I feel quite sorry for the owner of the only café-restaurant that is still in operation in our village and not only because his father is from Arnhem and he is just like me for Vitesse. Because he is the only one, it seems as if the municipality of Wormerland thinks they can best fight corona through him.
Who else should they focus their policies on? If there are no more places to school together, you can no longer school together. The waiver for the terrace for his business was revoked and the mayor canceled a dinner party.
“To set a good example, she says,” he shouted when I walked into his abandoned business with Frida van Roosmalen (0) yesterday for a double espresso. In his view, setting a good example was actually going to the catering industry.
“To support.”
He picked up his scanner.
“Am I going to do it? Yes, I’m going to do it anyway! Your birth month please…”
Then: “Only one has to pass… They all look in to check on you.”
It drove him mad, his wife mad too.
He didn’t really know anyone who wasn’t mad about it.
The day before, a woman with two small children had barged in during ‘rush hour’. The children immediately threw themselves on the box with toys, while the woman settled in extensively. When he kindly asked if he could scan her QR code, she exploded.
He raised the arms. “What was I supposed to do? They all sat watching, in silence. I also checked everything else. Finally she left, screaming. Pointing to her crying children, she yelled, “Have you got your way now?” As a catering entrepreneur, that goes through the marrow and soul, right? The worst part was that the rest of them started to compliment me after she was gone. Like, “Well done, kid.” But in the heat of battle you are on your own.”
“That’s how it was during the war,” I heard myself say. “The silent majority is of no use to you.”
Needless to bring up the Second World War again, I thought that too, although I like to make an exception for someone with Arnhem roots.
He served the espresso.
“I don’t feel like it anymore, yo. That shit three times a day. And it’s raining cancellations from people who are against QR codes.”
He let me look into his phone.
“No, no takeaway either,” one woman wrote. ‘We are against dichotomy!’
He: “They were once normal people. Everyone is radicalising.”
Marcel van Roosmalen writes an exchange column with Ellen Deckwitz here.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of November 24, 2021
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