Bonita Avenue (52 page)

She has rented two films, it’s his choice.
Secrets and Lies
doesn’t seem like a good idea (he does not say why), so they curl up next to each other on the sofa for
Magnolia
, which is not unsavory enough to keep him from dozing off. What he dreams, he doesn’t know, he’s in a stifling quagmire, he’s in The Hague, but also in the Delft of his youth, he doesn’t know.

“
Y’KNOW,
” her voice suddenly blares in his ear. He bolts up with a start, she sounds so close by, the crown of her head tickles his chin. “You know what I forgot to mention?” She pauses the DVD.

“I was sleeping …”

“The mail,” she screams, or does it only seem like she’s
screaming? “This strange envelope came last week. Have you had a look at the mail yet?”

He tries to talk and inhale at the same time. “No,” he says in a weak stammer, “well, yes, glanced through it.”

“That brown padded envelope,” she continues, “the fat one. Did you see it? Sent to the wrong address. There wasn’t a stamp, no return address either, I only realized later. Somebody must’ve delivered it by hand.”

“Why’s the movie stopped?”

“Because this suddenly occurred to me. Monday, I think it was. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I opened it up. A
really
strange little package, Siem.
So
strange.” Her voice sounds alarmed, as though a suppressed fear is rearing its head. “I tried to phone you about it.”

There is sand in his mouth, he can’t get a word out, and still he hears something: “What was inside?”

“I’ll just go get it,” she says, and makes a move to get up. “I taped it back shut. It’s not really—”

“Wait,” he says, wide awake now. “It’s upstairs, I think. I took the mail up to my study.” Before she can respond, he’s up off the sofa, walks toward the hall without looking back. “Want some wine?” she calls after him.

Numb, he stumbles up the stairs, his head is a reactor vessel. Throw the envelope out? Confess everything? Play dumb? Has she read the note? Like a zombie he opens the drawer.

“Ah,” she says as he returns to the living room, “so you’ve already opened it.” She sets two glasses of red wine on cork coasters. “And? What do you think?”

“Haven’t looked yet,” he says. Before he’s even sat down she grabs the envelope out of his hands and shakes the contents onto the sofa
between them. The stockings, the panties, the handkerchief, they fall noiselessly to the seat cushion, the jet-black object bounces and lands on the back of his left hand; as though it is a huge insect, a giant caterpillar, a black widow, he yanks back his hand, the thing leaps up, clatters via the coffee table to the tiled floor.

Silence.

He is deft, socially speaking. He knows just how to look when he’s taken a swallow of scalding tea while standing face-to-face with the queen, he can debate in parliament, he can debate in parliament even while being called a fucking wanker. But now, he’s stuck. He slumps back with a groan, his burning back against the cold leather.

Hours later, walking across what is no longer his campus, he tells himself that the story he dished up was consistent and in a certain sense more logical than the truth. Although it was a pretty rough evening, the end of which is not yet in sight—tonight might never end, he thinks, Tineke is going to start brooding, she won’t leave it at this, he knows her, she’s going to fret as well, maybe she’s fretting already, she’s gone to bed, lies there staring up at the ceiling—at the same time he experiences both the relief of confession and the satisfaction of a well-told lie.

A late-autumn breeze drives waves over the athletic fields, the campus is a turbulent sea of curled leaves, the scent of damp dirt and rot forces its way into his stuffed-up nose. Removed from the world, he crosses the wet gravel of the dimly lit 400-meter track, sheltered by a wide ring of dancing alder and hazel trees. He put all the blame on Wilbert—of course he did, without any scruples. The son of a bitch deserves it, finally he’s of some use. Now that he can think it over in relative peace and quiet, Wilbert’s intrusion
seems, all things considered, not so bad after all—as long as
he
keeps a tight rein, of course, he mustn’t forget that.

The ensuing quarrel was out of his control. Tineke’s conviction that the package was not intended for them turned out to be a form of vague self-deception. “Siem?” she said at once. “Are you mixed up with this? Don’t tell me you know something about this.”

The solution presented itself like a mathematical proof, logical, irrefutable, organic …“Yes, dear, well, I do know something about it,” he admitted, but instead of starting at
A
he started somewhere around
Z
, quite naturally, he thought, and yet careering forward, whispering to himself to keep as close as possible to the truth. In a somber tone of voice he told her that the text messages had started that summer, scarcely a week after that reception where Menno Wijn had shown up. At first he had no idea who was sending them, nor what they referred to, but he was hardly pleased to get them. Joni was a whore, that’s what it boiled down to, and did he know, and it was just what he deserved—yeah, it was awful. Some time later—“and here it comes, Tien, brace yourself, this isn’t pretty”—one of those texts contained a website address, advising him to have a look. So he did.

“And? Well? Where are you going with this? Siem—quit being so sinister! What did you find?”

“I’ll explain, honey,” and he took her hand in his. She reacted quite calmly to his account of the website, perhaps because he presented it so calmly, euphemistically, avoiding the word “porn,” while distracting her with his alleged concurrent suspicion that Wilbert was behind those texts—go on, shoot the messenger. “Well, I got the shock of my life,” he said. “Tien, it
was
one of those sites, I couldn’t believe my eyes, although at first I couldn’t believe I was looking at Joni.”

The strange part was that her indignation was not directed at
Wilbert (that’s how accustomed she was to his monkey business, no doubt), nor at Aaron and Joni (she only seemed to partly realize it), but at
him
. Why wait till
now
to bring it up? It was a lot to handle all at once, of course: the nasty erotic junk lying there between them, all that “wanker” stuff. (“Why does he call you that?” “You know what a filthy mouth he has.” “Are you keeping something from me? Siem? What’re you up to?” “Me? Nothing, darling, just calm down.”) Yes, the
why
of his long silence, she made a point of it, the cavernous gap between May 2000 and now. “
Six months
, Siem.”

He reaches the embankment that separates the campus swimming pool from the athletics track. Up the path he climbs, through low shrubs and nettles, to the highest point, where one of his predecessors had, with great ceremony, installed a thinking-bench. In the old days he’d come here to sit and contemplate when there was an important decision to be made.

Tineke asked: “Did you confront her?”

“Yes,” he said, because didn’t he, in a way? His wife sat an arm’s length from him, staring ahead in what appeared to be utter astonishment. Then: “But where do you get off not telling me? Do you think that’s
normal
?”

“I wanted to spare you, sweetheart, I wanted—”

“You wanted to spare me
what?
The truth? Facts? What the hell!”

He offered a spineless apology; she should keep his own worries in mind, and what a tricky subject it was to broach. Besides, after he’d given Joni a talking to, the website was history.

“So what’s
he
after then?” She picked up the stockings and threw them back down.

“Those photos still exist. They’re out there for good.”

Instead of responding to this disquieting remark she wanted to know exactly what he had said to Joni.

“Oh, you know …,” he sputtered, “the kind of things you say in a situation like this, we kept it short, actually.” An answer that did not satisfy her. Rather, it elicited a tirade that rampaged over the real problem, a centrifugal rage that was not about Joni, but about the two of them. She made him out to be the prudish old fart that he essentially is, a fool so devoid of sexuality that she seriously wondered about the scope of his edifying little chat. “You didn’t just give her some sermon, I hope,” she said. “Well,
now
I see why she’s not coming to France this Christmas.” And: “Are
you
surprised those two split up?”

He felt the need to stand up for himself, not so much because she doubted his tact—go on, say it: his parental aptitude—but because she just didn’t seem to get it. “Do you realize what we’re talking about?” he asked. “I’m telling you our daughter has put herself on the Internet as some or other … what’s the word … some kind of
slut
. Do you have any idea what that means?”

“And do you hear your
self
? Who are you to call my daughter a slut?”

“Tineke …,” he said, taken aback by her raised voice, by that “my daughter.”

“Let’s see that website. Am I entitled to my own opinion?”

“Pictures. There’s no websi—”

“Pictures, then. Let me see them. Probably nothing at all. For example. I don’t think you have the foggiest idea of what’s a slut and what’s not. Let’s see them, damn it.”

“Sweetheart,
please
. We’re not going to sit here examining that garbage. It
is
bad, believe me. Just because I, because we don’t … you know … that doesn’t mean I don’t know what …”

“Well?”

“What porn is.”

“Porn? Now suddenly it’s porn?”

This time he was the one to explode. “Why do you think that bastard’s sending me all this crap?” He swiped the lingerie off the sofa, the panties landed on the coffee table, slid across the tabletop. “Because of vacation snapshots?”

“Let’s see them. Now.”

“Tien—I’ll send you a few on Monday. I can’t do it. Not here.”

When he wakes up the next morning, she’s already up, there’s a note on the breakfast table, she’s gone for a walk, she has to think. He’s glad of it. After breakfast he builds a fire in the living room fireplace and installs himself in the sunroom with a pile of dossiers. But all he does is think up scenarios: say she calls Joni again, say she asks her for an explanation, what’s the chance that their daughter squeals on him? And what if he were to call Joni himself? Keep one step ahead? He tries to imagine that conversation: him trying, one way or another, to make clear to her, to convince her, that he … that he doesn’t … 
lust after her
.

He tries to figure out how to get his hands on that 100 grand without anyone noticing. There’s still a U.S. bank account with twenty or thirty thousand dollars, MeesPierson manages the rest of his Spinoza grant, plus a few hundred thousand in savings. He turns on the TV, tunes into a current affairs talk show, but can’t keep his mind on it.

How about making a deal with Wilbert? The very idea—negotiating with his son—infuriates him. Is he going senile? Luckily he is reasonably certain Tineke did not see the blackmail note. Suddenly he yearns for The Hague. Immerse himself in his department. He calls his chauffeur and asks if he can come and pick him up that evening.

It’s already afternoon when Tineke gets home, packed tightly
in a cap and his scarf, but still she’s freezing, with eyes that have clearly been crying. He warms up pea soup for her, she seems less upset than yesterday evening, she asks why he doesn’t go to the police, the threats seems serious enough, they’ve come from a recidivist, give me just one good reason why not?

“Joni.”

“Joni?”

“Yes, Joni. Just think of
her
, will you. She’s done her best to keep that website a secret, and now you want to go to the police with it? We’ll have to tell them everything. There might be a court case. We’ll have to talk to
her
about it. Exactly what she doesn’t want. Even Wilbert understands that. Not to mention the danger of it leaking out.”

She stands with her broad back to the fireplace, palms of her hands turned toward the fire. “Those people are bound to secrecy.”

“Tineke,” he says theatrically, “don’t be so incredibly naïve. She’s the daughter of the Minister of Education. You want it juicier? OK. Then ring up Bill Clinton.”

“Cut it out, Siem.”

“Honey,” he says, “we’re talking about Joni’s future.
That’s
what concerns me.”

“How’d the interview go?”

“You have to get off here.”

“Was she bitchy?”

“
Off here
. Not especially. She was clever. Interested.”

“But she’s a woman. Women have ulterior motives.”

“Course not.”

“A woman talks nice to you and only sticks it to you later. Once she’s back home sitting at her laptop with a cup of tea, she’ll skin you alive.”

“Speed limit’s fifty here.”

“Skin
us
alive.”

“Rusty, I’m a woman too, remember? You’re talking crap. FYI, I know exactly what I said.”

Too much, that’s what. That Mary Jo Harland was a pro; first she plied me with intense empathy, then she tipped me over like a tub of dishwater. Within half an hour she’d got on tape that my father had committed suicide and I hadn’t gone to the funeral. It took a certain amount of wangling over the phone to see that this didn’t get into the article. That compassion of hers was probably still lying in the rental car.

“Did you give her a tour?”

“Of course I gave her a tour.
You
invited her out to Coldwater. What: ‘Sorry, off limits, we’re making WMDs here’?”

“I assumed you’d take her to whatsit across the street. Or to Starbucks. That’s what
I’d
have done.”

A couple of minutes of silence. Then I said: “Take Alameda here, get onto Harbor Freeway only after Little Tokyo. Why aren’t we picking Vince up? He lands at LAX, right? Might have been nice.”

Rusty’s protégé ran his own site somewhere in Cleveland, Ohio. The first interview was a bit strange; Vince seemed like a capable guy, he expressed himself clearly and concisely—
if
he expressed himself, that is, because he was as taciturn as an oracle, and so bone-dry and listless that I was afraid he’d slip into a coma. On the open notebook page in front of me during the interview was a single, boldly inked word: “DULL.”