Johannes is jarig

Hoera!  Hoera!  My dear friend Johannes just turned 65 (both of us shown, somewhat younger, above).  I, as per our usual unspoken agreement, did not wish him happy birthday on the day of, but did happen to call him the day after.  I was surprised to learn that the birthday in question was his 65th, but, having discovered this, was not particularly surprised to hear that Het Parool, the newspaper in which he does the bulk of his publishing, had dedicated an entire issue of its weekly magazine to him.  He mailed me a copy, and here it is:

“Johannes is jarig” it announces. “Een feestnummer.”  And there he sits, not exactly happy but surely not as grim as he gets, beneath a festive aerial display with at center a green disc with a big purple “65” in its middle.  Johannes himself is hoisting a flute of champagne—freshly poured the bubbles tell us, and almost certainly spilled in the process, overfull as it is—but you may be sure he didn’t taste it if it were anything below Bollinger. Before him sits a taart, from Holtkamp it must be, that much they surely knew.  The taart is ready to be cut, but where is the cake knife?  How will Johannes, who has his cake, get to eat it too?  He will use his own knife—it’s there at his right elbow—one of many hundreds he owns, most likely his favorite, a folding, French-manufactured blade of his own design, though the handle of this one is white and my memory (and his style) says it should be black.

Small mysteries, but the biggest one is that such a magazine cover would exist at all.  Johannes does not care to have his birthday noted, much less celebrated.  In fact, he detests it.  This is why I call him only the day after his birthday, to point up that once again I have not wished him happy birthday.  And yet here it is:  not only did Het Parool dedicate an entire magazine to him but Johannes even appears to have cooperated in the endeavor.  Why?

We turn the page, and there he is again, this time pouring, the bottle carefully turned so as to avoid product placement, and mis-pouring at that:  one pours the champagne down the side of the glass, as he would be the first to tell you.  Below:  “Mijn verjaardag doet mij helemaal niets,” which is to say “I don’t give a damn for my birthday,” just as I said.  But oddest of all, the commentary bottom right by the stripling editor of the magazine in which he names Johannes an “ouwe brombeer,” which is exactly what I would expect Christopher Robin to call Pooh in translation.  It makes me want to smack the snipe; I can’t imagine how it makes Johannes feel.

Page on and we find some lovely photos of Johannes as I know him best: at breakfast by Hoppe (he swears by their coffee as if insisting so will hide the fact that it is solidly average and simply the only thing at that hour available within reach of his door); at the bar of De Zwart; and, my favorite, Johannes at home, indeed, at table, his obscenely cluttered workbench showing its usual slew of books and papers at left, miscellanea in the middle, food at the end, which is where I always sit, for obvious reasons.

In between you are given Johannes’s life story as told by the man himself, or rather as retold for what must be the hundredth time, plus a few mini-bios by friends and colleagues.  I have met all those people, always at a table at De Zwart, and heard what they had to say about Johannes, albeit from Johannes’s lips rather than theirs.  I read on, hoping to find some morsel that really satisfies, but the truth is I just miss Johannes, and neither pictures nor words will do much to feed me.

I still don't know why Johannes agreed to all this.  Searching, I turn the last page and there is Ilja, Johannes’s faithful (it’s the only word for it) assistant and, to my mind, only conceivable heir to the old man’s throne. Another mini-bio this, and though I’ve spent a good deal of time with Ilja there are here a few facts I did not know.  Best of all, and worth the rest of the issue put together, his closing comment--“We hebben allebei het hart op de tong”--which stands as the best single summary of the man there could ever be.  But I close the magazine, and this entry, without an answer.