The Streetbird (10 page)

"Into the ditch with a broken neck
..."

"And I'll get your bicycle before someone lifts it."

"Then the birds will come and eat your wreck."

De Gier shook his head. "Aren't you a trifle morbid today?" He tiptoed out of the room. "Back to the living," the sergeant said when the front door closed behind him.

He returned twenty minutes later and rang the bell. A young black woman opened the door.

"Mr. Jacobs' bicycle," de Gier said. "Can I put it in the corridor?"

The woman stepped back so that he could maneuver more easily. "And where is Mr. Jacobs?"

"In bed. Didn't you hear him sing?"

"I only came home just now." The woman smiled. "Has it happened again?"

"Drunk," de Gier said. "Very. He does get drunk often, does he?"

"Not too often. He's always very nice when he's indulging. Such a lovable man, and he believes, too. That helps."

"I didn't know."

"That Mr. Jacobs believes?" the woman asked.

"No, ma'am. That believing helps."

"It does help me," the woman said. "I'm a believer myself. I believe in everything, but Mr. Jacobs limits himself.... Come with me." The woman guided him back into the street. "Turn around. What does this say?"

De Gier read the little plastic sign screwed into the doorpost: ELIAZAR JACOBS. He also read the text, clumsily lettered on a wooden strip, dangling from a single nail:
"He who believes in the Good."

"You see?"

"I see," de Gier said.

\\\\ 11 ////

"You will be joining me?" the commissaris asked.

Uncle Wisi lifted a piece of cloth and took two glass egg holders from a weathered board. "Most certainly. You won't be poisoned here, opo. Grain is health-giving but it's a sin to limit its use to the manufacture of sandwiches." The jar gurgled. "Here you are. Your most excellent health!"

The genever burned through the commissaris' chest while he tried to adjust to Uncle Wisi's surroundings. He was in the low living room of an antique artisan's dwelling, both long and narrow, under a plastered ceiling supported by sagging pine beams. The old colors—the yellowish white of the thick plaster and the crumbly dark red of the aged wood—framed a tropical exuberance. Bright-colored textiles had been pinned to posts and shelves, and collections of pots and jars filled all available space, between plants that bloomed and crept and hung everywhere, some reaching for the light, others content in dark corners. His host was talking, but what Uncle Wisi said hardly penetrated to the commissaris' brain. When he did listen in the end, he noticed the medicine man's perfect Dutch. This strange man, the commissaris thought, did manage to adjust well—or is it the other way around perhaps? Could it be that the ancient reliability of the house is serving a foreign influence? He got up and looked out of the window.

Uncle Wisi stood next to him. The commissaris raised his eyebrows at the obvious vigor of the exotic vegetation outside. "My private plantation," Uncle Wisi said. "Given to me, since it grew from seeds that I was allowed to gather in your botanical garden. Everything is always available, a noteworthy fact, and how easy it is to find, once you know what you're looking for. The world holds nothing back, all one needs is a correct formulation of any particular desire. I always thought that the idea that gods only live in the home country bears witness of stunted growth."

The commissaris searched his memory, until he saw an elementary schoolteacher whose thin cane glided over a linen map covering the blackboard. Its tip touched a red spot, Paramaribo, capital of Surinam. The droning voice stated that only the coastal region had been developed and that the hills and jungles of the far-away country were wild. Descendants of runaway slaves roamed the wilderness, far from foreign interference, obeying only their own chiefs. The Dutch, through necessity, acknowledged the chiefs' power and sent gifts once a year: silver medals for the captains and discarded officer uniforms to confirm their authority. In the old days the captains had to promise to surrender escaped slaves, but they didn't. They weren't idiots; even the schoolteacher thought so.

"Massa Gran-Gado has been always everywhere," Uncle Wisi said, "but even so, we can't reach him because he's good enough to elude our efforts. Only his
winds
live inside us, from the very first day, on the African coast, in South America, and in our present location. Another nip, opo?"

"No, thank you." The commissaris hid his egg holder under a convenient leaf. The mood invoked by Uncle Wisi's emanations reminded him of his early youth and he saw the child that he had once been hiding under a glass cupola, in an herbarium. He had fled the crowd milling about in the city's zoo, amusing itself by watching diseased animals: a thin lion with a festering skin, a camel burping bad-temperedly, squinting at his tormentors from infected eyes. The screaming toddlers chasing each other around a cage full of screeching parrots had become too much for him and he had ducked out of the throttling grip of educating parents. The herbarium was quiet, as quiet as Uncle Wisi's room, even when the old man held forth, for his voice was no more than the whispering of large leaves moved by a cool breeze.

Uncle Wisi corked the jar. He hid his hands in the sleeves of his gown and shuffled toward the commissaris. "I'll sit down next to you for a moment, opo, because I need to touch you. Liquor improves togetherness, but we might not need alcohol to open toward each other. Wait, I will return Bacchus to his shelf." The bottle disappeared behind the rag. "He's called differently by us. I had trouble, when I arrived, to learn the new names. New names for old helpers, differently arranged too. It takes time to find the simplicity again that is hidden in chaos, and if you lose your way in the many, you miss the one. Only the one matters, for it gave birth to all the others." He sat down next to the commissaris. "You ever lose the way, opo?"

"Often," the commissaris said. "The other evening again. My wife took me to her sister's birthday party. I talked too much and bored myself."

"One has to make a choice, every day again, many times a day even." Uncle Wisi made the legs of his stool whine as he jerked his seat closer. "With the risk that we choose unwisely. I've done it many times too, sometimes out of foolishness and ignorance, but also on purpose, to see how far I could go down." He pointed at the rag hiding the genever jar. "The whole-bodied grain
winti
has shown me much, in a bar opposite my houseboat when I still lived on the Prince's Canal. Every morning I guzzled, and slowly the colors would glow again and my thoughts would boil so that I could hear my own wisdom, I could do even without the moon then, the collective eye of all the
gados.
The gods came straight down to me, and instead of listening to the palm trees, I heard water swish against my boat."

The commissaris made a desperate effort to push Uncle Wisi's whispering away. He tried to remember why he had come. The strange words danced around within his skull.
Wisi
would mean "magic," and not the most preferable type, because his host entertained connections with the criminal element of the quarter, or had he misunderstood Nellie's information? The red-light quarter had been smudged by the dark tints of pimps and muggers, and the dealers of the bad drugs, but its crime wasn't black by skin. Was he now attacked by a necromancer, a servant of imported evil gods? Were the
gados
bad? He himself, an incognito chief detective, had been recognized as
opo. Opo
would have to be the exact opposite of
wisi.
I must not allow the sharp sword of logic to be knocked out of my hands, the commissaris thought. All I'm doing here is gaining knowledge to aid my fight. The knowledge presents itself in the way it wants to, but the interpretation is mine. He glanced to the side and saw the old man's beaded cap move forward and backward and Uncle Wisi's sensitive hands caressing the room's warm air, afloat on the fluid breath of outlandish herbs.

But the environment is mine, the commissaris thought. This is Amsterdam, my own city, and the Dutch gods support me. They can't be hidden behind colorful rags, and Wisi's magical plants don't harm them. Even that cat, staring at me with its wicked yellow eyes, was born in a local alley.

"You hurt," Uncle Wisi said, "and wish to be rid of your pain. I think you've come to the right place."

The commissaris wanted to lean back, but his stool offered no support and he almost fell off it. He tried again to collect his thoughts. Am I in pain? But I'm not. The room's temperature is too high. I only hurt when I'm cold or tired. Or afraid, he admitted, but fear hadn't bothered him in a long while.

A ticking became audible. Opete's sharp beak touched the glass of the door leading to the garden, the vulture's bald head silhouetted against the garden's moist greens. True, the commissaris thought, the bird is foreign, ready to wreak havoc in our placid souls. But then, he thought again, even Opete can be friendly if politely approached.

Uncle Wisi let the vulture in and rested his hand on the bird's head. Opete's eyelids sagged as he rubbed his beak against his owner's fingers. "There's a good Opete," Uncle Wisi said. "Isn't he good?" The bird flapped a wing. "Does he need more love? Or are the lice at him again? Need scratching, do you? All right, all right, hop along, now." He pushed the vulture out. "You see, opo? Even the demon of death needs to be reassured at times, even the
sukujan,
the stinkbird."

"I thought you called him streetbird?"

"The demon has many names." Uncle Wisi felt behind another rag, crudely painted with a human skull, a rose stuck in its grinning mouth. He extracted a small drum made out of baked clay tightly covered with skin. "I'll sing to you for a bit, to start the treatment."

Uncle Wisi's song filled the room. The drum throbbed. Perhaps I should surrender, the commissaris thought. If he really wants to cure me, I should give in. By resisting, I won't get anywhere, and even the wrong place should divulge interesting facts. He and I can't exchange much unless we find a common level where we're both at home. The enemy opens himself when he attacks. Let's see where he hides his weakness. But is he really hostile? Isn't he rather tricking me to fall into my own depth, where the true reasons are hidden?

Uncle Wisi no longer used words. His humming gave way to nasal clanging sounds, as if he were plonking the tight strings of a guitar. There were other, much deeper sounds too, originating in his throat and fiercely pushed out of flaring nostrils. The drumming had become louder and higher.

He's tearing the soul out of my body, the commissaris thought, and by my own consent. Hopefully, anyway; it won't do to calmly sit here being bewitched.

Uncle Wisi became busier. He stood between the commissaris and a cupboard containing hundreds of bottles, jumping on the shelves due to the vibrations caused by his stamping feet. The bottles held colorful beans and crushed leaves, in subtle shades of green. The music seemed to make them gleam. The commissaris began to shiver. He pushed the fear out. All nonsense, he thought. I'm done with that, and with sense too. There never was a sense, I knew that when I was small and forgot when I grew up, but lately I've gone back to the old truth. What can this man do to me, except play games? It's all a game, even if we fire a machine gun out of a burnedout sex shop, in an alley bathed in the cool light of early morning while a thrush chants. Nothing mattered then; it doesn't matter now either.

The chant broke off. "Yes?" Uncle Wisi asked.

"Yes," the commissaris said. "Go right ahead."

Uncle Wisi put the drum away and pulled his stool toward him with his foot. He adjusted his robe as he sat down. "Would you mind standing up, opo?"

The commissaris felt the dry hands touch his hips and thighs. Uncle Wisi mumbled. The charged atmosphere of the room, instigated by his recent goings-on, became even more noticeable.

The commissaris smiled. "Well? Doctor?"

"A soothing ointment," Uncle Wisi said. "It will help, but your pain is hard to reach. I'll try something more potent. Weereeweeree with salt extracts, and a bit of this and that. Say, now, does the sun get into your bathroom?"

The commissaris was amused by Uncle Wisi's familiar tone of voice, unexpected after the solemn introduction. "It does in the morning."

"Good, maybe you should bathe early. Let the sun shine on you first. It doesn't matter if it is tucked behind clouds, the light still penetrates. After that, you sprinkle the obeah in the tub, not too much, just so that the water gets a bit of color. Rub some into the sore spots too. Then soak away."

"Certainly, doctor."

"You've got a wife," Uncle Wisi said. "I could feel her presence. She'll have to be part of the cure."

"My tub isn't quite that large."

"She doesn't have to get into the water. Ask her to sit with you. She can talk if she likes. Maybe she wants to sprinkle you, a few drops on the sore spots."

"Very well," the commissaris said.

"I'll make up a good batch so that you don't have to come back all the time. You're a busy man. When I'm done, I'll give the bottle to.Nellie."

"And the cost?"

Uncle Wisi rubbed his nose. "Pretty pricey, opo. I need three different kinds of weereeweeree; mangzasi, seeseebee, and smeery. My seeseebee is almost gone, but there's a new crop due in the garden."

"How much?"

"Leave the cash with Nellie. It isn't for me. I'll have to pass it on, to make sure that the obeah will work on you."

"How did it go?" Nellie asked when the commissaris walked into her kitchen.

"A most impressive performance," the commissaris said, "but I've forgotten what I went to ask him."

"Creepy, eh? I heard him sing. Did he frighten you?"

"A little," the commissaris said. "But that passed and we had fun afterward."

She stopped scraping carrots. "Fun? When he did it to me, I felt all hollow inside. That's not a fun feeling at all."

The commissaris raised a lid and sniffed. "Hollow is rather a good feeling, I would say. The emptier the better. What's this going to be? Stew?"

"When it's done it'll be ragout. I'm a gourmet cook, I don't make stews. And there'll be berries and cream for desert. Berries from the garden. Do you think you would like that?"

"I would," the commissaris said. "I should work, though. Get outside, snoop about."

Nellie's knife sliced into the carrots again. "That'll be later. The quarter only wakes at midnight, and you have been working, haven't you? I think you should take another nap."