The Man Who Cried I Am (6 page)

“Hey, man,” Roger was saying as Max closed the door after him; his last view was that of Roger scrambling around on the floor for the check.

“You were hard on him,” Margrit said, holding his arm.

“Screw 'im. Christ, why did I have to wait until now to start telling people the way they are? Look, a cab. I don't feel like walking.”

“All right.”

They passed a herring stand. Max stopped. “Shall we have eel or the green herring?”

“Whichever you want, Mox.”

He shook his head. “Neither.” They walked to the cabs parked beneath the trees. They were just down the street from the Anna Frank House, and that part of Amsterdam always did strange things to him; it made him sad and it made him angry. It also made him aware of what so easily could be at home.

“Mox, why are you so thin?”

The cab rolled easily over the cobblestones; it passed the couples lingering over the edges of the canals. Max suddenly felt frightened. There would be a billion other nights in Amsterdam as soft as this one, filled with the odor of sea and old bricks and tarred wood pilings; and there would be the smell of food, drifting gently down upon the street from those Vermeer kitchens; there would be young men and young women, unjaded as yet, talking about loving one another.

I don't want to miss it! Max thought, I don't want to miss any of it! I want to live forever and ever and ever and ever …

“Mox …”

“Oh! That last trip to Africa, I guess. It was kind of rough.”

“Thanks for the card.” They were at her house now. The cab had stopped. Margrit got out. For a second she waited, then she knew that Max was going on to the hotel. She spoke to the driver in Dutch. “I will see you tomorrow?”

“In the afternoon, Maggie. Shall I meet you in the hotel?”

“What is wrong with the morning?”

“You have to work.”

“I would take it off.”

“I have something to do. In Leiden.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

She was bending, peering into the cab, and Max could smell her perfume.

“Thanks, no. Business.”

“Good night, Mox.”

“Good night, Maggie.”

She closed the door. “American,” Max said, and slumped back in the seat, his eyes half closed. The driver nodded. “She telled,” he said.

“Okay,” Max said. “Fine.”

4

AMSTERDAM

Margrit Reddick walked slowly up the carpeted stairs. She should have been tired, but she wasn't. She let herself in and turned on the light. She stood with her finger on the switch and looked around the living room. The same old place. Perhaps it would have been different if Max had come up, but maybe not. She walked heavily to the kitchen. Genever on ice. She wouldn't sleep for a while yet, perhaps not at all. She returned to, the living room and sat down. She hated Amsterdam when it was this time of night and she was alone. She hated any place in the world she had ever been when it was quiet and she was alone.

She finished her drink and got another one. She sipped it slowly, thinking. There ought to be someone she could call, slip into an easy conversation, a leading one, and then consent to letting him (it would be a “him” of course, that she would be talking to) come over, spend the night so she wouldn't be alone. And who could tell, perhaps she might even work up a passion, enough to last a few hours. But people were so damned practical during the week. During the weekend it was no problem other than selecting the man with whom she felt most comfortable. Once she started to the phone, but changed her mind. The man she'd thought of, it suddenly occurred to her, smelled bad. Making love was chore enough with its odors and sounds, but at least let them be derived from making love; don't bring them with you. She remembered stories of the people in the Middle East, the well-to-do ones, who made such a great fetish of bathing and perfuming before they made love. It helped. But maybe, she thought as she sipped her third Genever, if she became high enough she wouldn't smell anything. She had done that before. The alcohol froze the sense of smell. Yes, she could do that, and make him understand that he could not stay the night, just until it was over. She could say that she had to get up early … Oh, shit! she thought to herself. Max had made her understand the release that came from words like that, the combination of sibilants and stops. She said it aloud and tears welled in her eyes. She quickly swallowed her drink, turned out the living room light and went into her bedroom. She rummaged through her drawers until she found a sleeping pill. She placed it on a dresser and undressed. For a moment in the dim light, she held herself. Then she reached up and gently grasped her breasts, stroked each nipple. The tears came once more. She snatched up the pill, ran to the kitchen and took a glass of water.

Groaning under the lukewarm shower and feeling the sleeping pill going quickly to her head, she spat, “
Zwarte klootzak!
” She dried herself and went to bed. She sighed and closed her eyes and felt for a moment that she was sliding right off to sleep, but then, through a growing warmth, she became aware of her nude body. She pressed her eyes tightly and held herself tense. The warmth continued to grow. She found her hands near her breasts and quickly drew them away. Now they lay pressed tightly against her body. She turned on her back and placed her arms up above her head; the knuckles of her hands rapped softly on the headboard. Her eyes were used to the darkness now, and she could see the outline of her breasts beneath the sheet. She flung herself on her stomach and gripped the top of the headboard with both hands. Sighing, she kicked the sheets from her. She took one breast and began to caress it. The other hand flitted down over her stomach. Slowly, the fingers began parting the pubic hair. She would sleep better, she thought, and she would not have to bother with anyone, whether they smelled good or bad.

But sleep did not come. She lay with her arms thrown out from her body. She felt soiled and young. But most of all she felt alone and fearful of it. She thought,
De zak! Hij had me toch zeker weleen zoen kunnen geven?!
The bastard! He could have kissed me on the cheek.

He had kissed her the first night they met, at the party Roger held for him. He brought her home, up the stairs and to the door. She turned to thank him. He said, “
Een kus?
”

She had smiled. Obviously he had asked somebody to tell him how to ask for a kiss. The dust of Africa hadn't remained on him long; he adjusted very quickly. And she had thought that he might kiss her and had decided that she would let him. “Yes,” she said, and she had held up her lips, closed her eyes. But she felt his lips on her forehead, soft and very gentle. He drew away. When she opened her eyes he was looking at her with a little smile and he seemed very tired. Someone at the party had told her that he hadn't slept for two days. What struck her was the innocence of the kiss, innocence, yes, and a kind of gratitude. For what, she had asked herself in the mirror, for what?

The silver light of morning was already coming up and Margrit began to cry again. No sleep. And what had she done to herself? She would be tired and irritable all day. It would serve him right if she snapped at him. Oh, the bastard, the black bastard, she thought, he could have kissed me!

When had he said it, how many times and in how many places? But she always forgot.

“Maggie, for Christ's sake, I don't like to be kissed on the street.”

“I forgot, Mox.”

“Well, try to remember, will you?”

“Why does it make you angry when I kiss you on the street?”

“Never mind, just don't do it.”

So, she was always surprised when swimming—Spain, East Hampton, the Virgin Islands—he burst out of the water with a roar, kissed her, dragged her underwater and kissed her again, released her only to grab her again when they came sprinting to the surface to draw breath. Of course, he could have kissed her, if only on the cheek.

She drifted by on a conveyor belt. She looked very much like herself, he noted with a smile. But she had a filter-tip cigarette in her vagina, and it was smoking. She wore no clothes. She came by again, only this time her hair was red. “Great!” he said, “never had a redhead, very good, Maggie!” And there was another filter-tip cigarette in her vagina. He shook his head. She floated by once more and this time her hair was jet-black. “Ah, Maggie,” he said. “Italian or Spanish?” Then he said, “Why do you smoke so much?” because there was another filter-tip cigarette right where the others had been. “Maggie, you're a damned showboat,” he said, and he moved close to the line and plucked out the cigarettes as she came by on the conveyor belt again and again. He dropped them beneath his feet and crushed them on the floor. “Baby, you don't watch it, you're going to get cancer of the uh-uh.”

“You've got it already,” she said. He tried to look behind him, but he could not; his neck, hands and ankles were strapped down. The room was different: sterile and white. He was naked now and his buttocks were turned up toward the ceiling. He heard the squeak of the cobalt machine being lowered into position.

“Relax, relax,” Margrit said.

“Now, wait a minute, Maggie, that's not the way it works.”

“I know what I'm doing. Relax. I'll burn it out.”

Helpless, he watched the long, slender shadow of the machine descend. He felt the eye of it poking near his anus and he strained at the straps, cursing. “Goddamn it, Margrit, let Dr. Woodson handle it, you dumb bitch!”

“
Zak! Shut up!
”

“Maggie, when I get up from here, it's going to be your ass, really.”

“Whose ass, whose?”

“C'mon, now Maggie. I'm through playing with you. Get Dr. Woodson. Get him! Help!” (Maggie, you rotten bitch!) “Help, doctor, help! (Loose me, damn you!) Help!”

“Shut up. Dr. Woodson is in New York.”

“Where are we?”

“New York.”

“New York?”

“No, Amsterdam.”

“Amsterdam?”

“No, Lagos.”

“I wouldn't be caught dead in Lagos, Maggie. You know that.”

“You're not dead. Yet.”

“Maggie, take it away. Listen, sweetheart: New Lucky Strike Filters Put Back the Taste Others Take Away … Try New Lucky Strike Filters.”

“No, that one's no good. Besides I tried Luckies, in the uh-uh, you remember.”

“Yes, darling, but how about this one: Kent Satisfies Best …”

“Like hell they do. Something about that filter; kept slipping.”

“My love, give me a chance.”

“Did you ever give me a chance?”

“Dearest, dearest!” He had felt the eye punching savagely. Quickly he said, “Lark! darling. Richly Rewarding—Uncommonly Smooth; Charcoal Granules, Inner Chamber … how about that, baby?”

“No!”

“Help!” he screamed.

“They are much too sweet; no body,” Margrit said, busy with the machine.

“Don't be like that, Maggie. How about this: BIG Change! Now Tempo Has
Good
Old-Fashioned Flavor.” Max felt the eye of the cobalt machine draw tentatively away. He waited anxiously.

“Didn't I try that one?”

“No, darling. You see, not only is it a brand new filter-tip, but it has already been improved! You know, more charcoal—by the way, Maggie, I don't think you tried the one with the ground coconut in the filter either—white fiber, new rich tobacco …”

“… taste,” Margrit said, “it is always the taste that counts.”

“Yes, dearest one,” Max said, and he kept up a steady stream of endearments while she loosened his straps. Once freed, he grabbed his trousers, pulled them on and raced shoeless past the conveyor belt where Margrit lay trying out the new filter-tip cigarettes.

Trembling, Max reached for a cigarette. He touched his behind and found the cotton wet. He had taken the precaution of sleeping on a towel. He moved and pain lanced through him and it was heavy and dull and he knew it would stay with him this time unless he took the morphine. He rose, changed the cotton and took the drug. It was still dark outside. He looked at the syringe. If he could just avoid steady use of the morphine for the next few days, just a few more. He started to nod. Suddenly there was a sharp pain in his hand and he jerked it up to find that the cigarette had burned down to his fingers. He thought of the dream; if he'd had a filter-tip cigarette, it wouldn't have burned him. He placed the cigarette in the ashtray. He didn't have strength enough to crush it out. Then he went to sleep wrapped in a morphinated stupor.

But by the time his morning call came, he felt better. He couldn't feel the pain anymore and the morphine had not left him too drowsy. He called down for a breakfast he didn't want, then showered. The sun was already bright on the Leidseplein. It made him feel good. He wondered what Margrit was doing, if she were already on her way to work. He should have kissed her last night, on the cheek, the forehead, some damned where. It had been good to see her. It would be good to see her later, when he returned from Leiden. His breakfast of soft foods came, and he picked over it. Then he called to make arrangements for the car. He was shaken by his toilet and he took one of his pills and lay on the bed, a routine prescribed by Dr. Woodson.

He could hear the city waking. The trams rattled around the curve downstairs, bells clanging. The horns of the cars grew in number and volume. He knew the bicycle riders were flowing past too. The hotel was fully awake now; he could hear doors being closed, maids walking heavily up and down the carpeted halls, the harsh sounds of Dutch being spoken in semi-whispers. And there was the rattle of breakfast dishes being removed from the rooms. Soon, Max knew, the chambermaids would be at his door. He dozed again. Another half hour, he told himself.

As he got into the VW (there had been nothing else available) he had another of those periods when he felt good, impossibly good, so much like his old self. Once again he permitted himself to think that the cotton, the pills, the pain, the morphine, Dr. Woodson, were a hideous comedy of errors. Even now, he thought, some obscure lab technician might be on the phone talking to the doctor, saying there had been a mistake. Max shook himself out of the daydream and started the car. Take what you get, man. It's nice, enjoy it. You knew as soon as you could know things that you weren't going to live forever. You got twenty extra years. Remember the war. The tanks. Cinquale Canal. Viareggio. The mountains. The Ghoums. The donkeys. He drove slowly through the streets. They did not look familiar. That is, they did not look
unfamiliar;
they looked, each one, just like one he had passed. He felt his way and was pleased when he arrived at the road south, Europa 10.