This is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
or to actual events is purely coincidental. (hdj)
One Monday, Liesbet said to me, “Remember, Wednesday evening we have to go to Jan and Marie’s.” “Wednesday”, I cried out. We’d talked about it once that summer, but I never gave it another thought. I prefer to think about pleasant things. I said, “Lies, why must you plague me. I don’t like Jan and Marie at all. They always talk about being sick – about aches and pains and doctors.” “Nothing to be done, my boy”, said Liesbet, “its only an evening and you’ll get over it. Besides, Lucas and Dina are also invited.”
There was no escape. On Wednesday evening, we found ourselves on Jan and Marie’s doorstep. They live just a few minutes’ walk from us. Jan, who has been retired for some time, opened the door. He looked as fresh as a wrung-out dishcloth, but that’s not unusual. “Oh, hi there,” he said tiredly, “come, come in out of the cold, but it’s not the best time, because I’m not much good right now.”
“Are you sick,” I asked. “Sick!” he cried in despair, “what is sick? It’s my feet again, man. And my back, and my neck. Everything is falling apart. My whole body is screaming in pain, but what can I do about it?”
Then Marie came to the door. “Come on in folks. So sorry, it’s like that again — nothing but aches and pains.” “Well, we should probably leave then,” I cried eagerly. But there was no way — don’t even think about it, leave again? After all, they were used to the suffering, and besides, the coffee was on. So, a little while later, the four of us sat together in their living room, Liesbet next to Marie, who was soon talking about her medicine.
I was sitting across from Jan. His foot, in a thick woollen sock, lay propped up between us on a small table. “Look,” Jan points out, “the pain shoots down from my ankle to my toes. If I just keep it moving, it’s not so bad.” He was wiggling his toes up and down in his socks and, for a moment, I thought of Jan Klaassen and his puppet show.
“But yah,” sighed Jan, “at the hospital they can never figure it out. Quacks, those doctors, they just let you suffer, you know. But they do get fat salaries. I sent another notice for the church bulletin yesterday too. But, like I say, pastors and elders aren’t much help either. Ach, Arie, I have to unload somewhere, and with you, at least, I can count on some sympathy.”
“How about regularly soaking your foot in hot water,” I suggested. “Warm water,” cried Jan, “man, I do nothing but soak in warm water, for my back too. Lately, I’m in the bathtub more than in my chair. Anko, my son says, ‘Dad could have been a seal.’ That’s just a joke of course, you know. But do you think it helps? Not a muscle, man, not . . . a . . . muscle.”
I said, “you should move to the Sahara, Jan, it’s nice and warm there.” “Yes, yes,” Jan said, “but at night you seize up from the cold. That kind of temperature change can’t be good for you.” He was quiet for a while, perhaps totally perplexed by his own wisdom. And he kept wiggling his toes. I couldn’t stop looking at it, because you don’t see that kind of thing very often, toes wiggling.
I tried to see if I could get him off his hobbyhorse. I said, bluntly, “we had another great week in Egmond aan Zee last August.” But Jan wasn’t paying attention, because he had suddenly started madly twirling his head. “Oh, my neck, my neck,” he said, “I have to keep everything lubricated, or it gets stuck. Man, this morning my neck was so stiff, it was as if my head was stuck onto my body. ‘Marie,’ I said, ‘hold on to my head, tightly.’ She did, and then I twisted my body sideways with a jerk. ‘Lovely,’ says my neck, and it’s loose again.”
I’d had enough by then, so I looked out the window and said, “Lucas and Dina should have been here by now.” Jan said nothing more for a while, and I listened to the women. “Yes,” said Marie, “then I have Oxipan to make my blood thin, and Hemopan to make my blood thick if it gets too thin. What did you say about Lucas and Dina? She turned towards me. I dated her once for a while, but was glad now that nothing had come of it. My Liesbet walks a good five kilometres along the canal every morning and always comes back spry, with no complaints about being tired or some or another ache.
“I wonder why they’re not here yet,” I said to Marie, “you invited them too, didn’t you?” “Oh no,” said Marie, “the four of you coming is still a month away.” My Liesbet turned red and then white, reached for her purse and looked in her notebook. “Oh, you’re right, Marie,” she said. “I was quite mistaken. There it is: on the twelfth of November, and now it’s only the twelfth of October.”
This was my chance. “Oh, oh, dear,” I said, “how could you get that wrong? Well, we’d better head for home soon then, folks, especially since you are both in such a bad way.” “Are you kidding,” said Marie, “you can’t leave so soon, you know. After all, here we are, sitting and having a lovely chat. And later we’ll have some nice cups of fruit.”
Fruit in sweet juice. That now too. There was no escaping, and we had to keep listening to Jan’s plaintive tales about toes, medicine and doctors. I kept listening. At ten o’clock, we were sitting with fat glasses of cloudy fruit syrup, in which floated limp, slippery apricots that reminded me of the jellyfish we had seen in the sea near Egmond. I said to Jan, who was just talking about his stomach ailments, “There were quite a few jellyfish in the sea again, man, those really big, fat jellyfish.” But even with the jellyfish I could not get Jan’s attention, and I sank back dejectedly into my chair, where a broken spring was bruising my left side.
Jan kept laying it on thick and, along with the sappy storytelling, kept his toes wiggling and his head spinning. My eyes began to roll and soon started to get heavy. I could barely keep them open. Just when I thought, “I can’t keep this up anymore,” Liesbet stood up and said very kindly, “but Marie, we should be going home now, you know.”
It was eleven o’clock. A little later, we walked back to our own house in silence. We sat for a while over a glass of wine. “Why do you keep turning your head,” said Liesbet, “keep it still.” I said, “Sorry, I didn’t realize.”
When we went to bed, I was soon asleep, tired as I was from the weight of Jan’s miserable monologues. But not long after, I woke up with a tearing pain in my side. Ow, I said. “Well,” said Liesbet a bit angrily, “not only are you snoring, but you’re also wiggling your toes and turning your head. Please stop it.” “I can’t,” I complained, “it’s gotten into my blood. Do we really have to see Jan and Marie again in a month?” “Maybe they’ll be all better by then,” Liesbet said more gently.
The next morning, I strolled through the village. And who should approach with jaunty stride and without even a walking stick? My best friend Jan. I called out to him, “Jan, how is your toe, your neck and your back?” His face beamed. “It’s as if someone else has taken that heavy burden off of me. I feel like a spring chicken — so good. Come and visit me again!”