‘Come on, styrofoam-eating beetles?’
‘Polystyrene beetles, yeah. The storeroom at Dixons was swarming with them. Computers just sank through their own packaging …’
‘Cross your fingers for this afternoon then,’ I said. ‘Holey reflectors, they’ll give a model a moth-eaten face every time.’
‘Very funny, Adri. Good day at the typewriter, I see.’
‘I don’t see any model, by the way. You hiding her from us?’
I noticed he had shaved. He was not wearing his hair in a ponytail; it had obviously been washed, and brushed smooth and glossy. We rarely saw him so kempt at home.
‘She just phoned to say she’d be a bit late. Had to stop by the drugstore first. Bladder infection.’
Miriam emerged from her study. She kissed her son and ran the back of her hand across his cheek. ‘Mmm, babyface.’ She held him at arm’s length and inspected him from head to toe. ‘Hey, your favourite shirt. I thought I’d washed and ironed it for this weekend … for if you went out …’
‘I’ll change it soon. So it’ll stay clean.’
‘Okay, we’re off,’ I said. ‘Now Tonio, good luck. Or should I say: good shooting.’
I shouldn’t have thrown him such a knowing look, because he cast his eyes down, groaned softly and mumbled: ‘Pl-l-lease.’
7
The trees on our street were now yellow-green, their crowns bursting with seed pods. We drove via sun-drenched Amsterdam-Zuid to Amstelveen.
‘Funny,’ Miriam said. ‘When he photographs, he thinks nothing of stretching out on his stomach in the dust. In the mud, if need be. Now he puts on his best shirt.’
‘Sometimes a photo shoot is more than a photo shoot.’
There were considerably more fishermen on the bank of the Bosbaan than the last time we drove here, and they no longer huddled so timorously in their shelters, which resembled something midway between an umbrella resting on its side and a one-man lean-to. Where the Bosbaan’s water dead-ended, we could really plunge into the woods — a churning mass of fresh green vegetation, snipped-up sunlight, and lacy shadows.
‘Just look at the spring,’ Miriam said.
At the goat farm café, we ordered the house classic for lunch: tuna salad on a nearly black multigrain roll. Goat buttermilk. Manure-scented tranquillity.
‘Strange to think,’ Miriam said, ‘that I used to bring Tonio here to see the newborn goats and piglets. Now it’s where he shoos us off to so he can have the whole house to himself and that girl. I have to say I rather like it.’
The situation apparently had a rejuvenating effect on us: after lunch we set out on a ramble, each of us holding a cone of goat’s milk ice cream. We walked to the blue bridge, under which the rowing lake narrowed, and hung over the railing, dreamily watching the few kayaks and water bikes out this early in the season.
‘Gosh, that Tonio,’ Miriam said. ‘Media Technology … and then right away he picks up his photography again. He’s doing well. I’m so glad. If I think back to two, three years ago …’
‘I was a little hard on him, I guess, chewing him out for his lack of ambition. At his age I was no better.’ First one job after the other for a year, then two aborted studies: psychology and law. And after my philosophy bachelor’s: two half-doctorates, philosophical anthropology and aesthetics — two halves, unfortunately, don’t make a whole. So much for my own goals.
‘I’ve got a hunch Tonio will finish his degree.’
‘Or else he’ll do other amazing things.’
We strolled back towards the parking lot. ‘Half past three,’ said Miriam, as we passed the goat farm. ‘No, we can’t do that to him.’
‘Oh, Tonio’s a pretty efficient photographer. He doesn’t go for the scattergun approach. When he had to snap me for De Groene Amsterdammer he sat me down at an antique Remington, tossed a few rolls of telex paper around. I heard a few clicks, and assumed he was taking some proofs. “Ready when you are,” I said. But he already had what he was after.’
‘You just said a photo session is sometimes more than a photo session. Come on, let’s go have a drink at the goat place. Grant him this one afternoon.’
8
When we got home at around five, Tonio was packing up his cameras in a large plastic bag. The girl had just left. A whiff of cigarette smoke hung in the house.
‘And … any luck?’ I asked.
‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘I can judge the digital shots pretty well on the computer. But I took some analogue ones, too, and for those I’ll have to wait for the prints.’
‘Pop out back before you go,’ I said.
One of the styrofoam reflectors was leaning up against the side of the small arbour that enclosed a wooden loveseat. I settled down on the veranda with the evening papers. A little while later, Tonio placed two square photos on the table in front of me.
‘Remember, they’re just Polaroids,’ he said. ‘I always take a couple to test the light.’
They were in black-and-white. A girl, or young woman, Tonio’s age, with shoulder-length hair and a pleasant face that looked far too sweet-natured for the aloof business of modelling. She had put herself in a somewhat too deliberately winsome pose, framed by the mini-arbour, its bench apparently removed during the session.
‘Pretty girl,’ I said, my expert eye far from withered. ‘Very pretty. But a professional model … I dunno.’
I handed him back the Polaroids. I could see on his face that once again, I just didn’t get it.
‘Professional? Adri, she’s a college student. That modelling and acting, it’s only a side job. Just like me at Dixons.’
‘She’s awfully attractive, that’s for sure.’
Suddenly, his demeanour changed. ‘She asked me go to Paradiso with her on Saturday night,’ he said, with bashful pride. ‘Some kind of Italian blockbuster night, with Italian hits from the ’80s.’
‘Oh, there’ll be lots of Eros Ramazzotti then.’
He pulled a comic face that said: never heard of him. Miriam came out onto the veranda and offered us something to drink. Tonio declined, but sat down anyway, albeit restlessly, on the edge of a chair. Miriam reminded me of two funerals the next day, at more or less the same time. Two close acquaintances, both of whom were equally important to us.
‘We still have to choose,’ she said. ‘And not like: you do one, I’ll do the other. Not this time.’
‘Too many people dying lately,’ I said. ‘Cremations, funerals … The question is: are they all mandatory? People are so quick to make you feel like there’s no getting out of it. There’s something unfair about it, considering my own—’ I turned to Tonio. ‘I’m not sure if you know … well, so now you do … but when the time comes, I insist on being buried in the absolutely smallest possible company. Not cremated, mind you, buried. A hole in the ground with three people standing around it. Three, no more.’
‘Oh,’ said Tonio, ‘and who’s the third one then?’
There was a moment’s silence, and then we all burst out laughing in unison. He was right. The third one would be lying in the coffin.
Tonio had a delightfully unassuming laugh, with lively bursts which made his parted lips looked even fuller and the skin on his nose creep upward toward his forehead. (That laugh, too, was in a critical condition. Oh God, save his laugh.)
He got up and, still chuckling, asked his mother: ‘Do you still get Surinamese takeaway on Sundays?’
‘A tradition since before you were born,’ Miriam replied.