say? If you put a glass of red wine on the table in front of him you’d see how demented he is. He wouldn’t forget to drink it, that’s for sure …’

After the police had departed, there was nothing left to peer at and the neighbours’ blinds plunged back into the depths.

What I liked most about my performance was the restlessness of the role I had taken on: losing my grip on reality; having the feeling that somewhere, but the devil only knew where, a task was waiting to be fulfilled. I had to act like I was searching for something I wouldn’t recognise if I somehow fell over it. This total detachment from our ugly, everyday sureties appealed to me. It was a lot of fun. I maundered through my days like my own stand-in, though not without assuring myself along the way that Moniek De Petter was steaming more and more recklessly towards a total nervous breakdown.

The dotard’s primary occupation is flight: an urgent, desperate need to escape. With that in mind there is a bus stop in the middle of Winterlight Geriatric’s garden. Completely fake, of course. I mean, no bus will ever stop in that garden or leave from it. But it’s still a perfect reproduction, complete with bench and shelter, a neatly posted timetable and various notices that make the whole particularly convincing, even if none of the prospective passengers ever show any interest in them: Road works in the High Street, delays may occur. We apologise for any inconvenience. There is even a short stretch of road, about seven metres in total, surfaced in the magnificently smooth asphalt cyclists are so keen to get under their wheels, and a sign to a town that doesn’t exist, which is also the bus’s destination. The number 77. Since the establishment of this ghost connection to elsewhere, Winterlight’s care workers have had to spend much less time tracking down residents who have gone missing. Nowadays when an old dear feels the urge to run away, she spots the bus stop and sits down triumphantly to wait for the next bus. After a while a nurse comes out, calls something along the lines of, ‘Are you waiting for the 77, Gilberta? It’s running late, pet, because of a detour or something. They’re digging up the sewers in the High Street, if I’m not mistaken. Why don’t you just pop back inside for five minutes? Come on now, you can have a nice cup of coffee while you’re waiting …’

The dementia sufferers feel like their travel plans are being taken seriously, they’re not pushed into even deeper confusion, and the staff don’t need to interrupt their exhausting routine of pill pushing and nappy changing for another round of hide-and-seek.

The bus-stop method has been adopted from Germany and the investment is worth every penny. Each person I’ve seen this trick used on really has come back into the home, enthusiastically accepting the warmth and the promised coffee, and afterwards completely forgetting that they were actually determined to flee and sitting there waiting for a bus ride to freedom.

But, as I explained, this stop is at Winterlight Geriatric Care and I had to get myself signed up as a patient there first.

My clandestine research into Alzheimer’s had taught me to emphasise a few key areas. Mood swings amongst others. Sitting there nice and depressive one hour, and chortling away the next, for instance at my wife’s farcical hair-do. (Or the trendy glasses she’d recently purchased to convince others, and above all herself, that she was keeping up with the times. Glasses with a glaring brand name on the frame. But Moniek had always been a sucker for flashy brand names. Or products with a little label on them saying ‘authentic’ or ‘designer’ …)

A sleep disorder, definitely, that was another thing I had to fake if I wanted to earn my admission to demen-tiahood. And so I got up as fresh as a daisy when the night was at its darkest, made myself a mountain of sandwiches, treated myself to a nice bath, preferably singing, rubbed myself with lavish amounts of sun lotion and instant tan, then installed myself in front of the TV.

My orientation in time and space needed obliterating too, with long walks as a frequent consequence.

Unfortunately I was forced to cut back on these extended wanderings. Moniek grew more ashamed of me with every passing day and became terrified that I might strike up a conversation with someone who knew us. Being married to a dementia sufferer was an almost unbearable affront. The disease might occur in the best of families, but under no circumstances in ours. And so she kept me inside as much as possible, under house arrest, with the front door locked.

The neighbours’ first reticent enquiries were a humiliation she felt obliged to parry with a childish excuse:

‘Oh, Désiré’s fine, thanks. Why do you ask? He’s just very worn out at the moment. He got it into his skull that he needed to catalogue his entire book collection. You know Désiré and books. He’s married to his books and he has me on the side as a mistress. In a manner of speaking, of course, you know what I mean. Anyway, he’s spending so much time in his library and he’s not really up to it. His leeks are bolting in the garden and he doesn’t even notice, he’s so preoccupied with his book-cases. Overworked, that’s what he is. Nothing else. And that for somebody who’s retired and should be taking it easy at long last. It’s the black hole, I suppose. What else could it be except him missing his profession?’

But the residents of Azalea Street knew better. After all, they were the ones who’d seen me walk past their front doors with a lampshade on my head.

‘Hi, Désiré. Bought yourself a new hat?’

‘Yes!’

‘It’s a beauty.’

‘I have to look good when Grandma comes.’

House arrest it was. But as long as you stay alert, an opportunity is bound to arise sooner or later and one day when Moniek stepped into the back garden with a basket of wet washing I managed to slip outside unnoticed. There was no time for me to think about it or put on proper shoes. Wearing my slippers and corduroy trousers, my red polka-dot shirt and without a coat — quite tidy, all things considered — I strode out onto the street. Walking purposefully. No plan. Heading where my nose led me. Wonderful. The only thing that stopped me enjoying my escapade to the full was the self-pity that gradually overcame me as I realised how little I had given way to these impulses in the past.

I avoided the busy main roads and took streets Moniek would only search as a last resort. And as soon as I got close to the station, I knew what to do: I would board a train. The first one I saw. The destination didn’t matter in the least. And without paying. After all, I had already taken one step down the criminal path. The police and I were old friends.