Tonio (70 page)

The six-year-old Tonio was so horrified at having to witness his own mother vomit that he went into a panic at the thought of the return voyage.

‘I don't want Mama to throw up.'

In the end, we took a taxi back to the bungalow — an hour-and-a-half trek, including inexplicable traffic jams, over winding inland roads. At first, the driver only sniffed with distaste, but later he launched into an all-out rant against his sour-smelling passengers.

Once home, the hardships were soon forgotten. Before dinnertime, Tonio and I thought up a new chapter for our book
Reis in een boom
. The boy had climbed into the chestnut tree behind his house and refused to come down, despite the pleas of his father and mother. Yes, at night, when his parents were asleep, he did climb down — to fetch tools and planks with which to build himself a treehouse. He carried out the construction during the day, doing his best to imitate a woodpecker with his hammer and nails.

‘… to mislead his parents.'

‘What's a woodpecker?'

‘You know. Woody Woodpecker.'

‘Oh yeah.'

‘When the treehouse is finished … a kind of cabin … then he can start his travels.'

‘Yeah, but Adri … a tree … how can you travel in it? A tree doesn't have wheels. It has roots … way deep in the ground.'

‘And
that
is the secret of our story. A secret only you and I know. Omigosh, just imagine, if
everyone
knew the secret … then every Tom, Dick, and Harry could write a story like this. Uh-uh, this is
our
story. Yours and mine.'

‘Will my name be on the book, too?'

‘Of course — the author's name is always on the front cover. And the title page. So there'll be two names. Yours and mine.'

If I were worth my salt as a writer, I would be able to describe Tonio's expression at the realisation that he might write his own book. With me. His face darkened a bit, perhaps as he realised the hurdles of such an undertaking.

‘Yeah, but Adri … I don't even know the tree's secret. Does he turn it into a ship?'

‘No, the tree stays put, with its roots anchored firmly in the ground. And the boy still travels.'

‘So what's the secret?'

‘When you get onto a train or a boat, and you go travelling on it, what's the first thing you notice?'

‘That you're moving … or sailing.'

‘Exactly. You move forward, and that means your surroundings change. First the train chugs past the houses, then fields and meadows. The secret of our tree is that it never leaves its spot, but that it keeps getting new surroundings. So it's as though that boy in his tree travels all over the world. With a constantly changing view from his treehouse.'

31

What was I doing here, in the middle of all this mass hysteria? Wanting to finish off what I started on 26 June 1988, when I made an about-face because I didn't dare abandon the newborn any longer?

My intuition had not deceived me. I got home and found Miriam in panic. The maternity-support worker had given Tonio his bath, whereby a plaster on her finger came loose. She showed Miriam the cut, which had opened up again in the warm water and was bleeding profusely. The silly woman had mentioned in passing that she had also been nursing a terminal
AIDS
patient for several months. After my phone call to the clinic, she was recalled from our employ and fired on the spot. We were told that the nurse was a chronic fantasist, and that she never should have been placed with us, but this only augmented Miriam's (and my) disquiet. I should never have gone to the football homecoming that afternoon.

32

Grasping the gunwale, I crouch-walked to the stern. I had to step over two cross thwarts along the way. The host-captain made a beckoning gesture at the handle of the rudder, assuming, apparently, that I wanted to take over from him.

‘The Pulitzer's mooring is just up ahead,' I said. ‘Could you let us off there? Miriam and I want to go into town on foot.'

He looked disappointed, but nodded, ticking his finger against the brim of his cap. At the Pulitzer Hotel, I helped Miriam out of the boat. We thanked them for the enjoyable cruise, and watched as the punt cut its way, razor-sharp, through the khaki-coloured water.

Via two side streets and the bridge over the Keizersgracht, we approached the Herengracht as quickly as the unflagging stream of thronging supporters allowed. We needn't have hurried, as the Museum Boat still had a couple of hundred metres to go before reaching the jam-packed bridge, where we tried to find a spot. The place was swarming with silver-white wigs, spray-painted to look like cloudish versions of the Dutch flag. Under the wigs, faces were caked with orange gunk, with mini-flags in red, white, white, and blue on their cheeks and foreheads.

The Revolt of the Clowns. They hung in clusters on lampposts. Something tickled my face: an orange wig, generously adorned with the kind of sticks you get at the herring vendor: a toothpick with a little Dutch flag at the end. The players' boat appeared under the next bridge. The animalistic braying, which you thought couldn't get any louder, only increased in volume. Again I noticed the lack of anything triumphant in the sound of the cheering. You only had to shake your head and it sounded like a mass yell for help, a crowd crushing itself to death.

The boat had now emerged from under the low bridge, and the blue training outfits all stood back upright, bottle or glass in their raised hand. The police force's motorised waterbikes hastened to resecure the cordon. People jumped, or fell, into the canal, reminiscent of old black-and-white cinema newsreels of The Beatles on their canal tour through Amsterdam. Then, too, it seemed to me as though people were screaming in protest, because there was a fake Beatle, complete with signature haircut, cruising along as a stowaway.*

[* Drummer Jimmy Nicol replaced Ringo Starr, who had taken ill with tonsillitis, on the group's June 1964 tour.]

The trio of young men who jumped into the water right in front of us wore orange life vests, ruling out a joint suicide born of desperate adulation. The boat drew nearer, and the cheering got even more deafening. Orange gorged itself on Orange, but the screaming suggested insatiability.

I held Miriam tightly, with her back pressed against me. We were now looking straight at the boat, insofar as the frizzy orange wigs allowed. Van Bommel's goofy hat. A black player, whose name I didn't know, wore a gold-coloured Roman victory helmet, I suppose in order to dispel any residual doubts. Another player was being interviewed on camera.

The spray-can orange mist thickened as the boat approached. Now, showers of orange confetti rained down upon the deck.

‘Heads down!' cried the MC. The players crouched obligingly, just to be on the safe side — a pity, because after their scandalous performance against Spain, I thought they all, down to the last man, deserved a good head-butt. The boat glided under the bridge. I took Miriam by the hand and pulled her behind me.

‘What are you doing?' she called out.

‘They'll be going down Leidsegracht next.'

Despite colliding constantly with other spectators, we managed to keep ahead of the team's boat. On the Leidsegracht, we found a surprisingly uncrowded spot across from number 22, where we had lived from November 1990 to July 1992. As if I hadn't stopped here on purpose, Miriam pointed to the house across the canal, her finger singling out the second floor. I looked at her. It was the first time today I'd seen tears in her eyes.

Hysterical cheering along the canal wall broke the relative quiet. Through the arch of the bridge, led by two police boats, sailed our national pride.

33

With every tourist boat that turned the corner from Herengracht into Leidsegracht, we heard the loud honk of a ship's horn. In time, it drove Miriam and me completely crazy, but Tonio ran excitedly to the window with each new blast.

‘Boat … boat!'

And then he watched contentedly as the flat, glass-topped vessel passed through the canal below, and the passengers' heads turned from left to right on cue from the tour guide.

One pleasant spring day during our first year at that address, I knelt at the low windowsill and looked out the open windows to see if Miriam and Tonio were yet on their way back from nursery school. There they stood, on the stone steps leading to the front door. A rare sight: Tonio in tears. He kicked the lowest stair angrily while Miriam spoke soothing words.

‘No … I want to go to Bibelebons!'

He wasn't faking it for effect. His crying seemed heartrendingly sincere in the serernity of that spring afternoon. ‘I want to go back to Bibelebons. Bibelebons! Not home.'

He plonked himself down at the bottom step and refused to go inside. Eventually she sat down next to him, an arm around his shoulder. I couldn't make out the words, but the snivelling continued, softer now.

Sweet poppet. He was the only one of us who missed the Veluwe. A tour boat tooted its horn. Tonio wasn't interested. He shook his head vehemently. Bibelebons — his beloved Veluwe nursery school. And we had just yanked him out of there, without asking his permission.

34

Tonio called me by my first name from the moment he could speak. If he wanted to indicate our familial relationship, he'd say: ‘This is my Adri.
My
Adri.'

And with it, he'd tug at my sleeve.

I sit in the small living room at Leidsegracht 22, with the glass door open to the short hallway and the stairs leading to the dining room. Reading on the sofa, I watch Tonio scuffle past, bearing a large bale of blankies. The entire house is laid with the same soft, thick, grey carpeting, including the stairs — it is Tonio's greatest pleasure to climb up the stairs on his bare knees. From behind the pacifier comes a combination of humming, mumbling, and gentle groaning as he conquers the stairway. When he reaches the curve and is nearly out of sight, the ruffle of his limbs against the treads stops, as do the noises from his nose and mouth. I turn a page of my book, and observe out of the corner of my eye how he hangs motionlessly on the stairs, the pacifier now in his free hand. He is looking at me. I focus on the page, but have stopped reading. Each of us as stock-still as a grasshopper, we eye one another: he, straight at me; me, indirectly.

I can't hold my pose any longer, and turn to him, looking straight into his wide-open eyes, which glisten teasingly.

‘Adri, you're my fa-a-a-a-a-ather, right?'

‘Whether you like it or not, yes, I am your father.'

Before I've even finished my sentence, he sticks the pacifier back into his mouth and continues lumbering up the stairs. His panting laugh has something triumphant about it: as though he's unmasked me, or at least has coerced a confession out of me.

I stare motionlessly at my book awhile, without reading.

35

When the homecoming boat had passed and the players crouched once again for the next arched bridge, we stood looking at the gable of our former home. All the way at the top, at the back, was Tonio's attic room, which he proudly showed to every first-time visitor. ‘This is
my
house.'

I pointed at the wide canal-green door, which shone like a mirror. Next to the door was a lantern that would have gone down well at a brothel. ‘You think that lock is still the same?'

Miriam didn't know what I was getting at.

‘Remember, that time you locked me out … and were hiding inside with Our Man in Africa?'

‘Oh, that. I'd lost my keys. I only wanted to keep thieves out.'

‘Maybe I was the thief.'

Having had enough of the noxious orange fumes, I suggested to Miriam that we take a short cut through Leidsestraat to the Leidsebosje, and wait for the parade there. We took a left onto the Keizersgracht. Leidsestraat and Leidseplein were less packed than otherwise on a warm summer afternoon. As we approached the square, I caught myself peering down side streets in search of the shawarma joint that Tonio might have been heading for that night, in order to put some solid food in his beer-ravaged stomach.

By the time we got to the Korte Leidsedwarsstraat, I could no longer contain myself. I walked over to the door of a Turkish snack bar, and examined the colour photos of the various dishes. Sure enough, they did a döner kebab, Tonio's favourite late-night snack. Was this the image he had in mind, and for which he allowed himself to be lured into a detour — off the Van Baerle, to Jan Luyken and, finally, Hobbemastraat?

Yes, a person can meet his end as unheroically as this. I recently came across an old postcard, sent in the summer of 1978 by Jolanda, who was vacationing on the island of Terschelling with a girlfriend. ‘I miss you + shawarma sandwich'. I had spent a few intense weeks with her, both of us so in love that we forgot to eat, but not to drink. Late at night — I lived in De Pijp — we would end up at the shawarma joint on the Ferdinand Bolplein. The streets were just as deserted as now in the early morning. I never considered those nocturnal meals life-threatening.

36

We passed the Hotel Americain's new fountain. From the sudden cheering around the corner, we reckoned the players' boat had reached the Singel. For those on the bridge, the boat still had to take another curve, so here the howling only started a few moments later. Miriam and I found a spot at the far end of the bridge railing. The sunlight shone on the deck and on the players, a few of whom were being interviewed. The TV helicopter hovered above Leidseplein, taking the bird's-eye footage we would soon be watching at home.