Tonio (39 page)

‘And you never saw her?' asked Miriam.

Dennis shook his head. ‘Tonio'd only just met her, I think. He was always asking me for advice. How he should handle things, you know, with her.' He smiled, amused. ‘D'you know what I really admired about Tonio? He listened. He could take criticism. If you explained that he was going about something the wrong way, like with a girl, he'd take it seriously. Not like irritation or anything. He wanted to get it right.'

‘Okay,' I said, ‘so Tonio didn't go to Paradiso with the photo girl, nor was she at Trouw. You were. We'd like to know how the last night of his life went.'

‘We arranged to meet in the Vondelpark at the end of the afternoon,' Dennis began. ‘There was a party at Vertigo, the Filmmuseum café. We both thought it was no good, so we left pretty soon. Had a snack somewhere, then we biked out to De Baarsjes. We dropped by Goscha's place. She's a girl we met at Trouw at the beginning of April. She lives near Jim and Tonio. So we had a few beers at Goscha's, and that's when we decided to paint the town red, the three of us. We got to Trouw at about midnight.'

It was busy. And because the rumour had spread that Roxy legend DJ Dimitri would appear as a mystery guest on Whitsun Eve, tickets were hard, if not impossible, to come by. To mollify the crowd at the door, the club had reserved a few tickets ‘for the regulars'. Dimitri had actually quit the late-night house circuit some years earlier and had holed himself up on an organic farm where he worked with handicapped children. Word went around that he was back in the saddle, DJ-ing at parties left and right, but incognito and under an assumed name.

Whether the three of them fell under the category of ‘regulars' or not, Dennis couldn't recall, but in any case they had wangled themselves three tickets. The music was disappointing. Techno, yes, but who on earth still danced to Kenny Larkin? And whether the pot-bellied DJ, who wore his headphones like a dog collar around his neck, was the famous Dimitri in disguise — who could say? He didn't play classics, which was Dimitri's trademark, but maybe it was all part of the camouflage. The hours-long solo set, though, was a nod in the direction of Dimitri.

‘How was the atmosphere?' Miriam asked. ‘I mean, aside from the music. Did you enjoy yourselves?'

‘It was fantastic,' Dennis replied. ‘Tonio used to like watching the dancing from higher up. Sometimes he'd take pictures, but that night he didn't have his camera with him. I had to keep going up there with him. He couldn't get enough of it. Big smile, you know what I mean. It did something to him, that churning mass of people. It meant something to him. I don't know what. He was such a unique dude. He was just growing.'

‘Didn't he dance, too?' Miriam asked.

‘Sure,' said Dennis, ‘but not so often. He preferred to watch. Now that you mention it … we danced together that night. We dipped.'

‘Wait a sec,' I said. ‘There are different kinds of “dip”. You used to call someone a “dipsomaniac”, referring to his mental state. But “dipping” on a dance floor?'

‘Here, look,' said Dennis, elaborating with the appropriate gestures. ‘You grab your partner upside-down by the legs and then let him slowly sink head-first to the floor. Like you're dipping a carrot stick in dip sauce.'

The sight of Tonio's gruesome hand with the dirty nails shot before my eyes, as it lay — already dead — on the edge of his hospital bed. How many times had he walked on his hands away from Dennis during that dipping, to get such filthy fingernails? I now had to ask the question whose answer I was far from keen to hear.

‘Did you guys drink a lot?'

‘Lots of beer, yeah,' Dennis said with a smirk.

13

That dream, the other night. I spent the night in Paradiso, where a huge party was to start early the next morning, at dawn. It was my job, as a kind of doorman, to open up for the first guests who rang the bell. I had my CPAP machine with me, and slept with the ventilator mask on in a bare, high-ceilinged room — until the bell rang. I went to open the door, groping my way through the pitch-dark hallway. I unlocked the door: no one there. I peered down the street, both ways. But it wasn't a street, it was a square: Paradiso stood, for this occasion, where the Stadsschouwburg theatre should be. The city was dead-still. The sun had not risen yet; but above the skyline, dawn was breaking in television-blue. On the Leidseplein was an abandoned carnival, the attractions and rides shut down, with canvas covers and metal rolling-shutters. I closed the door and tried to go back to sleep on the floor, the mask back in place.

The next time I awoke, there was a small group of guests in the main hall. A man and a woman sang ‘Mexico' by the Zangeres Zonder Naam, but with the pathos of an opera duet.* Without having heard the bell, I opened the tall, heavy door. The sun, while still not visible from where I stood, must have come up by then, because above the houses and treetops the sky was a soft copper-red. There was still no one outside. The door wobbled back shut.

[* The ‘Zangeres Zonder Naam' (Singer without a Name) was the stage name for Mary Servaes, a popular Dutch torch-song performer, active from the mid-1950s until her retirement in 1987. Her legendary performance of ‘Mexico' in Paradiso in 1986, recorded live, brought her a new generation of fans.]

I was waiting, I knew, for Tonio.

14

‘Anything stronger than that?' Miriam asked.

‘Only that one shot of tequila Tonio had,' said Dennis. ‘Between beers.'

‘And after closing time?'

‘We rode off at about four. Before that, we sat on a bench outside the club. Just to chill.'

I realised that, in his account of the evening, Dennis had hardly mentioned the girl Goscha.

‘Not for long, though,' he continued. ‘We biked back into town, cut through one of those side streets to the Weesperzijde. Blasiusstraat, maybe. Over the bridge to the Ceintuurbaan. We stopped to chat at the corner of Sarphatipark.'

‘Why there?' asked Miriam.

‘I live in the neighbourhood, Govert Flinkstraat — the bit between de Van der Helst and Ferdinand Bol. It's my dad's house; my sister and I live there with him. I invited Tonio and Goscha to come to my room to chill. At first, Tonio wanted to, but he'd promised Jim he would be back home by four. They'd watch a film together or something. Jim, with his chronic insomnia … Tonio wanted to at least keep him company for a bit. In the end, only Goscha came with me. No big deal — she fell asleep pretty much right away.'

‘Did you see Tonio ride off?' I asked. ‘I assume he continued down the Ceintuurbaan. Did he have trouble biking? Was he weaving around?'

‘I wasn't really paying attention,' Dennis said, ‘but if he'd been weaving all over the place I would definitely have noticed. No, now that you mention it, he just rode off as usual.'

‘Did you ever ride with him to his place in De Baarsjes?'

‘Sure, lots.'

‘What was his regular route?'

‘Ceintuur, Van Baerle, Eerste Huygens, and then left on the Overtoom. And then the rest.'

‘Tonio was hit on the corner of the Hobbemastraat and the Stadhouderskade. That intersection's not on his route.'

‘No idea how he got there.'

‘Dennis, do you think he might have wanted to check back at Paradiso … if that girl was still there?'

‘What time was the accident? Quarter to five, right?'

‘Four-forty.'

‘Then Paradiso would already have been closed. Not much chance of meeting up with someone then.'

‘And you, Dennis,' Miriam asked, her eyes wet, ‘how did you hear about the accident?'

‘It was the next day. I was sitting in the park when I got the phone call.' Dennis shook his head for a long time. ‘I just
couldn't
believe it.'

15

Tonio's friends told us that he had ‘loosened up' recently and made friends more and more easily. In that, too, he resembled me. It meant that years of timidity, insecurity, and loneliness preceded it. The downside of the pride that you are part of your son's genes.

When he had just started studying at the Amsterdam Photo Academy, we treated Tonio to a trip to Paris, where he wanted do some photography. He was eighteen. I imagined him wandering through Paris on his own, snapping pictures everywhere, but at the same time hungry for adventure. I had hung around Paris in the early seventies, too, visiting museums and buildings, unflinchingly hoping for the unexpected.

His dates betray that he belonged to a certain generation, one that is perhaps waiting for a suitable designation in the wake of Generation X and Generation Nix. But I will never be able to say: ‘Tonio is typical of his generation.' He had too little time to become what would be called typical of his generation. If he was a promise of something, then he's now a promise in a state of decay.

There's a good chance that I will curse his generation's subsequent achievements, because he was deprived of taking part in them.

From the age of eighteen, he travelled to Budapest, Paris, Ibiza, Berlin. In desperate daydreams, I conjure up erotic adventures for him … passionate affairs with girls, recklessly executed, so that there's no way to rule out that one day, via one or another
Lost Family
type of TV programme, a son or daughter of his might turn up. We cherish his
DNA
. (Miriam suddenly stood there recently, in tears, with Tonio's hairbrush in her hand: the hairs, still curling out every which way, moved in the sunlight.)

16

After a brief silence, Dennis told us that, earlier this afternoon, before coming here, he went over to Jim and Tonio's apartment in De Baarsjes. They had gotten rid of the worst junk on Tonio's desk, perhaps with a visit from the survivors in mind. ‘No, really, it was a huge mess … all those sticky Coke cans, to start with. Dozens of ‘em.'

I thought with regret that his desk should have been photographed before the clean-up: it would have produced a far different scan of Tonio's brain than the one made on Whit Sunday at the
AMC
.

Dennis and Jim had scrolled through Tonio's computer files as well. ‘That dude had taken pictures! … and some were really good, too … would be a shame to let it go to waste. He's worth remembering as a photographer.'

So the two had planned to make a rough selection of Tonio's pictures in the next two weeks, and then run them by us for approval. We were free to veto any of them, and the rest would be put together for a small exhibition. ‘We'll find a space somewhere,' Dennis said. ‘Maybe we can make a book of them. My dad works in layout. I mean, yeah, Tonio was such a damn-good photographer … you just
have
to do something with his stuff.'

Miriam and I glanced at each other, touched. Two sweet friends had decided that Tonio's photos mustn't go to waste.

‘Whatever it costs,' I said, ‘we'll take care of.'

‘Maybe the Jewish Historical Museum can spare an exhibition room,' Miriam suggested. She used to give guided tours there. ‘I'll sound them out.'

Of course, we were also curious as to what else lurked in Tonio's computer (and not just pictures), but we promised to leave his computer in the Nepveustraat until Jim and Dennis had made their selection.

‘Did you come across any pictures of that Paradiso girl on his computer?' I asked. ‘Tonio had her pose here' — I pointed to the glass cabinet with his rock collection — ‘and up in his old room, you've been there before.'

Dennis shook his head decisively. ‘No, a series of the same girl, here in your house … I'd have noticed it for sure. It's strange, though. When we were cleaning up Tonio's room this afternoon, we didn't come across a single camera.'

Before he left, Dennis made me promise I would open the exhibition with a speech.

17

Last night, just before going to bed, I saw, very clearly, Tonio's body as they had washed, dressed, and laid it out. Strangers' hands, with no discernible face to go with them, arranged his unresisting hands. Other hands, just as unfamiliar, washed his lower torso, with complete meticulousness and professionalism.

And cutting through this image, I see Tonio as a thirteen-month-old baby on the shoulder of a French country road. A sycamore cast its shadow over him, complete with bright flecks of light where the sun bored its way through the treetop. It was that afternoon in the summer of '89 that I had taken him to Biron Castle on the bike. His nappy was full and heavy, but he didn't utter a peep. My own nose told me that he needed changing. And so I laid him on the grass alongside the road. There was no living being in sight who might take umbrage.

I took my time changing him. There was, after half a day in the child's seat, plenty of cleaning to do. He lay there so contentedly in the dry grass, gurgling in a singsong way, grasping this way and that with his pink little hands, already tanned a bit mocha-coloured on the back. I found a rusty oil drum, swarming with flies, where I could deposit the dirty diaper, and washed my hands in an almost, but not yet, dried-up brooklet.