So, for once it’s not just me blowing my own trumpet. Nicole is a she-devil with a perfect understanding of how I fit together. That is to say, she deploys what she knows about me perfectly. Yes, I am proud, always have been. But that’s not all, and with a little extra explanation you might be able to imagine what that brief entry means to me. The world of literature and poetry is, after all, a closed one. It’s not easy to penetrate, definitely not when you’re a cop, and especially when you don’t know any other poets. It’s a world of one good turn deserves another, praise and be praised, with all the clannishness of a crew of dockworkers or, if you like, a squad of policemen. I never showed this entry to Lode, though I often felt like it. When he heard from his sister that I wrote poetry, he began to see me in a different light. Poetry was clearly something he associated with weakness. Had he misjudged me? Could he really trust me? I had one face for some people and another for others.
After the war I peddled my poems to the little magazines. There were quite a few of them at the time, printed on cheap paper, but they almost all proclaimed the same thing: after five years of misery the world had to start over again, as if it had been given a second chance. For me it was the other way round. It never stops, nothing ever stops. It all keeps going and it never goes away, no matter how much everyone wants to draw lines in the sand that say ‘this far and no further’. If time exists at all it is a rapidly spinning spiral to nowhere, not a line from A to B. It always makes me think of a malfunctioning toilet where you press the flush and see the water swirling and gurgling all the way up to the rim, where it comes to a halt just before it overflows. Get an earful of me, the philosophical fuck-you-too poet! Anyway, I didn’t quite realize all of that at that stage. I wanted my truth in verse on paper, but first I had to convince the people who produced those magazines that a copper could write poems too. Of course, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by not telling them I was in the police in the first place, but Angelo, who was obliged to go through life as Wilfried Wils, thought my uniform would make me irresistible to the pack of schoolteachers, newspaper hacks and inspired idlers who accounted for most of the poetry written in this country at that stage. And when I finally managed to convince them to read my poems, they considered them far too sombre, gloomy even, and therefore unsuited to this new age in which nihilistic filth would be consigned to the past forever. One of those newly purged souls who rejected me—his name was Achiel Punt and he died long ago from complications after bowel surgery—hadn’t expected me to visit him at his downstairs flat on Paarden Markt, and yes: on duty and therefore in uniform.
Completely bewildered he looks me up and down one beautiful spring morning in the year of peace 1946. In his letter addressed to me he felt like he was really something, but now I’m standing before him as large as life, he treats me to a nervous joke about not feeling entirely safe knowing there’s a policeman walking round town who spends his free time jotting down such morbid thoughts. Admittedly that is gratifying. So much so that I accept Achiel’s nervous, hypocritical promise to pass my poems on to the editors for their appraisal. As a parting shot I caution him for the rubbish bin he’s put out too early.
Writing is strange, son. While telling you about Achiel Punt, I see Café Vondel before me, four doors up from where Punt was living in 1946. I remember it staying closed for a while after the war because the resistance had smashed the windows and furnishings during their hunt for collaborators. And that takes me straight to a vision of that same café during its glory days in the middle of a stylish neighbourhood and makes me realize there’s something I’ve forgotten to tell you. Maybe it’s not that important. Judge for yourself.
It’s late August 1940. The city has been occupied for almost four months. I’m twenty and have finally completed my last year of school, but that doesn’t raise my father’s spirits. He’s lost his job in the meantime and is wallowing in misery. Meanbeard, on the other hand, thinks my diploma needs celebrating because fair’s fair, it’s his victory too. He lets me know a week beforehand that he’s sorry we’ve lost touch with each other. If nothing else, I’ve earned a drink in one of his favourite bars on Paarden Markt. I don’t exclude the possibility that my father has put him up to it, that he’s sick to death of me lying in bed surrounded by books, waiting for nothing. At that moment I feel trapped. My mother’s family has cut us off and, with an unemployed father, further studies seem completely out of the question. One look at him tells me enough. He won’t find a job until it’s presented to him on a silver platter. His weak spot, a lack of initiative, has been hidden for years by the money he’s brought in. Now he’s stripped naked and as weak as an infant. But I’m just as much a lamb that could be led to slaughter at any moment. The one thing I definitely don’t want is to be carted off to Germany, a fate that is already menacing everyone who is young and unemployed. Some of my mates see it more as a lucky break, an opportunity to kiss the parental home goodbye. Independence ahoy! I’ll have to find a job here instead, and despite the uncertainty of that prospect it fills me with budding joy, like a promise I whisper to myself. If I become this family’s breadwinner… vengeance will be mine. Revenge for the life these two have been mapping out for me for years without worrying about what I might want myself, without even asking what my plans might be. Having to bear the burden of your parents’ mediocre ambitions is idiotic, a joke, all things considered, but if you don’t have anyone to discuss it with, there’s no liberating guffaw after the punchline.
And now Meanbeard and I are sitting in the Vondel.
‘Well?’ he asks, putting down his glass. ‘You’re off in the clouds. You’ve hardly touched your beer.’
‘Sorry. You’re right.’
‘How are things at home?’
I shrug. ‘No work, no money, and it’s war.’
Meanbeard laughs. ‘The war is over. France has fallen. Bombs are raining down on the Brits. Germany is triumphant. And your father has connections. Things will be better soon.’
‘I think I’ll have to find something myself.’
‘You? And what about your studies?’
Do you hear the pad of his velvet paws? But I don’t say a word. I drink.
‘So you want something else…’
‘I don’t know what I want.’
‘Oh, yes you do,’ Meanbeard whispers. ‘You know what you want. I recognize myself in you. That’s why we get along so well. What do I live off? People will tell you I’m a sports journalist, that I scrape a living together from the odd newspaper article here and there and, let’s be honest, that’s something most of them look down on. What did I do? I studied law for a couple of years and that turned out to be a mistake. Then languages… Never graduated. And yet I can tell you that I am rarely short of money. From the beginning I was able to assure myself of sufficient income. It comes of its own accord and I don’t think that will ever change. Even as a student, I had money. But it doesn’t actually interest me. They’re all opportunities and a man like me enjoys them without paying a price. Do you get my drift? It’s here, in your head, that things have to roll. Money is a means, that’s all. And there are enough people around here willing to provide it.’
‘That’s another way of seeing it,’ I say finally.
‘We live in a country where people would rather you knew what kind of knickers their wife wears than found out exactly how much they earn. Ask directly and everyone starts to moan and sigh. I’m an idealist—you know that—always have been, and I count myself lucky that I am able to see my vision of the world becoming reality. It’s actually never really surprised me that that vision has made me money, as if I get paid for the simple fact of having ideals. How incredible is that? Incredible enough in incredible times.’
‘I don’t know what exactly you’re trying to say.’
‘No? I’ve already said too much.’
*
Do you read comics, son? I know it’s a silly question to ask a seventeen-year-old, but it suddenly occurre
d to me. Your grandfather was mad about Suske and Wiske. Do people still read that? I remember one book that ended with the heroes being catapulted back to the present by Old Father Time. Decked out with a long white beard and a scythe, he opens up an enormous book and lays them on the page with their year written on it. ‘Ka-boom!’ your grandfather always said whenever I got to that bit when I was reading it to him. Although there wasn’t a picture of it happening, as a little boy he was convinced that Father Time was going to slam that book shut. He must have been about five at the time, though I’m not sure of it. And now it makes my head spin to be describing your grandfather as a child who’s only just outgrown his nappies. His being dead makes it even worse. In that album, which came out a few years after the war, there’s an enormous dragon called ‘To-tal-krieg’. And the dragon Total War devours pieces of gold, taxes the citizens have to put out on the street in slop pails (the story is set in the Dark Ages). I have no idea if Willy Vandersteen, the author, did that as an anti-war statement. I think his main concern was those taxes, the money everyone in this country is so obsessed with. We consider ourselves permanently occupied, a land of serfs, who rarely lay claim to knighthood. Start off about your wallet and everyone pricks up their ears. Meanbeard was right about that. In this country there is a constant omnipresent sense of being a martyr to the state, as if it’s constantly got its fingers in your pocket.
‘If the people in this bar found out about all the things that have been going on here right under their noses… Do you think we’ve been twiddling our thumbs these last few years? You think we didn’t know what was coming? Men like me know when the time is ripe to make ourselves useful for the ideal we believe in. I got paid two thousand francs a month for almost four years. It was simple. I kept my ears open in the right places and collected information about the harbour. And this is where I always arranged to meet him.’
‘Who?’
‘Mein Freund Gregor… a real carrot-top. German, of course. I have a feeling you’re going to meet him too one day.’
‘They can lock you up for that.’
‘Not any more, they can’t. Another beer?’
Before he’s stood up, a woman joins us at our table.
‘So, fungus face? Forgotten me, have you?’
Into the underworld: over to the other side of Paarden Markt, then down a narrow, diagonal street onto Falcon Rui to get to Falcon Plein, Ververs Rui, Schipper Straat and then further north, across Brouwers Vliet to Spanjaard Straat and the quays of Bonaparte Dock. Not very salubrious. We go from clip joint to seedy bar: Meanbeard, your great-grandfather and a lady called Jenny who sometimes needs assistance on the cobblestones because of her heels and the amount of booze in the fading glory of her body. Her scent lingers. Meanbeard is greeted with enthusiasm in every dive. For me, at that time, it’s still an unfamiliar part of town, definitely at dusk, but Angelo, who has burrowed deep inside me, is in his element. Everyone here zigzags from hole to hole, giving him ample opportunity to plumb the depths of their bullshit. Everybody takes while they’re being taken in this bottomless crater. It’s the first time I’ve seen this many soldiers and sailors in one place. The men from the Kriegsmarine are the most boisterous. In the distance in the daytime they look like little boys in monkey suits, with blue stripes around their white collars and comical hats on their heads. From far away you expect acrobatics: you can already picture them playing the fool in the ship’s ropes, hanging off gun barrels, tossing caps. But up close in a crowded bar they stick together, hardly able to stand while they try to squeeze women’s breasts or bums. Here the white of their uniforms takes on a rancid edge and you can smell their sweat. They’re on a bender, knocking glasses over before they’ve drained them completely and looking for trouble. The city is theirs.
‘Our Jenny’s in a bad mood,’ says Meanbeard.
The three of us are sitting wedged in together at a very cramped table. Now and then one of us gets splashed with beer or has to lean out of the way to dodge an elbow.
‘Leave me be…’ Jenny mumbles while trying to light a cigarette. For all I know she’s over forty; for all I know she’s younger than me. Her lipstick shines deep blue in the bar’s green light. Her blonde hair looks yellow. There are crumbs stuck to her lashes. ‘Just leave me be…’
‘Tell my young friend here why you are in such a bad mood.’
She waggles her index finger. ‘Don’t, sweetie. It’s nothing to do with this lad.’ She’s almost begging.
‘From now on she has to get a medical check-up twice a week.’ The beer has tinged his voice with a casual cruelty. Jenny slaps the table hard, making the glasses jump, but immediately afterwards her strength fades again. She plays with the ruby-coloured ring on one of her fingers.
‘Ooph,’ I say, ‘not cancer, I hope.’
Brief silence. Jenny and Meanbeard look at me, then burst out laughing.
Jenny bends forward and he slaps his knee.
‘Priceless!’ Then he reaches for her handbag. ‘Wait, I’ll show you!’
Jenny immediately fights back like a lioness. ‘Let go of that!’
Meanbeard parries her effortlessly and, laughing, continues his search.
‘You bastard,’ Jenny roars. She gets hold of one of the loops of her bag and tugs it, sending the entire contents spilling out over the floor. Little bottles, compacts, screwed-up handkerchiefs, cards and a purse. She feels under the table like a blind woman, but again he outwits her. Triumphantly he holds up a book.
‘You have to see this,’ he winks. Under the table, Jenny gathers up her things, digging her nails into my knee for support. She doesn’t realize that Meanbeard has found what he was looking for. In a haze of booze and lust, some of the sailors stare at her bum in the tight green skirt, her fishnet stockings and her cheap patent-leather shoes, her defencelessness.
On the book it says ‘Health Pass’, followed by ‘Department of Vice’. Inside there are stamps with ‘St Elisabeth’s’ written alongside each in fountain pen. Jenny emerges from under the table, snatches the book out of his hand and disappears in the direction of the ladies with all the dignity she can muster.
‘Nothing’s clean enough for the Germans. All prostitutes have to register for a medical check-up. So now you know, my friend. If you feel your blood racing, always ask to see their little book first. You don’t want to pick up one of those diseases. Remember now.’
‘Yes, sure,’ I say, looking away.
Jenny comes back. Her make-up has run a little, but she really does seem to have perked up. She pushes a sailor who tries to grab her out of the way without even looking at him and stops at our table.
‘Listen, you bastard…’
He looks up, smiling. ‘It was just for a laugh…’
‘Really?’
‘I was just playing the fool.’ All at once Meanbeard doesn’t seem quite as drunk. It’s like the racket is dying down, the glasses no longer clinking, no more slurred orders at the bar. He reaches for her hand. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
She bats him away. ‘Get your paws off of me. I’ve had it with you.’
Resolutely she shoves her way out through the tightly packed sailors.
‘Jenny?’
She doesn’t look back. He raises himself up off his chair, sticks a hand in the air.
‘Jenny!’
The door closes behind her. Almost despairing, he sits down again.
‘She’ll come back,’ he coughs.
I see moisture gleaming on his big, bulging eyes.
Meanbeard tries to order a round of what we call ‘headbutts’: jenever shots with beer chasers. I refuse politely. I’ve already seen what jenever can do to you. My father is what you call ‘a mean drunk’. I also know that I still have to get home. It’s almost ten o’clock and soon the curfew will be in place for everyone who doesn’t have a special exemption.
It takes quite some effort to convince Meanbeard to come with me.
‘Ich habe eine shpezial exemption
!’ he crows, visibly pleased with his German.
‘Ich nicht,’ I say.
Laughter with melancholy quick on its heels. I recognize that too: jenever.
‘I don’t open my book for just anyone, Wilfried!’
‘No.’
‘I’m no book tart.’
‘Far from it.’
‘Our Jenny,’ he said mournfully, ‘where’s she got to? Where is that book tart?’
‘Come on, we’re going home.’
‘Piss off. Suck my book!’
With the help of a few sailors, who are just as drunk as he is, I get Meanbeard up onto his feet. Together we lurch along The Boulevard. He holds his face pressed against my lapel and lets his tears and snot flow free. Now and then he yelps something incomprehensible, finger in the air. Somewhere halfway up Keyser Lei, where he’s not the only drunk trying to make it back home, he pulls himself more or less together. He runs his hands over his slicked-back hair, straightens his dicky, and no longer needs my help to walk.
‘You’re a fine fellow. You are… someone a chap can count on, you know that? Someone you can count on.’
At long last we’ve followed the railway viaduct, walked through the Kievits quarter and made it onto Plantin en Moretus Lei. At his front door he puts both hands on my shoulders.
‘I’ll arrange something,’ he says, suddenly firm. ‘I’ll arrange a job for you. Police. Get it? I’ll get you in. Me and my contacts, me!’
He searches for his keys. I help him get his door open. He falls straight through it into the hall and before I’ve stepped in after him, he’s kicked the door shut behind him with an almighty bang.
Will Page 7
