The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Joost Zwagerman

  God lives in my head. His fields are immeasurable, his gardens are full of beautiful flowers that never die, regal women walk there naked, thousands of them. And the sun rises and sets and shines low and high and low again and the endless domain is endlessly itself and never the same for an instant. Broad rivers run through it, curving and meandering, and the sun shines on them and they carry the light to the sea.

  I sit quiet and content beside the rivers of my thoughts and smoke a clay pipe and feel the sunshine on my body and see the water flow ceaselessly into the unknown.

  The unknown doesn’t bother me. I nod now and then to the beautiful women plucking the flowers in my gardens and I hear the wind rustling through the high pines, through the forests of certainty, of knowing that all this exists whenever I decide to think it. I am grateful that this has been given to me. And I puff on my pipe in all humility and feel like God himself, who is infinity itself.

  I sit there aimlessly, God’s aim is aimlessness.

  But to keep this awareness always is granted to no man.

  9

  When I arrived in Amsterdam, about nine the next morning, and stood on the square in front of Centraal Station, I saw lots of electric streetcars, which I had never seen there before, and taxis, and policemen with caps instead of helmets. But they hadn’t filled in the Damrak yet, I saw the backs of the houses on Warmoesstraat right on the water and the Oude Kerk spire up above. So that was all right.

  And the same fine gentlemen were still walking around, their hair was perfect and there was not a crease in their jackets or a speck of mud on their shoes. They still looked like they knew absolutely everything and felt that they’d pretty much succeeded in life. They were friendly and polite to each other, as always. Their clothes were slightly different from a few years before, but basically the same. You could see that they had everything figured out: a suit was a suit, same as ever, and a jacket was still a jacket, and a respectable woman was still a respectable woman and a girl was a girl. It all worked out perfectly. And they also knew perfectly well who and what were beneath them, I had no doubt about that. The Damrak would certainly be filled in too once they got around to it.

  I took Tram 2 down Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. So it was a good thing they’d filled it in after all, otherwise the tram probably couldn’t drive down it, and now you could cross from one side to the other wherever you wanted.

  Tram 2, the line par excellence for fine and important gentlemen. A couple of terribly important gentlemen were on the tram, I was nothing next to them. The good old sun was shining happily down on Voorburgwal, the buds on the trees were still pale green, and I saw that the shadow of Nieuwe Kerk didn’t reach the other side of the street, not by a long shot. And I remembered that years before, in late May, I had seen the same shadow looking exactly the same. And that on a sunny winter day, when there were no trams on Voorburgwal yet, I had walked through the shadow of the church which covered the whole width of the street. Now it didn’t even reach the rails, the tram drove past the church in the sunlight. In a few months the same tram (it was still brand new) would be driving in the same place through shadow. And when I looked back at the two terribly important gentlemen, I decided that the whole time Rhenen had been the centre of the world, this world had hardly changed at all.

  I thought about when these two gentlemen would die, and stand naked at the Last Judgment, and be forgotten down here. And about terribly important gentlemen coming and taking their place. Would they still have their silent self-possession when they arrived up there without their nicely polished shoes? And what would become of the perfect part in their hair? What about their idiotic air of superiority, might their faces not show a hint of modesty when they got there and saw the other, even more important men they had looked up to for so many years, and they were naked too?

  And how many idealistic young people down here would have written essays by then, and written little poems and painted little pictures, and got angry and got excited about things? And kissed? And then grown important too, perhaps, and been forgotten as well?

  Then a girl with a violin got on the tram and looked at the tips of her shoes with her dark eyes, and I looked at the rounded curves of her summer coat and forgot all about the elegant gentlemen.

  10

  Hoyer was home. He had a very proper apartment in a side street behind the Concertgebouw and he received me in a sitting room I hardly dared walk in because the carpet was so expensive. His curtains were velvet, his chairs were upholstered in yellow moquette, a black pendulum clock and candelabras were on the mantelpiece and I think I saw a bronze horse somewhere, all things from expensive shops. I didn’t dare to really sit down either, I sat on the edge of the chair the whole time, but I don’t think Hoyer noticed a thing.

  Hoyer had had an amazing stroke of luck. They had made the same old stupid mistake and refused one of his nudes. He’d named the lady Lust and I must say, since I am writing for a respectable publication, that she did look ‘very nice’. And now Hoyer was living large in furnished rooms managed by an elegant widow with an aristocratic name, along with a female lawyer and a colonial official on leave with his wife and child. Hoyer ate out since the widow was far too elegant to cook for her boarders. Shoeshines cost extra.

  And I sat on the edge of my chair the whole time and looked at the ornamental table legs and the gilded frame of the mirror. It was deadly. I had to tell Hoyer about my trip, of course, but I didn’t know what to say, I heard myself talking and listened, scatter-brained, to the sound of my own voice. The light in the room was dim and gloomy; I think the widow was afraid of people looking in. I just wanted to leave, and I looked around at the three walls I could see without turning around in my chair but they didn’t dissolve, I couldn’t see through them. I looked at the door – I couldn’t help it – I sat there staring helplessly. My eyes were just drawn to the door. I had vague visions of Cunera, of the Grebbeberg with its river, of the sunny square in front of Centraal Station and the clock face gleaming on the Oude Kerk spire, and through these semi-transparent visions I saw the painted grain of the fake oak wood on the door. Someone was talking the whole time, oh, right, Hoyer. Then I myself answered, or not actually my self, but my tongue did move and sounds did come out of my mouth, I could hear them loud and clear.

  Hoyer didn’t notice anything. His studio was upstairs. Shall he lead the way? I numbly followed. ‘This must be the lavatory?’ I thought something along those lines was the proper thing to say when a gentleman was showing you his house. Hoyer didn’t notice anything. ‘No, that’s a closet,’ he said. And I thought, Why didn’t he say, ‘I beg your pardon, that’s a closet’? Surely that’s what he would be saying within a year or two.

  The hall was a tight squeeze, the runner was narrow, the stairs proportioned accordingly, there was a thin banister with slightly turned posts, but everything was very fine and in good taste, I have to admit. Hoyer still didn’t notice anything.

  Upstairs I recovered a bit, at least there was light, the famous ‘studio light’. The easel stood empty. There was an expensive chair in the studio and I sank into it. Never in my life had I sat in such a chair. Hoyer was painting portraits these days, of ladies and gentlemen, all in elegant clothing. He showed me the portrait he had just started of the lawyer in the building. She was travelling at the moment. Hoyer used to have his studio in another building, but the lawyer had convinced ‘Madame’ to allow part of the attic to be converted into a studio. They had had a hard time persuading her and managed to only when she heard that Hoyer was going to paint a portrait of a young lady from Willemsparkweg, in winter hat, boa and muff. And the rest of her clothes, too, of course. And that he had been put forward as a member of Arti et Amicitiae.

  Did Bavink ever come by? No, never; he’d never been here. Had he heard anything about Kees? Yes, Bavink had run into Kees on the street a while back and they had talked. He had gone through three or four jobs in the past couple years, with long stretches unemployed in betwe
en. His father had finally found him something with the gas company.

  ‘He walks around now in a uniform and a cap, he has Amsterdam’s three white Xs and “AmGas” on his head and a little book under his arm. And another guy with him, with a black bag.’ Bavink found it quite a sight. His job is to go around emptying the two-penny coins out of the gas meters; the other guy’s job is to carry them around in his bag. And after they’ve got the coins out, Kees has to go and ask the lady of the house if she wants the two-penny coins back again as change for the meter. Bavink spent a while with him; he had never walked along with someone doing that before. But it got boring fast. He never did it again.

  I gazed at the Bokhara carpet lying in front of the club chair and saw clearly before my eyes the deserted cobblestones of Linnaeusstraat and the blue limestone kerb and the seam where two stones were set next to each other, and the bricks of the pavement. I saw us sitting there in the summer night. Bavink and Bekker and Kees and Hoyer and me. I saw that the cobblestones and the dust on the street were wet, the watering cart had been by, there was a wet sheet of newspaper somewhere. And I heard Hoyer say that he was standing up, the cold from the stone was seeping into him. Now I was hearing the same voice, only a little more refined, more modulated, saying: ‘You must excuse me, Koekebakker, I have a consultation at eleven.’

  Outside, the spring sun shone down on the cheerless street. My God, how could a street like this exist? I was absolutely not allowed to kiss the girl in the tram but a street like this was allowed to exist. That was allowed.

  11

  On one of the grand canal streets I stood on the stairs and read on the door: ‘P. Bekker, Agent, Sales on Commission’. I rang the bell and waited. It took a long time. Then the top half of the door swung open and I saw a young man with a blockish head. ‘Is Mr Bekker in?’ That sounded strange. While the young man opened the bottom half of the door, not without some difficulty, I remembered how the front door used to open without my seeing anyone, there was a cord he could pull from upstairs, and I would yell, ‘Hi, Bekker!’

  ‘Is Mr Bekker in?’

  Mr Bekker was with someone at the moment. A large roll of carpets was lying in the marble passageway. ‘Who may I tell him is here?’

  ‘Koekebakker.’

  ‘Would you follow me, please?’ The young man went first, up a narrow staircase that changed direction too many times to count.

  Upstairs, at the end of a dark narrow hallway, he stopped. In the dim light I could just make out the words ‘Samples Room’. ‘Is this where I’m supposed to wait, friend?’ I asked, pointing at the words. I could tell that Friend found me a bit odd. ‘We’ve just never changed the sign, sir.’ He knocked.

  I heard Bekker’s voice call out, ‘Yes.’ The friend went in and the door shut behind him and there I was.

  Would I be so kind as to wait here? I was led to a small back room with a view of a blind wall. A massive roll of packing paper hung on a bar from the ceiling, with the end of the paper hanging down above a large, empty packing table. The young man went and sat at a little desk by the window, with his back to me, and started to tap on a typewriter. I looked at the packing paper hanging there, I saw that it had been torn off at an angle. I looked at the office worker’s broad, bent back and bony shoulders and at the blind wall out the window. One of the bricks was broken and dark red inside; that crumbled piece of brick was the most beautiful thing I saw.

  The worker typed away at God knows what. Whenever he stopped for a moment I could hear two men’s voices through the closed door, and recognized Bekker’s voice without being able to make out any words. I sat there for twenty minutes, dying. Per me si va nella citta dolente.

  Then the door opened and Bekker appeared. He was nervous and embarrassed. How was I doing? I looked good. He was terribly sorry. He was with a client, from Bordeaux; the man had come especially to see him. He didn’t think he could get rid of him before late that evening … ‘You understand – man, you sure look good. Just back from Algiers?’ I understood perfectly. Yes, back from Algiers. ‘Where are you staying? If I can I’ll come by and see you at nine tonight.’ I wasn’t staying anywhere, I was out of money, but that’s not something you can say in an office with a stranger standing right there. So I said I didn’t know yet. I’d drop by again later. ‘Better luck next time!’ I knew he’d say that. It’s one of those things that fine men and women say to each other where you don’t even need to listen.

  He took me to the front door. He thought it was a damn shame. I looked at the little sign, ‘P. Bekker, Agent, Sales on Commission’, then into his eyes. And I saw that he suddenly heard it too, the cow mooing, the cow in the twilight ten years ago that you could hear but not see. We shook each other’s hand. ‘Per me si va tra la perduta gente, Koekebakker.’ He held my hand tight and put his other hand on my shoulder. ‘Let me know if you need any money, okay?’

  I went down the front stairs. The client was standing at the window with his hands on his hips, legs spread wide, looking out at the street. He looked rich and well-fed. I respectfully doffed my hat to him and he returned the greeting, politely and graciously.

  12

  I’m coming to the end now, slowly but surely. Thank God, someone will say. Ach, I knew before I started that this wouldn’t amount to much. What does the life of an Amsterdammer ever amount to, these days? When I was young there were so many times when I wished something would happen, anything. But nothing ever happened. We never even changed address. And later …

  Only Hoyer knows what it all adds up to. He inherited some money, now he’s loaded. He’s a member of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and he reads The People.

  In the evening he sits in the reading room and leafs through the Berlin Tageblatt. He doesn’t paint any more. And he has a reason why he doesn’t paint, too: it’s because we live in an age of decline. A new art is coming, he is sure of it, and waiting for it to arrive. Meanwhile, he brings Art to the People – how, I don’t know. A bricklayer asked him once: ‘What does all that nonsense get me?’ Hoyer had an explanation for that too: ‘We Social Democrats know only too well …’

  He says loads of things that are absolutely true, and when you start to think, Now this is getting interesting, that’s when he stops. One afternoon in Café Poland he had a whole lot to say about ‘proletarian sentiment’ and ‘bourgeois ideologies’. I just listened. One time I said to him, ‘It’s wonderful how you understand everything so well.’

  At that he started right in again and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise for half an hour. And it really is wonderful, to someone who has to do what other people tell him his whole life without understanding much about it himself, and who is constantly being snarled at and has to eat margarine and live in stuffy little apartments. If I was allowed to keep even the slightest doubt I would join the Social Democratic Workers’ Party too. One good thing, though: the people who always end up in stuffy apartments don’t need me. And maybe they’d manage, somehow, without Hoyer too. I should check if it is allowed: doubt.

  Things went badly with the agency, sales on commission. The sales on commission part was total nonsense, Bekker had just put it there because it sounded good, and someone who has translated Dante and written poems, even if there were only thirteen of them, should not be an agent for domestic and foreign firms. On a rainy December day, with the lamps lit along the canal, I found Bekker leaning on his desk with his head on his hand. The room was half dark. He was motionless. I turned on the gaslight. There was three days’ mail, unopened, in the waste-paper basket behind him. He’d shoved the whole pile in with his elbow, deliberately, without looking at it. He had got rid of his employee months ago. They’d taken away his phone. There he sat. A list of steamship departures hung on the wall; the most recent one had long since returned and set sail again, several times. On the mantel was a thick book: a deluxe edition of the Divina Commedia.

  The lamps were burning outside, pale and strange in the last light of day, like som
e unaccountable mistake. The way they so often did. Everything seemed like an unaccountable mistake.

  Bekker is back working in an office now, with a good boss, who respects him for having translated Dante. On days when the weather is fine he lets Bekker leave early, so that he can walk around a bit in the sun.

  Bekker didn’t turn to drink. He solves chess problems or sleeps. He has no vision of the future and no longings, not even for six o’clock. What good are they anyway? He takes a melancholy pleasure in collecting his salary, and a melancholy pleasure in using it to buy neckties and shoes. His clothes are properly brushed. Sometimes he feels a little pleased with himself for having ‘lived the life of the mind’ once.

  He still goes and looks at a painting every once in a while. I ran into him recently. He told me about The Arrival of Queen Wilhelmina at Frederiksplein, Eerelman’s painting, the one with the ad for ODOL mouthwash painted on it so naturally. Wouldn’t that be a lovely painting to hang in a fancy pharmacy? he said.

  Kees is still working for the gas company and living in one of those stuffy little apartments I mentioned. He doesn’t know where they’ll find room for the next kid to sleep. The children are still small but in a year or two they’ll be squabbling every morning over the one faucet and the one bathroom, the way it always goes in District III neighbourhoods. He struggles with what Hoyer calls ‘the chronic shortages in working-class households’ and buys cigars only on Saturday nights. On Sunday he has to keep the children in line. He gripes about how he’d be doing so much better if he had only listened to his father sooner.

  His wife is good to him. He gets a clean handkerchief in the middle of the week. But she wouldn’t awaken desire in anyone who isn’t used to her like Kees is. It was different six years ago.

  In his father’s attic, where Kees used to have his ‘place’, his sisters’ underwear is hanging up to dry.