Before the summer I wrote the libretto of a new requiem, which will premiere as a performance at the Stopera next year. The concert premiere was on a Saturday, without decor or costumes.
We gathered in the south of the country, in the theater where it was all going to happen. Willem and my in-laws, the Brabanders, were also there. I had not yet heard the music, which was composed the summer after the text was submitted. Writers matter a little less in opera than in theater. Music is simply the alpha and omega there, the great work, the flow that takes the audience on a journey.
We were standing in the waiting crowd in front of the still closed door of the concert hall, when someone bumped into me. I immediately saw: this is my high school sweetheart. I hadn’t seen him in years. He hadn’t changed a bit, although of course he had. Around my age you can see a friend who has suddenly become a gentleman. But some from the past have anchored themselves so deeply in your memory that just looking at those same eyes again makes you not notice everything that is happening around them, the wrinkles and the graying beard hairs. And not only that. From within, your sixteen-year-old self emerges, tough, confident and with that stupid self-confidence that only comes from what breasts and swagger have to offer.
It turned out that he came across the requiem by chance and didn’t know that I had written the words for it. As we shuffled into the room we kept talking, or maybe I kept talking. I don’t remember exactly, embarrassed by the impudent teenager who pushed himself forward in me, while I was really standing there as a respectable member of the Brabant clan, safely surrounded by people I love very much.
And then also that damned requiem.
He hadn’t changed a bit, although of course he had. Around my age you can see a friend who has suddenly become a gentleman.
It turned out that there were only enough seats in the first row for everyone to sit next to each other. I ended up in the middle and looked up at the conductor’s buttocks. To my right Willem, to my left my childhood sweetheart.
It started. Suddenly I really wanted my ex to like it. That he would understand what had become of me.
But there were no surtitles and no text booklet was handed out. And as is the way with opera, only a few words were intelligible. Something about a sandwich that tastes better when you cut it into thirds. Something about people on laptops in a cafe.
It increasingly seemed as if I would wake up at any moment to say to Willem: ‘And then my childhood sweetheart suddenly sat next to me. And then they started singing on stage, but no one could understand anything. And you were there too. And your father. And your uncle and aunt. And I felt cold and you put your coat over me, but I kept shivering softly.’
I gave the coat back to Willem when it was over. We clapped, we stood up, we had a drink. “It was probably a good text,” the ex said when saying goodbye.
In the car home, Willem and I sang the evening away loudly.
The next day I saw a smiling selfie of my ex and me on my phone, with a full room behind us.
A gentleman and a lady, with children’s eyes.
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