* * *
—
DR. GALAVAZI’S HIGGLEDY-PIGGLEDY kitchen is spotless and daffodil yellow. “My wife’s in Maastricht, visiting her family.” The doctor ladles stew into Jasper’s bowl. He’s older, his throat is saggier, but his white hair still looks blown backward as if he’s facing a gale. “She’ll be sorry she missed you.”
“Pass on my compliments,” Jasper remembers to say.
The herby steam feels good on his cold skin.
“I shall. How are you finding London?”
“Labyrinthine.”
“We both find much to admire in your gramophone record. Naturally, ‘modern music’ to me means Poulenc or Britten, but if culture doesn’t evolve, it dies. I sent a copy to Claudette Dubois, too. She’s teaching in Lyon now. She’s ‘happy as Larry’—as the English say—about you and Utopia Avenue.”
“Pass on my compliments. Please.”
“I shall. Little did I know that when I let her test her newfangled ideas at Rijksdorp, we were hatching ‘the Dutch Jimi Hendrix.’ That’s what De Telegraaf’s calling you, and even I have heard of him. Bon appétit.”
Jasper’s taste buds investigate. Calf’s tongue, rosemary, cloves…“Were you expecting guests today, Doctor?”
The doctor breaks open a crusty roll. “Why do you ask?”
“The soup. You made enough to feed a rugby team.”
Dr. Galavazi’s lips twist. “It’s a fiddly old Jewish recipe of my mother’s. Collecting the ingredients is quite a quest, so I make a lot to justify the trouble. We have a refrigerator now. It’ll keep for a week. Also, I had a hunch—and hopes—that a former patient might drop by.” He has a certain look. Amusement?
Jasper hunts for clues: a former patient…“Me?”
The doctor sips his beer with pleasure. “Who else?”
“You must have many former patients.”
“Not many whose name is printed in giant letters outside the Paradiso. Not many perform on Fenklup, either.”
“At Rijksdorp, you used to say that television turns the human brain to cottage cheese.”
“For you, I made an exception. I imposed upon a neighbor. The program was idiotic, but you all played superbly, I thought. Identical to the gramophone.”
Jasper bites a soft butterbean. “On TV, we mime.”
“Is that so? My, my. More’s the pity Henk Teuling didn’t mime his interview. Have another bowl. It’s good to see you eat.”
* * *
—
THE PSYCHIATRIST SERVES green tea and lights his pipe in his book-lined study. These two aromas remind Jasper of Rijksdorp. Dr. Galavazi’s voice lulls. “Is this purely a social call, Jasper, or am I correct in thinking there’s a professional aspect to it, as well?”
“How retired are you, Doctor?”
“Us old shrinks never retire. We just vanish in a puff of theory.” He sips his tea. “Seeing you on my doorstep earlier, I guessed you were here to talk business.” The doctor sips his tea. “Was I wrong?”
Outside a cyclist in a hurry rings a frantic bell.
Say it. “I think I can hear him again.”
The doctor makes his thinking-growl. “Knock Knock? The Mongolian? Another?”
“You still remember my case.”
The doctor’s pipe smoke smells of chicory, peat, and pepper. “Disclosure: your case was good to my career. After Psychiatry Forum published my JZ paper, colleagues from Vancouver to Brasília, New York to Johannesburg contacted me with reports of the very same phenomenon: of patients with diagnoses of schizophrenia who reported visits by an entity who ameliorates the psychosis. Only last May we held a conference in Boston on ‘Autonomous Healer Personae’—AHPs. If my zeal seems vampiric, I apologize—but, yes, I remember the facts of your case very well.”
“If psychiatrists weren’t a little vampiric, psychiatry wouldn’t exist and I’d probably be dead.”
The doctor doesn’t deny this. “I’ll help in any way I can.”
Things cost money. “Thank you, but my grandfather is dead, and I’m not exactly on a steady wage, so—”
“There will be no fees. All I ask is that I can publish my findings.”
“It’s a deal.” Jasper guesses that a handshake is appropriate.
Dr. Galavazi smiles as he shakes Jasper’s hand, then reaches for his notepad. “So. How much time do we have now?”
“Our sound check at the Paradiso is at eight.”
The doctor’s clock says six fifty-five. “Just the basic facts for now, then. Why do you think Knock Knock is coming back?”
“I’ve heard him over the last few months. He’s still distant and it’s still faint, but he’s awake. I think I first heard him at a nightclub in London, about a year ago.”
Deep growl. “Were you on drugs at the nightclub?”
“An amphetamine. I saw him in a dream, too.”
“The monk in the mirror?”
“Yes.”
Another growl. “Perhaps it would be strange if you didn’t dream about such a traumatic figure in your life.”
“If…an invisible man moved into this house, Doctor, you couldn’t see him, but you’d sense him. I sense Knock Knock, here…” Jasper touches his temple. “It’s like it was at Ely, at Rijksdorp too, before the Mongolian. The Mongolian said I’d have five years. My five years are up.”
Dr. Galavazi’s biro is busy. Jasper thinks of Amy Boxer, who has been sleeping over in Dean’s room at Chetwynd Mews a lot since November. “Have you ever taken any hallucinogenic drugs?”
“No. I’ve heeded your warning.”
“Have you taken Queludrin or any antipsychotic drug?”
“No. I don’t have any. I haven’t approached a doctor. The British lock more people up than is generally known.”
Dr. Galavazi puffs his pipe. “What happened in this dream about Knock Knock?”
“It was like a film I was watching. A historical film, set a few centuries ago. I saw Knock Knock—a monk or abbot—being poisoned by some kind of governor…” Jasper gets his journal out of his satchel. “It’s on the first page. I’ve written down other dreams I thought were significant too. They’re dated.”
The psychiatrist takes the journal. Jasper guesses he looks pleased. “May I borrow this, and transcribe anything of interest?”
“Yes.”
He opens the first page. “An excellent habit.”
“My friend Formaggio says, ‘What isn’t carefully recorded is gossip and guesswork.’ ”
“He’s right. Are you still in touch?”
“Yes. He’s studying the brain at Oxford.”
“Remember me to him. He’s a smart boy. I take it you’ve heard nothing from the Mongolian since Knock Knock’s—what shall we call it?—‘reawakening.’ ”
“Correct. The Mongolian is long gone.”
“At Rijksdorp, you told me he was just passing through, like a ‘barefoot doctor.’ ”
“That’s correct.”
“And you still believe now…that he was real?”
The clock’s pendulum thinly sliced half a minute.
“Yes,” said Jasper. “I do. Unfortunately.”
“Why ‘unfortunately’?”
“If your theory is correct, and the Mongolian was a mental sheriff I created to lock up my psychosis, there’s hope I could do it again. But if I’m right, and the Mongolian was real and came to Rijksdorp by fluke, my prognosis is not good.”
Outside a woman shouts, “Watch where you’re going!”
“You must feel like a nightwatchman, Jasper, who knows only that danger is coming, not when or from which direction.”
“That’s not a bad simile.”
“Why, thank you.” Dr. Galavazi sips his green tea. “I’d like to read this”—he holds up t
he notebook—“review the facts, and conduct a fuller interview than we have time for this evening. For now, I’ll give you a prescription for Queludrin. Take it to a chemist before you return to England so that if a full relapse does occur you’ll have a little breathing space.”
Say “Thank you.” “Thank you.”
The psychiatrist thinks. “One thing more. In Boston, I met a psychologist based at Columbia University in New York. He’s an odd fellow, with unorthodox methods, to say the least. But I’ve come to respect him greatly. He’s curious about AHPs in general—and the patient JZ in particular. May I share tonight’s conversation with him?”
“Yes. What’s his name?”
“Dr. Yu Leon Marinus. He’s Chinese. To look at. But that’s not the whole story. Most people just call him Marinus for short.”
* * *
—
THE LONG SOLO in “Purple Flames” grows ever longer as Jasper finds a secret passage deep inside. The high roof, vaulted murk, arches, and windows evoke the Paradiso’s origins as a Nonconformist house of worship. Worship still happens here, thinks Jasper. Not of us four, but worship of music itself. Music frees the soul from the cage of the body. Music transforms the Many to a One. The Marshall stacks vibrate his skeleton. We touch something divine. His Stratocaster speaks of ecstasy and despair. We’re not gods, but we are channels for something that is godlike. Jasper could die here and now and not feel short-changed by life. He looks at Dean, who knows that the end is nigh. Jasper closes with a flashy bend of the top two strings and Dean rips into the final verse like a blowtorch. His vocals are twice as powerful as they were a year ago, in part thanks to Jack Bruce from Cream, who appeared backstage after their McGoo’s gig in Edinburgh and gave him some pointers about singing while playing bass. He has also taken some formal singing lessons and now has an extra half-octave at either end of his comfort zone. Elf is in no mood to be upstaged, and slams into a particularly pyrotechnic Hammond solo. Jasper wonders if Guus de Zoet or his half-brothers are out there in the Paradiso. Unlikely. Wouldn’t they have got in touch? Who knows? If normal people are difficult to read, the de Zoets are cryptic crosswords…
* * *
—
BACKSTAGE, JASPER LOSES the others in a merry-go-round of faces who appear to know him. Sam Verwey is one of the few he can name. “So, de Zoet. You left Amsterdam a nobody and come back a fully fledged pop star. My pupils think you’re God. When I tell them we used to busk together in Dam Square, they think I’m bullshitting them, so I’m taking this picture of us…Smile!” A flash explodes in Jasper’s eyes and brain.
“A triumph!” roars Big Smiler. “A coronation! An apotheosis!”
“Need any gear?” asks a pinstriped Mr. Toad. “ ’Shrooms, dope, Bennies, bombers? You name it, I got it.”
Big Smiler becomes Loud Laugher. “Why the hell have you stayed away for so long, eh? Amsterdam needs you…”
“They’ll be shitting cold puke now at De Zoet HQ,” remarks the Queen, who can’t possibly be on the balcony, smoking a doobie.
“Thijs Ogtrot from Hitweek,” says an undertaker’s face. “Is it true you spent two years at Rijksdorp asylum?”
From the balcony Jasper spots the Paradiso’s manager talking with Levon and Elf in the bar below. How do I get to them?
“So the question is, Jasper,” says Backslapper, “can your current management take you up to the next level?”
Jasper finds the wrong stairs. “His only friend was his guitar,” a teacher at the Conservatory explains. “His graduation piece was called ‘Who Shall I Say Is Calling?’ It dripped sound…”
“Coke, weed, Dexy, Purple Hearts,” murmurs Mr. Toad, by Jasper’s ear. “Satisfaction guaranteed. Ever tried acid?”
“Or will they be puking cold shit?” asks Queen Juliana. “The skeleton in the family cupboard—on Fenklup! Priceless!”
“You and I made love on Monday.” A woman’s painted her face like a Rorschach inkblot test. “Astrally. Yes. It was me.”
Jasper’s in the gents, washing his hands. He tells Miss Rorschach, “Perhaps it was Eric Clapton.”
“Now you’re famous,” begins Big Smiler, down in the bar, “all sorts of leeches’ll come crawling out of the woodwork…”
“Thijs Ogtrot from Hitweek,” says an undertaker’s face. “You wrote ‘Darkroom’ in the same acid session where John Lennon wrote ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.’ True or false?”
“…and they’ll want favors or money,” adds Big Smiler. “You’ll need to get better at saying ‘Rot op!’ ”
“The question is,” says Backslapper, “how long can a solo genius like Jasper de Zoet prosper in the confines of a band?”
“Who did you score off?” Mr. Toad’s face is knitted up. Anger. “Not a podgy little Belgian fuck with a quiff like Tintin?”
The Lecturer offers him a joint. “So, the dean wants you to give a lecture for Founders’ Day…”
“Bloody Nora.” Dean staggers up. “In the bogs just now was these two blokes snoggin’ ’n’ gropin’ each other! Uuuuuugh…”
“…about anything you like,” says the Lecturer. “ ‘Art, Love, and Death,’ ‘Dispatches from Soho,’ ‘Counterculture’…Do say yes.”
“Thijs Ogtrot from Hitweek,” says an undertaker’s face. “Your father wants you cut out of your grandfather’s will. True or false?”
“So all I need is five hundred guilders up front to pay for the studio,” says Big Smiler. “Cash is best.”
Jasper sees the Rorschach woman with her hand inside Griff’s shirt. “On Monday we made love astrally, but tonight…” she whispers in Griff’s ear, and burrows her hand downwards.
“Take your producer’s fee from future sales,” says Big Smiler. “Big bucks, guaranteed. What have you got to lose?”
* * *
—
THE MARCH NIGHT is coal gray, indigo, and starlit. The air is crisp and cool along Prinsengracht. Spring’s nearly here. A bicycle bell rings. Jasper steps out of the way: the cyclist leaves a low “Taak” as he passes. A song from long ago and a delicious whiff of bitternbollen fried meatballs leak from an amber-lit bar. Jasper pauses at the corner of Amstelveld and holds up his thumb to test the half-moon’s blade. It’s comfortable being an Amsterdammer again. The English distrust duality. They equate it with potential treachery. In the Netherlands, having a German, French, Belgian, or Danish parent is no big deal. The city’s bells begin their midnight round. Iron boom by bronze chime, stroke by stroke, the proud houses and the churches fade away. The conservatory and the poky room above the bakery in Raamstraat, where Jasper lodged for three years, vanish. Going, going, gone are the squalid brothels, shipping offices, and scruffy cafés; the venerable hotels, fussy restaurants, and concert halls; the Paradiso, the Rijksmuseum, and the ARPO studios; Dam Square, the shuttered-up souvenir shops, and the Anne Frank House; maternity wards and cemeteries; Vondelpark, its lake and chestnuts, lindens and birches, not yet in leaf; the city’s sleepers and the city’s insomniacs; even the bells in their towers that weave this impossible vanishing act melt out of reality until all that remains of Amsterdam’s ancient future is a brackish marsh, swept by gales, home only to eels and gulls, hut-dwellers with leaky boats and hungry dogs…
* * *
—
GRAFGRAVERSGRACHT IS AN oddity among Amsterdam’s waterways for being a cul-de-sac canal. Tourists blunder in only by accident in search of a shortcut to the zoo. Born-and-bred Amsterdammers have told Jasper to his face that no such canal exists—that its very name, “Gravediggers Canal,” is proof of a prank.
Yet here it is, complete with street sign, legible in the light of a half-moon. Its respectable residents are asleep, but at the far end, in the triangular attic window of 81 Grafgraversgracht, is a dab of sky blue. Jasper walks the length of the short canal to the door below the lamplit window. He presses the t
op bell to the rhythm of a Dutch nursery rhyme: “Boer wat zeg je van mijn kippen…” a pause, “…Boer wat zeg je van mijn haan?” Jasper waits.
Maybe she’s asleep and forgot to switch the lamp off.
Jasper waits. I’ll count to ten, then slip away…
Four floors above, the window opens. A key chimes on the cobbles. Jasper picks it up. It’s attached to a Superman key ring. Quiet as a burglar, he lets himself in and climbs up to the fourth story, past bicycles, cooking-gas cylinders, and a roll of old carpet. At his approach, the door at the very top opens…
* * *
—
THE ONE-BAR ELECTRIC fire is lava red. It bleeds into the light of the sky-blue lamp to make a purple glow. Helen Merrill’s muslin-and-silk voice is singing “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” on the record player. Trix stands in a furry bathrobe embroidered with Il Duca Hotel, Milano. Thirty, slender, a dash of Javanese, steamy from the bath, hair up. “Good heavens. It’s Mr. Platypus.”
“Can I come in?”
Trix lifts her eyebrows. “Lovely to see you too.”
I should have said hello. “Sorry. Hello. It’s lovely to see you.”
Trix stands aside and shuts the door behind him. “I was about to go to bed and cry myself to sleep. I thought your groupies must be feasting on the bones of my poor red fox.”
Jasper hangs his coat on the antlers. “Irony.”
“My, my, haven’t we gotten clever in London?”
Jasper slips off his boots. “Sarcasm?”
“Don’t get too good at normality.”
“There’s not much danger of that.”
Trix prepares two glasses of rum and ice.
The clock on the shelf says it’s five o’clock.
Jasper’s watch says it’s three minutes to midnight.
Utopia Avenue Page 34
