Adri van der Heijden - Tonio: a requiem memoir

Adri van der Heijden (b. 1951) is one of Hollands greatest and most highly awarded authors. His oeuvre consists mainly of two sagas: The Toothless Time and Homo Duplex. He has also written four other requiems, one of which is about his fathers death, His Fathers Ashes.

Tonio won three of Hollands most prestigious literary awards: the Constantijn Huygens Prize, the 2012 Libris Literature Prize, and the 2012 NS Readers Award for the Best Book of the Year. It has been a major bestseller in Holland and in Germany, and this edition marks its first appearance in English.

1

T-niii-!

Never have I called out his name more often than in the scant four months since Black Whitsun. If I add at the top of my voice, I am referring to my inner voice, which is infinitely louder and more far-reaching than anything my vocal cords, brought into vibration by a thrust of air, are capable of. Theres no sign of it on the outside.

Compare it with crying. Sometimes Im ashamed of myself in front of Miriam, who, unlike me, is able to surrender completely to the natural force of a sudden fit of sobbing.

Even though you dont see the tears, Minchen, I am crying with you, I once explained to her (with a choked voice, mind you). For me, this damn grief is like internal bleeding. It trickles away, or gushes, on the inside.

2

At the beginning of Vladimir Nabokovs novel Lolita, the narrator savours the name of his lover, syllable by syllable: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

My sons name begins with a similar tap of the tongue behind the front teeth (T ), upon which the lips separate in order to render the vowel o in all its fullness. Via the sinuses, higher up, the remaining breath produces a slightly shrieking nasal sound (niii ) little more than a brief interruption of the drawn-out ooo, which then further resounds, unhindered, through the still-open mouth.

T-niii-!

What a perfect thing to call him, we thought literally, too, so that later, when he was playing outside, we could call him in to dinner. The swell of the second o could easily reach the end of the street, if need be all the way to the Jacob Obrechtplein, where one day the boy would hang around the synagogue with his chums.

When Miriam was pregnant it never occurred to us to establish the babys sex via an ultrasound. Even without scientific confirmation, we were both convinced it would be a girl I dont remember why. We wanted to name her Esme, after the opera Esme that Theo Loevendie was composing at the time. He regularly kept us up to date on its progress over at Caf Welling.

A few weeks before her due date, Miriam came into the bathroom, where I was in the tub nursing a hangover. The door was ajar; she nudged it further open with her pointy belly, which jutted out even more from the way she planted both hands behind her back.

What if its a boy?

My head hurt too much to tackle that one. For months, the house had been littered with sheets of notes for a paper Miriam was writing for her Dutch literature work group: a comparative study of Thomas Manns novella Tonio Krger and Alfred Kossmanns novel Smell of Sadness. I only had to see a page of her notes from a distance, and the name Tonio Krger caught my eye. Copies of Tonio Krger were strewn around the living room, even the kitchen a variety of editions, in German and Dutch. Miriam read passages to me from her paper. I heard her discussing it on the phone with the docent, with her fellow students. And always the rounded euphony of that name: like it says in Tonio Krger

A boy, I repeated, extending Miriam a sudsy arm. Then well have no choice but to name him Tonio.

A light smack on my hand sent the soapsuds fluttering. Okay. Miriam wobbled out of the bathroom. Case closed, apparently. Esme still had top billing, but now we had a boys name on hand, in the unlikely event that.

3

A few days after the bathroom scene, our son was born, a good three weeks prematurely. Standing at the incubator, I whispered his name, reading it from the pale-pink bandage stuck to his tiny chest. It was starting to grow on me.

To. Ni. O.

It had the ring of a rolling, breaking, rumbling wave to it. Ni. A case of declawed negation.

All right, it was a gamble, but the name Tonio turned out to fit him like a glove. Once the little blindmans eyes opened wide, they looked at you with the same roundness and directness as the boldface os on the birth announcement.

My nickname for him Tot came up more or less by itself. It got a droolier laugh out of him than at his real name, so I guessed he wouldnt murder me for it later. When the mafia don Tot Riina was arrested in Sicily a few years later, a visitor who overheard me call my little one by his nickname said: Thats pretty bold, naming your kid after a mafioso.

Before yesterday Id never heard of this Riina guy. I was always reminded of Antonio de Curtis. The Neapolitan comedian. Stage name: Tot. He was in Pasolinis Uccellacci e uccellini. Hell of a clown.

Years later, whenever Tonio pulled one of his pranks, I called him Tot les Hros, after the movie by Jaco Van Dormael. Then he laughed even harder, but a bit nervously once Id explained I was calling him a hero, and he knew you could take that in all sorts of ways.

Miriams nickname for him at first was, I thought, more Vondel-like: Tonijntje, little tuna. When she spoke it she put so much love in her voice that he knew he had nothing to fear and, self-satisfied, he was happy to show it.

Okay, five more minutes, Tonijn, but you have to come sit here with me.

Im sad.

About Runner, heh (Runner was his Russian dwarf hamster, found dead in his wood shavings months before. Off and on, when it suited him, Tonio would grieve for him. He and his guitar teacher had composed a brief requiem for Runner.)

Im so sad hes dead.

Sad, but you dont feel like crying.

I feel tears you cant see.

4

With all my angst on the subject of his vulnerability, it never occurred to me that the lively pair of os that smiled at me so eagerly via the name Tonio were typographically identical to those that glowered out from the rigid congruence of the word dood death.

The last time Miriam and I saw him, two surgical drains stuck out of his forehead, a short one and a slightly longer one, like horns. They had been inserted earlier that day to siphon off excess fluid from his swelling brain. Even with everything going through my mind at that moment, my own brain still had room for a scene from the movie Camille Claudel, which Miriam and I had seen many years earlier. I wanted to remind her of it, but no, not there, not then.