The Luxembourg Run

by Ellin, Stanley

  a princess in Johannesburg — why would she settle for this ragged and

  wasteful life? What about the future?

  “But there is no future,” Anneke said, only half-teasing. “There is only

  today.”

  “Only today,” Hendrick echoed hopelessly. “Live for today and count on

  staying young forever.” He pressed his hand on the chessboard before me,

  fingers spread wide. “Sixty-four squares,” he said. “No more than eight in any

  direction. But where are all you young people?” He tapped the edge of the

  café table. “Out here. Outside the board on Square Nine. A fine game that is.”

  “Ach, de jongelui,” said Anneke with great solemnity.

  That was the Hendrick Spranger who led columnist Berti van Stade to

  me and, through her column, won me the title of de Koning Vondelpark.

  And, in all innocence, drew the attention to me of someone out of my

  past whom even the tolerant Hendrick would never have approved of.

  66

  It was the combination of Anneke and the

  inflation that undid me. Our plan had been to leave Amsterdam by midsummer,

  go to Brussels where Anneke’s dearest girl friend had sent out a call for the

  flock to rally for some urgent good works, and from there cross the Channel to

  do England as far west as Cornwall.

  Ordinarily, a few weeks labor on the docks would have provided

  enough capital to see us through the whole tour and back. But that year strange

  things were happening in what the newspapers referred to as The Economy.

  Instead of doling out a few coins for the necessities, you found yourself

  peeling off paper money for them. A loaf of bread brought cake prices. The

  cheap pad where half a dozen of us could settle in became a luxury item on the

  landlord's books. And I now had two mouths to feed and two bodies to shelter.

  So the few weeks on the docks stretched on and on while I hoarded what

  I could of each pay envelope, trying to accumulate enough to provide a fair

  stretch of freedom. And what this did was tie me down in the same place for a

  much longer time than I had been tied down since I made the transformation to

  my Dutch self. At least long enough to allow the slowest-moving reader of

  Berti van Stade’s column to search me out right there in Amsterdam.

  That was in early October, and by now Anneke and I had removed from

  autumnally cool Vondel Park to a commune run by some flower children on a

  canal boat moored in the Heerengracht.

  This weekend evening I came home beat-up by overtime on the docks,

  and Anneke, self-elected baby-tender for the commune, greeted me with an

  infant in each arm and with news that there’d been a visitor looking for me. An

  old friend of mine who had seen Berti van Stade’s flattering column some time

  ago and had finally decided to look me up.

  “An old friend?” I said. Considering the broad definition of the word

  friend among de jongelui, this covered a lot of territory. “What’s his name?”

  “He just said he was an old friend. And that once when he was doing

  missionary work you helped him out.”

  “A solidly built Dutchman? With a red face? Smiles easily?”

  “That’s the one. He said he’d be back later this evening for a good talk.”

  67

  “But we won’t be here for any good talk. We’re leaving for Brussels

  right now.”

  “Right now?” Anneke was used to my making precipitate decisions, but

  none quite this precipitate. “But you said it would take at least another

  week —”

  ”Right now,” I said. “Park those kids somewhere and get your stuff

  together. Anything not packed in ten minutes gets left behind.”

  “That man,” said Anneke. “A bad karma?”

  “Very bad,” I said.

  68

  Brussels was not my kind of town.

  Aside from its perpetually gray, wet climate, it seemed to be a place that had

  never put itself together. To my eye at least, the leaden-weighted medieval

  stone buildings, the baroque gilded structures that enclosed Grand’ Place, and

  those naked-looking steel and glass high rises shooting up everywhere rubbed

  against each other abrasively.

  And this was a town where the bulldozers had been unleashed with a

  vengeance. That was what had led to the good works Anneke’s girl friend

  Trude was involved in. Marolles, the shabby old southwest corner of the city,

  was now scheduled for the bulldozers, and that district — gemütlich and lowpriced

  — was where the counter-culture had gravitated. So the counter-culture

  was rallying its forces, and Trude and her Alain who had a pad on the rue de

  Renard in the heart of Marolles were leading members of the general staff.

  We arrived by train at midnight, settled into the pad, and next morning

  were pressed into service with the troops. Their banners were already hung

  high across the street from building to building — LA RUE DE RENARD

  VIVRA and LA RUE APPARTIENT A SES HABITANTS — although this

  information that the street would live and that it belonged to its inhabitants did

  not seem to me likely to stampede the bulldozers when they showed up. The

  service itself consisted of a cosmetic job. A host of blue-jeaned, mostly

  barefoot volunteers was out with buckets of paint, toiling away on every

  weatherbeaten building-front along the block.

  As a sort of uncertified master painter I was assigned the task of

  supervising the section of the block at its rue Blaes end and of instructing the

  painters there how to get more paint on the buildings than on themselves. I was

  on duty at noon when a familiar voice behind me said, “Ah, de Koning

  Vondelpark”

  I turned to face him. He had put on a few additional pounds around the

  belly since I last saw him seven years before, but otherwise it was the same

  red-faced, smiling Kees Baar. I said, “I suppose the canal boat brethren in

  Amsterdam told you where to find me?”

  “Approximately.”

  69

  “Well, you’re wasting your time, Kees. I gave up missionary work long

  ago.”

  “Oh, as far as dealing in the hard stuff, so have I.” He put on a mock

  reproachful look. “Still, you shouldn’t have run out on me yesterday. After all,

  I had to answer to Yves for your leaving us in the lurch last time around.”

  “Too bad. And how is Yves?”

  “Out of the hard stuff too. That American venture of his —” Kees

  stepped back as some volunteers lined up buckets of paint almost at our feet.

  “Look, let’s take a little walk. There’s a street fair over on rue Haute. I have a

  weakness for street fairs.”

  “For private talks?”

  “Believe me,” said Kees, “when it comes to real privacy I’ll take a

  crowd of strangers over an empty room any time.”

  There was a street fair on rue Haute, block after block of it, and it didn’t

  take long to see why Kees liked street fairs. Sausages, black and white, beer

  by the pint to wash them down, slabs of rich cake, he passed nothing by.

  “That American venture,” he confided with his mouth full, “went badly.

  A disaster. We finally moved into New York and then found ourselves up

  ag
ainst the brotherhood that claimed a monopoly on the trade. All right,

  nothing so tragic about having to give up on America, but zut!” — he snapped

  his fingers — “like that, the Marseille connection was gone too. That

  brotherhood has a long arm all right. They put Yves out of business in one

  day.”

  “So now,” I said, “he’s cleaning up the kitchen at Chouchoute’s.”

  Kees laughed. “Hardly. Still the money doesn’t come in the way it once

  did. And Vahna — you remember Vahna, I’m sure —”

  ”Yes.”

  “Well, she’s really impossible in her extravagance. Been piling up

  gambling debts at an unbelievable rate. And Yves, poor fish, is so insane

  about her that he just foots the bill without a whimper.”

  “She could do that to a man,” I said.

  “Oh, she’s a looker all right — still as beautiful as ever — but she

  couldn’t do it to me. Also, her papa was some species of tinpot aristocrat in

  Thailand, and now she’s got this itch to get in with the aristos here. The real

  70

  blue bloods. And Yves is supposed to buy her way in. He’ll wind up bankrupt

  before that happens.”

  “So,” I said, “to keep himself solvent he’d like me to do a little job for

  him.”

  “No,” Kees said, “as it happens, I’m in business with someone else

  now. A Britisher. Really a gentleman. And his line of work —”

  ”I can imagine.”

  “It’s respectable,” Kees said, unperturbed. “Almost completely

  respectable. But it needs a certain type of personnel to handle it properly. And

  someone like you without any police record — in fact, someone who actually

  stands in well with the police around the Continent —”

  ”Where’d you pick that up?”

  “Where?” Kees raised his eyebrows. “To start with, that newspaper

  piece in Het Oog. To finish with, I had a talk with the cop mentioned in that

  piece. Spranger. A great admirer of yours. I produced flawless credentials and

  made it plain that I was ready to offer you a proper career if you measured up

  to your notices. And, as he then said, he’d be glad to help remove you from

  your present useless life and see you started up the ladder of success.”

  “I happen to like it down here, Kees.”

  “Please don’t talk like a damn fool.” He jerked his head in the direction

  of the rue de Renard. “You’re not really like that gang of retarded children.

  None of them could have handled that mess in Marseille the way you did. And

  Spranger spilled it all about your way of life. Does van Zee live by begging or

  borrowing? No, when this paragon needs money he goes out and sweats for it.

  Vous travaillez comme un nègre. And the longer you live, the harder you’ll

  have to sweat.”

  He was addressing to me the same thoughts that sometimes rose to my

  mind while I was at my dock work. I gave him the same answer I had given

  myself. “Plenty of time to worry about it,” I said shortly, and moved off down

  the street to indicate that the subject was closed.

  He hastened after me. “Don’t be stupid, jochie. All you’d have to do is

  take a few trips a year. A couple of days on the road in your own little car —

  yes, you’ll be supplied with a car — and that’s it.”

  “I see. And what do I transport in my own little car?”

  “Paper.”

  71

  “Paper,” I said. “Of course. Printed by the government. And with pretty

  pictures and large numbers on each piece.”

  He gave me a sidelong glance. “That brain didn’t get rusty while you’ve

  been off playing with the kids, did it? Yes, it’s currency we’re moving around.

  And your cut for helping move it will be five thousand gulden a trip. Five

  thousand a trip, mind you, meaning not less than twenty thousand a year.”

  I wanted to close my eyes to them, but visions of sugarplums danced in

  my head. Then they became visions of handcuffs. “A load of currency is

  nothing to be caught crossing the border with,” I pointed out. “It can leave me

  with a lot of explaining to do. Also, it’s not merchandise you can tuck away in

  hymn books.”

  He snorted. “Give me credit for a little intelligence, will you? We ran

  Les Amis for three years without a whisper of trouble, and it wasn’t the cops

  who finally closed us up either. This new set-up is even prettier. I’ll let you

  test it for yourself. I’ll plant a load of scrap paper in the car, you can have all

  the time you want to hunt for it, and I’ll guarantee you won’t come up with one

  little piece.”

  “Kees, you can probably find a dozen men —”

  ”But what the devil good are they? They look like what they are. They

  smell like what they are. Naturally, they all have records. If somebody with a

  badge runs a check on any of them, this whole thing comes apart, but

  somebody like you innocently touring along — and with the blessings of the

  Amsterdam police, no less —”

  We were at the Place de Ia Chapelle now, where the fair petered out.

  The last food stall in sight was offering beignets au pommes, sizzling hot

  apple fritters coated with sugar. Kees ordered one for each of us, and when I

  refused mine he slowly and voluptuously ate both of them. Impressive to see

  the way he did it, not a drop of juice oozing down his chin. A perfectionist,

  Mynheer Baar, in whatever he did.

  I said, “Is Marie-Paule in on this?”

  “No. She is working for my Britisher, but in a different department.

  Movies.”

  “Movies?”

  72

  “Porno. Kino 96 Produkt in Copenhagen. She manages the place, tries to

  get it to show a profit despite all the competition. Funny to think of her in that

  line of work, isn’t it? Can you see her at it?”

  As a matter of fact, I could. I could also see across the square a trio of

  leather-aproned workmen rooting up loose cobblestones, lugging them to the

  curb, stacking them there. Kees followed my eyes. “Seeing yourself in the

  mirror, jochie?” He pulled out a handkerchief and carefully dusted powdered

  sugar from his fingers, ruminating aloud. “Twenty thousand gulden. Three

  hundred thousand Belgian francs that is, for a few easy weeks of travel during

  the year. I wonder what those roadworking donkeys there would think of that.”

  As if he didn’t know, and I didn’t know, what those roadworking

  donkeys would think of it.

  73

  The name of his Britisher — and Kees

  would come out with it only after our handshake agreement — was Simon

  Leewarden. He was in Bruges now, but it was too late to arrange a meeting

  with him there this weekend. However, we would meet a week from today in

  Bruges. “Do you know the town?” Kees asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there’s that bookshop on Sinte-Katelijnestraat, the big one. Be

  there at twelve noon. You’ll find me waiting.”

  “For an Englishman,” I said, “your friend seems devoted to Bruges,

  doesn’t he?”

  “Devoted to his daughter. The apple of his eye, believe me. She attends

  the girl’s school there run by the Sisters near the Beguinage.�
��

  Back at the pad I broke the news to Anneke in a roundabout way. “How

  would you like to become the mother of a pretty little Volkswagen, lieveling?”

  “Fine, as long as you’re the father.” She gave me a sharp look. “Are you

  serious? A car? Is that what you’ve invested all your hard-earned money in?”

  “No, it comes with a job I’m taking. I travel for this company a few

  weeks a year, and not only do we get the car but enough money to carry us the

  rest of the year. A good deal.”

  “Is it? Wait a second. Does it have anything to do with that man who

  looked you up in Amsterdam? The one with the bad karma?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Then, as a matter of fact, I seem to have missed a big scene in the

  movie. In Amsterdam, you wanted no part of him. Now, suddenly, it’s a job

  with him that pays remarkably well. Traveling? What kind of traveling? What

  kind of business is he in?”

  “There are some businesses, mijn lieveling, which are not in any

  directory. And that’s as far as it goes.”

  She could see I meant it. “All right,” she said obediently. But, as I had

  good reason to know, my pliant, clownish, long-legged Anneke with those

  innocent blue eyes and those childish freckles was not always as pliant as she

  looked. She said nothing more about the matter until late that night in bed, and

  74

  then it came out without warning. “When you’re traveling on business do I go

  along?”

  “Anneke, it’ll amount to only a few days now and then —”

  ”No. We’ve been together more than a year now, and we’ve never been

  apart one night. Daytimes I know it can’t always be helped but nights are

  different. You’re not to be away from me then.”

  “Unfortunately, we can’t always do what we want in this cruel world.”

  “Liever een mep dan een leugen, jochie.” It was the hard-boiled

  “Don’t hand me that crap, pal” response that sometimes stopped poor

  Hendrick Spranger in his tracks. “I know how females are about you even

  without a car. Don’t let these little-girl freckles fool you, meneertje, because I

  happen to be very grown-up jealous when it comes to my man.”

  That I believed.

  “All right,” I said, “I have to go to Bruges next week about the job.

  Come along if you want to.”

  “I’m glad you’re so reasonable,” said Anneke.