by Evan Dara
… Trams crash down Rozengracht. Treeleaves curtsy and flipper, go butter-yellow while palming the July North Sea sunbreeze. Scooters buzz through clouds of midges rabbling at canalside. Tides of tourists, fat German, fat American, sandaled Italian, twist creased subsections of maps, spiderwebs in which they’re caught, down to canal-curves, up to facade-splays, seeking orientation. The narrow, brick-herringboned streets, upbuckled by lusty treeroots, sinkholed by time and rainwater. Backpack-size, forever-overflowing trash bins, hip high on twin metal legs. Housestone restored, stucco restored white, stucco rotting smudge to dark. Lincoln sees all these. Lincoln moves on …
… Stone towers and astronomy spires. The Pulitzer Hotel, a sequence of scrubbed canal-houses hallway-linked in back, waiting for water taxis. Lauriersgracht, slender canal where Breitner lived, sun-glistening back towards the ugly carpark and uglier bus station. The dyke bookseller, always friendly. But Lindenman’s. It’s gone. Funky gray old neighborhood supermarket, one-of-an-etc., jumbled, tumbled, sawdust aisles, now replaced by an Albert Heijn, the national chain, always immaculate, organized, efficient. Lincoln knows the new place without going in …
Because that’s what it was. Greatness.
… Standing by the Johnny Jordaan monument, he looks at the Albert Heijn market’s constant human spillage when a spindly little man, with darkplum skin and black curly hair, is beside him in a torn and silted coat. The man asks him if he needs help with anything. Lincoln looks at the man, hobbling and puffing a cig. Not even help with freeing himself from attachment to two Euros? Lincoln half-smiles, turns away. The man walks off, and squats by the entrance to the market, lit cigarette held just inches from his twitchy lips. Lincoln whips around, and stops himself just as he’s facing the slight, olivegreen bridge humping across Prinsengracht. The man had spoken to him in English …
A giant. A natural leader. A
Hey, Mr. Bossman:
Thank you, good sir, for your kind words, and for your kind offer. I’m glad you liked my piece on the Coens, because they were charming, and the film sounds fun, and I think your (our!) readers will welcome this glimpse of one intriguing duo. (Hey: maybe I’ll get my first-ever pull quote!) And I’m also grateful for this new assignment: There should be no problem filing by August 20, and the other terms are just fine. So thank you again. I brushed up against Selwyn a few times, but I can’t say I knew him, so I hope I’ll be able to strike the right balance of insiderness (is that a word? Put that red pencil down!) and objectivity. But hey: that sounds like something for you to judge.
Best,
Tracy Krassner
… The chicken is cold and falls to bits, the rice is warm plaster, the pinda sauce vile, foul sludgewater and sugar. The man rages: Was Bojo always so awful? How could he have let himself come here? Hadn’t he learned anything? Wasn’t that the point of, at least some justification for, stinking shit, how could he, slaughter nostalgia, just slaughter it …
… We see him approach the treed block in Oud Zuid, turn down the quiet lane, walk past brown stone buildings, almost Romanesque in their heaviness and penchant for rounded forms. It’s after 8 PM, and still light. He turns up a walkway, stops within a slight stone portico, built to protect keyseekers from the eternal Amsterdam rain …
… All fine all fine, his father says, having returned to sit by his worktable. The living room is lit by the one lamp hanging over his father’s unfurled drawings. He’s working on torsion points, he’d said, for a footbridge in Arnheim, to be built over undermined land. Otherwise, the room is dark, dusking to shadow …
… Lincoln sees his father’s collection of historic globes, distributed about the room, and over shelves, on spiked stands. His father looks the same, Lincoln thinks. Straw hair slicked to one side, multi-textured nose, braces holding drooping trousers cradling a swoop of gut. And his reedy voice, an alto sax, not tenor. Nice asparagus coming our way this summer, his father says. Still no bifocals, his father says. Keeping busy keeping busy, his father says. Keeping those grades respectable?, his father says …
… He sleeps. He wakes. Lincoln walks to the police station, the main one, just across the canal from the Milky Way. A door opens fwehsh and he enters reception, surprisingly small and yellow, with a map of Amsterdam on one wall and one small curved counter. Cops and plainclothes-people enter from his same entrance door and disappear into a seam, appearing in a wall alongside the counter. All seem clean, scrubbed, and very pleasant, impossible-to-be-cops. Many are women, girls, cops in blue uniforms and blonde ponytails. Buzzings precede all door-openings …
… They are sitting in a side-room, behind another subtle door just off reception. Yeah, it’s like that, says the policeman, from the opposite side of the table. He can’t be more than Lincoln’s age. He has a walkie-talkie affixed to his uniform’s right shoulder. Make nothing, and you’re free. She breaks no laws, and she don’t worry about us. Hold on, the policeman says, jumps up and runs out …
… The policeman returns, carrying an opened can of Coke. Lincoln sits with four fingers atop the table, thumb below. He hears buzzes and door-shuts behind his door. We can keep our eyes out, but we have no reason for holding her, the policeman says. She has no record written, the policeman says. It is not within our right to, the policeman says …
… As he leaves, it is clear. He will have to make the effort himself …
What can I say: a man of integrity. A man of immense inner richness.
—P. Whittinger
Selwyn? A big heart and a huge understanding. He was just a great guy. A great man.
—K. Wellman
He was a wonderful guy, a distinguished guy. All right, then: a great guy.
—D. Volkov
… The building reminds him of social housing. It is ’60s-built, bland, yellowish brick and cheap-steel-edged windows. Like a conquistador he strides in, up two sets of shallow steps and through a heavy door that seems to rearrange universal vacuums when he opens it. He is then in the waiting room. Its large central table is surrounded by metal-limbed chairs, which are in turn surrounded by posters. The posters have chuff-marks, edge-tears and -curls. Yellowish, with blue lettering, they bear bold Dutch words that Lincoln does not understand …
… In an inner office, the young man looks up at a computer monitor, perched half a meter above his desk. He is darkskinned, coffee-dark, with puffy, black, steelwool hair, pulled radically back and gathered into a knob at the base of his skull. He keystrokes quickly, in bursts. Unknown to us. Yes. Unknown …
… Not in our system. Have never seen her. Of course we don’t see everybody. No one have to register. Alcoholics is not a legal crime. We only see those who come. She is unknown to us, the young man says …
… On Kantorstraat there are people milling. None are nicely dressed. Lincoln walks through a small black door behind them and enters a dank warehouse, its one large room lit by earthed windows and bare bulbs, ceiling-hanging by cords. In this place, bitter with cigs, more people are gathered. Most of them sit on the floor, against the walls, forking. In the far corner, three people stand behind card-tables, dip ladles into large aluminum-foil trays, mound up passing plates. In the scant light, moving things glint. Lincoln looks at this. Lincoln walks out …
… We see Lincoln scrumbled above a tiny cup of coffee, standing at the bar in the Nieuwe Lelie, a brown café on a sidestreet near Anne Frank. It’s strong, biting, fundamentally European. There is still afternoon sun …
… Lincoln walks himself to Geldersekade, at the corner of Korte Stormsteeg, in Chinatown. Where men linger …
… Never, says a man in a pea coat, with gruff-nail fingers …
… Do you have a euro for me?, says a man looking left, looking right …
… Dohn know nothin, says a man leaning against a black, nicked building-wall, bopping. What you want? …
… Let me show you something, says a man sitting on a bench, hand lashed to three thick ropes leading to dogs. He reaches into a rucksack, pull
s a photograph. You know who that is?, he says. That look like me? …
Dear M . :
I have been referred to you by { } regarding Lincoln Selwyn, and was wondering if I might take a few minutes of your time to speak about his much-discussed and illustrious stay in Chicago, and any thoughts about his disappearance. I’m currently on assignment from Chicago Magazine, and while there is a deadline it is not pressing. Thank you in advance for considering this request, and I hope that we might::::
Vry trly yrs,
Tracy Me
You felt it immediately. Immediately.
Yes, this was greatness.
… Lincoln takes light eats, reddish goulash and rice, at the Vliegende Schotel, around the corner from his hotel. In its second room, its rear room. This is a quiet no-smoking ambience, a handwritten sign just inside the room advises …
… On his table, a Shark. Black-and-white xeroxed pages, folded vertically and stapled in the seam. The Guide to Underwater Amsterdam, it says. Music listings, film times, events at squats. One record review. He puts it on an adjacent table …
… O no no no, you don’t have to worry, his father says, returning a cloth-dried plate to cupboard. She’s fine, just fine. I happen to think she’s probably in high spirits …
… Always a woman of modest needs, his father says. Don’t you worry, she has everything she wants. I provide for her every month, and generously. She isn’t wanting …
… Now that’s a laugh, his father says, chuckling. Do you really want me to starve her out? Now that’s a good one. Do you really think if the money dries up at ING, she’ll come calling? Just show up one fine day and ask for her dole? Or stay? That’s a laugh …
… It’s the only contact I have with her, son …
… I told you. I told you. You had nothing to do with it. You had to go up to university, and that was it. How long could you wait? Wasn’t a year enough? You have your own life to lead …
… Everything I can. Everything that anyone could do. Never do I miss a month. Never do I skimp. By the 15th of the month she knows it’s there, the whole lot of it. The woman doesn’t have to worry for a thing. Son, she doesn’t want to hear from me, from us. She was always independent. Son, she’s fine. She’s fine. What more do you want me to say? …
… In his pocket, as he walks down the block lined with trees, the sharp plastic stings his fingers, carves sharp stinging lines across his hand’s flesh. The card is a razor, Lincoln thinks. Will it cut him? Will there be blood? Will he seep shining pearls in his black pocket? …
… He sees the withdrawals. Strewn all over the month, the 2nd, the 9th, the 10th, the 14th, small, pathetically small amounts came out. 100 guilders. 150 guilders. 50 euros. 100. From locations all over Amsterdam. Kinkerstraat. Linnaeusstraat. The Ceintuurbaan …
… And like this, similar, for all the months. On every one of the printed, orderly ING statements …
… Also his father’s deposits. 2250 guilders. Then 1250 euros. On the 12th, the 17th, the 12th. The 13th …
… He pores over the statements, three years’ worth, dating from before she left. Like a driven coach, he makes the statements gymnasts as they bend and dart, leap and present. He crushes them in his hand. Smoothes them out. Bangs them down onto the thin-leg desk in his tiny hotel room …
… He goes to The Mad Processor, at number 82 just up the canal from his hotel. Young men sit in headsets at workstations, playing networked video games of escape, pursuit, staccato assault. A front desk offers cigarettes and a cardboard tray of candy bars. Lincoln takes computer ten, specifying internet access. He sits among the torquing male bodies, the low-throat cries, the war sounds …
… Welcome! But before we begin, you’ll have to create a password …
… They are there. Since the last statement, ongoing, until just two days beforehand, withdrawals. 50 euros from ABN on Haarlemmerplein. 60 euros from Fortis on the Singel. 80 from the Postbank. The bank he used …
… She is there. She is …
… But 08/2005. Four years. She will be able to use the card for another four years …
Dear M. :
It’s my understanding that a gentleman by the name of Lincoln Selwyn {worked for you} {was employed in this office} {volunteered his services to your organization} {resided in one of your buildings} {frequented your nightclub} { } some time over the past year, and I was wondering if I might take a few minutes of your time to discuss his {tenure there, role, experiences, influence}. I’m currently on assignment from::::
girlfriends?
UC?
social scene?
press!
Now I’ve got you—
You had thought you were safe. You had thought you could evade detection or capture. But after just one inadvertence on your computer, however Norton-secured, look what happens: you fall into a flurry of cyber-kisses and e-embraces.
Darling, is it possible for me to say I miss you? And if so, would you kindly make me miss you more? So, please: tell me how your forearm lands above your whorl of honey-amber hair when you’re lying in your bed. Tell me if the spearmint shock of morning toothpaste is what ignites your smile, or if, in fact, no amount of snoozing can make that light go out. Put me in touch with your favorite shower-towel, who, I’m sure, I am altogether sure, is dying to tell someone how it feels to pat and coddle the curves across your belly, to tamp the temples that nature made to honor your eyes, to fill the invincible hollow, with its swoop to soft, between your neck and shoulder.
OK? Is that too much to ask?
Trace
… But 2005. Four years. She will be able to use the card for another four years …
… We see him, the next morning, stride into a printshop, then into a Primafoon, the branch on busy Rokin. He purchases a cellphone with a pay-as-you-go plan, along with a 100-euro card. He sets up voice-mail on the spot. He sets the ringer to loud, double chirps, without music …
… He sits with an officer from ING, in a small side room, all of glass, segregated from the large, desked reception area. Could we do that?, the beige-suit officer says. Theoretically, it is possible. The data comes up automatically. We could have someone with the account up on his screen, and call when there’s activity. But this we have not done before. What if he misses, or looks away and confuses? What is our responsibility? What would be our liability? And of course there’s privacy. The account is not in your name. And late. To be sure you’d have to have someone all the night …
… Lincoln offers ING 50 euros per call to him. 100 euros …
… 500 euros …
… Lincoln returns to the printshop, receives the stack of snipes. He quickly asks for the master and a marker, and adds, in large letters, below his mother’s picture, Please Call 06-2538-3248. He returns the master to the printer, asks that 100 more be made. He leaves, sits on a narrow bench in a bus shelter. He will return the marker when he goes back …
… All throughout Amsterdam, there are signs. Lincoln puts them on lampposts, on scaffolds at construction sites, on walls adjacent to ATMs, on Albert Heijn bulletin boards. On tram seats and on trash bins. The nightclerk at the Van Onna puts them under windshield wipers at fifty euro cents per …
… He will make the effort. His effort will be rewarded …
A force of nature.
… Almost immediately, there are calls. All of them asking for meetings. All of them referencing compensation. He meets one man, in thick coat and sandals, in front of Centraal Station. Another, eating a succession of apples, in Flevopark …
… There will be no more meetings. Unless, first, they provide facts, he decides. Unmistakable proofs …
… The police recite a recondite legal provision, a relic from colonial fallback, when they call. The public has the right not to be disturbed, they say. The jurisprudence is clear on this. But he will not be required to take the existing offenses down …
… He calls newspapers, TV stations …
… But who i
s she, one TV newsman asks …
… A phonebook from the front desk, yellow pages. He stops counting. There must be 160 bank-branches in it. Several pages curl back, spasmodically, when he shuts the book, thick as a vaultwall …
… Between all, between everything, he races into The Mad Processor, into other net cafés. To check. To see …
… Most nights, he goes to the Bimhuis, hears discordant music. Jumbled, jilty, up-and-stumble sounds, more erratic than he’d remembered. Sax whizzes playing like emphysematic elephants. Drummers rattling their cages. He milks the last notes from each evening’s dark breast …
… In his hotel room, at the Vliegende Schotel while he eats, Lincoln delves into his mother’s statements, the photocopies he made. The originals rest in his suitcase. Over successive pages, over multi-month fans, he looks for repetitions, consonances, leanings, grids these into a stiffback notebook. Dates-Places. Days-of-the-Week-Places. Amounts- Days-of-the-Month-Places. Time-intervals-Amounts-Days-of-the- …
… One morning, he wakes. An acquaintance at school, his father was at ING …
… Lincoln starts walking from bank to bank, ATM to ATM, mornings, and afternoons, and into nights. He carries a copy of the snipe against his supporting notebook, always visible, not obstreperous. He will bank on the random, the aleatory, the unforeseeable, his footfalls keyboardstrokes from a monkey’s fingertips …