The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  The vessel slid onward. Jan settled back against the gunwale and dozed contentedly, Jolanda stared all around in amazement, the boatmen fidgeted with the rigging, and Sander blew his nose into his sleeve. It looked like he had dipped his cuff into egg yolk.

  As they progressed across the meer, a light drizzle began to fall, which cheered Sander somewhat—now at least Jan wouldn’t be able to dream through the passage. Sander’s cloak had long since lost any grease or oil its original owner may have waterproofed it with, but he didn’t mind being wet so long as he wasn’t also cold, and it had been a balmy if lead-tinted morning. The girl gasped, and Sander saw Dordt rearing up before them like some great shipwreck in the flood. Despite himself the sight of the city kicked Sander in the balls of his heart, was how he would describe it, a queasy, painful sort of feeling, and here he had only been gone from the place a week.

  Before the dikes had broken, Sander had considered settling somewhere in the vicinity when his wandering days were over—not close enough to his hometown to chance being recognized, of course, but someplace out in the Groote Waard. Get some fucking sheep, maybe, like he and his da had done. Only, yeah, with some tidy lad to share the life with instead of that old bastard, devil burn his bones. Here Sander was, back again, only the hut where he’d dropped out his ma was gone and the fields were gone and the whole fucking village where he had grown up was gone, and all memory of his asshole father, too, gone like his left eyetooth—so it wasn’t all bad. Looking at Jan, who had sat up and wiped the sand from his eyes, he knew the fancy bastard never would have settled for some sheep and a hovel even if Sander had risked settling down in the region, so maybe it didn’t matter that the flood had taken it all. Living in the city itself surely wasn’t such a step down, as stairways went.

  They’d done a decent job building things up to accommodate the raised waterline, and the city walls were the city walls were the city walls, but now the great gray ring of Dordrecht was an island of stone and not a river town in the midst of bustling farmland, with huts and barns pushing up to the marshy edges of the place. Dordt was alone now, a great tombstone for the people of the sea-taken Groote Waard, and there was not a building in the city that didn’t have a watermark somewhere along its flank from where the flood had pushed in before admitting defeat and retreating back to its newly conquered realm outside the walls. Fucking place still stank like bog rot a year and a half on.

  Jan was chatting with the boatmen as they maneuvered the vessel along the city wall jutting up out of the river, past the main entrance to the old harbor. Instead of mooring the boat there by the Big Head’s Gate, the arch of which was still crowned with scaffolding like a wooden coronet, the boatmen coasted south, passing the new harbor as well. Lousy Rotters meant to put in at the back entrance of the old harbor, Sander realized, and he pulled his hood farther down over his nose, trying not to let himself get worked up. The only reason anyone coming down from Rotterdam would enter the old harbor the long way ’round was if they had some business with the militiamen in that particular gatehouse…

  In the name of Christ and his precious mother, if Sander was that business he’d take every one of these treacherous, ball-washing boatmen to hell with him.

  The gate was open at this entrance, and the boatmen steered them out of the current and into the canal that fed into the guts of the city like an architectural cunt. The half-finished tower of the Great Church rose on their left, but sure enough, these false bastards had directed the boat toward the right side of the channel, straight at a small dock just inside the city walls. The dock protruded from the gatehouse, and as Sander rose into a crouch he saw a door set in the building’s wall swing open and an ancient militiaman step out onto the dock.

  Credit where it was due, whichever of the boatmen had recognized Sander and decided to turn him in had played it cool; Sander hadn’t suspected a thing until they’d gone for the back way into the harbor… but it would take a lot more than some old fucker and a couple of boaters to take out Sander Himbrecht, that was—

  “You,” the militiaman called, pointing directly at Sander. “You there!”

  This was it, then. Sander should have known better than to let Jan talk him into returning to Dordrecht. He’d been back twice already since Jan had proposed the plan, and begging fate for a third uneventful trip to the city had been greedy, he’d known that. He wondered if this old bastard on the dock was someone he’d personally pissed off in his youth—must be, to recognize him before the boatmen had even announced their bounty.

  “Right, you fucking assholes,” Sander muttered, straightening the rest of the way up as the boat bobbed to the dock. “Let’s do this.”

  “Outta the way,” one of the boatmen said, stumbling around Sander with a hefty crate in his arms.

  “You there,” the militiaman repeated, still pointing at Sander. “Give Kees a hand, you churl! Twice as big, and standing ’round ’stead of helping. Ought to be ashamed!”

  What?

  “I got it, I got it,” said the boatman carrying the crate—Kees, presumably. He leaned forward over the bow, and as they came abreast of the miltiaman he clumsily deposited the load on the dock. “As promised, friend.”

  “Come by after you’re settled and help me with a bottle of it,” said the militiaman as the boat glided past the dock. “But ditch that lazy lummox first!”

  Oh. Excise tax dodgers. Sander was in such a good mood at being proved wrong about the boatmen’s reason for using the back channel to the harbor that he waved at the old militiaman instead of leaping onto the dock and working him over for taking such a surly tone. The geriatric gave him the fig, then knelt to retrieve his illicit crate.

  They slid easily up the narrow channel, the backs of houses lining their approach like the sorriest fence you ever saw, to where the canal widened into the old harbor proper. There were fewer boats than usual at the slips, but leave it to the fool-headed Rotters to ease on over to the far end of the longest, greenest pier in the place, the quay running abreast of the harbor wall. Sander hopped out of the boat, whereupon he slipped on the slick wharf and almost went back over into the water.

  The girl laughed, an ugly, braying noise, and jumped up after him—and slipped as well. She would have bashed her face into the harbor wall if Sander hadn’t snatched her arm as she fell, and after comically kicking her legs against the slimy pier for a moment she found some purchase and settled down into a crouch. She looked like a land-reared dog thrust onto a boat.

  “Enough playing around,” said Jan, stepping carefully up after them and walking down to meet the excisemen at the foot of the quay. “I’ll get your entry, Sander.”

  “Gone up,” Sander said, spitting an oyster of phlegm in their direction. “Shameless.”

  “You pay to go into the city?” said the girl, slowly straightening up.

  “More and more every fucking day,” said Sander. “ ’Fore the flood was bad enough, but now they really got you by the short and woolies—already paid to get out here, waste of coin to go back. Fucking sheepheads.”

  “What?” said the girl, making Sander squint at her—was she really that thick? “What’s a sheephead?”

  “Me and my da, we did sheep out in the country,” said Sander as they walked down the pier, the algae-speckled harbor wall on one side and rundown rowboats bobbing on the other. She took her time to avoid slipping, he took his to stall long enough for the taxmen to piss off back into their taxhouse overlooking the quays—never knew if one of them would recognize him, even if the boaters and militiaman hadn’t. “Sometimes had to get a sheep inside the walls, right, if we was planning on selling an old one off. Yeah?”

  “Mmm,” said the girl watching her feet as she walked. She moved funny, like as not still wobbly-legged as a sea-shaken sheep herself from the passage.

  “Out in the ward everyone’s got sheep, so mutton don’t get you much, but in the city people ain’t got room for ’em, so we can turn a better coin. But. Problem—Dordt
’s run by greedy bastards who’d pimp their mothers if anyone would pay for the old bitches. They start some rumors, baseless ones, about our mutton making people sick. So the watch got instructions not to let us take our sheep in unless we bribe them good and proper, and if we paid that ransom, we’d be worse off than losing one to a wolf. So we’d…” Sander trailed off, seeing the excisemen hadn’t pissed off after all, but stood waiting for them with Jan at the top of the quay stairs. “Tell you later.”

  The taxmen didn’t know Sander, thank the devil for a change, just wanted to give him the eye and the lip. After the sheepies went back to their pen, Jan led the way over toward Varkenmarkt. The streets of Dordt were narrower than those of Rotterdam, and the air was thicker, wetter, colder, as if an invisible fog constantly haunted the city. The whole tone of the place had gone down since the flood, riverfolk trying to become islandfolk and doing a day-hire’s job of it—poor, in other words, piss poor. Shadowy figures watched them from doorways, as shadowy figures are wont to fucking do.

  “What were you saying?” the girl asked Sander. “You never told me what a sheephead is.”

  “He’s a sheephead,” said Jan, nodding at Sander. “A sheephead’s a person from Dordrecht.”

  “You ruined my story, you twat!” Sander shouted.

  “I doubt that,” said Jan.

  “Roll your fucking eyes again, Jan, fucking roll ’em!”

  “Shut up, Uncle,” said the girl. “I don’t know what he even meant, so shut up and finish the story. And what’s a Jan?”

  “He’s fucking Jan,” said Sander, “not Lobby von Frisian or whatever the shit he told you, fucking Jan.”

  “Is that true?” The girl sounded hurt, and Jan’s eyes narrowed, the only sign he was probably peeved.

  “I go by a lot of different names, Jo,” said Jan. “So many I lose track of them myself.”

  “That fucking crook seem like he ever lose track of anything to you, Jo?” Sander said with satisfaction. “He was running some game, same as always.”

  “Jo,” said Jan, “it’s like this—”

  “Just shut up!” She looked like she might cry for some stupid womanly reason, her fists balled up, her cod-belly white face now streaked with red. “Shut up!”

  “Thank you for that,” Jan said coldly, digging his fingers into Sander’s shoulder as the girl sped up, walking in front of them. “What the fuck’s gotten into you? You finally lost your wits altogether, you mad bastard?”

  “My mistake,” said Sander, happy to have traded his anger to Jan in exchange for the man’s calm and unwilling to swap back even if his partner was trotting out the mad bastards and lost-your-witses. “We sheepheads aren’t known for being clever, are we?”

  Jan released him with a curse, and stormed ahead. He put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, but she pulled away from him. Sander smiled to himself and also picked up the pace, coming up along her other flank and resuming his story.

  “So anyway, we didn’t want to pay some cheat-price to get our sheep into the city. So what do you think we did?”

  She was staring straight ahead, her face set, and they passed the cross street they should have taken to get to Poorter’s shop. Jan didn’t steer them down it, and Sander didn’t correct their course. There wasn’t any hurry, and it was good to be back on Dordt streets, dour though they were. Seeing what had happened to the place was akin to watching a dog you owned but never particularly liked get beat—you might not care for the dog so much, but it was your fucking dog, and who enjoyed seeing an animal take a hiding?

  “We dressed them sheep up like men, with my da’s coat and my drawers and this old straw hat we shared, and we’d lift ’em up and walk on either side of ’em, like this.” Sander dipped his arm under the front of Jolanda’s armpit and wrapped it around her back, and pissy or no Jan did the same, so they hoisted her up and half-carried her, the heels of her bare feet bouncing on the cobbles. She was giggling despite her obvious reluctance as they walked her down the street, Sander smiling over her head at Jan. “So in we’d walk past the militia, the city watch, who back then didn’t charge just to come in for local folk but did for our sheep, right. We’d wait until dusk so the gate would still be open, but it’d be dark enough that the sheepy in his pants and coat and hat might look like an old man or drunk or such we was helping along, and in we’d walk right past the stupid fucking watchmen supposed to be eyeing old Himbrecht to make sure he and his son didn’t sneak no mutton in without paying the toll.

  “Now, one of these militiamen was an old piss-catcher who—from Tilburg, I mean, a dirty sod from Tilburg, and every time we walked past them watchers with a sheep ’tween us, he’d give us a hard eye from up in his tower, but he never come down. So we been doing this for years, walking the sheep inside, and finally I see him stand up and squint down at us and I think for sure we’re nabbed this time, but then he sits back down and I hear him say to his partner up there, You Dordrecht… you Dordrecht… you—” Sander fell into a sniggering fit.

  “What?” said Jolanda, squirming away from them and dropping back to the cobbles. “What did he say?”

  “He said, You Dordrecht boys look just like sheep when you get old,” said Sander, and cackled. Jolanda blinked at him.

  “That didn’t really happen,” said the girl, but she wore the expression of one who hoped it had. “You’re a lying mussel, just like him.”

  “The devil take me if I am!” said Sander. “I heard him myself.”

  “Well, it’s not really funny,” she said.

  “You just don’t have a sense of humor,” said Sander, crossing his arms.

  “And that’s why you call people from Dordrecht sheepheads?”

  “Yeah,” said Sander, disappointed in her reaction.

  “So why do you call people from the other place, the burg, why do you call them piss-takers?”

  “Piss-catchers,” said Jan. “Tilburg’s a textile town, and they use urine to bind the dye color, as I’m sure you’re aware. So they catch their piss instead of dumping it out.”

  “Bah!” said Sander. “That’s not why!”

  “Why, then?” asked the girl.

  “It comes back to my gran’da,” said Sander. “He was passing through Tilburg one winter and this old wifey let him come in to stay the night since her husband was gone. He was already blind drunk, my gran’da, and so when she had her back turned, he took one of her crocks to make his water in, and—”

  “Here we are,” said Jan, and to his disappointment Sander saw they had indeed meandered back to the low house where Poorter kept shop, his door another nondescript gray break in the winding wall of buildings. “Stories later, we may be in town for some time if the Muscovite isn’t about.”

  “It probably wasn’t funny anyway,” said the girl, but when he went to pop her upside the head, Sander saw she was grinning at him.

  X.

  Part of the reason Poorter Primm loved Dordrecht was that the city, like himself, had once been grand despite its heritage and well respected despite its coarseness, only to fall victim to the sort of luck that would make a toothless beggar lying half-dead in a ditch with a drowned dog for a pillow and a rat waiting to bite his dick every time he passed out shake his head sadly and say, “Tough tit, old man, tough tit.” This shared ill fortune made him feel a solidarity with the place beyond mere civic affection, and he had long since resolved to never leave the island if he could help it—if things were this bad within Dordrecht’s walls, he couldn’t imagine what they were like without. Besides, it was getting better, slowly but surely, and who knew, in another decade or two the city might fully recover from the flood that had sunk Poorter’s business into a miserable mire as surely as it had done the same to the Groote Waard.

  A knock came at his door, which was intensely frustrating, as Poorter had eaten something evil the night before and had only just unfastened his belt for the fourth time that morning. Wincing at the chamber pot, he closed his eyes and breathed dee
ply, like an archer trying to steady himself for the shot, and his guts stabbed outward again. The luck of the sheep, all right: live in the shit, get fleeced often, and all to end up as mutton, Poorter thought glumly as he waited for the tempest in his belly to calm before answering the door. The knock came again, but this time he recognized it for what it was—two sharp raps, a pause, and three slow, light ones. The return of the Tieselen bastard banished Poorter’s cramps and he hurried to the door, a silent prayer on his lips that the madman who had so recently haunted his house was not attending his master.

  He was, Sander giving him a nod from behind Jan, and there was also a moppet on the step behind them. He was about to run the urchin off, but something about her feral looks gave him pause, and then he realized she was with the two men. A memory came unbidden to Poorter of a happier time, when he had opened this door to find none other than the count of Holland himself at his step, along with a trio of visiting French dignitaries whom Count William intended to outfit with the finest—and most expensive—pieces Poorter had on hand. Now the count was dead of dog bite, Dordrecht was an island, Poorter had the trots, and instead of nobility throwing coin at him he had three shifty hoods dirtying his stoop with the obvious aim of an invitation inside and, if his luck was really shit, a prolonged stay on the floor of his kitchen. Poorter’s luck was, as usual, ludicrously lousy, and it would be a week before they left for more than a few hours at a time… But he didn’t know that yet.

  “Master Primm,” said the bastard with a bow. “How does Providence treat you, old friend?”

  “Shortly,” said Poorter, “and without the courtesy of pretense that all is somehow not what it most certainly is.”

  “That’s Poorter,” Sander said, elbowing the urchin. “He’s like that, but not such a bitch as you’d think to look at him.”

  Poorter offered the psychotic layabout and the child prostitute or whatever she was a winning smile and ushered them all inside. Jan was being his usual charismatic self, complimenting Poorter on his stained bedshirt and cluttered workshop, but Poorter’s attention remained on the girl. Both Jan and Sander could be trusted, at least insofar as they were likely to request that he put them up and therefore wouldn’t nick something immediately, but Poorter hadn’t scrounged the little coin he had to his name by being the sort of fool who would turn his back on an unknown child.