Amsterdam Stories (6 page)

Japi didn't see anything, didn't hear anything. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “What are you doing here, how's it going, what's brought you here?” He stuck out his hand and said nothing, and was not surprised. “Just standing here staring,” he said.

“I can see that,” I said. “Come have a drink?” “Good,” Japi said. The louts who were leaning against the stone wall a ways off, amusing themselves for some time with very loud, ill-mannered commentary, now made very respectful greetings, since I had been throwing around quite a bit of money in Wijk bij Duurstede and had even slapped the notary on the back that very Sunday.

After a glass of jenever, some life came back into Japi. He had been working in Africa, tormented by the heat and the mosquitoes, had come down with a fever—spent more time suffering from fever than working or doing anything else. He'd come back that summer practically skin and bones.

His
française
was living in Paris with a young Dutchman who'd been articled to an office for a monstrously long time. Had another boyfriend too, a colonel. Treated him to dinner in Paris and called him a “good beast” in her broken Dutch and laughed in his face. Fastened her garter belt while he was right there so that he'd seen her bare knee. Then sent him away. He had to laugh. He wasn't in love anymore. She'd had a light blue silk slip on. One time he saw her having a drink with the colonel at an outdoor table. The colonel was acting very smug and looked savage and overbearing. She gave Japi the eye behind the colonel's back. She had lung problems and her months were numbered. Still, lively as ever. But had a hard time walking.

And what were Japi's plans? Still a freeloader? He freeloaded on his office, he said; the last day of every month he went and got his money.

Was he going to turn into such a ferocious worker again?

Oh, no. He had driven himself too hard. He'd aged fifteen years in the last three or four.

Then he lit a fresh cigar, one of mine, an expensive one with a band. I was doing well in those days. He took the band off.

He had toiled away, seen his share of misery. It started in Marchienne-au-Pont and Charleroi. He'd gone there for fun, with Jeanne. After three days she had had enough; he stayed. He showed me a little photograph: a grinning death's-head, the daughter of a worker in a glass factory. Seven children, five dead, and the sixth died while he was boarding there, she was the one in the photo. There he had learned to look, had seen what work really is. He'd always known how to have a damned good time spending money while other people earned it. Now he let it get to him and drove himself hard. Thought about becoming a socialist. He'd worked for his bread, been hounded, hounded and oppressed by people and by necessity, just like everyone else. He'd worked nights; in Amsterdam he came home from the office at one or two in the morning, then sat up, brooded, scribbled, written whole novels and burned them.

What could he do? What did they accomplish with all that? He let it get to him, dreamed up fiery speeches and ferocious articles while he sat in the office and worked on his boss's business, worked hard, everyone was amazed at the quantities of work he could put away. The world was still turning, turning exactly the way it always had, and it would keep on turning without him. He let it get to him. Now he was more sensible. He washed his hands of it. There were enough salesmen and writers and talkers and people who let it get to them—more than enough.

And they were always afraid of something and sad about something. Always scared to be late somewhere or get a scolding from someone, or they couldn't make ends meet, or the toilet was stopped up, or they had an ulcer, or their Sunday suit was starting to wear thin, or the rent was due; they couldn't do this because of that and couldn't possibly do that because of this. When
he
was young he was never that stupid. Smoke a couple cigars, chat a little, look around a bit, enjoy the sunshine when it was there and the rain when it wasn't, and not think about tomorrow, not want to become anybody, not want a thing except a little nice weather now and then.

You can't sustain that. He knew that. It couldn't last, it was impossible, you'd need a mountain of money. And he didn't have one. What his old man might leave him wasn't worth the trouble. And he, Japi, thought that was just fine. Now he spent his time staring. It's not like it's possible to accomplish anything anyway. He still hung around the places he used to like and spent his time staring into rivers. He got through several weeks staring in Dordrecht. In Veere he sat up on the roof of the Hospitaal for days. He'd spent September in Nijmegen.

And then, with a few variations, he repeated his old reverie about the water, how it flowed eternally to the west, out toward the sun every night. In Nijmegen there was a doctor who had taken the same walk at the same time every morning for fifty-three years—over the Valkhof hill and down the north side and up the Waalkade to the railroad bridge. That's more than 19,300 times. And always the water flowed to the west. And it didn't mean a thing. It must have flowed like that for a hundred times fifty-three years. Longer. Now there's a bridge over it. Since just a short time ago, a few years. Which is still a long time. Every year is 365 days; ten years is 3,650 sunrises. Every day is 24 hours, and every hour more goes through the heads of all those constantly worrying people than you could set down in a thousand books. Thousands of worriers who saw that bridge are dead now. And still, it's only been there a short time. The water there has been flowing for much, much longer. And there was a time when the water didn't flow there. That time was even longer, much longer. The worriers have died by the hundreds and hundreds of millions. Who remembers them now? And how many more are going to die after them? They just worry away until God gathers them up. And you'd think God was doing them a favor when he suddenly wiped them away. But God knows better than you or me. All they want to do is fret, and struggle, and keep on struggling. And meanwhile the sun rises, the sun sets, the river there flows to the west and keeps flowing until that too will come to an end.

No, he had no more plans and he wasn't planning to let it get to him anymore either. He would make sure not to do that. He did accept an invitation to dinner that night, and even sang a funny song and gave a crazy speech standing on a chair.

Japi stared for a few months more. He was not in the best of health and the sick benefits from his office had run out. He spent the winter in Amsterdam, where everyone was busy tearing down beautiful houses to replace them with hideous ones, worrying the whole time.

In May he moved to Nijmegen.

He wrote me a postcard from there to say that Jeanne had died of her lung ailment. He had been waiting for that, he wrote.

At half past four one summer morning, during a majestic sunrise, he stepped off the bridge over the Waal. The watchman saw him too late. “Don't worry, old boy,” Japi had said, then he stepped off the bridge, his face to the northeast. You couldn't call it a jump, the watchman said, he stepped off.

They found a walking stick in his room that had belonged to Bavink, and six notes on the wall saying “Dammit” and one with “All right then.”

The river has kept flowing west since then and people have kept on worrying. The sun still rises too, and Japi's parents still get their
Daily News
every evening.

His trip to Friesland remains a mystery to this day.

1909–1910

W
E WERE
kids—but good kids. If I may say so myself. We're much smarter now, so smart it's pathetic. Except for Bavink, who went crazy. Was there anything we didn't want to set to rights? We would show them how it should be. “We”: that meant the five of us. Everyone else was “them,” the ones who didn't see it, didn't get it. “What?” Bavink said. “God? You want to talk about God? Their pot roast is their God.” Other than a few “decent fellows” we despised everyone —and secretly, I still think we were right. But I can't say that out loud to anyone now. I'm not a hero anymore. You never know who you might need later. Hoyer also thinks you shouldn't offend anyone. No one ever sees or hears from Bekker anymore. And Kees Ploeger talks about the good-for-nothings who led him down the wrong path. But back then, in our crazy days, we were God's chosen ones, we were God himself. Now we're sensible, again except for Bavink, and we look at each other and smile and I say to Hoyer, “What did it all get us?” But Hoyer doesn't see it that way, he's a lost cause, he's turning into one of the bigwigs of the Social Democratic Workers' Party and all he does is raise his hands in doubt and shrug.

We were never clear about what we were going to do exactly, but we were going to do
something
. Bekker had some vague idea about blowing up all the offices, Ploeger wanted to make his boss pack his own clocks and then stand there watching him with a cigar in his mouth, cursing at people who can never do anything right. We were
unanimous
that we had to “get out.” Out of what, and how? The truth is we did nothing but talk, smoke, drink, and read books. And Bavink went out with Lien. Looking back, I think we were a magnificent bunch of young men, we deserved a fortune but despised “having lots of money”; Hoyer's the only one who started to think a bit differently about that before long. Bavink didn't understand why some people could ride in carriages whenever they wanted and wear expensive coats and order other people around who weren't any dumber than they were. You didn't see many automobiles yet in those days.

We spent whole summer nights leaning against the fence around Oosterpark and talking and talking. We could have earned enough for a whole living-room set if only we'd kept track of it all. People write so much nowadays.

A lot of the time we were less talkative. We sat on the curb until long past midnight, right on the street, and were melancholy and stared at the bricks and then up from the bricks at the stars. Then Bekker said that actually he felt sorry for his boss, and I tried to write a poem, and Hoyer said he had to stand up because the cold from the blue limestone curb was seeping into him. And when, in that short, balmy night, the darkness turned pale above our heads, Bavink sat with his head in his hands and spoke of the sun, almost sentimentally. And we thought it was a shame to have to go to bed, people should be able to stay up forever. That was one of the things we'd change. Kees was asleep.

And then we were off to the Zuiderzee to watch the sun come up, except for Kees, who went home. Hoyer complained about the cold but Bavink and Bekker didn't notice it at all. They sat on the stones down on the dike with eyes half closed and looked through their eyelashes at the little arrows of dancing gold that the sun made in the water. The sight made Bavink go mad; he wanted to run across the long, long, glittering stripe all the way to the sun. But he stopped at the water's edge after all and stood there. I remember one day when we, Bavink and I, went to the seaside and half the sun lay big and cold and red on the horizon. Bavink hit his forehead with his fist and said, “God, God, I'll never paint that. I'll never be able to paint that.” Now he's in a mental hospital. When we came back from the Zuiderzee we couldn't see anything except yellow spots for a long time and our bosses didn't like these excursions of ours at all. I was half asleep at the office afterwards and Bekker, who could handle it better than I could, sat at his desk daydreaming about the sun all day and looked out at the lit-up treetops on the far side of the garden more than usual and longed for six o'clock more desperately than ever.

We were also big on excursions after work to the ring of dikes around the city. We sat in the grass down on the dike, among the buttercups, and inquisitive cows came up to us with their big eyes and looked at us and we looked at them. And then it was a sure bet that Bavink would start in about Lien. One way or another those cow eyes must have had something to do with it. And then the twilight started to shimmer, the frogs started croaking, one frog made a horrible racket right next to my shoe, my foot was almost in the ditch. You could hear other frogs softly, far, so far away. The cow that in the half dark you could hardly see anymore you could still hear, trimming the grass. One started mooing pitifully in the distance. A horse ran back and forth, you could hear it but not see it. The cow near us snorted and started to get restless. Bekker said: “It's nice here. If only it stayed like this.” Bavink stood up and spread his arms wide and listened, and then sat down again and said that we didn't get it either, and we never would, he himself didn't get it, and really we were not much better than everyone else, and I think he was very nearly right about that.

No, we didn't actually do anything. We did our work at the office, not all that well, for bosses we despised—except Bavink and Hoyer, who had no bosses, and who didn't understand why we went in to see ours every day.

But we were waiting. For what? We never knew. Bekker said: “For the Kingdom of God.” At least that's what he said once, without explaining any further. Bavink always talked about “the end that is also a new beginning.” We knew exactly what he meant and said nothing more about it.

That summer we met almost every night at Kees's attic. Kees had decided he needed a “place” too. His place was the biggest and the easiest for all of us to get to. The neighbors didn't like everybody going up and down the stairs every night. Kees's father didn't see the point of the whole thing. Now Kees's father greets me very politely and calls me “Mister Koekebakker,” because he's seen my name in the
Handelsblad.

Bekker told Kees how he had to decorate it. They bought cheap wallpaper with a little flower pattern for three cents a roll and then glued it to the wall reversed so that the plain green backing faced out. Bekker wrote out a proverb in calligraphy and stuck it to the wall next to the door: “
J'ai attendu le Seigneur avec une grande patience, enfin il s'est abaissé jusqu' à moi.
”
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