A cigarette from the mayor

A note has been delivered to my student house. It is an invitation to my neighbours’ spring drinks. The invitation is clearly designed in Word, printed on a quarter A4 and cut out a little sloppy. The two women who have signed it, I have never met. In fact, I haven’t met any neighbours at all since I moved out of my parents’ house, wanting to be anonymous in the big city. Still, the note piques my curiosity about the people around me.

I walk into the front garden of a huge house: ‘Huize Chelsea’ is written on the façade. Instantly, my heels sink into the gravel, and I struggle to keep the slippery devilled eggs I made for the party steady on my tray. I place them on a table that is already filled with snacks. My neighbours gaze at me with curiosity, waiting and scrutinising me. No one approaches me, so I reach out my hand to the nearest neighbour.

I had almost forgotten how enjoyable it can be to talk to middle-aged people, especially when they constantly emphasise how pleased they are that I am there. They highlight how special I look, which I try to take as a compliment. They tell me about their Rotterdam in the nineties: “If you accidentally left your door unlocked, you could be sure you’d be burgled.”

Then I see the mayor smoking under an umbrella. She has lived in this neighbourhood for most of her life. She tells me that the house we are standing in front of, which now contains six apartments, used to be the most luxurious brothel in the city. This is where the harbour barons and North Sea Jazz artists used to go.

We are interrupted by the oldest neighbour at the party. She has been eyeing the mayor’s cigarettes. She hasn’t smoked for years, she insists. But today, she would ‘like to smoke ten cigarettes at once’. This is due to her accident, which has left her dizzy for a year, and there is no doctor who can help her. Until she discovered a new physiotherapist.

“He tells me that the problem isn’t here”, she says, touching my temple. “And not here”, my upper back, “but here”, placing a hand on my lower back. “Now he shakes me”, she says without elaborating, “and now I think I finally feel a bit better.” Her cigarette is finished, and I hand her an empty dish where she carefully places the stub. I return the dish. The table is filled with half-empty plates of bitterballen and sausage rolls in puff pastry. The devilled eggs are gone.