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Arends
    It's not just any old day. It's the first of September. What is more,
it's Sunday. And Mr Koopman's birthday. The other gentlemen
have already been up for many hours. The night-duty assistant
began washing at five o'clock this morning. Now, in as far as they
are up and about, they are all wearing their Sunday-best suits and
have already had their breakfast.
    Most of them are sitting in the sunlounge. They're smoking or
chewing tobacco. They're quarrelling or looking outside. Not
much to see out there. A dusty patch of lawn. A large horsechestnut that blocks out a lot of light and will be chopped down
this winter. A black-tarred fence.
    It's September the first, 1968. But Mr Koopman is still asleep.
He's seventy-nine years old now. It is true that Mr Koopman is the
most difficult gentleman in the home. He's a little senile. But that
doesn't alter the fact that he is contrary in general. He's bad at
obeying and cannot stay in bed at night. When the other gentlemen
are already asleep, he's still scuttling about the ward, turning over
ashtrays still standing there and wastepaper baskets. For he's
addicted to chewing tobacco and this way he sometimes finds an
old chew that has been spat out by one of the other gentlemen.
Four, five times of an evening he has to be tucked back in bed
again.
    'Mind you stay in bed, Mr Koopman. Or else it'll be off to the
asylum for you.'
    It makes no difference at all.
    The moment the ward orderly - who has a further fifty-nine
other gentlemen to bother her head about, after all - has gone to a
different part of the ward, he gets out of bed again. Such trouble
you then have to get the man back in again! And he won't wake
up in the morning. Not with sweet words. Not with threats.
Perhaps a good clout would help. But no slapping is allowed in
this establishment. Barring exceptions, they keep to that here.
    But this morning Mr Koopman does not have to wake up early. It's his birthday. On their birthdays the gentlemen are spoilt. All of
them. Mr Koopman too, therefore. And there is no finer day to
have your birthday than Sunday! And September the first, to boot.
And all of nature is festive. To celebrate summer's farewell. There's
dear, sweet sunshine and there's gold in the leaves of the chestnut
tree which will be chopped down this winter.

    But now it's a quarter past nine already. It really is high time
that Mr Koopman woke up. 'I'll lay his table. I'll fetch his breakfast
from the kitchen. I'll wake him up. Then he's sure to know it's
party time and that it's his birthday. He's not as potty as all that,'
gabbles the fat, kindly orderly. She has the habit of talking to herself.
    'Then he'll wake up alright. There's an egg with it, too, after all.'
    She comes out of the kitchen carrying a large tray with everything on it. Four slices of bread. A slice of ham (not at all thin-cut).
Two slices of cheese. A little glass dish of red jam. Oh, yes. Real
cherry jam. And REAL butter. Sugar, coffee, milk. An orange on
top of all that as well. And the egg, of course.
    Solicitously, she sets everything down on the little table, already
laid. She walks over to Mr Koopman's bed. He has woken up at
last. But he doesn't seem to be quite as good as usual today. He is
sitting half-upright in bed and his eyes do look odd. A bit wild. He
might be ill. Then he must stay in bed and the entire breakfast
thing is off. Then she has laid the table for nothing. And all that
work. You often get disappointments with these old folks, you do.
Yet, the good old orderly decides to encourage him to leave his
bed. There's always something doing with the gentlemen, after all.
Of a temporary nature, in the main.
    'Come on, out of bed, Dirk. Then I'll get you dressed.'
    Mr Koopman's Christian name is Dirk.
    The orderly is standing at his bedside now and in a motherly
way she pinches the calf of the leg sticking out from underneath
the blankets.
    She can't have hurt him with