Told you so.
For a long time, it had felt like him versus the world. A struggle that had defined his existence for years. This moment was his vindication. Proof that he was not some crazed, sandwich-board-wearing prophet of doom accosting people on street corners.
“Would you like anything else?” the waiter asked, clearing the table.
“Skinny cap,” Theo replied, glued to the unfolding financial destruction on the TV. It was a bit like watching the planes plow into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. You couldn’t take your eyes off it.
Soon the newscaster interviewed an expert panel in the studio, a group of sharply dressed men and women ready to spout belated wisdom. Theo straightened when the camera zoomed in on one of their faces. It was the former French finance minister, the one who’d been in that meeting in Brussels when Theo had tried to warn the European ministers about this moment.
“This is unprecedented. We couldn’t have seen this coming,” the Frenchman declared.
Theo gaped. How could he say it with a straight face? Had he erased all memory of that meeting?
Suddenly, Theo was overwhelmed by memories of his despairing struggle against an obdurate establishment. His quest for vindication, it seemed, had blinded him to a simple fact: winning wasn’t about being right. It was preventing this moment from coming to being. He hadn’t. And the images flickering on the TV screen weren’t signs of victory.
They were reminders he’d failed.
He sighed and cast a glance at the harbor. Beyond the waterfront, the city marching toward the horizon was a bricks-and-mortar timeline: crooked gabled buildings from the 1600s in the foreground, graduating to twenty-first century steel and glass, shrunken in the distance.
It was a view that anchored this moment in history, for it was four hundred years earlier near a clump of gold-tipped spires to his right that it had all started. Inside a canal house on Nes, a group of unsmiling burghers with ruff collars—poster boys for a Protestant work ethic—signed a document that made them the world’s first shareholders. The company was Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company. The world’s first IPO was massively oversubscribed. Not surprising, considering it was a monopoly backed by the government, with the power to raise armies.
Within a year, the company reported a capital growth of fifty percent, largely from the proceeds of seizing a Portuguese ship off the coast of Singapore. Such was the demand for its shares that a few years later, the idea of derivatives was spawned in the busy coffeehouses of Nieuwe Brug. Nearby in the town hall, the proliferation of coin clippers had prompted Amsterdamsche Wisselbank to create a unified monetary system.
Not far from there, a corkscrew of smoke drilled toward a clear spring sky. In fact, there were many such corkscrews scattered across the city. This wasn’t the past but the present. The smoke spirals were map pins pointing to the tent cities that were mushrooming everywhere. Closer in the foreground, the snaking pedestrian mall of Kalverstraat, once frequented by outof-towners, avoided by locals, was now avoided by everyone: out-of-towners and locals. The lines once visible when a new smartphone was launched had shifted to the soup kitchens serving the homeless. Further to the right, the exclusive shopping district of the Nine Streets was now a string of empty windows. And finally, right over to the left, somewhat obscured from view, a chocolate-colored art deco building. Bank of Eternity.
Amsterdamsche Wisselbank then, Bank of Eternity now. Could those men with ruff collars who energized trade, commerce and discovery by freeing capital from the clutches of a feudal society, have foreseen this? The downfall of capitalism caused ultimately not by a revolution, but the system’s very lifeblood: money. Maybe Marx was right. Capitalism was doomed to fail under the weight of its own contradictions. But what about the system his vision had spawned? That hadn’t survived, either. If communism failed because it didn’t recognize self-interest as an essential human trait, and capitalism failed because it placed that trait on a pedestal, then what was the alternative?
Theo had done a good job of predicting this crisis. But now, he was going to walk in the same dark tunnel as everyone else.
26.
TWO WEEKS AFTER THE CRASH, THEO HUNCHED over the kitchen table, chewing his cereal mechanically as he tried to recall the last time he’d met Mathias. Was it a year? Maybe longer? Their relationship had changed irrevocably when Theo had tried to warn him about the crisis all those years ago. It wasn’t like they had any fierce arguments or major disagreements after that night. But things fizzled slowly, like a marriage that had lost its spark.
How was he? Theo wondered. According to Valerie, the last person to have been in contact with him, the business wasn’t going too well.
The concern for Mathias’s well-being grew as the day progressed, compelling Theo to reach out to his friend.
He ventured on his bike to De Pijp, Mathias’s stomping ground. A fit of optimism made him try the office first. The sign was still there, nailed to the wall above the entrance. But when he looked in the smudged plate-glass window, all he saw was the disemboweled carcass of a business.
He sighed and headed to Mathias’s apartment, conveniently located around the corner. The building was a six-story, nineteenth-century workers’ terrace, crowned by a row of dormer windows in the slate roof.
Theo chained his bike to a parking sign and went to buzz Mathias’s apartment, when he noticed the door standing ajar. He pushed it open and went in.
The lights weren’t working. He gripped the bannister and ascended the creaky steps. The daylight from the open door tapered to darkness when he reached the first-floor landing. He stopped and groped the air, feeling for bicycles, washing machines, outboard motors and other crap people usually left outside their doors. Luckily, it was clear.
He carried on to the next level, negotiating the winding staircase with exaggerated caution. Finally, he arrived on the top floor, where he was greeted by an open door.
A flood of light from the south-facing window shone on cracked, peeling walls. The dusty concrete floor was marked with striations from the ripped-up floorboards. Wires trailed from uneven holes in the ceiling.
As Theo walked around the derelict apartment, he became aware of a presence. A ghost, rising from the dusty floor. A bare-chested Mathias in the kitchen, face beaded with sweat after a workout, drinking a protein shake straight from the blender jar. The gym had been in the spare room: bench press, Bowflex machine, exercise bike, mirrors on two walls. All that was left now was the mirrors.
It was the same in the bedroom, but the mirror there was on the ceiling. Theo glanced at his upside-down reflection, shuddering to think of all the things that had occurred within these four walls.
A draft of cool air drew him to the open sash window at the end of the room. There used to be a telescope there, he remembered, trained on a grassy patch in Sarphatipark where girls sunbathed in summer. No telescope now, and no girls sunbathing in the park, either. Instead, he was looking at a concentration of tents, domes of blue, red, green and yellow scattered on the lawn, smoke spiraling from small fires. At first glance, it looked like a campsite at a music festival. A mini Glastonbury, Roskilde or Burning Man. Except this wasn’t any of those. This was a tent city, one of many that had sprung up in the city’s parks, the scar tissue of a broken economy.
What if he’s down there? Theo wondered. It was inconceivable to think of someone as vain as Mathias living in squalor. But these were extraordinary times, and nothing was outside the bounds of possibility.
A few minutes later, he emerged from the building and crossed the road. The park was ringed by a wrought-iron fence and a thick screen of horse chestnuts. Prior to going in, Theo slipped his watch into his pocket and rolled his trainers in the mud, even though they were old and already scuffed. The gravel path from the gate merged with a looping asphalt track, thick with the smells of urine, stale food and unwashed bodies.
Spanning the length of two blocks, the park was
broken into sections by a network of paths and bridges. A puzzle-piece-shaped lagoon in the middle was concealed by tall reeds and weeping willows growing along its banks.
Most of the tents were clustered on the main lawn surrounding a sandstone monument with a dry moat. Theo trod on the sodden grass, scouring faces darkened with grit and framed with matted hair. Conscious of his own spotless appearance, he moved carefully, eyes darting, as if he’d just entered a bad neighborhood. But after a while, he noticed no one was even looking at him. It seemed the denizens of the tent city were pretending he was invisible, just like the world outside was pretending they were. People with no jobs, no homes, no hope, scurrying about the depths of society like plankton.
He crossed the bridge to check the next lawn, where the tents were pitched along the lagoon. A crude sign staked into the muddy bank caught his eye: Herengracht. The most prestigious address in the canal district. He wondered if this ironic nomenclature extended to the rest of the park. Was the area around the monument where he’d just been called Centrum? Was the sandpit near the gate christened Zandvoort or some other beach town?
After nearly thirty minutes of fruitless searching, he stopped at an elevated wooden platform next to a gushing waterfall that fed the lagoon. The bridge offered him a vantage point. He leaned on the railing, wistfully recalling scenes from another day when the park was carved into territories, shirtless musclemen cavorting beside the exercise equipment in the southeast corner, dog walkers, and boys playing football on the next lawn. The main lawn was colonized by sunbathers resting on picnic blankets, eating ice cream or sipping champagne, listening to music on tinny speakers hooked up to their mobile phones, their bikes lying flat on the grass as if enjoying a spot of rest.
He remembered the aroma of barbecues, the occasional whiff of joints. Children armed with soaker guns having a water fight while a brass band provided a comical background score. He recalled Mathias feeding the ducks, ignoring Theo’s warning that the uneaten bread could spawn botulism-causing algae.
Where were the birds now? Theo wondered. The wooden pontoon, usually splattered white with their droppings, looked pristine.
Rankled by their absence, he embarked on a quest to find them, looking in the usual hiding places: little coves concealed by the reeds, under the low branches of weeping willows, along the edges of a tiny island overrun with vegetation. But there was no sign of them anywhere. It was as if they’d never existed.
Then it struck him.
The ducks were long gone. And it wasn’t botulism that had killed them. It was hungry stomachs.
A moist film blurred his vision. What the fuck was wrong with him? The whole world was turning to shit and there he was, crying over some goddamn ducks.
27.
THE SQUARE OUTSIDE THE PARLIAMENT COMPLEX was a smoldering wash of orange. Thousands of Orange Shirts packed into an area the size of a football pitch, raising fists, uttering that hateful cry:
“Nederlandse Trots. Nederlandse Trots. Nederlandse Trots …”
Theo observed the rally from a safe distance in the shadow of a plane tree outside the Ministry of Justice building, his expressionless face concealing a mixture of fascination and fear. He recalled the last Dutch Pride gathering in the very same square a number of years earlier. Back then, they were just a small handful, nothing more than a nuisance to the patrons in the surrounding cafes. But now he was seeing the rumblings of a movement. The world was changing faster than anyone could keep up.
He exchanged glances with Walter, who was watching the proceedings, lips sealed in a grim pout. Walter was about to say something but was cut off by a loud roar. The Orange Shirts applauded their leader, the scrawny figure of Charles Barbour, who was now onstage, a thin smile spreading on his rottweiler face as he savored the crowd’s adulation like a rock star. The stage had been set so he stood at the same height as the statue of William of Orange rising in the middle of the square, subconsciously—or perhaps not so subconsciously—pitching the Dutch Pride leader as the nation’s modern-day savior.
A few moments later, he raised his palm to silence the gathering.
The air crackled with anticipation as he fussed with the mike, bringing it closer, adjusting the height, really playing with his audience.
Then his voice filled the square, harsh as a grinder saw.
“Would you like to hear a joke?”
A unanimous “YES” from the crowd.
“Okay. How do you blindfold a Chinaman?”
Pause.
“With dental floss.”
The audience threw their heads back, braying with laughter.
“I see you liked that. Okay, here’s another one. How do you know you’ve been robbed by a Chinaman?”
Once again, a pause.
“When all the rice is gone and three hours later, he’s still trying to back out of the driveway.”
Once again, laughter. This time, they clapped hands and bumped fists, enjoying every moment of this racist stand-up comedy. Theo scowled at Charles. If you were going to peddle poison, at least be original. Come up with your own material, not regurgitate the first thing you saw on the internet.
“One more, folks. How do you know you’ve been robbed by a Chinaman?”
The crowd turned to each other, confused; did their great leader just repeat himself?
“When the economy is in ruins, you can’t feed your family and don’t have a roof over your head.”
This time, no laughter. The silence was as sharp as broken glass. Seagulls squawked. A tram rumbled in the distance. There was a distinct change in the air temperature, as most people there couldn’t feed their families, didn’t have roofs over their heads. Ostensibly robbed by the “Chinaman” they laughed at a few moments earlier. Theo couldn’t help admiring the dexterity with which Charles worked the audience. He guessed it was like anything—do it long enough, you eventually got really good at it. Even stoking hate.
“Not funny, is it? But that’s exactly what’s been happening to us. For years, the Chinese have been systematically destroying our industries with cheap imports. Money that should’ve gone to Dutch manufacturers has been going into their pockets instead. And guess what they’ve been doing with that money? They’ve been using it to buy our land, our farms, our homes. Do you know these slant-eyes now own seven percent of our country? They own nine percent of Britain, eleven percent of America. This hasn’t just happened by accident. It’s part of a grand plan. It’s all here in this book: The Manchu Manifesto.”
Charles held a copy of said book in his hand, displaying it to the crowd like evidence in a courtroom.
“Let me read you a little extract. ‘For many centuries, the West subjugated China with opium. Now it’s our turn to fight back by getting them hooked on our drug: cheap goods. We’ll make them pawn their souls just like they made us pawn our silver. And when their economies are weak and debt-ridden, we’ll strike, not resting until the injustices of the past have been avenged and the Chinese dragon reigns supreme …’”
He snapped the book shut and raised his fist.
“Here’s my message to my Manchu friends. Bring on your dragon. St. George is waiting for you. Nederlandse Trots.”
The crowd exploded in a frenzy of fury and indignation. Theo and Walter walked away in disgust. There was only so much of this crap you could listen to without wanting to shout back. A move that would’ve been nothing short of suicidal.
Theo scoffed, “A few years ago, it was Muslims. Now it’s the Chinese.”
“Well, at least you can say he’s an equal-opportunity racist,” Walter sniggered.
“Is this Manchu Manifesto for real?”
“You see so much crap on the internet. Who knows what’s real?”
“I bet it’s a complete fabrication. Like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The economy in ruins. A power-hungry narcissist exploiting it by stoking base fears and providing simplistic answers. Where have we seen this before?”
“You know what�
��s scary? In Hitler’s time, there were enough good guys to stand up to the bad ones. But now we’re seeing clones of Dutch Pride on the ascendancy all over America and Europe.”
“This isn’t America or any other European country.” Theo clenched his fist. “The Dutch suck at national pride. We’ve always thought of ourselves as a small country at the mercy of the dykes. That nationalistic crap that Charles is selling is not going to work here. He may win a few more seats than he deserves to, but he’s not going to get the big prize.”
THE BIG PRIZE that Charles coveted was a standard office chair in a wood-paneled octagonal room overlooking a lake. Its current occupant, Prime Minister Elke, was a withered version of the person Theo had met years earlier. She hunched behind a sturdy wooden desk, wan face rutted with creases. Her eyes, weary from a lifetime of battles, fixed on Walter.
“Go on. Say it.” She sighed. “Get it out of your system.”
“I told you so. I bloody told you so,” Walter hissed, face colored by a rush of blood and pent-up venom. “None of this would have happened if you’d listened to me.”
“You were right. I was wrong. Can we—”
“Say that to the people of the Netherlands. Get on TV and say it. All those people who voted for you, who lost their homes and jobs … tell them it’s your fault. Tell them you fucked up.”
“You know how many problems are brought to my attention every day?” Her voice was as tired as her eyes. “I can’t attend to each one of them. I have to separate crank calls from the real ones. Sometimes you get it wrong.”
“Crank call? That wasn’t a crank call. You didn’t want to do anything about it because you had no balls.”
“Damn it, Walter.” She slapped the table. “I didn’t bring you here to drag old cows out of the water. Tell me what you think of this.” She slid two sets of official documents across the table.
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