Ventoux. Bert Wagendorp

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СКАЧАТЬ right,’ said André, when she had gone. ‘I thought at first that I was having visions. But it was real. Look not and ye shall find. Once you start looking, you lose.’

      I got my Pinarello out of the car and put the front wheel on. André was waiting on his Pegoretti, with one leg on the ground. He was wearing a red-and-black jersey of the Amore & Vita team. On the chest was the big M of McDonald’s.

      I set the kilometre counter to zero and got on. We had to cross the Maas; we were going to do André’s training circuit, a ‘River Rotte run.’

      ‘You’re sponsored by the pope,’ I said.

      ‘Yes, I spread the Holy Word. No abortion, no euthanasia, just love and hamburgers. Got it from Ludmilla. Little moralist.’

      After a kilometre we reached the Erasmus Bridge. ‘This is my mountain stage,’ said André. ‘When I feel like it I charge up and down it ten times. On the outer section, good for power.’

      ‘You’re taking it seriously.’

      ‘I live like a monk. No drink, no nicotine, no drugs. I stand on my head for an hour a day. Yoga. Rest, purity, regularity, that’s my motto now. And lots of cycling, to keep the head clear. Looking back, I think it’s a shame I didn’t ride out with you back then.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘When you came and asked if I would come and race, don’t you remember? I was lying on the sofa with a comic. Maybe I could have built up a nice career in cycle racing. I had the genes. And I was mean enough.’

      He stood up on the pedals and rode ahead of me. I looked out over the river. Nice escape, coke dealer at the front, crime journalist on his wheel. We rode through the city, until we reached the Rotte and turned north-east along the river.

      I asked when he had started cycling.

      ‘About a year ago. On my old man’s Raleigh. Part of my inheritance, you could say. Had it done up and rode it until last month. Cycling with my dead father, that feeling. Had long conversations. Good conversations. Of course, he didn’t think what I was doing would amount to anything. I’ll tell you another time.’ He paused for a moment. ‘That bike is bewitched.’

      ‘I know that. I sometimes think that with every cyclist you come across, there’s an invisible peloton riding along with him.’

      ‘Recently I had the feeling that we’d finished. That I had more or less told him everything. Then I thought: time for something new. That Raleigh was made in 1977, so it was about time. And I thought it was rather a weird idea, that bike. That’s not that odd, is it?’

      ‘No. I wouldn’t want to ride one metre on it.’

      We came to a white drawbridge. We crossed, after which we headed for town again along the other bank of the Rotte. On the Crooswijk bend, André cycled alongside me and put his arm on my shoulder. Then he stood up and pulled away from me. A little further on he sat up and stuck his arms in the air.

      I was happy, too.

      I clumped into the room in my cycling shoes. André gave me a towel and showed me where the bathroom was. The floor was covered in black marble. When I looked more closely at the dark-red tiles with hieroglyphic motifs on the walls, I saw little Egyptian figures on racing bikes.

      Ludmilla Laura had prepared a Russian speciality, something with ground beef and cabbage. We ate in silence.

      ‘What did you think,’ asked André, ‘when you saw me in court? What a bastard?’

      ‘I’ve passed that stage.’

      ‘I wouldn’t have blamed you for thinking that. I was a bastard. And I enjoyed it.’

      ‘You don’t have to defend yourself.’

      He smiled and took a second helping.

      ‘I was a sophisticated trader, make no mistake about it.’ He said ‘trader’, not ‘dealer’. ‘I saw politicians on TV pretending to be squeaky clean, though I had delivered a fresh supply to them the day before. Well-known names from TV, captains of industry, bankers. Oh, Bart, do I have to tell you that? You’re a journalist, aren’t you? Why do you think I got away with it?’

      I said nothing.

      ‘Exactly. Your father used to say to us that what you knew was power, and he was quite right. And who you know is even more power.’

      ‘And now?’

      ‘Now it’s finished. My name has been in the paper, I’m tainted. All I can do is descend to regular trade, and I don’t want to do that. That would make it vulgar. Anyway, I don’t need to anymore. Actually I was glad I had to draw a line.’

      ‘What are going to do, then?’

      ‘Maybe something with vintage cars. Old Peugeots and Citroëns. I’ve got four of them in a shed outside of town. I tinker about a bit. Sit in them. You can smell the past in cars, did you know that? I’ve got a 1968 DS that I swear you can smell our nursery school in.’

      ‘Yum yum.’

      ‘And I read books about medieval poetry and philosophy. I go to auctions of incunabula. Do you know what they are? Do you remember, the library of the Walburgiskerk, with those books on chains? We went once a year with the class. I thought it was fascinating even then.’

      ‘André, bullshit. You were always tugging at those chains. You drove those people nuts.’

      He laughed. ‘That was being a tough guy. Come with me.’ In his study was a classic English desk. Along three walls stood bookshelves that were filling up nicely. On the fourth hung a photo of the six of us on the summit of Mont Ventoux. He went over to the photo and pointed at Peter. ‘He has been marked out, but he doesn’t yet know it. To paraphrase Death in the poem: ‘That on Ventoux I saw the man / I must fetch at night in Isfahan.’

      ‘Carpentras.’

      ‘Doesn’t rhyme.’

      I touched Peter’s face with my finger.

      -

      V

      Joost made a valiant attempt to explain the rudiments of string theory to me. We were sitting in Huis De Bijlen. He faltered now and then and waved his hands about. Then he stopped abruptly. ‘I can’t explain string theory. For the simple reason that there are no words for it. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the theory.’

      The fact that even Joost could see there were no words for something proved that we were in a deeply abstract world.

      ‘It’s a mathematical concept so complicated that there aren’t many people in the world who really understand anything about it. I sometimes don’t even know if I understand the real finer points. And I’m not talking about the reality behind the theory itself, because that is far too complex to be thoroughly understood by anyone. I am making a contribution to the mystery. There are scientists who call string theory a religion.’

      ‘But what good is it to you, if it can’t be explained?’

      ‘Do СКАЧАТЬ