‘It’s obvious you’re faking it. You exaggerate.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. You’re guilty of overacting. A real ham. There aren’t any bats in your belfry, no matter how hard you pretend otherwise.’
‘Wow! So that means you’re …’
Incredible. I was completely bowled over. Unmasked by a dishevelled, grimy old man.
I said, ‘That was you, wasn’t it, last week? Who suddenly showed up at the breakfast table in the nude, crying because Mummy hadn’t come to pick you up from school.’
‘You have to go that extra mile.’
‘I’m impressed. I don’t think I could manage that — not yet. Wandering the corridors in my birthday suit, no, I’m not ready for that.’
‘Sooner or later you’ll have to. It’s an important phase … Do you already shit the bed?’
‘Not every night. Three or four times a week. It’s disgusting. But I’ve peed on the mat!’
‘And your wife?’
‘I don’t recognise her anymore.’
‘And your children?’
‘My children? Complete strangers who come to pick up my dirty clothes every Saturday.’
‘Excellent. Very good.’
And here was me thinking I’d left the folly of human interaction behind. A man (a husband and father, a dedicated employee, an honest taxpayer, respectable, nothing to hide) thinks he’s the world’s most adventurous old-age pensioner, the only one crazy enough to act on an impulse to pretend he’s suffering from dementia. His plan succeeds — he even manages to convince the doctors of the neurofibrillary mess inside his skull — and he arrives triumphant and with renewed self-respect in a specialised institution, only to be forced to conclude that he is ab-so-lute-ly un-original. Holy shit! I was immediately gripped by the fantasy that it might not be limited to just two Thespian greybeards, that I could be surrounded by more bright sparks than I thought!
And the surprising windfall; the possibility Rosa Rozendaal might be all there too! Definitely, she must be. When I thought of the look she gave me at memory choir …
‘Do you think we’re the only con artists here?’ I asked my unexpected comrade-in-arms. ‘Are there any others?’
Because if he’d managed to catch me out, it seemed only logical that he would have a good impression of the authenticity of the other dementia patients in the building. But he only shrugged.
‘Take that milksop in room 18, the poor guy who sits there cutting those stupid pictures out of Miaow! when his wife comes to visit with her lover? Is he faking it?’
Again he shrugged.
‘And that former camp guard?’ I persisted. ‘Walter De Bodt. Camp Commandant Alzheimer, I call him.’
‘Hard to say.’
‘He’s at least got a good reason for acting like his attic’s been vacated. Don’t you reckon?’
‘I told you, I don’t know. But if that war criminal is a malingerer, his acting’s a lot better than yours.’
And he rolled himself another cigarette.
I realised my inquisitiveness might annoy him, but took the risk of asking the one, obvious question:
‘You’re free not to answer, of course, but now I’m very curious as to what led you to feign dementia …’
‘Mediocrity, I guess.’
‘Mediocrity?’
‘Being like everyone else and finally having enough of it.’
‘Explain.’
‘The five most common self-recriminations of the dying are: one, they worked too much. Two, they lived their lives according to the expectations of others. Three, they lost touch with their friends. Four, they didn’t make themselves happy enough. And five, they didn’t express their feelings enough … That fifth and final point doesn’t bother me too much personally, but the other four more or less match the main themes of my life. Number two the most …’
‘I understand.’
‘And also,’ he continued, ‘I needed to be alone with myself again. Outside this home there’s a world where all you do is talk. Talk, talk, talk and then talk some more. And listen, or at least pretend to listen, to people who talk, talk, talk. And hear them talking over each other, talking, talking. You have family and other obligations, and often that comes down to talking and listening, and I just didn’t feel like it anymore — the whole social rigmarole. I wanted to finally have some peace and quiet to be alone with my thoughts. Here I can do that, more or less. It’s the only place that accepts me being completely introverted. It was my last chance. And you? What gave you the idea?’
I wasn’t entirely sure I could adequately explain my philosophy to a complete stranger off the top of my head like that, so I asked for a cigarette to gain some time. I hadn’t smoked since I was twenty-one. Before then I’d always enjoyed it: I liked the taste and, as a permanently insecure youth, I’d been gratified that something as pathetic as a cigarette immediately gave me a pose to adopt. But times and customs have changed and so has our view of tobacco. And I had a girlfriend who took charge of her future family’s life and demanded that I give up that stinking habit. Well, it was unhealthy and it did make you die young. Even if my chain-smoking buddy in the bus shelter wasn’t providing definitive proof of the latter. Truth be told, after more than half a century, I stuck a fag between my lips and it was as if I’d smoked the last one just an hour ago, that’s how familiar it felt. I didn’t cough and only felt a slight, yet far from unpleasant dizziness. A most delicious experience, one that did me good after weeks of living off the meals produced in Winterlight Geriatric’s low-fat, low-salt soup kitchen.
‘So, do you know why you spend your days wandering around here in your pyjamas?’
Yes, I knew why.
‘Life seemed to go faster than thoughts,’ I declaimed much too solemnly. ‘And before he had made a decision, he was an old man …’
They weren’t my words, I had plucked them from the mouth of a character in a novel.
‘You see,’ I said, quickly trying to justify my — admittedly ridiculous — affectation, ‘I was a librarian. A very contented librarian. I’ve always relied on books and I never minded supporting my own thoughts with the thoughts of others. So that quote means something to me.’
‘That’s the most important thing,’ he answered drily, ‘its meaning something to you.’
He was probably already regretting striking up a conversation with me. I could tell. Despite sharing a fate, we would never have become friends in real life — not when it still resembled a life.
Besides gobbledegook, I hadn’t said anything at all for months. Now I was in an unforeseen conversation and found it, to my astonishment, exhausting. Soon this lack of linguistic fitness would come in handy when I embarked on the aphasic and, as far as I was concerned, final phase of my life. If I wanted to do things by the book, it was time I got to work and sent a wrecking ball smashing through my vocabulary. I wondered if I was ready for it.
‘Do you know Bohumil Hrabal?’ I asked, thinking I should take advantage of the opportunity while I was still able to talk a little.
‘How am I supposed to know him? I’m senile!’
‘A writer!’ I continued. ‘From Prague. The man was already in his late eighties when his health started to deteriorate, and he was admitted to a home. He’s supposed to have met a fairly poetic end there, falling out of a window while feeding the birds. But according to those in the know, he deliberately threw himself out of the window, piss-pot, wheelchair and all. A voluntary defenestration, which was a little more symbolic in his hometown than it would be here.’