Tonio (71 page)

No sooner had the boat nipped under the wide bridge than the entire herd of supporters rushed across the tram tracks to the other side — in order to see their heroes reappear. The stampede looked just like thirty years before: the giddy panic with which hordes of squatters and their supporters were scattered by riot police. The tear gas was now orange, and the tears were not chemically induced, but brought on by the confused mix of triumph and defeat.

Miriam and I cut straight through to the Leidsebosje. We were approaching The Spot, but were in no hurry to reach it. We preferred to be pushed or washed there by the hordes of clowns that were now heading our way. Hundreds of them swarmed further up along the raked wall of the Singel canal, in order to get as close as possible to the boat, which was just emerging from under the bridge. It cruised down the short stretch of Leidsekade where Harry Mulisch lived. From where I stood, I couldn't see if he was watching from his workroom: there was too much reflection in the window. He might well have been there. Usually, he'd have retreated to his favourite hotel on the Lido in Venice right now, but it was closed for renovations. The day after the accident he had walked over to The Spot, and was shocked by the bright yellow lines and symbols that illustrated the brute force of the drama, as yet unaware of who it had happened to.

I recognised the player now being interviewed as Robin van Persie. I pointed it out to Miriam, who nodded sadly. Without having to say it out loud, we both pictured the six-year-old Robin leaning up against the wall of our rented schoolhouse in Marsalès, watching sullenly as his sisters taught the one-year-old Tonio to walk. Even the flat-bottomed flagship of Dutch football could not escape from pantonioism today.

The pedestrian bridge linking the Max Euweplein to the Stadhouderskade (the bridge I had once believed had played such a crucial role in Tonio's unhappy end), too, was chock-a-block with screaming fans who were already wastefully dumping fistfuls of orange confetti into the canal while the boat was still no further than the old Lido. My eyes glided along the front façade of the Holland Casino, trying to locate the security cameras that had registered Tonio's last deed in this world. I wasn't able to find them. Of course, being a system designed to foil burglars, they wouldn't make them overly conspicuous.

On the other corner of the entrance to the Max Euweplein was the grand café where, not even a year ago, Tonio had first met his future classmates. The small delegation that had brought us flowers at the beginning of June explained how it had gone. August 2009: because Tonio was still working at Dixons, he missed the beginning of intro week. When he finally made a date with his ‘group', he showed up much too late. Trying to kill time while waiting for him, his classmates — who had never met Tonio or even seen a photo of him — tried to picture what he was like, based solely on his name and date of birth. The game got more and more serious. Based on just those two bits of information, they put together a profile, a sort of intuitive composite sketch. Theories on his personal attributes like hairstyle and weight were posited and dismissed. A small majority came to the conclusion that he was 1.75m at most. Another small majority saw him with long, dark hair and thick eyebrows that grew toward each other a bit just above the bridge of his nose. Finally, they all more or less agreed: this, and only this, was how the newcomer looked.

Just then Tonio walked in, certain of his anonymity. He scanned the tables in the full café for what could be his group. How on earth was he to recognise them? All at once there were ten arms waving in the air, and ten voices calling out as one: ‘Yoo-hoo, Tonio! Over here!'

They had democratically conceived just the right picture of him. If I try to imagine his surprise at that moment — his shy grin (that started somewhere between his shoulder blades) — I could just cry. Just nine months later — a stone's throw from that very same café, on the other side of the canal — he would be dashed to the pavement by a car.

I imagined him walking over to his classmates' table. ‘Jeez, what the … you guys …'

Laughing, with jerky gestures, he would make a round of handshakes. ‘Shit, how'd you know …?'

37

The team's boat approached The Spot, where the Singel canal curves to the left toward the Rijksmuseum. Supporters still slid down the sloped, overgrown canal wall, either on their back or in a crouch walk, toward the water's edge, as though they were prepared to wade out to the boat, up to their neck in brown muck if need be.

‘Come with me.' I pulled Miriam past the undulating wall of orange backs and wigs. The Hobbemakade/Stadhouderskade junction was deserted. High above, a helicopter hovered, but not to guard The Spot. The crowd faced away from the intersection, cheering hysterically. No more yellow outlines, which the desk officers had warned us about, were to to be seen — worn away by cars that
hadn't
suddenly found a cyclist on their front bumper.

I pointed to the place. ‘Right about there.'

Here he had been slammed out of life. Life itself not yet entirely out of him, but what ensued was mostly just a last-ditch attempt to save what, in the end, couldn't be saved.

The boats, accompanied by whoops and roars, followed the curve. Vuvuzelas bellowed their heavy tones. Entire hordes advanced en masse toward the Rijksmuseum, so as to enjoy, for another few moments, a view of the players, or to be at Museumplein on time for the actual tribute.

Miriam shook her head, crying inaudibly. ‘Just like that …' I thought I heard her say. ‘In the middle of the road …'

What struck me all the more was the
loneliness
of what had occurred here. After a bike ride on his own … blind fate grabbing him by the horns … being flung into the air and smacked against the asphalt. How long did he lie there like that? Did he groan, or were his lungs already too wrecked to provide sufficient air to cry out?

I studied the area carefully. The curve in the Stadhouderskade, the mouth of the Hobbemakade, the crosswalk from the Park Hotel to the Singel … indeed, it really did look, as Dick had said, open and orderly. Blindfolded and all, fate had had quite a chore bringing together a cyclist and a car right here. Exacting work in the early-morning darkness.

In my imagination these past weeks, The Spot had gradually shrunk — until it became a narrow, indistinct, one-way tunnel in which a bike and a Suzuki simply
had
to have a fatal encounter.

38

Tonio, the finest thing you gave me is the sense of self-esteem. Before you made your entrance, I always had to
act out
a form of confidence, such was the low self-regard I secretly harboured. As I watched you develop, so too grew my sense of pride — in you, of course, but also in myself. I was, for a not-inconsequential part, in you. Whoever could have a hand in producing such a magnificent creature, must certainly be worth
something
.

Now that I'm forced to release you so abruptly, my self-esteem is in a sorry state, as though it was not only created out of you, but has vanished along with you. I begat you, but was unable to preserve you. I'm not worth crap anymore.

39

It is a night
you normally only see in films

Night was apparently a thing, an object, which could usually only be made visible cinematographically, but also occurred once in a blue moon — in the form, for instance, of the Brabant balladeer Guus Meeuwis. He was on stage at the far end of Museumplein, rounding off his act for the rapturous mob. After this, the national team would be given its official tribute; the players were now just about stepping off the boat at the pier across from the Rijksmuseum, in order to be reunited with their loved ones.

On the floor there's an empty bottle of wine
and clothes that could be either yours or mine

My Dutch grammar teacher would probably take more umbrage at that ‘empty bottle of wine' than ‘there's clothes'. Gerard van der Vleuten is no longer with us in this life, but through the years I often hear his undaunted voice: ‘A bottle of wine, Guus, is a bottle full of wine. If the bottle is empty, Guus, the wine is finished, leaving us with an empty wine bottle. An “empty bottle of wine”, Guus, is like “the corner of a round table”: a
contradictio in terminis
. Got it? Guus …?'

Meeuwis closed with
the
stupidest number to ever emerge from the history of Dutch song: ‘Kedeng, kedeng', the title offering an onomatopoeic depiction of a train chugging along the rails. The audience hollered the refrain in over-the-top ecstasy, enriching it with an improvised arrangement for a thousand vuvuzelas. Here a loser lifted up the hearts of the losers — and necessary it was, too.

The players were now allowed to take the stage. Van Bronckhorst, the captain, announced each of his men one by one, all twenty-two of them. The cheering from below elevated the athletes ever further above their flop. The
vox populi
had the last word.

40

The neighbour who had recorded the live broadcast for us warned me that the video and sound quality was ‘godawful', with pixelated block faces and wrung-out heads.

Filmed from the air, the fans looked even more like a herd of cattle at round-up time. If they got squashed hard enough against the bridge railings, their fervour would get squeezed out by itself. This mass display of rapture about absolutely nothing — this can't be what life, civilisation, Tonio's death, was all about. It was not so much that people sought out emptiness — they sought out
echoing
emptiness, so they'd feel less alone. Nothingness had to be an echo chamber. You tossed in a bass, and got back an ass, without having to do any more than scream at the top of your lungs.

The boats disappeared under the Marnixstraat's wide bridge at the end of the Leidsegracht, and stayed under it for so long that one might think they had just evaporated into the darkness. The helicopter's camera could only film the fans who desperately raced from one side of the bridge to the other, in disbelief that their heroes might be gone for good.

And yet the team boat re-emerged into the full sunlight, and turned left onto the Singel toward Leidseplein and the Hotel Americain. Before the vessel once again vanished into the darkness of the bridge alongside the hotel, you could see Robin van Persie being manoeuvred into an advantageous position for his turn as interviewee. Again the helicopter filmed as the herd galloped from one side of the bridge to the other. I knew that we, too, had crossed the road — not to the railings on the opposite side, but to the Leidsebosje, but I wasn't able to make us out: it was filmed from too high up.

The broadcast switched to the camera on board the boat and the interview with Van Persie. His handsome face had become, as the neighbour said, a Picasso cubist image, and his ear bled into a series of coloured squares.

‘So how does this all make you feel?'

‘Yeah, great, fantastic. All these people. This sea of orange. I'm starting to believe we actually won the championship.'

The boat cruised past the Holland Casino, under the footbridge. The helicopter briefly filmed the dome of the casino from above. Armando has written of the ‘guilty landscape'.* Well, this here was a ‘guilty cityscape'. Security cameras, meant to guard the casino's lucre, had registered the last moments of Tonio's life. The disc with the film was in the CD-ROM tray in Miriam's computer. I should try to convince her — and myself — to watch it together: this, too, we owe to Tonio.

[* Armando is a Dutch painter, sculptor, and writer.]

‘So, Robin, does this lessen the loss any?' the interviewer attempted again.

‘I don't believe in “loss” anymore,' Van Persie replied. ‘These people lining the canals, on the bridges, it's their call. If they want to act like we've won, then we've
won
.'

‘In other words,' I said to Miriam, ‘the national fan-club has unilaterally elected the Dutch football team world champions. If the hoi polloi want a shindig, they'll twist the facts as long as they need to, until they come up with a
reason
for one.'

Miriam shrugged. The interviewer mumbled something about second place.

‘When you see this,' Robin said, ‘coming in second's not so bad.'

The boat parade approached the scene of the disaster.

‘Second place is just the first-place loser,' I said. ‘An American sports slogan. The Dutch spin on it is: a first-place loser is still in first place. A water-tight argument, if ever I've heard one.'

Miriam shrugged her shoulders again, this time shaking her head, too, but without taking her eyes off the TV. Where the Singel followed the curve of the Stadhouderskade, the team's boat started manoeuvring to the left.

‘Minchen, don't you feel like shouting at them: wait here … stop … out of respect … throw some of those flowers up onto the street … do something … have somebody say something … even if just a moment of silence …'

‘With a city full of Dam Screamers?' Miriam said. ‘Fat chance.'

The interview with Van Persie had come to an end. The camera mocked him once more by deforming his good-looking head and turning a close-up of his torso into a motif of brown-and-pink squares, a sort of
Victory Boogie Woogie
-ised portrait. I suddenly realised that the images of Tonio's accident would show the same kind of jerkiness — not due to sloppy camera technique, but to frugality. Like all that surveillance-camera footage in
Crimewatch
. I didn't know if the fragmentary images of his last deed on earth would make it easier or more difficult for me to watch them.