Outsider in Amsterdam (14 page)

De Gier broke his polite silence and laughed. The father laughed too.

“That’s nice,” he said. “I can be amusing, in spite of my nerves. You want a cold beer?”

De Gier got his beer. Constanze brought it, on a tray. Two
cold tins, two glasses. She poured the beer. The father studied de Gier over his glass and smiled. “You like football?” he said.

“No, sir,” de Gier said.

The father sat up suddenly, nearly spilling his beer. “You are serious?”

“Yes,” de Gier said. “I am probably crazy but football bores me. I often had to watch it, as a young cop guarding the field. I saw some of the famous matches, Ajax against Spain, and Ajax against that other club, I forgot the name, but all I see is a lot of striped men chasing a little ball. It means nothing to me. It doesn’t just bore me, it irritates me. I think it’s a waste of energy.”

“You hear that, wife?” the father shouted.

De Gier had to say it all over again. The father’s face split open in a wide grin.

“Against that other club,” the father repeated. “I forget its name now. Hahaha.”

“You made him happy, sir,” the mother said. “He thinks he is the only one in town who doesn’t enjoy watching football and he worries about it.”

“Yes, damn it,” said the father, who was still sitting on the edge of his chair, “I am ashamed of it. It’s like I am different from all the neighbors, and the chaps at work. And now you are just the same. Ha.”

“What
do
you like?” de Gier asked.

The father pointed at the floor. De Gier saw a long row of gramophone records. He got up and looked through them. All modern jazz and mainly piano and trumpet.

The father was watching him unhappily. “You like that sort of music?” he asked.

De Gier felt a chill going down his spine. It amazed him. He had had it before, at moments of deep emotion. This fat puffy man might share his own spirit. He tried to control himself but his enthusiasm and bewilderment won.

“Sir,” de Gier said, “sir, I really like that music. I have the
same records as you have, not all of them maybe, but most of them. And I listen to them, once, twice a week. I put the cat on my lap and switch the lights off and open the balcony door when the weather permits, and light a cigar and I listen. For hours. And then it all stops, you know, it stops.”

He wanted to continue but the father interrupted him. “Christ will keep my soul,” he said softly.

The mother touched de Gier’s arm. “Maybe you cured my husband,” she said softly. “He isn’t alone anymore.”

“I never have to see you again,” the father said. “I’d like to of course, but it isn’t necessary. As long as I know that you sit there, somewhere in the city, and listen to your music. This is a good moment. They happen at times. You don’t expect them and they happen. When you do, they don’t happen. Mother! More beer!”

The mother brought more beer. Constanze had sat down, very gracefully. “She wants me to look at her,” he thought, “but I prefer watching her father.”

“You have had these moments before?” he asked.

“Yes,” the father said, “as a child. I never quite understood them. Something occurs, you notice something, and suddenly the moment is there. You can’t explain it, maybe you don’t want to explain it. I remember when it happened for the first time. I saw a hornbill in the zoo. Some people call them rhinoceros-birds. It looked so weird that suddenly my whole life changed. I saw my life differently. I knew it would change back again and become boring again, ordinary, everyday life. But that moment it was all different. The logic had been knocked out of it. The ‘this happens because of that and that happens because of that.’ All gone. I never forgot. Now I sometimes go to the zoo to see the hornbill. I walk straight up to its cage and watch it for a while and then I walk straight to the gate. I don’t look at the other birds and animals. Just a glance at the camels. They are weird too, but the other animals all can be explained. Not
the hornbill. Nobody can explain a hornbill to me. That’s the beauty of it, maybe.”

“You aren’t drunk, father?” Constanze asked. She turned to de Gier. “When he talks about the hornbill he is usually drunk, very drunk. We’ll have to carry him to bed. He is heavy.”

“No, dear,” the father said. “You go to town with the gentleman and enjoy yourself. I am not drunk and I won’t get drunk. Not tonight anyway.”

De Gier said goodbye and waited for Constanze to go through the door. He looked around before he left the room but the father was gazing out of the window, with a peaceful expression on his flabby face.

“That was nice of you,” Constanze said and leant against de Gier. “You should come again. Nobody can cheer him up anymore. He isn’t too bad tonight. Sometimes he groans and doesn’t know his own wife. He keeps on saying that everything is black and then he begins to mumble. He can curse for hours. He isn’t angry then, he just repeats the curses. Over and over again. I couldn’t live in this house anymore. When Yvette is here he gets a bit better. He took her to the zoo this morning.”

“To look at the hornbill,” de Gier thought. “Join the navy and see the sea, join the police and see the soul. I must tell Grijpstra, this would have interested him. Maybe Grijpstra should have a look at the hornbill sometimes.”

“Is that your car?” Constanze asked.

“Yes,” de Gier said. “I saved up for it. Tuppence a day, and I never stopped saving for a hundred years.”

“Really?”

“Not really. I borrowed it. I have a bicycle, an old bicycle. And when I’m on duty I drive a VW.”

“Oh,” Constanze said, “you don’t need a car to take me out. I am used to nothing. Piet had a car but he used it to take his girlfriends out. I worked in the kitchen and looked after the child.”

“Don’t you have a friend with a car in Paris?” de Gier asked. “You are a beautiful woman. You can’t tell me the men in Paris haven’t noticed.”

Constanze was quiet for a while. “I only left Piet some months ago. In Paris I have to work. My mother’s brother owns a wholesale company and he gave me a job. I lived in his house for a while and they are very strict people. I only got a little flat last week, and when I leave work I have to pick up the child at a crèche. I haven’t gotten around to men yet.”

“Hmmpf, hmmpf,” de Gier said.

“You said that last night,” Constanze said. “Is it your war cry?”

“Yes,” de Gier said, “a war cry.”

“Do you want to have me?” Constanze asked.

De Gier blushed and Constanze giggled.

“Who is trying to make who?” de Gier thought and went on blushing. He put his hand on hers; she didn’t pull her hand away.

“Did you bring your sandwiches?” he asked, pointing at the plastic bag she had put between them.

Constanze blushed. “Yes,” she said, “but not because I thought you wouldn’t feed me. It’s some bread and cheese my mother gave to my father when he went to the zoo this morning. He brought them back again. I was going to ask you to drive to the park later this evening. I always went there as a child and I would like to see it again before I return to Paris.”

“Are we going to feed the ducks?” de Gier asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s a secret. You’ll see.”

He took her to the Chinese restaurant on the Nieuwedijk. The owner bowed behind his counter and the waiter smiled. Constanze noticed the friendly reception.

“Do they know you here?” she asked.

“They do. We made a bit of a mess here yesterday.”

“What happened?”

“We arrested a man we were looking for and my colleague
accidentally ran into the waiter. In fact, he ran over him. There were noodles all over the place.” De Gier grinned. “Pity I was out on the street when it happened, had to go after my man.”

“You can’t be very popular here.”

“It’s all right. The police are very popular. But they’ll still sell us a meal.”

The owner served them himself.

“Shrimp,” the owner said, “very nice. Very fresh. With fried rice. And special soup. Real Chinese soup, not on the menu. And a glass of wine. Wine on the house. Yes?”

“Yes,” Constanze said, “that sounds nice.”

The owner bowed and smiled. He lit Constanze’s cigarette and snapped his fingers at the waiter. The waiter ran to the kitchen, ignoring the other customers.

“You get special service,” Constanze said. “How does it feel to be powerful?”

“I don’t feel powerful,” de Gier said. “A policeman is the public’s servant.”

“Ha,” Constanze said.

“It’s true, you know. I learned it at the police school. I believed it then. Later I forgot. But I learned it again. It’s quite true.”

“You are serious, aren’t you?” Constanze asked.

“Yes.”

“Let’s not be serious.”

“All right.”

“Are you ever in uniform?”

“Yes,” de Gier said. “Maybe once a month for a few days. When they are very busy at the stations and short of sergeants. Come and see me at the Warmoesstraat.”

Constanze laughed. “I am having dinner with a police sergeant.”

“Not now. I am just me. The Chinese owner thinks I am, and the waiter thinks I am, but I am not. I am a man who is having dinner with a woman.”

She changed the subject and they chatted for a while. De Gier steered the conversation toward van Meteren. She talked easily.

“Oh, he’s nice. He was the only one in that house I could rely on. Always gentle and pleasant, and always busy with something. He never hung around. And he wasn’t part of the house, he kept his distance but he would always help if anyone wanted help.”

“Busy?” de Gier asked. “Busy with what?”

“He studied.”

“At the university? Did he take evening classes?”

“He would have liked to, I think,” Constanze said, “but he didn’t have the right qualifications, although I am sure he is very intelligent. He read history, Dutch history. He used to borrow books from the library, he probably still does, and the librarians were helping him, telling him what to read and finding books for him.”

De Gier shook his head. “History?”

“Yes,” Constanze said. “Why? Why not history? He knows everything about Holland there is to know, I think. And he has been everywhere. He knows every city and every village. He planned trips and then he would go on his motorcycle. Weekends, and holidays and all the time he could get from his boss. He wasn’t enjoying his job much, I think, although he didn’t complain.”

“Did he ever take you with him?”

“No,” Constanze said. “He never asked me but I wouldn’t have gone anyway. Motorbikes scare me. I had a boyfriend who had a motorbike when I was a girl and we had an accident on it. I walked on crutches for months. Never again.”

“Did you like him?”

Constanze looked at him, eyes half-closed. “Why? Are you jealous? Or is this an interrogation? Like last night?”

“No,” de Gier said.

“Did you think I had something with that Papuan?”

De Gier didn’t answer.

She put down her fork and looked at him. Her eyes were wide open now.

“I am sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I have nothing against color. Van Meteren was always very good to me. But as a man … I don’t think I ever thought about him that way.”

De Gier felt her foot against his.

A few minutes later she mentioned van Meteren of her own accord.

“Yes,” she said, “a strange man. It must have been difficult for him to live here. He could never forget New Guinea, of course, and here he would never be accepted. People were nice to him, I think. But nice is not enough. They stared at him. Perhaps it would have been all right if he could have been a regular policeman. He would have had his self respect. He has been a policeman all his life. Do you know he could tell stories? I laughed a lot about the story of the white official who had been sent to New Guinea as an assistant district commissioner. He had hardly arrived when they sent him on an inspection and the very first time he went into a native village he ran into a tribal war. A tall thin lad, twenty-five years old perhaps, raised in a little Dutch city, and there he was with painted demons, dancing and yelling and clubbing each other. They never touched him. Maybe they left him alone because he was white. He had nothing to do with it. Big black hooligans with bones through their noses and feathers in their hair, and someone beating a drum. When it was all over the official was raving mad and they had to fly him back. He spent years in an asylum.”

“That’s a funny story?” de Gier asked.

“Maybe not,” Constanze said and laughed. “You think the poor chap had come to maintain order. Doing his duty and so on. But I thought it was funny. Maybe you would have thought so too if you had heard van Meteren tell it.
He acted both sides, the wild ones, and the official. He was really very good.”

“He acted the white fellow as well?” de Gier asked.

“Yes,” said Constanze, “ask him to tell the story, you’ll see.”

“I will,” de Gier said, and paid the bill. It was only half of what it should have been.

“I wonder what they are hiding,” de Gier thought. “That waiter’s papers won’t be in order, that’s for sure. Maybe there is something wrong with the owner as well. Or they were the fellows who hid Lee Fong.”

He wondered if he should mention the matter to the Aliens Department at Headquarters.

“Maybe not,” he thought.

Constanze moved close to him in the car. “Let’s drive to the park.”

He parked the car as close to the park as he could get.

She guided him to a pond. “Crumble some bread and throw it in.”

“There are no ducks,” he said.

“Never mind. Just do as I say.”

The crumbs hit the pond’s surface and caused a strange spectacle. Great carp, some of them more than two feet long, fought for the bread. The water foamed. The pond seemed full of carp. De Gier couldn’t imagine where they had all come from. The smacking of their thick pink lips filled the air around him.

“Did you like that?” Constanze asked when he had finished the bread.

“Yes,” he said. He thought the time had come and put his arms around her. She kissed him back and then pushed him away.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“Five minutes from here,” he said.