Free Tonio by Jonathan Reeder

entire lifetime.
    â€˜Great,’ he said, getting up. ‘I knew you’d say yes.’
    5
    The motorway was quiet, in both directions. Anyone planning to spend the Whitsun bank holiday elsewhere had already left town on Friday or Saturday. And as for the Amsterdam day-trippers, they would hit traffic snarls only later in the day.
    We knew the route to the Academic Medical Centre better than the police officers up in the front seat. Since autumn 2005 Miriam had driven me there for monthly medical examinations in my role as guinea pig for a new wonder drug that could restore and regulate an imbalanced metabolism. In recent months, Miriam had taken the same route a few times to deliver Tonio to the AMC , where they had lecture halls suitable for the Media & Culture written exams.
    Whitsun morning was, in a taunting sort of way, glorious. A haze that had not yet completely cleared sifted the sunlight, making it look as if gold dust was suspended in the air. We speeded straight through that glittering mist, and at the same time were radically closed off from it. Critical condition . The police van was moving further and further away from the day I had promised myself. Half an hour ago, I was still lying in bed, seventeen stairs away from my manuscript. At that moment I still had the choice: shower first, or give in to a wholesome impatience and take the bedroom smell upstairs with me.
    The doorbell had made choosing superfluous. Work on my novel about the murder of a police officer today? There was a real one standing on the doorstep. A van just like in my manuscript was parked at the corner, but without a police squad poised to spring into action. It was empty and real, and would take us to the AMC , where Tonio, in a critical condition … See, the fact that reality pursues one’s fiction, tries to overtake it, and sometimes even passes it, or, worse yet, makes it redundant, is something that every novelist just has to take into account. No point in moaning: it is one of the hazards of the trade. Beautiful, of course: the complete sovereignty of an invented reality, its closed circuit … but just try to take out an all-risk policy on it.
    I never complained. Only today, reality thrust itself with such obscene and devastating directness into my fragilely constructed world that I could only bow my head — or let it hang.
    6
    Last Thursday, too, it was abundantly spring, almost summery, 19 degrees Celsius and clear skies. When I went downstairs just before one o’clock to drive out to the Amsterdamse Bos with Miriam, I met Tonio in the front hall. He had just brought a folding tripod up from the basement, where he’d been storing some of his things since moving to De Baarsjes. A few white reflectors of framed styrofoam were already leaning against the wall of the passage.
    â€˜Check this out,’ he said, running his hand over one of the styrofoam sheets, which was pocked with an irregular pattern of tiny holes. ‘Totally chewed up by beetles.’
    â€˜Come on, styrofoam-eating beetles?’
    â€˜Polystyrene beetles, yeah. The storeroom at Dixons was swarming with them. Computers just sank through their own packaging …’
    â€˜Cross your fingers for this afternoon then,’ I said. ‘Holey reflectors, they’ll give a model a moth-eaten face every time.’
    â€˜Very funny, Adri. Good day at the typewriter, I see.’
    â€˜I don’t see any model, by the way. You hiding her from us?’
    I noticed he had shaved. He was not wearing his hair in a ponytail; it had obviously been washed, and brushed smooth and glossy. We rarely saw him so kempt at home.
    â€˜She just phoned to say she’d be a bit late. Had to stop by the drugstore first. Bladder infection.’
    Miriam emerged from her study. She kissed her son and ran the back of her hand across his cheek. ‘Mmm, babyface.’ She held him at arm’s length and inspected him from head to