Amsterdam Stories (13 page)

He was sitting in a streetcar, quietly poetizing away, sitting and staring, with his hands on the knob of his walking stick and thinking all the while, as little poets are wont to do, that he had such nice, pale, delicate, thin hands. It was around six o'clock on a Sunday evening in November, the streets were dark and empty. A lady, twenty-six or so, stepped onto the streetcar, stately, tall, in a brown suit with a stand-up collar, the cuffs and hems trimmed with black fur and her hands in a large matching muff, made of the same brown fabric with the same fur trim, and her delicate little face under a small brown hat with black fur. The whole ensemble was textbook Line Two, Museum District.

The little poet looked up for a moment, straight into her eyes, but she saw only the empty seat in the corner and walked right past him, tall and stately. Her husband followed behind her, clean-shaven, in black, with a tall hat on his graying, short hair.

When she sat down the little poet couldn't see her, because he was sitting on the same side, farther forward, with four people between them.

Monsieur sat directly across from her, as was proper, and looked at his watch and said something. The time, obviously. Then they said nothing more. No question about it, they were married.

The little poet decided they must have gone out for a visit and were now on their way home for dinner. Did they have a child, or children? Did her husband behave as was proper in the bedroom too? God let it happen: the little poet saw the man clear as day in front of him there on the streetcar, in nothing but a shirt and socks—a flannel shirt, of course, yes, gray flannel, not pretty and white—in his forties he must be, with weird hairs sticking up on his bare legs, and his tall derby hat on. Too bad he didn't wear glasses. And he heard the man ask in his proper Museum District voice, “Shall I leave the light on, Clara?” Her name, after all, must be Clara, the dazzling. And the little poet thought that Monsieur would say “Excuse me!” to her at a certain moment. Yes, God lets a person's thoughts wander so bizarrely. Strange, outlandish passages turn up in never-ending poems like his.

Then the little poet looked up at the window across from him in the streetcar. The houses were all dark, and the ladies reading this know perfectly well that in such circumstances you see all the passengers in the streetcar reflected in the window, outside.

The contemplative eyes of the little poet then looked straight into the contemplative eyes of Clara, the dazzling, which looked as though they knew something very special, but that was just an illusion. For a moment, the four contemplative eyes grew bigger and more dazzling, then the little poet lost his nerve, he was a well-behaved young man after all, even if there were such strange meanderings in his never-ending poem, and he looked at the brown fabric and black fur and at the vague shape of her legs under her suit and then wrenched his gaze toward a dairy outside. The curtains were drawn, it was Sunday. You can always look through people's reflections if you want, and P. C. Hooftstraat has really come down in the world, in the past there would never have been a milkman there, now there's even a greengrocer.

But when he looked back at how one of her hairs had come loose and was hanging down over her left temple, so lovely, so softly wavy, their eyes met again, for a moment. “I think you're handsome, do you think I'm pretty?” “I want you, if I had the courage, do you want me too, if you had the courage?” “I want to live, really live for once, be free, be a Goddess and not a lady from the Museum District, not so-and-so's daughter, so-and-so's sister, so-and-so's wife, so-and-so's mother, Mrs. So-and-so's friend. Just for a little while, in my thoughts. My thoughts go out to you, through my eyes, my thoughts range far and wide, forwards and backwards in time, through all veils and coverings. No one can stop them, no one can harm them, they go out to you through my eyes.”

And
his
thoughts went out to
her
like that too, through his eyes into hers, in those few short seconds. And no one knew.

A tall tower surged up from his spirit and a tall tower surged up from hers. And they looked out far and wide over everything and saw only each other.

And so the little poet poetized away at his never-ending poem and even the silliest woman could poetize along with him. But they couldn't be together. And maybe that was what made it so beautiful.

At Hobbemastraat her husband glanced at the conductor and his hand went straight to the cord. And she stood up and walked through the streetcar, behind her husband, proper and stately and without seeing anyone.

But while Monsieur stepped off the tram and she had to wait on the step in front of the door, her left shoulder towards the little poet, and it was almost over, she vanquished the Museum District for just one infinitesimal moment and looked.

“I think you're handsome and you think I'm pretty too. My heart sings in my breast and my brain sings beneath my hair. Pretty hair, hmm?” The little poet kept poetizing his poem, without end. But the poem took a somber turn and Amsterdam was dark and empty.

Like a true ridiculous little poet he wandered around the Museum District on a few afternoons after that, always feeling terribly poor and never quite sure if his tie was tied straight and his collar was clean and if he looked polished enough in general. But he never saw her again, of course, maybe she didn't even live in Amsterdam. There was a house on the corner, surrounded by a small garden, and growing against the wall was a climbing vine that bloomed without leaves in the soft November air, flowering in little yellow stars. He decided that this was the house where she lived and he named the vine “Clara.”

Still, he did love his wife and his wife loved him very much and they gave each other everything they wanted.

Why did God ever make
anyone
a little poet?

The devil always has a good time with adorable, unaffected young women who love their lawfully wedded husbands very much. When they've been married for a year or so they start to feel a strange homesickness for a land they know. But they've never been there. How can they miss something they don't know? How can you know something you don't actually know? Strange. What do they long for? They fling open the balcony doors one spring morning, singing, and suddenly feel vaguely sad, and why?
C'est là, c'est là qu'il faut être. Là?
*
Where? “I'm crazy.” And they hug their child tight and kiss it all over.

Coba is sitting at an outdoor table at the Beursbengel café on the Damrak, one of those tables with a heavy round marble top and a copper band around the edge. Her little girl is sitting across from her and the girl's bare little legs in low white socks dangle off of the chair. She has a piece of pie and a glass of milk and is eating with her little fingers. Her adorable eyes are so big and look around at everything. The child is awed by the special treat and all the people, but is very lively and cheerful. Mama looks to make sure she isn't making a mess and gently helps her but doesn't say much.

In the corner sits the devil, twisting the ends of his mustache. I once heard a woman, a high-minded, principled woman, say: “A man like that, what does he take me for? Does he think I'll fall in love with him just because he tugs at a wisp of hair? Bah!” Don't trust this woman too much. Now she's lying awake at night clenching her wet pillow in her teeth.

Coba takes off her jacket and lays it across her knees; it's too warm out for a blue twill suit. She is wearing a white blouse and her arms show through it, so pinkish brown, and the very top of her back and her chest too. You can see where her undershirt ends and that it's hanging from her shoulders on lace ribbons. Now she sucks in her upper lip, sticks out her lower jaw, and smoothes down her hair with her right hand, she turns her head a little and the tip of her tongue appears, brushes along her upper lip, and quickly disappears again. The devil twists his mustache. Now she says something sweet to her little girl and laughs, showing all her teeth; she has a good set of teeth—strong, even, dazzling white—so that you want to hold out your hand for her to bite, on the outside between pinkie and wrist. It is early May. For the first time this year she is wearing a V-neck blouse and her chest is white, so intensely white that the devil cannot help but think of heavenly light. And her collarbones stand out so perkily next to the indentation in her neck. She brushes the edge of her blouse with her slender fingers. Now she wipes the dessert off her child's hands with her lace-fringed handkerchief. She takes her child's little hand in her own two hands and squeezes it and gives the child a kiss on her big eyes and the child asks, “Mommy, why did you do that?” And she blushes and asks, “Do what, Bobi?” “Why did you suddenly kiss me?” “But Mommy kisses you like that all the time, doesn't she? Do you want another piece of pie, honey? But you can't make such a big mess, okay? Should Mommy go choose one for you? Stay right here, okay?” And Mommy goes inside, her hips just barely swaying, her blue twill skirt swinging back and forth. Then she comes back out holding a plate and laughs at her little girl from the doorway and sits back down. The devil twists the ends of his mustache. And suddenly she is afraid. What if he says something to her? What should she do? “Come on, Bobi, finish up, wait, should I help you?” And she picks up half the piece of pie on the tines of her fork and sticks it in the girl's mouth. She feels the fat lady next to her looking. The child has a face full of whipped cream. “Bah, what a messy girl!” “But Mama, you did it!” And there's Papa. He says hello and doffs his hat to the devil and the devil doffs his hat to Papa. Mommy blushes again, this time down to the indentation in her neck, but the little poet doesn't see it. He's been married too long.

She stands up and helps the child from her chair. “You want to leave right now?” “I have to go buy some wool to finish knitting my sweater. I can't find the color anywhere. I've already been to four stores and then I thought I should come here first, it was getting late.” The little child's eyes open very wide and she looks up at Mommy. “All right, we can go. Did you pay? Waiter!” The little poet doffs, the devil doffs, Mommy nods stiffly. Bobi waves her little hand and says in a high-pitched little voice, “Goodbye, mister.” The devil nods and smiles and winks. “Mommy, that man was looking at you the whole time.”

Luckily the little poet didn't hear a thing, his poem without end has once again reached a stage that is driving him out of his mind. He sees all the women sitting at the outdoor tables and walks past them to the street. “Oh God,” he thinks, “what if you performed a miracle now, what if all their clothes suddenly fell off?” A nearly mad little poet thinks the strangest things. You and I, dear reader, never think such things. And my lady readers…. Mercy me, perish the thought.

Six years they'd been married. And while she sliced the bread every morning and spread the butter and poured tea, for him and for Bobi and for the maid, and sometimes for the cleaning lady…
You
try slicing bread and making sandwiches for four kids just once, if you're not used to it, the way the unfortunate writer of these pages has done on occasion, it'll drive you insane. Over time you'd probably get used to it, but dear God, over time it would also get horrifically boring if you were unfortunate enough to think about it.

All right, so, while she was doing these things over and over again, it pleased God—the true God, God of heaven and earth—to make Dora, her sister, grow up and turn into a woman, beautiful as a racehorse. She was one of the two little sisters who had been sent to bed early on the evening he was allowed to come upstairs for the first time.

It took a long time before he saw her. But
she
had seen
him
long before. It was when she was fifteen. He was recently married, just over a year, and he came back from a trip where he'd gotten a lot of sun. He was wearing a light gray suit and brown shoes and a white hat with the brim folded down all the way around. Back then they still threw stones at you on Reinwardtstraat if the brim of your hat was folded down all the way around, but now it's allowed. His in-laws lived in the country then, somewhere along the IJssel River in a white house with a sunroom and a porch along the second floor. She was still barely more than a child, her skirt came down halfway between her knees and her ankles. Now grown women walk around like that. She was wearing a sundress with straps over her shoulders, wide vertical red stripes with thin white stripes between them; the shoulder straps were just red. Under this high-cut dress she had on a white blouse with a stiff raised collar. And her face was tanned too. She wore her dark hair with a part and loose in the back with a black bow. She was bareheaded and playing on the grass in front of the house like a child, playing diabolo, for the last time, though she didn't know it.

It was in early June, the tall trees behind and on either side of the house were a solid green mountain. Here and there a brown beech tree stood amid the green. The pink hawthorn was in bloom, the red flowers of the chestnut trees had fallen while the delicate empty calyxes left on the branches stood straight up. The acacias were in bloom, and the jasmine. The sunroom and all three porch doors were open wide. There was a little round pond in front of the house with leaves and white petals from the water lilies floating on it and reeds and yellow irises along the edge. The gravel road ran past the garden and on the other side of the road, flanking the garden on this side too, there was green rye everywhere as high as your head.

With raised arms spread wide she caught the spinning diabolo on the string, but it fell, and when she was about to bend down to pick it up she saw her sister's husband.

“Hi, Dora, don't you recognize me?”

He saw a child and a lawn and the pond and the white house and the tall trees and the acacia and jasmine in bloom to one side. He was recently married and hadn't yet started his poem without end. But she saw him, her eyes grew wide, the blood rushed upwards in her body. Why didn't she throw herself around her brother-in-law's neck and give him a kiss? She had always done that before, whenever he was a sweet brother-in-law who brought her bonbons and brooches and rum balls. The rum balls were their little secret.