Until I Find You

by John Irving

  "If William ever loved you, he couldn't bear to see you prostitute yourself," Femke said. "It would kill him to see you in a window or a doorway, wouldn't it? That is, if he cared about you."

  "Of course he cares about me!" Alice cried.

  Imagine that you are four, and your mother is in a shouting match with a stranger. Do you really hear the argument? Aren't you trying so hard to understand the last thing that was said--to interpret it--that you miss the next thing that is said, and the thing after that? Isn't that how a four-year-old hears, or doesn't hear, an adult argument?

  "Just think of William seeing you in a doorway, singing that little hymn or prayer I'm sure you know," Femke was saying. "How does it go? 'Breathe on me, breath of God'--have I got it right?" Femke also knew the tune, which she hummed. "It's Scottish, isn't it?" she asked.

  "Anglican, actually," Alice said. "He taught it to you?"

  Femke shrugged. "He taught it to all the whores in the Oude Kerk. He played it, they sang it. I'm sure he played it for you and you sang it, too."

  "I don't need to prove that William loved me--not to you," Alice said.

  "To me? What do I care?" Femke asked. "You need to prove it to yourself! Wouldn't it bother William--if you accepted a customer or two, or three or four? That is, if he ever cared about you."

  "Not around Jack," Alice said.

  "Get a babysitter for Jack," Femke told her. "You've got a few friends in the red-light district, haven't you?"

  "Thank you for your time," Alice said; only then did she take Jack's hand.

  Walking from the Bergstraat, they reentered the red-light district on the Oudekerksplein. It was early evening, just growing dark. The organ in the Oude Kerk wasn't playing, but the women were all in their doorways--as if they knew Jack and Alice were coming. Anja was one of the older ones; she was on and off in the friendliness department. It must have been one of Anja's off nights, because she was humming the tune to "Breathe on Me, Breath of God," which seemed a little cruel.

  It's not much of a tune. As a communion prayer, sung instead of spoken, the words matter more than the tune. Like many simple things, Jack thought it was beautiful; it was one of his mom's favorites.

  They next passed Margriet, one of the younger girls, who always called Jack "Jackie"; this time she said nothing. Then came Annelies, Naughty Nanda, Katja, Angry Anouk, Mistress Mies, and Roos the Redhead; they were humming the tune of the hymn, which Alice ignored. Only Old Jolanda knew the words.

  "Breathe on me, breath of God . . ." she was singing.

  "You're not going to do it, are you?" Jack asked his mother. "I don't care if I ever see him," the boy lied.

  Maybe Alice said, "I'm the one who wants to see him, Jack." Or she might have said, "He's the one who wants to see you, Jackie."

  When Alice told Tattoo Peter about Femke's idea, the one-legged man tried to talk her out of it. Peter had Woody the Woodpecker tattooed on his right biceps. Jack got the impression that even the woodpecker was opposed to the idea of his mom singing a hymn in a prostitute's window or doorway.

  Years later, he would ask his mother what ever happened to the picture she took of him with Tattoo Peter's Woody the Woodpecker. "Maybe the photograph didn't turn out," was all she said.

  After posing with the woodpecker, Jack and his mom walked down to The Red Dragon, where Robbie de Wit rolled Alice some joints, which she put in her purse. Perhaps Robbie took their picture with Tattoo Theo. (Jack used to think: Maybe that photo didn't turn out, either.)

  They bought a ham-and-cheese croissant for Saskia, who was busy with a customer on the Bloedstraat, so Jack ate the sandwich while they walked over to the corner of the Stoofsteeg, where Jack drifted in and out of his mom's conversation with Els. "I don't recommend it," Els was saying to Alice. "But of course you can use my room, and I'll look after Jack."

  From the doorway of Els's room, Jack and his mom couldn't see Saskia's window or doorway on the Bloedstraat; they had to cross the canal in order to see if Saskia was still busy with her client. She was. By the time they walked back to Els's room, Els was with a customer of her own. Jack and Alice went back to the Bloedstraat and chatted with Janneke, the prostitute who was Saskia's nearest neighbor.

  "What's with the hymn?" Janneke asked Alice. "Or is it some kind of prayer?" Alice just shook her head. The three of them stood out on the street, waiting for Saskia's client to slink out the door, which he did a few minutes later. "If he had a tail like a dog, it would be between his legs," Janneke observed.

  "I suppose so," Alice said.

  Finally Saskia opened her curtains and saw them on the street. She waved, smiling with her mouth open, which was never the way she would smile at a potential customer. Saskia told Alice she could use her room, too, and that--between her and Els--Jack would be properly looked after.

  "I really appreciate it," Alice told the burned and beaten girl. "If you ever want a tattoo . . ." Her voice trailed away. Saskia couldn't look at her.

  "It's not the worst thing," Saskia said, to no one in particular. Alice shook her head again. "You know what, Jack?" Saskia asked; she seemed eager to change the subject. "You look like a kid who just ate a ham-and-cheese croissant, you lucky bugger!"

  In Amsterdam, all the prostitutes were registered with the police. The women were photographed, and the police kept a record of their most personal details; some of these were probably irrelevant. But if the prostitute had a boyfriend, that was relevant, because if she was murdered or beaten up, it was often the boyfriend who did it--usually not a customer. There were no minors among the prostitutes in those days, and the police were on the friendliest possible terms with the women in the red-light district; the police knew almost everything that went on there.

  One morning, which felt almost like spring, Jack and Alice went to the Warmoesstraat police station with Els and Saskia. A nice policeman named Nico Oudejans interviewed Alice. Saskia had requested Nico; both when she'd been burned and when she'd been beaten up, he had been the first street cop to arrive at the scene on the Bloedstraat. Jack may have been disappointed that Nico was wearing plainclothes, not a uniform, but Nico was the red-light district's favorite officer--not just a familiar cop on the beat but the policeman the prostitutes most trusted. He was in his late twenties or early thirties.

  To the boyfriend question, Alice said no--she didn't have one--but Nico was suspicious of her answer. "Then who's the guy you're singing for, Alice?"

  "He's a former boyfriend," Alice said; she put her hand on the back of Jack's neck. "He's Jack's father."

  "We would consider him a boyfriend," the policeman politely told her.

  Possibly it was Els who said: "It's just for an afternoon and part of one night, Nico."

  "I'm not going to admit any customers," Alice might have told the nice cop. "I'm just going to sit in the window or stand in the doorway, and sing."

  "If you turn everyone down, you're going to make some men angry at you, Alice," Nico said.

  It must have been Saskia who said: "One of us will always be nearby. When she's using my room, I'll be watching out for her; when she's using Els's room, Els will be hanging around."

  "And where will you be, Jack?" Nico asked.

  "He's going to be with me or Els!" Saskia replied.

  Nico Oudejans shook his head. "I don't like the sound of it, Alice--this isn't your job."

  "I used to sing in a choir," Alice told him. "I know how to sing."

  "It's no place to sing a hymn or say a prayer," the policeman said.

  "Maybe you could come by from time to time," Saskia suggested to him. "Just in case she draws a crowd."

  "She'll draw one, all right," Nico said.

  "So what?" Els asked. "A new girl always draws a crowd."

  "When a new girl takes a customer inside and closes the curtains, the crowd usually goes away," Nico Oudejans said.

  "I'm not going to admit any customers," Alice might have repeated.

  "Sometimes it's easier than s
aying no," Saskia said. "Virgins, for example--they can be nice."

  "They're quick, too," Els told Alice.

  "Not around Jack."

  "Just not too young a virgin, Alice," Nico Oudejans said.

  "I really appreciate it," Alice told him. "If you ever want a tattoo--" She stopped; maybe she thought that if she offered him a free tattoo, the policeman would construe this as a bribe. He was a nice guy, Nico Oudejans. His eyes were a robin's-egg blue, and high on one cheekbone he had a small scar shaped like the letter L.

  Out on the Warmoesstraat, Alice thanked Els and Saskia for helping her get permission from the police to be a prostitute for an afternoon and part of one night. "I figured it would be easier to talk Nico into it than to talk you out of it," Saskia said.

  "Saskia always does what's easier," Els explained. The three women laughed. They were walking the way Dutch girls sometimes do, side by side with their arms linked together. Alice was in the middle; Els was holding Jack's hand.

  The Warmoesstraat ran the length of one edge of the red-light district. Jack and Alice were on their way back to the Krasnapolsky. Els and Saskia were going to help Alice pick out what to wear--she wanted to wear her own clothes, she said. Alice didn't own a skirt as short as the ones Saskia wore in her window or doorway on the Bloedstraat, or a blouse with a neckline as revealing as the ones Els wore when she was giving advice on the Stoofsteeg.

  It must have been about eleven in the morning when they came to the corner of the Sint Annenstraat. Only one prostitute was working, way at the end of the street, but even at that distance, she recognized them. The prostitute waved and they waved back. Because they were looking down the Sint Annenstraat, into the district, they didn't see Jacob Bril coming toward them on the Warmoesstraat. They were still walking four abreast; there was no way Bril could get around them. He said something sharply in Dutch--a curse, or some form of condemnation. Saskia snapped back at him. Even though Els and Saskia were not dressed for their doorways, Bril surely recognized them; after all, he'd made quite a comprehensive study of the prostitutes in the neighborhood.

  The three women had to unlink their arms for Jacob Bril to pass by them; it might have been the first time Bril had been forced to stop walking in the red-light district. Of course Bril knew Alice--she was standing between the two prostitutes. As for the boy, Bril always appeared to look right through him; it was as if he never saw Jack.

  "In the Lord's eyes, you are the company you keep!" Jacob Bril told Alice.

  "I like the company I keep just fine," Alice replied.

  "What would you know about the Lord's eyes?" Els asked Bril.

  "Nobody knows what God sees," Saskia said.

  "He sees even the smallest sin!" Bril shouted. "He remembers every act of fornication!"

  "Most men do," Els told him.

  Saskia shrugged. "I find I forget it, most of the time," she said.

  They watched Jacob Bril scurry down the Sint Annenstraat, as purposefully as a rat. The lone prostitute at the far end of the street was no longer in her doorway; she must have seen Bril coming.

  "Jacob Bril is a good reason for me to be off the street before midnight," Alice said. "I can't imagine what he'd say if he saw me sitting in a window or heard me singing in a doorway." She laughed in that brittle way, the kind of laughter Jack recognized as a precursor to her tears.

  It was Els or Saskia who said: "There are better reasons than Bril to be off the street before midnight."

  They came out of the Warmoesstraat in the Dam Square and walked into the Krasnapolsky. "What's fornication?" Jack asked.

  "Giving advice," Alice answered.

  "Good advice, mostly," Saskia said.

  "Necessary advice, anyway," Els added.

  "What's sin?" Jack asked.

  "Just about everything," Alice answered.

  "There's good sin and bad sin," Els told Jack.

  "There is?" Saskia said; she looked as confused as Jack was.

  "I mean good advice and bad advice," Els explained. It seemed to Jack that sin was more complicated than fornication.

  Entering the hotel room, Alice said: "The thing about sin, Jack, is that some people think it's very important and other people don't even believe it exists."

  "What do you think about it?" the boy asked. Alice appeared to trip, although Jack saw nothing that she could have tripped on; she just started to fall, but Els caught her.

  "Damn heels," Alice said, but she wasn't wearing heels.

  "Now listen, Jack," Saskia spoke up. "We've got a job to do--making sure your mom wears the right clothes is important. We can't be distracted by a conversation about something as difficult as sin."

  "We'll have that conversation later," Els assured the boy.

  "Have it once the singing starts--have it without me," Alice said, but Els just steered her to the closet.

  Saskia was already looking through Alice's dresser drawers. She held up a bra that would have been much too big for her but not nearly big enough for Els. Saskia said something in Dutch, which made Els laugh. "You're going to be disappointed in my clothes," Alice told the prostitutes.

  The way Jack remembered it, his mom tried on every article of clothing in her closet. Alice was always very modest around Jack. He never saw his mother naked or half naked, and for an hour or more in the Krasnapolsky was the first time he saw so much of her in a bra and panties; even then, Alice clasped the sides of her breasts with her upper arms and elbows, and crossed her hands on her chest to cover herself. Jack actually saw more of Saskia and Els than he did of his mother, because the two women surrounded her as they dressed and undressed her--they were full of advice.

  Finally a dress was chosen; it struck Jack as pretty but plain. The dress was like his mom--she was pretty but plain, at least in comparison to how the women looked and dressed in the red-light district. It was a sleeveless black dress with a high neckline; it fit her closely, but it wasn't too tight.

  Alice didn't own a pair of genuine high heels, but the heels she chose for the occasion were medium-high--or they were high for her--and she put on her pearl necklace. It had belonged to her mother; her father gave it to her on the day she left Scotland for Nova Scotia. Alice thought they were cultured pearls, but she didn't really know. The necklace meant a lot to her, no matter what kind of pearls they were.

  "Won't I be cold in a sleeveless dress?" Alice asked Saskia and Els. The women found a fitted black cardigan in the closet.

  "That sweater is too small for me," Alice complained. "I can't button it up."

  "You don't need to button it," Els told her. "It's just to keep your arms warm."

  "You should leave the sweater open and hug your arms around yourself," Saskia said, showing her how to do it. "If you look like you're a little cold, that's sexy."

  "I don't want to look sexy," Alice replied.

  "What's sexy?" Jack asked.

  "If you look sexy, the men think you can give them good advice," Els explained. The two prostitutes were fussing over Alice's hair, and there was still the matter of lipstick to resolve--and makeup.

  "I don't want lipstick, I don't want makeup," Alice told them, but they wouldn't listen to her.

  "Believe me, you want lipstick," Els told her.

  "Something dark," Saskia said. "And eye shadow."

  "I hate eye shadow!" Alice cried.

  "You don't want William looking in your eyes and really seeing you, do you?" Els asked her. "I mean, supposing for a moment that he actually shows up." That quieted Alice; she let the women make her up.

  Jack just watched the transformation. His mother's face looked more chiseled, her mouth bolder; most foreign of all was the darkness shrouding her eyes, which made her look as if someone close to her had died and she was keeping the death from Jack. Overall, his mom looked a lot older.

  "How do I look?" Alice asked.

  "You look smashing!" Saskia said. (There were always a lot of Englishmen in the red-light district. Saskia probably thought t
hat "smashing" sounded good in English.)

  "Forget a crowd--you're going to draw a mob," Els told Alice, but Alice didn't necessarily like the sound of that.

  "How do you think I look, Jackie?" she asked.

  "You look very beautiful," he told her, "but not really like my mom." This seemed to alarm her.

  "You look like Alice to me," Saskia said reassuringly.

  "Sure you do," Els told her. "All we did to her, Jack, was make her more of a secret."

  "What's the secret?" Alice asked.

  "Els means we had to hide you a little," Saskia said.

  "What we hid was the mom in her, Jack," Els added.

  "Because that's just for you to see," Saskia said, rumpling the boy's hair.

  "I'll be fine," Alice announced. She turned away from the mirror and didn't look back.

  The red-light district in Amsterdam is smaller than many tourists realize. It is such a warren of tiny streets--at peak hours, densely populated--that first-time visitors get lost in the maze and imagine that the prostitutes in their windows and doorways go on forever. In truth, you could stroll from one end of the district to the other--from the Damstraat to the Zeedijk--in under ten minutes. From the area of the Old Church to Saskia's room on the Bloedstraat, or Els's room on the Stoofsteeg, was less than a five-minute walk.

  On a Saturday afternoon, word of a new girl in a window or a doorway spread quickly. A woman who didn't look like a prostitute, singing what sounded like a hymn, was dividing her time between a doorway on the Stoofsteeg and one on the Bloedstraat. The story raced through the red-light district like a fire. Before nightfall, the older women working on the Oudekerksplein had linked arms and come to hear for themselves how Daughter Alice could sing. Anja came with Annelies and Naughty Nanda; Katja came with Angry Anouk and Mistress Mies. Around suppertime, Roos the Redhead showed up with Old Jolanda. The aging prostitutes said nothing and didn't stay long. They had expected Alice to make a fool of herself, but when a pretty woman has a pretty voice, she rarely looks or sounds like a fool.

  To those men prowling the streets, Alice's singing might have seemed as beguiling a come-on as the jingling bracelets on Saskia's burned arm; yet Alice rejected all comers. She was a woman occupying a prostitute's doorway, or sitting in a prostitute's window, but she just shook her head to every potential client who expressed an interest in her; she occasionally needed to interrupt her hymn and more firmly say no. Once, when she was using Els's room, Alice had to tell a particularly persistent gentleman that she was waiting for her boyfriend and did not want to miss him by being busy with a customer when he showed up. (Saskia supplied a Dutch translation and the man finally went away.) And when she was using Saskia's room, Alice was heckled by a bunch of young men. She must have turned down one of the boys, or all of them, and in response to being spurned, they had gathered around her doorway and were loudly singing a song of their own.