A Father's Affair (23 page)

I rolled onto my stomach and buried my face in the pillow. The pillow smelled of girl. I cried.

‘Armin! Armin! What are you doing here? This is
my
bed! Fuck off, Armin! You’re drunk! You puked! Pig! Armin!’

Bo is yanking on my shoulder. Screaming in my ear. I roll over. The world spins back the other way. Bo is hanging in the air, upside down. Despite his predicament, it seems he’s able to
hit me. He strikes me square in the face, with the flat of his hand. I hear the smack. Bo revolves a hundred and eighty degrees and falls into place. The walls of the room come flying in on me.

‘What’s wrong?’ I shout. But I can’t hear myself.

Apparently Bo can’t hear me, either. ‘Go to your own room, you pig!’ he shouts.

I try to sit up. Something is sticking to my cheek. I wipe my hand across my face. There’s my hand, floating in space. Now there’s something sticking to my fingers. Something yellow.
I look at the spot where I was just lying. I feel a wave of gall roll up into my gullet. The pillow is covered in vomit.

‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah, Jesus, yeah!’ Bo screams. Why is he screaming like that? Is he afraid I can’t hear him? And why did he hit me? He hit me! The son of a bitch! The bastard!

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Now there’s sound coming out of my mouth. It scrapes and rasps in my throat, but I don’t care. He’s going to hear
me. ‘Who do you think are? Smack me around because I puked in your little love nest, hey? Embarrassed in front of the girl, is that it? Because your father’s a drunk! Well, pal, let me
put your mind at ease. I’m not your father! Do you hear that? You hear that? I’m not your father! Your father is some sneaky little skirt-chaser from Haarlem who couldn’t keep his
hands off your mother. That’s a surprise, isn’t it! He was probably fucking little girls when he was fourteen, too!’

He’d taken three steps back, Bo. He’d gone all pale while I was ranting and raving at him. ‘What kind of bullshit is that?’ he’d shouted. And then he’d
suddenly jumped on me. As hard as a boy could, he’d hit me. I felt his fists against my chest, in my face, against my ears. I kept my eyes closed and all the strength ran out of me.

It had been said. It had finally been said.

O
n the front page of the NRC
Handelsblad
of 24 March 1983 is a photo of a photo. In the first frame you see the American president, Ronald
Reagan. In one hand the president has a pile of papers. With the other he’s pointing at something beyond the view of the photographer, and therefore beyond that of the reader as well. Right
above the pointing hand is the second photo, on a tripod, in a black frame. What that photo shows is a number of vague white lines against a grey background. In bold, black letters, the caption
explains: ‘Soviet MiGs, Western Cuba.’ It’s an espionage photo of a military installation on Fidel Castro’s sugar island.

The day Bo was born, the Cold War entered a new phase. Ronald Reagan had just launched his Star Wars programme. Bo was born in a world that no longer exists.

I look at the photo, and at the photo within the photo, in my parents’ living room. Amazingly, they saved a newspaper from the day my son was born. And that’s not
all. I found the paper in a box that turned out to be full of Bo souvenirs. Photographs. Drawings. A report card. An exercise book. Where did they get all this?

I show the photos to Dees, who’s helping me clear the house.

Bo as a baby, nursing at Monika’s breast.

Bo’s first school picture: taken at the day-care centre.

Bo on my mother’s lap.

Bo holding my father’s hand at the zoo.

Bo’s face smeared with chocolate pudding.

Bo wearing clothes covered in mud and sand.

‘Did you know that?’ Dees asks. ‘Did you know they had all this?’

‘No, I’ve never seen it before.’

We spread the newspaper on the floor. ‘Liberals threaten with crisis over spending cuts.’ How thrilling. ‘Man with artificial heart dies.’ Poor sod. (‘Barney Clark,
the first man to live with an artificial heart, died yesterday in Salt Lake City, the hospital reported. Clark lived for 112 days with a heart made of plastic and aluminium.’) ‘Flimsy
ball opens National Book Week.’ ‘Belgium says no to more Dutch waste.’ ‘$500 million loan to Iraq.’ (‘Iraq has been granted an international loan for the sum of
$500 million. The loan was underwritten by thirty-four major international banks, including one of America’s biggest financial institutions, Chase Manhattan. This bank, whose board of
directors maintains close relationships with a number of top Arab officials, was said to have lobbied strongly for American participation in the project.’ What do you know about that?) And,
at 7 p.m., Holland 1 kicked off prime time with
Like Father, Like Daughter
, while at 8.10 p.m. the Avro broadcasting company on Holland 2 struck back with
What’s My Line?
O,
beautiful, bourgeois Holland in which Bo produced his first dirty nappy!

‘I told him,’ I say without further introduction.

‘What? Who?’

‘Bo. That I’m not his father.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘I was drunk, mostly. He’d been hitting me. Because I puked on the pillow where he’d kissed his first girl. Or perhaps even fucked her.’

‘What? What, what the hell?’

He closes the paper angrily. Sits down in a chair. ‘Tell me again. Preferably in some logical order.’

So I tell him. About the girl-with-the-cap on the mudflats. And how we ran into her again that evening in the bar. And about Bas with his belly and his beard and his beer. And about the whisky.
And the double bed. And about how Bo slapped me. And what I said then. And what Bo did then.

‘Shit!’ Dees says. ‘Shit, man! Goddamn, shit!’

I sit on the floor, pick up the photos of Bo and put them back in the box.

Glad my father doesn’t have to hear all this.

Good thing he can’t see me now.

His failure of a son.

Dees stares at me with dark eyes. I get up. Walk to the window.

‘Just say it,’ I say.

‘Shithead.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Unbelievable shithead.’

‘Yeah.’

The room is silent for a long time. Outside a woman walks past with an ugly little dog on a ridiculously long leash. I think about the neighbour, Mr Bruggeman, and about Boris. I haven’t
seen them today. Maybe he’s dead, I think. Justice at last.

Dees sighs. ‘How’s Bo taking it?’

‘No idea. Not too well, I think. When he’d finished hitting me he jumped off the bed and walked out of the house without a word. I fell asleep. When I woke up that evening, he still
wasn’t back. I cleaned the bed. Made some food. Then I tried to read a book, but I couldn’t. About one o’clock he came back. He didn’t say anything. Went straight to his
room. The next morning I woke him up, with a fresh croissant and orange juice. I said we needed to talk. I said I understood that he was angry and upset. And that he needed to give it time. That he
should ask me to explain whenever he was ready to hear it. He didn’t ask me anything all day. Early that afternoon we took the boat back, half a day earlier than we’d planned. We drove
all the way home without a word. It was the longest, most horrible silence since Monika stopped talking.

‘Christ almighty,’ Dees says.

‘Yeah.’

‘How did Ellen react?’

‘Ellen doesn’t know yet. She wasn’t there when we got home. She hadn’t been expecting us yet. When she got home that evening, Bo was already in bed. She asked how it had
been and I said, “Good.” And she asked, “Is something wrong?” I wasn’t looking too happy, of course. But I said, “No, I’m just really tired. Bo is too.
He’s gone to bed already.” In bed I crawled right up against her. She was restless, couldn’t get to sleep. She knows something’s wrong. But this morning I left early, before
she’d have a chance to ask me about it.’

Another long silence between Dees and me.

He takes a couple of deep breaths, as if he’s about to say something. But he says nothing. Finally, I’m the one who breaks the silence.

‘You know what’s the weirdest thing of all? When Bo and that girl were sleeping in that big bed, he had his eyes closed. I swear to God. But at that moment it just didn’t sink
in. That’s how drunk I was.’

Dees laughs. But not with a lot of feeling.

Two hours later.

We’ve filled six big cardboard boxes with things I want to save. The Bo souvenirs. Classical records. Lots of Beethoven. I don’t like Beethoven. Lots of Brahms. I don’t like
Brahms. But they’re records my mother cried to. And that my father listened to during the last days of his life. I can’t just leave them here for Second-Hand Rose. Three boxes, full of
books. Old children’s books. My mother’s Bible. My father’s shelf of Dutch classics. Louis Couperus. Frederik van Eeden. Arthur van Schendel. Vestdijk, of course. Nine times
Vestdijk. I also found the religious book the neighbour had returned to the shelf, the last book my father ever read. The neighbour had given it a place next to Vestdijk’s
The Last Days
of Pilate
, which I thought was a nice gesture. To my amazement, it turned out to be the same book I’d found among Monika’s books ten years ago,
The Secret Teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth
, including ‘The Revelations of Jacob’, ‘The Gospel of Thomas’ and ‘The Gospel of Philip’.

The way everything that goes by keeps coming back.

I put the book in with my mother’s Bible, because my mother must have been the one who bought it – and maybe even gave it to Monika. (Monika wasn’t religious, but my mother
always said you could tell by looking her that she came from the Catholic south. And she definitely meant that as a compliment.)

Once the last box is filled, Mr Bruggeman comes over with Boris, just to take a look and have a talk. The dog runs excitedly through the house. And Mr Bruggeman talks and talks and talks.

‘Two days ago,’ he says, ‘I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. I heard voices and someone crashing around. It sounded like two people having a fight – a man and
a woman. I could have sworn it was coming from this house. But of course that’s impossible. No, that’s impossible. I lay there listening to it, my heart pounding. But no matter how hard
I tried, I couldn’t make out a word they were saying. I got up and turned on a light. I thought: maybe it’s only in my head. But at one point it got so bad that Boris started barking.
Then I put on my dressing-gown and went outside to see if the lights were on at the neighbours’ across the street. But it was all dark. And outside I didn’t hear it any more, the
fighting. Inside, Boris just kept barking. When he eventually stopped, it was quiet everywhere. The rest of the night, I didn’t sleep a wink.’

Dees said, ‘Sometimes at night it’s hard to tell where sounds are coming from.’

‘Yeah,’ Mr Bruggeman said. ‘Yeah, sure.’

‘My father’s wine collection,’ I say to him, ‘is for you.’

He tries to refuse. But not for long.

After he’s gone I take one last turn through the house, to be sure I didn’t miss anything. Dees starts taking the boxes out to the car. Everything we leave behind now goes to
Second-Hand Rose. The bookcase. The coffee table. The leather sofa. The bed. The bed, too? Yes, the bed, too.

I lean against the doorpost in the bedroom and try to imagine my parents, together in that bed, which now looks bare and inhospitable without sheets or blankets. Two years ago they slept here
together for the last time. Did they know, that night before the day my mother went into hospital, that it was the last time? Did they talk about it, he in one of his many pairs of striped pyjamas
(they too, are going to Second-Hand Rose), she in a modest nightgown? (I didn’t find any of my mother’s clothes, not a single scarf, not one pair of forgotten gloves, nothing. What my
father did with them, I have no idea.) I yank myself out of my reverie and bend over to take a last look under the bed – an old holiday habit. And I see something under it. A little box I
must have missed before. I pull it out. It’s made of tropical hardwood, mahogany inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl. I sit on the edge of the bed and open it. Letters. Postcards. From my
father to my mother. From my mother to my father. A picture postcard from Brittany, from Monika and me. A letter I wrote to my mother when she was already ill. Downstairs I hear a door slam. I have
to help Dees. This will have to wait until a moment when I’m feeling up to it. A moment when Ellen is around, to hold me tight if it seems as if I’m about to fall off the world.
Absentmindedly, I let the cards and letters glide through my hands. Then a little envelope catches my eye. ‘cor’ is written on it, in block letters. My father’s nickname. Nothing
else. The envelope has been torn open at the side. I shake out the piece of paper. It’s a note, with a brief message. Written in a feminine hand, it reads: ‘I’m pregnant.
M.’

What’s the best way to take a blow? Roll with it. Make sure you don’t receive the full impact at once.

‘I’m pregnant. M.’

Monika wrote my father a letter to tell him she was pregnant. That’s all.

It looks like she delivered the letter in person, because there’s no address on the envelope, no stamp. That’s all.

What could that mean?

That . . . can . . . mean . . . only . . . one . . . thing.

Can’t it?

One thing.

I try to stuff the letter back into the envelope. But my hands are shaking too badly. I put it back on the pile, along with the envelope. I close the box. Walk down the stairs.

‘What’s that?’ Dees asks.

‘Some letters and postcards.’

Together we carried the last boxes to the car. After a lot of juggling, we finally got them all in. The little wooden box of letters I put on the floor behind the passenger seat. I remember
looking in the mirror as we pulled away. In a little rectangular frame, I saw my parents’ house slide past as I turned the car and drove out of the street. For the last time through the old
town centre with its two gigantic churches, its little bridges across the Gein. ‘Abcoude – the old ABC’, as my father used to say. A stupid joke, but suddenly it made me roar with
laughter.