‘You see, he rented two top-of-the-line grands from Cristofori … defaulted on his financial obligations … and now it appears that the pianos have been moved to his new residence. So we thought that perhaps you could …’
I explained to her that the concert pianist was no friend of mine; I had never laid eyes on him, not even on stage. The Cristofori lady also told me, with a sigh of indignation, that the man had the audacity to lower both grand pianos, enlisting the help of some construction workers, who were busy renovating the basement on orders from the agency, out of the house.
‘The guy’s got a lot of nerve,’ I said.
‘And two of our best pianos,’ she added.
I told this all to Tonio that evening while tucking him in, on the upper bunk of his new bunk bed. I jazzed up the story with the image of a man who, two wing-shaped grand pianos attached to his shoulders, flew off one night into the wild blue yonder.
‘There’s no such thing as a wild blue yonder at night,’ he insisted. ‘At night the sky is nearly dark, depending on how far under the horizon the sun has set.’
A man flapping off with two grand pianos as wings, he didn’t seem to have much problem with. He made me repeat the story over and over, and had a good belly-laugh at the prank we’d pulled on our landlord by leaving that piano-playing mythical creature behind.)
The formalities surrounding the purchase of the house were completed. We could be summoned to the solicitor’s at any moment. At least once a day I would take tram 2 down Leidsestraat to Zuid. In Café Bar-B-Q, at the corner of the Banstraat and the Johannes Verhulst, across from the new house, I’d sit at the window gazing across at the yellow-brick façade. It was the left half of a twin house. Our front exterior had recently been sandblasted, while that of the right-hand house looked as though it had never been cleaned, and had collected all the soot and dirt of the past century. A lung specialist had his practice in the grimy right half of the yellow twins. The owner of the Bar-B-Q told me that the doctor’s standard reply to comments by his patients on the filthy state of his façade, was: ‘That is simply to illustrate the point of your visit, to show you what your lungs look like after forty years of smoking.’
There wasn’t much more to see of our house. Faded curtains hung in the windows, the sills lined with withered plants, a silent anti-squat brigade. I just sat there and looked, repeating to myself that we were about to start a new life. Tonio, who had just turned four, would grow up there, leave home after graduating high school, and years later, once it had become truly ours, would return with his own family while Miriam and I would downsize. For the next decade-and-a-half we would be secure there, the three of us. I turned to the bartender and asked if there was much burglary in the neighbourhood.
‘Only if they know there’s something to be had,’ he replied. ‘People with art or a stamp collection.’
I didn’t collect postage stamps, and until now our art collection consisted of a few of Tonio’s framed drawings, like his brilliant portrait of the cat Cypri.
13
The taxi exited the A10 and descended into Buitenveldert.
‘A critical condition,’ I said. ‘I’ve been wrestling with that term all day. With what it means … especially its elasticity. That “critical” had something comforting about it. As though, with a little extra effort, the doctors would be able to fix it … Now I know a critical condition can also turn out, well, critical.’
‘Then for me it has a whole different gist,’ Miriam said. ‘When the police rang the bell this morning, I knew right away something was really wrong. Even before they opened their mouths. When I heard “critical”, I knew he’d die. Or was dead already.’
‘He was still alive.’
‘All day I thought it would turn out badly. Of course, you never know for sure. Tonio could live without his spleen. Like people manage with just one kidney. But when I heard about his brain trauma … both halves starting to swell … I just prayed he wouldn’t come out of it as a vegetable.’
‘By the afternoon,’ I said, ‘my nightmare was a Tonio emerging from a coma. Severely brain-damaged, just enough left to be able to comprehend his condition. Oh, my God, what have I done? Look what my recklessness has caused. I think I’d have died from his regret, his shame … compounded by my own.’
Then it was quiet for a few moments, aside from the Arabic music and Miriam’s sobs. We drove past the old Olympic Stadium, approached the Harlemmermeer roundabout, near where my father-in-law Natan lived. Hinde turned to her sister and said: ‘Papa and Mama … how are you going to tell them?’
‘Not over the phone,’ said Miriam.
They decided to discuss it at our place and then cycle around to their parents’ homes, one at a time — in which order was still up in the air. I was surprised to have been so routinely excluded from such a painful mission, but I did not protest.
14
We got out of the taxi. I looked up, along the yellow-brick façade. Electric light shone through the half-opened curtain of Tonio’s old room — Miriam had probably left the light on when she got dressed there early this morning, trembling with trepidation.
I remembered a time, August ’98, when we returned home from holiday to find a six-member family standing on the front stoop. They were looking up on cue from an old man, who seemed to be the group’s guide. They spoke American English. When one of them saw us head for the front door, our suitcases in tow, the old man approached us. He introduced himself in Dutch and told us that he had lived here until the age of sixteen, shortly before the war broke out. He had been able to flee to America via Switzerland — to New York, where he still lived. Now he had been joined by his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren for the couple’s fiftieth-anniversary trip to his home town, including a visit to the house where he had spent his youth.
We gladly invited them inside. Tonio ran ahead; he saw it as his duty to show the visitors what he considered the highlights of the house: the basement full of Lego, and his own room with its K’Nex Ferris wheel. The old man’s father had been a wine merchant, and the basement had been the storeroom. While Tonio’s laugh echoed throughout the house, the whole family was in tears. The wife and the daughter were particularly hard hit. The father had told them so much about the house of his youth, and now … now here they were, actually walking around in it! Renovations had transformed much of the place over the past sixty years, but once in a while the man got choked up when he recognised certain things from the 1930s. The stained glass in the balcony doors, the ceiling ornaments, the maid’s room up on the third floor.
When we retired to the living room for coffee, he pointed to a cupboard door. ‘There’s a secret hiding place in there. My father had a small safe built in.’
Miriam opened the cupboard door. The bottom was covered with a piece of linoleum, which, sure enough, covered a small hatch. We had never noticed it. The cache was empty (but it set the wheels of Miriam’s imagination spinning, resulting in a thriller-like novel a few years later). It was an emotional moment for the man, and his whole family, to be able to point out something tangible that had been his father’s.
I let my gaze climb the yellow façade, behind which Tonio had grown up — never to return, not today and not in his old age. Thinking of that old man made me feel a wave of sorrow for Natan, Tonio’s 97-year-old grandfather, who would soon hear from his daughters that his grandson was no longer alive.