The name never caught on. Joe was the only one who called him that, for a while, but no one else.
During the summer holidays Christof was an almost permanent guest at Joe’s house, where a more permissive atmosphere prevailed. You would always see the two of them on the same bike, Christof standing on its baggage rack like an acrobat in a Korean circus act as they went to the Spar for a bottle of Dubro or to Snackbar Phoenix for a helping of chips. That, one day, was the way they happened to pass the ruined house on Brugstraat, still hidden behind a wall of scaffolding and black plastic sheeting. Later, after the house was rebuilt, Egon Maandag sold it, saying he had never had a good night’s sleep there since the accident. He had a villa built on a high stretch of ground outside Lomark, where his feet would remain dry by high water. That day, however, he emerged from behind the plastic at the front door and looked in astonishment at his son perched on the baggage carrier.
‘Hi!’ Christof said.
‘Hello, Christof,’ his father said, and those, I believe, were the only words they exchanged that summer.
Joe and Christof ate a lot of chips. The girl behind the counter at Snackbar Phoenix had a cute face and a well-rounded physique.
‘What will it be today, gentlemen?’
‘One chips, extra large, with extra ketchup, mayo and onions. And two forks,’ Christof said. ‘By the way, do you have any idea why this place is called the Phoenix?’
The girl shook her head.
‘It’s a mythical bird that rises from its own ashes,’ Christof said. ‘Kind of weird that you don’t know that.’
‘Oh, well, sorry,’ the girl said.
She looked around interestedly, as though suddenly seeing something that hadn’t been there before.
‘Is this where it was last seen or something,’ she asked, ‘I mean, that they named it that?’
‘That’s right,’ Joe said earnestly, ‘it was on this very spot that it had its nest.’
The chips fizzed in the boiling fat, at the window there droned a bluebottle that had seen better days. While the girl scooped the chips from the fat and shook them dry, Joe and Christof stared at the synchronized shaking of her glorious backside. It exerted an almost magnetic influence. She sprinkled salt on the chips and scooped them around, and Joe and Christof firmly instilled in themselves the sight of her phenomenal hams.
‘One chips with ketchup, mayo and onions for Mr Christof,’ she said.
‘His name’s Johnny,’ Joe said. ‘Could you do a little more mayo on that?’
After losing a year because of the accident, now I’m back in the third class with kids I barely know. And even though I’m the oldest, if you stood me up straight I’d also be the smallest.
On the first day of school, Verhoeven, our Dutch teacher, asked us what we’d done during our summer vacation.
‘What about you, Joe?’ he said when half the class had had its turn. ‘What have you been up to for the last few weeks?’
‘Waiting, sir.’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘For school to begin, sir.’
Finally I’m in a position to be around him all the time. But then, one morning, Joe asks Mr Beintema for permission to go to the bathroom. A little later, from somewhere in the building, comes a thundering explosion.
‘Joe,’ Christof murmurs.
The jerk had been sitting on the toilet, putting together a bomb. Half his hand blown off, a trail of blood from the cubicle all the way outside, and the principal running after him. Like a wounded rat Joe tries to escape, but the principal catches up with him halfway across the yard and starts swearing like a dozen drunken tinkers. Joe isn’t really listening, though; he falls to the ground as though someone’s pulled the rug out from under him. An ambulance arrives, there’s a whole lot of fuss and we don’t see Joe again for a while. That bomb-gone-wrong put him back a bit.
Gradually, the class gets used to having me around. I’m excused from oral exams, because every answer I try to give takes at least an hour and still no one can figure it out. All very tiresome.
Particularly tiresome is the fact that I still can’t still piss on my own, and somehow it happens that Engel Eleveld comes to my rescue in that regard. Engel’s a unique person. He’s the kind of guy you don’t notice for years, almost as though he’s invisible, and then suddenly you see him and are hopelessly overtaken by a feeling of friendship.
It was Engel’s own idea. I don’t know how he found out about my specific need for assistance, but all assistance is welcome. We go to the loo together, he rolls down my pants and hangs my dick in the bedpan that I always carry in the side compartment of my cart. The first few times I feel like dying of mortification, not so much when he stuffs my hose into the reservoir, but when he rinses the urinal in the sink. Amazingly enough, no one gives Engel a hard time about being my piss partner, at least not that I hear about.
You may, of course, be wondering how that goes when it comes time to take a shit, whether Engel helps me do that too. No way! Shitting I do in the privacy of my own home. Ma helps me. I tolerate no one else behind my hole.
After the explosion the toilet door at school was hung back on its hinges and the janitor tells anyone who’ll listen (no one, really, but he tells them anyway) that he’s never seen anything like it. What I’d like to know is what Joe was actually planning to blow up. Or whom.
When Joe comes back — his hand bandaged, stitches in his forehead — no one talks about it anymore. The whole thing seems to be dead and buried. Really weird, as though everyone would rather forget that Joe ever did something dumb. It’s not something he wears well. For myself, it makes me realize how much I’d like to see him give the world a good going over; if there’s anyone who could do that, it’s him.
Joe’s a little quiet at first, and Christof watches over him. When Joe removes the bandages, in class with everyone there, it’s Christof who keeps the curious at a slight distance.
‘Joe,’ he says worriedly, ‘isn’t that kind of dangerous?’
‘Danger is where you don’t expect it,’ mumbles Joe, and goes on unwinding the bandage.
Then he comes over to me and holds his hand in front of my face.
‘See this, Frankie? This is what stupidity looks like.’
My stomach flips. His right hand is a kind of meat platter in yellow, green and pink, loosely bound together with something like three hundred stitches. His little finger and ring finger are gone completely.
‘Jeeesus, Joe!’ Engel Eleveld says in awe.
Heleen van Paridon gags, but somehow succeeds in keeping her lunch down.
‘A little fresh air will do it wonders, you’ll see,’ says Joe.
‘Were you the one who made those other bombs too?’ asks Quincy Hansen, the turdhead who’s in my class now all over again because he’s flunked twice. I’d tell my secrets to a snake before I’d talk to Quincy Hansen.
‘Hey, it wasn’t me,’ Joe says.
‘Yes it was!’ shouts Heleen van Paridon.
She’s kind of aggressive, if you ask me.
‘No it wasn’t,’ says Christof, with an air of sanctimony.
Damn right, never admit a thing. What follows is a kind of quibble, with which Joe becomes bored pretty quickly. He gets up and walks away.
‘Well then who was it? Huh?’ Heleen shouts at his back. ‘Frankie?’
Joe turns around and looks at me, then at Heleen.
‘Frankie’s got more up his sleeve than you might think,’ he says.