Friday, 10 July
Greece possibly leaving the EU, the Chinese stock market slump, a new tax plan, refugees on the high seas; it doesn’t make us eat one ginger biscuit less. The influence of the world outside our cocoon is largely limited to the seasons. The cocoon has started to show some cracks, however. Even the most introverted residents are starting to notice how many vacant rooms there are. It is rumoured that some people are being asked to move to another room, so that a whole section can be emptied. Can’t the Residents’ Committee do something about that?
The Residents’ Committee is meeting this afternoon to discuss it.
Mrs Hoensbroek just ate a chocolate still in its foil wrapper. Her tablemate looked on in astonishment, but waited until Hoensbroek had laboriously managed to work it all down to ask, ‘Why didn’t you take the wrapper off?’
‘Wrapper?’
‘Yes, you just ate the foil as well.’
‘Did I?’
Mrs Hoensbroek picked up another chocolate and studied it. Ah, indeed, it was wrapped in foil. She called the nurse over. Who told her not to worry.
Well, at least something of interest to report.
Omar Sharif is dead. Ria cut his picture out of the newspaper and pinned it to the noticeboard.
She said she’d seen Doctor Zhivago at least seven times, the last time just a couple of months earlier, on the telly.
‘I cried all seven times. A bit less every time, but still.’
Antoine gazed tenderly at his wife. He is still in love with her. If you really love someone, it’s OK for her to love Omar Sharif as well.
Saturday, 11 July
Many people prefer to watch the Youth News rather than the regular news. At least the Youth News always has something cheerful to report on: a newborn polar bear cub, a dog that plays the trumpet, the return of a parrot given up for dead. It’s often something to do with animals.
That’s the sort of thing they ought to show on the Eight O’Clock News. It should end on a positive note is the widely shared opinion, and I must agree. After the weather report, a little levity, to signal: come on, people, it isn’t all doom and gloom.
We were this close to having to bury our friend Antoine. Not that it wouldn’t have been a fitting end for him. ‘He died while eating,’ the obituary might have said. He’d been enjoying an illicit homemade tartlet with his eyes closed so as to savour it more fully, you understand. In this case, it meant that he couldn’t see the wasp he was biting into as well. A second later his eyes flew open wider than wide; he’d been stung in the cheek. Sister Herwegen, always on her toes, promptly came up with an old-fashioned antidote for wasp stings: a cut onion. His cheek nevertheless swelled up to worrisome proportions and the doctor was called in.
‘You are very lucky, Mr Travemundi, a few centimetres further in, and you could have been a goner,’ he said after a brief inspection of the puffed-up interior of Antoine’s mouth. Ria started to tremble – retroactively, since she had at first thought her husband was just putting it on.
‘Well,’ said Edward, chuckling, ‘I suppose that for the time being, at least, there’ll be no more of that la-di-dah with your eyes closed.’ Antoine’s appetite is temporarily spoilt. And every resident now inspects every biscuit from every angle before taking a cautious nibble. Mrs Hoensbroek has totally sworn off biccies. Actually, it’s all for the best. She tends to buy dresses that are one or two wishful sizes too small, XL instead of XXL, or even XXXL. Perhaps her clothes will start to feel a little less tight now. She doesn’t consider herself fat. She claims heavy bones and water retention are responsible for her girth. The daily cream cake and all the biscuits and chocolates with her coffee should certainly not have much to do with it.
The wasps, by the way, are very early this year.
Sunday, 12 July
‘It’s high time we began working on our international restaurant project again,’ Antoine said at our last-minute convocation of the Old-But-Not-Dead Club. ‘We’ll fall behind on the culinary front if we’re not careful. Does anyone have any ideas?’
Edward put his hand up. He volunteered to reserve somewhere for Tuesday evening.
I have again asked Evert when he is going to inform his Old-But-Not-Dead Club friends that his membership is soon to expire.
‘When they ask me about it, not before,’ he replied. I must have looked puzzled. ‘When people start noticing of their own accord that something’s not right with me, that’ll be soon enough to confirm it. Until then, there’s no reason for anyone to know I’m dying. I’d rather not have to face the blubbering and lamentation, or chums who don’t know what to do or say.’
It took me a night to think it over, but Evert is right: it’s often best to put off announcing the bad news as long as possible. Especially if the victim in question, in this case Evert, won’t exactly be overjoyed if his nearest and dearest start mourning his departure while he’s still alive.
I see now that I am the one chosen to share the preliminary awareness of his impending death. For even Evert needs someone to confide in and exchange black humour with. He knows I won’t indulge in weeping and lamentation.
‘You can blubber in your own good time, Groen. Not while I’m alive.’
I think Leonie can tell he is doing poorly. She tends to stay close, and looks after him discreetly but tenderly, almost intimately. And Evert allows himself to be coddled and seems even to be enjoying it in his own oafish way. She’s allowed to straighten his jacket, to brush crumbs from his cheek. Whereas Evert disparagingly refers to most elderly women as ‘old biddies’, his name for Leonie is ‘pet’. That’s how he expresses his fondness for her.
Monday, 13 July
‘You’ve got to hand it to that El Chapo chap,’ Mr Pot remarked. The fact that the drug lord was responsible for bumping off quite a few people is less significant in Pot’s books than his escape from one of Mexico’s highest-security prisons.
‘Through a tunnel one and a half kilometres long! They even had a motorbike waiting for him down there so he wouldn’t have to walk the whole way.’ Pot was all hopped up about it. He grew even more excited when someone else mentioned that, back in 2001, Chapo had escaped prison in a laundry basket.
‘I don’t suppose that in Mexico they’d ever heard of the chest of books Hugo Grotius hid in to escape from prison,’ said Graeme, ‘otherwise that enormously heavy laundry basket of dirty underwear would have set off some alarm bells.’
Tuesday, 14 July
No, no, we definitely should not view the vacancies as a prelude to the home’s closing, but as a step of a much broader process of optimization and transition.
‘What does that optimization and transition look like, then?’ Leonie demanded.
These matters were still subject to a more narrow decision-making process by the board, as long as they were still ‘under discussion’, the director could not, to her great regret, give us any further information. Although, naturally, she would like nothing better than to be allowed at this time to discuss these matters with the Residents’ Committee.
‘I do get the sense, nevertheless, that this committee is not being taken entirely seriously, I feel like we’re being kept dangling,’ said Leonie curtly.
‘Oh, no, not at all,’ Stelwagen insisted, with a condescending s