Tonio (48 page)

‘That'll be where the crushed lung came from,' Miriam said. She shook her head. ‘His insides were totally mangled.'

‘And his spleen,' I added. ‘It had to be removed. First, half of it, then later the rest.'

The police officers seemed surprised that we were so well-informed as to the details of Tonio's injuries. ‘The
AMC
always tells us as little as possible,' Winding said. ‘They assert their oath of medical confidentiality. Professional secrecy.'

‘But you've got the pictures from the forensic photographer,' I said. ‘What is your conclusion, based on the photos, of Tonio's injuries as a result of the accident?'

‘We suspect,' Hendriks said, ‘that the victim collided with considerable force against the car door-frame. There's a dent in the body that appears to confirm this.'

‘Was his death a case of pure bad luck?' I asked. ‘I mean … taking a particularly bad spill?'

‘It doesn't take a car going more than thirty kph to make an accident like this — hitting a bicyclist — a fatal one,' said Windig. ‘Let's say he was going fifty.'

‘There are experiments with air bags for cyclists,' added Hendriks, ‘but that's still some way off.'

His remark brought about a silence in which the sickly-sweet smell of the biscuits became almost unbearable.

‘What sort of lad was Tonio, actually?' Windig asked suddenly, addressing Miriam. The question was so out of context that she drew into herself, embarrassed. For some time, all she did was stare down at her knees.

16

‘Oh, just, you know …' Miriam said at last, ‘just the kind of kid you'd least wish this kind of accident on. Sweet, handsome, talented. Always ready to lend a hand, sometimes endearingly lazy. A son you never argued with. Even if we'd wanted to, he'd never let it get that far. I love movies, so if Tonio would show up on my birthday with a couple of DVDs, that in itself would have been sweet and all. But, no, he included a book with all the films of the past century. Twice as thick as a phone book. That's the kind of boy Tonio was. A bag of contradictions, sure. One time, he would show up on his way to a party wearing his tux jacket. The next time, also en route to a party, he'd have two week's worth of beard, and his hair in a ponytail. No pigeonholing him. He and I, we were buddies … real friends … cohorts, if necessary. Strolling through town together. On the lookout for men in shorts with the ugliest calves. “Where's my calf-shooter?” we'd chime out, each trying to outdo the other. One day, he was just turning into an adolescent, he decided we had to go and get ourselves a calf-shooter at the Bijenkorf. His disappointment when it turned out there was no such thing! But to go shooting spitwads with a rubber band at ugly white calves … no, he was above that. He was just sweet and friendly and helpful, and proud if he could help someone out. Yeah, what can I say? Just the opposite of all those antisocial creeps you guys have your hands full with here. And to be run over on the street … in the middle of the night, just like that … Such a waste.'

Miriam just let the tears flow. The men from the Serious Traffic Accident Investigation Unit reminded us that, despite our initial refusal, we were eligible for Victim Assistance. The driver of the red Suzuki had been offered it as well, and he'd accepted.

As for the investigation, it would take some time. Once everything had been examined, we would come back for an ‘evaluation'. Before then, too, we were welcome to come back ‘for a bit of counselling'. We could have complete access to the photos of Tonio's injuries, although they suspected we would only be ready to see them in a year or so, at the earliest. Miriam and I looked at each other: she shook her head, almost imperceptibly.

I turned to officer Hendriks. ‘You said on the phone that they'd taken some of Tonio's blood for tests. Does it appear he'd had too much to drink?'

‘We don't have the exact details yet,' he answered, ‘but that alcohol was involved, yes, that much we know.'

I recalled what Goscha had said about the rounds in quick succession, and I remembered hearing Dennis say: ‘With one shot of tequila in between …'

‘He just wasn't paying attention,' Miriam said. ‘After a night on the town …'

Tired,
beat
, a bit drunk, with that techno-boom still ringing in his deafened ears — add it all up, and no one could stop me adding to it that as he pedalled along he was also lovingly musing over Jenny.

17

It appeared that no one was to blame for Tonio's death, at least in a legal sense. (My self-incriminations were another story.) But was I required to go along with the vision of blind, dumb fate as the cause? Or could I, instead of taking a fatalistic stance, occasionally feel
wronged to death
?

My son, my only child, goddamn it, had been mown down like a dog on the street, on a public thoroughfare. Men at conference tables had determined, supported by statistics, that at that time of night it was better to turn off certain traffic lights, or set them to warning flashes. It was all about statistical probability.

Had Tonio's safety been optimally guaranteed? Granted, as a twenty-one-year-old cyclist, he had his own responsibilities — but still relative to the traffic scheme of the city of Amsterdam, which ultimately was the responsibility of the traffic controllers. Otherwise we could just as well run amok across a bare asphalt surface minus the lines, arrows, signposts, and lights, we could play bumper-car without the rubber bumpers, and end up, all of us giggling, scattered about the graveyard.

An accident like Tonio's — it was the statistician's calculated risk. According to their calculations, more nighttime accidents happen at certain intersections with a fully functioning traffic light than with only a yellow flashing light. But …
someone
, in this case Tonio, had to absorb the minimal risk of a switched-off traffic light.

Fate? He has been torn away from us. A kid like him flung dead on the pavement must never be categorised as ‘one of those things'. You must not accept it, ever, even if fate wears a blindfold, and is led and prompted by the laws of probability.

18

Hendriks and Windig accompanied us out to the front hall. They were the most courteous and attentive policemen I had ever encountered. I could not help thinking that they knew much more about the progress of the technical investigation than they had let on. They had learned this, of course, at their division of the police academy: feed the truth to the shocked survivors
in
phases
, also when it concerns the victim's own errors.

We crossed the street back in the direction of the pet shop, where our supplier was still seated on his bench, smoking and drinking, now on his own. I was so lost in thought that I reached for the door handle of a green car that resembled ours parked in front of his shop. I opened the door on the passenger's side: on the seat lay stacked-up bags of cat litter.

‘Go on,' called the pet-shop owner. ‘Take it, it's yours. As long as I can have your house in return.'

I raised my hand in a sign of apology, and followed Miriam to our own car, just around the corner of the Van Breestraat.

19

‘So is this civilisation?' I said to Miriam, summarising my disgust. ‘A society, a community, a city … is supposed to be a
triumph
over disorder. It is an organisation that is supposed to leave nothing to chance. Chaos always manages to find a chink to squeeze through. But managing, organising, containing chaos is supposed to be the main goal. Right? I can accept that at night a flashing yellow light is less risky than red and green. Human psychology … Of course, there are always risks. With Tonio and that Suzuki, it didn't work, that experiment with the flashing yellow. Tonio was a victim of the exception to the rule. The system suffers a lesser defeat for the greater good. The terrible part is that society accepts its loss as a matter of fact … silently … It's just part of the calculation. And as a result, no one bothers about us. No apologetic word, nothing. Ice-cold silence. We just keep paying our taxes for the nighttime operation of the traffic lights. No one loses any sleep over it. We are expected to accept our loss just as they accept theirs. As an industrial mishap.'

What had happened here descended on us like such an unspeakable horror that it proved impossible to adopt a fatalistic attitude. There was no way to go on without an answer to the question of guilt. Someone or something — a responsible authority — had to have this on their conscience. Since I couldn't find anything or anyone that fitted the bill, I landed upon myself.
I
was the guilty party.

20

‘What happened to us,' I say once we get home, ‘most resembles a
miracle
… in the iniquitous, Catholic sense of the word. Minchen, it's so unfathomable, so far removed from everyday events, that it is no less than a miracle. Your son is sent heavenwards with a massive thwap. You're struck rigid by disbelief. You run back to the village pump, and everyone else reacts just as incredulously. Flabbergasted. Dismayed. Some of them try to explain the miracle in terms of physics. Even if the car had been going thirty, the cyclist still wouldn't stand much chance.
Quod erat demonstrandum
. But for us it remains a wonder. Our One and Only grabbed out of our midst, never to return. An event that has no parallels, except for previous morbid fantasies. And that is what makes it so obscenely miraculous. A vision come true. It can't be. It mustn't be.'

Because my words remind her of the situation's irrevocability, Miriam suddenly starts to cry — loudly, too, like only a child who has fallen flat on its face can. But unlike that child, nothing can cheer her up. Only when she calms down somewhat do I repeat my own lament: ‘I would so like to comfort you, Minchen, but the damn thing about comfort is that it always offers some kind of promise: “Everything will be all right.” I can't promise you that.'

‘The fact that you're here, sitting next to me, is enough.'

After Miriam has picked up her father from Beth Shalom and dropped him off at home (side-by-side grief in an old Renault), we sit on the sofa and drink a far-too-strong long drink. I use a small kitchen knife to open envelope after envelope of condolences. We take turns reading them, until Miriam can no longer stand it. It's the letters from Tonio's old schoolmates that break her up the most. We try to eat something. A bit of French bread with some egg salad — but I can't swallow it. Miriam's hands are clamped, motionless, onto a cup of chicken soup, into which her tears fall — silently, thank God.

When I abandon her to go to sleep, or at least to get into bed, she is lying on the couch with leaden eyes (Valium, vodka), not-watching a thriller. I kiss her goodnight.

‘Night, sweetie,' she says with her tiniest voice.

21

This afternoon, Miriam went back to the Nepveustraat with our friend Klaas to search Tonio's computer for those photos of Jenny. She came home in a bitter mood.

‘Doesn't he get it?' she snarled. ‘That a mother clings to every last thing her dead child left behind?'

She was referring to Jim. After her insistent ringing, he finally staggered to the door, torpid and disoriented, in a cloud of pot smoke.

‘It's starting to dawn on me,' I said, ‘that all those stories of his chronic insomnia are all about sleep, sleeping, and sleepiness. Maybe we've misjudged the problem.'

Jim was being intentionally unobliging. He told Miriam and Klaas he was busy putting all the pictures he found (but none of Jenny) onto a hard drive, but that there was ‘something wrong' with Tonio's computer. He literally told the mother of his dead best friend: ‘You can't just keep dropping by whenever you like, y'know, I've got my own stuff to do.'

Surely Jim had forgotten that he shared the flat with Tonio, and that we, Tonio's parents, still paid half the rent. He also seemed to have lost sight of the fact that Tonio, on account of his permanent absence, was not able to keep an eye on his belongings.

‘Jim,' Miriam had said, ‘you and Dennis were going to make a selection of the photos for us within two weeks. It's now been two months. Adri and I have lost our son … Can you imagine, Jim, that we regard everything that was Tonio's as a keepsake … including his computer?'

‘I'm working on it,' was his answer. Jim did, though, show a far more engaged interest in Tonio's laptop. He didn't have one of his own, at least not a functioning one, so if he might be able to take Tonio's with him tomorrow, when he went on vacation with his parents … the message was clear: no laptop, no vacation.

Tonio's laptop was a souped-up one, with a digital tablet that you could write on with a special electronic pen. There are few memories these past weeks that pain me as much as the shyly proud Tonio who came up to my workroom to demonstrate this birthday gift, inviting me to try my hand at writing something on the tablet. (At long last, this techno-moron made his first foray into the world of computers.) Goddam, that sweet kid … in all his maturity, he was still a child who could get a genuine kick out of the gimmicks and gadgetry of a present. It was the summer before he was to start his Media & Culture studies.