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.
Roelof Hartstraat. The traffic lights at the intersection are flashing yellow. Individual responsibility. There is almost no traffic. The occasional taxi. To the right, the College Hotel, whose loutish owners chopped down the trees. To the left, the road becomes the Coenenstraat. On the one corner, the local branch of the public library, where you and Miriam used to go to check out books. And on the opposite corner, Huize Lydia, where as a child you went to see your grandparents, when it was still a neighbourhood community centre (Grandpa Natan was treasurer).
Along Van Baerlestraat, too, trees were sacrificed during the recent ‘restructuring’. But right now, urban-planning atrocities are not on your mind as you pedal further on Jim’s bike under the streetlights. Still a ways to go until the Nepveustraat. You’re tired after two nights of hard partying. After all the euphoria of the past few days, the Jenny fantasies, visions of the long weekend ahead, you bike home all on your lonesome — a thought that drapes a dull melancholy layer over everything.
You ride past the Van Baerle/Nicolaas Maas junction. There, on the corner, my colleague K. Schippers lives. (I gave you his novel about photography as a present.) Once, I stood chatting with him on the sidewalk in front of his house a little too long for your pleasure. Out of impatience, or attention-seeking, you crawled under the unbuttoned back panel of my raincoat. If you walked backwards a bit, I was transformed into a variant on a circus horse, a kind of baggy-clothed centaur. Your excellent performance, while embarrassing me, pleased Schippers, who was a fan of clowns and patchwork animals.
‘As half-man, half-horse, you’re free to piss on the street …’
At least fifteen years ago, this incident. You approach the intersection in front of the Concertgebouw. Behind the buildings at your left, two blocks of houses deeper into the De Lairessestraat, the Jacob Obrechtstraat runs parallel to your route. You spent the first years of your life in the large apartment building called ‘Huize Oldenhoeck’ — those precious years of which you have no recollection (me, all the more). It occurs to me that on your final bike ride, you keep frighteningly close to the houses of your youth. You cycle, with a few zigzags here and there, along the images and settings of your earliest years. Look to the right, across Museumplein. You know better than I do where the hangout spot was, where the older boys gave you your first drag on a cigarette. You secretly hope that the Dutch football squad goes far next month — not because you really care all that much about the sport, but because of the festivities on the Museumplein grounds.
9
At the Concertgebouw, I know you’re always reminded of your boyhood friend Jakob, who was run over by a truck on the corner of Van Baerle and De Lairesse. The truck did not have a blind-spot mirror. Jakob was cycling to the Vossius: it was his very first day at the gymnasium. He only barely survived. That same week you started at another gymnasium, the Ignatius, so the news of Jakob’s accident didn’t reach you right away, you heard it on the grapevine. It was one of the few times we really lit into you: you told us the news far too late, and almost in passing: ‘Oh, guess what I heard … y’know, Jakob, right? Well he was …’
Now I think you didn’t appreciate the seriousness of the incident, the lethal danger. And anyway, Jakob and primary school, those days were long behind you, a new life was opening up. And yet you kept apologising, with tears in your eyes, for your negligence: you were starting to cotton on.
The traffic light changes to green. Now we have to talk turkey. I advise you — no, I beg you — to turn left here onto De Lairesse. A few blocks further, past the Jacob Obrecht, turn right onto the Banstraat. Then just a tad to the left — to your old house on the Johannes Verhulst. The whole front stoop is free to park your bike.
Kid, you’re tired, you’ve been drinking, you’re about to keel over, bike and all, from fatigue. Forget that whole trek out to De Baarsjes. Sure, Jim will be disappointed, but he’ll figure it out for himself, and sooner or later he’ll go to bed. You’ll explain it to him tomorrow.
You think you’ve got your wits about you, because you’re brooding about Jenny, but in fact it’s just sluggish, lovestruck daydreaming. Granted, there’s hardly any traffic at this hour, but … you also have to take that Eerste Constantijn Huygens/Overtoom crossing … a left turn … the taxis drive like maniacs there at night.
You’ve got a key to the house. (It’s hanging, if I remember correctly, on the same ring as the key to your bike lock.) You always manage to slip noiselessly up the stairs. You won’t wake us, I guarantee you. Besides, I’m wide awake anyway, thanks to a churning stomach from having eaten way too much garlic last night; I’m sitting upright in bed like a cat retching itself free of a hairball. It’s nearly half past four, I see on my watch. There’s no light yet coming through the curtains.