Until I Find You

by John Irving

  "Every day, Jackie," she said, kissing his cheek, "I take so many pills, I lose count!"

  Els had landlord problems, too, she wanted Nico to know; maybe the police could do something about the building's new owner. "Like shoot him," she told Nico, with a smile, kissing him on the cheek--then kissing Jack again. There'd been a rent dispute and a tax issue; the new landlord was a prick, in her opinion.

  Els was a longstanding spokesperson for the prostitutes' union; she regularly spoke to high school students about the lives of prostitutes. The students, many of them only sixteen, had questions for her about first-time sex. Years ago, she'd had a husband; she'd been married for three years before her husband found out she was a whore.

  She had a bruise on her face. Nico asked her if she was getting over a black eye--perhaps something one of her off-the-street customers had given her.

  "No, no," she said. "My customers wouldn't dare hit me." Els had gotten into a fistfight at a cafe on the Nes, just off the Dam Square. She'd run into a former prostitute who wouldn't speak to her. "Some holier-than-thou cunt," she said. "You should see her face, Nico."

  Jack thought that the holier-than-thou subject might make a good starting point for a conversation about his father. Els had not only known him; unbeknownst to Alice, Els had often gone to the Oude Kerk in the wee hours of the morning to hear William play the organ. Jack gathered that Els had not heard any racket from the Lord--just the music. To his surprise, Els told Jack that she had taken him to the Old Church one night.

  "I thought that even if you didn't remember hearing William play, some part of you might absorb the sound," she said. "But I had to carry you there--you were asleep the whole way--and you never woke up or took your head off my breast the entire time. You slept through a two-hour concert, Jackie. You never heard a note! I don't know what you could possibly remember of any of it."

  "Not much," he admitted.

  Jack knew how hidden the organist's chamber in the Oude Kerk was. He knew that his father would never have seen him sleeping on the big prostitute's bosom--which was probably just as well, knowing his dad's opinion of what Nico had called "this environment."

  Because Saskia and Alice were more popular--because they had more customers, Els informed Jack--Els was Jack's babysitter (what she called his "nanny") most of the time.

  "And I was stronger than your mom or Saskia, so I got to carry you!" she exclaimed. She had lugged him from bed to bed. "I used to think you were like one of us--one of the prostitutes," she told Jack. "Because you never went to bed just once; because I was always taking you out of one bed and tucking you into another!"

  "I remember that you and Femke almost came to blows," he said.

  "I could have killed her. I should have killed her, Jackie!" Els cried. "But Femke was the deal-maker, and something had to be done. It's just that it was a bad deal--that's what made me so mad. Lawyers don't care about what's fair. What's a good deal to a lawyer is any deal that both parties will agree to."

  "Something had to be done, Els--as you say," Nico said.

  "Fuck you, Nico," Els told him. "Just drink your coffee."

  It was good coffee; Marieke had made them some cookies, too.

  "Did my dad see me leave Amsterdam?" Jack asked Els.

  "He saw you leave Rotterdam, Jackie. He watched the ship sail out of the harbor. Femke had brought him to the docks; she'd driven him to Rotterdam in her car. Saskia would have none of it. She accompanied your mom and me and you to the train station in Amsterdam, but that was as much drama as she would tolerate. That was Saskia's word for the good-bye business--drama, she called it."

  "So you took the train to Rotterdam with us?"

  "I went with you to the docks. I got you both on board, Jackie. Your mom wasn't in much better shape than your dad. It seemed to be just dawning on her that she wouldn't see William after that day, although the deal was what she said she wanted."

  "You saw my dad at the docks?"

  "Fucking Femke wouldn't get out of the car, but your dad did," Els said. "He just cried and cried; he fell apart. He lay down on the ground. I had to pick him up off the pavement; I had to carry him back to the fuckhead lawyer's Mercedes."

  "Did Tattoo Peter really have a Mercedes?" Jack asked her.

  "Femke had a better one, Jackie," Els said. "She drove William back to Amsterdam in her Mercedes. I took the train from Rotterdam. In my mind's eye, I kept seeing you wave from the ship. You thought you were waving to me--I was waving back, of course--but it was your father you were really waving good-bye to. Some deal, huh, Nico?" she asked the policeman sharply.

  "Something had to be done, Els," he said again.

  "Fuck you, Nico," the old prostitute once more told him.

  When Jack got back to the Grand, two faxes were waiting for him; it didn't help that he read them in the wrong order. He began with a surprising suggestion from Richard Gladstein, a movie producer. Bob Bookman had sent Gladstein the script for The Slush-Pile Reader.

  Dear Jack,

  Stay where you are, in Amsterdam! What do you say we have a meeting with William Vanvleck? I know you've worked with Wild Bill before. It strikes me that The Slush-Pile Reader is a kind of remake, maybe right up The Remake Monster's alley. Think about it: the story is a remade porn film but not a porn film, right? We wouldn't show anything pornographic, but the very idea of James "Jimmy" Stronach's relationship with Michele Maher is a little pornographic, isn't it? (He's too big, she's too small. Brilliant!) We should discuss. But first tell me your thoughts on The Mad Dutchman. As it happens, he's in Amsterdam and you're in Amsterdam. If you like the idea of Vanvleck as a director, I could meet you there.

  Richard

  Everything became clearer when Jack read the second fax, which he should have read first. It was from Bob Bookman at C.A.A.

  Dear Jack,

  Richard Gladstein loved your script of The Slush-Pile Reader. He wants to discuss possible directors with you. Richard has the crazy--maybe not so crazy--idea of using Wild Bill Vanvleck. Call me. Call Richard.

  Bob

  Jack was so excited that he called Richard Gladstein at home, waking him up. (It was very early in the morning in L.A.)

  Wild Bill Vanvleck was in his late sixties, maybe his early seventies. He'd moved back to Amsterdam from Beverly Hills. No one in Hollywood had asked him to direct a picture for a couple of years. The Remake Monster had sold his ugly mansion on Loma Vista Drive. Something had gone wrong with his whippets. Jack remembered the skinny little dogs running free in the mansion, slipping and falling on the hardwood floors.

  Something bad had happened to Wild Bill's chef and gardener, the Surinamese couple. Someone had drowned in Vanvleck's swimming pool, Richard Gladstein told Jack; Richard couldn't remember if it was the child-size woman from Suriname or her miniature husband. (Possibly the drowning victim had been one of the whippets!)

  So The Mad Dutchman was back in Amsterdam, where he was living with a much younger woman. Vanvleck had a hit series on Dutch TV; from Richard Gladstein's description, Wild Bill had remade Miami Vice in Amsterdam's red-light district.

  Richard talked about the difficulty of bringing Miramax around to the idea of hiring William Vanvleck to direct The Slush-Pile Reader--that is, assuming Richard and Jack had a good meeting with The Mad Dutchman. But the idea, Gladstein and Jack agreed, had possibilities. (Bob Bookman had already overnighted Jack's screenplay to Wild Bill.)

  Richard and Jack also talked about the idea of Lucia Delvecchio in the Michele Maher role. "She'd have to lose about twenty pounds," Jack told Richard.

  "She'd love to!" Gladstein said. There was little doubt of that, Jack thought. There were a lot of women in Hollywood who wanted to lose twenty pounds--they just needed a reason.

  The more he thought about Wild Bill Vanvleck, the better Jack liked the idea. What had always been wrong with The Remake Monster's material was the material itself--namely, Wild Bill's screenplays. Not only how he'd ripped them off from other, better
material, but how he went too far; he always pushed the parody past reasonable limits. If you're irreverent about everything, the audience is left with nothing or no one to like. Conversely, there was sympathy in Emma's story--both for the too-small slush-pile reader and for the porn star and bad screenwriter with the big penis. Vanvleck had never directed a sympathetic script before.

  Jack wished he could ask Emma what she thought of the idea, but he didn't think that his working with Wild Bill Vanvleck as a director would necessarily make Emma roll over in her grave.

  Jack went back out in the rain. He passed the Casa Rosso, where they showed porn films and had livesex shows--more advice-giving, Jack had once believed. He wasn't tempted to see a show, not even as research for The Slush-Pile Reader.

  He walked once more to the Warmoesstraat police station, but Nico was out working in the red-light district. A couple of young cops, both in uniform, told Jack that they thought William Vanvleck's TV series about homicide policemen was reasonably authentic. Wild Bill had spent time in the Warmoesstraat station; he'd gone out in the district with real cops on the beat. It was a favorable sign that real policemen actually liked a TV series about cops.

  Jack worked out at a gym on the Rokin. It was a good gym, but the music was too loud and relentless; it made him feel he was rushing, though he was taking his time. His appointment with Femke, which Nico had arranged, wasn't until four o'clock that afternoon. He was in no hurry. When Jack returned to the Grand from the gym, Nico Oudejans had left a package at the reception desk--a videocassette of Vanvleck's homicide series.

  Jack showered and shaved, put on some decent clothes, and went out again. The address of Marinus and Jacob Poortvliet's law firm was on the Singel. Femke, their mother, was retired. Jack saw at once how easy it had been for his mom to confuse him into thinking that Femke occupied a prostitute's room on the Bergstraat. The Poortvliets' law office was roughly halfway between the Bergstraat and the Korsjespoortsteeg--virtually around the corner from those streets where the more upscale prostitutes were in business.

  Some small details about the office were familiar; both the cars on the Singel and the pedestrians on the sidewalk were visible from the leather reading chair and the big leather couch. On the walls of the office, a few of the landscapes were also familiar. Jack even remembered the rug, an Oriental.

  Femke was late; Jack talked with her sons. Conservatively dressed gentlemen in their fifties, they'd been university students in 1970. But even people of their generation remembered the controversial organist, William Burns, who'd played for the prostitutes in the Oude Kerk in the early-morning hours. University students had made the organ concerts in the Old Church a favorite among their late-night outings.

  "Some of us considered your father an activist, a social reformer. After all, he expressed a profound sympathy for the prostitutes' plight," Marinus told Jack.

  "Others took a view that was common among some of the prostitutes--I'm referring to those women who were not in William's audience at the Old Church. William was a Holy Roller in their eyes; converting the prostitutes meant nothing less than steering them away from prostitution," Jacob explained.

  "But he played great," Marinus said. "No matter what you thought of William, he was a terrific organist."

  The Poortvliets had a family-law practice; they not only took divorce and child-custody cases, but they also settled inheritance disputes and were engaged in estate planning. What had made William Burns's case difficult was that he was still a citizen of Scotland, although he had a visa that permitted him to work in Holland for a limited period of time. Alice, who was a Canadian citizen, had no such visa--but in the case of foreigners who were apprenticed to Dutch tattoo artists, the police allowed them several months to earn a tax-free living. After that, they were pressured to leave or pay Dutch taxes.

  There could be no child-custody case in the Dutch courts, because Jack's mom and dad weren't Dutch citizens. As outrageously as his mother was exposing Jack to her new life as a prostitute, his father had no means to claim custody of the boy. Alice, however, could be made to leave the country--chiefly on the grounds that, as a prostitute, she had repeatedly engaged in sex with underage boys. And she was a magnet for more widespread condemnation within the prostitute community. (As if the hymn-singing and prayer-chanting in her window and doorway weren't inflammatory enough, Alice had dragged her four-year-old through the district.)

  "You were carried, day and night, in the arms of that giantess among the whores," Marinus Poortvliet told Jack.

  "Half the time you were asleep, or as inert as groceries," his brother, Jacob, said.

  "The prostitutes called you 'the whole week's shopping,' because in that woman's arms you looked like a bag of groceries that could feed a family for a week," Marinus explained.

  "So Dutch law had the means to deport my mom, but not to gain custody of me for my dad," Jack said, just to be sure. The two sons nodded.

  That was when Femke arrived, and Jack once again felt intimidated by her--not because she was a fearsome and different kind of prostitute, but because she struck him as a great initiator. (No matter what experience you thought you'd had, Femke could initiate you into something you'd never known or even imagined.)

  "When I look at you in your movies," she said to Jack, without bothering to say hello, "I see someone as pretty and talented as your father, but not half so open--so utterly unguarded. You're very much guarded, aren't you, Jack Burns?" she asked, seating herself in the leather reading chair. And Jack had once thought she'd taken up that position in her sidewalk window to attract customers off the street!

  "Thank you for seeing me," Jack said to her.

  "Very much guarded, isn't he?" she asked her sons, not expecting so much as a nod or a shake of the head from either of them. It wasn't a real question; Femke had already decided upon the answer.

  At seventy-eight, only a couple of years older than Els, Femke was still shapely without being fat. Her elegance of dress, which she had seemingly been born with, made it abundantly clear to Jack that only an idiot (or a four-year-old) could ever have mistaken her for a whore. Her skin was as unwrinkled as the skin of a well-cared-for woman in her fifties; her hair, which was her own, was a pure snow-white.

  "If only you'd been Dutch, I would have got your dad custody of you in a heartbeat, Jack. I would have happily sent your mother back to Canada childless," Femke said. "The problem was, your father forgave her. He would forgive her anything, if she just promised to do the right thing by you."

  "Meaning good schools, a safe neighborhood, and some vestige of stability?" Jack asked.

  "Those aren't bad things, are they?" Femke said. "You seem to be both educated and alive. I daresay, in the direction your mom was headed, that wouldn't have happened here. Besides, she was at least beginning to accept that William would never come back to her--that began to happen in Helsinki. But that William would accept the pain of losing all contact with you--if Alice would just take you back to Canada and look after you, as a mother should--well, what a surprise that was! To your mother and to me. We didn't expect him to agree to it! But we'd both underestimated what a good Christian William was." Femke did not say Christian in an approving way. "I was just the negotiator, Jack. I wanted to drive a harder bargain for your dad. But what can you do when the warring parties agree? Is a deal not a deal?"

  "You drove him to the docks, in Rotterdam?" Jack asked her. "They both went along with it, right till the end?"

  Femke looked out the window at the slowly passing traffic on the Singel. "Your little face on the ship's deck was the only smiling face I saw, Jack. Your mother had to hold you up, so you could see over the rail. You were waving to that giant whore. The way your dad dropped to the ground, I thought he'd had a heart attack. I thought I'd be taking a body back to Amsterdam--in all likelihood, in the backseat of my Mercedes. The big prostitute picked him up and carried him to my car; she carried him as easily as she used to carry you! Mind you, I still thought yo
ur dad was dead. I didn't want William in the front seat, but that's where the huge whore put him. I could see then that he was alive, but barely. 'What have I done? How could I? What am I, Femke?' your father asked me. 'You're a flaming Christian, William. You forgive too much,' I told him. But the deal was done, and your dad was the only man on earth who would stick to his side of a bargain like that. From the look of you, Jack, your mom stuck to her side of the bargain, too--sort of."

  At that moment, Jack hated them both--his mother and his father. In his mom's case, the reasons were pretty obvious. In his dad's case, Jack suddenly saw him as a quitter. William Burns had given up on his son! Jack was furious. Femke, a retired lawyer but a good one, could see the fury on Jack's face.

  "Oh, get over it. Don't be a baby!" she told him. "What's a grown man in good health doing wallowing around in the past? Just move on, Jack. Get married, try being a good husband--and be a good father to your children. With any luck, you'll see how hard it is. Stop judging them--I mean William and your mother!"

  From the way her two grown sons fussed over her, Jack could tell that they adored her. Femke once more looked out the window; there was something final about the way she turned her face in profile to Jack, as if their meeting were over and she had nothing more to say. Nico Oudejans had asked her to see Jack, and she probably had a fair amount of respect for Nico--more than she had for Jack. She'd done her duty, her face in profile said; Femke wasn't freely going to offer Jack more information.

  "If I could just ask you if you know what happened to him--starting with where he went," Jack said to her. "I assume he didn't stay in Amsterdam."

  "Of course William didn't stay," she said. "Not when he could imagine you on every street corner--not when your mother's image was engraved in the lewd posture of every prostitute, in every gaudy window and dirty doorway in the district!"