by Jeremy Welch
The three of them squeezed onto the sofa-style seat of the rickshaw as the cyclist driver raised his head from the cross bar. His face expressed relief at the size of his new passengers – not the usual overfed tourists.
“Take us to the Vondel Park,” Salt instructed with a flourish of her arm.
“You’ll love it, Sebastian. It’s the biggest open air park in Amsterdam. Busy at the weekend so that’s why we are going today. We’ll find a nice spot near the water for lunch. You been before?”
As the rickshaw set off Sebastian looked around him at the confusion of traffic flow. Although a passenger he was conscious of a comment of Zoe’s before he left London. “What’s the last noise you hear before you get killed on a Dutch road? A bicycle bell.” Looking around him he absently replied, “No.”
The journey took them past the flower market and Leidesplein. Sitting in the middle he held onto Salt and Pepper’s arms as he tried to work out how he would survive the traffic chaos. Cars driving with logic and discipline until a cyclist appeared. The cars then retreated behind the cyclist as if feeling guilty for being on the road. The sides of the road had a cycle path where the cycles went in both directions. A confusion of traffic lights started trams tinkling and clattering crossing roads and cycle paths, sometimes both at the same time. The python of cyclists seemed oblivious to any light instruction and slithered between cars and trams. The rickshaw cyclist thought at various stages that he was a tram, car and cyclist as the mood suited him. Salt and Pepper laughed as his grip tightened and relaxed with each perceived danger.
“No wonder they built this park in the centre of Amsterdam, you need somewhere peaceful to relax having risked life and limb getting here!” said Sebastian recovering from the journey.
The park was peaceful, the pre-work runners had left and the one o’clock lunchers were hours away. The park was kidney shaped, with a cycle path at the circumference. Within this, lakes bordered by pods of land for different use. The sun glowed off the clay tennis courts as if a flattened Kalahari Desert. The noise of tennis balls being hit from baseline to baseline as predictable as the noise of crickets at night and just as mysteriously the noise stopped with a missed stroke. There were areas for children, play parks with swings and nodding horses on springs. Following the footpath they lazily looked for a shaded spot under a tree.
“How long are you going to stay in Amsterdam, Sebastian?” Pepper asked as they settled below a willow tree next to one of the lakes.
“I don’t really know. It all depends on how the book goes. I can’t stay here forever as I don’t have much money left. And once you have started your tour I won’t know anyone in Amsterdam.”
“That doesn’t give you that long really as we’ll be off after the show closes. How is the book coming along?”
For the first time since his arrival in Amsterdam he felt comfortable about the progress of the book. With guidance from Anneke, the shape of the characters had changed from his post-university draft; the journey to completion had started, no more inactivity.
As he lowered his head towards the ground to lie down Salt took his head in her hands and rested it in her crossed legs. He closed his eyes and the multi-coloured light danced inside his closed eyelids as he thought of the progress.
“All the ingredients are there and the texture of the book is more malleable than it’s ever been. I now know I can and will finish it.”
Salt stoked his hair with her fingers as she rested her head against the tree trunk.
“Who will you dedicate it to, will it be us?”
Pepper lay down on the grass with her head on his stomach looking upwards to the leafy canopy. Her head bounced gently on his stomach as he laughed quietly.
“No, not this one, perhaps the next one.” He surprised himself with the belief that there would be another and then possibly another. He was clearer now than at any other time in his life that he wanted to write and nothing else. “I have someone in mind for this one.”
“It’s the girl in the photograph, isn’t it?” Pepper asked still gazing upward. “Who is the girl in the photograph?”
Before he could reply a coloured ball rolled into the three of them. Following the ball was a little girl dressed in a blue skirt and a top too small for her, her belly poking out from the waistband of the skirt. She stopped short of the ball and held her arms out. Pepper rose up handing the ball to her with a smile.
“Is this yours? Here have it back,” she said.
“Danique! Danique!” cried the woman running over to the child. As Pepper held out the ball the little girl hesitated before she reached for it. Her eyes darting between Salt and Pepper trying to work out how a mirror image of one woman was possible.
“Sorry,” said the woman in English. “Come, Danique. Thank you,” she said as she led the child by the hand back to the circle of young women with their children.
The women sat on a mosaic of rugs with toys scattered around them. There were more women on the rugs than there were children. The children ran after each other laughing and screaming, always under the watchful maternal eye. When distance between the children and mothers got too far a cry of a name or chorus of names went up to hail them back to the perimeter of safety.
Most of the women were young, in their late teens or early twenties, slim and hopeful with youth. Sitting on a bench not far from the group sat a-lone blonde woman. Her knees close together and her hands placed between them. Sebastian thought he recognised her. She stood out from the others; although as young as them, she looked tired and gaunt with bruising under her eyes from lack of sleep. Every time she smiled at her thoughts it was with resignation, as if just tolerating life. The mothers engaged and catered for the incessant demands of the children; a small boy ran into his mother’s open arms and as her arms enwrapped him Sebastian heard her say, “Darling, I love you”, as she squeezed him tight to her chest. The lone woman on the bench looked on with a smile of something missed, unobtainable.
Sebastian lowered his head back into the crossed knees of Salt, the sun draining his energy.
“Everyone needs someone, don’t they?” Salt said it as a fact not a question.
“Yes they do,” Pepper replied. “Who have you got, Sebastian?”
He delayed answering as he thought of his family – brother, father and mother. They were not needed were they? They were there anyway. His friends, well they were there too. Who did he need, for he knew he needed someone? He knew he needed her, now possibly more than ever.
The sun disappeared along with its heat as a shadow fell over his eyes. It had been a cloudless sky so he couldn’t quite work out why. Opening his eyes he saw the silhouette of a man dressed in running shorts with his sweatshirt stuck into the waistband. Behind him came another one with a sports holdall, the zip open and juggling sticks poking out of the top. They gave off the aroma of health after a workout, fit and glowing.
“Hello there. You look like a version of Manet’s ‘Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe’ except there are two women and one man,” said Hugo laughing as his bald head went from gloss to matt as he wiped the sweat away.
“And they are dressed too,” replied Ricard.
Both had stomach muscles like the ribs of sand on a beach as the tide retreats. Sebastian felt his stomach muscles contract to hide his mildly inflated tummy into his rib cage. It didn’t work for long. Like the water in a balloon it collapsed to its natural comfortable position around his trouser top.
“Hello boys,” Salt and Pepper replied in unison. Sebastian nodded to the two in recognition and a readiness to know them better, but not today and definitely not now.
“Looks like you have had a more energetic morning than we have,” he said as he reluctantly moved to make room for the two.
Sebastian had met them before and seen them often around the Tulp but had never engaged in conversation other than salutations and platit
udes as their paths crossed. They were almost always together. He felt a little threatened by them, their presence more pronounced than his. They reminded him of his first girlfriend when he was seven. He had been sitting with her on the green of a park when she had been distracted by the class toughies who had come over and performed handstands and bent-over crab walks. These feats were enough for his fledgling love to be attracted away and for him to hear the over-the-shoulder comment of “What are you doing with that drip? Come and have some fun on the swings with us.” Sebastian felt proprietorial as this was their picnic and these two were interlopers. Salt opened the wine and poured three glasses. Sebastian lifted his glass up to catch the sunlight through the white wine; it gave off a yellow glow lighting his face.
“I know it’s early for this, but it’s good to break the rules,” giggled Pepper. Sebastian noticed Ricard and Hugo look at each other and nibble water from their sports bottles.
“Let’s play Donkey with the juggling sticks,” Salt suggested as she deftly drank from one hand and juggled two sticks with the other.
His participation short lived – it lasted exactly six throws – Sebastian retired as the donkey. He felt another déjà vu from his seventh year. The others continued, with laughter and squeals of horror and delight from Salt and Pepper. The sticks being balanced on noses before being propelled to the catcher. Bluff and counter bluff throws from behind their backs to disguise the direction of travel. With each drop of the sticks Salt and Pepper became a “donk” and a “donke”. Ricard and Hugo never got close to being a beast of burden. A long arching throw from Ricard sent one of the red and white sticks into the sky. It fell like a stuka bomb, flipping over and over with such speed that it became a pink blur as it fell downward. Salt, glass still in hand, shuffled like a drunk on the spot positioning herself for the catch. Catching it with her free hand and using the downward momentum she whisked it through her lifted knee back towards a laughing Ricard.
Sebastian sulkily looked around him. The children now tired by the heat played quietly on the rugs. The girls playing tea parties with their dolls and the boys pushing tractors and cars through imagined traffic jams to a slow narration.
It must have been about 12.00 as Sebastian noticed a few early lunchers. Men with their tie off, jacket over their shoulder held by one finger, the other hand holding sandwiches and a drink. A couple walking arm in arm, her eyes closed and face upward to catch the sun, him guiding her to some shade nearby. The pace slow and soporific, the conversation gentle and quiet as if to speak too loud would frighten the sun back into the clouds.
“You two go on, let’s see who the donkey is!” Salt laughed as she collapsed to her knees in excited exhaustion. As he reached for the bottle she kissed him on the cheek. “I love the summer so much, warm and sunny and everyone so happy.”
As Sebastian raised the glass his eyes looked over the lip to take in the happiness of summer. From the perimeter cycle route he noticed two men walking quickly towards them. Unusually for the heat of the day both wore black leather jackets. They weaved between the cyclists with deft determined footwork avoiding any collisions – skilful, quick and determined.
The single girl on the bench was looking agitated as she spoke frantically into her mobile, her hands running through her blond hair.
“Run, Irena, run!” A voice pierced the slumbered torpor of late morning. He looked around him to find the source of the voice.
The children, as if injected with sugared energy, responded to the word run as if it had been the crack of a starting gun to a new game. The tea party ended and the traffic jams were left to self-correct as they ran off like escapees from a prison camp.
“Run, let’s run,” the children shouted in unison pushing each other aside, yelling with delight at the new game. Their legs pumping and arms wind milling as they formed groups to then splinter like shrapnel from a grenade, reforming and splintering again. The mothers indulgently played the game chasing the children with arms wide open, making monster noises, threatening to eat them if caught.
“Donk,” cried Pepper as Hugo dropped the throw from Ricard. “You’re a donk! Donk!” she chanted.
The blonde on the bench stood up quickly with her mobile held limply in her hand. She looked at her white plastic high-heeled shoes as if seeking advice. Her head moved to trace the source of the voice advising her to run. Her eyes wide and fearful, frantic.
The two leather jackets quickened their pace through the melee of children.
“Irena, run, please. Run. Christ’s sake, run.” The voice was hoarse, exhausted and pleading reflecting no hope of response.
Sebastian still couldn’t find the source of the voice through the darting of children and the game of Donkey. He was now caught up in the unravelling separate and seemingly unnoticed event between the blonde woman called Irena, the disembodied pleading voice and the leather jackets.
As the two jackets reached Irena they grabbed her arms. The taller of the two had a scalpel-cut mouth sneering at her. The squatter one, the muscle, arced his hand through the air and struck her on the cheek with the back of his hand. Her head snapped back and the mobile phone dropped from her hand. She didn’t lift her hand to wipe the blood from the corner of her mouth. She didn’t even try to run, she stood quivering. Another slap to her face ensured complete subjugated compliance. The two men grabbed both her arms and lifted her off her feet. Irena struggled and raised her freed arm, reaching out towards the direction of the warning voice, her arm straight with hand outstretched as if the last act of a drowning woman and in her armpit Sebastian saw a tattoo of a winged horse’s head. He knew he recognised her.
“Sacha!” Irena pleaded like a child separated from her mother watching hopelessly as she disappeared in the crowd. “Sacha!”
Sebastian stood up and shouted.
“Hey, you bastards, leave her alone.” He echoed the voice, “Run, Irena.”
As he started to run towards Irena he felt his legs collapse under him and his body pinned to the ground. The weight immovable as he struggled.
“Don’t do it, Sebastian, just don’t get involved,” the voice of Ricard, even and controlled.
Sebastian struggled under the weight of Ricard and was within inches of freedom when he felt the knees of Hugo press on his shoulders pushing his face into the dry hot earth. With his chin on the ground propping up his face he looked towards Irena. He could just see her through the wall of two leather jackets. Just before they disappeared behind the hedge the scalpel-scarred man turned around, raised a corner of his mouth in a half-smile of victory and with his closed hand to his mouth flicked his thumbnail off his front teeth as if sending a morsel of food towards Sebastian.
Writhing to remove the weight from his back he felt powerless and hoarsely pleaded for release, his mouth full of dust. The weight remained, keeping him pinned to the ground. It had happened so quickly with such precision and minimal resistance that the children were oblivious to what had happened and were still running from their motherly monster captors.
“If we let you go you stay on the ground until we say so, OK?”
“Fuck you, Hugo.” Sebastian spat out the dust from his mouth.
“Do it, Sebastian, just do it,” pleaded Salt. “Do as they say.”
He sat up looking towards the hedge. Hugo and Ricard had retreated beyond striking distance. Salt and Pepper’s eyes told of their sympathy but also that what had happened to him was for the best. His eyes scanned the park for any sign of Irena; there was none. He looked towards the path that had been the source of the voice advising her to run. Slumped against a tree, her head bowed, legs buckled underneath her like the victim of a motorbike accident, one arm holding her phone to her ear.
“Irena, Irena,” Sacha gasped between sobs.
He recognised her; Sacha was the Mediterranean prostitute that Dasha visited daily. The young woman outside the police statio
n. Irena was another prostitute that worked in the same row of cells as Sacha.
Sebastian ran towards the bench where Irena had been sitting in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. She and the muscled leather jackets had gone. He lent down and picked up Irena’s discarded phone. Put it to his ear and listened.
“Irena…” The voice was weak with exhaustion. He looked toward the collapsed Sacha muttering into the mouthpiece, her mouth pathetically mumbling, “Irena…Irena…’. She was being pulled roughly by a man in black jeans and a T-shirt.
Sebastian still held the phone to his ear and heard an East European voice snarl in the background.
“Get in the car Sacha.” He thought he recognised the voice. “You stupid bitch.” The phone went silent. The voice was Dasha’s.
He started to move toward them. Too late, she had been bundled into a car; the rear door slammed and the car screeched away from the park.
He slipped the phone into his pocket and walked back through the children. The same little girl who retrieved the ball grabbed him by the trouser leg saying something in Dutch.