Dimitri Verhulst - The Latecomer

No, Rosa hasn’t been seen for days, at least not by me, and I fear I shouldn’t harbour any illusions on that score. She must have been discovered lifeless, and that discovery will have set a well-oiled, almost silent machine in motion. It starts with the mysterious trolley that judders through this building’s C wing without the usual Exelon, Reminyl, Ebixa and other treats for hopeless cases, but filled with products that fall into a slightly different category. Among them, Aerodor air freshener, the deodorant spray for mortuaries, praised by undertakers and coroners alike for its refreshing hint of lemon.

What else is on the trolley, the very last to be pushed in our direction? The renowned Swash wipes, of course, for washing the cadaver without damaging the sebaceous layer. Only the private parts see soap and water before going into the coffin, to ensure the funeral ceremony doesn’t smell like a fish market. Fluff Strips are inserted to prevent distasteful leakages; a task generally reserved for trainees that sometimes provokes well-worn hilarity and revives memories of the odd dirty joke. Fluff Strips (a term I only picked up here in Winterlight) have the useful property of expanding on contact with fluids and seal off all kinds of nasty orifices. You can use tweezers for instance to shove them down the throat of the deceased when the fluids are threatening to drool out. It does happen. Cotton wool serves the same purpose but is much less effective as a sealant.

Ditch that cotton wool, the future belongs to Fluff Strips!

There’s a box of incontinence pads on that trolley — even though most people here are obliging enough to drop dead while wearing the appropriate nappy. Vaseline, to impart a less morbid gleam to the lips. Make-up too, of course, to dust the illusion of a blush on that bloodless death mask. And let’s not forget Kukident adhesive cream, the unsurpassed means of anchoring false teeth to shrinking gums. After all, not every family can see the humour in their freshly laid-out Gramp’s gnashers popping out of his mouth in the middle of the last farewell, interrupting the pastoral muttering of the bedside vigil.

KUKIDENT: GIVE LIFE A SMILE!

Something that is no longer customary, as I recently heard the head nurse explain to a gaggle of giggling students, is to glue the eyes of the deceased shut with Super Glue. A guaranteed remedy against twitching, it used to be common practice in nursing homes, but it only took a single loved one with an urge for one last look in the eyes of the departed, and a nurse with an empty tube of super glue had a lot of explaining to do. And then they had to go off in search of a plumber or someone like that to make Grandad presentable again!

Afterwards Rosa’s body would have been smuggled out through the rear entrance. Without any fanfare. And that was that.

She left before I got a chance to ask her for a dance. Before I got to shuffle my slippers next to hers and whisper:

‘Rosa, there’s a bus stop just outside. The number 77. Destination: the past. The Albatross Dance Hall. If you like, we can take it together.’

Not anymore.

Since then I’ve played my role the way I’m supposed to play it: with total commitment. I hardly get out of my chair. I sit there gawking at thin air. I scarcely eat and if the staff didn’t force me to swallow a mouthful of water now and then, I’d be cultivating kidney stones as big as clementines. I cry inconsolably and often, and don’t talk to anyone. I drag my feet so much they’ve taken to plonking me in a wheelchair whenever they feel the need to relocate me. I get new brightly coloured pills. I don’t care what they’re for. As long as they’re not too big to swallow, I take whatever they give me. Curvy Cora tries to cheer me up by luring me out of my room with a box of bread crumbs: she knows how much I enjoyed feeding the birds and ducks in the garden. I hear the doctors tell my wife I’m going downhill rapidly, she has to prepare herself for the imminent end. My Aerodor and Kukident trolley is ready and waiting.

The patients didn’t notice, of course — they don’t notice anything anymore — but there came a morning when the Winterlight car park was suddenly full of TV production trucks. Accredited journalists tried to force their way in, photographers trained their tele-bazookas on the object of their mass attention and did their best to set the scene with shots of withered residents skulking behind curtains — to the fury of the home’s privacy-minded director. Not a single staff member could leave or enter the home without a barrage of microphones being thrust at their gaping mouth.

It was clear that all of the institution’s employees, even the cleaning ladies, were walking on eggshells. Dark clouds were gathering and it seemed to me there must have been some kind of emergency meeting drum in the sacredness of their duty to maintain professional confidentiality. Memory choir was cancelled until further notice, the bingo was off, the staff were needed elsewhere and Lorenzo probably wouldn’t be coming in to strut his stuff either. There was a media storm to brave. Winterlight Geriatric could get back to its old familiar programme afterwards.

My muscles had grown unpleasantly stiff since I’d decided to sit out my last days on earth like a slug. But now, for the moment, I was free of aches and pains. The developments inspired me and, despite my earlier resolution to no longer budge an inch, I shuffled off in search of adventure, moving at an inconspicuous snail’s pace towards room 17, Camp Commandant Alzheimer’s room, entering without knocking and closing the door behind me. Unfortunately it didn’t have a lock.

The Commandant had just got up from his wheelchair and was standing in the middle of the room, struggling with his clothes (he’d tried to stick both feet into the same trouser leg, a classic).

Constantly putting garments on and taking them off again — on-off, on-off — that’s the pathetic Sisyphean activity of those whose minds have been so eroded by the years that they constantly think they have to go somewhere. The number 77 always knows exactly where.

The Commandant looked at me with big, restless eyes, scratched his face and seemed to be considering whether or not to start screaming. The fairy.

‘There’s no point screaming,’ I said. ‘The louder you call, the worse off you’ll be. So just keep your filthy cakehole shut if you don’t mind, that’ll be easiest for everyone.’

I had the impression he could sense the meaning of my words. He kept quiet, trembling.

‘Look,’ I continued, ‘look out of the window! See that media mob out there? Five camera teams, armed with state-of-the-art recording equipment … Things aren’t looking good for you, pal. Because you know what, someone’s blown your cover! Your secret’s leaked out! There’s a mole in this home and he’s betrayed you, and there’s nothing you can do about it! Those journalists out there have been tipped off by an anonymous source. They know you’re in here. They know that Winterlight Geriatric is your own little bunker! You can imagine the commotion going on out there. At least I hope you can. The last living camp guard from that foul war has left his luxurious bolthole in Paraguay and returned to Europe because he was so pathetic he wanted to die on the soil of his old dreams! The coward who ran when his comrades were executed — rather fled than dead, although he himself drove I don’t know how many innocents to their death on an industrial scale. Now he’s old and sick enough to no longer be dragged before a judge, he comes back. But you know what, friend, you’re faking your illness and the whole world knows! You’re about to be arrested! Can you picture the triumphant headlines?’