Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2)

by Ruth Francisco

  “I can never say no to you,” Pim says. “Where to?”

  “Enkhuizen.”

  He tilts his head for a moment, then nods. “That might work. I can stop at Hoorn on the way back and pick up a case of Akvavit. My contact just got a new shipment.”

  “A case? What for?”

  “We can always use Akvavit,” he says, grinning. “A delegation from the United Nations of Islam Council of Guardians is arriving on Friday. They'll be staying at the Grand Hotel Amrath Amsterdam. We'll need a few bottles to bribe our way in.”

  “To plant bugs?” I always wonder how he knows these things.

  “That and more. I'll fill you in tonight.”

  Pim has a way of making everything sound easy. No more dangerous than a housewife picking up the laundry, retrieving her kids from soccer practice, then stopping to buy something for dinner.

  For a moment, I imagine the life I might have had, the little Dutch girl I once was. It seems like someone else's life. Would she have grown up to be kind and compassionate? Comfortable in her pleasant Dutch life, a husband and career, hobbies and children? An avid sailor like her childhood idol, Laura Dekker? Taking weekend jaunts to Greece or the Canary Islands? With Facebook friends all over the world? But then I would never have met Pim.

  “Are you okay?” Pim asks.

  He knows me too well. Throwing out a line to pull me back.

  “Sure.”

  I kiss him on the cheek, tuck my hair under my hijab, and head down the stairs.

  Two, May 2010

  Centrale Bibliotheek Amsterdam

  Katrien Brinkerhoff skips beside her father, over the bridge from the train station. Eight years old, a tepee of long curly dark brown hair bouncing down her back. She drops his hand, dashing ahead to peer over the side of the boardwalk into the gray-green water. A white swan makes a speedy retreat; a triangle of six goslings, sputtering and spinning and bobbing to change direction, flutter their feet, trying to keep up. Delighted, the girl claps her hands, makes a little hop, then runs back to her father. She wraps all her fingers around his thumb, and pulls him toward the library.

  The library has its own island, a castle of red brick, granite, and glass. The biggest public library in Europe, 28,000 square meters, 600 public access computers, 1.7 million books.

  Katrien loves the library.

  Together they walk around the enormous square granite tower imprinted with meter high letters—BIBLIOTHEEK—so tall it looks like it supports the sky and all the lofty thoughts of liberal thinking men and women throughout time. They walk up the steps, around the clusters of young people of every nationality of the world, who laugh and chatter, waiting for friends, texting on cellphones, eating from the food carts, swaying to music on their earphones.

  Inside is a cathedral of cool lightness. She loves riding up and down the escalators, watching people at the long glistening bank of computers, like operators controlling a spaceship, and she almost feels the building lift as they tap away at their keyboards. Up and up she rises, past stacks of books and CDs, the shelves illuminated with soft white lights. She rides to the top—fifth floor, sixth floor, seventh floor—and runs to the huge windows that look out across the IJ and over her city. She stretches her arms, palms on the cool glass, and embraces Amsterdam.

  The library makes her feel powerful and wise, a queen looking out over her kingdom. She stands at the portal of the universe. She feels the future and the past, and somehow feels deeply connected to it. All she needs to know to be a wise responsible ruler lies within these walls. All is possible. Everything can be learned. All can be understood.

  Her father steps up beside her and turns to watch her, a stoic twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  Like many parents, he stands in awe of his daughter's fierce passions. He senses her longing, her fear, her determination. He looks around the library at the other parents, all who wear the same amazed look. Who are these insistent indomitable little spirits? Where do they come from? Will they save us?

  “Let's find you something to read, and then get Mom's book,” he suggests.

  “Okay.” She presses her forehead to the window, not moving.

  He puts his hand on her shoulder, and says gently, “It'll still be here next time, schatje.”

  “I know,” she says, but doesn't sound convinced.

  He doesn't rush her.

  Slowly she exhales on the window, signs her initials, KLB, steps away, and takes her father's hand. She rides the escalator back down to the children's floor and finds three books she can hardly wait to read. Only then do her cheerful spirits return.

  “Shall we buy a Liege waffle at the cart outside?” asks her father after they pick up Jana's reserve book at the front desk.

  “Oh, yes, Papa. Chocolate, please. Can we feed the swans?”

  The waffle man, who is not from Belgium, but from Morocco, smiles as he hands Katrien three stale waffles. Excited, she runs to feed the birds. Her father ends up eating most of her treat as he watches her toss the pieces of bread to the birds in the water.

  He makes a plan to go to the gym.

  Enkhuisen

  Amsterdam is a fun place to be a kid. Years pass. Katrien does well in school, her days filled with activities and friends. She reads a lot of books.

  Come spring, Katrien and her father take the train to Enkhuisen. Ever since she turned nine, Katrien has helped her father in the boatyard. Prepping for the sailing season.

  Pieter's sailing buddies, already at work on their own boats, yell out cheerful greetings when they see them. Sunday is the first day of the sailing season and everyone is excited, joking that this year Pieter is sure to win with his new skipper. Katrien won't really be the skipper, but it's fun to be teased.

  These are practice races for the Flevorace in August. The Allegro won last year in the ORC-2 class. They have three days to get her in the water.

  The Allegro has been sitting in dry storage all winter, perched up on jack stands like a prisoner in stocks. They loosen the tie-down ropes and pull off the white tarps. Even dirty she is beautiful, a Salona 37, built in Split, Croatia.

  “Why are sailors always so friendly and happy?” Katrien asks her father. He tosses her a line, which she cinches around a cleat. She knows what he needs her to do without asking.

  Pieter checks the lights on the mast, which lies on the ground beside the jack stands. “You know how it is—there's a million things to pay attention to when you're sailing. You don't have time to worry about missed car payments or fights with your girlfriend. Wind, water, and sails take all of your attention. And it's a lonely place on a sailboat in the middle of the sea. You need all the friends you can get. Every time you return to port, it's a little victory. You want to celebrate—you're alive and safe and with friends. That's all that matters.”

  She thinks it is more than that, something she can't quite articulate. As if all sailors share a secret, a secret she defiantly wants to know. A secret only learned through sailing.

  Over the next two days, Katrien helps her father hose down the boat, paint the hull below the waterline, wax above the waterline, reinstall batteries, and test the electronics. She loves how her shoulders burn as she waxes the hull. Her arms ache, but nothing like they will ache Sunday after the race.

  On Saturday an enormous crane lifts Allegro with two wide straps, swings her slowly over the other boats and through the boatyard, then gently sets her down in the water. Katrien holds her breath as she watches, hands pressed to her cheeks. Pieter hails a few sailors, who interrupt their own preparations to help him guide the mast as the crane picks it up and sets it in the mast partners. Two men support the mast, while the others scramble around and hook up the shrouds to secure it. Like a hungry predator, the crane pulls away and moves on to another boat.

  Everyone helps each other.

  While Pieter connects the electrical wires on the mast, Katrien flushes the water tanks, clearing out the non-toxic anti-freeze, then fills them with water
. They pump diesel into the inboard motor tanks, test the electronics, bend on the main sail, and check it for soundness. Pieter fires up the engine. They motor over to their dock and tie up for the night.

  Early the next morning, Katrien and Pieter stop at the bakery for coffee and danishes before walking down to the shipyard. There she is, the Allegro, sparkling white in the morning light.

  The rest of the crew is there. Pieter's best friend, Rafik Sahin; two of Pieter's colleagues from the College of Science, who quite cheerily call themselves “ballast”; Stefan Groot, a handsome young man, whose father owns the boatyard; and Hans van Meerveld, who has sailed with Pieter for years. A crew of seven, including Katrien.

  After Stefan unties the lines, Pieter starts the inboard. As they putter out into the IJsselmeer, Rafik and Katrien raise the main sail. The air is light, and they make a few practice figure-eights before heading to the buoy for the start of the race.

  Twenty sailboats jockey for position, counting the minutes before the race, hoping to be in full sail close to the starting line just as the horn blows.

  Unlike her mother, Jana, who almost never sails with them—“I don't like to be bossed around and barked at”—Katrien loves taking orders from her father and the other sailors. It makes her feel important. Part of the team. “Coming about!” “Trim the jib!” “Ease off the sheet!” “Cast off the starboard jib sheet!” “Tighten the halyard!” “Watch the luff!”

  The horn blows, and they are off.

  Allegro flies, in the middle of the pack.

  Rafik helps Katrien trim the jib, wrapping the line around the winch. She isn't heavy enough to pull it tight, and when he leans into it, she feels his strength and confidence. His weathered round Turkish face smiles widely, clapping her life-vest-padded shoulder. “Goed gedaan, zeeman!”

  The wind kicks up to 20 knots, and the sailors scramble about to tighten the outhaul and the halyard. “Get on the highside! Sit on the rail!” The sailors shoot their legs over the side, like birds on a wire. Others stand and lean, clinging to the lifelines, the boat slicing through the water on edge.

  The wind, mean and capricious, slaps Katrien's face, but true sailors don't cower; she proudly turns to the abuse. Surf splashes their feet, spray moistens their cheeks, bejewels their hair and beards.

  Allegro bounces and lurches. She wants to turn into the wind, and the rudder fights the forces of wind and water. They wrestle with the lines, as if to rein in a stallion, unbroken, white and wild. A force of nature.

  They sail up starboard of a second sailboat, the Nachtegaal, edging up, stealing its wind. The boat shudders, and Katrien knows at some point there will be too much drag on the rudder and her father will have to turn into the wind. But first he wants to see a luff in the Nachtegaal's sail. Then he'll ease off.

  All the sailors watch for the ripple, and when they see it, they let out a cheer. “Ease the sheets,” her father calls, and the boat pulls ahead.

  #

  On sailing weekends, Katrien and her parents stay with Hans and Marta van Meerveld, a very Dutch couple, tall, big-boned, blond. They run a B&B in a stately manor that has been in the family since the 17th century, when Enkhuizen sheltered the Dutch merchant fleet. It sits on a cobblestone street in the heart of the old town, with grand details one seldom sees in Holland—large elegant rooms with tall ceilings, and a salon, book-lined and pilastered, with French doors that look out into a large walled-in courtyard. The old carriage house makes four guest rooms. A cottage tucked at the back of the property is where Katrien and her parents stay.

  Hans works part time in the Tourist Information Office, the VVV, and spends the bulk of his time building guitars. Marta paints porcelains and runs the B&B. They enjoy the constant flow of people from different countries, and quiz them over breakfast about their travel plans, their homes, their aspirations, their impressions of The Netherlands. Their guests adore them and return year after year. Hans and Marta think of these people as family. At Christmas they receive hundreds of cards from all over the world.

  After Pieter and Rafik roll in from the bar they go to after the race, they play guitars for the crew and their girlfriends, two guests from Spain who are staying at the B&B, and a few other intimate friends. A local poet reads from his scribblings. Jana and Marta cook a huge pot of pasta, and everyone drinks wine and sings songs—pop songs from America, Portuguese folk songs, Turkish ballads.

  It's all very friendly, very bohemian.

  After dinner, while her father smokes a cigarette in the courtyard and talks politics with Hans and the other guests, Katrien helps Rafik and Jana in the kitchen.

  Katrien has always known Rafik, a solid man, softhearted and funny, who takes an interest in everyone, and never forgets anything you tell him. He has played in Pieter's garage band since college. Six guys who once a week drink beer, smoke weed, hang loose, and rage against bourgeois middle age. The band rents space in a hip area of the Noord, where musicians and artists have restored abandoned warehouses into galleries and studios. Rafik plays bass guitar, Pieter sings lead.

  As Katrien wipes the dishes, she observes how Rafik smiles at her mother. He insists on scrubbing the heavy pots for her. The way he looks at her when she laughs, throwing back her head with a explosive bark, you can tell he cares for her. Jana glows in a way she doesn't with her father.

  “Where is Evi?” Jana asks, addressing Rafik's reflection in the window over the sink. Rafik's date, a younger woman, tall and blond, is in the other room. “I like her so much. I think she suits you. But then I like all of your girlfriends.” She flicks her wet hands in his face. “Are you avoiding her?”

  His body stiffens a little. “No, not at all,” he says, smiling.

  “No, not at all,” she mocks, returning his grin. “Why don't you teach her to sail? I'm sure she'd love it. She's athletic.”

  “She's lived in Enkhusien her whole life and hasn't learned to sail. I'm sure she would've learned by now if she had an interest.”

  “You could have used her today. Pieter said it was blowing like stink. The problem with you is you compartmentalize your relationships. You need to include them in your passions. Sailing and music. That's why you can't keep them. You can't blame them for feeling excluded.”

  “You don't sail with Pieter.”

  “No, but we share everything else.”

  He raises a disbelieving eyebrow, then shrugs. “Maybe you're right.”

  “Of course, I'm right. I get really close to one of your girlfriends, and then you dump her, and I have to sneak around to see her. That makes me feel like I'm cheating or something, so I finally have to let the friendship go. It's not fair to any of us.”

  “I know.”

  “Why don't you settle down, Rafik? What on earth are you waiting for?”

  “Another Jana,” he says, grinning. “You made that far too easy.”

  Jana smirks, trying to scowl, and elbows his ribs, but Katrien knows he means it.

  Jana hands him a large porcelain serving dish to wash. “My grandmother used to say, 'It is not so important who you love, but that you choose someone and commit to them.'”

  “Practical woman. Sicilian, wasn't she?”

  “From Puglia. Not so different. We still have family in Lecce.”

  “That's in the heel of Italy?”

  Jana nods.

  Rafik pauses a moment, then scrubs methodically. “Maybe one summer the four of us could take a sailing vacation along the coast of Croatia. Pieter has been talking about upgrading to a Salona 42 for ages. We could pick up the boat in Split, stop at all the islands, visit Dubrovnik, then cross the Adriatic to Lecce to see your family. Katrien would love it, wouldn't you?”

  Katrien is surprised to be suddenly included in the conversation. Being the only child among grownups makes her feel special, but also has its disadvantages. The image of a rubber bumper comes to mind, thrown over the side to keep two approaching boats from scraping their hulls against each other.

&nb
sp; This flirting between married couples, full of sparks, alarms and confuses her. Yet she also realizes her parents are most alive with their friends. A touch of naughtiness challenges them and brings them to life.

  Katrien finishes her chores and leaves the kitchen. She is tired of being a bumper.

  She passes through the rooms, listening to one adult conversation, then another, everyone discussing politics and art and culture. She imagines concentric transparent globes, one within another, all spinning in different directions at different speeds, creating a wonderful hum.

  “If a woman can't get a job because she covers her face, why should the state support her? I say cut her welfare. Take off your burka and get a job!”

  “It really is getting out of hand. Twenty-six percent of Brussels is Muslim. Twenty-four percent of Amsterdam. Twenty-five percent of Rotterdam. The schools are like eighty percent Muslim. When they get old enough to vote, we'll really be up shit creek.”

  “It's still only six percent for the country. Not many in Enkhuisen.”

  “When have you ever seen a Muslim in a sailboat?”

  “I read that the Schilderswijk district of The Hague has become a sort of mini-caliphate. Even non-Muslims have to comply with sharia law on the street. Women have to cover their heads. No smoking, no alcohol, no sale or consumption of pork. They won't let Dutch police in the neighborhood.”

  “Is that so unusual? The Mafia ruled Italian neighborhoods in New York City for decades.”

  “This is the twenty-first century. We can't have a country within a country.”

  “The government is so damn politically correct, they even changed the names of school holidays. Christmas Vacation is Winter Vacation, Easter Vacation is Spring Vacation. My favorite is Lenten Vacation. They call it Rest and Relaxation Leave.”

  “Wouldn't want to offend anybody.”

  “God forbid.”

  “The Protestant Church of the Netherlands has closed almost half of its two thousand churches. Guess who bought them up?”