Dimitri Verhulst - The Latecomer

I was still looking at Rosa, watching the last bit of cake glide into her mouth.

When I had summoned up the courage to again turn my gaze more or less in Charlotte’s direction, I saw that her eyes were swimming with tears. And with a shock I should have anticipated, I realised she was looking at me the way you look at someone for the last time. She had come here today to say goodbye! Something she’d done in her heart months ago. My true self was long gone, after all. She could no longer bear to visit someone who didn’t recognise her. The only man she was willing to recognise as her father had dissolved in the mists of his own memory. This was going to be her last trip to this den of misery, her final symbolic visit, to round it all off. I saw it. I felt it. And I couldn’t raise any objections. My son had chucked it in long ago.

( ‘Whether I’m sitting in front of him or not, he doesn’t even know who I am anymore. If you ask me, my presence only upsets him …’, I could hear him saying it.) And from tomorrow Charlotte too would use those glib phrases to soothe her conscience about her premature goodbye.

( ‘I wanted to remember my father the way I’d always known him, not as the complete stranger he became.’ )

Of all my pétanque buddies not one had come to visit me here. Neither had any neighbours or former library colleagues. My brother? Never! And why on earth would they? I was already as good as dead. An empty husk perched on a commode. If my daughter could no longer bring herself to visit, only Moniek would be left. My last and only connection to existence. But that too could be severed.

Charlotte talked at me the whole time, almost constantly. Not because she was counting on some kind of communication, but because it was something she would never do again. The occasion demanded it. And because we’re all so desperately awkward when it comes to goodbyes.

‘You’ve really pulled the rug out from under us, Father, with your illness. Did you know that? Me especially, because our Hugo doesn’t really let it get to him. He’s too busy with work and the kids’ exams, you know him. Mother backtracked on the idea of looking for a flat at first, but now she’s arranged it after all. She’s moving on the last Saturday of the month. She’s got a beautiful place, she can’t complain. In the middle of town, with everything she needs close at hand. But she refuses to admit she’ll have to make do with less space and is hanging on for dear life to the whole jumble sale that’s been gathering dust up in the attic for years. Dresses that don’t fit anymore and will never fit again? She’s taking them. And why? Because “Do you have any idea how much that dress cost?” Three boxes full of drawings Hugo and I did in the nursery class, tent pegs and a groundsheet from the year dot, something hideous made of ivory … It’s all going with her! And it’s not going to stop there. Now she wants me to trot off to Sanders Furniture Emporium with her to buy a cupboard for her tea towels. She has to get rid of some bloody cupboards, not buy more. But she doesn’t get it. She refuses to get it. Instead she’s pissed off with me. “You’re already just as bad as your father, he wouldn’t buy me a cupboard either …” Meanwhile our Hugo just busts his gut laughing … I’ve realised that I can look forward to quite a few years of drudgery and thankless sacrifice. At the moment, all I really want is to press the fast-forward button. These years aren’t going to be any fun for anybody: not me, not you, not anybody.’

A good moment for a fart, I thought.

‘Did you know Mum’s already decided what music to play at your funeral? Elton John’s “Song for a Guy”. I can’t imagine that’s something you ever enjoyed listening to and, actually, just three notes of Elton John were probably enough to give you amoebic dysentery, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I told her, Mother, please, that song is actually a musical declaration of love by one homosexual for another, so if you ask me it’s not really appropriate for Father’s funeral. But she couldn’t care less. Your having dedicated a sizable portion of your life to building up a proper classical music section in the library doesn’t matter a bit. Just like nothing about a human life matters at the end. Forget Tartini, forget Schubert. It’s going to be “Song for a Guy” and that’s all there is to it.’

A better moment for a fart, but my bagpipe was deflated and refused to blow.

A frisson of elation swept through the canteen: the young and handsome Kukident rep had been spotted on the premises.

And it was true, if you looked outside you could see his car, painted with the slogan: KUKIDENT — GIVE LIFE A SMILE! The female staff gabbled and giggled, patients were suddenly being wheeled up and down the corridors in the hope of bumping into the sales Adonis, as if by chance.

Daughter dear had fetched another glass of wine from the bar (not for me, unfortunately). She was looking tired. She’d never been a great believer in cosmetics and that hadn’t changed.

‘Pascal and I are separating,’ she blurted after returning to our table and taking a slug from her glass as if it were lemonade.

‘You’re the first person I’ve told, but I feel like you can keep a secret.’

At least she hadn’t lost her sense of humour!

‘I know you were extremely fond of Pascal. He felt the same way about you. He thought you were a tiptop person and like a father to him. But it is what it is. It’s not that anything terrible has been going on between us. On the contrary. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. But it’s over. I slept with someone I can never love as much as I once loved Pascal. But I’m not feeling sorry for myself … It’s too hard to explain. Maybe I shouldn’t even try. But I’m better off practising first, before I have to tell Mother … Anyway, it’s all a bit of a mess at the moment …’

She’d drained her wine.

She took both my hands in hers, squeezing gently.

‘Dad,’ she said, ‘Dad, look at me for a minute!’

I really didn’t know how to suppress my discomfort. It would have helped if I’d been able to concentrate on Rosa Rozendaal, but she’d been wheeled back to her room in the meantime.

‘You really don’t know who I am, do you?’ Charlotte repeated, her cheeks wet with tears.

‘Matilda!’ I cried triumphantly. ‘Matilda! I knew you’d come to rescue me in the end!’

She straightened her back, put a full pack of cigarettes down on the table in front of me, pressed her lips hard against my forehead, then left without another word.

My premonition was correct: she never came back.

Rosa Rozendaal’s appearances became less and less frequent. She no longer added her voice to the memory choir, which made me change my tune too; just dragging myself to this imbecilic group activity was now a test of my willpower. She was also absent from Lorenzo’s dance afternoons and didn’t even leave her room for meals. No more Easter eggs painted by her hand, no more dogs called Pablo sitting on her lap.

Until finally I realised: Rosa probably wasn’t here anymore! She must have failed to wake up from one of her afternoon naps, quietly and fuss-free, as befits a lady. Only to be found when Aisha came to wake her for a pedicure, or to give her a watery coffee with a madeleine on the side.

It’s something I do wonder about when I see how drolly the carers step into the rooms: whether they’re always prepared for the possibility of a dead body on the other side of the door. Do they still occasionally find it confronting or shocking? Or do they get so used to the omnipresence of death that, to overstate things, they just casually sweep the deceased into a dustpan? I sometimes come close to asking.