The girls were the Van Persie sisters from Rotterdam. Lily (nine) and Kiki (going on twelve). They were staying at the campground with their divorced mother and younger brother Robin, who was just about to turn six.* It was mostly Lily, with her broad mouth and uncombed curls, who took Tonio under her wing, and with a gusto I had seldom seen in a girl that age. As soon as she laid eyes on Tonio, she would insist he be removed from his pushchair. She agreed to stay within sight of us, his parents, as she carried the tyke to and fro, but refused to give him back. Tonio was too heavy for her girlish body; he kept sliding down her chest, and Lily would then shimmy him back up as far as he’d go. With any luck, Tonio would throw his arms around her neck, giving her a bit of extra grip.
[* Robin van Persie would later become a well-known soccer player and a member of the Dutch national team, and is at present a star striker for Manchester United.]
Tonio loved all the attention and cuddling. With his head up close to Lily’s, his laugh was broad and drooly, and he panted with flirtatiousness. And the important thing was: he and Lily were on the same wavelength. It was as though, their heads close together, they were continually in conversation.
Lily had the distinct misfortune that Tonio learned to walk during those first weeks of the holiday. As soon as he realised that his place was down there with both feet on the ground, he would thrash wildly in Lily’s arms until she gingerly set him down — and not just in the hard grass, where he’d soon plop onto his rear, but near a large object, a table or chair, which he could hold onto as he walked around it. Best of all were the metal supports of his stroller, because they had wheels — he was mobile.
Kiki and Lily often showed up at the schoolhouse early in the morning, while we were still eating breakfast, to ooh and aah in admiration as Tonio’s mother pushed dice of Laughing Cow soft cheese into his mouth. Soon enough the girls were allowed to unwrap the foil themselves and feed Tonio the bite-sized cheese cubes. His eyes sparkled, his drool became milky from the white cheese. All we had to do was watch out he didn’t get overfed.
Sometimes the sisters brought their little brother Robin with them, who never spoke and always wore an angry little pout. After breakfast, Tonio resumed his walking lessons behind the stroller under the tutelage of Lily and Kiki. He was now between thirteen and fourteen months old.
In my recollection, I see Robin leaning up against the outside of the schoolhouse, one foot up against the wall. Surly and haughty, he watches the movements of the toddler, who enjoys his sisters’ full attention. I sit at the picnic table under the apple tree, pretending to be absorbed in yesterday’s already yellowed newspaper, but I cannot take my eyes off the scene before me. Tonio has the tendency to push a bit faster than the wheels can furrow through the rough grass, so that he leans back slightly and easily falls over. He’s got the hand-grips firmly in his fists, above his head, so that as he topples over backwards he pulls the pushchair on top of himself.
‘Oof.’ The girls rush to prop him back up. At Tonio’s eye level is a shopping net, strung onto the frame by an elastic cord, with tissues and extra Pampers. Every time he falls over backwards, the nylon netting falls over Tonio’s face, like a loosely woven veil, and he doesn’t like it much. Not much time for crying, though: practice makes perfect. His dismay is limited to a brief whine while his fingers tug at the butterfly net. Kiki and Lily leap to the rescue. Lily takes advantage of the situation by scooping Tonio up and nuzzling him. He tries to wriggle away: there’s work to be done.
Robin’s stance hovers between childish contempt (pff, he can’t even walk) and an equally childish jealousy (my sisters don’t give me the time of day, but they’re all over that clumsy sprog). He, Robin, is not only good at walking, fast and slow, but he can creep, jump and climb, too. ‘Robin’s problem is,’ says Kiki superciliously, imitating her mother, ‘that he has no concept of danger.’
Tonio is back up on his feet, and screeches as he pushes the stroller. Again he’s learned something new: he wrenches and jerks the stroller over a stubborn tuft of grass and walks on. The girls follow him with arms extended, prepared to catch him should he fall.
I am worried about the fearsomely large wasps here; they fly close to the ground, as though they’re too heavy for their wispy wings. They look savage, and I imagine their stinger dripping with poison. I have already chopped one in half with a breakfast knife; it was pestering Tonio and I thought I was giving it a quick, painless death. Horrified, I saw how both halves stayed alive: the front half propped itself up on its wings, the back half — call it the weapon-wielding half — wobbled off, carrying the defeated stinger with the remaining legs.
‘If you want, Robin,’ I say in an attempt to include the boy in the adventure, ‘you can keep an eye on those big wasps to see they don’t fly near Tonio and your sisters. They’re much scarier than the ones we’ve got back home.’
Robin doesn’t answer. When I glance up from the paper a while later, Tonio and his entourage have already reached the other side of the yard. Robin is nowhere to be seen.
8
Four nurses filed from the corridor through the open glass doors into the courtyard. Two men and two women. They each carried a full cafeteria tray. Lunchtime. After blinking for a moment into the bright sunlight, they opt unanimously for a table in the sun.
‘Life goes on, of course,’ Hinde said. ‘No matter what’s happening inside.’
The nurses occupied a table some distance from us, but as it was otherwise so quiet in the courtyard I could clearly pick up snippets of their conversation. They spent some time quoting large sums in euros, the estimate ranging from two-and-a-half to three million.
‘Say there’s ten thousand staff, including partners,’ said one of the men. ‘That still comes out to 250 to 300 per person.’
‘But for that amount you get Marco Borsato’s cute bum,’ one of the female nurses said.
‘Don’t forget Karin Bloemen’s cute bum,’ said the other man. ‘And they call it a cold buffet.’
‘And the Mart Visser catwalk,’ said the second woman.
‘I still think it’s weird,’ the first man continued. ‘It’s always cutbacks, cutbacks, cutbacks. And then they go and rent a whole convention centre for ten thousand of us.’
‘Jesus, Jan, you really are a killjoy,’ said the Marco Borsato’s-bum woman. ‘It’s the AMC’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Can’t they throw a proper party for once? I’ve been here for twelve years and till now it’s been a dry house.’
9
Twice since Tonio was very young (one and almost three years old), I have been pursued by obsessive visions concerning his safety.
Once, during that summer of ’89, when we rented the schoolhouse in Marsalès, I took him out on the bicycle. I placed him in the child seat up front for what was perhaps the most wonderful and intimate day I had ever spent with him. Our destination was Biron Castle, but first we took a spin around the country roads, hardly bothered by any traffic. Tonio was getting on to 14 months, and his still-golden-blond curls fluttered right under my nose. I only had to tip my head down slightly in order to feel and smell his warm crown. Coasting downhill, a light breeze wafted through his hair. Only as noon approached did I put on his little white cap with the wavy edges, tying the lace under his chin, to keep him from getting sunstroke.
Earlier that summer, I had taught him the words ‘cow’ by pointing at the black-coated cattle, as always adorned with large yellow plastic earrings, on the grassy slopes. Until now, no cows had shown themselves along our route. We cycled through the fields, which were scattered with large rolled-up bales of hay, either as refuse or harvest by-product. Occasionally, Tonio would point a wet finger at one of the rolls, calling out with a thin voice, more sound than word: ‘owww … owww!’