Tonio (2 page)

‘Why have I only got one name?'

‘My boy, Tonio is such a beautiful, such a perfect, name on its own … why spoil it with a middle name?'

‘Adri,
everybody
has a middle name. Some of the kids at school have
two
. I don't even have
one
.
You've
got two.'

‘Yeah, and I can thank my lucky stars they didn't stick another one on. “Maria” was in back then. Especially for boys.'

One day, when he was a bit older, I explained it to him, that lone first name. ‘It's my fault, Tonio. My own clumsiness deprived you of more than one name.'

A confession from his father: Tonio wasn't about to pass
that
up. He was keen as mustard, and glowed with anticipation. ‘Let's hear it.'

‘God, now I'm sunk … Well, here goes then. What is Mama's and Aunt Hinde's last name? And no cheeky answers now.'

‘Rotenstreich.'

‘And you, son of Miriam Rotenstreich and grandson of Natan Rotenstreich, what's your last name?'

Laughing: ‘Van der Heijden, of course. Just like you.'

Tonio triumphantly flung his security blanket into the air, as always trying to hit the ceiling, which seldom succeeded. It was his favourite teething cloth, white with red polka dots, cut from one of Miriam's old cotton blouses. He had forsworn the pacifier some time ago, and while he was actually too old for a blankie, he couldn't go entirely without. It fell back and landed on his head. ‘Oops.'

‘How many sons does Grandpa Natan have?'

Tonio pretended to count on his fingers, and then said: ‘None. Just two daughters. Mama and Aunt Hinde. They're sisters.'

‘Grandpa Natan is in his eighties. He won't live forever. And Miriam and Hinde … of course, we hope the Rotenstreich sisters will be with us for a long time yet. But eventually it'll be over. The name Rotenstreich will die out.'

‘Yeah, 'cause if Aunt Hinde and Uncle Frans have children, they'll also be called Van der Heijden. You and Uncle Frans are brothers, married to two sisters, right, Adri?'

‘Which is why the family argues twice as much,' I said. ‘But that's a whole other story.'

‘Doesn't Grandpa Natan have any brothers?'

Tonio swung the knotted fabric in circles like a catapult, and launched an imaginary projectile. Squinting, he followed its path. Bull's eye. He pumped his fist. ‘Yesss!'

‘No brothers, no. He used to have sisters. They were murdered by the Nazis in World War II. Just like his parents and the rest of the family. Now there are just three people on earth with the name Rotenstreich.'

‘Y'know, Adri … at school there's a boy, and his last name is the same as his mother's. He hasn't got a father. So what if Aunt Hinde …'

‘Oh? Dunno if Uncle Frans will like that.'

‘Oops.'

Tonio draped the cloth over his head, covering his face.

‘Oops for me, too, just now,' I said. ‘I neglected to mention something. See, years ago, Grandpa Natan did a lot of research, in old registers and such, looking into his family name. All he found were dead Rotenstreichs. With one exception — a Professor Rotenstreich in Jerusalem. So Grandpa Natan rang him up. The man swore up and down they weren't related. He didn't want any more contact. So that was that — another dead end.'

There was a brief silence. Tonio had slid his cloth back on his head so he looked like a miniature pharaoh. ‘Adri,' he sang, sweet as pie, ‘you were going to tell me why I don't have a middle name.'

‘Patience sure isn't your middle name, is it now? Without this detour along the name Rotenstreich, you wouldn't get my drift at all. I'm taking a carefully chosen path to my goal.'

‘Okay, sorry.' Laughing, he fell over backwards, and at the same time tossed the balled-up cloth into the air. It noiselessly grazed the ceiling and fell back down with a dull thud. ‘Yesss!'

‘Listen, Tonio, I'm going to tell you what a numbskull your father is. You'd like to hear that, I'll bet.'

‘Yeah! Yeah!'

‘From the moment Mama was pregnant, we searched for a way to attach the endangered name … Rotenstreich … to the name of our future child.'

‘Huh?'

‘With all the exotic pedigrees around these days, no one thinks anything of an unusual, long first name anymore. Especially if it's a middle name. When you were born … I'm not sure if you were allowed to file fantasy-names at the birth registry back then. If you can't follow me, just say so.'

‘I don't know what a regis …'

‘Where all our names are written down. Everybody who lives in Amsterdam. Where I went the day after you were born to add your name to the list.'

‘Like at a hotel.'

‘Checking in, yes. Couldn't hurt to try. A publisher suggested we write to the queen. “Your Majesty, have mercy, it is a rare name, etc. etc …” Well,
that
was the last thing on our minds. I just wanted to walk into the registry office and announce: “People, listen up. The new arrival is named Van der Heijden, first name Tonio, middle name Rotenstreich. In full: Tonio Rotenstreich van der Heijden. No hyphen.” Just as long as it got written down. If it was a girl, she could have called herself Rotenstreich van der Heijden until she got married, or until she died. A boy could even pass the name Rotenstreich van der Heijden to
his
children.'

‘No hyphen. Funny.'

‘
If
they fell for it. On 16 June 1988, the day after you were born, I went to the birth registry office on the Herengracht. You and Mama were still in the hospital.'

‘Slotervaart,' Tonio said, somewhat absently. ‘I had to stay in the incubator.'

‘We'd been sold faulty merchandise, as usual. We decided to keep you anyway. So the next day … off I went to the Herengracht. Picture me walking there, the proud young father.'

‘
Young
father?' The polka-dot cloth went sailing again. This time, the rag, unfolding on its descent, landed on my head. ‘Oops.'

‘Brand-new father, then. Whatever you say, ace. I went to see Mama in the maternity ward earlier that day. She must have reminded me twenty times that I had to finagle a way … she didn't care how … to get the name Rotenstreich on that birth certificate.'

‘No hyphen.'

‘So there I am, walking down the Leidsestraat and Herengracht reciting “Tonio Rotenstreich van der Heijden” to myself, over and over. I started to like it. Not two first names, but a double surname. There was something aristocratic about it. I had just become father to a son. A full-blood prince, that's what you were. There: the entrance to the registry office. Me on the front steps. It was child's play. I would mention it as offhandedly as possible, like I had other things on my mind. “I've come to register the birth of my son. Tonio Rotenstreich van der Heijden. Yesterday, yes, the fifteenth of June. Sixteen minutes past ten in the morning.” If the guy at the registry office asked: “Excuse me, is that a name, Rotenstreich?”, then I'd answer: “Yes, in the Ukraine, where my father-in-law comes from, it was a common given name.” Just a question of putting on the right attitude.'

Tonio laughed. ‘I'll bet I know how it ended.' He pulled the cloth back round his neck and pressed the cool fabric against his overheated ears, a sign sleep was at hand.

‘Hey, no butting in, you. Well, it did go differently than I'd planned. Behind the door where I needed to be was a kind of hallway, only a metre square, with a plastic chair. Not enough room to swing a cat. There was this small counter with a computer on it, and—'

‘You had computers back then?'

‘Yeah, wouldn't you know it? Computers, even before you were born. Antique ones, pedal-powered.'

‘So how come you still don't know how—'

‘You can teach me one day. So there was this young woman at the birth-registry computer, she was all friendly and welcoming. Entirely truthfully, I said: “My wife gave birth to a son yesterday, and now—” This was in the days when civil servants were still encouraged to put the public at ease, so she cried: “Oh, how
gre-e-e-e-at
! What's his name?” I thought the official part was still to come, so I answered — again, nothing but the truth — well, what do you think I answered?'

Tonio dropped his voice and said, dreamily: ‘Tonio.'

‘And the young woman, half singing: “What a great
na-a-a-ame
!” I should've noticed her fingernails dancing over the keys, but I was a nervous young … er … brand-new father, and I wasn't on the ball. She glanced at the passport I had laid on the counter and went back to her typing. A sheet of paper came rolling out of the printer, and
bam
, on went the city's official stamp. She folded it in half, slid it into a plastic cover, beamed at me, and said: “I wish you and your wife, and of course baby Tonio, a happy start.” Before I knew it, I was standing outside by the canal, reeling slightly from the fast-track process. Something wasn't quite right …'

‘Adri, I
said
I knew how it was going to turn out.'

‘Yeah, go ahead and laugh. It was first and foremost about you.'

‘But how could you—'

‘Exactly. That's what being a brand-new dad does to you. You lose your mind. I opened the folder. Van der Heijden, Tonio, born 15 June 1988, registered 16 June 1988. A-OK. Dumb bunny! If she'd just
asked
for a middle name, I'd have pulled it off.'

‘Why didn't you go back? You could have said: something has to go in between. Rotenstreich. No hyphen. Huh, Adri?'

His voice sounded soft and childlike. The story had taken a turn for the worse. His hands were stuck into the rolled-up cloth, like in a muff.

‘I didn't dare. I was afraid that if she heard that so-called middle name now … that she'd get suspicious.'

‘Whoa.'

‘I first had to rethink my strategy. Maybe write to the queen after all.'

‘Mama was cross, I'll bet.'

‘So back to the hospital. She was just breast-feeding you in the maternity ward. She looked at me with … you know … with those big, brown, expectant eyes, which think they know what's coming. That her family name has been rescued for at least a whole generation.'

Tonio slowly shook his head no, and again no. If I detected a whiff of
schadenfreude
, it was directed at me, not at his mother.

‘I told Mama what went wrong. A happy start? No, you couldn't call it a happy start.'

‘Adri, I can't believe you could be so stupid.'

6

It's time I finally gave him his middle name.

CHAPTER ONE

100 days

1

The doorbell, twice: first short and hesitant, then long and emphatic.

The abrasive shrillness always scared the Norwegian forest cats out of their wits, and sent them scampering for cover — the reason Miriam would disconnect the electric bell on weekday mornings, when the postman might ring with a package. The cats always came first. Today, Sunday, the chance that anyone would ring was negligible, certainly this early in the day, so she left it plugged in.

The first tinkle sounded as though a finger was unable to get a grip on the button. Loud enough, however, to send the cats charging up the first flight of stairs. Even from where I was, in bed on the second floor, I could hear the drumroll of their heavy paws on the steps. They probably paused in the bend of the stairs, only to dash up even faster after the second, much more insistent, ring. Their claws scrabbled over the parquet floor on the first-storey landing, after which they took the next flight of stairs by leaps and bounds. The stampede and the doorbell's echo ended simultaneously, so Tygo and Tasha probably came to a halt halfway up the second flight, their ears pricked up and their coarse fur standing on end, alert for further hostilities.

2

Whit Sunday, 23 May 2010. The bell of the Obrechtkerk had just chimed nine times. The intrusive peal calling the parishioners to prayer would only come later, at a quarter to eleven. Classic Sunday morning tranquillity in Amsterdam Oud-Zuid.

I lay on my back in bed. I had raised the head end of the mattress by remote control to reading level. The curtains were open partway, so from my pillow I could see what a fine spring day it was becoming. (The newspaper had predicted a ‘summery' day.) The sun was still hidden behind the tall houses, their eaves in stark silhouette against the deep blue sky. Just as the structure of falling rain can often portend much of the same all day, today's sky betrayed its intention of remaining cloudless until evening.

The breeze that wafted into the bedroom through the balcony doors was still cool, raising goosebumps on my bare shoulders, so I slipped on a yellow-and-brown checked flannel shirt.