“What are you laughing at?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s crazy, really. Once I wanted to work on boats. Now, I think I’d like to again.”
“I don’t know, Netty. It’s pretty hard work. You sure couldn’t do it in that outfit. The captain would say it’s too distracting for the crew,” Ram laughed.
“But it’s not at all distracting for you, is it?”
She turned to look at Ram fully now. There were tears in her eyes. Her lips were trembling and her body was shaking.
“You’ve never even looked twice at me in two years, have you? I’m just the girl behind the bar at The Heeren.”
Ram looked on, dumbfounded but dimly beginning to realize now.
“I’ve been in love with you from the first moment I saw you, Ram.”
Ram was awestruck and looked back at her dumbly. Netty was crying now and she buried her face in her hands and shook and sobbed violently. Ram put his hand on her shoulder and tried as best he knew how to comfort her, but he didn’t have a clue how to do this; he’d been too long alone, and before that, too deep into his own hole to know or even feel how others felt and so was completely out of his depth. He felt horribly awkward and his mouth was dry.
“I’m sorry,” he finally managed. “I’m real sorry. I didn’t know that, honest.”
“I know you didn’t know that. How could you? You were such a mess when you first got here that you could barely feed yourself. How could you ever know what anybody else felt about you when you could barely even feel yourself? Yes, I know that. I knew that back then. But I fell in love with you anyway, because I saw something beneath that which you don’t see yet. You don’t even know that the world exists outside of your needs, which are all twisted out of shape. I wish I could die. I feel terrible and hopeless to do anything about it or that anything can come from it.”
Now Ram was trembling—not from her declaration of love but from her reading of his nature, which was absolutely true so far as he knew. They sat on the bench for a while in silence marked only by Netty’s sobbing. Passersby looked at them, and Ram felt self-conscious under their gaze. It seemed as though they looked upon him with contempt—either for hurting Netty or for his ineptitude to do anything to comfort her. And if that was so, they were right because Ram lacked whatever it was—sympathy or empathy, he wasn’t sure which; tenderness, certainly—that could ease the pain of a friend or lover. It was a world unknown to him, real love or real friendship, and when Netty’s sobbing finally subsided, Ram reached in his pocket and produced a blue silk handkerchief and gave it to her. Netty thanked him, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and put the handkerchief in her coat pocket. “I’m keeping this,” she said.
They sat a while longer. Another boat passed down the Amstel. Then Netty rose and said, “Come with me. There’s a special place that I want to show you.”
They walked slowly down to the canal’s confluence with the Amstel. Ram put his arm around Netty’s shoulder and she slipped her hand round Ram’s waist and pressed in close to him. Her hair smelled of jasmine and her body was warm against his side.
They walked toward Frederiksplein, holding each other in silence. Clouds were blowing in again and the wind was picking up and turning the air chilly. Ram was trying to think of what to say to make her feel better, wondering whether he should tell her that he’d come back for her by summer’s end.
But the very idea of intimacy was still so strange and foreign to him that he didn’t know how to broach it. Finally, she stopped and took him by the hand and crossed the street toward the little pedestrian bridge across the Amstel.
“Do you know what this place is, Ram?”
He had seen it before on one of those canal boat cruises but hadn’t been paying attention when they announced what it was.
“No, what is it?”
“This is called Melkmesterbrug—the Milkman Bridge,” she said. “There are many legends about this bridge from the time of the plague. It was the only safe place where milk could be delivered to the people over there,” she said, pointing to the old houses of the district. “Then, afterward, it became famous as a place where young lovers could meet. I wanted you to see this place and know this before you left. Now I want you to leave.”
Ram was about to say something in protest, or talk about his projected return in the fall, but Netty raised her hand in admonition to stop him.
“No, I know what I’m doing. I know what I’m saying. I’ve been thinking about this all week. You don’t have to say anything or do anything. I’ll be alright.”
Ram stood there stupidly, looking at her. But her gaze was averted from his, and her head was turned to the side. Then she walked away, mounting the bridge and walking toward the other side as he watched her go. When she was near the crest, she called back to him over her shoulder. “If you ever come back to Amsterdam, Ram, come here in the early evening on a Friday and maybe you’ll find me. Maybe you will have to wait, but I’ll be here for you. Goodbye, Ram. Good luck in America.”
At the top of the bridge, she stopped but didn’t look back, her gaze fixed downwards, on the swiftly flowing Amstel below her, her shoulders shaking again.
Ram stood for a minute watching her, but it made him uncomfortable to do so and he moved off into the growing shadows of the buildings lining the Amstel. He picked up his pace to battle the growing chill, breaking into a run so he could make the tram stopped at Frelderiksplein. It was crowded with shoppers, and a Scandinavian busker was butchering a Bob Dylan tune, getting all the words wrong.
Past the Gothic facade of the Rijksmuseum and the light-sprinkled Leidseplein, they cruised until they came to Ram’s stop at Marnixstraat in the Jordaan. Then Ram crossed at the canal and walked up Westerstraat, past the Westerkerk at Prinsengracht, then over the canal and up Prinsenstraat until it emptied into his canal.
When he got to his home at 69, he heard his name being called and stepped back from the house and looked up to the top floor apartment where Mac and Grub were looking down and calling him.
“C’mon, Le Doir. Get your ass up here,” Mac shouted. “We’re gonna send you outta A’dam in style, man.”
Ram looked up and smiled. He could hear the music all the way down in the street. They were playing “Doolin-Dalton” off Desperado.
“I’ll be right up,” Ram called.
The bells of the Westerkerk were tolling three as Ram unlocked the front door and mounted the twisting staircase to Mac’s fifth-floor flat. The music was booming the closer he got and the 69 regulars and all their friends were all assembled on the landing to greet him. They shouted at him and cheered as he mounted the final staircase. Someone handed him a chillum when he reached the door. When the greetings and hugs were finished, Lola steered Ram to the mirror-topped table where a long dragon line was swirled. Ram took two long snorts and someone handed him a tall Grolsch and a spliff.
For the next two hours or so, he was caught up in the whirlwind—smoking and drinking and dancing and hugging and snorting—until he could take no more and had to step outside to the balcony to draw fresh air. He was getting his breath and recharging himself when Mac approached from behind.
“Hey, man, it’s your party. What are you doin’ out here by your lonesome?”
“It’s cool, man. I’m cool. I just needed some fresh air.”
“So, what’s happening? You don’t seem to be too into it or something.”
Ram looked back at him. He thought of telling Mac about Netty and what happened between them that afternoon, and he was about to but decided not to instead. No, he was leaving tomorrow, he told himself He had promised Fran that he would, and everyone knew he was going back stateside.
“Oh, I don’t know, man,” Ram finally managed. “Just gonna get homesick for A’dam is what I guess I was thinking.”
“Hey, man, it’ll be here when you get back. And we’ll all be here for you.”
“Yeah, I know that, brother.”
“Well, c’mon then.
Let’s go get some… We just be pimpin’, and jivin’, and high off them motherfuckin’ narcotics,” they both shouted in unison.
That brought some of the gang outside, and a chillum got going. And for the next several hours, that’s how it was—a proper sendoff for an A’dam expatriate, fellow traveler, and brother.
The party swirled and eddied, ebbed and flowed. Ram was of it but not into it, which wasn’t like him at all, and it bothered him when he recognized this. Later, he would remember Big John and Lance and Jimmy Ray coming by with Ron G. and Johnnie T and the other dealers that Ram and Mac had helped make into millionaires from the Morocco-Amsterdam run. Phil Ryan and Ian Benjamin put in a brief appearance before Phil got too drunk and belligerent and had to be asked to leave by Mac’s lady, Leslie, which almost got Mac the head-to-head brawl he’d been hoping to see between Benjamin and Big John, which was only called off in deference to Ram. Then Rene and Santana and three of her lovely flamenca friends came down with Tony and Monty, who had been with Ram that long ago weekend in the Marnixstraat lockup. But only by looking back at it deliberately and forcing the recall could Ram remember all of it; and it wasn’t because of substances consumed, because he had backed off of everything except for an occasional beer after that first hour. Instead, it was a disrecollection caused by his own sense of disembodiment, for he now felt interposed between two worlds, the first, a foreign land, the home of his choosing, the second, his native home, where he felt obliged to return and reconcile with but felt alien toward. That was what he and Fran discussed on that boat ride those long weeks ago prior to now—that Ram had to come home and face down his demons and mend his broken fences and fractured family ties and make something of himself. And Ram then agreed with his brother and began wondering what that world would be like.
But now, with the friends who loved him simply for who he was, and what he was, and were now gathered about him, and who required nothing of him other than that, and did not require him to be some pluperfect persona that he aspired to be, desired to be, or thought he should be, Ram felt horribly torn. The assignation with Netty hadn’t helped matters any. He’d always liked her and even had a secret crush on her but thought his chances so slim as to not be worth the effort. And so, Ram stayed in his self-protective foxhole, which made sense considering the near-total, self-reconstruction required as a result of his last sojourn home into the pit of a heroin Purgatorio, which reluctantly, and only just barely, had spat him back out alive. Then he was drifting back, and could feel the room closing in, and he exited the party unnoticed and descended down the staircase, out the door, and into the street. And when he came to again, he was walking down Keizersgracht, heading toward the Lily Canal.
When he arrived at Leliegracht, he stood on the bridge and looked down on the little, two-block-long canal. He thought back to the time when he first got to Amsterdam, those days with Juan and Mac in the winter when he and Juan lived here in the back of the VW van that Mac had lent them. It was pitch-black now and silent, with reflected light dancing off the water. Ram tried to stuff all that was good about Amsterdam into his head and catalog it all so he could hold it in safe-keeping, in case things somehow went awry when he got back to his other home. He named and numbered his friends and business associates here, and all the places he knew and loved so well: Ron G. and the boys, Big John and Clem and Lola, Rene and Santana, even Phil Ryan and Ian Benjamin; the Westerkerk bells and the back of the New Church, the Jordaan and Waterlooplein, the Oudezijds Voorburgwal and Oude Sschans, the nightclubs of Leidseplein and Saturday nights at the Ochtshof, the Melkweg and Paradiso, the takeaway Indonesian street carts, and the Rijsttafel restaurants where the A’dam exiles went when feasting was called for; the Café de Prins on Sunday mornings and Vondelpark excursions when the weather was fine. And finally, Ram catalogued those A’dam things closest to his heart: his regular haunts and his Ace-Deuce compañeros: the Egg Cream, die Fles, The Oporto and The Heeren, Mae and Leslie, Grub, and Jimmy Ray and Vance, Red John and the Hookah Tribe. Now there was Netty, too; or at least the hope of her, Ram thought.
He’d named all the people and all the things that he could think of, and it gave him pleasure to do so. He was smiling as he lit a cigarette and looked down on the Lily Canal. The wind picked up and whistled down Prinsengracht toward him, and with it, a new storm was following in; cold and icy, filled with snow falling in large flakes and filling the horizon with millions of streaking white spots, driven earthwards in oblique angles by the chill wind driving through the night. Ram watched the weather front gathering more steam as it assaulted Amsterdam. It was too cold to walk now and Ram called it lucky when a cab appeared and pulled up alongside him. He got in, gave the driver directions, and asked him to drive slowly. They headed into the Jordaan, along Egelantiersgracht up to Twee Tuinstraat. Then, they headed back to Keizersgracht, where all that remained of the party were its embers.
It was down to Mac and Leslie and Tall Paul, Grub and Ron G. and his wife, Celeste, when Ram walked in. They talked for a while but the ladies could see that the boys wanted to be alone with Ram and so they left for Ram’s flat taking Tall Paul with them.
“I’ll be home soon, Celeste,” Ron called after his wife as they descended the stairs.
Mac reached into his pocket, pulled out a vial, and emptied some flakes onto the glass. Ram and Ron tried to dissuade him, saying they were tired and needed their sleep. But Mac wouldn’t take no for an answer, insisting on one final snort-and-shot salute before they put the party to bed.
“You’re relentless, Mac.”
“Yeah, so what? Here’s to Ram,” Mac said, raising a shot of Genever and his silver tooter aloft. He threw down the shot, inhaled a three-inch-long stripe, and then the other A’dam exiles likewise partook, though largely to a lesser degree, before calling it a night. Then they separately filed off to their respective dwellings inside the old canal mansion.
When he entered his apartment, it was empty. Ram packed away those last few items that he’d left for the last minute. He pulled the easy chair over to the picture window fronting onto the canal and watched the snowflakes drift onto the water. It had been good here these past years, thought Ram, and it had saved his life to come here, he knew that. There had been difficult days and easy days, days of joy and days of sorrow, exciting times and long periods of ordinary everyday affairs. Although the future’s uncertainty unfurling before him back at his other home now concerned him, Ram thought himself sufficiently steeled to face it and deal with it head on. It had gotten as bad as it could get back there, Ram thought. He believed his brother and trusted Fran’s judgment. Now all Ram had to do was to wait for dawn and the time of his departure, which he did. He reclined back on the chair, feet propped on the windowsill, watching the snowdrifts blanketing Amsterdam in a mantle pure and white as ermine.
When he awoke, Ram walked up to the Egg Cream and had breakfast. Mac met him there and, afterward, they headed out to Schiphol. The sky was low with silver clouds lined in black and the city was entirely white under a foot of new snow. Ram asked Mac to stop by the Lutheran church up off Brouwersgracht. He got out and snapped a picture.
“More than anything, I want to remember Amsterdam this way,” Ram said. “It’s almost like it’s a make-believe place when it’s like this, magical.”
It was too early for Mac, and he was still half-wrecked and nodded in assent. Mac fired up the Porsche and they skittered out to Schiphol at high speed. When they got to the terminal, Mac helped Ram with his bags to the door and said he had to leave.
“I hate goodbyes, brother,” Mac said. “Besides, I’ll see you soon enough… Call me when you’re back and we’ll come out and grab ya.”
Ram nodded, “Yeah, sure.”
They did the four-step bro’mine handshake and Mac hopped back into The Toad and fired her up. He rolled down the window and shouted, “Until then, we just be pimpin’, and jiving, and high off them motherfuckin narcotics!” Then he put The Toad in gear, burnt rubber,
and squealed off into the mist. Ram watched the car until it disappeared. He didn’t hear his name being called until the third time Fran said it. Ram turned to see his brother, smiling widely and looking him over.
“So, Ram, are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” said Ram. “Come on, let’s do it.”
The brothers Le Doir went silently through security and customs and then waited in a departure lounge for their flight to be called. Over coffee, they made small talk about what they’d each been doing since last seeing each other. After Interlocken, Fran went to Yugoslavia and then all the way to Turkey, and he told Ram tales of his travels. When it was his turn, Ram didn’t have much to tell—a couple of trips to Zwolle to see the gypsy car merchants, one overnighter with Mac and Leslie to Utrecht. His brother asked him if that was all. Ram thought about it and didn’t say anything. Mostly, the past weeks were life in the neighborhood between The Dam and The Jordaan, with names who were nobodies and events that were nonevents. And so, Ram let Fran do the talking, for his enthusiasm was bubbling, and Fran could be infectious when he felt like it. Ram smiled, listening at the stories, all the way through takeoff, looking down through the silver clouds at the receding earth below. When they banked, there was a break in the cloud cover, and through it, Ram could briefly see Amsterdam, canal-laced and sparkling in white crystal. Then the sky closed over and they were in the midst of an iron-gray cocoon. Ram listened to the chug of the plane engines bearing him home again. Sleep overtook him and he didn’t come to until the descent into New York City.
Windwhistle Bone Page 14