Saving Charlotte

by Pia de Jong

  PIA DE JONG

  Saving

  Charlotte

  A Mother and

  the Power of Intuition

  Translated by Pia de Jong

  and Landon Y. Jones

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

  Independent Publishers Since 1923

  New York / London

  Amsterdam, 1995

  The brick house at the corner where a narrow alley runs into the broad canal stands apart from the others. The walls are thicker, the stones darker, the windows smaller. The gable is reminiscent of battlements in medieval castles. A stone above the doorway is gracefully engraved 1632.

  As Robbert and I wait for the landlord, the blue sky turns dark gray and it begins to rain. The drizzle soon becomes a downpour. Bucket after bucket is emptied on our heads. Just as we are about to run for shelter, a big man with an open shirt and bristling chest hair walks up to us. He holds a ring full of rattling keys. Slowly he opens the three locks in the thick door, one by one. “Welcome,” he says drily, as we almost knock him over to get inside.

  We shake ourselves off on the ragged doormat. I wipe wisps of hair off my cheeks and lick raindrops from my lips. They taste like town. Earthy, loamy, with a touch of sweetness and a hint of decay.

  The man leads us with firm steps over uneven marble tiles through an unusually tall foyer. At the end he opens a door with peeling green paint. Stopped at the doorway, we peer into a black hole. As my eyes get used to the gloom, a high ceiling lined with wooden beams emerges. Bare, off-white walls, scuffed parquet, and a plastered-up fireplace. The musty smells gather in my mouth and throat, making me cough.

  “Well, this is it,” the man says with a wry smile. He picks up a rusty screw from the tiles, rolls it between his thick fingers, and puts it in the pocket of his low-hanging corduroys. “Go ahead, look around while I do a few errands. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

  When the door closes behind him, we walk ahead, hesitantly. Mice scamper back and forth behind the battens. Their scratching claws remind me of fingernails on a blackboard. Our clothes dripping, Robbert and I stare at each other in disbelief. We look like children dropped off by their parents in an unfamiliar place without any explanation.

  Where did the two of us end up? What is this house about, this quirky, unkempt place with a mind of its own, which makes no effort whatsoever to help us feel comfortable? The question is not whether we want this house but whether this house wants us.

  Through a high window we look out onto the wide canal, its limpid water muddied by the rain. On the far side, children skip down the cobblestone street. More kids, tumbling over one another, erupt from a building that must be an elementary school. Their laughter sounds through the brick walls. Mothers in colorful raincoats huddle together under a few umbrellas, waiting for their children to find them. Then the door of the house directly across the canal from us squeaks open. A fragile old man with a serene face stands tall in the doorway. He peers quietly over the water, as if expecting an old friend from years ago.

  Robbert takes my hand and leads me to a side window overlooking the alley. Just a few meters away, on a barstool behind the window of the house opposite us, sits a blond girl in a pink lace bra and faded blue jeans. Scarlet lipstick, a fair face with some scattered freckles. Her skinny shoulders shimmy to music that must be coming from her metallic headphones. How young she is. Eighteen at the most.

  A sports car with three teenage boys screeches to a halt in front of her door. The driver, clad in a black leather jacket, honks and rolls down a window, snickering. Another boy, with slickly combed hair, pokes his head through the window and shouts, “How much?” Then they laugh in her face.

  The girl sniffs and looks the other way, annoyed. The honking goes on. The door to the house next to what is apparently a brothel is flung open and a bearded man in a pale purple bathrobe rushes into the alley. “Drive on, you idiots!” he shouts in an exceptionally piercing tenor. His thick, curly hair stands in all directions. When he starts to pull his gray beard, one of the boys points at him, laughing raucously.

  “Get out of here!” shouts the man, who stoops to pick up a jagged rock from the pavement and raises it by his ear. When he pretends to throw it, the boy at the car window ducks. The girl rolls her eyes as the car lurches away.

  Robbert and I look at each other, petrified. Where are we? What kind of neighborhood is this?

  The alley is not wide; we can almost touch the girl, who is now angrily reapplying her lipstick. Back and forth the tube paints her full lips a glistening scarlet. I lick mine, which are dry and chapped.

  Just then a dapper man of about sixty strolls up the alley and, without a moment’s hesitation, walks into the girl’s place. As if expecting him, she takes his coat, then his plaid umbrella. She smiles when he squeezes her shoulder. They chat a bit. All this happens with the disconcerting familiarity of a married couple. As she is about to pull the window curtain closed, she looks at me across the alley, unblinking. Her eyes are Delft blue. Our sudden intimacy makes me uncomfortable. She pauses for a second, glancing over me, then draws the curtain with a jerk.

  I squeeze Robbert’s hand. We’re in our early thirties, looking for a place to start a family. On paper this seemed the ideal home. Roomy, with a touch of romance, as it was described in the real estate agent’s listings booklet. This is a far cry from what we envisioned.

  But we have not seen everything yet; there is more to discover. There is an attic, filled with cooing pigeons. On the floor below, a space that could work as a study and a spare bedroom. On the second floor we find a small but lovely nursery—exactly what we hope to need soon. Next to it is the master bedroom. Through one of the several windows I look again down the alley, now strangely serene. The girl’s curtain is still closed. I try not to think about her and the man, at least three times her age, inside the brothel.

  “Fancy address,” I say with a half-laugh. “Remember what the booklet said? ‘House full of character in the old quarter.’”

  Robbert looks around the room. “Can you imagine our queen-sized bed here?” he asks, stretching his tall body out on the dusty plank floor. I hesitate a second, but then lie down beside him. Above our heads dangles a single cobweb on a long thread. I sneeze, six times in a row.

  On the other side of our bedroom wall I hear a record playing. A female voice is singing an aria, as powerfully as if her life depends on it. She sings about despair, love that hurts, and anger. I know this voice from the recording my father used to listen to. Maria Callas, singing “Casta Diva” from Norma.

  I jump up when I hear the door of the brothel opening. The girl lets the dapper man out. They no longer talk, or even say goodbye. Everything is said and done. She strolls back into her hallway, fiddling with the strap of her bra. Then she goes to the window and raises her arms up above her head. When she stretches, I see her ribs and realize just how thin she is. There is a vulnerability to her that appeals to me as much as it puts me off.

  “What do you think of this place?” asks Robbert. “Are we going to live here?”

  Just then a clap of thunder. Upstairs in the attic a hatch rattles. Pigeons flutter and coo hysterically. I take a deep breath.

  Through a cloudburst in the gray sky, I see a glimpse of our still-hidden future. Our familiar bed in this room. Clothes casually thrown over a chair, socks scattered on the floor, sweaty sneakers kicked off by Robbert after his daily run. It’s Sunday morning. Kids rush inside wearing flannel pajamas. Their high voices, fighting to be heard, fill the room. They jump as high as they can on the mattress, as if it were a trampoline, and let themselves fall over on us. Boys who look like Robbert, girls who look like me. We tickle them, all of us laughing, until we gasp for breath.

 
“Well, yes,” I say with a confidence that arrives out of nowhere. “Let’s live here. This house is ours—it belongs to us.”

  And so the following month, on a single afternoon Robbert and I move our meager belongings into this headstrong house on one of the Amsterdam canals, the stately Herengracht.

  All day and all night the hookers attract men. Gentlemen with leather briefcases shuffling along the alley with an air of entitlement. Athletic types with backpacks. Men in sneakers, slippers, expensive Italian shoes. Cars full of daring teenagers. Different women work in this brothel. Bored girls with their mouths turned down, chesty women in their forties, skinny junkies with vacant stares. I would not recognize any of them if I ran into them around Dam Square. But the face of the blue-eyed blond girl with the scarlet lips is etched in my mind. She also attracts far more men than all the others combined. She must be made of honey.

  It seems that every time I go out I bump into the man who lives across the alley, whose bathrobe gets more and more worn over time. When I greet him, he looks at me with a certain contempt and never greets me back. He still rushes out whenever there is an unruly crowd in the alley. He then angrily threatens to throw that same rock on the sidewalk, or to call the police. Every so often the police do arrive, and they always take the side of the girls. They want them to be able to work undisturbed.

  Opera music continues to pour into our bedroom, now strewn with clothes and running shoes. The music never annoys me. To the contrary, I am touched by these women’s voices that tell stories of love and longing. I know my neighbor’s repertoire by heart. Callas is his favorite and now also mine. Sometimes we run into one another. He is an older gentleman who dresses with care: suede shoes, neatly pressed pants, and a woolen jacket. He always politely tips his jaunty hat. Apart from these two neighbors and the ever-changing army of hookers, I do not know anyone here.

  Robbert is usually lost in his thoughts about the origins of the universe. On blackboards, on endless piles of double-sided notebooks, on the back of grocery lists, he writes his formulas, in which he attempts to grasp the secrets of the smallest particles and the biggest planets. I do not understand the x’s and y’s and the mysterious diagrams made of lines and circles, but my imagination runs in all directions with the stories he tells me in the dark when we both lie awake. About the birth of a baby universe. About black holes that swallow everything. About infinity, which is grander and bigger, more spacious and more silent, than I can even begin to imagine.

  Every morning I stuff documents into my oversized briefcase and hurry out the door. Along the way, behind the wheel of my fancy leased car, I comb my hair, fix my makeup, and eat some breakfast. The title Senior Management Consultant is stamped on my glossy business card. I visit companies, analyze business processes, and write detailed reports that I present to their boards of directors. In the evenings I teach management courses in expensive conference centers. Sleeping alone in impersonal hotel rooms with paintings of unfamiliar landscapes on their walls, I often feel lost. When I do get home, it’s usually after hours, when Robbert is already asleep. Exhausted, I fall into bed immediately. Many of my nights are filled with colorless dreams. In most of them I walk through a maze, looking for an exit.

  Frequently I wonder about my work. I am very adroit at pretending to know the solution to other people’s problems. I have learned how to bluff my way into and out of any given situation. I love the applause after my presentations, the compliments I get in the corridor. I savor the audience’s hunger for more: more analysis, more business vocabulary, more pithy one-liners to nail down their situation. But secretly I am afraid that people will someday find out it is all a pose, that I am really an impostor.

  We have now lived in the quirky corner house for more than five years. It continues to treat us as if we are unwelcome strangers, wondering why on earth we chose this exact place to live our lives. Children have not yet arrived. It is still only the two of us.

  One night, well past ten, I drive home way too fast. Hans and I have just finished a training course on negotiating. Hans is fifteen years older than I am and my favorite colleague. He behaves in a fatherly way to me, with a hint of flirtatiousness. Our heads were filled with negotiating strategies designed to achieve the best possible outcome. As so often, I was the only woman in the room full of male managers. After lunch, in the warm conference room, I noticed the men shamelessly gazing at my body. I am aware that they undress me in their minds, garment after garment, until I stand naked. Then they let their fantasies run wild. When I started my job, I used to feel aggravated and lonely when their eyes met mine. After a few years I got used to it, but the loneliness stayed.

  The sign says AMSTERDAM, 80 KILOMETERS. Normally that would take me an hour, but roadwork caused a traffic jam. While my car idles in neutral, I turn on the radio, trying not to fall asleep. Excited voices pile up on top of one another. I can’t figure out what they care about so much. I search through the stations until I hear a track from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. Music I loved to play when I was a student, alone in my dorm. I hum along to the sound of the trumpet, letting the jazz leak into my skin.

  At last the cars start moving again. By now it is completely dark. No moon, no stars. I wish to drive home as fast as I can, but first I have to get gas. When I turn off into a service station, I open the window to smell the gasoline. The pungent smell makes my mouth water. I like it so much I almost forget to refuel. For a split second I think about parking there and spending the night in my car.

  Inside, a man wearing a Route 66 T-shirt leaves the bathroom and walks past me. He tugs on his crotch, unashamed. I look sideways, trying to avoid his grin. At the counter of the diner a few bored truckers munch on greasy burgers. I am suddenly ravenous, wanting to finish all their plates and more. Behind the truckers, in the cooler, I notice a box of frozen kale. I want that kale, frozen or not.

  “Hi, missy,” one of the men says, leering, as I pull open the glass door. The sight of the fat dripping down his stubbly chin makes me want to throw up. All of a sudden the room starts to spin, making me dizzy. I try to hold on to the door handle but miss it. Everything turns black, and I fall into an infinite empty void. I don’t know how long I am out, but when I come to, I am being propped upright by the tattooed arm of one of the truckers.

  “A girl needs to eat,” he says, nodding at a burger in front of me. Still ravenous, I take a huge bite. “It’s on me, honey,” he says, squirting extra mustard on my burger. “You were lucky I caught you. Imagine I had not been there!” As I start to rise, he slides his hand up my thigh. I jump up and run back to my car.

  It is way past midnight when I finally park in front of my house. To my surprise, the blond girl steps outside the brothel and calls me. I have never seen her this close up. Despite the red lips and the black lines around her eyes, she looks strangely childlike.

  “You are having a baby,” she tells me bluntly. I am annoyed as well as astonished. How on earth would she know? I am just a few weeks late, a secret only Robbert shares.

  “Well?” she asks, cocking her head.

  I nod reluctantly.

  “You are pregnant!” She shouts so loudly I am afraid the whole neighborhood will hear. Robbert and I had planned to tell no one till I am at least three months on the way. “I saw it in your face,” she goes on. “That special look. I knew my sister was pregnant before she found out herself.” She pauses to lick her lips. “I’ve already started to knit a sweater for your little one,” she confides in a sisterly, chitchatty voice. “Want to see it?”

  It is far too early to think of baby clothes. I still have to get used to the idea that I will become a mother. And besides, I long for my bed. Desperately. But she looks at me so sweetly, her head tilted, that I find it impossible to say no.

  “Well, then, very quickly,” I say, and follow her inside. Suddenly I am in the middle of the brothel. I am not supposed to be in this place that is only for her and the men who pay for her services.


  A double bed stands in the middle of the room. Covering it is a smudged bedspread with a print of a half-dressed Marilyn Monroe, her back arched fetchingly. From the ceiling dangles a single light bulb on a cord. On the bedside table is a large package of condoms and a smaller pack of tissues. It is all so mundane, so unapologetically functional that I flinch.

  When I turn and look away, a man abruptly walks in, forcing me to step aside. “Hi, sweetheart,” he says to the girl.

  “Oh, there you are,” she says saucily. “It is Tuesday. I missed you already. Sorry, work,” she says to me with a shrug. “Some other time.”

  She slams the door behind me with a bang.

  “Step aside, now!” the forever angry man of the corner house barks at me. “Where are your eyes? For God’s sake, can’t you see I am walking my mother?”

  Today he wears not his familiar bathrobe but a lumberjack shirt that is way too tight. I wonder how he was even able to button up this shirt, which must have belonged to him since he was a skinny teenager, more than half a century ago. Below his ragged shorts his pale legs are spiderwebbed with veins. He and his aged mother are walking arm in arm, back and forth through the alley, in laps of about thirty meters. They look alike. Two combative types, with the same fierce glares and the same unruly, thick hair.

  “Een, twee, drie, vier,” he chants, beginning an old Dutch children’s song in his loud tenor. Soon he and his mother arrive in front of the window where the blond girl lures her customers with her lips, her body, her beckoning hands. This neighbor who scares away her clientele annoys her. Now a car wants to pass them, and the irritated driver begins to honk. Harder, louder, with growing impatience. My neighbor holds his mother’s arm all the more firmly, not changing his path for even a step. “En als het hoedje dan niet past, zet het in de glazenkast,” he bellows, his mom joining in with a frail soprano. As they move rhythmically forward, I am afraid the driver will lose control and hit the gas pedal.