Postcards From No Man's Land (12 page)

‘He married the daughter of a silversmith. They were together for only seven months before Titus died of the
plague.’

‘The Black Death.’

‘It killed many at that time. He was buried in the Westerkerk.’

‘Near Anne Frank’s house.’

‘A year later Rembrandt died. But not of the plague. Of a broken heart, I would say. We know he was buried beside Titus in Westerkerk. But his grave has never been found.’

Not knowing what else to say, Jacob detached himself from Daan’s arm and went to view Titus in close-up again. Daan followed. The guard eyed them from the door.

‘So,’ Daan said, ‘am I right? Titus looks exactly like you.’

‘Only I don’t go round wearing monky gear.’

Daan ignored the feeble joke. ‘How does it feel?’

‘Weird. Even weirder now I know who he is.’

The guard took a step towards them.

‘She must think we’re going to steal him,’ Jacob muttered.

‘There was an incident recently.’

‘An incident?’

‘Someone kissed Titus.’

‘You mean someone actually walked up to the picture and laid a juicy smacker on his mouth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hoi yoi! What happened?’

‘No one saw.’

‘So how do they know?’

‘Whoever did it left the print of their kiss in lipstick.’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘The problem was, the lipstick was very hard to remove without damaging the picture.’

‘And nobody knows who did it?’

‘Not for certain.’

Jacob glanced at Daan. ‘But you think you know?’

‘
Nee, nee
!’

‘You do, you think you know. I can see you do!’

Daan grinned.

‘Come on, confess. Who was it?’

‘My lips are sealed. Isn’t that what you say?’

‘So were Titus’s!
Swalk!
’

‘Swalk?’

‘S W A L K. In capitals. Sealed with a loving kiss. Kids write it on love letters.’

Daan pulled a scornful grin. ‘We have nothing like that.’

They stood in silence, studying the painting. Other visitors floated past, few pausing to give Titus more than a glance.

After a while Jacob said, ‘All the time I feel that if I wait just another minute, he’ll get up and walk out of the picture and come and join us.’

Daan said nothing, but, again placing his hand on Jacob’s shoulder, steered him through the crowd back the way they had come. At the museum shop he stopped and bought postcards of Titus dressed as a monk and Rembrandt dressed as the Apostle Paul.

‘Here,’ he said, giving them to Jacob, ‘yourself as a young man and yourself as an old man.’

As they went down the marble staircase to the exit he began to sing a plaintive song in a gravelly voice:

‘
Mijn hele leven zocht ik jou
,

om—eindelijk gevonden
—

te weten wat eenzaam is
.’

‘And what’s that all about?’ Jacob asked.

‘A song by a Dutch poet, Bram Vermeulen,’ Daan said.

‘Which, being interpreted, means?’

Stopping at the bottom of the stairs, Daan thought, then said, with mock gravity:

‘I’ve spent my life looking for you,

only to learn, now I have found you at last,

the meaning of solitude.’

POSTCARD

Vladimir: To have lived is not enough for them.

Estragon: They have to talk about it.

Vladimir: To be dead is not enough for them.

Estragon: It is not sufficient.

Samuel Beckett:
WAITING FOR GODOT

‘THAT WAS A
long one,’ Jacob said.

The phone conversation between Daan and his mother had gone on for over half an hour. Jacob had heard his name mentioned too often for comfort.

‘Tessel is upset,’ Daan said. ‘Geertrui was difficult all day. She kept asking where you were. She wants to see you.’

‘Glad I’m so popular.’ The joke fell flat. Mild panic returned. Their viewing of Titus had attached him for a while. Now he felt estranged again.

‘I explained what happened.’

‘Which must have improved the shining hour no end.’

‘I told you. She feels responsible for you. But with Geertrui driving her crazy, she doesn’t know what to do for the best.’

‘I should go back home.’

‘No, no. Tomorrow you must see Geertrui.’

‘I
must
? …’

‘If you don’t mind. On Sunday Tessel will take you to the ceremony at Oosterbeek. I’ll stay with Geertrui. Tonight, you’ll stay here. I persuaded Tessel that would be best.’

‘Thanks for asking.’

‘I thought you’d prefer it. It’s nicer for you here, isn’t it?
And it’ll be easier for everyone.’

‘All my stuff is at your parents’.’

‘You can manage for one night. We’ll pick your stuff up on the way from Geertrui tomorrow.’

‘Wait! Hold on a minute! Sorry, but you’re going a bit fast. Before we go any further—you said there was something you would explain after you’d spoken to your mother.’

‘Yes.’

‘It sounded pretty serious.’

‘It is.’

‘Well, I don’t want to be difficult, but I’d like to hear what it is first, before we make any plans.’

‘Everyone is so … what is it? …
ongerust
… anxious, let’s say.’

‘Sure, but—’

‘I know, I know! I’m often told I’m
bazig
. Masterful.’

‘Bossy,’ Jacob said, laughing.

‘
Ja
. Bossy. I don’t mean to be. But if something needs to be done, I can’t put up with indecision. Like my father. He’s the same. At difficult times Tessel this-and-thats. Always
er om heen draaien … Christus!
What’s the English? Kind of going round and round—’

‘… Dithers?’

‘Dithers? Really?’

‘Dithers.’

‘Okay.
Dank u
. Dithers! Anyway, I can’t stand it.’

‘All right. But still …’

‘Yes. All right. I agree. The problem is, Tessel said she should explain. She insists. On the phone just now, again, she insisted.’

‘But when? I’m not going … I mean, I don’t want to see your grandmother before I know—’

‘Exactly. So I must tell you. Only, you must pretend to Tessel that I haven’t.’

‘What?’

‘That you don’t know.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘It would be best. She’s very upset already.’

‘But I can’t. It would be lying. I hate lying.’

‘You don’t have to say anything. When she tells you, just listen. That’s not lying.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘You want a discussion on moral philosophy?’

‘Not just now, thanks. But anyway, it’s no good. It’ll show on my face. My face always gives me away. I’m always being told that.’

Daan laughed. ‘An open book!’

‘Wherein men may read strange matters.’

‘Eh?’

‘Shakespeare. Sorry. The Scottish play.’

‘The which?’

‘The one about the Scottish king. You know.’

‘No, I don’t know. Why should I know?’

‘Can’t say the name.’

‘Why not?’

‘Bad luck.’

‘You’re not superstitious?’

‘No, not really. Just a theatrical tradition.’

‘Is that any different?’

‘If you name the play, you have to clap your hands and turn around three times to ward off bad luck.’

‘
Klets!
’

‘It’s true. I’ve been in this play. We put it on at school. I played Malcolm, the murdered king’s son. It’s a very boring part. Most of it was cut. Which is just as well, as I’m not much good as an actor. Anyway, people kept saying the name and we had terrible trouble.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘A broken leg one night, and a stabbing during the fight scene another night. That kind of trouble.’

‘Accidents.’

‘Maybe. It’s a pretty violent play,
Macbeth
, but still.’

‘Ah—
Macbeth
.’

‘Oh, shit!’

‘Now you want us to do the stupid business of clapping hands and turning round, I suppose?’

‘’Fraid so.’

They stood up, facing each other.

‘
Krankzinnig!
’

‘Better safe than sorry.’

They clapped their hands and turned round three times before falling in to their seats again, giggling.

Daan said, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’

‘A rationalist like you,’ Jacob said. ‘Ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

‘Ridiculous.’

‘Puerile,’ Jacob added, rather because he liked the sound of the word than meaning it, and hoping Daan didn’t know he was laughing more as relief from social panic than from amusement.

Daan went to the kitchen and opened a bottle of dry white. It was after six o’clock, the time every day, he said, when Geertrui had always done so and he had become accustomed. ‘The hour of the evening glass,’ he said she called it. ‘But this is only
een goedkoop wijntje
—you know—cheap stuff.’

‘Plonk.’

‘So I add some tonic. Make a spritzer. What about you?’

‘Whatever you’re having.’

‘Have you no mind of your own?’

‘Not about plonk. Or any sort of wine, come to that. Unlike you, I’m not accustomed.’

‘Then I’ll educate you.’

‘Corrupt me, you mean.’

‘Sometimes they’re the same, don’t you think?’

‘They are?’

‘You learn something, you aren’t innocent any more.’

‘If you put it that way.’

‘One way, another way, the result is the same.’

‘Won’t argue the point, if you don’t mind. Afterwards, maybe.’

They settled themselves with their drinks. The room had darkened in the evening light. Daan switched on a side-light by the sofa, which islanded them in the gloaming. The heavy beams loomed overhead. It seemed to Jacob more than ever as if they were sitting between decks in an old sailing ship. A long way out from land and going where, he didn’t know.

Their mood turned solemn again. Daan eyed Jacob with a calculating stare that propositioned the years between them. Feeling adrift again, Jacob stared back, the wine perhaps helping him to hold his own. Dutch courage, he thought unsmiling.

At last Daan began. ‘This is it, then. Yes?’

‘Okay.’

‘You know Geertrui is ill.’

Jacob nodded.

‘But more than just ill. She has cancer of the stomach.’

He paused, waiting for a response. Jacob could say nothing, only swallow, aware of his Adam’s apple rising and falling like a sharp stone plugging his throat and his stomach tightening as if infected by the words.

‘Incurable,’ Daan went on. ‘And very painful. Often more painful than is bearable. More and more often.’

Jacob forced himself to say, ‘How awful.’

‘They do their best with drugs. But by now, it isn’t enough. Sometimes I think it’s like the pain eats the drugs, and gets worse, gets stronger from feeding on them.’

Jacob had to put his glass down but managed to say, ‘Surely there’s something they can do?’

Daan shook his head. ‘It’s in the terminal stage.’

‘You mean, she hasn’t much longer?’

‘A few weeks. But before the end the pain is—’ Daan took a deep breath as though he had felt a sudden twinge himself. ‘One of the doctors told me it’s worse than the worst torture.’

Jacob tried to grasp what this meant, a pain beyond cruelty. But could find no clue to such horror in his own life. He said, for something had to be said, ‘And there really is nothing they can do?’

‘
Niets
. Nothing much.’ Daan turned his face away before adding, ‘Only one thing.’

Instantly, Jacob knew what it was he was about to hear. His body stiffened against it, yet at the same time his strength seemed to drain out of him, leaving only a sensation of flabby weakness trapped in his rigid frame.

Daan didn’t pause but continued at the unforgiving pace of someone required to speak the inevitable.

‘They can assist her death. And Geertrui wants it. Is to have it. It’s decided. You understand?’

Jacob nodded. ‘Euthanasia.’ And added, ‘We debated it at school,’ thinking even as he spoke how banal it sounded.

‘And what did you say?’

‘Most people were against it. They said it was anti life. And that it would lead to people with power getting rid of anybody they didn’t want.’

‘Like Hitler and the Nazis in Germany.’

‘Yes. And not just them. Stalin was just as bad in his own way. Pol Pot. Now we live longer and there are more and more very old people. We keep on hearing about how much they cost to keep. Well, if euthanasia were allowed—’

‘We’ve had all those arguments here in Holland. And you, you agreed?’

‘About that, yes. But …’

‘But?’

‘Some people argued that everybody should have the right to die decently. To make decisions about their own death. We didn’t ask to be born, they said, but at least we
should have some say in our own death. Especially when we can’t, you know—function properly any more … It’s a question of personal freedom.’

‘And you? What do you think?’

‘I agree with that. About dying decently and having a say in how you die.’ He gave Daan a cold look. ‘But it’s easy to talk.’

Daan drained his wine. ‘It’s allowed here so long as everything is done properly. The illness must be in the terminal stage and causing extreme pain. Geertrui’s is. Two doctors must agree. They have. An independent doctor must review the case on behalf of the authorities and agree. This has been done. The nearest relatives must be consulted and agree. We have. But it wasn’t easy. My father and I accept it. But Tessel was completely against. Nothing to do with reason. Emotionally. She just hates it. She and I—we had bad rows about it. We said terrible things to each other. She accused me of wanting Geertrui out of the way so I could get my hands on the money from selling this apartment, which Geertrui has left me in her will. I accused her of liking to see Geertrui suffering because of … well, because of some family history. I suppose at such times people do say unforgivable things to each other. We’ve made it up. But it still hurts. I think that’s why Tessel wanted to tell you all this herself. She wanted you to hear it her way. And also why she didn’t give you my address yesterday.’ He poured more wine and eased himself in his seat. ‘Well, anyhow, Tessel is the one who’s with Geertrui the most and has to cope with the suffering, which has worn her down. And Geertrui argued and pleaded and went on and on till in the end Tessel had to accept that whatever she feels it’s what Geertrui wants that matters.’