Authors: Peter Buwalda
Before listening to the LP on the turntables and headphones up front, before determining that Theun Beers has a flat, uninteresting voice, he stares mesmerized at that picture. According to the caption, the figures a few steps behind him are a drummer, bassist, and pianist: like Beers, twenty-somethings with sideburns and floppy hats or Sandokan turbans over their long hair, but guys who pale in comparison to their frontman in charisma and photogenics.
Theun Beers wears leather pants, and between the lapels of his open suede jacket glows a brazen torso as leathery as his trousers.
On Sunday he and Tineke stroll pseudo-relaxed through Het Rutbeek, they discuss the immediate future and how he will inevitably be sleeping in a pied-à-terre in The Hague on weekdays. Suddenly it’s all moving so fast: on Monday morning he hears from Kok himself that the Cabinet very much wants him, “we’ve got a green light”; the next day the eight o’clock news opens with Kruidenier’s dramatic exit. Current affairs programs spend the rest of the evening speculating on a successor, his name keeps coming up. He has already informed his university deans and the key members of his staff by telephone. He and his spokesman go through what he will have to do tomorrow afternoon, after the news from The Hague. A special meeting of the Board of Directors and the trustees has been convened to address the changeover, there is champagne, he makes a farewell circuit through the administrative wing, starts removing things from his office walls.
At two o’clock that afternoon the hurricane starts swirling; the campus is swarming with news media, he gives the same brief reaction a few times and leaves the administrative wing via a side door. The next morning his new chauffeur picks him up, and to his surprise his department secretary is sitting on the backseat. Conversing calmly, they drive to Huis ten Bosch, where after his swearing-in he drinks two cups of tea with the queen; the world is spinning again, but now at double time.
He recognizes the pattern. The first weeks are killingly hectic, he puts in fourteen-, fifteen-hour days, hurtles between Zoetermeer and The Hague, sees more civil servants, advisory panels, and union officials than is good for a person. He endures his first
parliamentary debate, wades through stacks of dossiers—but his head is calming down. This is how he’s always done it: smother private problems in demanding work. He enjoys his new arena, the responsibility, the national interest that, like a horde of hooligans, storms the Cabinet where he is suddenly a member.
Back in his apartment on the Hooikade, as he showers off the new reality, Aaron’s house on the Vluchtestraat seems farther away than ever, and he can hardly imagine he actually smashed through that sliding glass door. From his cozy Hague apartment, that balcony where he lay bleeding seems like a fantasy, a dream, a nightmare. For the past few days he’s been toying with the idea of calling McKinsey, asking for Joni’s e-mail address, the
real
one. Maybe he’ll muster up the courage to send her something, something sensible, something … fatherly?
But then he himself is the recipient. The text message comes in on his private cell phone during parliamentary question time. The Christian Democrats’ education expert has summoned him to the sitting with a query about the competitive position of Dutch research institutes. He is early, it is only his second time in this situation, before it’s his turn the Defense Minister takes questions about the Joint Strike Fighter. The practically empty chamber seems immense, bigger than on television, questioners walk in and out, the minister’s response elicits another question. Kok comes in, walks behind the television cameras. The PM grunts something that sounds like “how’s it going,” sits down next to him and thumbs through a stack of paper. To kill time during the ensuing airplane discussion between his colleague and a defense specialist, he takes his phone out of his pocket. “Unknown sender,” just an 06 number. He opens the message.
Wanker listen. I know you’re fucking your stepdaughter on the Internet. Want me to keep your jerk-off secret quiet?
He glances at the PM. The electrical field surrounding the boss of the Netherlands: its force dissipates. Which throws Sigerius off balance. He has to grasp the veneer tabletop so as not to tumble over backward. But he forgets to first set down that instrument of calamity, he just lets go of it, the phone bangs against the edge of the table and clatters to the floor. He grimaces sheepishly at Kok, who glowers at him, he slides his chair back a bit and disappears under the table. His temples throbbing, he gasps for breath.
Christ. Now the shit’s gonna hit the fan.
He sees the gleaming phone, half of it anyway, the anthracite back panel has come loose, it’s lying on the floor between Kok’s feet. The Speaker of the House calls his name, it’s his turn, he looks up at the PM like a puppy dog, mumbles “sorry” and points under Kok’s desk, “I’ll just get that.” He grabs the bit of plastic from between the heavy black leather shoes, robust labor union footwear that would cost a Berlusconi in the polls, and struggles to his feet. He sets the dismantled cell phone on the desk top and hurries to the Speaker’s lectern. A capable body double answers the questions that are fired at him.
As soon as he is liberated, he leaves the parliament building without so much as a glance in any direction, and has his Volvo deliver him to his department in Zoetermeer. Only once he has closed his office door behind him, high up and deep in his department, does he reassemble the phone. It comes to life, searches for a network, and immediately starts vibrating: two new messages. The first is from, of all people, Isabelle Orthel.
Hey, just saw you on TV, long time no see. How’s things?
The second is from the same unknown 06 number.
Went all pale, didn’t you. Shit-scared, you fucking wanker. Make me an offer
.
He slams the cell phone onto his desk, stares at it for a bit, and picks it up again. He’s got a meeting with his department secretary and under-minister in five minutes; instead of preparing for it he fumbles a reply.
Who are you?
For the rest of the week he agonizes over that question. He dials the number about four times, each time gets put through to a female voice who reads out the numbers, followed by a beep. Once, he leaves a message, firm and clear: Identify yourself, friend, or drop the goddamn charade. Once, somebody answers but doesn’t say anything, he keeps asking who he’s dealing with, until, following a derisive chuckle—a gruff man-laugh—they hang up.
His options are few. Aside from himself, only Joni knows of his “involvement,” maybe Aaron too—and
he’d
sooner bite off his tongue. He rules out either of them being behind these perverse texts. So one of them must have blabbed. Or is he underestimating Aaron? Could he have pissed Aaron off?
What were you doing in my house? What kind of vacation did you treat us to?
Something like that? No, it can’t be. The kid isn’t crazy. No, one of them talked. The person who is hounding him is well informed, knows that Joni is Linda
and
knows about him—in other words, knows
everything
, and that infuriates him, he’s mad at the asshole himself, but at Joni and Aaron too: why did they talk?
Wait a sec … He scrutinizes the text messages again. Could they be from someone who recognized Joni, just like he recognized her—why not?—and is now taking a shot in the dark? A wild guess? Who would do something like this? Somebody at Tubantia? A student?
In any case, it hits the mark. His old fear returns, a paralyzing
combination of panicky self-preservation, that first and foremost, and an overwhelming fatherly concern. Not only is his ass on the line (a mutated ass, Siem Sigerius’s ass has expanded into a network of interests, contacts, expectations, responsibilities; a reputation like a crystal chandelier that under no circumstances may be allowed to come crashing down), but Joni’s too. The illusion that Joni would come out of this unscathed, that everything would eventually return to how it was, a cautious flicker of hope that has provided him with some relief these past months, has been destroyed.
During his next obligatory question hour, exactly what he is afraid of happening, happens. Perhaps that is why the text message hits him right in the gut.
I can see you, wanker. You’re looking pale. Been jerking off too much or just sleeping badly?
When, later that afternoon, his chauffeur drives him through an autumn storm to Utrecht, where he has to address a meeting of the national Student Union, he asks him to stop at a roadside restaurant. Although he has resolved to ignore the stalker, he retreats to the men’s room and, trembling with rage and hardly in the mood for a friendly chat, calls his old secretary. Who has asked for his telephone number recently? Only journalists. No one else? No, not that she can recall, and anyway she never gives out telephone numbers, he knows that.
He’s completely at a loss. That evening, as he sits in his furnished apartment, the walls start to close in on him. Rain falls in sheets on the sidewalks in the depths of the Hooikade and he stands with his legs against the warmth of the radiator. He is imprisoned in a glass cell, he has never been so visible before, so vulnerable. All eyes are fixed on him, he is fighting for the confidence of parliament, of the media, of the party, of the voter. His stalker has chosen his moment well, he’s got to hand it to him. He tosses and turns, the
wind whistles around his foreign, anonymous bedroom, he thinks of home, of Tineke, of their life before—and suddenly it hits him.
Wilbert.
Who else?
God,
that
took him long enough. How could he be so blind? His son gets out of jail, his son calls for Joni. The only man on earth who has a score to settle with him. He switches on the lamp next to the bed and looks into the small bedroom. He can’t say the thought puts his mind at ease. “Dumb bitch,” he hisses. Could Joni have told him?
How incredibly, terribly, unbelievably stupid
. The room is chilly and yet the sweat is pouring off his shoulders.
Or did Wilbert first threaten
her
? If it’s him at all. So there he is, in the dead of night. He stares into space for several minutes. Then he takes his cell phone, locates that 06 number, and dials.
“Wilbert,” he says after the beep, “I know it’s you, kid. Apparently you’re angry. After ten years you’re still angry. I respect that. I’m angry too sometimes. But realize you’re playing with fire. On top of it, you’re talking crap. You insinuate all sorts of things, but can you prove anything? Of course not. There’s nothing to prove. Get a grip on yourself, kid. Get a life.”
The dreams were relentless. They picked at him with their sharp beaks, and when he woke up the ravens landed on the lampshades, waiting for him to doze off again. He found himself everywhere: in bed, on the sofa, at the table with his stubbly cheek in a cold slice of pizza, on the stairs with a cramp in one of his feet.
It felt as though he didn’t sleep for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch, but sometimes it was suddenly pitch-dark, or conversely, an unexpectedly bright ray of light sliced through the gap in the curtains. He made space-time journeys through all the houses that had featured in his life. Often he was at home in Venlo with his parents, in creepy variations on the row house he grew up in, and there was always someone—usually his father—who was pissed off about something; then he lived with a malignantly or terminally ill Sigerius family member in his little room at his great-aunt’s in Overvecht, or he lay on his own deathbed; he often had the same dream, in a room in the otherwise abandoned farmhouse. Sometimes awoke to guinea pigs pissing on him, having placed them on his chest in another epoch. He listened to distorted sirens in the city.
Twice he had visitors. Somewhere in time he woke with a start to an electric drumroll that repeated itself three times as he
lay on the sofa, swallowing and blinking, a container of lukewarm pasta carbonara on his chest. He slid to the floor and crept toward the radiator. In the shadows he could make out a pair of figures, a man and a woman. The man wore a blue suit and tie, the woman an ash-gray ensemble, they both had scarves around their necks but no overcoats. They each gripped a leather portfolio under their arm. Jehovahs. He would keep an eye on them until they pushed a
Watchtower
through the letter slot and then tried their luck with the neighbors. But they didn’t. The man’s gaze glided up and down the front of the house, the woman rang again, louder, it seemed. Aaron ducked farther down, kept so quiet he could hear them whisper. When they rang for the third time he got up and went to the front door.
His visitors introduced themselves with names he forgot straightaway. They claimed to be from the Ministry of Justice, they wanted to ask him some questions about “Mr. Sigerius.” For a brief moment he was certain they had come to tell him his ex-father-in-law was dead.
“Do we look that gloomy?” the man asked kindly. He looked sympathetic too: well-meaning wrinkles folding across his rock-hard head, but his handshake betrayed him: a hydraulic vise-grip. He smelled like a mixture of subtle aftershave and the brown oil he used to grease his firearms.
“Your friend has been nominated for an important position,” the woman added. She did not smile, but slid the toe of her shoe over the threshold. Something told him he had to make a solid, upright impression on these people. “Come in,” he said.
In the passage he distinctly heard the woman inhale sharply through her triangular nose. “Horses?” she asked as he led them into his house; strangely, it was as though all three of them were entering his house for the first time. He was dreaming, it seemed,
he dreamed the smell of fresh manure, a scent he’d hardly noticed until now. It felt like he was watching himself from the sofa, he saw himself walk into the freezing-cold living room, and immediately noticed that he looked very strange indeed, in Sigerius’s judo jacket, which he wore like a bathrobe that used to be white but was now smeared and stained with bits of old food. He also realized, from his racing heartbeat, that his living room did not exactly radiate stability and solidity; he was busy emptying out his bookshelves, everywhere there were stacks of books he was planning to use to stoke his multiburner the coming winter, it was getting cold and his central heating got tepid at best. On top of it, he needed to buy garbage bags. “Don’t mind the mess,” he said, in fact to himself.