The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old

  Then we went down the list of all the people we know who have dementia. We decided that about half of them are quite unhappy, or very much so. ‘Therefore the other half can’t be that badly off. Not much worse off, anyway, than most of the other residents here. That’s the optimistic conclusion,’ said Grietje, and went on to say that she wouldn’t even think of ending her life prematurely.

  As if to answer the question I had not dared ask.

  The gout is already a bit better. The pills are working. I am even able to hobble about a little.

  Thursday, 3 October

  In our subtropical world of fatuous blabbermouths, you hear at least ten times a morning that everything was better in the old days. Yesterday Mrs De Vries, in a voice filled with nostalgia, said that there always used to be time for a coffee and a little chat with your neighbours. Evert remarked that in her case, then, nothing had changed.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘For years I’ve had to listen to your non-stop jabbering, Vera, except when you shut up to take a sip of coffee.’

  An indignant ‘Well!’ was the answer.

  And for the first time since I have known her, Vera was quiet for a full five minutes. When the five minutes were up, she haughtily demanded that Evert address her as ‘Mrs De Vries’ from now on. Most people in here do call each other by their last names, a relic, presumably, from the time when everything was so much better and people still had respect for one another. Evert’s the only one who calls everyone by their first name, no matter who.

  I am quite sprightly again today, and feel I can safely have a drop this evening. I find I am more addicted than I thought. You may not realize it as long as you’re in the habit of drinking, but after a few days of imposed abstinence, the longing for a nip can take a terrible toll on your mood.

  In defence of my alcohol dependence, I can always tell myself that at my age it makes no difference anyway. So I feel justified in pouring myself a little preprandial glass of wine, the first of the night. Not so long ago I’d also light up a cigar, but, alas, that pleasure is denied to me now. Smoking makes me cough my lungs out.

  Friday, 4 October

  On World Animal Day there’s no meat or fish on the menu. We get tofu balls with endive-potato mash instead. A small gesture. Tomorrow I’ll take an extra helping of meat.

  It’s not as if the mousetraps are put away on 4 October; we don’t stop swatting mosquitoes either. There are animals, and then there are animals. The same goes for humans: some get shot or starve to death, and others get to live in a mansion with a swimming pool.

  Mrs Stelwagen summoned me to her office to ask if I could think of a nice parting gift for Anja. I could not.

  ‘Cost no object,’ she insisted. Her conscience must be troubling her.

  ‘Well then, I suppose an electric bike would be nice.’

  She thought that was an excellent idea. I had expected her to fob Anja off with a rubbishy watch or something. I think I have done Anja a good turn with my inspired suggestion.

  This afternoon I am off to see my scooter guy. Nice to know that for the first time in my life I have my own ‘go-to guy’ for something. I’m going to ask him to order a windscreen for it. The past few days’ stiff east wind has been making my excursions bracing to say the least, even with the autumnal sun shining. A windscreen ought to make it more bearable.

  Saturday, 5 October

  Henk Krol, he who scaled the barricades for the sake of our pensions, has had a great fall. It seems he was rather selective in his fight for pension fairness. He didn’t think it necessary to pay into a pension fund for his own employees.

  It now transpires that at least half the residents always thought Krol was a shifty sort of fellow.

  The fact that there was a picture of him in the paper posing with both his ex-wife and ex-husband didn’t improve matters. ‘If you can’t even make up your mind if you’re queer or straight, how can you look after the interests of three million senior citizens? Bugger off, is what I say!’ Thus spoke the ever-nuanced Mr Bakker.

  But with Henk Krol’s resignation many fellow residents have tumbled into a deep political hole. Who are they going to vote for now?

  A good number of residents, especially the ladies, wish they could vote for Princess Beatrix.

  All in all, trying to talk politics in here is not for sissies.

  It’s not as if anyone has anything interesting or sensible to say anyway. Evert recently asked the assembled, out of the blue, if any of them were still keeping their pubic hair properly trimmed. You should have seen their faces.

  Later he explained that it’s sometimes necessary to use shock tactics to keep our little table from getting too crowded.

  Sunday, 6 October

  Edward has taped a piece of paper on to one of the tables downstairs that says: Please, no ORGAN RECITALS at this table. Evert added another restriction underneath: And not a word about DEAD SPOUSES (m or f) either.

  There was puzzlement all round.

  ‘What do you mean, no organ recitals?’ asked Mrs Dirkzwager, who upon taking a seat always slaps down her automatic pill dispenser next to her cup of decaf and proceeds to swallow her daily medicines one by one, announcing with a sigh what each is for. And that happens every day, believe it or not.

  Edward laboriously explained that while you are certainly free to bring up your various organs, your troubles and your dear departed ones, you just can’t do it at this table.

  ‘Some people would rather not listen to other people bitching and moaning all the time,’ Evert clarified.

  The room separated uncertainly into two contingents: a small group at the No Organ Recitals table, the rest shuffling off to the other tables, hesistant whether or not to voice their usual health complaints out loud.

  By afternoon Edward’s notice had disappeared.

  The National Senior Song Fest is coming up. The preliminary rounds are being held soon. Let me not fall into the error that was raised a moment ago: namely, bitching and moaning.

  Just one remark, then: the real winners are the deaf and hard of hearing.

  Monday, 7 October

  There are several ladies in here who are germophobes; there are also several other ladies whose lifestyle, to put it kindly, does not focus on personal hygiene. The two factions are often at loggerheads.

  At dinner, Mrs Aupers, one of those that don’t believe in changing their stockings on a monthly basis, tried to persuade two of her table-mates, both great proponents of hygiene, that all that washing and scrubbing made no sense.

  ‘There are at least eighty kinds of fungus on the heel of your foot alone. I read it somewhere. Can you imagine what’s living in your crotch?’

  ‘Please! I’m eating!’ one of the clean and godly ladies exclaimed.

  ‘I only want to say that I don’t see the point of all that lathering and showering. Your hands are a dog’s breakfast of germs and mould too, you know.’

  Well done: the two dirt-phobic ladies called for the nurse. Could Mrs Aupers please be so kind as to keep her opinions to herself at mealtimes? Mrs Aupers stood up for her freedom of expression. A row broke out. In the end Aupers, in the grubby dress showcasing what had been on the menu the past few days, was made to go and sit by herself at another table.

  But the harm was done. Most did not care to finish what was left on their plates. Plump Mrs Zonderland was the only one to take advantage of the situation: she made quick work of four custard puddings, normally one of the home’s most popular desserts. Usually the bowls are scraped or licked clean.

  Tuesday, 8 October

  Do you think a bloke like Henk Krol has been walking around all these years worrying, ‘Oh, I do hope no one starts investigating those pension contributions I refused to pay for my employees’? Don’t you suppose the suppressed anxiety must have undermined his immoderate self-satisfaction just a tad? I hate to think how many other people there must be living with the threat of exposure. The scandals that do come out mu
st be just the tip of the iceberg.

  Anja’s send-off party was yesterday afternoon. It was better than I’d expected, actually. Some of her colleagues performed a song that wasn’t half bad, and there was a chap who gave a nice, respectful speech that even contained a hint of criticism of the corporate culture here. Stelwagen didn’t bat an eye. Her smile was firmly pasted on for the duration of the party. I wonder who that chap was, in fact.

  Anja was delighted with her electric bike.

  We promised to stay in touch. A sincere declaration of intention. We’ll have to see about putting it into practice.

  Old people often lose touch with their last remaining friends outside the care home; they stop visiting each other or doing things together. They dread having to take any initiative. If you want to be kind, you can attribute it to fear and lack of energy. I think it’s laziness and apathy. Not letting yourself grow lonely costs a great deal of – sometimes fruitless – effort.

  Wednesday, 9 October

  I heard a dull thud in the room next to mine, and then a faint groaning. The walls are thin here. I rushed into the hall and knocked; no answer. The door was locked but the cleaner just happened to come along, and I prevailed upon him to open it with his skeleton key.

  Mrs Meijer was lying on the floor of her kitchenette and you didn’t have to be a doctor to see that her arm was twisted at a very odd angle. It was a sickening sight. I alerted reception and a short time later Meijer was on her way to hospital on a stretcher.

  That was last night.

  It turns out that she broke both her arm and a leg.

  She had used a chair to climb up on the counter in order to dust the tops of the cabinets. ‘But that’s the way I always do it,’ she is said to have groaned. Makes perfect sense.

  Myself, I have accidentally sat down on my glasses three times this week. In the end it proved to be too much strain for one of the arms, which promptly gave up the ghost. This was my backup pair, since I sat on my good pair last month. I repaired the arm with some tape borrowed from the handyman, and finally found the time to bring the other pair to the optician.

  ‘I’ll see if there’s anything I can do about this, Sir.’

  Thursday, 10 October

  When the Nobel Prize Committee phoned Ralph Steinman a few years ago to congratulate him on winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine, he wasn’t able to take the call because he had died three days earlier.

  Rotten luck for Ralph, wasn’t it. It’s not every day you win a prize like that, so you’d want to be alive for it, wouldn’t you. On the other hand, as it turned out luck was on his side, even if he didn’t know it. You see, the rule is that Nobel prizes can’t be awarded to dead people, so the committee had to scramble to come up with a new rule: you can win the prize if you’re dead, as long as the committee doesn’t know you’re dead.

  It’s rumoured that someone from the organization now has to speak to the winner personally on the phone before the announcement can be made. Therefore, learned ladies and gentlemen, there’s no point keeping your deaths quiet.

  Besides, isn’t it the Nobel Committee’s own fault? Awarding a prize ten, twenty, sometimes thirty years after a famous discovery is asking for trouble. Who knows how many dead professors have had to miss the greatest day in their professional lives?

  The people here felt very sorry for Ralph Steinman when I told them about it.

  ‘Another thing that’s tragic is that Vincent van Gogh never saw one cent of all the millions his paintings were worth later,’ sighed Mrs Aupers.

  ‘So it’s lucky he’s dead, then!’ Evert concluded cheerfully.

  The Higgs boson isn’t really on the radar in here.

  Friday, 11 October

  Great brouhaha over a Russian diplomat arrested by police in The Hague.

  ‘For a drunk Russian child-abuser, palliative sedation seems more appropriate than diplomatic immunity.’ Well said, Graeme! Ingenious linkage of two unconnected items currently in the news. The only problem is that hardly anyone understood what you were saying.

  ‘We’ aren’t very fond of Russians, and aren’t inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt; that’s evident from the conversation over coffee.

  ‘One look at that Ruskie’s vodka-mug says it all,’ opined our Mr Bakker.

  ‘Some travel brochures make a point of saying that they don’t cater to Russians in their hotels,’ said Mrs Snijder, who has never in her life ventured further afield than the Veluwe district.

  As far as I’m concerned: thank the Lord that we have Mark Rutte and not Vladimir Putin.

  What can explain the fact that we are so bad at remembering names?

  ‘Christ, what’s his name again? You know, that singer in that band. There was a blonde girl too. Begins with an A. It’s on the tip of my tongue.’

  You find yourself suddenly unable to pry the name of someone you’ve known for years from the right brain cell. Then, hours later, the name will pop into your head unbidden.

  I have to rack my brain more and more often for a name or a word, only to come up empty. I should just accept it, but it bothers the dickens out of me.

  Don’t let it, Groen.

  Saturday, 12 October

  The director called the fire drill a great success. If the point of a drill is to create as much chaos as possible, I’m in total agreement with her.

  They appeared as if out of nowhere up and down the corridors in their fluorescent vests: the ‘First Responders’. The alarm hadn’t even gone off, so the emergency personnel had the opportunity to warn us that it wasn’t real. ‘To prevent heart attacks,’ Stelwagen explained later.

  Knowing it was only a drill meant that most inmates took their time finishing their coffees, and then went back upstairs to fetch a cardigan, because it was chilly outside. The resulting queues for the lifts deserved a traffic report. As everyone knows, in case of fire, do not take the lift. Most residents categorically refused to take the stairs, however, which is understandable if you’re pushing a rollator. They just stood there waiting for a lift that never arrived. Finally the emergency-team chief decided that upon further consideration it wasn’t a fire, but a bomb scare, which meant the lifts could be used after all. By that time one lady had fallen down the stairs and someone else had had his fingers crushed in the automatic fire doors.

  I hope that in the case of a real fire, the flames will take their own sweet time, because it took thirty-five minutes for the last resident to get out, and by that time the first ones had already gone back inside, the staff leading the retreat, because it was freezing out there.

  Sunday, 13 October

  I’m livid just thinking about it.

  It was unexpectedly nice out yesterday, and I decided to take my mobility scooter for a little drive. Shortly after I’d set off, a car, seemingly from nowhere, swerved in front of me. I braked to a halt. A motorcyclist hurtling towards me from the other direction had to screech to a stop in order not to crash into me. The biker, twenty years old or so, shot me a dirty look. ‘Out of the way, you old git!’

  ‘Mr Old Git to you. A little respect, please. Isn’t that what you young people are always going on about: respect?’ I bumped my fist to my chest and drawled, ‘No disrespectin’, man.’

  ‘Back off, old git!’

  I backed up to make room to let him through.

  Leaning close, he spat square in my face, then revved his engine and tore off. The gob of spit dripped down my cheek. I wiped it off with my sleeve in disgust.

  I drove home seething with impotent fury.

  Now I read that ‘my’ mayor, Eberhard van der Laan, has prostate cancer. That piece of news doesn’t do my mood any favours. Amsterdam’s mayor is one of the few people I admire. A nice bloke and an effective leader – a rare combination.

  I glance out the window, where it’s been raining cats and dogs for the past three hours, and it occurs to me that unless I go and call on Eefje right now, I might just consider killing myself. And if she isn?
??t in, I’ll seek out Evert. If he isn’t in either, I’ll just have to spend the rest of the day in bed.

  Monday, 14 October

  Luckily Eefje was home yesterday. She has a soothing, cheering influence on me; all she has to do is just be there. She listened to my story about the young lout. When I got to the spitting part, her head jerked back in revulsion, as if she felt the disgusting gob hit her own face.

  ‘If you’d had a gun, you’d have blasted him – bang! – right off his motorbike, I imagine.’

  ‘That’s a thought … But I would have missed because I was shaking so much, and I’d probably have struck an innocent bystander instead. So it’s just as well I didn’t have one.’

  Then Eefje suggested we throw all caution to the wind for once, and knock back a ‘coffee with legs’ before lunch. For those not in the know: that’s an Irish coffee.

  It helped.

  At teatime Mrs Bastiaans gave a report on the Consumers’ Guide deep-fat fryer tests.

  The Moulinex Pro Clean AMC 7 received a ‘double plus’ for its ‘crumb-sticking performance’. Mrs Bastiaans wondered if that means crumbs will or will not stick to the chips. She considers herself a chip expert but isn’t sure about the significance of crumb-sticking performance. To make this discussion even more interesting: the report was in a Consumers’ Guide from five years ago, and the care home has a strict prohibition against frying of any sort. And there you sit, more or less forced to listen to that bunk.

  Tuesday, 15 October

  There was an announcement on the noticeboard that the annual Residents’ Association outing is cancelled owing to disagreement amongst board members. A new election is to be held in the spring. All current members are putting themselves forward for another term.