Frans Teitler

The epistolary paradox

I am retired, but I hate the Dutch word pensionado. That is someone who winters in Spain in flip flops and also wants to eat his ‘frikandel speciaal’ on the boulevard in Torremolinos. I don’t want to be a pensioner, but neither am I a pensioner who keeps shouting that he is busier than ever. Who rushes from one voluntary job to another and, when making appointments, first extensively studies his crowded agenda. Without whom the local tennis club dwindles and who plans his holidays around the bridge drives he and his wife participate in. I’m not that kind of retiree.

I’ve never liked card games and to be honest: I don’t really have anything to do. I cycle a bit. I read a little. I occasionally do some shopping. I pass the vacuum cleaner on Friday mornings and I clean the toilets (well, Ada is busy in the garden). We live too far from our grandchildren to be used as babysitting grandparents – but the kids do come and stay for a few days during almost every school holiday.

An empty existence? By no means. I like to write letters. Manually. I hate email. Digital mail leads to superficiality and laziness: a scribble, press the send button and you’re done. I love the clank of the mailbox, the thud of the letter on the doormat, the anticipation of finding out who has taken the trouble to surprise me with a letter. It won’t be my fault if they go bankrupt, those KPN, TNT, TPG or whatever all those privatized successors of our trusted PTT may be called.

I have many correspondents. One of them is the most important: my brother Hans. He lives in Munich and I exchange letters with him every week. I’ve been doing that for a long time.

From 1979 to 1982 I worked as a Dutch teacher on Curaçao. During those three years I maintained a weekly correspondence with Hans. After our return to the Netherlands, that no longer seemed necessary, although over time we became aware of a remarkable paradox: the distance from Rotterdam to Oegstgeest, our places of residence, was greater than the thousands of kilometres that previously separated us and that we bridged with our letters. In September 1993, Hans (a classicist and historian) was given the opportunity by his employer, the University of Utrecht, to work in Paris for four months. This was a good reason to take up our correspondence again. Since then we have continued to write to each other. The total sum of our letters now consists of around 1500.

And for those who think my life is meaningless: in addition to going to the supermarket, cycling and cleaning the toilets, I spend a large part of my day typing (and thus making them accessible for posterity) these letters. The reason for this was the death of our parents: in 2000 my mother’s and in 2003 my father’s. In their estate we also found letters, even from our grandparents, but we soon noticed that, interesting as they were, the often illegible handwriting hindered us from reading them. Our letters may also be of interest for posterity, but only if they are more accessible than those of our parents and grandparents.

And so every week I type out some of the letters from the past and of course also write a new letter every week. Until, if we are given the time, this Ouroboros will bite its own tail. Below is the head of the Ouroboros. Keep in mind that this one page is only the first of the more than 3000 that make up its body. And to do justice to the word ‘correspondence’, I also include a letter from Hans (of a somewhat later date).

Frans Teitler, March 2012

Oegstgeest, 18 January 1994

Dear all,

In a literary mood I have sometimes called it the ‘epistolary paradox’ (perhaps even to you because I sharpen my literary pen especially for your letters): the phenomenon that in a regular correspondence you always have something to write about while at a lesser frequency you sometimes have to desperately search for subjects and desperately suck the back (the end actually) of your pen holder into an elegant brush. How poorly today’s schoolchildren grow up with their Japanese pocket pens and felt-tips and without any pen holders, ink pads and sponge boxes – although I must honestly admit that the latter attribute I believe is something more of our (grand)parents, who still wrote on a slate.

I would like to extend this epistolary paradox to a social one. You have now been back from Paris for three weeks and except for one phone call, in which we expressed the wish to see each other again soon, we have had no contact at all. Busy, of course. Yes, we are too and that’s why. But, to speak with Kees de jongen: it is eternally unfortunate that we, when you were at a 10 hours’ distance from us (do you know the poem Pogrom by Ed. Hoornik, with the closing line It’s only ten hours’ tracks to Berlin?) had epistolary contact with each other and now we have hardly any.

That is why I have carried out the plan that I have already informed you about (on Dad’s birthday), that is to continue our correspondence as usual. Because, damn it, did Ter Braak and Du Perron only have something to say to each other when Du Perron was in the Indies or Paris again, did Kafka and Max Brod put their pens to rest because they lived close to each other, and did Goethe leave things unspoken because Eckermann came to see him every day? Then all those wonderful tomes of thin print would never have appeared, then Martin Ros could forget about his Private Domain series, right? So Hans, no nagging of ‘I’m so busy’, no excuses like ‘I had plenty of time in Paris, but here I have to work again and put bread on the table, have mouths to feed and work on my scientific career’. It’s sad but it has to be said: you will never be a professor, so you can set that flame a little lower (by the way: yesterday I heard Maarten van Rossum —that Peer de Schuimer from Utrecht— on the radio again and he was announced as professor of American Studies. Did he make it after all?

Meanwhile the bell has rung, I have already given 3 hours of lessons and then picked up the repaired car that prevented Ada from going to Amsterdam today to contribute to the economic maintenance of our family. For me this was a pleasant surprise (not the Fl. 319,- on the bill, but her presence at home) because I usually arrive in an empty house when I come home in the afternoon. At least it is a heated house, because we bought one of those electronic thermostats that you can programme, much like the video.

Alright folks, this was the first letter in what I hope will be another long series (and as for that professorship, of course we will keep hoping).

Frans

Rotterdam, 18-IX-’95

Dear folks,

We had a nice swim, for 30 minutes and not a yard more because things must remain within reason. And then on to the tanning bed, because the Eastern Swimming Pool has four sunbathing cabins so that we didn’t have to go to another establishment separately. Two cabins next to each other. The token (at Fl. 8.75, so quite cheap; anyway, a bargain compared to the Fl. 15,- you have to pay in solar centre Aurora on the Oudedijk) in the appropriate slot (first twice in the wrong slot, but then in the right one – it made me think of the spider on Kate’s cunt) and sure enough, the lights started to shine. Only, when I (and as it soon turned out, Geertje as well) tried to pull the top half of the ‘sandwich maker’ down, I couldn’t get it to move. What to do? If I stayed like that, only my back would turn brown, and that would not be worth the price of Fl. 8.75.

But come again? There was another button – maybe you had to press that. I did so, without wearing my glasses. If I had, I would have seen that it was an ’emergency button’. The alarm started to sound. Geertje called out from the adjoining cubicle. The lifeguard came running straightaway, I saw from the gallery (I had left my cabin by now). With arm gestures I tried to make it clear to him that at least I was still alive. “Press the red button again,” the man shouted, “and it will stop wailing.” I entered the cabin again, still not wearing glasses, and pressed the red button. The alarm went off again – I accidentally got into the wrong cabin. But there was the lifeguard. With a new token and an indication as to which button we (Geertje had not yet succeeded in finding the right one either) had to press.

All’s well that ends well (although I had placed a towel so awkwardly underneath my head that part of my back remained white – the colours will blend in, indeed, just like Ma’s wallpaper).

Hans