WE CELEBRATED COR’S BIRTHDAY ON AUGUST 18, 2016, AT ROYAL SAN’S, the restaurant where Cor had eaten last, just like every year. A new café had opened across the way, about two years before: Het Wapen (The Weapon). Cor would have seen the humor in it. On the site where he’d spent the last seconds of his life there was now a terrace full of people drinking beer. Cor couldn’t have hoped for a better memorial.
Shortly before his death, he had gotten a beer out of the fridge, at eleven a.m. “Freddy Heineken has gotten to me,” he joked to Francis.
It was true. Freddy Heineken had gotten to him: not through the beer he brewed, but through the curse attached to the Heineken ransom, the lost six million that had corrupted his relationship with Wim without him noticing it. And that was the reason for the first, second, and, finally, the fatal attempt on his life. The curse spread to everything and everyone connected with the ransom, directly or indirectly.
To Thomas van der Bijl, who stated that he had dug up the ransom and was silenced, partly because of it.
To Willem Endstra, who arranged for Willem to keep his bloody gambling halls, and who got caught up in a web he couldn’t escape from alive.
And to Wim himself—the curse had driven him to commit the craziest crimes.
We are watching two guys with beer bellies having a lot of fun. “People with fat guts are fun to be with, Dad used to say,” Frances commented.
“Yes, but he was always trying to lose weight,” Sonja replied. “Remember he was taking those slimming aid pills, that Xenical? If he wanted to have an extra hamburger or two he would just take some extra pills. Or he took up exercising like a madman, like when he started playing tennis with his friend Kai.”
Every year we bring up the same memories, because new ones aren’t available.
“Remember that time when they were done playing tennis and a jealous woman had scratched HOER [whore] on Kai’s car?” I say.
“Yes,” Sonja says. “Kai was too embarrassed to drive it, so Cor took his key and scratched an A after HOER [hurrah] and said, ‘Problem solved!’”
“Hurrah to you today, Cor,” Sonja says. “Happy birthday!”
We raise our glasses.
Together forever!