The Streetbird

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  The commissaris picked a leaf. "I'm sure this is wolfs claw. Contains poison, I believe."

  "That's what he gave me to put on that fellow's coat."

  "The man who wanted to abuse you?"

  "Yes, the fellow who never came back."

  The commissaris touched the plant's stem with his cane. "Ah, I remember now. My wife was saying that I should pull it out because it destroys love. I made a joke about it, said that she should put it in my bath, to be rid of all the trouble I cause her."

  "Do you often tease your wife?"

  "Only when she nags."

  Nellie turned away. "I wish I could nag at Henk, but I don't dare to whine. If I do, he might never come back again."

  The tip of the commissaris' cane shot up. "What's that squeaking?"

  "Opete does that. He lives behind the bushes over there. Do you want to see him?"

  The commissaris was hardly surprised. Neither was the vulture. The bird was perched on a stick, stuck through holes in the sides of a crate. It leaned forward.

  "He's quite tame," Nellie said. "Right? Opete?"

  The bird squeaked.

  "Does he ever get locked up?" the commissaris asked.

  "No, but he can't get out in winter because then the roof is closed. He doesn't mind that, I think. It'll be too cold for him then."

  "I thought vultures were much larger," the commissaris said to the bird. "I mistook you for a crow at first when I saw you this morning, and it's your fault that I'm not in Austria now. A black vulture flying above a black corpse in my own Olofsalley is too much. Do you know that you're an unsuitable apparition?"

  The bird bent its head sideways and moved its claws on the stick.

  "Poor thing," Nellie said. "You don't like to be scolded, do you?" She ran off and came back holding a bit of meat. "Steak. Not too much, because the price has gone up again."

  The vulture took the meat carefully from her fingers and closed its eyes while it swallowed. The commissaris grinned. "Wherever did Uncle Wisi find him?"

  "Under Luku Obrian's armpit," a dry voice said behind him. "Incubated in a Jumbo he was, but born here."

  The commissaris turned his head. "Uncle Wisi," Nellie said. "I hope you don't mind that we're here. The, eh, Uncle Jan is staying with me and he wanted to meet you, but you weren't home."

  Sunlight reflected in the beads of the old man's headgear. He put out his hand. "Hello, opo."

  The commissaris felt the bones in Uncle Wisi's hand, covered by brittle skin. "They call me Uncle Jan."

  "Opo," the black man said. "That's what / call you. Opo makes tapu, but you don't speak my language."

  "No," the commissaris said. "And I don't know your country, either, which is a pity. You have a lovely garden, sir."

  The vulture hopped out of its crate and walked, wings spread, to Nellie. Its beak touched her skirt.

  "Don't beg, Opete," Uncle Wisi said. He put a finger under the bald little head and pushed it up. "Do try to behave, even if you're called a streetbird in Surinam."

  Nellie stroked Opete's wing. "Because they keep the streets clean, isn't that right, Uncle Wisi?"

  "In the cities?" the commissaris asked. "We should import a few thousand. They would do a better job than the sanitation lads we employ now."

  Uncle Wisi laughed. Strong even teeth gleamed between his thin lips. He touched the commissaris' cane. "Are you lame, opo?"

  "Rheumatism," the commissaris said. He touched his hip. Uncle Wisi's hand brushed over the indicated spot. The wide eyes above his thin curved nose closed.

  "They had you in jail, opo?"

  "Yes," the commissaris said.

  Uncle Wisi's eyelids fluttered. He shook his head. "Opo in jail. They had me too, but too long, and my cell wasn't flooded. Jews and niggers, the caps and boots didn't care for our sorts. But you had a cap too." His eyes opened fully. "And you still have one."

  The commissaris' cane ground in the gravel of the path while he looked into Uncle Wisi's dark pupils, floating in deep ponds of bloodshot white.

  "Yes?" Uncle Wisi asked.

  "Of course not," Nellie said. "Uncle Jan doesn't wear a cap. He's got a hat, a nice old-fashioned hat with a wide brim."

  "Did you once live on a houseboat?" the commissaris asked. "I think I remember you. You kept animals. A donkey, wasn't it? And a wolf?"

  "Only a fox, but the German soldiers shot it because he bit them when they picked me up. But they weren't clever, those Germans. Didn't pay attention, so I could escape from their jail."

  "A while ago, sir. How old are you now?"

  "There's no figure," Uncle Wisi said. "My mother couldn't count too well. But I'm older than you, much older. You're too young to use that cane. Cup of tea, opo? What about you, Nellie?"

  "No, thank you," Nellie said. "I have to do some cooking. I'm sure Uncle Jan would love some tea."

  She left, half-running. Uncle Wisi grinned. "You can still get away, opo."

  The commissaris had to make an effort to face Uncle Wisi. He smiled halfheartedly. "No, I'll stay."

  Uncle Wisi turned and led the way. "That's good, we do have to make firm decisions at times. But I don't think I'll give you tea after all." He cackled. "Too weak for the likes of us. Don't you agree?"

  \\ 10 ////

  "This is hardly a place for friends to meet," Jacobs said, looking at the clock above his desk. "It's about closing time. I think I can lock up and leave the dead alone. The sun must be out. What do you think about joining a live crowd on a terrace?"

  "Sure," de Gier said. "And some cold genever. No, perhaps not. Iced coffee rather."

  "Are we walking?" Jacobs asked. "I think I've walked enough in my life. What about my bicycle?"

  "You ride, I run?"

  "On the baggage carrier," Jacobs suggested.

  "Of course," de Gier said. "It can be done even if I haven't done it in years." He pointed at Jacobs' trouser legs. "Is that why you wear those clasps, so that your trousers won't get into the chain? Ever heard of a chain guard?"

  "I live in other times."

  "You certainly do," de Gier said, pulling at the baggage carrier. "You sure this thing won't break?"

  "Sit down. I have a respectable bicycle that doesn't fail. About as efficient as my body. I shouldn't really have my body anymore. Hey!"

  A little black boy roller-skated across the cycle's path. Jacobs braked, the cycle veered to the left and almost hit a passing streetcar. De Gier shook his fist at the boy. The boy stuck out his tongue.

  "Nasty little boy," de Gier said.

  "Why?" Jacobs asked.

  "Because he doesn't look where he's going and sets up dangerous situations for others."

  Jacobs looked over his shoulder. "Come off it. Don't you read the papers? I wouldn't be surprised if that was the little boy featured in the article. That boy was black too, rollerskating along the sidewalk. Zheefzhaf, not a care in the world. He should have a care, of course, since the sidewalk is for pedestrians, but a Turk was mugging a lady on the same sidewalk, grabbing her bag and hitting the poor thing in the face, which wasn't so nice either."

  "I read that," de Gier said. "And the boy roller-skated on, following the terrible Turk until a patrol car showed up, whereupon our boy performed some crafty antics, right in front of the cops, who tried to run him down so that they could beat him up, but he told them all about the Turk and the cops caught the mugger instead. A good little boy. A commissaris shook his hand and he would have gotten his portrait in the paper if he hadn't been worried about running into the Turk again."

  "What'll you have?" de Gier asked when he leaned back in the easy chair next to Jacobs.

  "A double genever."

  "Two?" the waiter asked.

  "No, no. Iced coffee for me. I say, Jacobs ..."

  "You're really going to ask me now?"

  "I think I will," de Gier said. "When the adjutant and I were visiting your cozy establishment earlier on, you said something that I didn't quite follow. You said: '
When you,' you being me and the adjutant, 'caught them,' them being black fellows, 'in the jungle and put them in ships, and chained them in the holds . . . ' You did say that, didn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "But I," de Gier said, sipping from his glass, "have never in my life, and neither has the adjutant I'm sure, caught no black fellow in no jungle."

  "And you didn't drag me from my bed either?" Jacobs asked. "In the spring of 1942, on a day about as bright as now? And you didn't kick me into a boxcar and bang the sliding door on my hand so that my finger got squashed? This finger? Isn't much left of it now, right?"

  "Right," de Gier said.

  Jacobs grinned. "Funny, trying to show something that isn't there. I amputated it myself, with a piece of broken glass, in the camp. It got too smelly and it throbbed all the time."

  "In 19421 was rather little," de Gier said. "Filling diapers, if I can believe my mother."

  "I filled my pants when your colleagues arrested me."

  De Gier put down his glass. "Amsterdam cops caught you?" "That's correct," Jacobs said. "The SS was busy, so the local cops helped out. They didn't like Jews either. And those black slaves were sold by Amsterdam merchants. Their portraits are in the Rijksmuseum now, and one of them looks just like you. Same mustache and large innocent eyes. Fat lower lip. A trader with the West, his ships carried slaves there and came back with sugar, harvested by slaves. A most profitable merry-goround. How do you think the splendid inner city of Amsterdam was financed?"

  De Gier didn't answer.

  "Never occurred to you where all that money came from?"

  "My father was shot in Rotterdam," de Gier said. "He was coming back from his office and the underground army shot a German, so the other Germans arrested the first ten male citizens who happened to come along and put them against a wall."

  "I know," Jacobs said. "I tend to simplify. The real thing is impossibly complicated. I sometimes think that it's people that are no good. Not this or that people, but all of us. Maybe we're a mistake and shouldn't be here at all."

  "I still dislike Germans," de Gier said, "but there are occasions that I can help them out and I always do."

  "And blacks?"

  De Gier choked on his coffee. Jacobs patted his back. De Gier put his glass down again. "Blacks?"

  "Blacks."

  De Gier shrugged. "I think I rather like them. They look good to me. Smart color, snappy dressers. I think I'm glad they've come. A contrasting color improves the general picture."

  "And all the crime?"

  "Well?"

  "You don't mind?"

  "No crime," de Gier said, "no cops. I'm a cop. Besides, it's understandable, don't you think? They fly from one way of life to another, in a matter of hours. Bit of a change. Got to adjust. It'll probably take a few generations until their bad percentage equals ours. By that time there'll be something else. There's always something wrong."

  Jacobs raised his hand. "Waiter? The same."

  "Too much genever makes you drunk," de Gier said.

  Jacobs raised his glass. "That's very true. Your health, sergeant."

  De Gier drank more coffee. "Another question. You said Luku Obrian 'was not a good corpse.' Remember you said that?"

  Jacobs stopped sipping. "I remember that too."

  "You knew him?"

  "Yes, since they put him in my care."

  "Not when he was alive?"

  "I'd seen Obrian," Jacobs said. "In the street. I live in the quarter too."

  "Listen," de Gier said. "You and I have worked together before and your ideas have been helpful to me. Last year you looked after a certain Boronski."

  Jacobs frowned. "Let me think. So many corpses. Boronski. Okay, I've got him, nice-looking but evil inside."

  "His corpse bothered you," De Gier said. "That's what you were telling me at the time, and you had to protect yourself by manufacturing a shield, a transparent egg that you formed around your body. So that Boronski's spook couldn't annoy you."

  Jacobs nodded. "I always do that when they try to get at me."

  De Gier grinned. "A good trick. Use it myself sometimes, not with the dead but with the living. In a streetcar, for instance, or in the canteen."

  Jacobs shook his head a few times. He sighed. "The alcohol is working. I need more genever now than I used to. Not that I get drunk all the time, but it does help once in a while. You mentioned Obrian. What exactly do you want to know?"

  "Everything. Why was he killed? Know your corpse and you'll know your killer. But my trouble is that I never knew Obrian. I saw his corpse, but I'm not as sensitive as you are. I do know that he was a pimp and able to push people around, by hypnotic power probably. I saw his house, and his altar."

  "Altar?" Jacobs asked.

  De Gier's gesturing hands re-created the trestle table. "Loaded with the unusual. Bones. Christ in a straw skirt. Fluids in bottles, weird perfumes like you smell in the street market where the blacks buy their herbs. He had been burning incense, too."

  "I read his form," Jacobs said. "Louis alias Luku Obrian. Luku was his nickname, and I know what the word means. I rent a room in a house where blacks live. I've been listening to their folklore. A lukuman knows tricks. Sometimes they can foretell the future."

  De Gier rolled a cigarette. "Not Obrian. If he could have foreseen what was coming, he wouldn't have carried on the way he did. He kept bothering his competition until they bothered him."

  "With a Schmeisser."

  "Right."

  "Good weapon," Jacobs said, accepting a fresh drink from the waiter. "A neutral weapon, too. The Germans created it, but it shot the SS too. I saw that after the liberation. It all depends whose finger is on the trigger. The blacks who live in the house where I stay are frightened of wisi, for that's their word for evil and they pray to opo, which is the opposite, but the power is the same. It all depends on how you use it. You know..."

  Jacobs drank.

  "What?" de Gier asked.

  "Bah," Jacobs said. "Genever tastes great, but only for a while, or have they put me on another brand now?"

  "Wisi and opo."

  "Yes. The power being neutral in essence. I knew an SS soldier in Dachau who called his Schmeisser mein Halt. Meaning that he could stop anyone by pointing its ugly snout. When we took the weapon away, he was just as scared as anybody else. I call my Schmeisser my friend."

  "You do?"

  "Waiter?"

  The waiter came. "One more," Jacobs said. "A single this time, and more coffee for my mate."

  "Where is this Schmeisser of yours?"

  "At home."

  "And how did you get it?"

  "Took it with me from Dachau. Belonged to the soldier I mentioned. We got it away from him, and while the others bashed his head in with bricks, I took the Schmeisser and I hid it in my gear. It neutralized my fear."

  "Fear," de Gier said.

  "Doesn't go away." Jacobs grabbed his glass. "Whenever I wake up at night, I think it's them, at the door. Then I reach for my friend."

  "And you put your friend down again."

  "I do. I used it as tapu, as a means to protect. Tapu is the means, opo the power behind the means."

  "Say that again?" De Gier asked.

  Jacobs' emaciated features had softened. His skullcap was stuck to his thin gray hair. He crossed his legs; sunlight shone in the nickel-plated bicycle clasps. "Black terms," Jacobs said. "Invoked by having Obrian's body in the morgue. Not a good man, that fellow you have delivered to me. An angry man who hisses his rage. If I'm not careful, the dead get into me and I think their thoughts. You have to learn how to deal with the yorka, but I learn slowly."

  "Another black word?"

  "Pitch black. The yorka is the spook, the soul, the spirit who has lost its body but still yearns for it."

  De Gier memorized the words. "Wisi," he mumbled. "Tapu. Opo. Yorka."

  "They took the words with them," Jacobs said. "From the African west coast to the South American east coast, and no
w to here. They're strong words and sustain wandering minds. I have my own words. My people traveled too. Where haven't we been? Two thousand years in the desert, to Armenia, to Poland, to Danzig, to here, to Germany again, Amsterdam again, but always Jewish, one life after another, on and on, carrying our magic."

  "I wonder if I have any," de Gier said.

  "You do, but you don't need it as much as the minorities." Jacobs pointed at himself. "A magical Jew with a magical Schmeisser to shoot at the magical SS to prevent them taking me to hell." He got up.

  "You're leaving?"

  "I have to perform more ritual. Wet the spiritual wall with my essential fluid. Be right back."

  Jacobs stumbled when he returned, holding on to chairs and guests. The waiter brought the bill. "I do believe your friend is somewhat tipsy, sir."

  "Hardly surprising." De Gier paid. "I'll take him home."

  Jacobs sang children's songs in the taxi, softly so as not to irritate the driver. "Hop hop horseman," Jacobs sang. "When you fall you cry." His elbow touched de Gier's side. "Which is dumb, sergeant. To fall is fine, but we shouldn't be too noisy about it."

  "That's absolutely correct," de Gier said. "Here we are, driver. You do live about here, don't you, Jacobs?"

  Jacobs peered out of the car's window. "Let's see, now. Yes, I believe these houses are known to me. If this is where Straight-Tree-Ditch and Bent-Tree-Ditch meet, then I do live here."

  Jacobs staggered away while de Gier put a note into the driver's hand. He got out. "Wait for me, I'll see you home."

  Jacobs lay on his bed, in a room that, apart from the old-fashioned iron bed, contained no more than a wobbly table, a chair, and a cupboard. He covered an eye with his hand and tried to look at de Gier. "Coffee, sergeant? There's some powder in the cupboard. The kitchen is downstairs."

  "No," de Gier said, "but I would like to have a look at that Schmeisser of yours."

  "Just a minute." Jacobs managed to get off the bed and crawled about on the floor. He tried to pry up a board but his finger missed the crack. De Gier knelt next to him. "Let's see if I can do that." The board veered up.

  "There it is," Jacobs said, and fell back on his bed.