Dimitri Verhulst - The Latecomer

He was now walking around his room in little circles, figures of eight. His breathing was getting even more erratic and I realised that I could keep going with the same zeal. I’d struck the right note, even if it could only lead to him having a heart attack with the hounds at his heels.

‘You’re always the same, aren’t you, with your crimes against humanity? Once the tide turns and you lose power, you get delicate. You’re suddenly too ill and weak and tender to be tried and it would be inhumane not to take all that into account.’

He grabbed at his chest and coughed.

Like I said, I’d struck the right note. I had to push on.

‘It’s a beautiful day today, you realise that? Outside, in villages and towns everywhere, people are getting ready for the festivities. Because soon, when you’ve blown that last little bit of rank air out of your lungs, we’ll have finally turned the last page on that war of yours. There’ll be none of your scum left. Yes, I know, you infected your children with the same deranged ideas about innate superiority — the struggle against that poison will never end. But your generation, with you as its last survivor, was the worst yet, and hopefully the worst ever, and yes, that generation has almost been rubbed out. And that’s enough to cheer up any misanthrope.’

I flopped down onto a chair to consider the damage I’d done. The fear he must have seen and undoubtedly enjoyed in thousands of eyes was now shrieking through every shred of his tattered being.

It felt good, I couldn’t deny it.

‘In three days it’s your birthday party. I’m sure you’re looking forward to it. I’ll be there too. No doubt you consider that beneath you. And now I stop to think about it: I’m not really keen on sharing my birthday with you either … What if I just drowned you in your piss pot? Does that fit your idea of justice? Or do you have a more original suggestion? What did you do with the political prisoners in the old days? You must have come up with a few entertaining torture methods that have never worried humanity’s collective memory because nobody lived to tell the tale? Don’t you have something amusing for me to try out now? How about I ram a fork into your eyeball until the blood spurts out, coming fast and thick? And then make you eat the eyeball?’

He was going to have a complete breakdown. It was a question of minutes before this simpleton lost it completely.

Maybe I’d gone far enough and needed to stop. There was no benefit to be had in continuing to hector him or taking revenge on someone who had already been defeated by a trouser leg. These weren’t my values, even if I was rather tempted to overlook that just a little longer.

But there was more to it. Something I hadn’t found easy to admit to myself at first. Soon after arriving in this home, when I discovered the identity of this infamous patient, I had begun to see his presence here as a possible exit strategy, a way of returning to normal life with my head held high. Because what if I couldn’t bear living here? What if the loneliness, monotony and imprisonment proved too much for me? I could always expose the fugitive war criminal and leave Winterlight Geriatric as a tight-lipped hero! My friends and children might be embarrassed about the things they’d said during my supposed mental absence and the visits they’d never paid me, but above all they would praise my dedication. And my wife … well, yes, my wife … she has fangs: she bites!

So forget it, I was right to call it a day.

‘We’ll meet again,’ I said, taking my leave of Camp Commandant Alzheimer, but he’d probably forgotten it again half an hour later.

I’m sure Moniek has been suffering from telephono-phobia for a few weeks now. Every ringtone must sound like a death knell in her ears. Bad news has no respect for manners or the clock — that’s why she’ll go to bed with her mobile close at hand. It could be my parting shot: dying in the dead of night. But I have my suspicions that old folks’ homes don’t actually notice nocturnal expirations. Death is presumably determined during the morning round. And if they are unable to avoid noticing that a patient has been such a pain as to pop off when staff levels are at their lowest, they’ll simply wait until the full day shift has clocked on before doing what needs to be done.

Every time the phone rings, Moniek will be afraid it’s the coup de grâce . Sometimes her whispering premonition will slow her down so much she won’t get to it in time. Doubt will set in: would they inform the next of kin by answering machine or would that be considered improper? She settles on the latter, and doesn’t listen to her missed calls, trying to convince herself that news only becomes real once it’s known.

But it’s inescapable: in the extremely near future she will answer the phone and, to her great regret, she will not be met by the cautious voice of a telemarketer. It won’t be a pollster or a country bumpkin who has insisted on dialling the same wrong number twice, but the warm tenor of the care manager of Winterlight Geriatric: ‘Mrs De Petter, I’m afraid I have to give you the news you have been expecting for quite a while now …’

‘Was it an easy death? Did he die in his sleep?’ These are the kind of questions people generally ask.

Because we’re keen to believe the dearly departed don’t even know they’re dead, at least the ones who had the good timing to exhale their last breath between two dreams. They are somewhere far beyond the end of days, still thinking they’re about to get up, empty their bladder and eat a piece of toast while reading the morning paper. Beautiful.

But my death wasn’t going to be easy. No, I wasn’t going to die in my sleep.

I like to picture the scene: Moniek washing up in her kitchen, wearing her pink apron. She has just been informed of her widowhood, hip, hip, hooray, because her husband took a tumble out of his window while feeding the birds. It was very quick — falling always is — and they have every reason to believe he didn’t suffer unduly.

That’s how it could, might, should go.

While I’m at it I imagine my old buddies, bent over their boules. They’re in the middle of a loud discussion about the state of play and have brought out the measuring tape to decide who’s won and who’s lost. And then Roland suddenly remembers the news he’d meant to tell everyone straight away but forgot for a moment because it was such a beautiful evening and he says, while the discussion of the millimetres continues unabated:

‘There’s something I have to tell you …’

Yes, definitely, this was something his mates needed to know.

‘You can get your black raincoats out again because you’ll never guess who’s kicked the bucket this time: Désiré!’

‘Désiré, Désiré? Hang on … Which Désiré?’

‘Nah, come off it. Désiré Cordier, who else? You’re not going to tell me you’ve forgotten who Désiré Cordier is, or rather was. After all those years of playing together.’

Of course everyone knows who Désiré is. Was. Quiet, respectable. Former librarian, mad about books. Mad about music too; able to rattle off Beethoven’s birthday on command. Or tell Schubert’s string quartets apart. Unbelievable. Too bad he kept on playing pétanque like an absolute beginner. Under his wife’s thumb. At some stage he got dementia and became a real handful, plundering shops, catching trains to Wherever-it-was. There was no other option, they had to put him in a home. Winterlight, I think. Where they were filming that series recently … What’s it called again? Yes, it was definitely Winterlight. But how long ago was that, Désiré getting admitted? To be honest, some people thought he was already dead. But, see, he’s been alive all this time. It’s a shame. A crying shame.