The wind was apparently blowing my way, so the sausages and drumsticks on the grill made my mouth water, but it was above all the voices cutting clearly through the fading light that made me regret not being down there, too, where it was alive with rats and girls, and where I would have relished spooning up a mouthful of macaroni-and-rice. I sat there, not doing much myself, listening to their talk and laughter, to the tinkle of clinking glasses, until the bats began to circle above the sheds, and it became altogether too dark to put another letter on paper.
It could have been the swerving of the police van that made me feel slightly queasy, but more likely it was the memory of the desires sparked by that summer evening. Later, that desire got itself a future: Miriam and me … me, Miriam, and Tonio … But this, too, was part of that future: us on our way to the hospital to be told just how critical our boy’s condition was. If he stood a chance. If he was still alive.
8
H&NE. In the late summer or early fall of ’79, one of the backyard barbecue voices got a face.
The squatters’ pad, Van Ostadestraat 205, was next door to a primary school with a playground at the back and a widened sidewalk out front where mothers waited to pick up their brood. This is where I saw her, kick-coasting her granny bike, manoeuvring between clusters of chatting women, some of whom cast her a disapproving glance while stepping demonstratively off to one side. With her left foot resting on the pedal and propelling the bike along with her right foot, she caused just as much inconvenience as regular cycling, except this way the police couldn’t give her a fine.
I had just closed the door to no. 209, where I lived, behind me. I can’t remember if there was a threat or forecast of rain, but the kick-coasting girl wore a raincoat several sizes too big. The garment, in a men’s cut, must have been beige once, but was now shockingly filthy — it was an eye-catcher even in this neighbourhood of dilapidated squats and rusted-through bikes lying half in the gutter. The front was particularly grubby, full of random smudges, while the fabric around the buttons was pretty much black, as though the coat had once done service as a coalman’s apron.
I would have just shrugged it off, were it not for the very pretty head that stuck out of the equally grimy collar, shiny with grease and buttoned up to the chin. Loose, dark hair framed a lightly tanned face that nevertheless gave the impression of paleness, perhaps because of the dark eyes that weren’t even made up (which would have been rather incongruous alongside a coat like that). The oversized garment concealed her figure, but a certain roundness in the chin, neck, and jaw suggested the girl was on the chubby side.
Although there wasn’t an obvious resemblance to Hinde, I could tell right away that they must be sisters; this one, the younger of the two, I guessed about eighteen.
When she noticed me, no more than a vague shadow of recognition passed over her face. Maybe she couldn’t place me any better than I could her, and she only thought she should know who I was because I lived in the house that provided her sister’s squat with running water. Her ‘hello’ was diffident and distant in equal measure; its slightly questioning tone did not tally with the broad, carefree smile (a kind of gentle grin) with which she returned my greeting. It seemed to me that in passing she looked at me just a tad too long (which means I did the same), causing her to overshoot the bike rack, so she ended up propping her bike against the front of no. 207.
When I looked back as I walked along the sidewalk past the school, she was half bent over her bike, pulling the chain lock through the spokes. The front of the too-wide coat — really no more than a coal sack, just as black and just as shapeless — hung all the way to the ground. The chubbiness — well all right, that wasn’t her strong point, but she was definitely pretty. But that shabby old rag really had to go. She slighted herself with it — and, by extension, me, although she was far from being H&NE yet.
All the more vexing was that I didn’t see her again for the next few months. So like it or not, I was forced to picture her in that filthy raincoat.
9
The Utrechtsebrug. As mucky and murky as the water could look under low cloud cover, in today’s morning sunshine the Amstel River glistened as though silver-plated. The brilliant sunlight bleached the surrounding colours, bathing everything in the same milky blue.
The bridge was always the last landmark on the way home from vacations in the south. Tonio used to start talking about it as soon as we left Lugano or the Dordogne: on the other side of the Amstel, a man-sized K’Nex Ferris wheel was waiting for him to complete its construction. For me, the Utrechtsebrug symbolised the imminent reunion with my stationery shop up on the third floor. So for hundreds of kilometres we could all look forward, each in his own way, to this gateway to the city.
For Miriam, the bridge meant an end to many hours of concentrated driving. She never really had an outspoken opinion about post-vacation life. Yes, being home, nothing beat that.
On the front seat of the van, the two police officers focused on the exact route to the AMC — as though they couldn’t have done it blindfolded. The woman reminded her colleague that he just had to keep an eye out for the hospital exit, which wouldn’t be signposted for a while yet. They were young, fresh from the academy. Having to concentrate on the traffic came in handy: this way they didn’t have to worry about us.
Between their seat and ours was an empty middle row whose back regretfully did not offer us complete invisibility. With both arms around Miriam, I kept a stranglehold on her. I made half-hearted hushing noises, but did not know what to say to her. That everything would be all right? What right did I have?
In a critical condition. I was incessantly, feverishly analysing that phrase. Since Miriam had frantically shouted those four words, and the policeman had repeated them with professional calm, their meaning swung back and forth. At one moment they announced the inevitable, the next moment they took on something reassuring. Recently on the news a casualty was said to be in a critical condition. Two days later the papers reported the injuries to be no longer life-threatening.
‘Our Tonio,’ Miriam murmured. ‘It might already be too late.’
‘No, Minchen, you mustn’t think that.’
Critical was critical, and nothing else. Critical did not mean: dead. Not even: as good as dead. Critical meant: alive (as long as not proved to the contrary). Critical was something you had to get through.
Miriam sniffed, but it was not hysterical crying. ‘We’re too late, I can feel it.’
‘I forbid you to talk like that.’
10
H&NE: Her and No-one Else. All right, now that I had chosen this woman (this girl), I’d have to put my money where my mouth is. Make nice things for her: folding paper boxes filled with images and anecdotes, but I would also have to open real, existing worlds for her. The hedges surrounding the ivy-clad house. The chicken wire of the champagne cork. The salt edge around the pink sirloin.
The boom gate of paradise.
When I learnt from her parents that they had considered naming their second daughter ‘Minchen’ after her German grandmother, I tried it out on her, at first teasingly. Too often, perhaps, because at a certain point I couldn’t shake it off my tongue. She has remained Minchen to this day.
Meanwhile … something was not right, something that could well backfire one day. Too young. Just turned twenty. She hadn’t, to put it officially, had time to sow her wild oats. One day she would realise that she’d spent her youth with only me … and that there were some secret things she had never been able to make the most of …