Good, Nadja had soon got up again to switch on the light and wash her face and tell her lightly that given her lack of genius she’d prefer to switch from piano to history. “Wait, take a look at this.” She had turned round to look for something.
A picture, a beautiful but terrible picture, torn out of a book and drawn by Rembrandt, of an eighteen-year-old girl, executed by strangulation by the City of Amsterdam for having killed her landlady by hitting her over the head with an axe. She and Nadja had looked together at the little body bound with ropes. The mood in the room was one of Crisis Over—Life Goes On. In a tone that sounded like an explanation of something, Nadja said, “One of the jurors at her trial before the sentence was carried out was named Blaauw.”
The doorbell rang. Armanda set down the basket with the rest of the laundry and went downstairs to open up. Jan Brouwer was on his morning walk.
“You need to get something done,” said the old man, right in the middle of the sidewalk, pointing up at the façade. The white climbing rose, which had come loose in yesterday’s bad weather along with its trellis, was hanging over forward, baring a house wall that needed replastering.
“I know, Father,” said Armanda, pressing a kiss onto the freshly shaved cheek. As she went back inside she made a mental note to call the builder that afternoon. Sjoerd and she had been apart for almost three and a half years now. Exterior work on the house had always been part of his responsibility.
Now for the letter! she thought, as she chatted to her father about the weather, now back to normal (warm; weak wind from the southwest, stronger along the coast). She glanced from the envelope on the table to her father, who simply by being there miraculously transformed whatever might be contained in the room into a moment of present calm: two cups of coffee, a bowl of cookies, and a great streak of sunlight across the floor that was targeting a male leg dressed in gray lightweight flannel. Months before, she and Nadja had had a conversation in which Nadja announced she was going to move in with a man in Bijlmer, a Surinamese, and there had been a big scene.
“There’s a letter from Nadja. Should I read it out?”
Oh, Grandpa Brouwer’s open, benevolent look! He settled himself comfortably, ready to hear how things were going with his beloved eldest grandchild.
Dear Mama,
It’s three in the morning. I’m sitting at the table wearing the winter coat he left behind, over my pajamas. I can’t sleep. You were right, I think, he’s left me. I didn’t know it, but the early morning bus trip last week through the Bijlmer was our good-bye. It looks absolutely awful there, Mama, unfinished apartment houses and otherwise nothing but sand, though at least you see corn poppies and stuff growing on it. He leaned over to me, all confidential. I’ll never say it out loud, he murmured in my ear, but the Netherlands are beautiful. I find the Netherlands beautiful. We were on our way to the University Hospital.
I was going along to keep him company, and then continuing on to my lecture. You know, or actually you don’t know, so I’m going to tell you, he’s a senior male nurse in Paramaribo, and came here for a specific time to work at the U.H. in the intensive care unit. For further training. How was I to know that the time was up?
So I’ve been absolutely flattened for the last six days, and I’ve done nothing but think about him, it’s unbearable but he’s still mine and he’s black as black can be. (Once we were walking down the Warmoesstraat when someone in a group of guys from the Antilles or Surinam yelled something at him, some curse word I couldn’t understand. Sranan, he said, when I asked him what sort of language it was in, and he burst out laughing when he told me what it meant: horribly black!) Once when we were in bed, I made some sentimental remark about this black/white contrast thing in our relationship. While I stuck out my leg ostentatiously and held it next to his, I was carrying on about “isn’t that beautiful” … and at the same time I was thinking secretly that blackness isn’t something external, it’s inside him, he lives in his blackness. And in the same moment I felt I was flying across hundreds of years of West Africa’s past, that I was sailing across the ocean in the blink of an eye, to land in Fort Zeelandia in Surinam, our colony of traders in coffee, cotton, sugar, and slaves in our fine Dutch seventeenth century, where our souls would meet.
That thoughts are thoughts and words are words is something you can figure out just by looking at the idiotic difference in the speed at which they move, you know? The only thing I said about all this wonderfulness was “isn’t that beautiful?” Nothing more. And Mama, the words were barely out of my mouth when I looked sideways and you know, he was absolutely furious. Suddenly I was looking at this man on the pillow and the sheets who was very angry, angry up to here, even his shoulders were rigid. Am I your first nigger? he asked.
I told you we first met on a sightseeing boat. It’s the best student job anyone can have. You stand with the microphone in your hand and your back to the captain, canals, bridges, to your right that’s a mug of coffee, and for the rest of it you simply tell whatever comes into your head. He was sitting right at the back. He looked from the merchants’ houses to me, from the drawbridges to me, from the whole labyrinth of waterways and water lanes that winds through old Amsterdam in all its alarmingly crumbling glory when seen from this side, and eventually empties into the IJ—-from all of that he looked at me to watch (or so I thought) the words coming out of my mouth. Next day he was sitting there again. By chance I was in really good form and babbled on about our great trading city, the jewel of our blessed little Republic, that once set the tone for the entire world economy: first, as I explained superenthusiastically, thanks to the Dutch sailors who so loved going to sea that they didn’t care about being paid; second, thanks to the windmills, such clever technical doodads that could be harnessed to saw wood, grind corn, pump out polders, you name it, they could do it; and third, I said briefly, because what did I know about this stuff, thanks to slavery. On the third day, when he looked at me, I looked back at him. And I could feel that he didn’t understand a word of my set text or even guess what any of it was about, he was just looking at my mouth.
Mama, have I ever told you that I almost never felt attracted to any of the boys at school, and I don’t really feel attracted to any of the guys in my study group at university either? Too much like pals or brothers. I never once felt my heart go thump! After our third trip on the Queen Juliana, he and I went into town, ate at a little table, and took the bus to the apartment he’d rented from friends for the duration of his stay in the Netherlands. Oh, I know, you just won’t get it. I was out of my mind with love. So where did my wedding night take place? In an apartment in a new block, with a fancy roofline that makes it look as if it’s standing up at an angle on the flat polder like a boat that’s sinking.
When he’d gone to sleep, I leaned over him. Is it true that the first thing you fall in love with is a face? But can that be something other than the eyes and the mouth? I think it was already quite clear to me as he lay there, sleeping sweetly, that he had an expression of his, you have to say it out loud in an earthy but friendly way, but that he really did try to reach for my face through my words. And I can visualize them, all in a row, the young guide’s words, out of which all you needed was some intelligence and goodwill and you could conjure a complete merchant fleet sailing laboriously against the wind, and the harbor of Hoorn in bad weather, and Amsterdam harbor half frozen in winter in the eighteenth century, and the storehouses, packed full of produce from the colonies, the churches, the grand houses on the canals with their blazing reception rooms and their women always standing at a window and reading a letter. Luxury, calm, and lots of tea, in mid-May you could watch all of Amsterdam boarding lighters to sail to the tea pavilions and summerhouses on the Vecht and all the way to Haarlem, returning in the fall. I mean it when I say that it was all streaming through me like a dancing river, and now through him as well.
Mama, something’s weighing on me. I think it’s dreadful, but one time I had a really hard tim
e suppressing a pang of pity for him. We were coming home after a late movie. Did I feel like having a late-night supper? He’s already pirouetting toward the kitchen. How about oysters? Of course. And he comes back with a glass full of vinegary pickled mussels, gray blobs of crap in a glass that he holds up like a trophy. My king of the primeval forest. Poor sweet guy. Then he puts a bottle of white wine on the table that’s been standing next to the heater for hours, switches on the main light, and goes to work with a corkscrew. At that moment I would have given anything not to have remembered that a few nights before, in the dark, he’d said to me: You touch the blackness in me. And how blissfully happy I’d been, and had thought: how great, there’s this naturalness between us, and we don’t know each other’s weaknesses, though they certainly exist, and we can just leave it alone, leave it alone! Oh Mama, don’t be surprised by this letter, it’s night, and I’m very alone, I was so captivated by this man!
At this point Armanda raised her head and met the eyes of her father. He was crushed, but still benevolent.
“Shall I pour us a quick cup of tea?” she asked gently, thinking of her father’s prudery, and how he was so stiff-necked in his rejection of all modern developments.
“Oh, finish dear Nadja’s letter.”
His voice, unsure as it always was when his feelings became confused without any prior warning, led her for a moment to her own love life. It was good that a lover was no longer called “lover” these days, but, more modestly, “friend.” Her father liked the disheveled mathematics teacher, one of her colleagues, whom she had brought with her to number 77 on several Sundays now.
“All right.” She picked up the sheets of paper again, hunted for a moment, then resumed her reading. “Now I must tell you something that you couldn’t know back then, but your rage probably picked up on already: he’s married back home.”
Without looking up, she saw her father stretch out his arms, and she knew how shocked he must be.
“Oh, my little one!”
She read out the rest of the letter.
· · ·
And I want to tell you, there’s something else, something strange, that I went through with him. There was a party in the garage in our apartment building. He asked if I was coming. This party was going to be a winti-pre’, an African idol celebration. Do you believe in them? I asked him straight out. He gave me a warning look. Believe? Do you mean believe? You don’t, do you? He began to laugh, poked me in the stomach with his finger, and went to the light switch to demonstrate something to me. Okay, the ceiling fixture in this room uses three bulbs, two of which are burned out, but I could see, couldn’t I, that the light switch itself was working. Don’t ask how … he said maliciously, already dragging me toward the elevator. Basement.
So where are the cars, I thought, as we entered the concrete cavern that took up the entire space under the building. Larger than ten churches. Entrance and exit ramps, pillars, neon lighting, painted numbers identifying the parking spots, everything very orderly, yes, but not a car to be seen. What there was instead, somewhere in these catacombs, was an enormous but invisible drumming; we really didn’t need to ask the way. The Bijlmer, Mama, is terrific, it shows a real vision. Until the last ten years, more or less, there was just a village here on a sandy road between Weesp and Amsterdam. Then along came the architects and drew some enchanting apartment buildings like honeycombs, with garages underneath, in a paradise of meadows and poplars and new stretches of lawn. God, how beautiful, it was supposed to become a city where living, working, and enjoying the fresh air on weekends are separated by nothing more than a few crosshatched pen strokes. But you’ve no idea: right now almost the entire middle class of Amsterdam is sitting on the waiting list for houses with gardens in Purmerend. And I’m looking at people here, striding out to the sound of the drums with towering headdresses….
So, we went to where the party was in the garage. There were around a hundred people, all of them black of course. Excitement and drumming and a lot of jumping around by a band called Boeing 737. Very appropriate, it seems to me now, because basically what they were doing was picking up somebody’s ancestors from the primeval forest and transporting them at warp speed to a polder southeast of Amsterdam. We moved into the middle of the crowd. My beloved was already doing little steps forward and back. Winti, he said, when I asked him afterward, means: a spirit of your ancestors who moves as fast as the wind. Very simple.
It was next day before I got any more details about these spirits, all perfectly normal according to my guy, one huge family according to him, that also included Voodoo. Oh, but aren’t they really dangerous, I asked. What? he said, the Voodoo wintis.? And he told me how back home on his farm an iguana with revolving yellow eyes had sat in a tree for weeks, and there would have been no point in chasing him away. But there are also lots of examples of well-intentioned spirits, he said, and named some water sprite. When such a watra takes up residence in a person during a party, he or she always asks right away for a bottle of rum and a box of cigars. At the end you must banish him or her, because water sprites love social gatherings. I know, the whole thing’s madness, but it interested me, because I thought: it’s all him.
So, I wanted to tell you about the party. Everyone in the place was dancing. And did it get hot! Then the thing everyone had been waiting for happened. Crazed yelling. A boy, not even ten years old, I think. Began stepping backward, tried to say something: um, um, as if there was a name he couldn’t remember. Then this child asks for something in a booming voice, really overwhelming, sounds very heavy—and he gets it. When will I ever see a child glug down a glass of beer that size again, his hands already reaching for another which also goes down at one go? It was one of those watras, it really was, Mama; he came, he said in this huge voice, from Alkmaar, no, no, not our nice little town near Amsterdam, this Alkmaar was once a sugarcane plantation, a vast stretch of land on the banks of the Commewijne. People were passing on in whispers everything he said, as translated by an interpreter, because the boy, who was possessed, was speaking in an African language he himself didn’t understand. Never knew that what we call the factual is such an elastic concept. The ancestral spirit first complained at the top of his voice about the neighbors around the coffee plantation at Nijd-en-Spijt, then cheered up a bit, looked around, said hello to his family, and asked them how things were going.
I couldn’t tell you how the party ended and whether the spirit really did leave. I needed air. This watra also gave off a particular smell, formalin, you know, the smell of new schoolbags. And what was I thinking as I stood there all on my own in the grass all covered in the evening dew? Absolutely nothing! I believe the way we’re supposed to use rational connections when we think is completely overvalued. It hardly ever happens. I, for one, don’t like it and I only do it when I have to write something for one of my study groups at the university. I just stood there in the cool and looked.
My neck hurts. My fingers hurt. I’m crushed by this dreadful unhappiness. Am I empty enough to go to bed now?
I give you a hug. Don’t be angry anymore.
Nadja
P.S. It’s late morning, the day is bright. I was thinking about my mother, Mama. Where she actually is. Became a spirit far too early. And I didn’t just think about her, to tell you the truth, I … called her. I whispered mother! mother!
27
The Collapse of the House
For a time they were side by side, being propelled forward at an insane speed. Like two boats that have cast off and started a race. She lay flat on her stomach, her head in her arms, hands clamped on the edge. It had happened unbelievably fast. When a house comes off its foundations and the roof is torn off, the entire fabric gives way. It described a little curve on the water, then the wind knocked away the walls. The floors were ripped away in sections by the current. There was no panic. She had heard no screams. Nor seen any in eyes or faces.
There had even been a kind of farewell. She saw Izak Hocke look at h
is mother and Cathrien Padmos look at her baby and Laurina and Nico van de Velde look at each other and Zesgever at little Adriaan and Gerarda Hocke, the heavy goose clutched to her breast, look at the failing roof of her house. She registered. It all happened in a fraction of this one second of terror. This old woman knows she’s old, and close to death. She sees the floor of the attic of her house break in two, and the furniture suddenly fly into the air. An enormous force pushes the objects to the surface. Cupboards, tables, she knows every one of them piece by piece, knows what has been in them or on them. It doesn’t require conscious thought. Just before a wave riding from the bottom lifted both parts of the floor and hurled them forward more than thirty feet in a single blow, the old woman saw the beds, water jugs, and the pathetically sodden featherbeds from all three bedrooms on the second floor come swirling up in front of her feet. The house was half afloat. The cellar and storerooms had already parted company with it. An inhuman situation: an old woman surviving her own home?
Only Simon Cau in his last moments, thinking of nothing and no one. He didn’t even wait. Lidy, who needed all her strength to seize some outstretched hands and hold on tight, still saw him throw himself into the water. A gray silhouette bending forward, then streaks of foam.
Now, painfully, she eased her grip on the edge of the wood that was not swimming on the surface of the water but about four inches beneath it. She lifted herself a little. The raft was being propelled by a powerful current. Beneath her only yesterday, there had been a sandy road called the Captain’s Road, which led, by way of many twists and turns, over the Melk dike to the main road to Zierikzee and finally to the Oosterschelde. Inching her way backward, seeing almost nothing, she became aware of the identity of her companion on this slab of flooring, on which until a moment ago an entire life had played out, as if on another planet, with its own time and laws, a life complete and full of significance, to which she now had been compelled to say adieu.
The Storm Page 21
