by René Appel
As I was about to get into the elevator, a guy came through the entrance: a man in a blue windbreaker, short gray hair and glasses. It would have looked strange if I had let the elevator door close in his face.
“Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon.”
The man pressed the button for five, I hit ten.
We started up, without another word. But there was no silence. From somewhere underneath my pant leg, at ankle height if you listened carefully, came a clearly audible, rhythmic buzzing. The man looked at me.
“My cell phone,” I said. “I’m not going to answer it now. Have to deliver this package first.”
The man nodded, but kept looking at me. Then I saw it happen in his eyes: he knew me from somewhere, though he didn’t know exactly where.
There had been a documentary about me, and the biography Marc Verhoeven was working on wasn’t the first book; there was already one about my formative years in the neighborhood, out in Watergraafsmeer, a book with way too many photos in it, from back then but also from the present.
“I live downstairs,” I said. “I’ve seen you before.”
The man got out on the fifth floor. Was I imagining it, or did he reach into his pocket as soon as he stepped out of the car? Was he maybe going for his cell phone?
Time was running out. It had been running out from the start, but now it was really running out. When I left the elevator on the tenth floor, I heard it right away, and this time I wasn’t imagining things: a police siren. Close by. At the end of the corridor I was in now, there was a little window. The flashing blue lights could be seen from all the way up here on ten.
* * *
Maybe it was a mistake, shooting myself in the foot like that by going to my ex’s place on the very first day of my leave—the best way you could think of for me to blow my chance of early parole in three years.
But the moment she opened the door—I didn’t even have to hold the package up to the glass peephole so she couldn’t see my face or my eyes, like I’d been planning—I knew it was no mistake.
I could tell from the way she looked at me; it was in her eyes. The same way those eyes had looked at me at that sidewalk café in Corleone in Sicily, where she’d been working as a waitress. That was twenty years ago. I was there on vacation, because of The Godfather. Because I wanted to visit the hometown of the Corleone family, the way someone else might go on a pilgrimage to Rome. She put a bottle of Peroni and a glass down on my table and looked at me. And I looked back.
“Rob,” her lips whispered now.
“Chiara,” I said.
“What’s . . . ?” She pointed down at my shoes, at the buzz of my ankle monitor.
The only sound from the living room at first was that of a TV, but now there was another sound too: a man’s voice.
“Who’s there?” the voice asked, and the next moment the man appeared in the little hallway that connected the living room and the front door.
I had a feeling then that I can only describe in one way. This is it, I thought, this is what I live for. That’s what sets me apart from people like Marc Verhoeven, who will never do anything but watch from the sidelines. Like a soccer coach in the dugout: his best striker scores with an unstoppable bullet to the top corner, and all the coach can do is throw his hands in the air—all he can do is cheer.
Maybe some things had happened between me and Chiara. Technically speaking, maybe she was at that moment my ex-wife.
But I hadn’t given her up, not just like that, that’s not the way I am. Today I had come to take her back.
At what moment had Marc Verhoeven fallen into the moat? The moat that separates the visitors at the zoo from the lion’s habitat? Was it during his very first visit to the maximum-security unit? Or was it later, when he hit on the bad idea of “interviewing” my wife as well?
No, it was probably right now, I thought, as in one swift movement I tore the lid off the mailer and pulled out the brick. The brick that, in a flash of inspiration, I’d taken from the pile at the corner of Archimedesweg and Carolina MacGillavrylaan, where the road workers were putting in a new section of bike path.
This is who I am, I thought when I saw his face, his eyes those of a cow that’s grazing in the middle of the tracks and suddenly realizes there’s an express train hurtling toward it, his hands making a gesture of fending off something. More like a conciliatory gesture, really: Wait a minute, we can discuss this, right?
But lions don’t discuss.
They don’t wear ankle monitors, either.
This was my life, squeezed together tightly in a couple of seconds.
And a couple of seconds was all the time he had left to sniff around in my life.
Thirty seconds, tops—it almost never takes me longer than that.
SALVATION
by Simon de Waal
Red-Light District
Translated by Maria de Bruyn
It’s just after midnight, a warm spring night. Waldemar, a thickset man of fifty-eight, is standing on a bridge in the heart of Amsterdam’s Red-Light District. He’s carelessly stuffed his dark wrinkled shirt into his stained pants after rolling up the shirtsleeves a couple of times. The pants’ legs are too long and the cuffs, which drag across the cobblestones when he walks, are frayed. He leans forward against the handrail of the Bosshardt Bridge, named after the Salvation Army major who, for decades, helped the neighborhood’s weak and damned souls without worrying about their pasts.
Waldemar rocks slowly back and forth, to and fro, mumbling something incomprehensible under his breath. A tourist, Hiroki Ota, wearing a wool cap with flaps that say Amsterdam, stops a few yards away. He’s hiding a small camera in the palm of his hand and waiting for the moment when Waldemar’s worn-down soles lose their grip on the asphalt and the crazy old street person plunges headfirst into the murky water. He wouldn’t be the first simpleton in Amsterdam to suffer that fate and drown, but when the man hasn’t fallen in after rocking perhaps fifteen times, Hiroki gives up and walks on, disappointed. He disappears into the knot of people pushing their way through the busy Molensteeg.
Red lights and garish neon ads are reflected in the canal’s still water. Swans float by, slowly, elegantly, and drift beneath the bridge. They come to a halt in front of the Casa Rosso nightclub, vain and almost haughty as they wait for the bread that is thrown to them every evening. Crowds of tourists take photos of the unexpected and paradoxical scene: stately white lines of impalpable beauty on expansive black water, lit up by the simultaneously alluring yet merciless red neon lights of the prostitutes’ claustrophobic windows.
Waldemar has seen it all a hundred times. Silently he straightens his back and leaves the bridge, his gaze turned deeply inward, his bearing making him unapproachable; he thinks of his daughter, whom he’s missed for so long. He looks up only when he reaches the next corner. Rowdy students, unsuspecting tourists, a boisterous group of young women celebrating a bachelorette party all pass him by. He turns a corner into a passageway that leads to the next canal. No red lights here for a change, but a large, busy snack bar where a drunk boy with close-cropped hair and a dangling lower lip fruitlessly tries to insert a coin into a slot so he can open the vending machine’s window, within which an assortment of typical Dutch treats beckon. Behind the vending machine, a sweaty bearded man appears with a tray of fried snacks; with practiced movements, he quickly fills all the empty windows with freshly prepared food. Bold gulls swoop low through the street, waiting for a moment of relative quiet in the passageway so they can snatch up any fallen morsels. The boy takes a bite of his croquette, which is still too hot. Cursing under his breath, he keels forward, gasping for relief, and the food falls out of his mouth. He staggers on angrily, waving the hot croquette in his unsteady hand.
Emerging from the passageway, Waldemar comes out onto the next canal, the Oudezijds Voorburgwal. This has quite a different, almost peaceful look, dominated by the monumental Old Church, Amsterdam’s oldest building, wh
ich dates back to the year 1280, its tower illuminated in the evenings. A beacon of hope above a square kilometer of misery, which is how the local police have characterized the Red-Light District for years. Waldemar saunters past the church. The dark-skinned prostitutes preside over their domain in the small alleys surrounding the stately building, just like every other group that has its own space in the district: the S&M ladies, the Thai and Filipino transsexuals, the Chinese, the Eastern Europeans. And all of that spiced up by dozens of busy coffee shops, by a café where the Hells Angels meet, by the headquarters of the Salvation Army. Belief and sin go hand in hand here.
Waldemar knows it all. The entrance to the small passageway at the Oudezijds Voorburgwal is dark and oppressive, only illuminated halfway down by the red neon lights over the prostitutes’ doors. Waldemar assumes his usual spot across from the passage, a place where he can look into it without calling attention to himself. The world passes him by; it’s a day just like the hundreds of others he has spent there. And here comes Aaron, a man in his fifties, sporting an extravagant dark-gray beard and a velvet suit that could belong either to an old-time town crier or a member of Rembrandt’s Night Watch. A dashing hat with a long feather rests atop his head. He carries a wooden staff with a pennant, so he can be easily spotted in the busy crowd. This way, the tourists he is guiding can follow him with no trouble. Waldemar steps back a bit to make way for the guide and his entourage.
“We’ll begin here,” announces Aaron in practiced English. “This, esteemed public, is not only the Red-Light District’s narrowest street; it is the narrowest street in all of Amsterdam. Exactly three feet wide! Only three feet! The name is . . . De Trompettersteeg. Yeah, you try to pronounce that.” He falls silent, because he knows that laughter and murmuring will arise as the tourists actually try to say the passageway’s name.
An overly ambitious man with a face ruddy from drink begins to cough as he tries to push the last, so undeniably Dutch, syllable out of his throat.
“That G sound,” Aaron finally continues, as the exuberant group quiets down, “saved lives during the Second World War. The Germans couldn’t pronounce it, so the Resistance forced traitors and infiltrators to say the word Scheveningen, where the Sch sounds just like the G. Those who couldn’t do it properly were Germans and therefore risked losing their lives. So remember the name Scheveningen.”
Waldemar shakes his head benevolently as the flush-faced man is thumped roundly on his back after struggling to say the new word.
“Let’s go on,” instructs Aaron. “After we emerge through the passageway, be careful: the ladies are here to earn money, not to be ogled. And do you remember what I said at the start of the tour?”
The sightseers respond like good children on a school trip: “Don’t take photos!”
Waldemar mumbles the words along with them, checking his watch. He knows that this is the last group that will be led through the district tonight. The neighborhood is growing calmer, more shadowy, the night is asserting itself.
Aaron beckons again, and someone from the herd ventures a hesitant first step into the dark passageway, toward the red-lit and seductive temptations. “I’ll follow behind and continue my narration.”
“It’s like entering the gates of hell, where purgatory awaits you,” says the red-faced man, and his words hurt Waldemar. One by one, the tourists disappear into the passage. Aaron brings up the rear, his feather swaying above their heads, his staff tapping on the cobblestones.
“Why don’t you tell them what happened there!” yells Waldemar, but no one hears him because no sound issues from his mouth.
No fucking photo’s!! is misspelled on the passage’s wall; the big graffitied letters are meant to be artistic, but their message is clear. Of course, Aaron’s herd can’t help themselves. As soon as they reach the windows, they gape at the young women. The red lights hide all their flaws, and their white lingerie, which really doesn’t cover anything, shines brightly. The tourists stare and stare and stare.
“They’re actually quite pretty,” a woman whispers in surprise to her husband as they pass the voluptuous, beckoning bodies. He nods a bit too enthusiastically, to which she responds with a frown.
The red light is out at one of the windows; the paint is peeling, and the window is dirty and covered sloppily with brown packing paper from the inside. Aaron passes it by, as he’s passed it a hundred times before.
Waldemar lingers by the side of the canal for a long time.
Later, as the tourists tumble into their beds, what remains are the drunkards, the bullies, and the pimps, who appear like rats in the night to collect cash from their women.
Waldemar knows them all.
* * *
It’s a few days later, and there he is again. Waldemar saunters through the district at his characteristically placid pace. He wasn’t gone during those intervening days, but nothing noteworthy happened, so they can be safely ignored.
Tonight, at the end of his usual circuit, Waldemar stops at the Trompettersteeg. Quick footsteps can be heard from the direction of No fucking photo’s!!, and Ivan, a plump young man, not yet thirty, with bushy eyebrows and a freshly rolled joint hanging carelessly from his lips, exits the passage. A modish name-brand bag hangs from his shoulder, and he’s carrying a wad of brown packing paper under his arm. Ivan the pimp walks by Waldemar and bumps into his shoulder without looking at him. No apology follows, and the young man carelessly drops his bundle of paper at the side of the canal as he walks away, leaving the penetrating scent of hashish, never really absent for long in the district, hanging around Waldemar’s head.
Soon Waldemar loses sight of the young man, who becomes an unrecognizable silhouette, indistinguishable in the crowds.
Waldemar bends over and picks up the paper. He smoothes it out, then folds it as neatly as possible and puts it under his arm. Slowly, his gaze shifts to the passageway’s entrance, and the voices in his head fade away in an anxious premonition of what’s about to happen.
He strolls into the passageway, up to the window where the packing paper had hung. The red lamp is on again above the door, soft and flickering irregularly. A poor attempt has been made to clean the window, and there she stands. Her eyes are hazy and evasive, her pose inexperienced. Waldemar’s face pales as thoughts and memories and love and hate all fight with one another in his head.
People pass him cautiously; his wide frame is making passage through the narrow alley difficult. Although she looked away from him at first, the girl’s curiosity triumphs. She lifts her head, doesn’t seem unfriendly. Waldemar gestures to the door handle, which she turns from the inside, cracking the door slightly.
“Fifty,” she says hesitantly.
Waldemar says nothing and points inside.
Unpracticed, she makes the international sign for money, rubbing her index finger and thumb together.
Waldemar, who has been standing there with his hands in his pockets and legs spread, shows her his right hand, which holds a bundle of banknotes.
That works. She opens the door wider and lets him in, then pulls the curtains shut.
“What do you want?” A light, unrecognizable accent wafts through her words; it could be foreign but could as easily come from the eastern part of The Netherlands.
Waldemar doesn’t want anything. He looks around the room.
The girl stands expectantly beside the bed and finally lays a questioning hand on his forearm.
“You know what?” says Waldemar.
“What?”
“Let’s just sit down.”
He bends and sweeps his hand over the bed, but remains standing when she doesn’t make a move to sit.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Katja,” she answers uncertainly.
“You chose a good name, Katja. A good working name.”
“It’s my real name.”
“Oh.”
A short silence follows.
“You shouldn’t let just anyone in,” say
s Waldemar.
“Maybe you should go,” she says, suspicion winning out over uncertainty.
Waldemar takes a step forward and grabs her by the arms, just below her shoulders. His dark eyes hold her in a penetrating gaze. “You have to go,” he says, laying the paper—which she hasn’t really paid attention to—on her bed.
This confuses her, and she tries to get loose. “Why should I go?”
Waldemar doesn’t notice the swelling panic in her voice, simply because he hasn’t expected it. “It’s dangerous here,” he responds. “Look, this has to go up on the windows again. No one belongs here anymore.”
Now her shoulders are shaking and he can see fear in her eyes, so Waldemar takes his hands away. “Don’t be afraid, sweetheart. I don’t want to frighten you.”
“But why? Why is it dangerous here?” She looks straight into his eyes for the first time and sees his years of madness. “Why?” she repeats.
Waldemar’s chin trembles and he glances away, because he can’t handle her innocence and fear. He sighs and manages to put into words the thing he has never wanted to say: “A girl was killed in this room. Someone like you. A beautiful, sweet girl. Didn’t they tell you that when they brought you here?”
A shiver goes through her body. “No, he didn’t say anything. Here?”
“Yes, in this room. In that corner. I’m sorry. No one can ever come here again.”
Waldemar wipes the tears from his eyes, shakes his head, and suddenly grabs her by the arm. “You have to leave here. Now.”
He takes her to the door and opens the curtains. A prostitute on the other side of the narrow passage sees Waldemar pull Katja from her room with a crazed expression and drums angrily on her own window.
“You have to leave here. It isn’t safe, it’s not safe here,” he mutters urgently, unaware of the commotion unfolding around him. Aaron, who has just walked into the passageway with a fresh group of tourists, stops, so as not to put his clients at risk. The drumming prostitute pushes an alarm button. Lights flash, and a siren drowns out everything else in the street. People cover their ears, but Waldemar sees, hears, feels nothing. He drags Katja through the passageway, convinced that the devil is at her heels. He pushes people aside; Aaron tumbles against the wall, his hat rolls away, its feather crushed by someone’s shoe.