There was nothing unusual about detectives having their own informants and networks. If you wanted information, anything at all, you needed them. It was always a matter of personal trust. Or loyalty. Sometimes things went south. An investigation got fouled up by information from an untrustworthy source. Sometimes the detective got hooked on the promise of information. He assumed none of that was true here.
He ordered another absinthe. It was a foul drink, disappearing much too smoothly down his throat. And guaranteed to obliterate his past. As if he needed that. As if he needed anything to separate him from his past.
Yes, there was a past he wanted to obliterate.
He looked up toward the counter.
There she was again, the woman. She was clearly not an incidental tourist. He was glad about that. He would speak to her. But not yet. Not at once. He couldn’t. Tired, and one drink too many. He would make a fool of himself if he attempted a conversation. He would talk nonsense and mess up the approach. He knew he would.
And she was with somebody. With two men, even. Were they the same men as before? He didn’t know. He had hardly looked at them the other day.
His attention was more focused now. A glass of absinthe, a woman. That was enough.
And then, suddenly, she sat in front of him at his table. She was alone. She wore black. The only color about her was her lipstick. And she spoke to him as if they’d been friends for some time. “The only thing wrong with this bar,” she said, “is that there’s no decent jazz. I prefer that old southern jazz, Louisiana-style. You don’t hear that much anymore.”
“Something can be done about that,” he said. Or at least, that’s what he thought he said. “Can’t you ask the bartender if he could play some jazz?”
“I’m Linda, by the way,” she said. But she didn’t extend her hand. “You were here before, weren’t you?”
That made him smile. She had noticed him, after all. She had remembered him. “Is it so remarkable when people return?”
“Yes,” she said. “You don’t see many regulars here. Except for me and two, maybe three people, all of whom I know personally. This is no ordinary bar. What we drink here is not beer. It’s absinthe. An accursed drink.” She smiled. Her hair was dark brown but her eyes pale blue. He very much liked that combination.
“I’m Walter.”
“You from Flanders?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“The accent. I like Flanders. Love going there. Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Ostend. I feel much freer in Flanders than in Holland. In the sense of …” She snapped her fingers and glanced upward as if looking for meaning. “You know what I mean.”
“You probably know more about Flanders than I do about Holland. I’ve been to Amsterdam twice, maybe three times before.”
“I only go there on holidays. I don’t travel professionally.”
“What is your non-traveling profession?”
“I’m a management assistant for a large company here in Amsterdam. You?”
“Government,” he said.
That smile again, telling him she accepted the banality of that description without reserve. But she seemed genuinely interested in what he did. “Government? That sounds ominous. A diplomat? A spy? Or do you collect taxes?”
“Police.”
“That’s odd. Here in Amsterdam? As a Belgian?”
“Collaboration between Belgium and the Netherlands concerning international crime prevention.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then it’s political as well.”
“More or less.”
She looked at him, more serious than a few moments ago. “Politics.”
“It’s mainly about extreme political parties, religious extremists, that sort of thing. Troublemakers, really. But troublemakers with a considerable and possibly dangerous political agenda. And the organizations who pay their bills. And the usual suspects: neo-Nazis admiring Hitler a bit too much, or sects with a tendency toward megalomania.”
She eyed his drink.
He followed her gaze to his almost empty glass. “Can I offer you one of these?” he asked. “Or anything else?”
“I don’t want to stay out late.”
“Have to get home on time on account of the parents?”
She grinned. “A policeman with a sense of humor. Where will this end? We only see them on TV. And you’re not in uniform. Do you occasionally wear a uniform, Walter?”
“Never.”
“Good,” she said. “I’ll have another absinthe. Against my better judgment.”
He got the drinks at the bar, paid, and walked back. “Are we here because we have something artistic in common?”
“No,” she said, “because we are both into self-destruction. Isn’t that what was said of drinkers of absinthe in earlier days? Poe, Baudelaire? That their addictions destroyed whatever creative gifts they had? Addiction to drink, opium, women, literature?”
Nice, he thought. A dark, intelligent woman in a bar in the heart of Amsterdam telling him something interesting about dark poets like Poe and Baudelaire. Things could have turned out much worse this evening. He was most intrigued by her long, slender, tawny hands. As if they had seen a lot of sun this summer, like her face and arms. Maybe she’d been on a boat, somewhere in Spain or Greece. Maybe she had a garden. He opted for the former. She looked like she knew somebody who had a sailing yacht in some subtropical country.
He felt warm because of the alcohol. It was a dangerous feeling. It told him the world and he were at peace with one another. That nothing would disturb that peace. It went counter to his knowledge of how the world functioned.
“How long have you been in Amsterdam?” she asked.
“Second day.”
“Oh. And already out in the night on your own? Quite an adventurous spirit.”
“I don’t live far from here. And not far from my office either.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “Most places in the center are expensive. A lot of nuisances as well. Drugs, prostitution, rowdies. Not during the day. The rats come out at night. But to you that’s not a problem, I assume.”
“You live around here too?”
“Yep. But I wasn’t born here. I’m from Utrecht. That separates me from the typical citizen of this city. And by God, they make sure you know it! Well, whatever. I’ve been living here for the better part of three years.”
She looked around. “I had hoped to find a friend here tonight, but she didn’t show up. Instead, I get to meet you. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“You believe in coincidence, Walter?”
“I only believe in people. In their bad and good qualities. Anything else is metaphysics. There might be something like a coincidence, as I occasionally witness in my job, but it doesn’t have any deeper meaning.”
“So there is no higher plan, no real meaning in life?”
From Poe and Baudelaire to deeper meaning and metaphysics. Maybe this was the absinthe speaking. “In what sense?”
“In the sense of something that inspires and gives meaning to life and existence,” she said. “A creator, maybe.”
“I prefer not to believe in a creator.”
“You prefer to disbelieve.”
He smiled. “Yes. You could say that. The meaning of life is life itself, that’s what I believe. There is no deeper meaning. Assume the contrary—there’s something after life—and chaos would ensue. And fear. I prefer finality. A final and unique life. A random universe, without meaning or any sort of master plan.”
She rose. “I would like to discuss this more deeply and so on, but I need to get home. And God or whatever deeper meaning there is to life is not going to wait for me. And neither is he going to do my job in the morning.”
“I can find a taxi and take you home if you want.”
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
He looked at his watch. “You’re going to take the tram? At this hour?”
“No, I
meant, I’m old enough to get a taxi on my own, Walter. Do I get to see you again tomorrow?”
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll try to be here.”
“I’m sure you will,” she said. She had brought an elegant woolen overcoat with her, he noticed. And then she was gone, after a last glance over her shoulder. A meaningful glance. One of those really meaningful glances.
The short walk to his apartment helped clear his head a bit. He had no trouble finding the keyhole and ascending the stairs. He forgot to turn on the lights, but the stairwell wasn’t all that dark, with light coming in from what appeared to be a roof window. Then a shadow closed in. He reached for his gun and felt ridiculous at once. Toon, his neighbor, stood on the landing. “Sorry to scare you,” the old man said. “Can I offer you a drink? Or is it too late? No, it is never too late to have a drink with a neighbor.”
Eekhaut wanted to go to sleep, but he couldn’t just ignore the man, who was old and probably lonely and wanted just a little company. I’ll be that man in a couple of years, Eekhaut thought. “All right,” he said. “Let’s have a last drink.”
“Good! I have some jenever like you never drank before. Not where you come from, anyway.”
Toon’s apartment was what Eekhaut expected: sad and messy and at the same time cozy. The furniture dated probably from before the war. Toon gestured toward an old horsehair coach, and Eekhaut hoped the man had neither dogs nor cats. He didn’t see any anyway. “Be right back,” Toon said. He disappeared in the back of the apartment and returned almost immediately with a tall brown earthenware bottle and two small glasses.
“Taste this first,” Toon said.
Eekhaut imitated his host and emptied the glass in one gulp. It stung in his throat for a short moment, but it was a gentle sting, a smooth caress, followed by a warm feeling.
“Well?” Toon said.
“It is … very special,” Eekhaut said. The jenever tasted like nothing he had tasted before, almost like a clear liquid honey.
“Tears of the Bride,” Toon said. “I don’t know where they get those names: Tears of the Bride. Made by Wynand Fockink. Have a look at his shop if you have the time, Mister …”
“Eekhaut.”
“Mr. Eekhaut, I am an old pensioner, but I bought this apartment fifty years ago, which allows me to remain in the heart of Amsterdam. I don’t need any luxuries, but I allow myself a bit of this heavenly drink, now and then. Why shouldn’t I?”
The apartment needed redecorating and a touch of paint, and perhaps a new carpet, but none of that would happen. Toon was the sort of man who was content with living in his past. And Eekhaut did not begrudge him his freedom. He noted a small plaque on the sideboard. A golden shield. Toon noticed his attention. “Yes,” he said. “My badge. Got it from my colleagues when I retired.”
“A policeman?”
“Yes, a policeman. A cop. A pig. That’s what they said to your face on the streets, some of the fine and upstanding citizens of Amsterdam. It may have been a bit of an honorary title for me as well. This is my life. Amsterdam. On the beat for so many years.”
Eekhaut couldn’t find the appropriate words. Toon ignored his silence and poured another glass.
“Tears of the Bride, you said?”
“Yes. Remember the name: Wynand Fockink. In Pijlsteeg. Close to the Damrak. Heart of the city. Known only to ghosts of my past. Drink up. There’s more where this came from. And somebody should drink it besides me.”
Eekhaut knew he wasn’t going to get to bed for a while.
23
NICK PRINSEN RESTED ON his bed and looked at the ceiling. It wasn’t remarkable, even though he had painted it white himself when he came to live in this apartment. Painting it white had been difficult because the previous tenant had applied a dirty dark gray, or perhaps it had become dark gray on account of a succession of tenants who hadn’t bothered to paint or clean anything, least of all a ceiling. Nevertheless, whatever the case, it had taken him two buckets of paint and four coats to disguise the gray and return the ceiling to a dignified white.
Not that it mattered in any way. He liked a white ceiling, that was all.
Prinsen had also painted the walls. Not white, but a soft yellow—because that particular color had been cheap. The Pakistani who had sold it to him assured him this paint was of excellent quality, which Prinsen hadn’t believed. Not at that price. But it also didn’t matter if the paint started to fade after a couple of months. Its patina would add to the apartment’s charm.
The apartment had two rooms and a bathroom and a toilet. It measured fifty square meters in all. Which was considerable, in the center of Amsterdam. And at such a modest rent. People with jobs in the center of Amsterdam had no choice but to live small, unless they preferred to commute for an hour from the suburbs. The suburbs would be green and quieter, certainly better for families, but they didn’t offer the excitement of living in the center.
His choice had been easy. There was no reason for him to move out of the city.
This sort of problem had never existed in the village where he grew up. When he was a child, he had never known people who had to live in confined circumstances because they needed to be close to their job. In the village, people lived small because they knew themselves to be modest under the gaze of an all-seeing God. Under that gaze, you wouldn’t do anything spectacular or exceptional. You didn’t build a house larger than your neighbor’s. You didn’t want to belittle or anger them. You didn’t build a house with more windows than your neighbor’s. Didn’t add anything frivolous to your house, like a pergola. You did nothing that distinguished you from other people.
As a child, however, he had mentioned the large houses he had seen pictures of in books. He had been wondering aloud, as children do, about the wonderful things people did, like traveling to the moon or climbing mountains. “Nobody goes to the moon,” his parents told him. Chastised him. “Those are all made-up stories. Vanities. These modern times, they make you crazy. Make you believe in fairy tales. It is impossible to travel to the moon.”
His mother had taken him to the rector, an old and frail man who always dressed in black, whose voice was sharp as a razor. He was whatever came closest to a religious leader in the village. “The boy has too much imagination,” his mother said. The rector let him sit on an upright chair. The room the rector lived in smelled stale, of old paper and old cigar smoke and old clothes. That air had been lingering in the house for a very long time. This was also how the rector smelled. Everything in the house was dead or reminded Nick Prinsen of dead things. The rector was old. The world he represented was old. What could such a man tell him?
“Why does he have that name?” the rector asked in his razor-like voice. “His Christian name. Nick. Nick, isn’t it? That’s not a Dutch name! Not a name of this people!”
“His father’s idea,” Prinsen’s mother said. “He said it was Dutch.”
“His father!” the rector said.
“Yes,” said Prinsen’s mother. “His father wanted him to be called Nick.”
“Nobody in the village is called Nick.”
“This is unfortunate,” Prinsen’s mother said. “Maybe I can have it changed.”
“Nothing changes in the world,” the rector said. “The things that were and have been will remain so till the end of times. Till this world disappears. Till God’s final judgment. He will always be called Nick. And he will bear the shame—”
“It’s not a shame to be called Nick,” young Prinsen had said, in his sudden anger. You were not supposed to get angry. That was a sin. And certainly not around the rector. Who would have been called a vicar or a dominee, but who wanted to distinguish himself from other so-called men of God.
Even children could sin. That’s what the rector said. Even children were not innocent. Nobody was innocent. Original sin had all of them in its grip. It defined all of them.
The rector said, “This is a shameful thing because nobody is called Nick. It is a name from the m
odern world, and therefore it is not suited for anyone here. But now it cannot be changed anymore. We understand how difficult it is for a child to have such a name, but that will make the child strong.” He leaned toward Nick Prinsen. “This will make you strong, boy,” he said. He spoke in a condescending way, but to Nick it sounded like a condemnation.
Prinsen had bought most of the furniture for his apartment from street markets or from people who wanted to get rid of old junk. Things they considered junk but were still usable. He had bought a bed and a wardrobe. Only the mattress on the bed was new, as were the sheets. That sort of thing, he bought new. In the other room, he had a round table and four mismatched chairs. And a cupboard and a bookcase. Everything was free or secondhand.
He didn’t care much about furniture. But he spent money on other things that, in a way, could be labeled frivolities. A widescreen TV on a small table in the corner. A laptop on the old desk, attached to a steel ring mounted on the wall, for safety. A compact stereo in the bookcase.
He had entered the twenty-first century. He had left the village behind.
“On Judgment Day,” the rector had said, “the Lord Jesus will return and call each and every one of us by his name. But how will he do that with you, Nick, with your strange name and you being such a strange boy? But do not fear. The Lord Jesus will call on all children of the Word and will forgive all of them for their sins. You too, Nick. You too. So be prepared for that moment. And consider yourself warned from now on: you must prepare for the mercy of the Lord, and sin no more.”
He had been nine or ten perhaps at the most. There had been no calendar anywhere in the village. Hadn’t been for a century or more. Nobody told Nick what a century meant. Nobody told him anything about history as it happened outside the village. The rector was the sole teacher. The rector only taught the Bible. It was the only book children and adults alike had to read.
There was a town close by, but people from the village seldom went there. Sometimes they went and bought clothes or tools or visited the pharmacist. But the village and even the town were a long way from any other part of the country.
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