Tonio (6 page)

In the morning, when it wasn't so hot, we would occasionally walk down the lane to a suburb of Aix, where we caught the bus to the city centre to have lunch and do some shopping. On the way back we would stop at our favourite supermarket for
gourmandises
that Miriam would only have to heat up for dinner. That is how it went on 29 June, but the next day it was too hot to walk along the searing asphalt. Supplies needn't be replenished, and there was still half a portion of
boeuf à la Normande
with
pâtes fraiches
from the previous evening (what a life). We stayed put in Villa Tagora.

What does a historic day in the life of two lovers look like? Not sensationally remarkable, in this particular case. In my diary, I wrote that on Tuesday, 30 June 1987 we had taken breakfast in the garden at about a quarter after nine. ‘We watch the hornets and butterflies flit from one cone-shaped purple flower to the next. The (white) butterflies remind me of white-jacketed lab assistants going from flask to flask with a pointy pipette. At 9:30 I sit down to work at my small military-invalid table in the shadow of the terrace. Documentation folder Hans K. Notes for
Advocaat
…'

At around midday, I took a walk in the surrounding open fields. Squatting down on a gently rolling, thicketed hillock under the murderous sun, the whole intrigue for the new novel fell into place. Without pen and paper, I simply
had
to stay sitting there, risking sunstroke, until the plot had been worked out in its entirety.

Not that this point made the day such a historic one
per se
. I mentioned
two
lovers.

Overcome by the heat, I walked back to the house, where I scribbled everything down, obstructed by a swarm of
mouches volantes
between my eyes and the paper. I then drank, out of euphoria or to reward myself, nearly a litre of wine at lunch, after which Miriam and I retired to the bedroom-sauna. We woke from a deep sleep only at half past five. Miriam had dreamt about sharks.

Out in the shade, I wrote some letters until Gijs, or Gregory, came over to chat. Gijs was an actor and musician from Amsterdam, who, under the
nom d'artiste
Gregory, had built a career in France. Thanks to his coppery red hair (and his accent), he was cast as Vincent van Gogh in a television series on the painter's life. He married a local politician, and accordingly wound up in Marseilles, where, having appeared on regional broadcasters, he was becoming something of a local celebrity. Additionally he served as the regular accompanist, on guitar and accordion, of Jean Nehr, the Provençal singer. He had come to Villa Tagora to rehearse with Jean for a series of performances. They were planning to record an album soon.

Gregory, so he told me, missed Amsterdam. Whenever he got the chance to go back, no matter how briefly, he would make a beeline for the pool hall above the Hema on the Ferdinand Bolstraat, where he had played since his youth. He promised to bring me one of his LPs the next time he was in Amsterdam. ‘If I send one by post, there's a good chance the package'll sit in an overheated van in the sun and arrive at your door two days later as a warped liquorice pancake.'

With that, he disappeared into an annex behind the house for his rehearsal. Soon we could hear a guitar being tuned. Since we had promised to pay the rent for the upcoming period on the last day of the month, I asked Miriam to take Anneke the money. She was gone for some time: Anneke would never pass up the chance of a chat in her mother tongue. I sat at the small table on the terrace, drinking Pays du Var wine from a cardboard carton, listening to Gregory's melancholy accordion, which more or less drowned out Jean's unamplified voice. Miriam's absence made me impatient (I wanted to share with her my story of the novel's plot that had come to me in a brainwave under the scorching midday sun), and at the same time I hoped she'd be away there a while (perhaps I was aware that there was something false and dangerous about my euphoria). The moon, melon-coloured and surreally large, appeared on the horizon. The music, the wine, the moon — what more could a person ask for?

‘Empty.' Miriam shook the wine carton; there was nothing left to slosh about. ‘Where do you put it, for heaven's sake?'

More wine with dinner. The musicians must have opened a window or door, for Jean's voice now reached us; even the words were clear. He sang, as far as I could tell, a doleful song about ill-fated love. Gregory accompanied him on the mandolin. The music was moving and extremely melancholic.

I tried to relate the intrigue of my
Advocaat
to Miriam. Maybe the copper-headed punk, in teamwork with the plot, had rammed my head full of sunstroke: I couldn't make a sensible yarn of it, but Miriam expressed her enthusiasm for my progress, even if it was hazardous to my health.

The next number, with Gregory back on the accordion, was in a completely unintelligible Occitan dialect. Judging from the profoundly minor-key melody, the text described an even more tragic love than the previous one. During the coffee and cognac, I heard myself suddenly broach an old subject. It hadn't been brought up in so long that it seemed to be weighed down by a heavy taboo.

14

A child. The child. Our child.

‘Minchen, I haven't brought up you-know-what in ages. The hush-hush subject.'

If — past difficulties on this issue at the back of my mind — I was trying to raise the subject a bit teasingly, cloak it in light-heartedness, then I apparently did not succeed. Perhaps I had been too ebulliant all evening for yet more banter.

‘Of course I want a child,' Miriam said. ‘But I also want to achieve something. Do something.'

Just like that, all of a sudden. She didn't give in entirely, but this was the first time she openly acknowledged her own desire. I was buoyed. Now just stay the course.

‘I'd say … have the child first. Finish your studies during pregnancy, get on top of your writing and all … and once you're past the breast-feeding period, get a job. I'll look after the little one during the day.'

Aside from the moon, the only source of light was a candle on the small dining table. Although Miriam did her best to lean back, the flame still illuminated her tears. The candle stem was, for some reason, decorated with strawberries.

‘Of course I'd like it,' she said. ‘But I'm so afraid … so afraid that everything, taking care of him, will end up on my shoulders. Especially when you're stressed out by a new book or something. Just try to understand that.'

Now she was crying for real. Between the wails I could hear Jean Nehr singing
a cappella
and nearly bursting out laughing in the process.

‘The cooking, Minchen, the washing up, I shamelessly leave that all to you when it suits me. But raising a child … that's something else entirely. Responsibilities. Trust me.'

‘Adri, I don't want my life to end once I've had a child. I have to achieve something. So …' (with a comically pleading voice) ‘promise you'll help out?'

I gave her my word, in all sincerity, while at the same time my heart skipped a beat. Responsibilities. Miriam sat up next to me, rubbing her face with both hands. She sniffled a bit more and then said: ‘We could try as soon as the end of July.'

‘And if we waited another month? End of August?' I can't rule out that I was already backpedalling. ‘I want to get myself cleaned up a bit inside. Lot of poison been put through the ol' system lately.'

‘Then I'll quit smoking,' Miriam said. ‘End of July, no, then it'll be an April baby. That's no good. Rather May or June.'

We sat in silence for a while, hand in hand, each with our own thoughts, listening to the drawn-out sighs of Gregory's accordion and Jean's nasal vocals. The organisation of my life suddenly stretched out before me in a different, more rigid configuration than I was accustomed to up until now. Not unappealing, although something like nostalgia began to hum inside me as well. I would, for starters, finish all open projects during Miriam's pregnancy. I would expel all the scoria and sluggishness from my blood, and restore my youth to its former glory, despite my impending fatherhood.

15

‘So we're on?' I asked all at once.

‘We're on,' Miriam said, smiling.

The elongated flame of the candle, the rising moon, and, in between them, the rugged terrain of Villa Tagora — everything took on the scent, the colour, the sheen of our decision.

‘Let's drink to it,' I said. ‘While we still can.'

I fetched a new carton of Var wine, and snipped open the spout. Red drops balled up on the scissor blades. ‘And no wisecracks about snipping the umbilical cord — from now on everything is symbolic.'

Miriam didn't care for more wine. I knocked back one Duralex tumblerful after the other. Even after the music was finished, we stayed sitting there chatting for so long that our fleeting kisses did not particularly disrupt the conversation.

‘So …' I started all over again.

‘Yes, we're on.'

‘Really?'

‘We'll do it. Really.'

‘I was just thinking …' I said. ‘As soon as it's born I'm going to keep a diary of his, or her, life. Every day. Everything. As a present for his or her eighteenth birthday.'

‘Then you should start with the pregnancy,' said Miriam. ‘As a prologue.'

‘No, with today. The decision. And everything from this moment on. I'll start tomorrow.'

All I can recall from the rest of the evening is that most of our sentences began with: ‘I could …' or ‘We could …' And the choice of a home birth versus a hospital came up.

‘At home, at home,' Miriam said decisively. ‘No hospital birth for me.'

‘Y'know, Minchen, not to get on your case, but … until now, whenever we talked about having a child you were so intractable. I've often suspected you were secretly afraid of the pain.'

‘Oh no, no way. The pain? Then you don't know me.'

16

I had won Miriam over so convincingly that I lost sight of my own doubts and fears about fatherhood. They reared their head now that, even with all her conditions, she had relented. I had created a danger zone for myself, and dragged Miriam and me over the line.

Within two weeks of the decision, we took the express train back to Amsterdam, so impatient were we to cleanse and prepare our bodies for procreation in the intimacy of our own home. Miriam would quit smoking, I would — at least until after a successful conception — stay off the booze. Miriam was such a moderate drinker that she had no trouble forgoing that one glass.

While we felt ourselves becoming more radiant and healthier by the day, my mother-in-law's birthday approached. Wies had lobbied for a grandchild for so long — demanded it, almost — that we figured she'd be delighted with the news that we were bringing our bodily equilibrium into balance in preparation for a perfect copulation and a pure conception.

A misjudgement. I phoned her up.

‘No, Wies, we're coming for your birthday, don't worry. The only difference is that won't be drinking on account of —'

‘Well, don't bother coming then. Not even a little nip, what a pair of killjoys. Either we celebrate my birthday or we don't.'

Not a word of happiness about the imminent addition to the family. It wasn't, incidentally, her doing that in the ‘dry' weeks that followed (abstinence from alcohol, but not from sex: Miriam would only go off the pill once our degenerated bodies had been revitalised), doubts started to creep back into my head. Whether I would be up to the responsibility of raising a child. To placate Wies, we broke down and hit the 45 per cent Polish vodka that friends of Natan in Cracow still sent him. At home, too, we occasionally cheated on our self-imposed regime. I still found, to my relief, emptied blister pill strips in the bathroom wastebasket. Maybe it wouldn't come to parenthood all. Whenever we loosened the reins I'd sneak an extra splash into my glass. Miriam would do the same with each new half-smoked cigarette, and say it would be irresponsible to go off the pill so soon.

17

Shortly before leaving Aix, we received the news that Miriam's aged cat Baffie had died. Once back in the Netherlands, we stopped off at my parents' in Eindhoven on the way to Amsterdam. We hadn't been there even an hour when I asked my father if there was an animal shelter nearby. Yes, he knew of one, not so far away. Without further ado he drove us there. Miriam glanced at me occasionally, her eyebrows raised, but she, too, refrained from asking anything.

A staff member led us past the hysterically barking dogs, their claws haphazardly playing the harp on the cage fronts, to the cat unit.

‘This litter was born in June … they're less than a month old.'

Miriam promptly fell in love with a tabby with undersized front legs and who allowed herself to be constantly overrun by her siblings. She hadn't even picked the runt up yet, and its claws were already tangled in her hair. ‘No getting loose now. I'll have to take her.'

‘She's not meant just to replace Baffie,' I said. ‘Her job is to be a constant reminder of the pledge we made in Aix—'