The Portrait (15 page)

I must have covered this route in the reverse direction when I was still a canvas and unpainted, in the van, but all I remember of that is bumping through a summery forest and having a stream of patches of light projected on my white surface through the leaves that were sliding by. Then, it was like being carried off by a lover. Now, I could only think one thing: This is not what I was made for, to move like a human. I'll never survive it.

I don't know how long the bicycle ride through the woods and suburbs lasted, but when we reached Lidewij in hospital she was already three centimetres dilated, and the contractions were coming every three minutes. It's a question of hours now, a female voice said. She pronounced her Rs in the back of her throat and had a sing-song voice. The contractions are starting to really come now — it's good you've made it.

Creator was still panting — he had started cycling faster and faster — and now tried to breathe along when a contraction came. He had, I presume, sat down next to the bed. I got the impression that a contraction was something that hurts.

There was someone hanging on the wall in the room; at least I heard Creator say something about a print of water lilies and a pond. That was after a while, when he'd got more or less used to the rhythm of the recurring contractions. He was looking for a subject with which to distract Lidewij in the intervening minutes.

That could have been me, I thought, feeling a gulf of regret. I could have been a glossy Monet print, and spent every day of my entire life attending human births in a regional hospital.

Immediately after entering the room, Creator had bent over to kiss Lidewij.

You smell of smoke, Lidewij said.

Creator said he had lit a fire.

Just like that, first thing in the morning, in your pyjamas?

Waste paper, old sketches, paint rags, Creator said.

Weird, he added, after a silence. I woke up this morning wanting to get rid of the junk.

You must have felt it coming, Lidewij said. Typical.

Then she started groaning, and Creator breathed demonstratively through his lips, and the rustling around me sounded like a judgement. When the contraction was over, a silence fell.

Baby's presenting perfectly, said the voice with the throaty Rs. Head first, just like it's supposed to be.

She left the room humming.

That was a whopper, Lidewij said. They're getting stronger each time.

She grabbed Creator's hand, but he said ouch.

Scorched, he said. It suddenly flared up, because of the wind.

A silence fell.

You've got a smear there, Lidewij said. It felt like she was trying to wipe Creator's forehead with her sleeve.

Did that journalist call?

Minke Dupuis? He was playing for time, I realised that, as if his life depended on him doing his best to make everything that wasn't happening here, in this room, at this moment, seem unimportant. He was hoping to make it to the next contraction without answering; he was hoping to keep the truth out of the birth of his child.

She's still on my hand, Lidewij said. Look, the number of her mobile.

The next contraction was a long time coming. I heard a high-pitched hiss, presumably from a machine.

I had the weirdest dream last night, Lidewij said. That he was born.

He
?

Yes, he was a he and he was born and I had to ride a trishaw to Withernot. You were already home and I rode through the potholes on the track and kept shouting out, hold on, and then there was a specially deep pothole and I thought, I've bounced him out, out of the trishaw behind me, and I looked back — here comes another one.

Lidewij started to groan, and Creator started to pant.

That was just a little one, Lidewij said. That's no use to us.

In the darkness inside Creator's pocket, her smile suddenly appeared before me.

And then? Creator paused. You looked back and then?

Then Singer was sitting there. In the trishaw. The size of a baby, but still absolutely Singer.

And then? I could feel Creator's heart pounding. I felt the passion with which he wished the dream had ended there.

Lidewij hesitated, then said quickly, Then I woke up with the first contraction. Not as strong as now, but still. Weird.

Yes, weird.

I think Creator went to kiss her, but Lidewij said something else.

Do you know what I thought when I was awake — I relaxed through the first contraction and I thought, If this is a job someone has given me and I've been crazy enough to accept it, then I can't give it back anymore, not even if I wanted to, not now.

The woman with the voice had come back; silently, she checked the machines Lidewij was hooked up to.

Look, she said to Creator, that line's its heart. Just fine. But it mustn't come under here.

She disappeared out of the room again, evidently having shown Creator where the line had to stay above.

I could tell from his breathing that Creator wanted to say something. It was as if, on hearing Lidewij use the word
job
, he had made a bold decision, complete with a deep sigh and a suck of air into his lungs.

Lidewij, he said, in a voice that seemed deeper. It's a strange thing, by the way, how a voice resonates in a chest and makes it all tremble. These mortals are made of unusual material.

Lidewij, Creator said, there is no Singer anymore.

He jumped, his heart missing a beat, from her reaction. She'd said, Oh God, and it had come out as a groan. Oh God, I knew it, I dreamt it.

Creator took another deep breath.

Singer's been picked up, he said.

Picked up? Why didn't you say so? Lidewij was relieved; I could hear that in every word. Picked up, she repeated.

Who by?

The guy from the phone call, Creator said. From the four-wheel drive. You know, the one who rang six months ago, when they didn't come to pick him up.

And?

And what?

What was his reaction?

Oh. I don't know. Beautiful — he thought it was beautiful. And looked just like him.

And Specht?

Creator hesitated. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to say what he had heard from Minke that night — that Specht was dying.

Specht will be satisfied. That's what the four-wheel-drive guy said. More than satisfied. Specht couldn't come. Apparently he's ill.

Seriously?

No idea.

Poor Singer, Lidewij said. If only he's not too late.

He's only paint.

Don't say that. You put your heart and soul into it.

Another contraction was on its way. Lidewij waited it out in total silence, and Creator hardly breathed along. When it was over, I heard nothing for a while and then sobbing.

Hold me, Lidewij said.

Creator bent forward and laid his right arm over Lidewij's chest.

Hush.

Lidewij's sobbing sounded insanely close, as if her breath was fanning me inside Creator's breast pocket. But it wasn't sorrow I could hear. It was something else. More frightening than sorrow.

It was such a horrible dream, she said. Horrible. I looked into the back of the trishaw, and Singer was sitting there and Singer was dead. I'd been riding through the forest for hours and he'd been dead the whole time.

Now she was crying with long, howling gasps.

Hush, Creator kept saying. Hush now.

In that instant, the voice of the woman broke in, swearing and sounding high and shrill.

I told you! If the line comes under here, you have to tell me!

Somewhere down the corridor a buzzer went off. Creator had let go of Lidewij, footsteps approached, the door to the room swung open.

A man asked, How long since we've had a signal?

No signal? Creator said in a monotone.

What is it? asked Lidewij. Is something wrong?

Page Verdurmen, said a male voice. He's still in the building.

Footsteps went off, others came in, Creator was pushed back to a corner of the room, machines were disconnected. I don't know if Lidewij had another contraction during the consternation, but they wheeled her off, and Creator started moving, out into the corridor, following the bed, his heart banging like a hammer.

I was there through those last anxious hours before an exhausted surgeon came to tell Creator the outcome and stammered while trying to decide what to explain first — about Lidewij or about the child — but I only remember the pounding of Creator's heart and the uncontrollable waves of his panicked breathing. It was obvious that Lidewij had disappeared through the double doors of the operating theatre. Now and then, Creator left the hospital for a short walk through a wood. He talked to himself. It was like the way he talked when he was working on me — How long ago now? — but he wasn't talking to me, and it sounded like he was constantly asking questions. Why? Why? Why? I heard him say, almost roaring, and suddenly I even thought I heard him shout out
Mercy
or
Spare me.
Goodness, how could I think of anyone other than Specht, but I didn't have the slightest impression that Creator was still capable of making any kind of connection. It was actually a mystery to me where his words, when he actually spoke them, were going. What on earth are they doing, people, when they call out things like that — stand by me? Who are they addressing?

Only a few thoughts were pounding through my head. I didn't exist anymore; that much was clear. But I was still the last person in Lidewij's thoughts before she disappeared into the operating theatre.
I rode through the forest and the whole time Singer had been dead.
I repeated the words as a kind of mantra. I had been torn in half and I was still Singer; I sat in the back of the dreamt trishaw and my mother looked back. I had no choice. What else could I do but cling to that possible backward glance? Mummy, Mummy, look back, for God's sake, look back, let me exist — I'm here after all, even if only in Lidewij's sedated head, even if I'm being torn and blacked out of my creator's thoughts, even if I'm a rattling corpse in the back of the dream of a woman under anaesthetic — look back, look back …

Who am I when she sees me?

What kind of fate is this, never being able to know who I am unless someone is looking at me?

Who will see me, please? Who will make me exist?

It must have been late in the morning when Creator saw the double doors opening in the hospital corridor and heard that he was the father of a son.

An eighth-month son.

Details of size and weight followed, but Creator didn't hear them. He only asked, My wife, how is my wife?

We've got your son in the incubator now — we'll have to monitor him for the time being, said the surgeon. You can see him in about a quarter of an hour; unfortunately, it will be through glass for a little while yet.

Only then did he answer the question.

Your wife.

The surgeon took a deep breath and wiped his forehead.

Still unconscious, but out of danger.

You could hear that it was a sentence he'd said before.

A groan welled up in Creator, and I heard it coming from very close quarters, rumbling deep inside before it rose up and left me shaking.

He had seen Lidewij lying there, unconscious, as the surgeon had said, in a room full of equipment.

He had whispered, Fearless Fly, while kissing her on the forehead.

He had gone to the maternity ward where the incubators were and stared through a window at a stark-naked baby. It breathed as if drinking slugs of liquid air.

A boy — that was very, very obvious.

Stijn, he whispered.

I didn't comprehend any of this until later, when Lidewij had returned to Withernot with Stijn, which was indeed the name they were going to give their son. Whopping great balls, Creator then said.

He left the hospital mid-afternoon, but didn't ride home — at least, not straight home. He rode in the opposite direction, through Laren, to the endless bicycle path that separates Utrecht and North Holland. He cycled calmly, and his heart and breathing were calm, too. The wind had died down. Branches that had been torn off in the night were scattered over the path. Past the White Mountains, workmen were cutting up a fallen beech; I heard the roar of chainsaws.

They were still audible in the distance when Creator got off his bike. He knew this place. He leant his bike against a tree and walked to another tree. He did something very strange to that tree, which I felt very clearly. He pressed himself against the trunk, first his head, as if pressing his ear against someone's chest, and then his whole body, as if hugging the tree. It felt rough and barky.

Only then did I realise that the big jolts I was feeling weren't coming from outside, from the tree, as I had thought for a moment. They were rising up in Creator himself, from his diaphragm. Creator was crying. And while crying, he let himself slide down the tree he was holding tight, bending his knees and finally rolling over on one side. He lay there like that until the jolting lessened. Then he got up and sat down right in the middle of a mass of damp leaves with his back against the tree.