Artis is still closed, but a little further on is the De Nieuwe Ooster cemetery. It’s a lot of fun there too. Those beautiful baroque gypsy graves alone, and if you’re lucky, you’ll come across a Surinamese funeral, with swinging Wi Kan Doe porters. There are also famous Amsterdammers, from George Breitner to Jos Brink.
Jos Brink! I adored him, with his mischievous, melancholy choirboy face, and that wonderful (just, or just not ironic) cocky voice. Even my grandmother condoned the fact that he was ‘that’. ‘Still a nice, spontaneous boy’, she would say frugally. (She didn’t want to believe it about Wim Sonneveld, by the way. No, such a neat man!)
‘Do you know where Jos Brink is?’, I asked the doorman, an attractive Mediterranean curly-haired person who reached for his keyboard with a twinkling smile. ‘Joost who?’ he asked. Well, he was still young. ‘Jos Brink!’ I said. ‘He was very famous, from TV!’
That smile again. “Yes, you see, I am a Turk,” he said. “And to be honest I never watch TV… but if you can spell the name for me?” I did it, but it didn’t help. He went to fetch a colleague, a man my age. ‘Jos Brink… Jos Brink… Yes, I believe someone has been before him before…’, he mused, staring at his screen. ‘Oh, I’ve got it. He lies here as Gerardus. Gerard Brink. Box 39.’
He gave me a map. There was no one in the damp chilly cemetery. Scratching crows, yes. Children’s graves with clown shoes. And there, in a bend, lay Jos.
There was a sign at his grave: ‘Everyone is welcome at Jos Brink’s grave. And of course everyone is allowed to place flowers or other things.’ But there were no flowers, let alone ‘other things’. Nothing. The earth around his stone was without form and void, as if he had been dead not 15 years, but 115.
Poor Jose. He easily attracted five million viewers in one evening. If you ordered a ‘Jos Brinkie’ at the snack bar, everyone knew what it was: a frikandel with peanut sauce. Then you’ve made it far.
Now even the doorman of the cemetery doesn’t know him anymore. ‘When you die, all the trees will continue to grow, and the greengrocer will be open again at 9 am’, Jos once said. He was right.
‘Hi Josh. You are very dead,’ I said. I walked back to the entrance. Would I also ask about Breitner’s grave?
The cheerful head of the doorman made me decide not to.