Postcards From No Man's Land

  You, yesterday, made me feel happy today.

  By the way, talking of happy. I’ve just looked it up in an English Dictionary I found on the bookshelves in this apartment, and I discover that happy comes from an Old Norse word, happ, meaning good luck, related to Old English gehaeplic, meaning convenient, and Old Slavonic kobû, meaning fate. So, as just thinking about you makes me happ-y like never before, do you think it might be my convenient good luck that you are my fate?

  There are a zillion and one things I want to ask you, from easy questions like ‘How are you planning to spend the rest of your life?’ to really important ones such as: ‘Is it better to go with the flow or to let the flow go?’, ‘Whose films are funniest, Laurel and Hardy’s or Charlie Chaplin’s (or neither)?’, and ‘Will eternity be long enough to do all I want to do with you?’

  I better stop before this letter gets any stupider. I could rewrite it so you wouldn’t know how stupid I can be. But I’m not going to, because if we are going to get to know each other and become friends, which I hope we are, and which, to be honest, is what this letter is really trying to say, then I reckon you might as well know from the start how stupid I can be.

  I’ll make a guess: you like poetry. Me too. So I’ve written one specially for you.

  Hille:

  for you

  earth plays

  sky tunes

  water sings

  stones rock

  time burns

  fire quenches

  in me:

  Jacob

  ‘Ton? Hi, this is Jacob.’

  ‘Jacques! Hey, hallo!’

  ‘Did I wake you up?’

  ‘No no. It’s okay.’

  ‘I was wondering …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m on my own today.’

  ‘You’re not to visit Geertrui?’

  ‘No. Change of plan. And Daan is with her. The thing is, I need to post a letter, and I haven’t done that before, in Holland I mean, and I thought you might … and, well, like you said, remember? … show me a bit of Amsterdam.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘About twelve thirty. If it’s a problem—’

  ‘No, no problem. Good idea. Just thinking. Can you be outside Daan’s place at two o’clock?’

  ‘Two o’clock. Yes.’

  ‘If it isn’t raining. Wait in the apartment if it is.’

  ‘Two o’clock outside Daan’s place if it isn’t raining. It isn’t now. A nice day, actually. Sun’s out.’

  ‘Is it? Good. Okay. I’ll be there. With a surprise.’

  ‘A surprise? What sort of surprise?’

  ‘A surprise without legs. And, Jacques …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m very glad you called. Tot ziens.’

  Dear Sarahgran,

  Lordy but don’t time fly! How’s the hip? Wish you were here? I’m glad I am. As Kilgore Trout is wont to utter: Life goes on. I’ve seen AF’s house (not anything like what I expected, but more of this as of the rest later), bits of Haarlem, bits of Amsterdam, also some Rembrandts (great), the Van Riets, and assorted Dutchjongvolk.

  Best of all was yesterday. The ceremony was wonderful. There were times I wanted to cry. Thousands of people, lots of them young locals. But you know, you’ve seen it. Beautiful weather. None of the embarrassing naff stuff I’d expected. No gung-ho stuff. No flag waving stuff. No hero stuff either. And even the religious stuff was all right. And you know how much I hate all that holy guff stuff. Even sang the hymns, can you believe. I mean hymns! They usually bring me out in spots. This time they brought me out in smiles. But in a sad-happy kind of way. It was more like a big family party than a dirge for the dead. There must have been men there who knew grandad. Now it’s all over, I wish I’d had the gump to find one and talk to him. Why do I always not think of the best things till afterwards?!

  Stood on grandad’s grave. That’s when I wanted to cry the most. Met two Dutch people who laid flowers on his grave, a girl and her brother, Hille and Wilfred Babbe. Took photos for you. Had a meal with Hille (she’s 17) afterwards. Hope to meet her again. Don’t jump to conclusions. But she’s pretty terrific. Yes, I’ll be careful. I know, I know, don’t say it: Don’t be too impulsive, don’t wear your heart on your sleeve. Your face, my thane, is as a book wherein men may read strange matters. I always do try to listen to what you tell me for my own good. But I’m not so sure you’re right about this. Or maybe you are right and I don’t care any more. Don’t know why. Something to do with this trip. Meeting Geertrui. The ceremony yesterday. I don’t mean I think it’s okay to show your deepest feelings to everyone all the time. But I am beginning to think you can hide them too much and too often. Isn’t it better sometimes to take a risk and show what you feel, when the feelings and the other person are important to you? Hiding them, holding them in, pretending to feel something else than what you do feel—that can’t be good. Maybe I’m confused about it, but at least, you have to agree, I am trying, which is another of the things you keep on telling me I have to do! (No megamouse moods so far, by the way. Just one brief flash of a retreating tail.)

  This afternoon, a gay guy I met who knows Daan van Riet, whose apartment (Geertrui’s actually, it’s very nice) I’m staying in for reasons I’ll explain later, too interesting-complicated for a letter now, is going to show me some of Amsterdam. You see how well looked after I am.

  I’ll send a card to the folks this afternoon. (Are you sending mine as usual? I’ll miss it if you don’t. Can’t break the flow after all these years. You’ll have sent this week’s to the Van Riets’, I guess).

  Got to go and enjoy myself some more. You know how it is with us tourists, one endless round of revelry. This is just to let you know I’m okay, thriving, enjoying myself. Lots of traveller’s tales to tell you when I get back.

  Your loving grandson,

  Jacob.

  As the clocks of Amsterdam chimed two in their tuneful jingle, Jacob stood on the wooden steps outside the apartment. A light cool sunny day with a gentle breeze puffing down the narrow street. His kind of weather, warm enough to feel comfortable, cool enough to freshen. A few people about, mostly locals by the look, but some tourists, wandering like lost souls in this street where there were no shops or attractions of the kind that make tourists feel easy.

  He heard Ton calling his name. It seemed to come from below Jacob’s feet. As indeed it did, for then he saw Ton climbing out of the canal.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ Jacob said, as Ton took him by the shoulders and gave him the usual three-barrelled greeting, the third kiss brushing his lips and throwing Jacob into a small confusion of pleasure.

  ‘Picking you up,’ Ton said when that was over, ‘with your surprise without legs.’

  A boat of course, a commodious dinghy with a smart outboard motor clipped to its stern, a pretty little craft, spotlessly maintained, its wooden hull the colour of fresh chestnut gleaming with varnish, bright brass fittings, deep blue waterproof cushions making a sofa of the bench fitted across the waist, a triangular pennant fluttering from its bow with the crest of Amsterdam on it: a blood-red ground with a black stripe through the middle on which three white ‘x’s in a row, a cross for each of the disasters that afflicted the city in the long ago: fire, black death and flood. The name was painted black on white on the prow: Tedje.

  ‘Wow!’ Jacob said. ‘Very swish. Yours?’

  ‘I wish! A rich friend’s. The best way to see Mokum.’

  ‘Mokum?’

  ‘Amsterdammers’ bijnaam for the city. Byname?’

  ‘Nickname? Like Londoners used to call London the smoke.’

  ‘Ah! I’ve just thought. You can swim?’

  ‘Could probably make it across the canal.’

  ‘That’s okay. Let’s go.’

  Ton had brought a map so that Jacob could follow their route. They began by phutt-phutting out of the narrow water of the Oudezijds Kolk, past the Weepers’ Tower and under the bridge t
hat carried Prins Hendrikkade, turning left in to the broad water that took them past the cathedral front of the Central station, where trams and buses, bicycles and people swarmed, and (Jacob feeling smug in their private superiority) past the sleek glass-roofed tourist boats waiting for customers, before turning left in to the first of the spider-web canals, the Singel, but then immediately right under the bridge in to Brouwersgracht, which Jacob could see from the map connected the tops of all the canals of the western part of the old city, on past the start of Herengracht and Keizersgracht, before turning left in to Prinsengracht.

  ‘My favourite,’ Ton said. ‘The most friendly. More for ordinary people. Lots of houseboats at this end, and over there, you see, to our right, the streets of the Jordaan, where the working people, servants and people like that, used to live, and where I live. I have two rooms in a friend’s house. And you see the tower of the church ahead on the left?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Westerkerk.’

  ‘Near Anne Frank’s house.’

  ‘Daan told me how you’re mad about her. I thought you might like to see her house from the water.’

  When they chugged by, the usual queue, on this now warm afternoon, three or four deep, lined up along the street for a hundred and fifty metres or so, reaching almost beyond the church to the square beside Raadhuisstraat, the busy main road to the Dam which Jacob remembered stumbling across as he fled Anne’s house only four days before. A year seemed to separate then from now.

  ‘And opposite, over there,’ Ton was saying and pointing, ‘there’s a little shop, the best place to buy fresh coffee. A lot of good little shops around here. For only cheese or only wine or only anything. One of the things I like so much about Amsterdam, the little shops everywhere, selling all sorts of things. One shop near here sells only olive oil. They treat it like the best wines, which you must taste before buying. And also, everything is mixed up. An expensive art shop next to an old clothes shop, and a cycle repair shop next to a porno bookshop, a hand-made shoe shop next to a shop that sells only special kinds of metal things. All of Amsterdam, I mean this part, the spider’s web, is like a big village where you can get anything you want and where ordinary people still live, not just rich people or tourists in hotels or no one at all, like in the centre of many cities.

  ‘In fact, I don’t think Amsterdam is a city. It is and it isn’t, which is like everything here. And it isn’t modern. I mean the buildings aren’t. Look at them. Most of them were built hundreds of years ago. But it is a modern city too, in the way people live and what you can do.’

  By now Jacob was settled comfortably on the blue-cushioned sofa-bench, where he had a clear view ahead and wasn’t bothered by the sound of the engine phuttering behind them, Ton to his right steering with little shining brass levers for the engine and a miniature brass ship’s wheel for the rudder attached to the hull. He lolled and began to luxuriate in the way you can only in a small open boat as it noses gently through calm water on a sunny day. But when he had done this before it had been through countryside during holidays with his family on the Norfolk Broads or in a longboat on English waterways. He had never floated, lolling and luxuriating, through city streets. Through countryside it seemed natural, part of the surroundings. But here it was like Ton said, not one thing nor the other. Not country but not city. Water but not a river. A way through the city but not a road. Not a river, not a road, and yet both. He lolling and loafing, while on either side cars and trucks and cycles and people on foot careered. It was as if two surfaces of life, two ways of living, rubbed together: water rubbing against brick (the sides of the canal were brick, most of the buildings were brick, and even the canal-side roads were brick cobbles); he and Ton in waterborne idleness and to either side of them the road-borne hustle of people busyness. Other boats passed them: sightseeing launches with passengers gawking, ugly little white plastic pedal boats, usually propelled by pairs of laddish tourists who must always shout hello and gaggle, a patrolling waterpolice boat, hunky work boats of one sort and another. Their bow waves set Tedje rocking.

  By now, well down the length of Prinsengracht, along a straight stretch where there were few houseboats, the canal seemed wider, more open, and glistened. Perhaps it was the angle of the sun and the bright blue of the sky above and the breeze fribbling the leaves in their early stages of turning to autumn, or his viewpoint on the water, looking up at the valley of buildings on either side, but for the first time Jacob saw, actually took notice of the trees that lined the edges of the canals. They clothed the water on both sides, some tall and full-bodied, some small and tender and young, some in stages of middle-age, an extended family, lacing with greens the reds and browns and greys of the buildings with their upright oblong windows, their frames painted white. The trees softened the flat-faced facades which rose never more than four or five storeys, topped with decorative peaks and gables, often painted white or cream, which at first Jacob thought were much alike, but now he began to notice were varied in a multitude of flutters and curlicues and steps and scrolls and sheer slides. They finished off the buildings like wigs and hats and cowls on eighteenth-century gentlemen. And these shoulder-to-shoulder, cheek-by-jowl parades of buildings were, he thought, like books stacked tightly on a shelf, various thicknesses, various but not greatly different heights. A library of houses. And so beautiful. It was like suddenly looking at someone you hadn’t taken much notice of before, hadn’t even liked, and seeing that he, she, was very attractive. (He or she—which? Strong upstanding bricky maleness and curving flowing liquidy femaleness. Ton’s neither, both, everything, and Amsterdam not being what it seemed.)

  ‘I’m beginning to see what you mean about this place,’ Jacob said. ‘It’s lovely.’ He laughed. ‘I could fall for it. Maybe I am falling for it.’

  ‘I’m pleased. Join the club! I told you this was the best way to see Mokum.’

  ‘You’ve always lived here?’

  ‘No no. But wanted to from the day I first saw it when I was little, about five or six. I was born in a small town in the south.’

  ‘Your parents still live there?’

  ‘And my two sisters and four brothers.’

  ‘Seven of you?’

  ‘A good Catholic family.’

  ‘Where do you come?’

  ‘The youngest.’

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘As well as breed, you mean? He’s a tandarts, a dentist. And also a professional homophobe.’ Ton chuckled and added, ‘Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Something like: Act normal, because that is crazy enough. Don’t be any different to anyone else. Everybody must be the same. The worst side of us Dutch. My father’s favourite motto.’

  ‘And you aren’t normal?’

  ‘Not in my father’s eyes. Never forgiven himself for breeding a queer. Keeps asking my mother what they did so wrong that they produced me. Was as happy when I left home as I was to leave. Can’t handle that his friends might meet me. The way he behaves, you’d think it would mean the end of him. He even pays me to stay away.’

  ‘You mean, he pays you not to go home?’

  ‘Home? Where is home? This is the only place where I’ve ever belonged. Amsterdam is my home. These few streets and canals are my home. And yes, my wonderful father pays much money to keep me here. Well, he can afford it. There’s a price for everything, isn’t that right? And the price for being a homo-hater should be as high as anyone can pay.’

  ‘Your mother. What about her?’

  ‘She visits me. Every three or four weeks we spend a weekend together. Have a great time. Shops. Nightclubs. Films. Music. We get on well. We always did. She was the first person I came out to.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Enjoy.’

  ‘She didn’t!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Can’t imagine most mothers say
ing that. Not from families like yours, anyway.’

  ‘My mother is not most mothers.’

  ‘But your father—’

  ‘She loves him. Don’t ask me why.’

  ‘Hard to understand why some people marry the people they do.’

  ‘Marriage!’

  ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Why not? With the right person.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s strange? Two people swearing to stay together for the rest of their lives and not to love anybody else—’

  ‘Not in that way—’

  ‘Whatever that way is!’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘I don’t believe there is a that way. Do you? Friends. Can’t do without them. Lovers. For sure, yes please. Someone to live with while it’s right, while it works. Okay. But for ever? Never. Nothing is for ever.’

  At that moment they were passing under a bridge, which the map told Jacob he should remember, and that in the reach of canal beyond it they would pass the house where he sheltered from the rain and where Alma rescued him.

  ‘Could you pull over and stop for a minute?’ he said, and explained about Alma.

  It was easy to spot the house across the canal. It and its next-door neighbour were the only ones with the steps up to their front doors recessed in to the building. All the others had them outside, sideways on. And the profusion of plants around Alma’s ground-level windows.

  ‘Nice to live at this end of the canal,’ Ton said. ‘Also expensive.’

  ‘I suppose I should have returned the money Alma gave me and thanked her for her help.’