Omnis Cellula e Cellula
Peter van Houten was a man that many judged. His fans believed him to be a sensible and intellectual person, while a few knew that he was not.
One of them would be his former assistant, Lidewij Vliegenhart. The one that put up with him only because he paid her. She stormed to his house one day, and forced him to read a letter the Waters boy sent him. Peter van Houten read it. From the beginning to the end he read it. He told Lidewij, "Send it to the girl and tell her I have nothing to add".
That girl, Hazel Grace Lancaster. She was one of the few that thought him horrid. He ruined her trip to Amsterdam. Simply because she brought to his mind an ache.
She reminded him of Anna, of his dead little girl. Why did she have to die, why? Peter van Houten told her, he told her that she would die. And her innocent little face asked him if she would see him in heaven. Then, Peter van Houten told her that he would be there soon. And that was twenty-two years ago. He was such a coward, such a promise-breaker.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves/ That was what he told the Augustus boy. He, Peter van Houten certainly blamed himself now. All my fault All my fault All my fault All my fault All my fault All my fault All my fault He was a horrid man. Insufferable.
A coward. A drunk. A person who spends more than half of his day clutching a whiskey bottle. That was him. He didn't deny it. He had thought about ending his life. But that would be… Well, he was sure it was going to break his daughter's heart. Oh, his daughter, the girl that suffered beautifully was the only reason he clung on to this dull world.
Omnis Cellula e Cellula. That was what he had told the Hazel girl. That life comes from life comes from life comes from life comes from life. Where was the life that had come from his daughter? Where is it? As Peter van Houten took another swig from his bottle of whiskey, he cried.
He cried like a baby. She died She died She died She died She died She died She died
Peter van Houten was one of those people who knew all about death. How it felt like with the rising sun too bright in your eyes. He was sobering up. That girl, Hazel had told him to. So he is. He is trying now. Trying to put his pen back down on the page.
What should he write about? He wrote An Imperial Affliction for his daughter. Who should he write about now? A sequel to An Imperial Affliction? No… That didn't feel right. He couldn't continue writing about the woman that left him more than two decades ago.
Omnis Cellula e Cellula. But he knew that the statement didn't apply to everyone. It didn't to his poor daughter. So, Peter van Houten decided, the characters in my book wouldn't, really.
And then… Peter van Houten thought about writing about himself. Yes, he thought. But I can't do it in a too straight forward way. I don't think a drunken old bastard's life is interesting enough, anyway. But what I could do… Maybe write about someone else, and include me in it. That settles the matter.
Gears were turning in Peter van Houten's mind like it used to, when he was younger. Younger and more naïve. Peter van Houten could feel himself get more excited, and he laughed at himself for it. Peter, tsk tsk. You know better than getting excited and ending up with more than you bargained for.
But never less, he started to plan it.
First, who should the main character be? Lidewij? No, no. She was with me during a pretty boring period of my life. No excitement, no romance, and nothing like anything that were the highlights of An Imperial Affliction. Hmm. What were the highlights of An Imperial Affliction? The Hazel girl and the Augustus boy told me that it was how I expressed death. Death. That is what I should write about. Any recent deaths, Peter? He asked himself just almost sarcastically. Because he remembered.
Augustus Waters had died.
Yes! That's what he would write about. Perfect. Except I shouldn't write it as Augustus Waters. I'd done that already, where the story stops mid-sentence. I'll write it as Hazel, then. They were awfully close when they came to visit me.
For that moment, Peter van Houten's problems seemed to clear up. Move on, old boy. He told himself. For probably the first time in a long time, Peter van Houten started to write.
Here are my apologies, Hazel.
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
…