On the Bright Side

by Hendrik Groen

  I wasn’t looking forward to it. I prefer to avoid crowds when I’m on my scooter.

  ‘You can just ram your way through,’ was Geert’s suggestion, and it’s hard to argue with that.

  So yesterday afternoon we rode to the ferry dock, which was even more congested than I’d feared.

  ‘Stay close behind me,’ Geert ordered. That helped. He elbowed aside a bicycle here and a moped there with a friendly smile for the victims. There were some indignant glares, but also some approving nods.

  I was very chuffed to receive a sexy wink from a pretty woman. It may even have brought a blush to my cheek.

  Once I got used to it, I even began enjoying the hectic bustle of downtown Amsterdam.

  Artis was spectacular. In zoological gardens the emphasis these days is more on the garden, and less on the creatures. Lots of beautiful flowers, bushes and trees, and fewer animals. They are no longer confined behind bars but hidden somewhere in the greenery where two myopic OAPs can barely spot them.

  In the ape house we were proud as monkeys when we spied the world’s tiniest primate: a mother monkey carrying a baby the size of a matchbox on her back.

  Geert had brought a thermos of hot water to make himself a nice Cup-a-Soup, but he hadn’t screwed the lid on tightly enough: the water had leaked out. Making the best of a bad bargain, we bought ourselves a salami sandwich.

  ‘I don’t really like that soup anyway,’ Geert confessed. ‘Those eighty-four packets were a bit of an impulse buy.’

  ‘They have a long shelf life,’ I consoled him, ‘so you can keep them for a long time before throwing them out.’

  On the way home I almost landed under a tram, but aside from that it was a successful trip. My worry had been groundless. I was pleased with myself for not using some feeble excuse in order to get out of it. I often think of my wife’s words of wisdom: it’s the things you haven’t done that you will regret the most.

  It’s time to visit her again – I’m going the day after tomorrow.

  Sunday, 17 May

  Bert, the son of my former neighbour Antje, came for tea yesterday. To catch up on what’s happened in the past five years. He was well, but his eighty-seven-year-old mother had been wandering off and frequently getting lost, both literally and figuratively. She had been brought home four times by complete strangers, the last time on the back of a Moroccan paperboy’s moped.

  ‘That put a big dent in my prejudices,’ Bert was forced to admit.

  ‘Lucky he wasn’t stopped for having a passenger without a helmet. Or did he happen to have one for her?’

  Bert gave a wry chuckle. ‘If the situation wasn’t so tragic, it would make you laugh till you were blue in the face.’

  Mother Antje wasn’t just getting lost, she had also spent hours wandering round the shopping mall in search of her bicycle, which was parked in the shed at home. She had also lost her purse. Bert had stopped giving his mother any money as a result; but then she’d walked out of the supermarket with a loaf of bread under her arm without paying. The geriatrician, the gerontologist, the social-geriatric care visitor and case manager had all advised him to give Antje back her purse. Wise decision: within a week she had lost it again, and someone had withdrawn €500 four times from her bank account, since she conveniently kept her PIN number with her bank card.

  ‘What a farce. Anyone with a grain of common sense can see she should be in a nursing home, but a foursome of overqualified, overpaid social workers think it best to wait until she’s run into a few more mishaps. Four of them said so!’

  I said it’s difficult to make people go into a nursing home against their will.

  ‘And so we should just sit back and watch her break a hip? Or get run over by a car?’

  See, that’s what’s wrong with the welfare state, in a nutshell: the only way for a woman with dementia to get the protection and rest she needs is via the hospital or the police station. And that’s leaving the undertaker out of the picture for now.

  Bert was a bit down when he said goodbye.

  ‘Sorry, neighbour, I haven’t been very good company, but I am really at the end of my rope.’

  I couldn’t think of what to say to make him feel better.

  Monday, 18 May

  I went to visit my wife yesterday, the trip I make twice yearly to the psychiatric institution where she lives. I no longer dread it. I have made my peace with it.

  She softly says hello, but doesn’t recognize me, or barely; it’s hard to tell. We’ll have a cup of tea, she lets me hold her hand, and if the weather is nice we’ll take a little turn round the garden, arm in arm. I like to point out the prettiest flowers. She seems content with what life still has to offer in the form of slight pleasures. Every once in a while a little smile, every once in a while a friendly nod.

  An hour later I’ll say goodbye, and board the train from Brabant back to Amsterdam. All in all it’s quite an undertaking. Fortunately I can have the home’s transport pick me up from the station.

  Home again, I reward myself with a snifter of brandy and a game of chess with Evert. On days like these I let him have a draw. Unless he goes too far and sacrifices his queen. Then that’s his business and he’s checkmate in thirty minutes or less.

  Tuesday, 19 May

  It’s nice when old people take some interest in their appearance – if not for their own sake, then for those who are obliged to look at them.

  Traipsing round all day in threadbare slippers and the same old pair of shabby trousers does not signal much in the way of self-respect. (By the way, I saw a picture in the paper the other day of Fidel Castro in a baggy Adidas training jacket, a messy beard and hair that had obviously not seen the inside of a barber shop for quite some time. The revolution isn’t what it used to be.)

  I myself take pride in my appearance. Polished shoes, clean shirt, jacket, tie. I frequent the barber’s on a regular basis, and also have them see to the unruly eyebrows and the bristles spouting from my nose and ears.

  Most of the Old-But-Not-Dead are quite vain. Ria and Antoine look as if they’re ready to walk down the runway in a geriatric fashion show. Edward and Graeme are quite civilized-looking, and even Leonie is rather with it. Only Geert might be encouraged to change his clothes more frequently, and Evert, too, has to be reminded occasionally that it wouldn’t hurt to have a wash every once in a while. Since joining the Club, Leonie has taken to wielding the fashion- and hygiene-cudgel. In her most charming manner, she gently steers those two gentlemen, who’ve lived as bachelors far too long, in the right direction. She recently took Evert to buy a new jacket.

  ‘The collar of that jacket won’t come clean any more, I’m afraid, Evert.’

  ‘That’s fifteen years of neck grease, that is,’ Evert grunted. Well, Leonie thought that might be sufficient reason to pick out something new. And, miracle of miracles, Evert docilely followed her to C&A, and came home with a spiffy powder-blue jacket.

  Leonie also gave Geert a lovely scent for his birthday.

  ‘You should wear it often,’ she said. It was the first time in his life that anyone had ever given Geert an eau de toilette. Cool Water, by Davidoff.

  ‘Coal water?’ he asked, surprised.

  Wednesday, 20 May

  Sad, sad! Our national songstress Trijntje did not make it.

  ‘It was the pantsuit. She looked like a scarecrow,’ said Mr Pot.

  The Eurovision Song Contest has attained a new apogee: four Finnish mongols. Here in our home most people still refer to them as ‘mongols’ and not ‘people with Down’s Syndrome’. They also talk about ‘negroes’ and ‘foreigners’. It isn’t because they don’t respect the people belonging to those groups; it’s because the concept of politically correct language has passed them by. Here language is frozen in time.

  There was quite a bit of complaining about the lightning pace of the songfest, as well as the rather enervating light-show.

  ‘It’ll make me have an epileptic fit, all that flashing and
flickering,’ Mrs Quint feared.

  ‘Huh! You’d get an epileptic fit from a red traffic light,’ said Pot. He was on top form last night.

  Every year Eurovision leads to nostalgic ruminations about Ted de Braak, Corrie Brokken, Teddy Scholten and, yes, even Udo Jürgens and Charles Aznavour. Although no one is sure whether or not they were all contestants.

  Halfway through the Finnish punk rock band, the sound on the conversation lounge set was turned to mute. After the bearded transvestite, those Finns were the last straw.

  ‘We had Russian grannies once, but never any Dutch grandpas,’ Antoine mused. ‘That may be an untapped opportunity.’

  Evert thought an Alzheimer’s band would fit the bill.

  ‘I can just picture some of them taking a nosedive off the podium, trying to escape.’

  ‘Now, now, that’s enough of that, Mr Duiker,’ the nurse reprimanded him.

  The sound was turned up again for the results.

  Even though we’d heard only five of the sixteen songs performed, it was of course a downright scandal that Trijntje wasn’t going through to the next round.

  ‘We just can’t win against so many Eastern bloc countries,’ people fumed. Now we won’t have to watch the finals on Saturday. If ‘we’ aren’t in it, ‘we’ won’t watch it. So there.

  Thursday, 21 May

  Circus Magic comes to North Amsterdam once a year. Since the weather was nice and we had nothing better to do, I proposed to Geert we go there on our scooters. All too often we have nothing better to do. Having tea or coffee, or bellyaching about this-that-and-the-other: those are the core activities of our existence, so any excuse to break free of the daily grind is a plus.

  Circus Magic was a gift.

  On a small stretch of lawn in the middle of a housing estate, we found the blue tent and its circus wagons. Driving up, we were met with the usual expressions of amazement at the sight of two old chaps out and about with neither a kid nor a grandkid in tow; but then you could see them think, ‘Whoa, how cool is that, two old geezers out on their own.’

  We bought tickets for the wooden bleachers in the second circle, but were treated as special guests, and led to even better seats: moulded plastic chairs down by the ring. And if we preferred to remain seated on our scooters, that wasn’t a problem either.

  The circus family’s Dutch contingent consisted of a charming young ringmaster, a big fat clown and a blushing blonde. A strongwoman from Spain, a juggler from the Eastern bloc and a pretty acrobat from … I forget where, made up the international complement. Two mute Ukrainians were in charge of the props, and there was also a portly man wearing a sweater that said ‘Security’.

  It was a lovely, poignant and festive performance. The strongwoman’s sweat flew in all directions, the clown high-fived everyone, a goat stepped through a hoop, the pretty girl dangled from a contraption high in the air, the juggler juggled, and six ducks all in a row waddled ahead of the blonde duck-tamer.

  Afterwards all the artists came over to shake our hands.

  ‘That was fun,’ Geert grunted, ‘and you still have some popcorn in your hair, Hendrik.’

  Impossible. I don’t have enough hair for anything to get tangled up in it, but I ran my hand over my head anyway.

  ‘Joking.’

  Friday, 22 May

  Evert had to go to the doctor’s this afternoon. He was nervous, I could tell. He had his usual swagger on, but it wasn’t convincing. I have a bad feeling about it.

  We’re leaving for Bruges in a week and a half. Quite an undertaking for folks who, for years, haven’t been away from home for more than a few hours. Some of us might spend a night at a son’s or daughter’s house at most. Ria and Antoine have their bags packed and ready at the door, and Leonie’s table is littered with constantly changing little piles of clothes. Geert is keeping a close eye on the weather in Bruges, and Graeme has drawn up an itinerary for the entire three days. As for me, I have rung the hotel to make sure that everything is in order. I was politely reassured that it was.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Groen, we’ll make sure that everything is ready for your arrival.’

  It is now 9 p.m. I just left Evert’s. He wouldn’t tell me anything. He also turned down my offer of a game of chess.

  ‘You’d better go, Henk, my head’s killing me.’

  Tuesday, 26 May

  On Saturday Evert came to my room before elevenses. With some very bad news.

  ‘I decided to sleep on it, but there’s no point going on pretending nothing’s wrong: I have cancer. I have only a few months left. Half a year, maybe.’

  I think all I did was shake my head or maybe I said something feeble, like ‘Impossible’.

  Evert was shown the results from tests that were done two weeks ago, and it was clear: advanced-stage colon cancer.

  Evert is refusing chemotherapy or radiation.

  ‘The most they can do is slow it down a bit, and I don’t feel like subjecting myself to that.’

  I protested a bit more, against my better judgement.

  ‘I won’t think of it, Henk. It would only prolong the agony.’

  He did ask the internist for the best painkillers and pep pills that exist, and the doctor agreed not to make a big fuss about one pill more or less.

  I was a basket case for two days. Yesterday I was given a stern talking-to by Evert himself.

  ‘Hendrik Groen, chum, you must go on with your life the way you have lived it for the past couple of years: with joy and gusto, and let the chips fall where they may.’

  That was a clear order.

  He’ll wait until we are back from Bruges to inform the other Old-But-Not-Dead Club members. He had wanted to keep it from me until then as well, but he had to tell someone, and decided that ‘his best mate would just have to be the poor sucker to have to hear it’.

  ‘You’ve had only fun and games out of me long enough,’ he added with a grin. Evert himself had needed just one day to adjust to the new reality and resume his devil-may-care attitude.

  I realize that for the moment, he is supporting me more than I am supporting him. I don’t think that was supposed to be the idea. This will be one of your life’s last great challenges, Groen: to do everything in your power to give a beautiful friendship a suitably upbeat ending. I must pull it off, there’s no second chance.

  I’ll start tomorrow, when the Old-But-Not-Dead Club gets together for a festive conclave to discuss preparations for our trip to Bruges.

  Wednesday, 27 May

  Death is always looming over our Old-But-Not-Dead Club. With eight members well into our eighties, we can expect one and a half funerals a year, statistically speaking. It’s just like waiting for the bus: the longer you wait, the greater the likelihood that it will eventually get here. To make life bearable, we ignore the statistics. Old ostriches, we are: we bury our heads in the sand, as the Grim Reaper saunters among us with his scythe in search of his next victim. It would make a great cartoon, that.

  If an ostrich next to us keels over, we look up in alarm and then quickly stick our heads back in the sand.

  To Evert, it’s a relief to have clarity. Now he knows what he must do: face the final curtain with pluck and bravura.

  Yesterday evening he popped round again.

  ‘Life has always been too short for cheap booze, but even more so now.’ He pulled out a bottle of twenty-year-old Scotch. We drank to a grand finale.

  He is probably planning to be well into the red when he dies; in fact, he came to discuss his intentions in that regard. This week he will transfer half of his nest egg into his son’s bank account, to be used for arrangements for a decent funeral. The other half will be paid into my account.

  ‘Yes, I decided I’d rather give it all away while I’m alive,’ he said. ‘It’s for the whole club, but they don’t need to know. Not yet.’

  Seven thousand euros. We’ll see how fast we can spend that in the coming months.

  ‘The other seven thousand should b
e enough for Jan to buy a cheap pine coffin and a nice spot in the Noorder Cemetery.’ He prefers to be buried beneath a tree, since he isn’t fond of sitting, or in this case lying, in the sun. He wonders if cemeteries offer a choice of cheap or expensive plots, as in the theatre. He wanted me to go with him tomorrow to check it out, but that’s a bit too soon for me.

  ‘Can’t you let me get used to the idea first?’ I protested.

  We’ll scope it out after Bruges.

  Thursday, 28 May

  It wasn’t as difficult as I’d thought, pretending nothing was the matter. Especially since, for the first time in weeks, Evert was in the jolliest of moods. We had an Old-But-Not-Dead meeting to discuss the trip to Bruges.

  We leave next Tuesday at 10 a.m., and return Thursday afternoon before the evening meal. We thought two nights away from home was enough for the Club’s first big trip.

  Expectations are high, but so are the nerves. We look forward to having new adventures, but at the same time there’s the natural inclination to want to cling to familiar routine. We love surprises, but then again we don’t. You know what to expect at home, and there’s no telling what may happen when you’re away. We run the gamut of human emotions.

  Evert and Geert are the ones who are always ready to forge straight ahead imperturbably and without hesitation. Ria, too, if somewhat less so. She’s the one who sees to it that Antoine doesn’t stay at home reading a book; she gets him off his backside.

  ‘Stop spending so much time studying life’s instruction manual. Just do it! Yes, you may fall down a few times, but so long as you get up again, you’ll be ahead of where you were.’ Ria casually spoke these words of wisdom not long ago, as if asking someone to pass the sugar. She amazes me.

  I’ve drawn up a detailed list of what I have to pack. The schoolmaster in me is never far away. I caught myself dithering over whether to take three pairs of underpants or four. In the end, cross with myself, I tossed five into the suitcase. And an extra pack of nappies.