Miriam nodded, smiled, wiped her face dry.
‘Then we have to quit boozing, and soon,’ she said. ‘What d’you say to an official last glass tonight? Really, that when we go to bed we can say … uh … finito, over and out, enough is enough. Y’know, I don’t really even like the taste of it anymore.’
‘All right, one last toast … to our longevity.’
‘To the longevity of all three of us.’
4
(Diary entry, Wednesday 19 May 1999)
8.00 p.m. Tonio home. Observe him surreptitiously as he plays, kneeling on the floor, wearing his drab olive outfit: the picture of health. 8:30: he goes up to the third floor with me and sits on my chaise longue reading something. Later he gets up quietly so as not to disturb me. Out of the corner of my eye I see him walk around the long sorting table. He inspects the manuscripts, arranged by chapter in small stacks. Here and there he reads the summary on the top sheet.
‘It says here: “Movo in the Burn Centre.” Why is Movo in the burn centre?’
‘He stuck his head in a deep fryer full of scalding-hot fat.’
‘Oh. Why?’
‘To punish himself.’
‘Oh. What for?’
‘The terrible things he had done.’
‘Yeah, but here it says he got twelve years in prison.’ (Laughs.) ‘Then you don’t have to go and punish yourself …’
‘It’s for other things than the judge punished him for.’
‘Oh. Why does he get to go free after eight years? It says so here.’
‘That’s how it is in this country. If you behave, you only have to do two-thirds of your sentence.’
‘Oh.’ He gives me three big kisses, and goes off the bed. ‘Work hard, okay?’
5
I have long searched for a memory of Tonio with which I might close this requiem.
In a work of fiction, a few recollections of the lead character’s past, provided they are well chosen, are sufficient to recall his entire youth. This document dedicated to Tonio would only be complete if I could include in it all my cherished and less pleasurable memories of him, plus all those gleaned from third parties. Loss makes one insatiable. In order to combat the unattainable yearning for completeness, I have let my memory take its own associative course. I have worked the material so gathered into a structure similar to that of a novel, in the hope that Tonio, despite the gaps, will emerge as multifaceted as possible.
I stumbled on my diary notes from the summer of ’99, when the three of us vacationed in Marsalès for the third time (for Miriam and Tonio, it was their fourth visit). The date: Wednesday 11 August 1999. I do not quote the diary entry verbatim here, but fill it out so as to get to the heart of the situation.
The previous weekend we had visited the publisher Dick Gubbels and his wife Elly in the Corrèze, and our return to Marsalès marked the last week of our holiday. On the morning of the 11th, the three of us are sitting in the yard of the rented house, which we use only for sleeping, and occasionally to take refuge in from the fearsome Dordogne thunderstorms. The yard is surrounded by a tall hedge, but the sun has already long risen above it. Miriam and Tonio recline in plastic lawn chairs, while I sit at the metal office table the landlord put there especially for me: a frame in peeling army-green and a desktop of grey linoleum, which has been scratched by so many penknives that if one were to smear it with ink and press a large sheet of paper onto it, the result would undoubtedly be a Baroque linocut.
I write using a portable electric typewriter, which is powered by way of a long, rodent-safe, heavy-duty cable leading to the house. Since my compulsive nature is in no way put on hold during vacations, I make notes for one of my works-in-progress. The main character, Movo, is being treated at the Beverwijk Burn Centre, where he has been taken after immersing his face in a pan of hot oil, in an act of self-mutilation. There, too, it is the morning of 11 August 1999, and it’s getting on to 11.00 a.m. Movo is sitting in the hospital garden, guarded by a nurse, awaiting the solar eclipse. Around him are the victims of a recent fire that burned down the Roxy discotheque in Amsterdam. An indoor fireworks display following the funeral of the fireworks artist Peter Giele had set the disco ablaze. Movo, who has undergone a series of plastic-surgery efforts in Beverwijk since the end of April, recalls the tumultuous arrival of the ambulances from Amsterdam.
My worktable is in the shadow of a densely crowned tree. Miriam and Tonio’s deck chairs are in the full sunlight, which now, at almost eleven o’clock, is still just bearable. Miriam is reading a book by Patricia Highsmith. I can’t see the cover from here, but I think it’s from the Ripley series. Tonio sits stock-still, his knees tucked up, against the back of his chaise longue. Now and again he puts on the cardboard eclipse glasses he bought at the campground store. The lenses are made of green mica, or of ordinary plastic. He looks briefly at the sun, and removes them again. His face does not betray any impatience; rather, stoicism.
The Roxy victims around Movo are all wearing protective eclipse glasses. Some of them have the earpiece stuck in the gauze bandage in which their head is swathed. The nurse asks Movo if she shouldn’t go buy a pair for him, too, from the kiosk in the lobby:
What’s to protect? I’m as good as blind. Well, okay, three-quarters. All the better to see the solar eclipse with, and no need for those dumb glasses.
From the timetable printed in the 6 August edition of de Volkskrant (also for sale in the campground store), I note that the eclipse will be visible in the Netherlands, depending on the location, somewhere around ten past eleven. I can’t remember what that means for the south of France. It’s not yet eleven. Tonio can be quite stealthy: suddenly he’s standing beside me.
‘Adri, have you ever seen a total solar eclipse?’
‘I don’t know if it was total or not, but it was in the early sixties … I was as old as you are now … there was a big fuss about it. The world would come to an end, I think it was. The only thing I can remember is the sun with a nibble taken out of it.’
‘Did you have eclipse glasses back then?’
‘We had to make do with the lid to a hagelslag jar. It was made of dark-brown hard plastic. If I didn’t go blind, it was thanks to the points you could save up to get yourself one of those jars.’
‘I’m gonna go look.’
Movo is trying, quite deliberately, to mislead the nurse. His dive into the deep-fry oil was intended to blind him completely. That did not entirely succeed. Now he will try again. Twelve seconds of looking directly at the eclipsed sunlight will damage the cornea sufficiently to finish off the job. What the nurse does not know is that Movo’s stitched-on eyelids still show little-to-no capacity for reaction …
It’s how it is, and always has been: I ruin every idyll by grinding it up into material for fiction. May I, for that reason, burn in a hell too far away to convey me in an ambulance to Beverwijk.
‘It’s starting,’ Tonio calls from his lawn chair. He even sits up extra straight.
I look at the watch next to my typewriter. Just past eleven.
‘So soon?’ asks Miriam. She raises her sunglasses and looks at Tonio, but not at the sun (fortunately).
‘See for yourself.’ Tonio brings his mother the eclipse glasses.