Anneke was a mistake from the very start. She wasn’t my mother: she was my aunt, who had become my mother. A misunderstanding, an error. I wasn’t meant to grow up under her roof. She knew this, too, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
Time creates wrinkles, and my mother didn’t have wrinkles. Anneke did. The same wrinkles my mother would have gotten, in the same places. After all, they were sisters. If my mother had had the opportunity to get wrinkles, perhaps on a Saturday afternoon after shopping she would have said she felt sorry for people who dine alone. She would likely have felt the same way as her sister. If my mother had lived, maybe I would have never dined alone in a bar and I would have felt sorry for people who dine alone, too.
If my mother were still alive, Anneke would have adopted a little boy and she wouldn’t have had to put up with her sister’s traumatized daughter.
That Saturday afternoon, sitting with Anneke, I realized something for the first time that I ought to have realized much sooner. I understood that Anneke was my mother, because I didn’t have any other. Anneke had brought me up, she had loved me, and she was still alive. Anneke’s sister had raised a little girl. But Anneke had been my mother for more than twenty years. And she had never abandoned me.
Maybe it was too late, too late to give something back to Anneke. To say thank you. But I felt she deserved it. For the first time I understood that she had lost much more than I had. I had lost my mother, but she had lost her sister and the opportunity to see herself in a child of her own.
I wanted to say something about what I had just realized, but I didn’t know how to put it into words. I wanted her to understand that I didn’t want to be a thankless child any longer. I wanted to let her in.
“I have a list of a hundred names,” I blurted out. I didn’t dare look at her, I was ashamed.
“Come again?”
“I want to tell you about something I’ve been doing, Anneke . . .” Her name put distance between us, as it always had. For once I didn’t want that distance to be there, but there was no alternative: I couldn’t suddenly start calling her mother.“It’s something important, dear Anneke,” I added. She looked at me, surprised. I knew that word, dear, had sounded very strange, coming from me. It was a word I seldom used, with her or anyone else.“I know you probably won’t believe this,” I continued, “but a long time ago I received a list of a hundred names.”
“How long ago?”
“Not long after we went to visit the town hall and the police station in Someren.”
Anneke looked at me, waiting.
“I kept the list hidden for a long time. Two years ago I began to search for the people whose names are on the list.” Her eyes seemed to grow wider with each sentence I uttered. I wasn’t entirely sure why she was so stunned: it could be the fact I was telling her a secret, but it also might be sheer disbelief.
I told her everything. The first meeting with Karen Abrams, the internet searches, the trips to other countries, the people I had met, from the strangest to the most boring. I confessed that Jenny wasn’t my friend, just someone I had met on one of my trips. Then I told her about my meeting with Lianne Pérez-Horst and the interview.
In the silence that ensued I saw how Anneke’s eyes had grown misty, and I hoped she wouldn’t burst into tears.
“Thank you,” she eventually said.
“For what?”
“For telling me this.”
“I should have done it sooner.”
“It’s always hard to be open with the people we’re closest to.”
Sometimes silence can make it possible to better understand something you’ve just heard, and sometimes silence begs to be filled. In the silence that followed, I wanted to ponder Anneke’s words, but she decided to fill the void.
“Do you think you’ll find what you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you feel when you meet someone and realize they’re not the person you’re looking for?”
“Sometimes I feel closer to learning the truth, and sometimes I feel further from it. Sometimes I have no expectations at all.” I paused to reflect for a moment before speaking the following words,“It just keeps me busy.”
The man who was dining alone was having his coffee and writing something in a notebook. I wondered whether he had been watching us, if he thought we were mother and daughter. I constantly wondered that when Anneke and I were together in public. I kept asking myself if the people around us could tell that we weren’t really mother and daughter. I always hoped that people would be able to tell from the distance between us that Anneke was undoubtedly not my mother.
“It might be that you finish your search and realize there was nothing to find,” she spoke softly and slowly.“It might be that you need this search to relinquish your dream,” she looked at me to see if I reacted, but I didn’t.“I’m not saying this boy doesn’t exist . . . But you may never find him. And if you’ve tried to find him and you haven’t been able to, eventually you’ll decide to stop your search and live with the fact you haven’t been able to find him.”
For a second I felt like I was twelve years old and we were on our way to the town hall in Someren. Once again I saw Anneke trying to shield me from disappointment. And for once I saw that she wasn’t doing it to hurt me, but because she didn’t want me to suffer any more than I already had.
“Maybe you think that looking for this boy brings you closer to your parents. Maybe he could tell you about the accident. But that won’t change anything. It happened, your parents are gone, you’re the survivor. Perhaps we should have talked about this long ago, but I didn’t know how to, sweetie, we didn’t know how. Jan and I also survived the accident, though we weren’t there. It changed our lives, too.”
I remembered the first time I saw Anneke and Jan in the hospital, and had asked myself why they were there, where they had come from. And the doctor’s words: Your parents couldn’t come to see you, a sentence that was far too long for expressing something that could have been said much more concisely.
“I would never have chosen this, sweetie. But now I know that I would never have wanted to be mother to any other little girl in the world than you.”
Him
I didn’t know whether to go searching or let myself be surprised.
I didn’t sleep for a single second of the two hours that remained of that trip on the Talgo to Barcelona when I met Paco and his son Roberto. We arrived at the station and I bid my two travelling companions farewell. Paco was returning to Madrid on the Talgo that same evening.
Roberto told me that his next train left the following evening for Vigo and urged me once more to join him. I was so tired I couldn’t think clearly. Perhaps that’s why I agreed. Because I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was saying. Or perhaps I thought it would help fill my empty days.
We agreed to meet in the station the following evening. I had thirty-six hours to kill. I called Simon and spent them at his house. After sleeping all night, I was overcome by doubts about whether I should board a train that would take me somewhere I had never set foot before. But I had an agreement with Roberto and I have always been a man of my word, so I put it out of my mind and the next day I showed up at Sants station, ready to go. Roberto greeted me with a smile and I immediately felt I had made the right decision. He showed me to the only compartment that hadn’t been booked that day. He set up a bunk and showed me how the bathroom worked just as if I were a paying passenger, reciting his instructions from memory. Before leaving to greet more passengers he told me to come to the restaurant car a few minutes after the train departed.
I was alone in the compartment, looking through the window at people rushing toward the train. By the time the train left the station, night had fallen. I looked around the compartment and realized that I would be spending the next few months in such a space.
I went to the restaurant car. Some of the tables were occupied, but Roberto hadn’t arrived yet. I took a seat and waited.
“So, in the end you decided to go searching, instead of letting yourself be surprised,” Roberto said as he sat down across from me. I said the first thing that came to mind.
“I boarded the train because I need to get my feet off the ground. I need to get away from myself.”
Roberto looked at me steadily, while he processed what I had said. To me it had sounded empty and meaningless, but he had taken it to heart.
“You’ve come to the right place, then,” he eventually said.
Though I didn’t believe Roberto could really understand what I needed right then, a part of me wanted to believe that this trip to nowhere really could lead me toward a meaningful future.
I spent several months in the dark. Now, looking back, I know they were months, though at the time I had no idea, I had lost all notion of time. I also had no idea I was in the dark, because I kept turning on the lights, but the problem was that there was no light that burned as brightly for me as Willemien had.
Over the course of seven months I slept in dozens of hotels, on Roberto’s tab, or in hostels. The first few weeks I traveled only with Roberto, but I soon got to know the other conductors, and after a couple of months my dance card was full with trips from Barcelona to Vigo, from Madrid to Seville. Once in a while I got left on the platform when my conductor’s car was fully booked by customers who had paid for their tickets, but fortunately that didn’t happen very often.
As might have been expected, those first few nights were filled with monologues that I attempted to follow, until one day, after a few months of traveling, when Roberto asked a question that helped draw me out of myself. We had been on the train from Barcelona to Paris for several hours. The only thing I could think about was the first time I had been to the French capital, on my way to Holland.
We were in the restaurant car and we had exhausted several topics of conversation already when Roberto asked casually,“What was Willemien like?”
I thought he expected a few well-chosen adjectives, like attractive, gentle, intelligent. But while the words danced in my head I realized they were meaningless. They wouldn’t set her apart from any other woman Roberto had ever met. I was lost in thought and Roberto apologized for his question, assuming I didn’t want to answer.
In that second it seemed to me my heart became less heavy, that I could sit up straighter, that I could smile authentically. It was as if the day had suddenly brightened, and I realized the moment had arrived when I could finally talk about Willemien without grieving her absence. And I was eager to talk about her, I wanted to tell my young traveling companion all about her, and without knowing where to start I began talking before Roberto had another attack of logorrhea and I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.
“Willemien never ceased to amaze me,” I said. Roberto paid closer attention.“Willemien was constantly reinventing herself. When something had been in the same place for a long time, she would move it, to see how it affected everything else. When she had been doing something she loved for a long time, she would try something new, until she loved doing that, too.” I had never tried to sum up Willemien, I had never stopped to think about what she was like, or how I saw her. But Roberto had prompted me to think about her differently, so I did my best.“You know what, Roberto? I probably chose Willemien because back then she was with someone else, and I needed to triumph over someone. I think she chose me precisely because I fought for her and won. Sometimes the reasons that two people come together are completely circumstantial. But all that matters is what happens next. And what happened was that we got to know each other, and since we came from different places there was a lot to get to know. I could tell you that what I liked best about her was that she was this or that. But the truth is that I liked her because she chose me. And that over time, despite everything, she continued to choose me day after day.”
Roberto looked at me in awe, as if I were a wise professor and he were an eager student. I felt close to Willemien because everything I had been saying was something I had learned together with her.
“Of course, there were some surprises,” I continued. “Things that reminded us how different we were, things that caused us to clash. But living in another country and adapting to another environment makes you humble and tolerant. And we both had that opportunity. First me in Holland, then her in Spain.”
I looked around, the restaurant car was starting to fill with people, but it was so late at night that everybody seemed to be keeping quiet in deference to the distinctive clickety-clack of the train. Everyone murmured instead of talking, except Roberto and myself. We had lost all notions of circadian rhythm. We were more used to being awake at night than during the day; and we felt at home on the train.
“Love isn’t what it used to be anymore,” Roberto said despondently.
“Love, I don’t know, Roberto. I think it’s different for everyone. The only thing I know about is what my life with Willemien was like.”
“How was it? Happy, right?”
“Yes, well, I could tell you it was an endless series of adventures we shared, of countless rough patches to get through, requiring innumerable gestures of goodwill.”
“Adventures, rough patches, gestures,” Roberto repeated, in an attempt to memorize three magic ingredients I had just revealed to him.
“Yes, I think so. Adventures, rough patches, and gestures, all floating in a vast ocean of routine.”
We were looking out the window, but in reality we were looking inwards.
“Until the ocean dried up,” I said, rising from the table. I realized I had said enough, and I wished Roberto a good evening and went off to bed.
A quarter of an hour later I was lying on the uncomfortable bunk in my compartment, thinking about lost opportunities, about how my life might have been if the ocean hadn’t dried up. Recalling the future Willemien had planned for us.
One day long ago, Willemien had told me that we should take the money her parents had left her and open savings accounts for the children. Plus, she said, in a tone that was both cheery and determined, I would retire from work when I hit sixty and we’d be able to live without worrying about anything until we were one hundred. She had made out a budget based on two people living forty years. I remember the image that came to my mind, of two grandparents, shriveled as raisins, embracing in our bed one early fall morning, looking at the ceiling of our apartment in Figueres, deciding whether to walk down the promenade in Figueres or read the novel one of our grandchildren had written. I remember wanting to live with Willemien until we were two hundred. I said so, and then I said, What if we don’t die? What will we live on then? and she began to laugh.
Now, after her death which was forty-four years too soon, and my retirement at the age of fifty-seven, thanks to her parents’ bequest, instead of imagining two raisins looking at the ceiling of our bedroom I had to invent a new life for myself, to survive the endless years ahead, in which I’d have to live on the budget that Willemien had made for the both of us.
The night before I decided to stop riding the train I had a series of vivid dreams. I dreamed I was watching the stations pass by through my window, and at each station there was someone waiting for me, my children, my grandchildren, even Paco was waiting for me at one of the stations. But the train didn’t stop. And I resigned myself to living on that moving train for the rest of my days. Until eventually, just when I stopped looking out the window, the train came to a halt. I looked outside and saw that I was at a deserted station. I gazed out the window, as far as I could see, looking for the silhouette of someone, anyone, Arjen, Simon, Robert, or Antonia, any of my sisters, I even looked for Pedro and Mariana. But there wasn’t a soul waiting for me at the only station where the conductor of my train had decided to stop.
Yet something made me get off the
train. No suitcase, no coat, I alighted at the deserted station.
I remember how the train doors shut behind me, the train gathering speed as it moved away from the station. At the same moment I saw millions of beams of light in front of me, as if I were a star scattering rays of light, as if I were my own giant light bulb. Each ray of light was distinct from the others, and each ray of light was one possible version of the future.
The next morning I awoke feeling at peace, I chose one of those rays of light I had seen in my dream, I said goodbye to Robert, and got off the train.
Her
Something broke inside me—as if all the pieces of an impossible jigsaw puzzle had finally been assembled and then they fell apart. It happened right after I bought the paper. I hadn’t expected it.
It was Saturday, I had gotten up early and walked to the supermarket to do my weekly shop. I knew that Lianne Pérez-Horst’s article was coming out that day and didn’t want to miss the paper. After filling my shopping bag, I paid for the paper on my way out and walked a few meters along the street. I had thought I wouldn’t flip through it until I got home, but I couldn’t wait. In the middle of the sidewalk I set my bag down on the ground between my legs and opened the paper.
Beneath the title Unlikely Search for an Angel I read the story of a desperate little girl. My heart shrank. It couldn’t be me. It couldn’t be that I was still that little girl. I broke into a cold sweat.
Next to a long column there was a photo of a list of one hundred names. A worn piece of paper I had carried around for months, for years. It was mine, I knew it, but at the same time I didn’t recognize it. In the photo in the paper my list looked like the scrap of paper a policeman finds in the pocket of a dead man, and which he keeps as evidence. Beneath the list there was a photo of Karen Abrams and me together in the bar. Karen Abrams was laughing, looking at the camera. I was looking sideways at the floor. My body looked tense, as if I were afraid, but I didn’t remember feeling that way when she took the photo. I looked at my face carefully and I felt like I was losing my mind.
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