Ventoux. Bert Wagendorp

       www.worldeditions.org

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      For Hannah

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      ‘I finally sat down in a valley and transferred my winged thoughts from things corporeal to the immaterial, addressing myself as follows:—“What hast thou repeatedly experienced to-day in the ascent of this mountain, happens to thee, as to many, in the journey toward the blessed life. But this is not so readily perceived by men, since the motions of the body are obvious and external while those of the soul are invisible and hidden. Yes, the life which we call blessed is to be sought for on a high eminence, and strait is the way that leads to it.”’

      PETRARCH, The Ascent of Mount Ventoux

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      Prologue

      For years the photo had been in an envelope, at the bottom of a white storage box. On the brown tape with which I had sealed the box sometime in the mid-1980s, I had written ‘Miscellaneous’. At least eight times I took it out of a dark cupboard, down from an attic, or out of a shed, and put it back without unpacking it. Now that she had suddenly turned up again, I knew immediately where to find the envelope.

      Photos of other holidays are neatly arranged in albums with titles such as ‘Italy 1984’ or ‘Route 66, 1986’. This one was hidden away, deep in my memory and in a cardboard vault, until the moment came to retrieve it. Time had added a hint of orange to it.

      I placed it in front of me on the dining table and absorbed the image. For minutes on end I gazed absently into the eyes of the people in the portrait. Then, slowly, the memories came. The sounds, the smells, the words. I remembered that I stared into the lens and thought: one day, later, much later, I’ll look at this photo, and I’ll remember that this was happiness. Time seemed to disappear, until I had almost become the young lad standing there. I felt the excitement, the joy, the expectation again. I felt her body against mine again.

      It’s more than thirty years since it was taken, on the campsite of a little place in Provence, one day before Joost, Peter, and I cycled up Mont Ventoux. On the back it says: ‘Camping in Bédoin, June 1982. From l. to r. David, Peter, Laura, Bart, Joost, André.’ In the background you can see a blue bungalow tent and a small orange trekker tent. There is a racing bike leaning against a gate. The girl is wearing a red bikini and white flip-flops. An embarrassed smile is playing around her lips, as if she is not completely at ease about this, of all moments, being immortalized.

      André has a roll-up in his mouth and is facing the camera with indifference through a cloud of smoke. Joost is posing ostentatiously with his hands on his back and his chest thrust out; David has raised his right hand in a warning gesture—the photo was taken with his camera and he had set the self-timer.

      Peter is wearing a little hat and sunglasses. As a result, you can’t see his eyes. There is a vague grin hovering around his mouth. With his hands in the pockets of a pair of cut-off jeans he is leaning against Laura with his bare torso. You can see she is perfect, see how beautiful her breasts are and how endlessly long her legs. Her eyes take you prisoner, even on a Kodak print. I have put my right arm around her and am looking triumphantly into the lens, like a footballer allowed to hold the championship trophy for a moment.

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      I

      My name is Bart Hoffman. Actually it’s Johannes Albertus Hoffman—Hoffman as in Dustin, with a double f and one n. I was born almost fifty years ago in Zutphen, a town on a river in the easternmost part of Holland. My father was the head of a Christian primary school.

      I’m a crime correspondent with a national newspaper—I belong to the generation of student dropouts who found their way into journalism. A guy I knew from studying Dutch wrote the occasional piece for the arts page of a big daily. He heard that they were looking for someone in the sports section to type in the results on Sunday morning. When they were short-handed, I was occasionally allowed to go to an unimportant football match. Writing came quite easily to me, and when they were looking for a reporter, I applied for it and got the job.

      It was painless, packing in my studies. I didn’t like the other students. I didn’t like all the hot air they talked about Dutch writers like Reve and Lucebert, or Chomsky’s generative grammar. I was the only person in my year who read Football International. The fact that I could effortlessly recite the first five minutes of the TV commentary of the 1974 World Cup Final, a fantastic ready-made artwork, made no impression on my fellow students. Long before it came into vogue, I had a very good imitation of Johan Cruyff in my repertoire, but they didn’t even recognize it.

      After two years, the paper’s cycling reporter retired and I was able to take over from him. In the spring I followed the peloton and reported first on the Paris-Nice or the Tirreno-Adriatico and then on the classics, and in the summer I went to the Tour de France.

      During the day I would drive slightly behind the peloton and afterward talk to the racers. Then I would type up a piece, and in the evening go out with colleagues to a good restaurant to talk over the race and life in general. I couldn’t imagine a better existence, and I was always sorry in the autumn when, after the world championship, Paris-Tours, and the Giro di Lombardia, it was over for another five months.

      When I was 24, the week after Holland became European football champions, I moved in with Hinke. She was beautiful, and had the Nordic white skin and clear, challenging eyes. She could easily put her long legs behind her neck, since she had done gymnastics from an early age. I was in love and thought she was a very nice person, but that was before I had awakened a less nice side in her.

      On the fourth birthday of our daughter Anna, in 1995, she gave me a choice. I could choose between fatherhood and the nomadic existence of a cycling correspondent. In the case of the former, she would continue to be a part of my life, and in the latter, she would disappear from it and take my daughter with her. I chose to become a real father.

      I went to the editor-in-chief and explained my situation. A month earlier, our crime correspondent had died of a heart attack. The editor-in-chief asked if I knew anything about crime and justice.

      ‘I’ve been a cycling correspondent and I’ve read Crime and Punishment,’ I replied, more or less as a joke.

      ‘Okay, then you’re the man we need. Congratulations.’

      When I turned 40, I stopped smoking, got my old Batavus out of the shed, and began cleaning it up. It was, may I say, one of my better decisions. On the bike I began slowly but surely to realize that you can go right, but also left. That you can always take the same route, but can also choose a different one. That things sometimes happen to you, but that you can do something for yourself. Anyway, it was another five years before we got divorced. Anna was 18 by then, and there was no longer any reason for Hinke and me to stay together.

      Ever since I’ve been alone again, I’ve lived in a spacious flat in the centre of Alkmaar. I once moved to the town because I found Amsterdam too big and the people too noisy and far too full of themselves, and now I don’t want to leave. The flat is sparsely furnished, but that doesn’t bother me. Everything I need is there, and I like space around me.

      I know every metre of cyclable road between Den Helder and Purmerend. On the bike you think time is standing still, or at least that it is no threat at all. The bike protects you from despair.

      Anna has bought a Bianchi—she was well brought up. Not a German racing bike via the Internet, not some new American racer, but an Italian classic make. She knows who Coppi and Bartali were, and likes the Giro better than the Tour.

      ‘Brilliant colour,’ I said, when she brought it to show me. ‘Nice sea-green.’

      ‘Celeste, it’s called.’

      Never knew that; you have to be a cycling woman for that.

      ‘La Dama Bianca,’ I said.

      ‘Giulia Occhini.’