Tonio (61 page)

I am not, at age fifty-eight, going to hide behind poetic torment, but while I am not always conscious of my blasphemous work interruptions, I have to admit she's right. When Tonio used to do his homework in the very spot she now occupies, he never complained of falling plaster dust fluttering onto his computer. Except once, when he proudly and amusedly announced during dinner: ‘This afternoon, all of a sudden, I heard you start cursing and throwing things.'

I would give anything to know what possessed me, with my small family still intact, that afternoon. Maybe I realised, in an unbearably lucid moment, how fragile we were, the three of us, and that our bliss could fall to pieces without warning. It could have led to the paroxysm of impotent rage to which Tonio, a floor below, was an acoustic witness.

Ach, of course not — this would be too pat. I probably quaked with anger in search of a word balanced on the tip of my pen, suddenly blown away by the switching on of a leaf-blower out on the street. Some such thing.

4

‘There will always be a
before
and an
after
,' one condoloncer wrote. As the months tick on, I appreciate each day how true those words are. A deep scar has been drawn straight through my life. ‘Before', my existence was worthwhile; ‘after', it is worthless — I can't put it any more simply than that.

I will probably continue to write, and if I do indeed find the strength to do so, I will give it my all, for otherwise there's no point. But actually
believing
in the craft, as when I was Tonio's protector and breadwinner — that is a thing of the past.

In my darkest moments, I am even capable of thinking that a bit more professional effort on my part might have saved Tonio — even though I realise at once that greater concentration on my work during his life would have meant less attention for him. So there you are: the sombre surges of my constricted brooding.

5

The
letselschadeadvocaat
on the Tesselschadestraat (this phrase is begging for a limerick)* had managed to get his hands on the Serious Traffic Accidents Unit dossier, including the CD-ROM with images of the collision recorded by the Holland Casino's CCTV camera. The public prosecutor handling the case offered to meet with us.

[* A
letselschadeadvocaat
is a personal-injury lawyer.]

Forensic measurements, police officers at the accidents unit had told us earlier, confirmed that the driver of the Suzuki had been driving ‘a bit too fast', and that Tonio had drunk ‘a considerable amount'. According to the files obtained by the personal-injury lawyer, the Suzuki was going between 67 and 69 kilometres per hour in a 50 kph zone. Blood tests showed that Tonio had 0.94 mg/ml of alcohol in his body, corresponding to six or seven beers. (For motorists, the limit is 0.5 mg/ml, the equivalent of three beers.)

‘Six beers,' said the personal-injury lawyer. ‘Not much, in fact. That's how an evening usually
starts
.'

I was surprised by the results. All this time I'd told myself, grudgingly, that Tonio must have been pretty drunk. After all, he and Dennis had been at a party in the Vondelpark that afternoon, and after that they'd had a few beers at Goscha's place. At about midnight they rode off to Trouw, where, Goscha had said, the rounds ‘kept coming'. In recounting the evening, she regretted that Tonio was always a step ahead of her, picking up the entire tab. Dennis said that Tonio had had a shot of tequila between beers. So how could all that drinking result in a blood-alcohol content equivalent to just six beers?

‘Don't forget,' the lawyer reminded us, ‘that the accident occurred at 4.40 a.m. The alcohol from that afternoon and evening was long out of his system by then. And don't overestimate the rounds at a club like Trouw. At that hour, the place is jam-packed — the bar, too — so buying rounds wouldn't have been a speedy affair. If there had been six of them, and Tonio got them all, he'd have been awfully busy. Six times three is eighteen … work that out at nightclub prices. I do understand that Goscha felt guilty, and that at the end of the evening Tonio only had five euros on him. Let's say that he'd long burned off the beer from that afternoon and evening, that he biked off into the night with five, six beers and a tequila in him. Then he'd have been a little tipsy at most, but certainly not drunk.'

Miriam went with the lawyer to the public prosecutor's office on the Parnassusweg. They were told that it was up to us whether to sue the driver for involuntary manslaughter as a result of reckless driving. The man would certainly be fined for speeding — nearly twenty km above the speed limit. Miriam, speaking for both of us, did not want to prosecute. She did want to know, however, whether the police had dissuaded the driver from seeking contact with us, or whether he himself had taken the initiative (to do so or not).

As far as the cause of the accident was concerned, the prosecutor's view was that both parties were guilty. Neither bicyclist nor driver was paying attention at the moment it happened. Tonio should have yielded to the car. The driver could have been chatting to his passenger and had perhaps glanced the other way. He was on his way home from a job at a café, but had not been drinking.

In the past weeks, I have often told myself that Tonio was a clumsy cyclist; that, when he was a youngster, I should have taught him better. This was my daily routine, day in day out: fattening up my guilty conscience. That notion of careless cycling was contradicted by the memory of Tonio on his bike, about two years ago (he had just gone to live in De Baarsjes). I was sitting outside at Café De Joffers, right near the intersection of Willemsparkweg and Cornelis Schuytstraat. Suddenly, I saw his orange granny bike swerve onto the Cornelis Schuyt from the Willemsparkweg. Leaning languidly back, pinkies on the handlebars, he meandered entirely at ease between the backed-up, honking cars — quite elegant, actually, as though city traffic were his natural habitat.

He cut up onto the sidewalk across the street from Joffers, raising his backside to take the curb. I'm sure I saw Tonio park his bike in front of Van Dam's bistro and go inside. I paid hastily and rushed across the street to ‘catch' him red-handed. In the bistro: no Tonio. In the bike rack: no orange bicycle.

Maybe there were no tables at Van Dam, and he had continued on to our house. Against our front wall: no orange bike, nor had Miriam seen him inside.

Had I imagined it all? No, when I spoke to him some time later, it seemed I had not. A reckless ride through the Cornelis Schuyt and among the idling cars? This and that day? Could be, but he hadn't been inside Van Dam. ‘What on earth would I be doing at Van Dam?' Oh yes, of course, he had nipped into Mulder's bookshop, a couple of doors down from Van Dam, to buy a photography magazine, and in order to avoid the traffic jam he continued on his way via the sidewalk. His destination was not his parents' house, but somewhere else — he couldn't remember where or for what.

I drummed it into my head that whenever I thought of Tonio as a clumsy cyclist, I should try to see him as I did that day on the Cornelis Schuytstraat, with his elegantly reckless cycling style. And this is how he, in the wee hours, had shot out of the Hobbemastraat, heading for — yes, heading for what? For something that justified, at such a late hour, his purposefulness.

6

I do not believe in a soul that is released from a body after death, and subsequently lives on in some rarefied way. There are those who, after a significant loss, see the light, and convert to one religion or another. As much as I would like to believe in the presence, somewhere, of Tonio's soul, it is not enough: I want evidence that his soul exists, so that my words do not fall on deaf ears. I would so very much like to inform him of my anger: that he has not been allowed to go on with his life.

‘To tell you the truth, Tonio, I'm pissed off at the whole world. For me, it's been one huge conspiracy against your future. My anger is all-pervasive. Your mother's rage is purer. She does not blame anybody in particular. She is just livid on your behalf, because you no longer have the means to express your indignation at the brazen theft of the years you still had ahead of you.'

Show me that his soul is still there somewhere, and I will lay bare my still-living heart to him: my shame for his death, my complicity therein, my shortcomings during his life.

His soul need not respond to my unburdenings, as long as I know it's
there
, as a listening or otherwise registering substance, if need be as a cosmic black hole from which not even a faint echo of my confessions will ever return.

‘The few times anyone has had the nerve to ask me these past few weeks if I was working on something, I have answered: “A requiem about Tonio.” Should have been: “
for
Tonio.” I write it first and foremost for you. No, not for the serenity of your soul. I
hope
in fact to attract your soul's attention. I want to rile it. Via your soul, I want to you to know that we have adopted the pain you endured for half a day. “Rest in peace”: nothing doing. We are united in that pain. You, Miriam, and me. And should souls exist — ours, too — then, when we die, we'll be united for eternity.'

7

Come on, Tonio, be honest: didn't it bother you that instead of cycling back the De Baarsjes with you, Goscha chose to stay behind and keep Dennis company? You didn't
have
to leave alone. You were also invited to hang out at Dennis's. You usually didn't turn down an invitation to extend the festivities.

Or did you have the feeling that Dennis and Goscha would have preferred to be alone together, and insisted you stay only out of politeness? Maybe there had been signs earlier that night that something was brewing between them … Did you feel like a fifth wheel? Did you want to be discreet, and let Dennis and Goscha have the rest of the night to themselves?

Jim, who wasn't in bed yet, said you had promised to be home by about four o'clock to keep him company. Dennis and Goscha told us something about you guys watching a movie, even at that late hour. Goscha, who was the most tipsy of the three of you, wasn't sure: ‘Maybe he was just too tired, and wanted to go to bed. We did put away a lot that night.'

She told us that she'd fallen asleep ‘pretty much right away' once inside Dennis's house. She thought that Dennis, perhaps because of that, was angry with her afterward.

The three of you stood there for a bit, bikes between your legs, on the corner of Sarphatipark, just near the intersection of the Ceintuurbaan and Van der Helststraat. In the seven years that I lived on the Van Ostadestraat, I walked past this corner nearly every day, in total many hundreds of times. I imagine you standing at the spot where, before I had my own line, my regular phone-booth stood, where I took care of business and appointments. Here, one Saturday in the spring of '78, I had desperately called every medical emergency service in the city, reaping only answering machines, while the first droplets of bright-red blood dripped out of my pant leg onto the granite floor of the phone booth: a case of an unstaunchably torn foreskin.

What did you all talk about, with the beat of the Trouw DJ still banging in your ears? I hear your laugh waft across the quiet intersection, but cannot make out what you're saying, except for a quasi-indignant: ‘But Dennis, jeez man …', followed by more laughter.

From where you stand, you can see the church tower on the corner of the Tweede Van der Helst and Van Ostade as it juts into the night sky. If you had taken a left there, within a few turns of the pedals you'd be at the small row of houses (now a modern block of flats) where your history — not yet in the flesh — began. There, in front of the school next to number 205, your mother and I first met. She was on her bike, and kick-scooted along the sidewalk, greeting me as she passed. She was wearing a hand-me-down raincoat from your future grandpa Natan — such a filthy piece of clothing, totally black with grime on the lapel and between the buttons, that I subconsciously forbade her on the spot to ever wear it again. Of course, I had already seen what a dark beauty lay concealed behind that ratty, formless skin.

More than thirty years ago, and there, in that run-down, pre-gentrification street, is where the Tonio design had taken root.

8

All right, so Goscha does not bike back with you, and you don't go to chill at Dennis's. According to Goscha — and I specifically questioned her about this — you did not ride off swerving like a drunkard. You rode normally, straight ahead, onto the Ceintuurbaan. I imagine you glancing back one last time, waving: ‘Oi!' (Unless you shouted at something or someone along the way, this would have been your last word — more a sound than a word, your signature goodbye: ‘Oi.')

I follow you on your last bike ride. A few things are still unclear to me. Maybe, if I keep a close eye on you, I can solve them as we go.

The Ceintuurbaan, the main artery of my years in De Pijp. The intersection with the Ferdinand Bol. The metro station construction site. In case you have a change of heart: you can't turn right again to rejoin Dennis and Goscha on the Govert Flinck.

The bridge across the Boerenwetering, with the Hobbemakade on either side and the mini red-light district to the right. The night is high and clear. Daytime is not far off: it promises to be a splendid Whit Sunday. I suspect we share a distaste for whores. Can't count on a lifesaving stopover on that front.