History of a Pleasure Seeker

by Richard Mason

  In the absence of a central bank these loan certificates functioned as de facto currency. With each confession Maarten made, more banks agreed to accept them in settlement of loans and advances. This enabled other institutions to retain reserves of real greenbacks to honor the demands of frightened depositors. By Tuesday 29th, when Maarten, having abandoned all pride, threw himself wholly on his Creator’s mercy, proof of God’s steadfast love was provided by the restoration of calm in New York.

  The news reached Amsterdam on Wednesday 30th and confirmed to Maarten the centrality of his position in the Almighty’s plans. He resumed his fast as a precaution against resurgent pride and consumed nothing but coffee and rye bread for a further two weeks—because the stock market continued its fall and the situation remained delicate. Having secured six weeks of funding, he did not waste time in courting moneylenders. He threw himself into punishing bouts of prayer, refusing to rise from his knees until the ache in them was agony and his body, like Christ’s, was paying a physical price for the sins of the world.

  In the end, further self-sacrifice was required. It took a promise to give to the poor three-quarters of the Plaza’s profits, after interest on its loans was paid, to save the Exchange. Maarten made this pledge in all solemnity on November 14th. The following day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average touched a low of fifty-three, then started to climb; and the confidence this unleashed filled the Plaza’s bar to overflowing, and then its palatial suites, and thus God preserved Maarten from the necessity of requesting more money from his friends.

  The banks were quite prepared to lend again, and delighted to serve a client who owned New York’s most fashionable hotel.

  Shortly after her father received confirmation that a credit facility of $2 million had been placed at his disposal at the National City Bank of New York, Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts pulled the silk bellpull outside his office door. She had spent the days of his prayer-filled sequestration energetically and tasted a happiness that her former life of wasteful leisure had never offered her. Overruling Constance, she had sought and discovered an empty shop just off the Kalverstraat on which a year’s lease might be obtained for rather less than the value of her ruby bracelet. She had sold this bauble without embarrassment to Frederik van Sigelen, who had paid a full and generous price, and disposed of a rope of pearls and a pair of diamond earrings similarly. This left her with the funds to pay two cutters and an embroiderer for a year, and her own extensive collection of fabrics would see her through a first season. Though her palms were wet with perspiration, she told her father all this with aplomb.

  Maarten, so narrowly rescued from ruin, was in tremendous spirits. “What a kind and generous step to have taken, my darling. I’m sure you would have saved us all from penury.”

  This was not at all the response Louisa had expected. Her shoulders relaxed. She sat down. “I have so much to learn from you, Papa, but be assured I will be an attentive and diligent student. If only you will show me how to do the first few months’ accounts, I promise I’ll manage thereafter. Constance has agreed to help in the shop and model the collection. I am certain—”

  “But there is no longer any need, my precious.” Maarten squeezed her shoulder. “You must buy back your jewels at once. The world has come to its senses. The Plaza is full. This very morning I have had word that sufficient credit has been extended to see me through, and the refurbishments in London and Frankfurt will soon be finished. You may carry on living gaily amongst your friends.”

  “But that is not how I wish to live.”

  “Nonsense, my treasure.”

  “It is not nonsense, I assure you.”

  “You are right.” Maarten grew penitent. “Your motives are generous and thoughtful. I do not mean to disparage your efforts, only to tell you that the crisis has passed.”

  “I am glad of that, but I mean to do this, Father.”

  “Do what?”

  “Open a shop. Make my own money.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  Louisa began at the beginning and repeated her plan in detail. This time she was not nervous but angry.

  “It is quite impossible,” said Maarten when she had finished.

  “On the contrary. It is quite possible, Papa.”

  “Then it is not advisable.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds of decency and common sense, Louisa.”

  “Where is the shame in hard work? In making one’s own way, as you yourself—”

  “You are not at all in the situation I faced when I was your age. Believe me, you should be glad of that.”

  “I am grateful for the start you have given me. But I wish, I wish—”

  “What do you wish, my child?”

  “To make my own way in the world.”

  “Then you must marry a man with talent and ambition, whose interests you may serve as your mother has served mine. That is the way in which a woman may succeed.”

  “I am capable of succeeding on my own, Papa.”

  “I do not doubt it. But that is not the way of the world.”

  Constance Vermeulen-Sickerts had not at all looked forward to fawning over her former rivals in an effort to sell them clothes. She had not been a wholly benevolent ruler of Amsterdam’s jeunesse dorée and she knew she had enemies who would pay large sums to have her kneel at their feet as they tried on shoes. She felt a moment’s disloyal relief to learn of the enterprise’s doom. “My sweet—”

  But Louisa stalked past her, closed her door in her face, and dragged the dressing table against it. I will defy them, she thought. I will open my shop whatever they say. But she knew, even as she made these promises, that she would break them. The knowledge inspired a wish to break other things. She flung open her closet and pulled from it all the presents her mother had brought her from New York. She was about to take her scissors to them when a more pointed vengeance occurred to her. She rang for Hilde.

  Hilde Wilken was not often summoned by Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts, except to be told off. When she saw the pile of clothes on the floor and the fury on Louisa’s face, she started to cry.

  “No time for tears, Hilde.” Louisa intended to act before her passion cooled, in case she thought better of challenging her parents in this manner. She picked up the dresses. “These are for you.”

  “Pardon, miss?”

  “These are a gift for you.” Louisa attempted to inject warmth into her voice. She was not over fond of Hilde, whose timidity and lack of initiative annoyed her. She would much rather have given her clothes to Agneta Hemels, who had been an active collaborator in several memorable coiffures. “I wish you to have them,” she repeated, and in her tone was a note of command.

  “Yes, miss.” Hilde stopped crying.

  Louisa smiled. “You have been a good and loyal servant, and this is your reward. Come, let us find some shoes to match them.”

  Like Piet Barol, Egbert had dreamed of conquering his captors before his parents’ return from New York. Their sudden arrival was inhibiting. But the anxiety they brought with them was not. Egbert was used to being the failed member of a high-achieving family; for the first time it seemed that his parents and sisters had troubles of their own, and this gave him strength. So did Piet Barol’s deliberate provocation of the Shadowers, who retaliated only by instructing Egbert not to speak to him—and this was the first commandment he broke. The second was their punishment for this betrayal, which he refused to implement.

  He took two warm baths a day as a point of honor, and with each his determination grew. But he did not take the decisive step, and as the household’s confidence seeped back he began to worry that his captors would recover as his family was doing. Piet Barol, after all, was an outsider and a grown-up; perhaps he could flout the Shadowers’ decrees with impunity.

  Lying awake one morning, fretting in the dark, Egbert made up his mind to act. He got out of bed. He did not return to it a further six times. Neither did he dress and undress rep
eatedly. He splashed water on his face, put on his clothes, and bit his lip till he tasted blood. Then he went to his door and opened it. He ran down the stairs and arrived in the entrance hall just as the clock was striking five. The lamps by the front door were burning low and gave an encouraging glow. He paused, but he knew delay would undo him. Like a fugitive evading a distracted guard he ran down the hall, through the dining room, and opened the secret door.

  His great-aunt’s entrance hall floor loomed before him. He switched on a light. He had spent hundreds of hours navigating this treacherous terrain and remembered the shame of such journeys; then Piet Barol’s calm courage and his masters’ inability to punish it.

  He held his breath and ran.

  Hilde Wilken was aware that Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts had no great affection for her, and she did not trust her motives. Her first thought, on receiving Louisa’s gifts, was that she should spirit them from the house before they were countermanded. But where could she store such clothes? They would test the honesty of the truest friend and Hilde did not have any friends in Amsterdam. An afternoon off every fortnight did not leave her much time to make them. She decided, finally, to put her faith in the Baggage Store of the Central Station.

  The morning of Egbert’s bid for freedom, Hilde rose early too. As he was dressing, she was folding his sister’s clothes as tightly as she could and putting them into a sack. She could not carry a trunk unaided and had no money for a hired carriage. When she had laid the table for Maarten’s breakfast and set fires in his office, the kitchen, the drawing room and the dining room, she told Mr. Blok that Mrs. de Leeuw had an errand for her, and Mrs. de Leeuw that Mr. Blok had one; and in order to escape the prying eyes of the servants she left Herengracht 605 by the front door.

  Hilde was not used to sudden good fortune. She ran the whole way to the station, possessed by a superstitious certainty that something or someone would snatch it away. But nothing and no one did. She hired a locker and deposited her haul in it. She obtained a ticket and a receipt. If Mrs. Vermeulen-Sickerts demanded the return of her daughter’s possessions, she could now say she had sold them. She walked back to the Herengracht. Mist was rising from the canals and the cold inhibited their stench. It was a sparkling winter’s day. You may have found a husband, Agneta Hemels, she thought, but you’ve missed the chance of all this.

  Egbert reached the schoolroom. From the shadows came hysterical hissing. He silenced it by switching on the lights. He went to the piano. On the music stand was the edition of Chopin Piet had bought him, which opened like an invitation at the fourth ballade.

  The boy sat on the stool, resolved to play it come what may. His aunt’s piano had known less tedious masters than Egbert. As his hands stretched in the opening octaves, its strings quivered in recognition and joy. He had never heard the ballade before, but its opening soothed his fear and beckoned him from the Bach-like maze in which he had wandered for so long. The tune prepared him for adventure. When it slipped away only to return, embroidered as finely as any garment of Louisa’s, he had to search in the mass of notes to find it.

  Once grasped he did not let it go. His fingers went faster or slowed down as the music led him; he obeyed no regimenting discipline but began to delight in his skill. As the page filled with notes, he was astonished by what he could do—for the sound his hands and feet produced was one of transcendent beauty.

  When he had finished, he knew for the first time that there is value even in the darkest sorrow. He stood up. He went to the drawer in which his aunt’s front-door key was kept and removed it. Then he took his grandfather’s signet ring from its box and picked up his collected Bach. Without hesitation, he crossed the hall and let himself out onto the street.

  So many unusual things had happened to Hilde Wilken since the previous afternoon that the sight of Egbert Vermeulen-Sickerts throwing a music book and a gold ring into the water from the Utrechtsestraat was almost unremarkable. At first she barely registered what she was seeing. When she did, she hurried closer. The boy was standing on the bridge, his face shining in the morning light. Was he a ghost? She crossed herself and crept closer.

  “Good morning, Hilde.”

  “Good morning, Master Egbert.” Hilde was too astonished to curtsy. For the first time she was not afraid of this little boy.

  “It is a very pleasant morning, is it not?”

  “Indeed it is.” Hilde could not help herself; she leaned forward to touch him.

  “I am quite real, I assure you.”

  And this was confirmed by the warmth of Egbert’s skin.

  Hilde ran into the drawing room without knocking and spoke without curtsying. “Oh, madam! Master Egbert is outside!”

  “Whatever can you mean, Hilde?”

  “I have spoken to him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am certain, madam.”

  “Call my husband at once.” Jacobina went to fetch a cloak; then thought better of it and ran down the stairs.

  Maarten was in his office. It was now his habit to spend three hours each morning in prayer. At the tinkling of the silver bell he rose painfully. Hilde’s breathlessness annoyed him, but as he listened he saw that proof of his salvation had come at last. Finally he understood the purpose of his recent sufferings. By forcing him to renounce vanity, God had prepared him for a gift greater than riches returned: the glory of a son like other sons.

  He too ran down the stairs and into the street.

  Piet Barol had been searching halfheartedly for his pupil for an hour, and it was Didier Loubat who conveyed the extraordinary news. By now the entire household had learned it. This meant that when Egbert turned the corner of the Herengracht, the nine people who had witnessed his years of failure and confinement were there to celebrate his triumph.

  It was Mr. Blok who sounded the first cheer, and Monsieur la Chaume who lustily seconded it. Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts began to run. He had not run for many years and it was fortunate that his son was not very far away. He reached him a moment after Jacobina did and picked him up and embraced him. Then he burst into tears, not caring a damn who saw.

  Egbert completed the journey to his home smiling shyly, but inside he felt like a hero. He was ravenous with hunger and consumed an enormous breakfast. When it was finished a delicious heaviness stole over him, quite unlike the exhaustion that had succeeded his journeys across his great-aunt’s entrance hall floor. With his head against his father’s shoulder he fell into a deep doze at the dining room table.

  “Let him sleep as long as he likes,” said Piet, with the authority of a staretz. “When he wakes, he will be cured.”

  Egbert did not wake until midmorning of the following day, and when he did his father took him out and bought him half the contents of a toy shop. They returned from this expedition in great good humor and had an excellent lunch. As soon as it was over, Maarten went to his office and called for Piet Barol.

  “Mr. Barol!” He leaped to his feet and embraced him. He had not been so excited since the day of Egbert’s birth. “You have achieved what I had begun to fear was impossible. How ever did you manage it?”

  “The credit is Egbert’s alone, sir.”

  “Don’t be so devilish modest. Sit down and tell me all about it.”

  Piet sat, but he had already decided to preserve his pupil’s confidence. “All that was wanted was patience and sympathy and”—with sudden inspiration—“prayer.” He inclined his head. “The Lord God Almighty has intervened here.”

  This was exactly the right thing to say. In a locked drawer of his desk Maarten had a large gift of money for Piet Barol, but the young fellow’s piety demanded greater recognition. He glanced around his office and his eye fell on the miniature of the man on a tightrope. He hesitated. It was the jewel of his silver collection, worth twice what he had paid for it to say nothing of the luck it had brought him over twenty years. “My dear man.” He pressed it into Piet’s open hand. “You have given me back my son. I should like you to hav
e this. And this.” He unlocked the drawer and took out an envelope promisingly swollen with cash. “Let me say that should you wish to work for me in a more dignified, better remunerated position than the one you currently occupy, you need only say the word.”

  Piet had expected a bonus. He had not imagined it would be accompanied by a life-changing offer. He looked at the money and the miniature in his lap. They represented freedom, the capital to make his own way. They were what he had come to Amsterdam to seek. A job with Maarten would mean more of a life he had already glimpsed. And then there was the question of Jacobina … It seemed that the opportunity had arisen to exit with honor from the Vermeulen-Sickerts’ lives and he was minded to take it.

  “I am grateful for this gift and for your confidence, sir,” he said, finally. “But for the moment I am very happy as Egbert’s tutor, and after that I wish to work for myself, and no other man.”

  Maarten clapped him on the back. “If that is your answer, I shall not dissuade you from it. The best strike out on their own. When the moment comes, you must go into the world and make your fortune as I did.”

  “That is my intention.”

  “And an admirable one. Keep that man on a tightrope ever beside you. He will protect you from harm.”

  “I shall treasure him.”

  The next day was a Saturday. Didier had one good suit of his own and Piet loaned him an Hermès tie and a set of studs and squeezed his large feet into a pair of Maarten’s discarded shoes. He was not superstitious and had no intention of keeping the miniature Maarten had given him, but he knew that guile—and a guileful accomplice—would be required to realize its full value.

  They left the house looking like gentlemen of good family and ample means and exploited this impression at three of the city’s leading silver galleries. Piet had watched many young men in Leiden liquidate their possessions and knew better than to appear at all anxious for money. He also knew that good prices are paid only to those with the confidence to decline bad ones. He had no idea what the thing was worth so he decided that no sum would tempt him to sell to the first two buyers. This allowed him to bluster convincingly with the third.