Kopstoot — Geert-Jan Kemme

How Dirk would have enjoyed the chaos on the financial markets this week.
The political and economical collapse of the world, and more especially of Holland, was an important topic of conversation of his as a boulevardier of the Utrechtsestraat, the Frederiksplein and the Amstelveld. The working and living space of his final years.
An important theme that merited indefatigable intellectual devotion in café Oosterling, café Krom and café Marcella. To read all papers but also to study them. Le Monde as chief inspiration. Marking down important passages and making notes that were to be worked into an all-revealing monography.

The marking of passages did have some use for the other, more rushed newspaper readers in those cafés, until it sprawled over all the article’s lines. The great masterpiece wasn’t achieved. But conversation on the topic was carried on unflaggingly. And, the somber tenor of the subject notwithstanding, this with great light-heartedness and buoyancy
In short, we might, in a way, really look forward to it all coming about, the world disintegrating. Not in the last resort as it would also, finally, prove his superior foresight.
But this all-engulfing topic was happily put aside by Dirk when young ladies joined his company or were invited. With an engaging attentiveness he would participate in these ladies` circles. Really radiant he became when in the company of his beloved Gemma.

All these gatherings were unhurriedly but constantly lubricated with “twosomes” (stelletjes). A glass of beer and a gin. A “kopstoot” in café parley, but, to him, a twosome. “Dirk, another drink?” “Yes, Ill have another twosome”. An infraction on the rule of reciprocity in café life.
But for this patriarch of consultancy, the double rate remained the commonest thing in the world.

The last years, things became a little quieter around him. The café population changed and so did he. Walking became more wearisome and his involvement with the great subject subsided a little. One day he asked me to help him clearing his bureau. The piles of notes disappeared in grey sacks. The topics of conversation became more personal and intimate, with a lot of attention for the stories of others, and for his own life story. The troubled relationship with his mother, cooking oil in the Shell laboratory, the land surveying in France, the Horringa revolution in Dutch management consultancy. The Horringa families in Norway and Holland now came lovingly into view. The picture of Hedda, his granddaughter, was all the time shown lovingly to his companions.

A couple of weeks ago I dropped in on him in The Schouw, where he was now lodged. In a lonely night he had fallen down and hadn’t been able to get up anymore. He saw it differently. “I couldn’t overcome the pull of gravitation, I couldn’t overcome the pull of gravitation”. A Horringa doesn’t fall, but engages in a struggle with the laws of nature.
“And where from here, Dirk?”, I asked him. “They say I’m in for dementia”. And we had another animated discussion on that subject. Really an interesting new phase of life, to boot, he thought, and certainly for a consultant who is expected to take a somewhat different look at things than his customer. Dementia enables this deconstruction. You’d be crazy not to want to get demented if you have the opportunity. It’s a pity, Dirk, you didn’t get around to this interesting new phase of life. The pull of gravitation, however, that you did beat now.