Authors: Peter Buwalda
He turned to Joni and pointed his thumb downward. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said: “I think we have to go back,” after which he stuck a finger in his ear and reassured his friend at the other end. “Thijmen, calm down. Take it easy. Joni and I are here, in Zaltbommel. We are fine. We’re eating veal. But I’m really glad you called. Yeah, it’s terrible. Yes. Yeah—it’s not far. We can be there in an hour.”
Thijmen had listened in silence. “Aaron?” There was bewilderment in his voice. “There’s nothing you can do, man. Just stay where you are. Be glad you’re
there
. You go party. I’ve got to hang up now, kid, I’m out of here.”
“Got it, Thijmen, understood. You’re absolutely right. We’ll do that. You just get out of there safely. See you, dude.”
With a little crackle Thijmen hung up.
“What’s that?” Aaron asked the dial tone. For a brief moment he looked straight into Boudewijn Stol’s eyes. “OK, Thijmen, hang in there, buddy. Sure thing. We’re on our way. Bye.”
He pressed the end-call button and set the telephone down next to his plate.
“Well?” asked Brigitte. “Doesn’t sound too good.”
“No,” he said. “There’s something awful going on in Enschede. A fireworks factory has exploded. We saw it on the TV back in our hotel room just now. That’s where we’re from, you know, Enschede. I live right near that factory. It’s much worse than they thought. Being broadcast on all three stations.”
“Huh,” said Stol.
Impressive analysis, he thought—
huh
. “The sliding glass doors of my house have been blown out,” he said, “and …”
“If that’s everything,” Joni interrupted. She did not look at him, but sliced off a piece of veal and dragged the tender meat through the gravy. She stabbed a snow pea along with it and stuck the assemblage into her mouth.
“For the time being, yes, that’s everything,” he said. “But the whole street is on fire. If the wind shifts my house will be toast. We’ve got to get there. Now.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and demonstratively shoved his chair back. Joni kept looking at her plate and continued chewing. He watched anxiously as she ate. Damn, you know, this was
his
house they were talking about,
nobody else here could claim
their
house was about to go up in flames. She swallowed. A golden-blond wisp slipped over her cheek; she gently, calmly, slid it back behind her ear. Then, as though deciding she had been watched for long enough, she laid down her cutlery and looked at him. “Aaron,” she said, “don’t be so unbelievably childish. We’re at the wedding of one of your best friends. We can’t just take off. Calm down a bit, honey.” She winked at Stol. “Good thing
he
doesn’t have a stable.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “No, Joni,” he said, palpitating with a surging rage, “I don’t have horses, but I do have two house pets, remember?”
“Guinea pigs,” said Joni.
Brigitte hid a snicker behind her hand.
“And forty original jazz LPs belonging to your father next to my turntable,” he added quickly. “And a laptop. And a fortune in photographic equipment. And 2,000 books. Maybe we can salvage some of it? Just a suggestion?”
“Go get the car,” said Joni, “while I fill a bucket with pond water.”
Stol intervened. “I understand where your boyfriend’s coming from,” he said soothingly. During their brief squabble he occupied himself with his handkerchief: leaning back casually, he produced, magician-like, the crimson silk hanky from his breast pocket, spread it out over his left hand and picked it up from the middle, as though it were soiled. A little shake and he took hold of the underside with his free hand, carefully folded the cloth in half and grasped it like a marmot. Prising open his breast pocket with thumb and index finger, he released the little silk beast into his pocket, appraising Aaron all the while. “His instinct tells him he has to rush to the fire-storm. It’s happening there, and he’s stuck
here. His most cherished possession, a house containing all that defines him, is in danger—this is clearly no trifling matter.”
Aaron blinked. Why did the Oracle not address him directly? Had he even asked for his opinion?
“If you ask me,” said Stol, as though he could read his mind, “you should put your emotions aside for a moment and consider the nature of the situation in Enschede. And Arend’s likely role in its solution.”
“My name is Aaron.”
“That is what you should be thinking. Now rather than later. Better to realize here, instead of
there
, that by going there you’ll probably do more harm than good.”
“Who said anything about doing harm?”
“I did,” said Stol. “There’s a fire, there’s the danger of collapsing buildings. Poisonous fumes. The whole ball of wax. The only thing the professionals want from the general public is that they keep out of their way.”
“And what makes you the expert?”
Stol, smiling, sized him up.
“What’s so funny?”
“You are. You are a really funny guy.” With a couple of quick tugs he pulled his cuffs out from under the sleeves of his jacket. He turned to Joni. “But say your boyfriend goes anyway. What then? Then there’s Arend wandering around a disaster area with nowhere to sleep. He’s in the way. And say the wind
does
shift, then all he can do is stand there, drunk and helpless, and watch his house burn to the ground. You have to be able to handle that. And if I judge him right, I’ll bet he can’t handle that too well. He’s already freaking out.” Stol picked up his fork, skewered a bite-sized hunk of veal and put it into his small mouth. “In other words, if you
go there,” he said, chewing and jabbing his empty fork in Aaron’s direction, “you’re risking a trauma.”
Joni sat with her elbows on the table, she looked back at her plate and held her hand like a visor in front of her eyes. Aaron inhaled slowly. All right then. Go on, shit on my head, thanks for the hat. Make a monkey out of me. And no, they weren’t going anymore. He had lost. So what were they staring at now, the three of them? He looked at his plate, his food gone cold, and rubbed his right eye. “My contact,” he said, “there’s something stuck to it.” He tried to whisk the plastic disc out of his eye but realized his hands were shaking violently. Stol’s eyes burned through the skin on his head.
“Listen here,” he shouted as he got up, “I want all of you to know I’m pro-family and anti-drugs.” Without looking at anyone he marched off, cupping the contact lens in his hand, in the direction of the double doors where they had entered. His face burned. The banquet hall pitched like the hold of a galleon, cannons yanked on their chains, chandeliers waltzed back and forth across the ceiling. He felt the exhaustion of having slept badly for weeks. As he staggered along the gold-leafed floorboards and the eating backs he accidentally kicked over a handbag. He shuffled over the parquet floor, mumbled “sorry,” and when he flicked it back up with his foot he saw in the distance that Stol, Brigitte, and Joni had gone back to chatting. They were laughing heartily.
The coolness of the marble cell, rose fragrance from a spray can. He locked himself in the first stall he found and slumped onto the matt-black seat without dropping his trousers. The tank gurgled softly, he laid his churning head in his hands, closed his eyes, and listened to the murmur. The water mocked him, he could hear it snickering above his head …
When he returned to the banquet hall, it appeared smaller than
before: the ceiling was lower and was charred around the edges by candle flames. As he hurried toward their side of the table grid he could already see that Stol had removed his white jacket. He did a double take. What the?… Stol had taken off his shirt too, he sat bare-chested at the table and was smiling at him. In his hand, or rather in the crook of his arm, he held a dirty plate against his hirsute chest like a Frisbee. A slab of calf’s cheek, drenched in gravy, slid off it and landed with an audible thwack on the table. As if on command, the entire hall fell silent and stopped eating. Everyone turned and looked at Aaron.
“No!” he screamed. “What are you doing?”
With a bitter grimace Stol flung the plate at him. He ducked and fell forward off the toilet seat,
bonk
, his head banging squarely against the white stall door.
“Ow-ow-ow-ow,” he whispered. The crown of his head throbbed. He felt blood.
Sigerius stands stock-still in the hall. He has just picked up the mail from the doormat. He had planned to walk through to the living room, but now he stands in the doorway, looking anxiously at his daughter’s profile. She is sitting on the padded armrest of the large sofa, she’s wearing denim hot pants, it’s hot out, one of her bare legs is crossed on her lap, she picks intently at her toenail polish. She is arguing with Aaron, but he can’t see him. “Come on, just go with me,” he hears him say. “I think it’ll do you good.”
“Why on earth will it do me good?” She glances up briefly from her foot. “Just tell me that.”
“Because then you’ll get a realistic picture. Instead of letting your imagination run wild.”
They are talking about tomorrow afternoon. Aaron, as a resident of the disaster area as well as a professional photographer, has a double invitation to ride through the remains of Roombeek in a minibus laid on by the city council. Without first checking with Joni, he has arranged for her to have that second seat.
“My boyfriend’s idea of victim assistance,” she says. “Go stand in front of the burned-out, caved-in ruin where your half-dead exboss used to live. It’ll do you good.”
The scowl on her self-assured forehead, the full lips that she squeezes tight, either out of irritation or simply from focusing on
her nail polish. He has a lot of nerve, actually, watching her like this all week.
When he got back from Shanghai and, half in shock, surfed through all the news programs, Tineke suggested they invite Joni and Aaron to stay with them. The kid can’t get into his house, and now they’re sleeping in Joni’s stuffy attic room. Of course they’re welcome, he had said, the door’s always open, but haven’t they been sleeping in that attic for years now? He believed Joni would turn down the offer, maybe they shouldn’t put her on the spot. Upon which an uncharacteristic quarrel ensued. Tineke said that
she
would like it, it seemed nice to
her
. Nice, he repeated, nice?—what he thought was nice was that they raised their daughters to be independent. He shouldn’t be so silly, she said, she just felt like having Joni at home. And since reasonableness is one trait of Tineke’s that he admires, and to “just feel like something” is so out of character, he asked if there was some special reason.
“No,” she said.
“Tell me anyway.”
With a sigh she sank heavily into the swivel armchair across from him. “You won’t believe it,” she said, “but he phoned yesterday.”
Every day he had 110 different
he
s after him, but he knew at once it had to do with Menno. So was this crap about to start all over again? Wijn’s Utrecht drawl echoed in his head. “You’re kidding,” he said. “What’d he want? And why are you only telling me now?”
“Honey, Sunday wasn’t really the right moment. I mean: I thought the fireworks accident was enough for one day. I haven’t forgotten how upset you were at that reception. You do understand, don’t you?”
“Tien, you should have phoned me in Shanghai. Immediately. What’d he want?”
“He wanted … he wanted to know if Joni had survived it.”
“Menno Wijn?”
“Menno Wijn?
Wilbert
. Wilbert phoned.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Now do you understand? I got the fright of my life. He called while I was having dinner, alone.”
“How did he sound? Where’d he call from?”
“He sounded calm. But unfriendly. Curt.”
“Where’s he live?”
“Darling, you don’t think I asked him all that, do you? It all went so fast. It’s been ten years since I’ve talked to the boy.”
So he agreed to it, of course he agreed to it; now that he knew the whole story it wasn’t such a bad idea for Joni to stay with them for a while. He insisted they not tell her about the phone call. As far as Tineke could remember, Wilbert didn’t specifically say to, so technically speaking they weren’t keeping anything from her.
“That’s for us to decide,” he said.
And so on Tuesday evening the evacuees appeared on their doorstep, themselves apparently not displeased with the idea of a clean bed and their own shower. For his part, he spent the next two days hotfooting it from TV station to TV station, ran himself ragged organizing Portakabins for students made homeless by the explosion. It was all quite hectic. Since learning of the fireworks accident he hadn’t given Linda and her website a second thought—until the moment those two dropped their bags in his living room. They greeted him and sat down on the sofa across from him, after which the Roombeek routine unfolded: he listened to their fireworks stories, they to his—and all the while it throbbed through his head:
or maybe it
is
her
…
“Even if it’s worse than you thought,” he hears Aaron say, “then at least you know what you’re agonizing about. But really, you’ll be OK with it.
I
was OK with it.”
“
OK
with it?” Joni shook her head and went back to picking at her toes. “Weren’t you going to go buy a judo outfit? Go buy it then. Instead of playing Mr. Psychologist.”
Sigerius urges himself into action. Quit this observing. For five days he’s been observing his daughter. He studies her like an anthropologist, no, like an inquisitor. Often, now for instance, he notices nothing out of the ordinary: there she sits, Joni, upset by that awful story about Ennio, looking only like her own vulnerable self. But still. If he bumps into her in the hallway or on the path around the side of the house, or just a few minutes ago, when he happened to catch sight of her—each fresh meeting is a body blow. With each fresh sighting he sees what he first saw during the reception: an unnerving resemblance. He pushes open the living room door, catches Aaron’s eye and says: “You don’t need to buy a new judo outfit. Come with me.”
The irony of it is that he turned to the Internet because it seemed like a safe alternative. Until recently he thought: anything’s better than that debacle of a year and a half ago.