The way Miriam lay there, utterly exhausted, wan and looking like a wrung-out dishrag, I wondered if she’d ever really recover. Visions of the Kanadreuffe’s mother in the novel Karakter — as a schoolboy I’d read the first few pages — who withered incurably in her childbed from one minute to the next, had forever plagued me: become a new father and see your wife age twenty years during delivery.
The afterbirth still had to be removed, but the umbilical cord came, twisted and gaudy, into view. The doctor handed me a pair of episiotomy scissors. ‘It’s a tradition here that the father cuts the umbilical cord. Things didn’t go that smoothly today. We had to hurry.’ She fastened two clamps next to each other on the cord. ‘Can you do it like this?’ Just clip it between the clamps … yes, that’s right.’
It made a creepy, crunching sound.
‘We’ll give you a piece of the umbilical cord to take with you. Sealed in plastic. As a memento.’
I watched as the baby was washed, dried off (more like patted dry) and weighed. He was three-and-a-half weeks premature, and underweight. The scale’s reading was given to the white-coated man, who was still writing everything down. Weight, length, the various times of the entire process. In the six months between high school and university, I had a job as ‘timekeeper’ at a machine factory in Eindhoven. Maybe that’s what this man’s job was called, too. He entered the time of birth as 10:16.
9
‘Have a name for him yet?’ asked the midwife.
‘Ach, all those pretty girl’s names …’ I answered. ‘Yesterday we were sure it would be a girl. Tonio. That’s his name now. Not Esmée. Tonio. Hello, Tonio.’
His cries, as he was trussed into a nappy, were high-pitched and yet hoarse. Miriam’s weakly beckoning voice nearly got drowned out. I went over to her.
‘I’ve just unveiled the monument,’ I said. ‘Well done, babe … beautiful job.’
I kissed her wet cheek. The women removed the afterbirth. As though identifying a flower, the midwife began picking through it in front our very eyes, offering icily sober commentary about how the foetus lived in the uterus. I had rather preferred to preserve the myth of the afterbirth. An aunt who had worked as a maternity ward nurse once told me how some of her colleagues smuggled placentas home with them to feed to the dog (like they also stirred breast milk into their tea). For a moment, I was afraid the doctor would suggest we all munch down the afterbirth for lunch — which would perhaps have meant a return to the myth.
Miriam bravely endured being stitched up where she’d been torn during delivery. Later, she was taken by wheelchair, in which a sort of blotting paper had been laid, to the shower. The doctor took me aside.
‘The baby’s underweight, so we’d like to keep him for the time being … in an incubator … for observation. You can go have a look in a moment.’
10
The blonde nurse came to ask if we needed anything. No, there was enough water in the carafe, and I avoided the coffee after Miriam reminded me how the stuff could stink at inopportune moments.
‘A tranquiliser, maybe?’
Yes, Miriam thought that was a good idea. A little while later the nurse returned, keyed up, with a handful of individually wrapped pills. ‘The head of the trauma team will be here any minute.’
11
‘As I understand it,’ said Dr G., the traumatologist, ‘the accident occurred on the Stadhouderskade just as it curves past the Vondelpark. It’s a nasty spot. Notorious, I’m afraid: we see a relatively high proportion of accidents at that intersection.’
Dr G. was a tall, slender professor of surgery. He appeared self-assured by nature, but with us he had an slight air of diffidence. His expression betrayed sympathy for the parents: unlike us, he had seen Tonio’s injuries, both the external and internal ones. He was in a position to assess the boy’s chance of survival.
‘I won’t give you false hope,’ he said without sitting down. ‘He’s still in a critical condition. I had to remove his spleen … it was badly damaged. Half of it at first, and then the rest. The impact caused a serious trauma to the lungs. They’ve taken on a lot of blood. It’s complicated by the fact that there was also substantial brain damage. We opened up his skull on the right side, because the brain has started to swell there. It desperately needs oxygen, which the lungs aren’t producing … The next few hours will be touch and go.’
As he spoke, his voice calm, Miriam sat next to me, shivering. A new and detailed map of the child she had given birth to was being unfolded in front of us.
‘I’m going back to the OR,’ said Dr G. ‘You’ll be kept informed of any developments, naturally. I’ll stop by again before I go home.’
It was absurd that we had been brought here but couldn’t see Tonio. An entire team of masked experts bent over his opened-up insides, and inserted tubes, tampons, scalpels, forceps, clamps. But maybe what he needed most was Miriam and me, simply to hold his hand.
Today, for the first time in a long while, I did not associate the AMC with champagne. From 2005 to 2007 I was administered my magic pill at the Endoscopy unit of the Stomach, Intestine, and Liver wing, under the watchful eye of Professor Lisbeth. As the study also included taking detailed notes of changes in the professional life of the guinea pigs, I had faithfully reported that my new novel was finished, and promised I would do my best to keep the alcoholic festivities to a minimum. At my next appointment, after being weighed and jabbed, I sat hooked to a blood pressure monitor when the door opened and in came Professor Lisbeth with a tray. Not with medical instruments, but a wine cooler holding a bottle of bubbly and three champagne flutes. It was the first time I ever heard the pop of a champagne cork in a hospital, followed by the effervescence of the wine and the clinking of glasses.
‘To your new book!’ Lisbeth was still wearing her white coat, but that only made it more festive. Her assistant, Ellen, had just tapped a quarter of a litre of my blood into a tube, so I could certainly use a pick-me-up. The impromptu reception was touching, and only there in the examination room did it hit home that the job was truly finished. The glistening eyes of the women told me that for them, too, this sort of thing only happened once in a blue moon.
12
Tonio’s arrival put paid to a longstanding dilemma that procreation had finally undone, but my fear of losing the child was in no way diminished. My breathless efforts would now be dedicated to piloting my son safely through all the predicaments and perils of the world.
We got postnatal assistance far too late after the birth, and I had the impression that in order to make the girl feel not entirely unneeded, Miriam gave her little jobs that she could already handle herself. The aide continually came into my room to ask about my work. It was her way of flirting with men who she presumed had been shortchanged, physically speaking, during their wife’s pregnancy. She took a broad view of her duties.
It was 26 June 1988. Now that the girl was in the house to assist Miriam and help look after the baby, I could nip out to the Dutch national football team’s ticker-tape parade. They had just won the UEFA championship in a 2–0 victory over the Soviet Union.