The Sergeant's Cat

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Of course. This Dayak (he remembered Borneo headhun­ted from a geography lesson) princess was too exotic to give in easily. His own shameless hurry disgusted him. How could he even dare to expect so much so fast?

  Next day, another six yellow tulips.

  He waited for her in the street. Offered to take her home on the Harley’s saddle, designed for maximal physical contact.

  She preferred public transport.

  A day passed. More anonymous tulips were accepted but every direct approach was blocked by curt refusals. Maybe she thought he was too young. Frank checked Ravena’s application again.

  She was twenty-three years old, against his nineteen. But what the hell? The mature princess and the ardent young prince. The possibilities were still endless. The form also contained Rav­ena’s address. He rode out on his Harley. She had her own mini apartment with a front door and private steps. She wasn’t home.

  The clerks were humble people, caught in drudgery, scrib­bling all day before grinding home on rusty bicycles. Frank re­fused to laugh at their crude jokes. He wouldn’t go out with them for coffee breaks, and chose to read avant-garde poetry at his desk instead. Their resulting hostility exploded into a nasty joke. A clerk sidled up. “Say, Frank, been on the roof yet?”

  “No.”

  “Come with me—you should see the view.”

  “Okay.”

  There was a small hinged stepladder leading to a skylight the clerk obligingly unhooked. “You go first, pal,” he said.

  The minute Frank reached the roof, the trapdoor slammed shut behind him. Below, there was mumbling and laughing. “Nice view, what?” clerky voices asked. The view was not nice. Frank could see other roofs and bare trees reaching up sadly. Ragged washing dried on sagging lines. A rear garden displayed heaped garbage between slimy tree debris. The roofs street side overlooked grumbling traffic, released by a green light.

  Frank waited minutes. The skylight stayed shut. Rain driz­zled coldly. He squatted so that he could hear better and heard Ravena’s soft laugh. She, too.

  Angry, he was angry—but anger alone wouldn’t free him from this trap. He walked away from the trapdoor to the edge of the roof, where fear of heights stopped him. The laughing voices beneath the skylight egged him on. He jumped to the next roof, across a narrow but gaping passage. His smooth leather soles slid and he almost toppled backward, but managed, by mowing his arms around windmill-fashion, to stay upright. He forced his trembling legs to inch toward the edge of the next roof. Seven stories down, a rear garden covered with junk pushed against a sagging fence. Under the gutter near his feet, a window had been left open. If he—but, no, he couldn’t accept the challenge. Say he swung from the overhanging gutter for­ward and backward once—twice, maybe—trying to work up momentum to propel his reluctant body through the window? What if the gutter broke, and he dropped onto rotted-out boxes and rusted bicycle frames a hundred feet below?

  So, back to the skylight, kneel and knock, beg the clerks for mercy?

  Never.

  Fresh bright orange streaks of fury burst through Frank’s brain and burned away most of his fear. Despite his careful squat­ting he began to slide again, reaching the edge more quickly than he dared to. He hung from the gutter. So far, so good. His fingers had passed through the gutter’s gooey contents before grabbing hold. Sooty leaves, creamed in bird droppings. So far, so better. Now for the best part, swinging Tarzan-style. The tension made him grin. Pity he had forgotten the apeman’s war cry. But he could make up his own. Yuuu-aayuuuuh? There we go. Hup ONE! Hup TWO!

  At hup three, his fingers released their grip on the gutter, his body shot through the window, and his heels aimed for and hit the floor. The room contained a bed, a chest of drawers, a washstand. There were no signs of an occupant. A boarding-house room, waiting for the next guest? Frank slid on worn linoleum, slowed down to a casual walk, placed his left hand in his trouser pocket, opened a door, followed a corridor, de­scended the narrow stairs. He lived here and was on his way out for a stroll. If he met anyone, he’d say, “Hello—how are you doing?” noncommittal but friendly enough, and meanwhile keep going.

  Descending floor after floor, he met no one. The street door opened easily. Outside, he turned back to the office.

  There they were, all the king’s men and woman, waiting gleefully for Frankie’s pleas from above to open the skylight, waiting for Frankie’s surrender.

  Frank quietly joined the giggling crowd, maneuvered him­self next to Ravena, and took her slender hand. She looked up at him, her dark eyes gleaming. “You! Where did you come from?”

  “I flew.”

  That was all he would ever say about his feat, even to Dayak princess Ravena, the Jane of his private jungle.

  Ravena often asked him about the miracle when he lay next to her in the wide bed of her apartment, opened to him after the clerks’ defeat. He stayed with her until Betty-Baby’s dad transferred him to work for associates in Paris for a while to learn the tricks of the trade. While Frank was away, Betty-Baby’s dad sold the building and moved the company to modern premises.

  He also got rid of Ravena. She wrote to Frank in Paris, mentioning another lover, a man with a sailboat who might take her far away unless Frank came back at once to take her even farther. He didn’t go back at once, and when he eventually did, Betty-Baby’s dad made him crown prince.

  Rumor reached him that Ravena had been dumped off the sailboat somewhere and had come back to Amsterdam, but Frank didn’t see her again. He saw pink, dimply Betty-Baby instead, who bought him the condo. Years slipped by. There had been no reason to hunt about in the alleys of his past.

  Until now.

  Frank studied the phone book. No Ravena Simons. Sam Simons—would that be Ravena’s brother? He dialed.

  “Frank Nullish,” Frank said. “Remember me, Sam? I used to be with your sister.”

  “Sure,” Sam said. “You’re rich now, Frank?”

  Frank nodded.

  “What?” Sam said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m poor.” Sam gave him her number.

  Ravena’s voice was low and vibrant.

  “This is Frank Nullish, Ravena.”

  The silence was low and vibrant.

  “You remember me, Ravena?”

  “I remember you, Frank.”

  “So how are you doing?”

  “Well—,” she said. “Okay, I guess.”

  “That’s nice,” Frank said. “Meet me? Now? Here?” He gave her the bar’s address. She said she needed half an hour.

  Frank dipped the tenth Black Belgian into the fifth bourbon and inhaled alcoholic nicotine. Ravena came in. She wore a silk orange-red suit and her hair down, hiding most of her face. What he saw of her skin had wrinkled. She’d be forty-three. The hand that clasped his was clawlike, the claw of the bird of paradise.

  So what? Old Ravena. Me old Tarzan. You old Jane.

  A lovely lady. A matured exotic. They’d start over, build a gazebo in a banyan tree, turn the lights low, spray perfume. Keep an ape.

  Edmond’s chins trembled. “What would the lovely lady like to imbibe?”

  Ravena ordered whiskey.

  Edmond’s pudgy hands manipulated the square black bottle with ease and abandon.

  “How nice that you phoned,” Ravena said.

  She needed more whiskey to say more. She told Frank she had a daughter, who’d left home and wasn’t doing well, and that she had no man, except Uncle Joe. She lived close by. She hoped Uncle Joe had not followed her.

  “Is there an old man looking in?”

  Frank asked Edmond. Edmond said there was. “His head shakes.”

  “Parkinson’s disease,” Ravena said.

  “Very old,” Edmond said.

  “Eighty,” Ravena said. “He gets nervous without me.”

  �
�In shirtsleeves,” Edmond said.

  “He should be wearing a jacket.” Ravena excused herself and went outside. Frank saw her admonishing a shabby old man, marching him off. Uncle Joe’s bald head shone like a reluctant moon, his arms swung widely.

  She came back after a while. “Naughty Uncle Joe. I put him to bed. He’d better stay there.” She looked at her empty glass. It filled up again. The bird of paradise claw touched Frank’s arm. “How about you, any kids?”

  “I married Betty-Baby,” Frank said. “No kids. It isn’t working out. She’s sick all the time.”

  “The company is hers?”

  “In her name,” Frank said.

  Ravena nodded. “So all your property is Betty-Baby’s.”

  He nodded too. “In a way, in a way, but I’m starting over again.” He touched Ravena’s shoulder meaningfully. “I phoned you, you know. Can we go somewhere?”

  “Uncle Joe will be nervous,” Ravena said. “It’s better in the morning. He sleeps late. We have a big apartment.”

  “Uncle Joe’s apartment?” Frank asked.

  Some gold in her teeth gleamed. “In a way, in a way.” She looked up. “There’s a hotel nearby. But tomorrow would be better.”

  Frank overpaid Edmond. Outside, they both stubbed their toes on cobblestones on their way to the Volvo.

  Frank drove off carefully, aware of possible police and of Uncle Joe in his mirror. “Which way’s the hotel?”

  “The other way.” She looked over her shoulder. “Oh, dear, he got out again. Stop the car.”

  Uncle Joe’s face pressed against Ravena’s window, mouth moving like that of a fish about to die in the bottom of a boat. “Ravena, where are you going?” the fish head asked.

  “I’ll have to go with him,” Ravena told Frank. “Phone me tomorrow morning, we’ll work something out . . .”

  “No go?” Edmond asked when Frank sat down again. “Last drink? I’ll be closing soon.”

  The black bottle did its job. “You sure you like that lady?” Edmond asked. “I’ve seen her here before. Got to know her, so to speak.”

  “Tried her out?” Frank asked. “One morning, Uncle Joe still a-snooze?”

  Edmond winked. “Now now, sir, now now.”

  Frank stood next to the Volvo. A cop car stopped. “You wouldn’t be planning to drive?” the cop car’s loudspeaker whis­pered.

  Frank crossed the quay again, tentatively pushed the build­ing’s door leading to the apartments. The door should have been closed, of course, but wasn’t. He climbed all seven flights of stairs, reached the skylight, lowered its steps, walked up the steps, pushed, reached the roof. The roof was still old, with peeling tar sheets showing decayed tinplate and moldy gutters.

  Frank was happy. He was back, he had reached the starting point. He would jump to the next roof, slither about, squat down, be a hero again. He would dig his fingers in the juicy contents of the rotten gutter, lower himself, swing his rejuve­nated body into the neatly made bed of the boardinghouse room below, Ravena’s bed, and they would fly off together on bird-of-paradise wings, away from the battlefield where pathetic clerks’ corpses stank pitifully.

  Hup one. Hup two—

  The gutter broke.

  “Yuuu-aayuuuuh!”

  “Can we take him now, Adjutant?” one of the paramedics asked the portly police detective. “We haven’t got all night.”

  “Wait,” the younger detective with the wide moustache said. “Wait, Grijpstra, tell me again why we shouldn’t investigate the corpse and location further. I know you told me before, but you were eating that hamburger.” He glared at the paramedics. “You guys wait, okay?”

  “Sergeant de Gier,” Adjutant Grijpstra said, “you’ve been upstairs. There are tracks on the roof, the victim’s tracks only. The subject jumped off all by himself. Accident? Accidents are okay. Suicide? Suicides are okay.”

  “The prints say the subject hung from the gutter by his hands,” Sergeant de Gier said. “As his swinging broke the win­dow’s glass, I may surmise that the subject was attempting to swing himself into the room below. Maybe he was a burglar and a rapist. Maybe he’s listed and we can now cross him off our list.”

  “You checked the subject’s wallet,” Adjutant Grijpstra said. “Credit cards, cash, valid driving license, papers that go with the Volvo parked at the quayside. Photograph of a large lady. A Boucheron gold watch. A Leyden House suit. The subject’s vis­iting card calls him managing director of a corporation making needlecraft needles. The company’s name is known to me. My own mother and my own ex-wife use those needles. They’re good needles. You still say he may be a suspect?”

  “There was a woman in the apartment the subject didn’t get into because the gutter he was hanging from broke on him,” de Gier said. “He tried to enter the woman’s room, intending mischief maybe. Perhaps she saw him swing in and pushed him out again.”

  “Self-defense is kind of okay,” Grijpstra said. “But it wasn’t self-defense. Why not? Because the woman says so. She was asleep in another room, heard the glass break, heard someone shout “Aa-yuuuuh,” opened the broken window, looked down, saw the body, and phoned us. We confronted her with the body. She says she never saw the subject before.”

  “She lied?” de Gier asked.

  “Ugly women have no reason to lie,” the second paramedic said.

  The sergeant thought. “Yes. So why did he force himself into a fatal accident, this handsome, well-dressed, still youngish, reputable needlecraft-needle-business-owning subject?”

  “Who cares?” Grijpstra asked. “Fatal accidents are okay.”

  De Gier’s sensitive brown eyes shone pleadingly. His mous­tache curled in gentle protest. His perfect teeth showed in a humble smile. “I care,” he said.

  “Please,” Adjutant Grijpstra said pleadingly. “The subject is some forty years old. He is doing fine. He has been making and selling needlecraft needles for years. He is looking at selling even more needlecraft needles for even more years. But why? He already has a Volvo and a Boucheron watch. He is beginning to wonder about his effort, his direction—his destiny even, maybe. One day he goes home, but he doesn’t. He comes here. He drinks to cheer up. He cheers down. Events swing him by the arms. We’ll ask the bartender in that bar tomorrow. Not that whatever he’ll say will matter much maybe.”

  “Edmond,” the first paramedic said. “Fats Edmond, but don’t call him Fats or he’ll beat you up. We have taken subjects from there that were badly beaten.”

  “What will Fats say that won’t matter much, maybe?” de Gier asked.

  Adjutant Grijpstra shrugged. “That the subject got drunk maybe, met a woman maybe, it didn’t work out maybe. That he drank more maybe, he was a sporty type once maybe, he was going to show himself he was still a sporty type maybe?”

  “That aa-yuuuuh the woman heard could be Tarzan’s good­bye cry maybe,” the paramedic said. “I wanted to be Tarzan, too. I still do maybe.”

  “Don’t drink,” Grijpstra told him. “The vine you’re swing­ing from may break.”

  “I only drink beer,” the paramedic said.

  “What brand?” de Gier asked.

  The paramedic smiled knowledgeably. “All beer is good beer.”

  “So?” de Gier asked Grijpstra.

  “So,” Grijpstra said, “Mr. Frank Nullish, married to the bland blonde he keeps a photo of in his wallet, got himself into a situation that reminded him he once was Tarzan, swinging happily from a vine in the Amsterdam jungle. He does that again, Sergeant. Watch this.” Grijpstra reached up into an empty and uncaring sky, lifted a huge leg. “Hup one.”

  The first paramedic nodded at his partner. They each grabbed their end of the stretcher.

  Grijpstra reached higher into the empty and uncaring sky and lifted a huge leg higher. “Hup two.”

  The paramedics lifted the
stretcher. There was a moment of reverent silence, then the stretcher slid into the ambulance while adjutant, sergeant, paramedic one and paramedic two sadly shouted: “Hup three.”

  The Machine Gun and the Mannequin

  He sat on the porch in a cane chair dating back to the time the mansion was built, back in the days when the rich still owned plantations in the colonies. He was a little sickly looking guy, smoking a cigar. The cigar didn’t func­tion too well either—he had to press the torn leaf on the side to suck smoke out of it.

  He wasn’t a plantation owner, of course, just another nut, and I was on my way out and ready to walk by him. The man­sion was now a home for the disturbed elderly and I had been visiting my aunt, who isn’t right in the head. One must be thoughtful once in a while and that’s why I was there, but I had been thoughtful enough and wanted to go home. My aunt hasn’t a thought in her head anymore—she only clicks her dentures and doesn’t know what’s what.

  The little old guy waved to me and pointed at another cane chair that was ready to fall apart. I sat down. He was all alone on the porch and maybe he had something to say. He looked nutty, all right, with his few long hairs waving around his shiny skull. There were buttons missing on his shirt and his slippers were just about frayed off their soles. The bridge of his spectacles bit into his bony nose and his black raisin eyes stared at me over the round glasses.

  “No visitors for you today?” I asked. He wasn’t saying any­thing yet, so I might as well be polite.

  “Never have any.” It wasn’t a complaint, just a statement that loosened more words. “Don’t know anyone, “except the woman who used to clean my place. She’ll clean for the next guy now, don’t you think?”

  I nodded. He was there for keeps.

  “Yep,” the little old guy said. “Willems is my name, but here they call me Gramps.”

  “Treating you okay?”

  He said they were and that the food was fine. And he was allowed to smoke, which was fine, too.