In the Eerste Constantijn Huygensstraat, in front of the window of a shop selling orthopedic accessories, a girl was standing on the phone next to her bicycle. She carried a cello on her back in a padded sleeve.
“I just don’t care about it anymore,” she said correctly. “Dad…” She fell silent and listened. She was about 15 years old and very beautiful; slender, pale, with big black eyes, a mouth painted by Botticelli, and a head of wavy, long dark brown hair. She resembled the young Kate Bush. (Kate Bush is now 63 and quite fat, but still beautiful.)
“Dad, I’m old enough to do that myself…” she said into her phone. She didn’t speak slyly, but very nicely. As she listened, she bit her lower lip and looked absently at the shop window full of knee braces, compression stockings, and hammertoe splints.
The cello was very large, as cellos are. She looked like she was about to tip over backwards, like Gregor Samsa thrashing about on her back. “Well, I’m definitely not going to do that, put hockey on the back burner,” she said. ‘What? No, Daddy, I…’ She bit her lip again and listened.
So cello and hockey. I thought about my own childhood. I come from a so-called ‘musical family’ where, thank God, sport was considered to be something for a very different kind of people, but I was expected to play an instrument. It started with that miserable recorder, then a violin, which I hated a little more passionately, that guitar also didn’t work out, and even on the piano I couldn’t get past a few children’s songs by Bartók, with the piano teacher next to me furious’ staccato, staccato!’ was screaming.
My father left us to start a new family elsewhere, and with him the pressure to be musical disappeared. Finally we were allowed to go to without a joke and screeching top doll look, with the sound very loud. I never touched an instrument again. My daughter plays the piano very well, though. Maybe it skips a generation.
The girl struggled to straighten her back. Annoyed, she pulled her long hair from under that big, heavy cello. Her gaze became determined. “No, Daddy,” she said, “we’re not going to talk about this again tonight.” I’m going to the movies with Elise tonight. To the movies, yes. I like that, yes.’ And still in that neat little voice (staccato, staccato!): ‘You know what, Dad? Just sink in.’
Grinning, she got on her bike, for the last time with that damn thing on her back.