Postcards From No Man's Land (38 page)

After a while Ton said, ‘Let’s remember. Here. How it looks tonight. And come and see it again next time … Begin from where we left off …’ He let go of Jacob’s arm and turned to face him. ‘Yes?’

‘Yes,’ Jacob said with difficulty. He wasn’t so sure now that it was the smell of oil that was making his nose run. ‘But … There’s … just so much. I’m not sure I’m—I dunno—strong enough. Brave enough. Not like you and Daan.’

Ton gave a little huffing laugh. ‘Bravery, it isn’t! It’s just how we believe life should be. Not for everyone. But for us. And people who think like us. We’re learning how to live it while we live it. What else is worth doing?’

‘After the last few days, I feel I’ve just been blindly following my nose till now.’

‘Well, it’s a nose worth following,’ Ton said. Then added, serious again, ‘One of the reasons I love Daan so much is that we think things together we never would have thought by ourselves. Or with anyone else. And for us, the sex is part of how it happens.’

‘I know,’ Jacob said. ‘About the thinking, I mean. It was like that for me when he took me to the Rijksmuseum the other day.’

‘He’s obsessed with Rembrandt. I think he’d like to be the world expert.’

‘What about Simone? What does she do?’

‘An art student. She’s obsessed too.’

‘What with?’

‘Her art. And with Daan. She has a project going. She’s drawing and photographing him in every pose you can think of. All nudes. She plans to do one thousand and eighty pictures.’

‘Why that number?’

‘A full circle is three hundred and sixty degrees?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that’s for a flat surface. One dimension. Simone says she wants to do Daan in three dimensions, and from every degree. So that makes three hundred and sixty times three, which is one thousand and eighty drawings. And the same number of photos.’

Jacob laughed. ‘What an idea! Has anyone ever done such a thing before?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘It’ll take years.’

‘Two, she says. She’s into the second year. When they’re
finished, she’s going to exhibit them, and then she’s going to start on twenty-six oil paintings based on the drawings she likes the best.’

‘Twenty-six?’

‘Because that will be Daan’s age by then.’

‘That’s complete attention, for sure.’

‘Geertrui’s real love?’

Jacob nodded.

He stood up.

‘D’you mind if we go. I’m getting cold.’

Ton took Jacob’s hand to keep him steady while he got up. But did not release it when he was on his feet.

‘I want us to say goodbye here. Looking at the night-time river. Remembering it and us together.’

‘Won’t I see you tomorrow?’

‘My mother’s monthly visit. I must be with her.’

‘I see. Okay. Well …’

Ton reached up, put his hand round Jacob’s head, and kissed him once, lingering, on the lips.

‘Goodbye, Jacques. Till here next time.’

Jacob put a hand on Ton’s head, just as Ton’s held his, and returned the kiss.

‘Goodbye, Ton. Till next time.’

Ton hugged him close for a moment before they set off along the catwalk and across the wilderness back to the road.

POSTCARD

One does not always sing

out of happiness.

Pierre Bonnard

NOISE FROM DOWNSTAIRS
woke him. Eight thirty, a grey and cloudy Wednesday.

He got up to go to the bathroom and found Daan ready to leave.

‘Was going to write a note to you,’ Daan said. ‘Must be with Geertrui most of today. And Tessel. Business to settle. A lawyer. And doctors. I’ll be back this evening. About seven. Will you be okay?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘I’m sorry but—’

‘I understand. Don’t worry. And look, about last night.’

‘No need.’

‘Wasn’t thinking. Too much wine. Anyway, whatever, didn’t mean, well, you know—to make things worse. I’m sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about.’

‘There’s something I want to say.’

‘Quick. I’ve only a few minutes before my train.’

‘Only, well, I know it’s hard for you just now. And I know you’ve put yourself out to look after me, and all that. And well, I just want to thank you and tell you that these last few days, you and Geertrui and Ton—’

‘We’ll talk later. Okay?’

‘Sure. Right.’

They surveyed each other. Jacob in a white T-shirt and
blue boxer shorts, feeling crumpled and musty from his night’s sleep. Daan crisp and clean in fresh black jeans and a blue denim jacket over a white buttoned-up shirt. But his eyes were blood-shot and weary.

‘Got to go,’ he said and taking Jacob by the shoulders, delivered a three-barrelled kiss, the last on the lips. The rough male kiss of blankets. ‘You know where everything is. Help yourself. Your last day. Have a good time.’

Jacob thought to say as Daan went out, ‘Tell Geertrui I’m really grateful for her gift, will you? I mean, that’s putting it mildly.’

Daan’s feet tattooed down the stairs.

‘I’ll tell her.’

He was finishing breakfast when Tessel arrived. She had come to find something Geertrui needed, she said, and went upstairs to a closed room at the back in to which Jacob hadn’t been but which he presumed must be Geertrui’s bedroom. She was there only a short time, returning with a small leather bag to the kitchen, where Jacob was washing up the remains of last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast.

‘Would you mind,’ Tessel said, ‘if I had coffee with you? But I mustn’t stay long.’

‘I’d like that,’ Jacob said. ‘But you’d better make it. Mine’s pretty unreliable.’

While Tessel was preparing the coffee she said, a nervous note in her voice, ‘I hope Geertrui’s memoir hasn’t upset you. Made you unhappy.’

Is this really why she has come? Jacob wondered. ‘Not unhappy, no. Not sure what I feel yet. But not that anyway.’

‘Daan told you I did not want Geertrui to tell you what happened between her and your grandfather?’

Jacob nodded, not wanting to give Daan away but not able to lie either.

‘It’s true, I didn’t,’ Tessel said, pouring hot water on to the coffee. ‘Not because I didn’t want you to know, but because it seemed to me, after all this time—. What good does it do, knowing such a thing?’

‘Don’t know if it does any good or not. But I do like knowing Daan is my cousin and you’re my aunt.’

Tessel turned and looked squarely at him for the first time since she arrived.

‘Yes?’ she said. ‘I’m happy about that.’ She smiled. ‘And I have to admit I’m happy to be your aunt.’ She turned away and added, while pouring coffee in to cups for them, ‘There has not been much happiness in my family these last months.’

She carried their coffee to the front of the room, put the cups on to the table, and sat in the chair facing the window. Jacob followed her, and sat on the sofa. He could not help thinking that in doing so he had taken Daan’s place.

‘Your last day with us,’ Tessel said.

He took a drink of coffee, then said, ‘I know it must sound odd when you think what’s happened, but I’ve really enjoyed being here and meeting you and, well—’

‘We haven’t looked after you as we should.’

‘Honestly, it doesn’t seem like that to me.’

Tessel looked at him. ‘Really it wasn’t only you who I was thinking that Geertrui might upset.’

‘Sarah?’

Tessel nodded. He thought how much older she appeared today than on Sunday. Her face was drawn and tired. She sipped her coffee and put the cup down again before saying, ‘You’ll give her the memoir to read?’

‘You think I shouldn’t?’

‘It’s yours. You’ll do as you wish with it.’

‘Daan thinks I shouldn’t as well.’

‘But you’ll find it difficult not to.’

‘It isn’t just that. I want to do what’s right.’

Tessel sniffed. ‘Ah yes!’ She took another sip. ‘It isn’t
always so easy to know what’s right.’

‘Not always so easy to do what’s right either.’

He meant it only as an observation, but it came out sounding like a criticism.

Tessel gave him a sharp look. ‘You think I’m evading it. Or saying you shouldn’t do what’s right.’

A little flustered, Jacob said, ‘No no. Didn’t mean that. Only, I’m not looking forward to telling Sarah, and I’m worried how she’ll take it.’

‘So not telling her would be a kind of cowardice.’

‘Is it?’

‘And not to be a coward you’ll tell her.’

‘Hadn’t thought of it like that. Is that what I’ll do?’

‘Or is it a greater cowardice to tell her?’

‘How?’

‘Then you have got rid of the burden.’

‘What burden?’

‘The responsibility.’

‘What responsibility?’

‘Of knowing something that might hurt someone very much. Someone you love and who has given you a great deal of love and care, a great deal of her life, in fact. The responsibility of knowing and of not telling her, to save her from a deep hurt.’

‘You mean, it’s harder not to tell than to tell, and might be more good—sorry!—better not to?’

‘More good is right. A greater good not to tell than to tell. This is how I think, I must admit.’

Jacob kept quiet for a while, trying to settle the question for himself, but could think of nothing but the awkwardness of the situation. Tessel was making little picking movements with her hands, teasing at the arm of the chair, smoothing her skirt, touching her face, lifting her coffee cup and setting it down without drinking.

At last he said, ‘I don’t know. I’m still a bit surprised, I suppose. Need to read her memoir again. Hasn’t properly
sunk in yet. And I’m always a bit slow, to be honest, thinking out how I feel, what things mean to me.’

Tessel took a deep breath. ‘That isn’t a fault in my eyes. Act in haste, repent at leisure. Isn’t that one of your sayings?’

Jacob gave her a smile and a grateful nod. ‘Something like that, yes.’

Tessel finished her coffee, and sitting on the edge of her chair, said, looking at her hands overlapped on her knees, ‘I really came to say goodbye. Tomorrow, I won’t be able to take you to the airport. Daan says you’re quite capable of getting there on you own but—’

‘I can. It’s no problem. In fact, I’d prefer it.’

‘But I still feel one of us should be with you.’

‘There is no need. Honestly.’

‘Also, I want to say how much I would like you to come and visit us again. When … after—’

‘I will. I’d like to. Very much.’

‘Daan would like it too.’

‘Promise. As soon as I can.’

She tried a light-hearted smile. ‘After all, we’re your Dutch family. You’re one of us. You belong to us.’

He laughed with genuine pleasure.

‘You should come for a long stay. And learn to speak Dutch.’

‘That’s what Daan says. He already calls me little brother, which I hate as much as any little brother would.’

Tessel stood.

‘I must go.’

She collected her coat and bags. Then stood by the door facing Jacob.

‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Don’t let an anxious aunt confuse you. When the time comes, you’ll know what is the right thing to do. Do it, whatever anyone says. Now, may your Dutch aunt kiss you as a Dutch aunt should?’

She leaned to him and touched his cheeks with a
three-times kiss he only just felt.

‘Give my greetings to Sarah. Please let me know what you do. If you tell her, I should like to write to her about it. Will you do that?’

‘Sure.’

‘Thank you. Goodbye again. Next time I’ll be a proper aunt. We shall have some fun together. There are places in the country, on the polder, I know you’ll like to see. The real Holland. Not like Amsterdam.’

‘I like Amsterdam a lot. More every day.’

‘You do, you young ones.’

He watched Tessel make her way carefully down the stairs, and was glad she had come. There was something in her he recognised in himself. A kind of reserve. An anxiousness about the other person. And an impulse for what Sarah called good manners. Their Jacob-genes or accident, coincidence or inheritance? Did it matter? It was just how they were and he was glad.

Tessel’s visit left him restless. He could settle to nothing. Couldn’t read. Music irritated him, writing was impossible, might even, he felt, make him spew. Even though he wanted to write to Geertrui, felt he ought to, and say whatever he could while there was still time, now that he knew. But say what? There was too much to say. And too little of it that he could say. What did you say to a woman, to anyone, who was to die by her own decision in five days’ time?

In the end, to escape his fidgetiness, he went out. At first he thought of going back to Stonehead, to see what it was like in daylight and because it was out of the way of people. But by the time he had walked to the station he’d thought again and didn’t feel like sitting alone on a narrow wall in the middle of a river.

He watched the buskers for a while on the station forecourt. The band of Peruvians or whatever they were. A couple juggling bottles. Every so often he heard above the
noise a tram tringaling its bell before setting off on another round of its route. He liked the look of the Amsterdam trams, pencil bodies with bullnose ends, and liked their noises, their bells, hiss of pneumatic doors and brakes, whine and whirr of their engines, metallic grind of their wheels on the rails. They were old-fashioned and sturdy in appearance, yet modern and cheeky in feeling. Like the city they travelled. Why not, he thought, take a ride on one all the way to the end of its route and back again? A tram’s-eye-view of a thread of the city.

He wandered over to a display board that showed a map of the city, the tram routes marked in red. He decided on the 25. It ended at a place with names he could say, Martin Luther King Park and President Kennedylaan, on a sharp bend of the river Amstel. Bound to be a café there where you could sit and watch what was happening on the river before coming back.

Off they went, tringaling, out of the station plein, tringaling, across the water, tringaling, on to Damrak lined with its tatty tourist-trap shops and bars—Sex Museum, Torture Museum—past the Beurs van Berlage, which used to be the stock exchange and was now an exhibition and lecture centre, down to de Bijenkorf, the posh department store facing in to Dam square and the royal palace with its grim grey heavy stone walls looking more like a prison than a palace (why didn’t they clean it and brighten it up?), people everywhere, tringaling, Madame Tussaud’s with a queue, tringaling, on to Rokin, smarter shops on one side—antiques, clothes, restaurants, an optician’s where Daan bought his reading specs and said was a beautiful old shop inside run by the same family for generations—on the other side a canal with waiting tourist boats, and at the end of the street, tringaling, round a busy bend in to Vijzelstraat.