Until I Find You

by John Irving

  "I thought Mom did it for only one night," Jack said. "I thought there was just one kid, probably a virgin. He broke her pearl necklace."

  "Nobody does it for only one night, Jack. When I told her to stop, or I'd have her deported, she just kept doing it. With Alice, they were always virgins. At least they told her they were virgins, or they looked like virgins."

  "But why'd she do it?" Jack asked. "She had a job, didn't she? She was making money at Tattoo Peter's and at Tattoo Theo's."

  Alice had two pretty good jobs, in fact, and William was giving her money for Jack's expenses--this in addition to whatever Mrs. Wicksteed was sending her. Alice didn't need money. However, the one way she hadn't tried to make William come back to her was that she hadn't exposed Jack to any risk; she hadn't yet done something to herself that a child of his age shouldn't see. But if she was a prostitute, Alice reasoned, and if Jack was exposed to that--well, how would it be for a boy growing up to remember his mother as a whore?

  " 'What if Jack remembers that this is what you did to me?' she asked your dad," Nico Oudejans told Jack. " 'Since you like prostitutes so much that you play for them, William,' your mother said, 'what if Jack remembers how I became a whore because you stopped playing for me?' "

  Nico told Jack that William played the organ for the prostitutes for strictly religious reasons. "He was a fanatical Christian, but the good kind of fanatic," Nico explained. William had insisted that there be an organ service for the prostitutes--at that early hour of the morning when many of them stopped working. William wanted them to know that the Oude Kerk was theirs at that time, and that he was playing for them. He wanted them to come to the Old Church and be soothed by the music; he wanted them to pray. (William wanted them to stop being prostitutes, of course, but the music was the only way he ever proselytized to them.)

  Not everyone at the Oude Kerk was in favor of William's playing the organ for the prostitutes, but he silenced most of his critics by citing the zeal of St. Ignatius Loyola. William Burns said that he'd encountered a greater evil in Amsterdam than St. Ignatius had met on the streets of Rome. Ignatius had raised money among rich people; he'd founded an asylum for fallen women. It was in Rome where the saint announced that he would sacrifice his life if he could prevent the sins of a single prostitute on a single night.

  "Naturally, some of the higher-ups at the Old Church expressed their doubts--after all, Loyola was a Catholic," Nico Oudejans told Jack. "Among Protestants, your dad was sounding a little too close to Rome for comfort. But William said, 'Look, I'm not trying to prevent the sins of a single prostitute'--although, in his own way, he was. 'I'm just trying to make these women feel a little better. And if some of them hear Our Lord's noise in the music, what's the harm in that?' "

  " 'Our Lord's noise'?" Jack asked.

  "That's what William called it, Jack. He used to say that, if you could hear God's noise in the organ, you were at heart a believer."

  "Did it work?" Jack asked. "Were any prostitutes converted?"

  "He made believers out of some of those women," Nico said, "but I don't think any of them stopped working as prostitutes--at least not until long after your mother started. Some of the prostitutes didn't like your dad--they thought he was yet another Christian do-gooder who disapproved of them. William had just found an odd way in which to disapprove! But more of the ladies hated your mother. They wouldn't let their own children anywhere near the red-light district, but your mom dragged you through it every day and night--just to drive your dad crazy."

  "You told her you'd have her deported?" Jack asked. Another policeman came into the office and put more Dutch guilders on the table.

  "Prostitutes who weren't Dutch citizens used to get deported all the time," Nico said. "But your dad didn't want her deported. He didn't want to lose you, Jack. At the same time, he couldn't bear to see you in this environment."

  Jack asked about Frans Donker, the organ-tuner. Nico said that Donker had imitated, or had tried to imitate, everything William did. Donker had spent half his time trying to play the organ instead of tuning it. "And when your dad needed a good night's sleep--when he was too tired to play for the ladies in the Oudekerksplein--Frans played for them. I think Frans Donker was a little simple; maybe someone had dropped him on his head when he was a baby," the policeman speculated. "But your dad treated Donker like a helpless pet. William indulged Donker, he pitied him, he was always charitable to him. Not that Donker deserved it--that boy didn't know what he was about."

  "He put baby powder on his ass," Jack remembered out loud.

  "Donker even imitated your dad's tattoos, but badly," Nico said. "Then he took a really stupid job--something only Donker would dream of doing--and we never saw him again in the district."

  "I think I know what Donker did," Jack told the policeman. "He took a job on a cruise ship, playing the piano. He sailed to Australia, to be tattooed by Cindy Ray."

  "Yes, that's it!" Nico Oudejans cried. "What a memory you have, Jack! That's a detail even a cop like me had forgotten."

  Jack also remembered the dark-brown woman from Suriname; she was one of the first prostitutes to speak to him. He'd been surprised that she knew his name. She'd been in a window on either the Korsjespoortsteeg or the Bergstraat--not in the red-light district but in that same general area where Jack and his mom had met Femke. (And he'd thought that Femke was an unusual prostitute, when in fact she was a lawyer!)

  The Surinamese prostitute had given him a chocolate the color of her skin. "I've been saving this for you, Jack," she'd said. And he'd believed, for years, that she must have been one of his dad's girlfriends--one of the prostitutes who'd taken William home with her, and had slept with him, as Jack's mother had led the boy to believe. But that wasn't true.

  Jack's father had not had sex with a prostitute in Amsterdam; William had only played the organ for them, a sound both huge and holy, which had compelled them to just listen. As for some of them--those who'd managed to hear the Lord's noise in the music--William may have saved them from the sins of a single night, albeit later in their lives, when a few of them did stop being prostitutes.

  "I called your dad the Protestant Loyola, which seemed to please him," Nico Oudejans told Jack.

  Nico also told Jack that the Surinamese prostitute was one of William's earliest converts to Christianity; she'd heard God's noise in the organ and had become an overnight believer.

  Jack had lost count of how many policemen had come into the office and put their guilders on the table in front of Nico, but when another cop had come and gone, Jack asked Nico if he had won a bet on a game or a horse.

  "I won a bet on you, Jack," the policeman said. "I bet every cop in District Two that one day, before I retired, Jack Burns would walk into the Warmoesstraat station, and we'd have this little talk about his mom and dad."

  The next evening, Wednesday, Jack went with Nico to the Oude Kerk to hear Willem Vogel, the organist, rehearse. Vogel had officially retired from teaching and conducting, but he still wrote music for organ and choir--a CD of his compositions had recently been released--and he still played in the Oude Kerk, the long service on Sunday and the Wednesday-evening rehearsal. Willem Vogel was in his late seventies but looked younger. He had long, hairless hands and was wearing a sweater with sagging elbows; in the unheated church, a wool scarf was tied around his neck.

  Jack had correctly remembered the narrow, brick-lined stairs leading to the organist's hidden chamber above the congregation. The wooden handrail was on one side as you climbed; a waxed rope, the color of burned caramel, was on the other. There was a bare, bright, unshaded lightbulb behind the leather-covered organ bench; it cast the perfect, shadowless light upon the yellowed pages of the music. Vogel's well-worn shoes made a soft tapping on the foot pedals; his long fingers made an even softer clicking on the keys.

  Jack could hear only the drone of the choir, in the distant background, when the organ was soft or not playing. When Vogel played hard, you could barely hear the acc
ompanying voices from the organ chamber. At a moment when the choir sang without him, Vogel opened a small piece of hard candy--neatly putting the paper wrapper in his pocket before popping the candy in his mouth.

  The names printed on the stops (the registers) were meaningless to Jack. It was a world beyond him.

  BAARPIJP

  8 VOET

  OCTAAF

  4 VOET

  NACHTHOORN

  2 VOET

  TREMULANT POSITIEF

  Jack struggled to hear the Lord's noise in the music. But even when Vogel played the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei, the Lord wasn't speaking to Jack.

  Willem Vogel had never met Jack's dad. Once, in 1970, Vogel had been out to dinner rather late with some friends; one of the friends suggested that they go to the Oude Kerk and listen to William Burns's concert for the fallen ladies, but Vogel was tired and declined the invitation. "I regret I never heard him play," the organist told Jack. "Some say he was marvelous; others say that William Burns was too much of an entertainer to be taken seriously as a musician."

  The next morning, Jack went with Nico Oudejans to a cafe where they were meeting Saskia for coffee. Saskia had stopped being a prostitute more than ten years before; her retirement hadn't improved her disposition, Nico forewarned Jack. She'd gone to a school for beauticians and had learned how to cut hair, maybe also how to do makeup and manicures; she worked in a beauty shop on the Rokin--a wide, busy street with many medium-expensive shops.

  Saskia hadn't wanted Nico and Jack to come to the beauty shop. Given her former line of work, even a friendly visit from the police was unwelcome. And Saskia feared that--in a beauty shop, of all places--the ladies would make too much of a fuss over her knowing Jack Burns.

  When Jack saw her coming, he thought she'd had more than a career change. She'd had a whole makeover. Gone was the winking armload of bracelets, hiding her burn scar. In her fifties now, she was still thin, but the gauntness had left her face. There wasn't a trace of the come-on of her former profession about her. Saskia's hair was cut as short as a boy's. Over a white turtleneck, she wore what looked like a man's tweed jacket. Her baggy jeans were unflattering; her ankle-high boots, with a low heel, gave her a mannish walk.

  Jack got to his feet and kissed her, but Saskia was a little cool to him--not unfriendly but not warm, either. She was only marginally friendlier to Nico. She was carrying a Yorkshire terrier in her oversize handbag. The dog and Nico appeared to be old friends; the Yorkie hopped out of Saskia's handbag and sat contentedly in Nico's lap while the waiter took Saskia's order.

  Jack half expected her to order a ham-and-cheese croissant, but she asked for a coffee instead. He wasn't surprised that she'd had her teeth fixed. Why wouldn't a new mouth have been included in her makeover?

  "I know why you're here, Jack, and it doesn't interest me," Saskia began. "I don't go along with it." Jack didn't say anything. "Everyone took your dad's side. But I hate men, and I liked your mom. Besides, I wasn't working in the district to take time out to go to church and listen to him play his bleeding-heart organ."

  "I remember bringing you ham-and-cheese croissants," Jack told her. (He was trying to calm her down, because she sounded angry.)

  "Your father hung out there--that was where your mother let him see you, when she was buying a bloody ham-and-cheese croissant. I think I would die on the spot if I ever ate another one."

  "You and Els took turns being my babysitter?" Jack asked her.

  "Your mom helped Els and me pay the rent on our rooms," she answered. "Alice paid part of Els's rent and part of mine. The three of us shared two rooms. It made sense, businesswise."

  "And Mom admitted only virgins?" he asked.

  "Some of those boys had been with half the ladies in the district! It only mattered to Alice that they looked like virgins," Saskia said.

  "Did she honestly believe that my dad would get back together with her, just to stop her from being a prostitute?"

  "She believed that your dad would do almost anything to protect you--to give you the life he thought you should have, which wasn't a life in the red-light district," Saskia said. "It was the fuckhead lawyer who worked out a way to make your mother stop being a prostitute."

  "You didn't like the lawyer?" Jack asked. He remembered how Saskia and Els had screamed at Femke; how he'd thought that Els and Femke had come close to having a physical fight.

  "Femke was as much of an asshole do-gooder as your fucking father, Jack. On the one hand, she was this outspoken advocate for prostitutes' rights; on the other hand, she wanted us all to go back to school or learn another profession!"

  "What was the deal that she offered Mom?"

  "Femke told your mother to get off the street and take you back to Canada. Your dad wouldn't follow you this time, Femke promised. If your mom would put you in a good school--if she kept you in school--your dad would pay for everything. But your mother was tough; she told Femke that your father had to promise he would never seek even partial custody of you. And he had to promise that he wouldn't look you up, not even when you were older--not even if Alice was dead."

  "But why would my dad promise that?"

  "He opted to keep you safe, Jack--even if it meant he could never make contact with you," Nico Oudejans said.

  "If your mom couldn't have your dad, then he couldn't have you," Saskia said. "It was that simple. Listen, Jack--your mother would have slashed her throat and bled to death in front of you, just to teach your fucking father a lesson."

  "What lesson was that?" Jack cried. "That he should never have left her?"

  "Listen, Jack," Saskia said again. "I admired your mom because she put a price tag on his leaving her--a high one. Most women can never be paid enough for the terrible things men do to them."

  "But what terrible thing did he do to her?" Jack asked Saskia. "He just left her! He didn't abandon me; he gave her money for my education, and for my other expenses--"

  "You can't get a woman pregnant and then change your mind about her and not have it cost you, Jack," Saskia said. "Just ask your father."

  Nico hadn't said anything since telling Jack that his dad had opted to keep him safe. Saskia, like Alice, had clearly chosen revenge over reason.

  "Do you cut men's hair, too?" Jack asked her. "Or just women's?" (He was trying to calm himself down a little.)

  Saskia smiled. She'd finished her coffee. She made a kissing sound with her lips, and the Yorkshire terrier sprang out of Nico's lap and into her arms. She put the tiny dog back in her handbag and stood up from the table. "Just women's," she told Jack, still smiling. "But now that you're all grown up, Jackie boy, if you ever want someone to cut your balls off, just ask me."

  "I guess she didn't learn the castration part in beauty school," Nico Oudejans said, after they'd watched Saskia walk away. She didn't once turn to wave; she just kept going.

  "What about Els?" Jack asked Nico. "I suppose you know what's happened to her, too."

  "Fortunately for you," Nico said, "Els has a somewhat sweeter disposition."

  "She's not cutting hair?" Jack asked.

  "You'll see," the policeman said. "Everyone has a history, Jack."

  Nico led Jack past the Damrak, away from the red-light district. They wound their way through streams of shoppers--across the Nieuwendijk to the tiny Sint Jacobsstraat, where Els occupied a second-floor apartment. Her window with the red light was a little uncommon for a prostitute's window, not solely for being outside the district but because her room was above street-level. Yet when Jack considered that Els had taken an overview of her life in prostitution--she'd grown up on a farm and took an overview of life on a farm as well--he thought that Els in her window above the street was where she belonged.

  During the day, she greeted passersby with boisterous affection, but Nico told Jack that Els was more judgmental at night; if you were a drunk or a drug addict pissing in the street, she would turn her police-issue flashlight on you and loudly condemn your bad manners. On the Sint Jacobss
traat, Els was still a prostitute, but she was also a self-appointed sheriff. Drugs had changed the red-light district and driven her out of it; alcohol and drugs had killed her only children. (Two young men--they'd both died in their twenties.)

  Jack had been wrong to think that Els was about his mother's age, or only a little older. Even from street-level, looking up at her, he could tell she was a woman in her seventies; when Jack had been a four-year-old, Els would have been in her forties.

  "Jackie!" Els called, blowing him kisses. "My little boy has come back!" she announced to the Sint Jacobsstraat. "Jackie, Jackie--come give your old nanny a hug! You, too, Nico. You can give me a hug, if you want to."

  They went up the staircase to her apartment. The window-room was only a small part of the place, which was spotlessly clean--the smell of all the rooms dominated by the coffee grinder in the kitchen. Els had a housekeeper, a much younger woman named Marieke, who immediately began grinding beans for coffee. As a former farm girl, Els hated cleaning chores, but she knew the importance of a tidy house. She shared the prostitute duties with another "girl," she explained to Jack; the women took turns using the window-room, although Petra, the other prostitute, didn't live in the apartment.

  "Petra's the young one, I'm the old one!" Els exclaimed happily. (Jack didn't meet Petra, but Nico told him she was sixty-one.)

  Els, who claimed to be "about seventy-five," said that most of her regular customers were morning visitors. "They take naps in the afternoon, and they're too old to go out at night." The only customers who visited her at night were the ones off the street--that is, if they happened to be passing by when Els was sitting in her upstairs window. For the most part, she let Petra sit in the window. "At night, I'm usually asleep," Els admitted, giving Jack's forearm a squeeze. "Or I go to the movies--especially if it's one of your movies, Jackie!"

  Els had always been a big woman with an impressive bust. Her bosom preceded her with the authority of a great ship's prow; her hips rolled when she walked. She was massive but not fat, although Jack noticed how her forearms and the backs of her upper arms sagged--and she walked with a slight limp. She had a bad heart, she claimed--"and perhaps an embolism in the brain." Els pointed ominously to her head; she still wore a platinum-blond wig.