The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old

by Hendrik Groen

  I may have said this before.

  Maybe I shouldn’t grumble so much.

  I should just work harder at making sure that every day is worth living. Or at least every other day. There have to be rest days too, just like the ones in the Tour de France.

  Thursday, 25 April

  Yesterday I took in a lunchtime concert. Rereading my own complaints about the emptiness of our days, I told myself to buck up and do something. Classical music is wasted on Evert, Eefje wasn’t feeling well and I wasn’t in the mood to look any further for company, so I went by myself to one of the free concerts our municipality offers her citizens, held in the town hall.

  Alas, ‘doing something’ is no guarantee of a pleasant afternoon. The music was rather monotonous, and seemed to go on for ever, which is why I nodded off until some lady angrily prodded me awake. I’m afraid I may have been snoring. Everyone was staring at me. I was terribly embarrassed. When it was over, and I was trying to slink out as unobtrusively as possible, I could still feel contemptuous eyes on my back.

  ‘Come on, Hendrik, stop moping. Doing nothing is the only way to make sure nothing goes wrong. Stop brooding about a minor mistake. And next time you go, you can just go in a false beard.’ That was Eefje’s advice when I visited her on her sickbed. She had no appetite for the chocolate truffles I brought her. She didn’t complain, but explained in a businesslike voice that her intestines often gave her trouble. ‘When that happens, the only thing to do is to stay in my room.’

  Tomorrow I am invited, on condition that she’s feeling better, to come back for a glass of white wine and chocolate truffles.

  Friday, 26 April

  Between bites of custard pudding, Mr Dieudonné Titulaer – brilliant name, isn’t it, but what an old windbag! – read out a newspaper article reporting that, according to the ‘Anti-Intruder Task Force’, there’s been a huge increase in the number of old people assaulted in their own homes. Dieudonné rubbed his hands gleefully, as if to gloat about how much better off he was living in this safe refuge, and not the dangerous world outside. I noted a big clump of custard dangling from his moustache.

  There was also, the task force reported, an increased tendency for roughing up the victims to get them to confess where they’d hidden their money-socks. Because one of the reasons for the increase in robberies was that OAPs hate to use ATM machines and so keep relatively large amounts of cash in their homes. I myself suspect there’s a different reason: old people aren’t as ready with the baseball bat to defend their possessions. Thieves have a marked preference for defenceless victims.

  The tone was set for the evening’s conversation. Fear has been sown. Fear is a seed that falls on fertile soil in here. More than half the inmates are afraid to venture out alone at night. We got to hear a whole litany of stories about purse-snatchers, intruders, pickpockets, vacuum-selling conmen and other scam artists.

  I went to see Eefje. We watched a DVD. A romantic comedy, a genre that usually sends me to sleep. Not this time.

  Saturday, 27 April

  Children laugh approximately a hundred times a day. Adults only about fifteen. Somewhere along the line we lose the inclination. Those are statistics from a research study. Old people weren’t singled out as a separate category, but from personal observation I would say that a rise in age corresponds to a decrease in laughter. Although it does depend greatly on the individual, of course. I’ve spent the past several days watching for it, and of the people I see regularly, five haven’t smiled for three days straight. There are four ladies, on the other hand, who tend to laugh a lot. They laugh so often, and for so little cause, that once you start noticing, it gets awfully irritating. (Which is why you shouldn’t pay attention to it; the minute you decide not to notice, however, it’s already too late. You find you can’t help noticing.)

  The middle bracket consists of a majority that seldom laughs from the belly, but smiles frequently. I tried keeping score for a while, but stopped because it became too distracting. I’d count how many times a group of us laughed, but then I’d have no idea what they’d been talking about, with the result that my companions would ask me if I was feeling all right.

  Now I am trying to keep track of how often I laugh myself, but that too is harder than you would think. After one hour of tea-drinking and one hour of playing billiards with Graeme and Evert, it came to three laughs (out loud) and somewhere between ten and fifteen smiles. Not bad.

  It has made me painfully aware, however, that when I, or other people, laugh, it is often for social acceptance. A little laugh here, a smile there, for no other reason than to be polite. As a friendly gesture, or because you’re too spineless to reveal you didn’t think it was funny. Or as a way of avoiding the subject.

  Sunday, 28 April

  When you read in the paper that some Dutch celebrity has died, it’s fine if you think, ‘Cripes, was that one still alive?’ For it shows that the person in question had already long passed into oblivion. But sometimes it’s the other way round, and some decrepit former star is dragged back into the spotlight. Painful.

  Just before he died, a doddering Ramses Korsakov Shaffy was hauled back on stage to sing, quavering and off key, ‘We’ll go on’. They showed a drooling Willem Duys sitting in a wheelchair, speechless after his fifth stroke, for his last appearance on the telly. Tough guy Rijk de Gooyer, when he’d had a few, used to beat big bruisers to a pulp if he didn’t like the look of their face. Near death, he was dragged before the cameras, a helpless, lisping mummy, for a reunion with his old mate Johnny. I’d have expected Rijk to put a bullet in his own head before allowing decrepitude to set in.

  Why are those vultures of the telly so keen to put on these demeaning spectacles? Why doesn’t anyone tell those ‘wonderful colleagues’ that it’s disrespectful and a downright shame to parade former heroes once they’re old and helpless?

  I turn the telly off every time it happens, but I can’t turn off the picture it leaves in my mind.

  The date of the coronation approaches. The irritation over the accommodations that have to be made by the populace to that Punch and Judy show is escalating. Mr Schaft, one of the few inmates who still gets around by bicycle, was furious. Last Tuesday the police confiscated – ‘stole’ – his bike at the ferry crossing, all because a week later some big fat bloke with a crown on his head is set to cruise by at a considerable distance. The whole city is being tidied, raked and polished, and then, next week, when the whole circus is over, Amsterdam can just go to hell again as far as they’re concerned.

  But I can’t share my opinion of the whole palaver with my fellow inmates. Not a negative word about the House of Orange.

  Monday, 29 April

  I don’t feel well. My head is heavy and dizzy. Could it be something’s growing in there?

  Methinks I have far too many ailments already to start growing tumours as well.

  Friday, 3 May

  For a staunch republican, it wasn’t bad timing, to be indisposed on 30 April. I barely noticed the hoopla surrounding the coronation. I had a raging headache on the big day, and a tummy bug. So I swallowed a nice cocktail of aspirin and Imodium, and stayed in bed. Evert stuck his head in once, as did Edward, Grietje and Eefje. I pretended to be asleep.

  On the second day, I suspected I must be starting to pong, and thought I’d take a shower. I slipped and fell in the tub. Managed to drag myself back into bed with a great deal of effort and pain. The immediate tendency is not to want to call for help. It’s that mixture of pride and embarrassment that stops you.

  In the end a nurse arrived, alerted by my next-door neighbour, who’d heard a funny thud. The nurse called the house GP, who diagnosed just a couple of bruised ribs, so it seems I’ve been let off relatively easy. A broken hip means at least four months confined to bed before you can even think of attempting to shuffle about leaning on a Zimmer frame.

  Now it only hurts when I breathe. The doctor isn’t too fussed about limiting painkillers, fortunately, so I
was just downstairs for the first time in three days for a cup of coffee. There were even one or two people who actually seemed happy to see me. That did me the world of good, I tell you.

  I shall be taking it easy for a few days. I must be on top form again come Monday, because that’s the day of Evert’s club outing. He has put up a bottle of brandy as a reward for whoever guesses what we’re doing. I did not win: we are not going synchronized swimming.

  Saturday, 4 May

  Mrs Stelwagen summoned me to her office yesterday. First she asked kindly if my swollen knee had gone down at all. ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with my knee, but my bruised ribs still hurt.’

  Oh, sorry, she was confusing two different accidents. Our director tries her best to show sympathy, but she’s a bit lacking in that department.

  What she really wanted was to tell me that she had gone to the Board to discuss my request to see the regulations, and that the Board felt the regulations were not a public matter, and was therefore unable to grant said request.

  ‘And why aren’t they public?’ I asked.

  ‘The Board has no comment.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘So, nothing. I am very sorry that I can’t help you. Now will you please excuse me? I have someone else waiting. Enjoy the rest of your day.’

  I slunk off disappointed; at least, I hope I gave her that impression. I had decided beforehand to make a fuss for form’s sake if they wouldn’t let me see those regulations.

  Ria and Antoine Travemundi know many people, and among their acquaintances is a friendly retired lawyer. Antoine had told me about him before my conference with Stelwagen. He said he would give him a ring, and then perhaps I could pay him a visit to find out what the law says about board transparency. I don’t have to worry about compensating him.

  I shall take myself there shortly.

  Sunday, 5 May

  Liberation Day. In a place filled with so many old people, you would expect to hear some moving or shocking stories about the War on 4 and 5 May, wouldn’t you, but no, they never mention the War, or else they fall back on the old chestnuts – sugar rations and such.

  It is striking how little the folk in here know about one another. That thought occurred to me yesterday during the two-minute silence for the fallen. I looked around and realized I knew next to nothing about how any of them had fared during the Second World War. Not even the people I see most often.

  I do know quite a bit of Evert’s history. I have known him for twenty years or so. He was a printer by trade, and I met him through my work. Our friendship has endured; we have never looked back. His wife died ten years ago. Two kids he seldom sees. He has neither money nor property nor God. For years he’s been playing the role of reprobate with great conviction. A classic diamond in the rough, salt of the earth.

  I have known Anja Appelboom for forty years. She never married. Perhaps she waited too long for Mr Right. Smart, sweet and dependable. I think she must be lonely.

  Evert and Anja, that’s what remains of what was once a tolerably full social life – with a wife, child and friends.

  Until three years ago I lived in a nice terraced house with a garden. The plan was to die there in peace, when the time came. So much for that.

  My wife has suffered from manic depression for forty years. She lost it completely soon after our little girl drowned. She decided to drive to Groningen in the middle of the night because she wanted to climb to the top of the Martini Tower; she gave the car away to a complete stranger, a junkie, and returned to Amsterdam in a taxi. She squandered thousands of guilders. In the end she was nabbed for shoplifting by the police and forcibly sedated by her shrink. Then, after months in an institution, she sank into a deep depression. Finally, still shaky but more or less stabilized by a slew of medications, she was allowed to come home. Until the next manic breakdown, followed by yet another depression. This happened five times in a row. The last time, most of our house went up in flames while I was out running an errand. Now she is locked up for good. After the fire, Anja arranged for me to come and live here.

  I visit her twice a year. She barely recognizes me but takes my hand and pats it. I have never been angry with her.

  The calendar tells me that my last visit was over six months ago.

  A life in a nutshell.

  For the past two years the emptiness was slowly but surely growing unbearable, but look … suddenly I have Eefje, I have Graeme, Grietje, Edward, Antoine and Ria. It isn’t time to kick the bucket just yet.

  Monday, 6 May

  Last night it occurred to me that the reader might like a bit more background information about this care home, to give you a clearer picture, since the chances that you will end your days in this home or a similar one are slim. So I will henceforth pay some attention to describing the stage set on which our lives are played out, and the daily routine.

  In the late sixties, homes for the elderly began sprouting up everywhere. A warehouse type of design was acceptable and cheap. Old people weren’t used to a great deal of luxury back then. They had been through the War and were easy to please.

  The architect of this home decided to make it a grey concrete affair, seven storeys high, each floor composed of two wings separated in the middle by the lifts. The wings consist of long windowless corridors, each lined with eight one- or two-room ‘flats’ equipped with kitchenettes. The kitchenette consists of four cupboards, two up and two down, a countertop one metre long, and two gas rings that can only be used to heat water or milk for tea and coffee. If you wanted to boil an egg as well, they might just turn a blind eye. There’s a small shower and WC. The installation of grab rails in places where you could slip and fall, and the absence of thresholds, show that the builders did give some thought to the target audience.

  Each flat has a balcony large enough for a dustbin and a hanging geranium.

  At the end of each wing on each floor, there’s a conservatory-like area furnished with sofas and chairs. Although hardly anyone ever sits there – most residents prefer the large common room downstairs – it is generally frowned upon for someone from another floor to sit there ‘for no good reason’.

  To be continued. I should save my strength. At two o’clock I must take myself in comfortable clothes down to the lobby, where today’s group leader, Evert, awaits us for what ought to be a memorable excursion.

  Tuesday, 7 May

  Who’d have thought that Evert, of all people, would treat us to a Tai Chi class? The last thing you’d expect of him. Luckily our instructor didn’t mind us having a laugh, and we made good use of his indulgence. We did, however, try in all seriousness to apply ourselves to the slow-motion fighting poses, although I’m afraid that in the case of a mugging, what we learned is unlikely to be of immediate use. Tai Chi is a sport you can practise even with a Zimmer frame, so it’s an ideal form of exercise for the elderly. Bruised ribs, however, are another story. I took it very slow, suffering in silence. The Tai Chi master and his comely assistant taught us the glorious names of the various moves; I’ve already forgotten most of them unfortunately.

  Graeme crashed to the floor while trying the stork imitation; it cost him some points, but did not jeopardize his diploma.

  Afterwards, in keeping with the theme, we went to The Great Wall for a Chinese meal. Grietje ordered, straight-faced, ‘number thilty-thlee with white lice’. Silly, but good for a laugh. It’s lucky Chinese people are so tolerant of old people. Respect for their elders was rammed down their throats with chopsticks from the moment they were born. In Western culture, the old are considered more of a nuisance. There’s a case to be made for that too.

  Upon being bombarded with compliments on the way home for having organized a superlative day for us, Evert tried not to beam with pride. He even seemed to have caught something in his eye. ‘All right, all right, that’s enough of that.’

  Since our first outing, seventeen people have asked to be admitted to our club. Sadly for them, Old But No
t Dead is not accepting new members for the time being.

  Wednesday, 8 May

  This morning a ‘Harassment Protocol’ has appeared on the noticeboard in the common room. It lists seven tips for combatting bullying. It is a dated directive, I see, from two years ago. The work of a Mr Jan Romme, Director of the National Foundation for the Elderly. As if this were a primary school for OAPs.

  Tip number one: a counsellor must be brought in. Tip number two: bullying information sessions must be held. And on and on in that vein. Most im-pres-sive. A protocol like that will surely put an immediate stop to the bullying in here. Something to be considered for Syria too, perhaps? Or for Afghanistan? People are harassing each other all over the world. A global harassment protocol is what we need. With counsellors and information sessions.

  Not funny, Groen.

  It’s true: people in here gossip, humiliate and ridicule one another as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. Nothing childish is foreign to us in these parts. The best thing to do is pretend not to notice. And if that’s impossible, if it bothers you, speak up or go and sit somewhere else. Or take a swing at them, as Edward suggested. Something I’d never have expected of him.

  It’s easy for me to say, since I am rarely the victim. There are a few thoroughly rotten apples you have to keep an eye on. Like four-legged predators, they choose the weakest to prey on, not stopping until they have torn them to pieces, if you let them. The best is when, for want of victims, the bullies wind up turning on one another. There are a few interesting vendettas going on. The Ladies Duits and Schoonderwalt are out for each other’s blood as a result of some coffee spilled on an antimacassar three years ago. Until death do them part.