Amsterdam Stories (3 page)

Then he came up and stood next to you and slyly showed you all the “coppers” in his pocket, and laughed out loud, and said, “Can you believe those suckers?” He never accepted paper money: you can't clink bills in your pocket. He had to have gold and silver, and when it was too much for him to carry he said he'd “come by to get the rest later.”

That was Bavink. Clearly someone in a constant state of overcoming the body would be thoroughly interesting to him. He could learn something from a man like that. Someone who thought it was fine just to let the wind blow through his hair, let the cold, wet wind soak his clothes and his body, who ran his tongue over his lips because the taste of the ocean was so “goddamn delicious,” who sniffed his hands at night to smell the sea. Someone who thought it was enough to be alive and in good health, who went on his joyful way between God's heaven and God's earth and thought it was idiotic that people caused themselves so much trouble, and laughed out loud at them, and sat there eternally with his beatific smile, quietly enjoying the water and the sky and the clouds and the fields, and let the rain soak him through without noticing it and then said “I think I'm wet” and laughed. Someone who could eat an expensive meal and drink expensive jenever better than anyone in Holland and then, at other times, on his long walks (because he didn't always sit around, every so often he spent days at a time on his feet), he'd eat dry rolls day in and day out and be moved to tears because out in the open “a piece of bread like this can taste so good.”

And when Bavink was working, Japi sat nearby on the grass or back-to-front on a chair inside, smoking. When they were both inside, Japi kept another chair nearby with a little glass of liquor on it, and reached out his hand for it every now and then. And he kept Bavink on track. Bavink had never spoken a word to anyone when he was working but he talked with Japi.

“The hell with it,” Japi said, “what does it matter if it's good or not! You do what you can, you're just a poor bastard like everyone else. You have to paint. You can't stop, can you? The things don't care if you don't get them down exactly how you see them. And other people don't understand anything anyway, not the things and not your work and not you. As for me, I could spend my time in a lot more interesting ways than sitting here boozing and eyeballing that mess of paint. You think
I'd
be any worse off?

“No, that's all wrong,” he said then, “much too blue—don't you remember what we talked about yesterday? Much too blue. Please. You think it would have grabbed you the way it did if it was that weird blue color?”

Japi was worth his weight in gold to Bavink. Bavink brought him along everywhere. It was Bavink who made Japi what he was when Bavink turned up with him in Amsterdam.

In no time Japi was worse than low on funds. Bavink wouldn't let him go for all the money in the world. Japi's only job was to look through the “garbage heap,” and he got the hang of it in no time— never before had “the dump” turned such a profit. Since then, Bavink paid for everything, or almost everything. Now and then Japi got a little money from home. But that didn't make any difference since sometimes they lived it up like tycoons—when they were in the mood they went to Amsterdam for a few days, to Brussels, Paris, Luxembourg, they spent two weeks in Normandy. Japi usually brought along a few things from the scrap heap, “a chip off the old scrap heap” he called it. In France and Belgium he went up to people on the street, rang doorbells. There was no one else in the world Bavink would have let do any of this. But no one else understood the art of keeping Bavink alive, as Bavink said. His conversation was inexhaustible. And he had a memory for landscapes that bordered on the miraculous. He knew everything along the railroad line from Middelburg to Amsterdam: every field, every ditch, every house, every road, every stand of trees, every patch of heather in Brabant, every switch in the tracks. If you had been traveling for hours in the dark and Japi was stretched out asleep on the seats the whole time and you woke him up and asked “Japi, where are we?” you would just have to wait until he fully woke up and all he had to do was listen to the sound of the train on the tracks and then he'd say, “I think we're in Etten-Leur.” And he'd be right. He could tell you precisely how, on such-and-such a day, the shadow of such-and-such a tree in Zaltbommel fell on such-and-such a road, and which ships were sailing down Kuilenburg into the Lek at the moment when you and Japi were crossing a given railroad bridge. And then he'd sit attentively at the window: “Now this is coming, now that is coming.” For hours. And he'd nod and laugh whenever he saw something he knew especially well. Or else he would say, “Look, the tree is gone,” or “Hey, there are new apples on it now, I didn't see any last time.” Or: “Two weeks ago the sun was right behind the crown of that tree, now it's a little to the left, and lower, it's because we've gone two more weeks, and we're also running ten minutes late.”

And so when winter came to Amsterdam they came too, and Japi sat in my room one night and smoked the cigars sitting on my table for the taking, one after another.
My
cigars.

That was the night Hoyer was over. He had just drifted back from Paris again and now he sat there, tall and lanky, wearing a straw hat, in November, and a salmon-colored jacket, and griping about his work, and about girls. He was in the middle of an incomprehensible story about a young lady and a hired coachman and a basket of eels when we heard the stomp of footsteps coming up the stairs. It was in a working-class neighborhood so you could usually just come on up, most of the front doors were left open.

Bavink came in first and said, “How's it going, boys? It's me. Ha, if it isn't Hoyer! How are you, Hoyer? Still griping? Well heartiest greetings to you. To you too, Koekebakker, may you long be with us.” Japi stood in the door. They smelled of salt water and grass. “Come in, man, come in!” Bavink invited him in—into
my
apartment.

“For Chrissake,” Hoyer said, “would you please be so kind as to shut the door?” “Koekebakker,” Bavink said, “this is Japi, a guy who knows how to have a good time. Hoyer's polite as ever, I see. Have a seat, Japi,” Bavink said, flopping down into the one free chair, “just pull up that trunk.” A gallows-colored sea chest was sitting there, which contained one clean shirt and my sister's letters. “Wait, I'll help,” I said. Then we slid the trunk over to the table, Japi and I, and then Japi saw an empty crate of Hoffmann's starch with a picture of a cat on it. I had put soil in it but nothing would grow. “How about that instead,” Japi said, “otherwise I'm so low.” “I'll take one of these,” Bavink said, lighting up one of my cigars. “You too, Japi?” That suited Japi just fine. “What's that you've got there?” Bavink said.
Le Lys dans la vallée
by Balzac was lying on the table. “Ah, good old Balzac. He's no young whippersnapper. Dead, right? Dead a long time. Of course. Where'd you blow in from, Hoyer? What a beautiful coat you have on. Stand up. Too short, man, much too short.” Bavink was in an expansive mood. “Geez, I know,” Hoyer said. “Why don't you tell us where you've been hiding out, and who's this gentleman?”

Then came the story, accompanied by nods and grins from Japi. And now and then his hand would reach out toward my table, and Hoyer was smoking like a chimney too, I had stopped smoking. “Wait a minute,” Bavink said. “Here, I have some special cigars. Kamper Middelburgs, from Bessem & Hoogenkamp by Lange Delft.” “I know them,” I said.

“My boy,” Japi said, taking a look around my attic room, “it looks cozy here. By God, it's cozy here.” He stood up and walked over to the wall. “Ah, Breitner. Very good. And what have we here? It's a bit dark in here. So, good old Anton Mauve. And there we have the city hall, by God.” It was a sketch of the Veere city hall. “Bavink,” Japi said, “I do believe you're familiar with this. I'll go look for a job
right now
if that isn't a little something of yours.”

“You're in luck,” Bavink said. “I thought so,” Japi said, and he sat back down. “No, really, I'll definitely be coming back here again. I like it here.”

Just then the gramophone belonging to the diamond cutter across the street started up. “Clap,” Japi said. And we clapped. The four of us stood at the open window and applauded our hearts out. You could hear porch doors opening everywhere, people came outside, some applauded with us, a child started crying, a dog howled as though the whole block would be dead within a month. The diamond cutter never flinched—he was magnificent. A young woman across the street shouted, “Buncha idiots!” A little girl shrieked a few times: “It's Papus! It's Zeppelin!” A kid started playing his harmon-ica. “It's about time we left,” Hoyer said.

So we stomped downstairs. On the fourth and third floors there were loud discussions going on inside. “About us,” Japi said. On the second floor there was no one home. “Say, Japi,” Bavink said on the street, “you need to get this round.” “Sure,” Japi said, “let's go.” So I got to see what Japi was like that same night. Hoyer's theory was that beer never did any harm, so we drank a very respectable amount of it. Japi didn't have a penny. Hoyer flat-out refused, Bavink was drunk and staring vacantly into space and insisting that “This guy is a damn good fellow and he's getting this round”—he meant Japi— ”and the waiter is a damn good fellow too.” I had nineteen cents; Hoyer slipped out. I decided to put “the situation” on my tab, the waiter knew me, and at one o'clock the three of us were crossing Frederiksplein, yodeling happily. I got the money back from Bavink later; he absolutely insisted I take it. Japi found it all splendid and three days later he was sitting on the edge of my bed, swinging his legs back and forth; he said it was stupid of Bavink to get so plastered, but “everything worked out.” When he left, he had
Le Lys dans la vallée
in his hand.

It was a month later. It had been below freezing for a fortnight but at the beginning of the week there was a sudden change. And now it was night, and raining heavily. All day long it had been raining hard, almost without a break. The water ran in streams down my window-pane. It felt cozy inside. I liked it. I had no stove and my summer coat was still at the pawnshop. I had never owned a winter coat. The frost was a problem; you had to stay in bed out of poverty, it was the only way to keep warm. Usually in these circumstances I would just drop by Bavink's. But just then the man had taken to sleeping all day and walking around all night. I had sat by his stove all night, alone and abandoned—he would have wanted me to but it wasn't exactly fun. And now I sat listening to the rain clatter on the roof and was glad it was thawing, thawing hard. My bread, two thick slices, was directly on the tabletop; my last plate had gotten broken the previous night. Next to the bread was my cash: four blue bills, two rijksdollar coins, three guilders, and a few cents. And my kerosene burner stood on the floor in the corner, the water was starting to bubble in the little kettle on it. Next to it was my teapot, lid off, ready for the water to boil; there was already tea inside. And I sat with my legs stretched out under the table, barefoot, in a shirt, my hands in my pants pockets, and I looked at my food, at my wonderful money, at the flame of my oil lamp, at the single light of my little burner, and I listened to the rain and I was happy.

It was eight o'clock. I put my watch down on the table next to my money, the watch that was no longer on its way to the pawnshop, and I said, “For now you'll stay right here with Old Man Koekebakker, little watch,” and I put my hand back in my pocket. I was used to having conversations with my things since there's so little that's worth saying to most people.

I was out of the woods for now—dear Autumn hadn't let me down. The falling leaves, the southwest wind bending the trees on Veerschenweg even farther to the northeast and blowing snatches of Tall Jan's bells to my ears and making the towers sway and shake in fear beneath the black clouds—I had finally transmuted it to gold at my writing desk and now I could sit and look at it in the form of my own money, money you can count on and that never lets you down and never leaves you in the lurch. I had gotten home an hour before, soaked to the skin, with a loaf of bread, a half pound of butter, six ounces of sausage, a half pound of sugar, three ounces of tea, and a box of cigars, twenty-five for four cents—riches I hadn't known since my birthday, and that was months ago. I had already put away the sausage, that was for tomorrow. I had had a little cupboard built next to the window, and that's where I put everything all in a row on the bottom shelf: butter, tea, sugar, sausage, all the things that can taste so good when you haven't had them for a long time. And the rest of the loaf of bread, minus the two slices, was up on a higher shelf.

My clothes were hanging up to dry at the top of the stairs, under the rafters: jacket, sweater, pants, underpants, shirt, and socks. The water started to boil, the lid of the kettle rattled up and down. I looked at the steam and started thinking about how I would get my coat from the pawnshop tomorrow and for once not eat dinner in the kosher restaurant—beef and potatoes for thirty cents, pea soup with meat for thirty-five cents. And I was just thinking that it wouldn't be unreasonable to think about getting a little something to drink in the house when my meditations were interrupted by a heavy footstep outside the door. Someone was fumbling with my door. You couldn't knock because the door was made of wallpaper glued to a couple of screens, if you knocked you would put your hand right through it. People knew that. “It must be Hoyer,” I thought, “he can never find the hook.” The hook was on the inside but the door never closed properly and you could just get your finger through the crack and open the door from the outside. “Come in,” I shouted, too lazy to get up. “Easier said than done,” I heard a voice say, “how does it work?” “I don't recognize that voice,” I thought, “who can it be?” I stood up and opened the door, and a trickle of water ran over my hand. “It's Japi,” the man said. “Come in,” I said again. There he stood, water streaming from every fold of his clothes and off his hat too.