Writing is strange, son. While telling you about Achiel Punt, I see Café Vondel before me, four doors up from where Punt was living in 1946. I remember it staying closed for a while after the war because the resistance had smashed the windows and furnishings during their hunt for collaborators. And that takes me straight to a vision of that same café during its glory days in the middle of a stylish neighbourhood and makes me realize there’s something I’ve forgotten to tell you. Maybe it’s not that important. Judge for yourself.
It’s late August 1940. The city has been occupied for almost four months. I’m twenty and have finally completed my last year of school, but that doesn’t raise my father’s spirits. He’s lost his job in the meantime and is wallowing in misery. Meanbeard, on the other hand, thinks my diploma needs celebrating because fair’s fair, it’s his victory too. He lets me know a week beforehand that he’s sorry we’ve lost touch with each other. If nothing else, I’ve earned a drink in one of his favourite bars on Paarden Markt. I don’t exclude the possibility that my father has put him up to it, that he’s sick to death of me lying in bed surrounded by books, waiting for nothing. At that moment I feel trapped. My mother’s family has cut us off and, with an unemployed father, further studies seem completely out of the question. One look at him tells me enough. He won’t find a job until it’s presented to him on a silver platter. His weak spot, a lack of initiative, has been hidden for years by the money he’s brought in. Now he’s stripped naked and as weak as an infant. But I’m just as much a lamb that could be led to slaughter at any moment. The one thing I definitely don’t want is to be carted off to Germany, a fate that is already menacing everyone who is young and unemployed. Some of my mates see it more as a lucky break, an opportunity to kiss the parental home goodbye. Independence ahoy! I’ll have to find a job here instead, and despite the uncertainty of that prospect it fills me with budding joy, like a promise I whisper to myself. If I become this family’s breadwinner… vengeance will be mine. Revenge for the life these two have been mapping out for me for years without worrying about what I might want myself, without even asking what my plans might be. Having to bear the burden of your parents’ mediocre ambitions is idiotic, a joke, all things considered, but if you don’t have anyone to discuss it with, there’s no liberating guffaw after the punchline.
And now Meanbeard and I are sitting in the Vondel.
‘Well?’ he asks, putting down his glass. ‘You’re off in the clouds. You’ve hardly touched your beer.’
‘Sorry. You’re right.’
‘How are things at home?’
I shrug. ‘No work, no money, and it’s war.’
Meanbeard laughs. ‘The war is over. France has fallen. Bombs are raining down on the Brits. Germany is triumphant. And your father has connections. Things will be better soon.’
‘I think I’ll have to find something myself.’
‘You? And what about your studies?’
Do you hear the pad of his velvet paws? But I don’t say a word. I drink.
‘So you want something else…’
‘I don’t know what I want.’
‘Oh, yes you do,’ Meanbeard whispers. ‘You know what you want. I recognize myself in you. That’s why we get along so well. What do I live off? People will tell you I’m a sports journalist, that I scrape a living together from the odd newspaper article here and there and, let’s be honest, that’s something most of them look down on. What did I do? I studied law for a couple of years and that turned out to be a mistake. Then languages… Never graduated. And yet I can tell you that I am rarely short of money. From the beginning I was able to assure myself of sufficient income. It comes of its own accord and I don’t think that will ever change. Even as a student, I had money. But it doesn’t actually interest me. They’re all opportunities and a man like me enjoys them without paying a price. Do you get my drift? It’s here, in your head, that things have to roll. Money is a means, that’s all. And there are enough people around here willing to provide it.’
‘That’s another way of seeing it,’ I say finally.
‘We live in a country where people would rather you knew what kind of knickers their wife wears than found out exactly how much they earn. Ask directly and everyone starts to moan and sigh. I’m an idealist—you know that—always have been, and I count myself lucky that I am able to see my vision of the world becoming reality. It’s actually never really surprised me that that vision has made me money, as if I get paid for the simple fact of having ideals. How incredible is that? Incredible enough in incredible times.’
‘I don’t know what exactly you’re trying to say.’
‘No? I’ve already said too much.’
*
Do you read comics, son? I know it’s a silly question to ask a seventeen-year-old, but it suddenly occurred to me. Your grandfather was mad about Suske and Wiske. Do people still read that? I remember one book that ended with the heroes being catapulted back to the present by Old Father Time. Decked out with a long white beard and a scythe, he opens up an enormous book and lays them on the page with their year written on it. ‘Ka-boom!’ your grandfather always said whenever I got to that bit when I was reading it to him. Although there wasn’t a picture of it happening, as a little boy he was convinced that Father Time
