A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  [In another postcard to Allan, which was an aerial view of the Frankfurt Book Fair, boasting some 5,500 publishers from some 100 countries.]

  NEVER AGAIN WITHOUT YOU.

  LOVE,

  RUTH

  It’s the right look for someone who’s about to approach a prostitute. I appear to have an old disease to share.

  My guidebook for Amsterdam informs me that the red-light district, known as de Walletjes (“the little walls”), was officially sanctioned in the fourteenth century. There are tittering references to the district’s “scantily clad girls in their shop windows.”

  Why is it that most writing about the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is always so unconvincingly superior in tone? ( Amusement is as strong an expression of superiority as indifference is.) I think that any expression of amusement or indifference toward the unseemly is usually false. People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.

  “Everyone has a sexual hang-up, at least one,” Hannah once said to me. (But if Hannah has one, she never told me what it is.)

  There are the usual obligations ahead of me in Amsterdam, but I have enough free time for what I need to do. Amsterdam isn’t Frankfurt; nothing is as bad as Frankfurt. And, to be honest, I can’t wait to meet my prostitute! There is the thrill of something like shame about this “research.” But of course I am the customer. I’m prepared— indeed, I’m fully expecting—to pay her.

  [In another postcard to Allan, which she mailed from Schiphol Airport and which—not unlike the earlier postcard she mailed to her father, of the German prostitutes in their windows on the Herbertstrasse—was of de Walletjes, the red-light district of Amsterdam: the neon from the bars and sex shops reflecting in the canal; the passersby, all men in raincoats; the window in the foreground of the photograph, framed in lights of a purplish red, with the woman in her underwear in the window . . . looking like a misplaced mannequin, like something on loan from a lingerie shop, like someone rented for a private party.]

  FORGET EARLIER QUESTION. THE TITLE IS MY LAST BAD BOYFRIEND —MY FIRST FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR. YES, SHE’S ANOTHER WOMAN WRITER. BUT TRUST ME!

  LOVE,

  RUTH

  The First Meeting

  The publication of Niet voor kinderen, the Dutch translation of Not for Children, was the principal reason for Ruth Cole’s third visit to Amsterdam, but Ruth now thought of the research for her prostitute story as the all-consuming justification for her being there. She’d not yet found the moment to speak of her new excitement to her Dutch publisher, Maarten Schouten, whom she affectionately referred to as “Maarten with two a ’s and an e. ”

  For the translation of The Same Orphanage —in Dutch, Hetzelfde weeshuis, which Ruth had struggled in vain to pronounce—she had stayed in a charming but run-down hotel on the Prinsengracht, where she’d discovered a sizable stash of marijuana in the small bedside drawer she’d selected for her underwear. The pot probably belonged to a previous guest, but such was Ruth’s nervousness on her first European book tour that she was certain the marijuana had been planted in her room by some mischievous journalist intent on embarrassing her.

  The aforementioned Maarten with two a ’s and an e had assured her that possession of marijuana in Amsterdam was barely a noticeable offense, much less an embarrassment. And Ruth had loved the city from the beginning: the canals, the bridges, all the bicycles, the cafés, and the restaurants.

  On her second visit, for the Dutch translation of Before the Fall of Saigon —she was pleased that she could at least say Voor de val van Saigon —Ruth stayed in another part of town, on the Dam Square, where her hotel’s proximity to the red-light district had led an interviewer to take it upon himself to show Ruth the prostitutes in their windows. She’d not forgotten the blatancy of the women in their bras and panties at midday, or the “SM Specials” in the window of a sex shop.

  Ruth had spotted a rubber vagina suspended from the ceiling of the shop by a red garter belt. The vagina resembled a dangling omelet, except for the tuft of fake pubic hair. And there were the whips; the cowbell, attached by a leather strap to a dildo; the enema bulbs, in a variety of sizes; the rubber fist.

  But that was five years ago. Ruth had not yet had the opportunity to see whether the district had changed. She was now staying in her third hotel, on the Kattengat; it was not very stylish, and it suffered from a number of graceless efforts to be orderly. For example, there was a breakfast room that was strictly for the guests on Ruth’s floor. The coffee was cold, the orange juice was warm, and the croissants lay in a litter of crumbs—suitable only for taking to the nearest canal and feeding to the ducks.

  On its ground floor and in the basement, the hotel had spawned a health club. The music favored for the aerobics classes could be detected in the bathroom pipes for several floors above the exercise facility; the plumbing throbbed to the ceaseless percussion. In Ruth’s estimation, the Dutch—at least while exercising—preferred an unrelenting and unvarying kind of rock music, which she would have categorized as an unrhymed form of rap. A tuneless beat repeated itself while a European male, for whom English was very much a foreign language, reiterated a single sentence. In one such song, the sentence was: “I vant to have sex vit you.” In another: “I vant to fook you.”

  Her firsthand inspection of the gym had quickly dashed any tentative interest she might have had in it. A singles’ bar in the guise of an exercise facility was not for her. She also disliked the self-consciousness of the exercise. The stationary bikes, the treadmills, the stair-climbing devices—they were all in a row, facing the floor for the aerobics classes. No matter where you were, you could not escape seeing the leaping and the gyrations of the aerobic dancers in the plethora of surrounding mirrors. The best you could hope for would be to witness a sprained ankle or a heart attack.

  Ruth decided to take a walk. The area around her hotel was new to her; she was actually closer to the red-light district than she realized, but she began walking in the opposite direction. She crossed the first canal she came to and turned onto a small, attractive side street—the Korsjespoortsteeg—where, to her surprise, she encountered several prostitutes.

  In what seemed to be a well-kept residential area were a half-dozen windows with working women in their lingerie. They were white women, prosperous-looking if not in every case pretty. Most of them were younger than Ruth; possibly two of them were her age. Ruth was so shocked that she actually stumbled. One of the prostitutes had to laugh.

  It was late morning, and Ruth was the only woman walking on the short street. Three men, each of them alone, were silently windowshopping. Ruth had not imagined that she could find a prostitute who might talk to her in a place that was less seedy and less conspicuous than the red-light district was; her discovery encouraged her.

  When she found herself on the Bergstraat, once again she was unprepared—there were more prostitutes. It was a quiet, tidy street. The first four girls, who were young and beautiful, paid no attention to her. Ruth was aware of a slowly passing car, the driver intently looking over the prostitutes. But this time Ruth wasn’t the only woman on the street. Ahead of her was a woman dressed much as Ruth was—black jeans, black suede shoes with a stacked, medium-high heel. The woman, also like Ruth, wore a short, mannish leather jacket, but in dark brown and with a silk paisley scarf.

  Ruth was walking so quickly that she nearly overtook the woman, who, on her arm, carried a canvas shopping bag from which a large bottle of mineral water and a loaf of bread protruded. The woman looked casually over her shoulder at Ruth; she gazed mildly into Ruth’s eyes. The woman wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and was in her late forties. As she passed them by, she waved or smiled to each of the prostitutes in their windows. But near the end of the Bergstraat, at a ground-floor window where the curtains were drawn, the woman abruptly stopped to unlock a door. She instinctively looked be
hind her before stepping inside, as if she were accustomed to being followed. And again she gazed at Ruth—this time with a more searching curiosity, and with what struck Ruth as something wantonly flirtatious in her at-first-ironic and then seductive smile. The woman was a prostitute! She was just now going to work.

  Ruth once more walked past the prostitutes on the Korsjespoortsteeg. She was aware of more men on the street, none of whom would look at her or at one another. She recognized two of them; they had made the same circle she had. How many times would they return for a longer look? This, too, Ruth wanted to know; it was a necessary part of her research.

  While it would be easier for her, alone, to interview a prostitute on a pleasant, unthreatening street such as this one, or on the Bergstraat, Ruth believed that the character in her novel—that other woman writer with her bad boyfriend—had best suffer her encounter in one of the worst of the rooms in the red-light district. After all, if the awful experience was to degrade and humiliate her, wouldn’t it be more appropriate—not to mention more atmospheric—if it happened in the sleaziest environment imaginable?

  This time the prostitutes on the Korsjespoortsteeg regarded Ruth with wary stares and a barely detectable nod or two. The woman who’d laughed at Ruth when she’d stumbled gave her a cool, unfriendly appraisal. Only one of the women made a gesture that could have been construed as either beckoning or scolding. She was a woman of Ruth’s age, but much heavier; her blond hair was dyed. The woman pointed an index finger at Ruth and lowered her eyes in exaggerated disapproval. It was a schoolmarmish gesture, although there was no small amount of wickedness in the heavy woman’s smirking smile—she might have thought Ruth a lesbian.

  When she again turned onto the Bergstraat, Ruth walked slowly in the hope that the older prostitute would have had time to dress herself—or to un dress herself, as the case might be—and to position herself in her window. One of the younger, more beautiful prostitutes winked openly at Ruth, who felt strangely exhilarated by such a mockingly salacious proposition. The pretty girl’s wink was so distracting that Ruth nearly walked by the older prostitute without recognizing her; in truth, the prostitute’s transformation was so complete that she was an altogether different woman from the plain person with a shopping bag whom Ruth had seen on the street only minutes ago.

  In the open doorway stood a vivacious, red-haired whore. Her winered lipstick matched her claret-colored bra and panties, which were all she wore except for a gold wristwatch and a pair of jet-black sling-backs with three-inch heels. The prostitute was now taller than Ruth.

  The window curtains were open, revealing an old-fashioned barstool with a polished brass base, but the prostitute was in the midst of a domestic pose: she stood in her doorway with a broom, with which she had just swept from her threshold a single yellow leaf. She held the broom at the ready, offering a challenge to more leaves, and she carefully looked Ruth over, from her hair to her shoes—as if Ruth were standing in the Bergstraat in her underwear and high heels and the prostitute were a conservatively dressed housewife dutifully attending to her chores. That was when Ruth realized that she’d stopped walking, and that the red-haired prostitute had nodded to her with an inviting smile, which—as Ruth had not yet found the courage to speak—was growing quizzical.

  “Do you speak English?” Ruth blurted.

  The prostitute seemed more amused than taken aback. “I don’t have a problem with English,” she said. “I don’t have a problem with lesbians, either.”

  “I’m not a lesbian,” Ruth told her.

  “That’s all right, too,” the prostitute replied. “Is it your first time with a woman? I know what to do about that.”

  “I don’t want to do anything,” Ruth quickly stated. “I just want to talk with you.”

  The prostitute became uncomfortable—as if “talk” were in a category of aberrant behavior, short of which she drew the line. “You have to pay more for that,” the redhead said. “Talk can go on for a long time.”

  Ruth was nonplussed by the attitude that seemingly any sexual activity would be preferable to conversation. “Oh, of course I’ll pay you for your time,” Ruth told the redhead, who was scrutinizing Ruth meticulously. But it was not Ruth’s body that the prostitute was assessing; what interested her was how much money Ruth had paid for her clothes.

  “It costs seventy-five guilders for five minutes,” the redhead said; she had correctly estimated that Ruth wore unimaginative but expensive clothes.

  Ruth unzipped her purse and peered into her wallet at the unfamiliar bills. Was seventy-five guilders about fifty dollars? It struck Ruth as a lot of money for a five-minute conversation. (For what the prostitute usually provided—in the same amount of time, or less—it seemed insufficient compensation.)

  “My name is Ruth,” Ruth said nervously. She extended her hand, but the redhead laughed; instead of shaking hands, she pulled Ruth into her small room by the sleeve of her leather jacket. When they were both inside, the prostitute locked the door and closed the window curtains; her strong perfume in such a confined area was nearly as overpowering as the redhead’s near-nakedness.

  The room itself was all in red. The heavy curtains were a shade of maroon; the rug, a blood-red broadloom, gave off the faded odor of carpet cleaner; the bedspread, which neatly covered a twin-size bed, was of an old-fashioned, rose-petal pattern; the pillowcase for the solitary pillow was pink. And the towel, which was the size of a bath towel and a different shade of pink from the pillowcase, was folded perfectly in half and covered the center of the bed—no doubt to protect the bedspread. On a chair beside the tidy, serviceable bed stood a stack of these pink towels; they looked clean, if slightly shabby—just like the room.

  The small red room was ringed with mirrors; there were almost as many mirrors, at as many unwelcome angles, as there were at the hotel’s health club. And the light in the room was so dim that, each time Ruth took a step, she saw a shadow of herself either retreating or advancing—or both. (The mirrors, of course, also reflected a multitude of prostitutes.)

  The prostitute sat down on her bed in the exact center of the towel, without needing to look where she was sitting. She crossed her ankles, supporting her feet by the spikes of her heels, and leaned forward with her hands on her thighs; it was a pose of long experience, which pushed her pert, well-formed breasts forward, exaggerated her cleavage, and allowed Ruth a view of her small, purplish nipples through the claret-colored mesh of her demi-bra. Her bikini panties elongated the narrow V of her crotch and exposed the stretch marks on the prostitute’s pouting stomach; she’d clearly had children, or at least one child.

  The redhead indicated a lumpy easy chair, where Ruth was supposed to sit. The chair was so soft that Ruth’s knees touched her breasts when she leaned forward; she needed to cling to the armrests with both hands in order to avoid the appearance of lolling on her back.

  “The chair works better for blow jobs,” the prostitute told her. “My name is Dolores,” the redhead added, “but my friends call me Rooie.”

  “Rooie?” Ruth repeated, trying not to think of the number of blow jobs that had been performed in the cracked-leather chair.

  “It means ‘Red,’ ” said Rooie.

  “I see,” Ruth said, edging herself forward in the blow-job chair. “As it turns out, I’m writing a story,” Ruth began, but the prostitute quickly stood up from her bed.

  “You didn’t say you were a journalist,” Rooie Dolores said. “I don’t talk to journalists.”

  “I’m not a journalist!” Ruth cried. (My, how that accusation stung!) “I’m a novelist . I write books, the kind one makes up. I just need to be sure the details are right.”

  “ What details?” Rooie asked. She wouldn’t sit down on the bed; she paced. Her movements allowed the novelist to see some additional aspects of the prostitute’s carefully appointed workplace. A small sink was mounted to an interior wall; beside it was a bidet. (There were several more bidets in the mirrors, of course.) On a ta
ble between the bidet and the bed was a box of tissues and a roll of paper towels. A white-enameled tray with a hospital aura held both the familiar and some un familiar lubricants and jellies, and a dildo of an uncomfortable size. Like the tray, of a similar hospital or doctor’s-office whiteness, was a wastebasket with a lid—the kind that was opened by stepping on a foot pedal. Through a partially open door, Ruth saw the darkened WC; the toilet, with a wooden seat, was flushed with a pull chain. And by the standing lamp with the scarlet stained-glass shade, a table next to the blow-job chair held a clean, empty ashtray and a wicker basket full of condoms.

  These were among the details that Ruth needed, together with the shallowness of the room’s wardrobe closet. The few dresses and nightgowns, and a leather halter top, could not hang at right angles to the closet’s back wall; the clothes were twisted diagonally on their hangers, as if they were prostitutes attempting to show themselves at a more flattering angle.

  The dresses and the nightgowns, not to mention the leather halter top, were entirely too youthful for a woman of Rooie’s age. But what did Ruth know about dresses or nightgowns? She rarely wore the former, and she preferred to sleep in a pair of panties and an oversize T-shirt. (As for a leather halter top, she’d never considered wearing one of those.)

  Ruth began her story. “Suppose a man and a woman came to you and offered to pay you to allow them to watch you with a customer? Would you do that? Have you ever done that?”

  “So that’s what you want,” Rooie said. “Why didn’t you say so? Sure I can do that—of course I’ve done that. Why didn’t you bring your boyfriend?”

  “No, no—I’m not here with a boyfriend,” Ruth replied. “ I don’t want to watch you with a customer—I can imagine that. I just want to know how you arrange it, and how common or uncommon it is. I mean, how often are you asked by couples ? I would think that men, alone, would ask you more frequently than couples. And that women, alone, were . . . well, rare.”