Amsterdam 2012 (19 page)

“At least we know what he stands for,” said Alex.
 

My parents looked worriedly at one another, my mother picking at the edge of her pillow.
 
“Mullet doesn’t have a chance, does he, Arthur?”

“He’s going to pull Christian Fundamentalists from the Republican Party,” said my father, “and he’ll have the Independent and Libertarian vote.
 
He might pull away anti-war Democrats.
 
It’s hard to know.
 
I think it matters how much Americans don’t want to go to war.”
    

The next day
Al
Jezeera
broadcasted
Qasim
bin
Laden’s
latest speech.
 
“The United Nations of Islam does not fear the United States.
 
Every day our territory increases, every day thousands join our jihad.
 
Every week a new country joins our Islamic Union.
 
When Allah blesses jihad, as he did twelve centuries ago, there is no stopping Him.
 
If the United States sends troops to the Middle East, the people of America will see their own shores become the battle ground for jihad, their country torn apart as in their great Civil War.”

Oil futures closed at $190 per barrel.

Chapter Eight

One morning I found Mother in the backyard, jumping on the back of a spade, breaking up large clods of freshly turned sod.
 
She was wearing overalls and red rubber boots.

“What happened to the lawn?” I asked.
 

“I figured it was time to start a garden.
 
You kids don’t use the yard anymore.”
 
She ripped open a forty pound bag of soil amendment.
 
“Help me with this, will you, Ann?”
 
I took the other side of the bag, and we dragged it across the dirt, shaking it as we walked until it was empty.

“Why aren’t you at work?” I asked.
 

Mom leaned her head back and rolled it side to side, stretching out the kinks in her neck.
 
“I could use some water.
 
How about you?”
 
She walked to the patio and took a swig from a water bottle on the picnic table.
 
She offered it to me.
 

“Mom!
 
Tell me what’s going on.”

“Don’t get angry, pumpkin.”
 
She took another swig and set the bottle down.
 
“I was laid off.”

“
Laid
off?
 
How come?”

“The agency lost a good chunk of their funding.
 
High gas prices make the cost of running the city higher, and I suppose counseling for troubled teenagers is a low priority when it comes to running buses and trash collection.
 
We’ll be okay.
 
We’ll save on gas, and I’ll have time to do all the chores I used to pay to have done.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“It’s all right.
 
Lots of people are losing their jobs.
 
We’ll be fine.
 
Your dad has his own business.
 
As long as we have a government, people will need accountants.
 
We’ll just tighten our belts a bit.
 
I do have something I need to talk to you about, Ann.”
 
She looked sheepish and apologetic.
 

“Now you’re scaring me.”

She laughed uncomfortably.
 
“I know it’s just before the fall semester, and I’m sorry this is so last minute, but I don’t think we can cover your tuition.
 
If you worked a semester, your dad and I could save a bit.
 
Maybe you could go back in January.
 
Or transfer to a school in state.”

“I’ll lose my scholarship if I don’t go back.”

“I know, honey, but we simply can’t cover the difference.”

“What about Alex?”

“He’s been accepted at Berkeley, a full scholarship for tennis.
 
We’ll cover his living expenses.
 
You’ve had three years of college.
 
He deserves to experience it.
 
I’m sorry, pumpkin.
 
Are you terribly disappointed?”

If anything I felt relieved.
 
I didn’t want to go back to Canterbury without Peter.
 
I didn’t want to have to answer questions.
 
Without him I would feel different from everyone else, like a widow or something.
 
But I had assumed I would go back and finish up what seemed like a dreaded obligation.
 
Without school, what would I do with myself?
 
“People are getting laid off all over the place, Mom.
 
What makes you think I can get a job?”

“You could see if they’d take you back at your old summer job.”

“At St. John’s?”

“They liked you.
 
They offered you a nursing scholarship.”

I had almost laughed when my supervisor made the offer.
 
I had my eye on much grander things—a curator at a museum or maybe a filmmaker.
 
“You want me to become a nurse?
 
With my temper?”

Mom smiled.
 
“Nurses can always get jobs.
 
We’re going to need nurses.”

Her statement, delivered so matter-of-factly, as if she had said we needed milk, surprised me.
 
“You really think we’re going to have a world war?
 
Is that why we have all that water stored in the basement?”
 

She shrugged.
 
“Would you help me rake the dirt smooth?
 
I want to get the vegetables in while it’s still cool.
 
I found these heirloom tomato seeds from a company in Seattle.
 
They’re supposed to bear fruit all winter long.”

Ours wasn’t the first victory garden on the block.
 
One of the first signs things were getting tough was the gardeners stopped coming.
 
One could live without a neat lawn.
 
The price of groceries had gone up, even in California where most of the fruits and vegetables were grown.
 
People began turning under their sod to plant gardens.
 
That saved on gas going to the supermarket as well.
 
And newly unemployed women who had worked all their lives suddenly needed something to do.
 
The gardens gave a rural feeling to Santa Monica.
 
Block after block you could see women dressed in jeans, clogs, and straw hats hoeing dirt and tying up peas and beans.
 
Children sold extra produce from card tables in their driveways on Saturday mornings.
 
As if this was the way it always had been.

Dad hired a plumber to divert our shower and sink water into a cistern to use in the garden.
 
Mother had shelves built in the coolest part of our basement and bought boxes of Ball canning jars.
 
It seemed a little crazy to me, but her mother had lived in London as a teenager during the Blitzkrieg.
 
The new V-2 rockets Hitler launched on Britain late in the war in September 1944 had wiped out Grandmother’s neighborhood and killed her in-laws.
 
My mother had grown up with these tales.
 

Mom wasn’t being paranoid.
 
She felt a reality to the threat of war I couldn’t possibly imagine.

#

I packed my college textbooks in boxes to take to the attic.
 
I wouldn’t
be needing
them for a while.
 
I loved the weight of the books, especially the art history books filled with gorgeous reproductions of Italian Renaissance paintings.
 
As I flipped through books on color theory and aesthetics, striped cover to cover with yellow highlighter, I wondered what had seemed so important.
 
I thought of how Anne Frank treasured her books, how determined she was to continue her education even in hiding, how she and her sister competed for who would read a book first.
 
Books fed her hopes and dreams.
 
I thought of the hours I had spent looking through my
Janson’s
History of Art
, transported by beauty.
 
Now all of that seemed over.

I felt as if I were putting away something precious, something I might never see again, as if I were renouncing the world and entering a cloister.
 
It made me incredibly sad.

Several of Peter’s books were mixed in with mine.
 
Our last year at Canterbury we had practically lived together, so I wasn’t surprised.
 
A piece of paper slipped out from between the pages of his book
The Media of Diaspora
.
 
It was a magazine article from the German magazine
Der
Spiegel
printed from the Internet
.
 
I had taken two years of college German, enough to get the gist of the article.
 
It talked about the illicit sale of Middle Eastern antiquities, objects plundered from the Iraqi museum after the fall of Saddam Hussein, as well as Persian and Egyptian artifacts.
 
Egypt was apparently suing various museums around the world to get its treasures back from the fifty-five pieces stolen from a
Luxor
temple storeroom in 1987.
 
They recovered a statue of
Amenhotep
III from a collector in The Hague.
 
I was wondering why Peter would have been interested in the article, when I noticed the name of the European art dealer named in the suit.
 
It took me a moment to recall Leo
Klausner
, the dealer pointed out by
Marjon
in the art gallery in Amsterdam.
 

So Peter had known who Leo
Klausner
was.
 
Why had he been interested in him?

I went to my computer and looked up Leo
Klausner
on the internet.
 
I found dozens of articles about his involvement in the revitalization of the European art market, particularly of post modern surrealism.
 
I found no other articles linking him to trafficking Middle Eastern antiquities.
 
I was clueless.

Later I called Greg Sewell from a pay phone.
 
“Sure, I know the name,” he said.
 
“Peter was interested in how money flowed to the terrorists—you know, ‘follow the money’—and how African diamonds and stolen antiquities were funding terrorism.
 
Leo
Klausner
was one of those suspected of trafficking in antiquities of dubious provenance and giving the money to various terrorist cells.”

“You’re kidding.
 
How did Peter find that out?”

“The Internet.
 
Maybe from his friends.
 
I don’t know.”

“We saw Leo
Klausner
in Amsterdam.”

“Really?
 
Where?”

“By accident at a gallery opening.
 
Peter was clearly upset about seeing him.”

“He was probably worried about you.
 
If he’d been alone, I bet he would’ve gone up and talked to him.”

“You don’t think he might go back, do you?
 
To find out more?”

“I don’t know.
 
He’d have to get a fake passport.
 
But he already knew how to do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“He looked into it and told me about it.
 
Maybe it was for one of his Muslim friends.”

I was beginning to get a very queer feeling—Peter as Jason Bourne with fake passports stashed in airport lockers around the world.
 
“Thanks, Greg.”

“No problem,” he said.

“Greg?”

“Yeah.”

“You thought Peter was a good guy, didn’t you?
 
I mean, he wouldn’t….”

I could hear Greg breathing, thinking.
 
“Peter was the most decent guy I ever met,” he said.

“Thanks, Greg.”

When I hung up the phone I felt weak and dizzy.
 
Everything I thought I knew about Peter, all my memories, all we shared together seemed—like water—to be draining away between the fingers of my cupped hands.
 

I leaned against the wall of the convenience store beside the pay phone.
 
It smelled of urine.