Ventoux. Bert Wagendorp
through a lawyer with whom I was friendly and sent him a postcard. On it I had written that I would be at his place on 16 March at 11 o’clock, and he should let me know if that didn’t suit him. I got an email in reply. ‘Bring your bike with you,’ it said. ‘You looked as if you were in training.’
‘Bart!’ cried a familiar voice. ‘Good to see you, man! Same as ever! Didn’t shave this morning, I see,’ There was a buzzing tone. ‘Door’s open. Come right up. Fourth floor. Got your bike with you?’
I didn’t reply, but pushed the door open and went to the elevator.
Of all my old friends, André is the most precious to me. Or perhaps I should say: the memories of André are dearest to me. Our friendship is older than we are. Our mothers were friends because our grannies were already friends. We went about together when our mothers sat opposite each other at table with their big tummies. Once we were born, a week apart, we were immediately an inseparable duo.
I have a photo in which the two of us are sitting in a playpen, two boys of eighteen months, in the same pink knickerbockers and the same white jumpers. ‘November 1965, Bart and André’, my mother has written on the back. We are playing with blocks, me with my left hand, André with his right. We have put our free arms around each other. ‘The two of you sat like that for hours,’ says my mother.
I think friendship is based more on shared experiences than on compatibility or attraction. I share more with André than anyone else.
He gave me a Russian bear hug, long and powerful, kissed me on both cheeks, and beamed at me. He was moved, and I was probably the only person in the world who could spot that.
‘Bart, man, I’m so pleased to see you again.’
‘Me too, André.’
‘Coffee? Cappuccino?’
‘I’d love one.’
The huge room was white. White walls, a floor of white tiles, and a white ceiling. In the middle there was a black Gispen table with six Jacobsen chairs around it. In front of the window with a view of the River Maas stood a large sofa; hanging on the wall was a TV screen of cinema proportions. In two corners were two tall speakers. Apart from that, the room was empty.
André’s father was caretaker at the Baudartius, our secondary school. He had been a renowned amateur cyclist with a powerful finishing sprint. In André’s parental home, the living room was full of lamps, vases, and other knick-knacks that old Gerrit had won in the criteriums of the eastern Netherlands. Perhaps that explained André’s sparse interior.
The emptiness spoke for itself and did not beg to be filled. In that emptiness stood a bike, a splendid racing bike. I walked around it once, I touched the stem and stroked the saddle. It was soft brown, like the tape on the handlebars and a strip on the tubes. The bike itself was white. Gold leaf seemed to have been applied on the down and seat tubes of the triangle of the frame.
‘Wow,’ I said. I saw André smiling contentedly as he came into the room with two cups on a tray.
‘Listen a minute.’ He took a remote off the table and pressed the button. I heard a guitar, and a little later a couple of violins, and then Nick Drake: ‘When the day is done, down to earth then sinks the sun…’
André sang along, in a rather hoarse voice. ‘When the night is cold, some get by but some get old…’
He turned the sound down and shot me a questioning look.
‘Fives Leaves Left.’ He nodded with pleasure. ‘Sjaak’s first LP, 1970, I think.’ Sjaak was his elder brother.
‘When he was out I always played this track, do you remember? I actually wasn’t allowed to touch his turntable. There were all kinds of scratches where I put the needle on, just before “Day is Done”. We were very young, weren’t we? Right away, I thought it was the greatest song I’d ever heard. And I still do. That guitar at the beginning, or those violins. I had no idea what the words were about. I do now.’
I didn’t understand why he was playing the track. ‘What a fabulous bike, André. A bit different from that old Raleigh of your father’s.’
He laughed mysteriously. ‘Pegoretti, hand-built. Dario Pegoretti is his name. I went to Caldonazzo, where he lives. Plays only jazz in his workshop. Love, man, love. I’ve never seen so much love. I just stood and watched and I never wanted to leave.’ Now ‘Day is Done’ sounded through the room in a jazz version. ‘Pegoretti is a jazz freak. I’m standing there and he puts this on, in a version by Brad Mehldau.’ I still didn’t understand.
He put his hand on the saddle. ‘This model is the Pegoretti “Day is Done”.’ He stopped talking and looked out of the window.
‘Do you understand anything about chance, Bart?’
‘There’s no such thing as chance. We call things chance for want of a better explanation. The fact that you go to an Italian cycle-maker and he’s making a bike he names after a song that you played forty years ago until the record wore out only seems to be chance, because we have no idea how such a thing is possible, because we are terrified of admitting that it isn’t chance at all.’
‘You haven’t changed a bit, Bart, you’ve always got an answer. So it isn’t coincidence either that you’re here. It wasn’t coincidence that you were sitting in that court with your notepad.’ He looked serious.
‘It was cool calculation. I thought: I’ve got to see André again. Let’s have a look to see where he might be. Hey, he’s on trial.’
‘They couldn’t touch me, could they? Those guys didn’t stand a chance. Suckers.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ I said.
‘Leave it. I mustn’t talk to you about it. You put it nicely. André T., unproven dealer in pleasure and oblivion. That’s how it is. That’s how it was, I should say. I’m going to do other things. Important things. For myself, that is.’
I looked at him and saw that he did not want to go into details about his new activities. Not now, at any rate.
‘Bart, you old wanker. It’s as if you were here yesterday, with that slow Puch moped of yours. Haha.’
‘I was never the Kreidler type. I’m still not, as a matter of fact.’
He looked at me seriously. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘for all those years of silence. I should have responded, at least to the announcement of your daughter’s birth.’
‘I expect you were busy.’
‘Pretty.’
‘No excuse, bastard.’
‘No.’
‘She’ll be 21 soon.’
‘Yes, well anyway, congratulations on your daughter’s birth.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Do you have a photo with you? I’m interested to see what you’ve produced.’
It happened by itself, he said a little later. ‘People always want to know how it could have reached that point, how you wind up in the wrong world. The answer is simple: step by step. You scarcely realize that you’re going irrevocably in a certain direction. Just like people who have the same office jobs all their lives. How did it happen to them?’
‘If you ask me, you were already involved when I got married. With your Porsche and your Mandy.’
‘That’s right. It didn’t work out with Mandy.’
‘And how did it happen?’
‘You say to yourself: this is easy money and I obviously have a talent for it. Let’s carry on with it.’
‘No pangs of conscience?’
‘Pangs of conscience are like muscle ache. You massage them away.’
He