By Jeroen Blokhuis

In those days I often climbed onto the roof of the hospital, sometimes alone, but often with my friend Ewout. It was a kind of addiction. The roof was grainy, littered with bits of tar that felt sticky. At the highest point stood a collection of chimneys blowing out smoke with hissing sounds: that’s where we stood and felt the air circulating around us.
      There were several ways up, but they all started at the bicycle shed and continued along drainpipes, gutters and higgledy-piggledy brick walls. At certain points it was really down to the strength in your fingers; at other times it was a case of keeping your nerve, and suppleness: keep moving upwards and you will make it. Of course, it was out of bounds, and if we were spotted they actually shouted at us, and the drainpipes were treated with black, murky oil, but that didn’t stop me because I was a real climber.
      Up on the roof Almelo was spread out before us, looking like the bottom of the sea. The streets were indentations, we listened to the sounds that drifted up from below at random: a clearly visible truck couldn’t be heard, whereas at our vantage point the prattle of a motor scooter outside the city centre came through crystal clear. It was the same with two chatting mothers, the sound of a saw, a closing door, and of course there were seagulls and the wind.
      Our addiction was sustained by ambulances.
      We were actually waiting for the rattling sound of the garage doors below being pulled up and the sight of one or two ambulances racing out, lights flashing and sirens wailing. In response we would rush back down the whole route, in reverse order, with or without drainpipes, to pursue the ambulance which would take us to an accident. The ambulance which would push its way through the city in hot response and would stop close to wrecked cars, moaning injured people and bodies fallen from the roof; bodies in pieces, glistening pools of blood, concerted action by first aiders and policemen. Why did I feel so attracted? Maybe I simply doubted the truth.
      We never managed it. We ran and ran after it, through the indentations, among all those sounds; we just managed to spot the rear lights of the ambulance turning a corner, the swerving blue light at the end of the street; our legs raced as they do in cartoons, yet every time we lost touch with our target. Once, four ambulances set off at the same time. Four! Our excitement was such that only at the end of the afternoon were we willing to concede that we had missed it all. We stood at a crossroads, gasping for breath, while passers-by looked at us disapprovingly, ‘What are these boys up to?’ We couldn’t explain, but we had lost sight of the ambulances; surely it had something to do with time zones and stretchable space.
      The hospital could be seen from our home. My father’s office was up in the attic, and if you stood at the window you got a clear view of Vloedlaan, which looked quite narrow from above. In summer the windows were wide open; the sultry summer air wafted along gables and challenged pigeons to take refuge in the gutter. I was there a lot. My father was supposed to be working but would much rather play music or show me his records. One day my father asked why I did it: climb onto the roof of the hospital, when I was aware that it was forbidden. I answered, ‘Because it’s so beautiful up there.’ I expected this to silence him; I presumed he would think it was great that his son showed a lack of respect for rules and climbed onto buildings, making sure he couldn’t be caught; that my father would encourage freedom, but he didn’t. 
      That day I had stayed home from school because I felt feverish. ‘Not a proper illness,’ my mother had concluded, ‘nothing to worry about, but you’d better take it easy today.’ I was feeling fine in the afternoon and my father must have guessed my plans. This was the day I would keep up with the ambulance, I just knew it.
      ‘If I catch you, you’re in for a beating,’ he said, something he had never said before. He took hold of my arm and looked at me as if he were standing eye to eye with a stranger, another son who hadn’t accumulated any credit. I thought: that’s how life will be from now on. Then he put his hand on my forehead to gauge my fever. I felt hot, but why? Because of his hot hand on my forehead, or was my fever reflected in his palm, or did the contact release the heat? His hand rested on my forehead for a long time and the corners of his mouth showed a hint of love. Yet I still felt alone when I closed the door behind me and went downstairs. I thought: in the past – I really got the word ‘past’ – in the past I always used to read comics under his desk, but not any more.
      I went outside, towards the hospital. That’s life, so I ended up at the hospital and walked around it. I heaved myself on top of the bicycle shed. From there I could see over the roof of the lower part of the building. At this point I would normally use one of the drainpipes, but they were smothered in oil. I could try to jump and pull myself up from the edge of the roof; fortunately I had strong arms. My stomach was balanced on the edge and I swung my legs over it, and there I stood, but the most difficult part was still to come. I looked upwards: a sheer ten-metre wall, and the drainpipe was jet black and unassailable. Except that the drainpipe was fastened to the wall by brackets, brackets that were not treated. They provided support. I checked out the wall: my right hand could just about reach a brick which stuck out a tiny bit. Now I was really clinging to the wall, my toes on the narrow bracket and my fingers clutching the edge of the brick. My other foot tested a small ledge, possibly left by shrunken mortar. The bricks against my face seemed to push me away, but I kept on finding something to hang on to, and my only thought was: get higher up. Getting up, nothing else mattered, and all of a sudden I could grab the edge of the roof. Gravity was confined to the space I had just left, a stretchable emptiness. Once on top I still felt its pull, even after walking over the roof to the other side. I felt it also in my blazing head. I sat down above the garage doors, and yet again sounds wafted up to the top of the building: barking, talking, speeding off and snippets of music with deafening silence in between.
      The sun moved across the horizon.
      At last I got up: nothing to do but go home, yet just at that very moment they opened, the doors opened. An ambulance moved out; very slowly it approached the road, switched on the flashing lights but not the siren, and turned left. I may have hesitated, just a bit too long, before I let the stretchable emptiness carry me down, and on the ground I began to run. In hot pursuit, but it was no use: there was no siren to point the way, and after I had turned left and run for quite a while there was no ambulance to be seen. What could I do? Nothing but catch my breath or amble about the streets.
      Streets that took me home. I walked on the pavement and watched my own shadow. I prepared myself for arriving home, when I would have to explain why I had gone out, because in that case I could have gone to school. Something was happening, but I didn’t know what it was. Down Tijhofslaan, the field where we played football was deserted; in the Rosarium no one was to be seen. I turned the corner into Vloedlaan, our street with our white house. There it stood, the tailgate open, the flashing lights turned off; it was huge. I saw a movement, a shadowy figure inside it, and the space behind me became stretchable again.
      I walked quickly away, staying calm but moving fast. After two hours I walked back, up Tijhofslaan, past the Rosarium, along Vloedlaan towards home, through the gate, back door, scullery, kitchen, and into the corridor. My mother was sitting on the sofa holding the telephone, which she put down quickly. ‘There you are! Where have you been?’
      ‘Out,’ I answered, but I wanted to ask about my father.
      ‘Papa,’ my mother said, ‘papa has gone to the airport, he has to fly to New York.’ She walked towards me.
      I just thought: it’s nothing to do with the ambulance; the ambulance was for someone else.
      ‘Leo has died, do you remember him? Leo from America.’ She squatted down in front of me. ‘Papa really wanted to be at the funeral, but he couldn’t make it unless he left immediately.’
      I thought: I’m not being punished, but why now, right now?
      She asked where I’d been, because papa had to leave very quickly, so there hadn’t been time to say goodbye to me. My mother kissed and tried to cuddle me, but she was never any good at that.
      ‘I think you’re still a bit feverish,’ she said. ‘I’m going to tuck you into bed, OK?’
      She took me up to bed, and I said I was starting to feel better already.
      Leo was a friend of my father’s who had moved to the States after marrying an American wife called Sandy. Every year he came to visit and stayed with us. He was a jolly man who talked for hours and played the guitar with my father; he also taught me American songs.
      So that’s why my father had left. He had dashed out of the house to catch a train, to travel by train to the airport, and board a plane to fly across the Atlantic, to hire a car in New York and drive it to the mortuary in New Jersey, just in time to join the funeral cortege following Leo’s coffin and stop to hear words being uttered, see the coffin being lowered, slowly make his way back with the dwindling group of mourners, shake hands, kiss Sandy and offer his condolences, make an appointment to meet the next day, locate the hotel that had been recommended to him, find a parking place for the hired car (a Ford Mustang), just in time to walk down the street, cross it and be hit by a van and ripped to pieces, into smithereens; dead, quite dead. Most of his body lying in one spot, his legs in another.

That’s what happened. What people say is true: life goes on, and people’s lives readjust in the face of such circumstances. My mother lived to be eighty-six; I acquired a family. Yet I only have to spot one plane in the air, or hear a single siren, or feel a little bit feverish, to remember the white house in Vloedlaan and my father’s hand on my forehead, the black oil, the sounds of the city wafting up to the roof, and the quiet ambulance in the street with the coffin containing my father, in pieces; exactly like when I was still just a boy.

© Jeroen Blokhuis
© Translation Holland Park Press

Jeroen Blokhuis was born in 1969 and lives in Warnsveld. His work has been published in KortVerhaal and another short story Jesper Jespers is about to be published in Passionate Magazine.