NL
ENGJan Schouten says:
WOUNDS
19 December 2011, 15:05
We called him the creep. It was my turn to drive, and after I’d dropped off the other two tennis mates, I was alone with him in the car. His name was Menno.
Menno was chomping away on a Mars bar. When he’d finished, he licked his fingers. Then he chucked the wrapper on the floor.
So, the creep. A substitute player.
Our fourth player, who’d had to drop out for six weeks, had given us a potted description of him: ‘The guy’s called Menno. Made lots of money in property around Amsterdam and The Hague. Lost it all again in the crisis. Recently come back down to earth, living the simple polder life. Alone. Wife’s up and left him of course.’
‘He can hit a fair ball, ’he had added.
‘Sounds all right’, we thought, ‘Send him over, then!’, but it only took one match for Menno to earn his nickname.
You have to understand a bit about tennis to know how a creep behaves. To start with, Menno acted as if he was playing singles. That was just about forgivable. Less so was his smug smirk if you pointed it out to him. His line calls were also obnoxious, since they were always to his advantage. Funny character, who couldn’t bear ever to lose again. And then there was that triumphant yell if he got to smash a ball at the net! It wouldn’t occur to him to thank his team-mate, who’d set it up for him. He was a reasonable player, and when we praised him – we still troubled to do so in those early days − Menno would just shrug his shoulders. So it was soon clear what he thought of our level.
A facsimile of a man, a clipped crow. Uncharming to the bone. A phoney. I don’t remember ever taking a stronger dislike to anyone than I did to Menno, and if you ask me for more examples, I’ll still be here next week. But there’s something else I want to say.
To get from Almkerk, where we play tennis, to his house, I turn off at the windmill towards Zuilinchem, the village where Menno recently moved into the made-over shed that overlooks the mansion he was once born in, and which is now home to the family of a fellow property developer who had more luck.
The road leads over a high dike. Behemoth trucks hurtle towards me. The road is narrow. Good thing the creep keeps his trap shut. Hasn’t said a word since we walked off the court. Suits me fine. I focus on the traffic and am making quite a good job of forgetting him.
Suddenly – in a turn in the road – he comes back to life.
‘Hey, ’he says, ‘That bit of water there!’
He points to a small pond at the bottom of the dike.
‘Would you stop here for a minute?’
During our doubles matches and afterwards, when we’re drinking our beer, Menno talks like a supercilious lord of the manor. But now his question comes out softly, almost bashful. I park the car.
He leans forwards. He sighs,
‘There, ’he says, ‘under the willow trees. That’s where my father always used to fish.’
He wipes the condensation off the windscreen.
‘It was his favourite place,’ he says.
I can smell his sweat right through his deodorant.
‘Christ, ’he says, ‘I can just see him sitting there. I would cycle along this dike on my way back from school. Every day. Fifteen, I was then. I see him. He sees me. He waves me over to come and join him.’
He slumps back into his car seat.
From under the sleeve with which he wipes his face I hear him whisper.
‘Didn’t do it, never did, ’he says.
I sit still, letting the silence grow. I see a boy of about fifteen with his satchel strapped to the back of his bike. He’s riding home, always crossing this dike. His father misses him, his father beckons to him, but he cycles on.
Suddenly I’m revisited by an old pain.
My head fills with images of my own father when he was still alive. He has waited up for me, as he did so often when I came home late from a party. Things are not going well between him and my mother. He’s alone, now too, sitting in the light of a single standard lamp, the rest of the room dark. He says: ‘Come and sit with me, old man, let’s have a good chat.’ Does he think I haven’t heard? My father repeats his invitation. Before he has time to pour me a drink I’m already tugging at the door-knob.
‘Let’s go, ’I hear Menno saying. The whites of his eyes look bloodshot. What’s he after? Comfort? Something to cheer him up, perhaps? Does he want to hear how I torment my own memory with that one question to which I fear the answer?
I bend over the steering wheel and start the engine.
Before he gets out, Menno points at the floor and says: ‘Your car needs a proper cleaning job.’
I let it go.
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