‘Maybe I was the thief.’
Having had enough of the noxious orange fumes, I suggested to Miriam that we take a short cut through Leidsestraat to the Leidsebosje, and wait for the parade there. We took a left onto the Keizersgracht. Leidsestraat and Leidseplein were less packed than otherwise on a warm summer afternoon. As we approached the square, I caught myself peering down side streets in search of the shawarma joint that Tonio might have been heading for that night, in order to put some solid food in his beer-ravaged stomach.
By the time we got to the Korte Leidsedwarsstraat, I could no longer contain myself. I walked over to the door of a Turkish snack bar, and examined the colour photos of the various dishes. Sure enough, they did a döner kebab, Tonio’s favourite late-night snack. Was this the image he had in mind, and for which he allowed himself to be lured into a detour — off the Van Baerle, to Jan Luyken and, finally, Hobbemastraat?
Yes, a person can meet his end as unheroically as this. I recently came across an old postcard, sent in the summer of 1978 by Jolanda, who was vacationing on the island of Terschelling with a girlfriend. ‘I miss you + shawarma sandwich’. I had spent a few intense weeks with her, both of us so in love that we forgot to eat, but not to drink. Late at night — I lived in De Pijp — we would end up at the shawarma joint on the Ferdinand Bolplein. The streets were just as deserted as now in the early morning. I never considered those nocturnal meals life-threatening.
36
We passed the Hotel Americain’s new fountain. From the sudden cheering around the corner, we reckoned the players’ boat had reached the Singel. For those on the bridge, the boat still had to take another curve, so here the howling only started a few moments later. Miriam and I found a spot at the far end of the bridge railing. The sunlight shone on the deck and on the players, a few of whom were being interviewed. The TV helicopter hovered above Leidseplein, taking the bird’s-eye footage we would soon be watching at home.
No sooner had the boat nipped under the wide bridge than the entire herd of supporters rushed across the tram tracks to the other side — in order to see their heroes reappear. The stampede looked just like thirty years before: the giddy panic with which hordes of squatters and their supporters were scattered by riot police. The tear gas was now orange, and the tears were not chemically induced, but brought on by the confused mix of triumph and defeat.
Miriam and I cut straight through to the Leidsebosje. We were approaching The Spot, but were in no hurry to reach it. We preferred to be pushed or washed there by the hordes of clowns that were now heading our way. Hundreds of them swarmed further up along the raked wall of the Singel canal, in order to get as close as possible to the boat, which was just emerging from under the bridge. It cruised down the short stretch of Leidsekade where Harry Mulisch lived. From where I stood, I couldn’t see if he was watching from his workroom: there was too much reflection in the window. He might well have been there. Usually, he’d have retreated to his favourite hotel on the Lido in Venice right now, but it was closed for renovations. The day after the accident he had walked over to The Spot, and was shocked by the bright yellow lines and symbols that illustrated the brute force of the drama, as yet unaware of who it had happened to.
I recognised the player now being interviewed as Robin van Persie. I pointed it out to Miriam, who nodded sadly. Without having to say it out loud, we both pictured the six-year-old Robin leaning up against the wall of our rented schoolhouse in Marsalès, watching sullenly as his sisters taught the one-year-old Tonio to walk. Even the flat-bottomed flagship of Dutch football could not escape from pantonioism today.
The pedestrian bridge linking the Max Euweplein to the Stadhouderskade (the bridge I had once believed had played such a crucial role in Tonio’s unhappy end), too, was chock-a-block with screaming fans who were already wastefully dumping fistfuls of orange confetti into the canal while the boat was still no further than the old Lido. My eyes glided along the front façade of the Holland Casino, trying to locate the security cameras that had registered Tonio’s last deed in this world. I wasn’t able to find them. Of course, being a system designed to foil burglars, they wouldn’t make them overly conspicuous.
On the other corner of the entrance to the Max Euweplein was the grand café where, not even a year ago, Tonio had first met his future classmates. The small delegation that had brought us flowers at the beginning of June explained how it had gone. August 2009: because Tonio was still working at Dixons, he missed the beginning of intro week. When he finally made a date with his ‘group’, he showed up much too late. Trying to kill time while waiting for him, his classmates — who had never met Tonio or even seen a photo of him — tried to picture what he was like, based solely on his name and date of birth. The game got more and more serious. Based on just those two bits of information, they put together a profile, a sort of intuitive composite sketch. Theories on his personal attributes like hairstyle and weight were posited and dismissed. A small majority came to the conclusion that he was 1.75m at most. Another small majority saw him with long, dark hair and thick eyebrows that grew toward each other a bit just above the bridge of his nose. Finally, they all more or less agreed: this, and only this, was how the newcomer looked.
Just then Tonio walked in, certain of his anonymity. He scanned the tables in the full café for what could be his group. How on earth was he to recognise them? All at once there were ten arms waving in the air, and ten voices calling out as one: ‘Yoo-hoo, Tonio! Over here!’
They had democratically conceived just the right picture of him. If I try to imagine his surprise at that moment — his shy grin (that started somewhere between his shoulder blades) — I could just cry. Just nine months later — a stone’s throw from that very same café, on the other side of the canal — he would be dashed to the pavement by a car.
I imagined him walking over to his classmates’ table. ‘Jeez, what the … you guys …’
Laughing, with jerky gestures, he would make a round of handshakes. ‘Shit, how’d you know …?’
37
The team’s boat approached The Spot, where the Singel canal curves to the left toward the Rijksmuseum. Supporters still slid down the sloped, overgrown canal wall, either on their back or in a crouch walk, toward the water’s edge, as though they were prepared to wade out to the boat, up to their neck in brown muck if need be.
‘Come with me.’ I pulled Miriam past the undulating wall of orange backs and wigs. The Hobbemakade/Stadhouderskade junction was deserted. High above, a helicopter hovered, but not to guard The Spot. The crowd faced away from the intersection, cheering hysterically. No more yellow outlines, which the desk officers had warned us about, were to to be seen — worn away by cars that hadn’t suddenly found a cyclist on their front bumper.
I pointed to the place. ‘Right about there.’
Here he had been slammed out of life. Life itself not yet entirely out of him, but what ensued was mostly just a last-ditch attempt to save what, in the end, couldn’t be saved.
The boats, accompanied by whoops and roars, followed the curve. Vuvuzelas bellowed their heavy tones. Entire hordes advanced en masse toward the Rijksmuseum, so as to enjoy, for another few moments, a view of the players, or to be at Museumplein on time for the actual tribute.
Miriam shook her head, crying inaudibly. ‘Just like that …’ I thought I heard her say. ‘In the middle of the road …’
What struck me all the more was the loneliness of what had occurred here. After a bike ride on his own … blind fate grabbing him by the horns … being flung into the air and smacked against the asphalt. How long did he lie there like that? Did he groan, or were his lungs already too wrecked to provide sufficient air to cry out?