"Can we go now?" Wim asked Ruth.
As they were groping their way down the dark stairs, Ruth asked the prostitute where she or he was from.
"Ecuador," the prostitute informed them.
They turned onto the Bloedstraat, where there were more of the Ecuadoran men in the windows and in the doorways, but these prostitutes were bigger and more obviously male than the pretty one had been.
"How's your hard-on?" Ruth asked Wim.
"Still there," the young man told her.
Ruth felt she didn't need him anymore. Now that she knew what she wanted to happen, she was bored with his company; for the story she had in mind, he was the wrong boy, anyway. Yet the question remained of where the older woman writer and her young man would feel most at ease about approaching a prostitute. Maybe not in the redlight district . . .
Ruth herself had been more comfortable in the more prosperous part of town. It wouldn't hurt to walk with Wim on the Korsjespoortsteeg and on the Bergstraat. (The idea of letting Rooie have a look at the beautiful boy struck Ruth as a kind of perverse provocation.)
They needed to pass by Rooie's window on the Bergstraat twice. The first time Rooie's curtain was drawn; she must have been with a customer. When they circled the Bergstraat a second time, Rooie was in her window. The prostitute showed no signs of recognizing Ruth--she just stared at Wim--and Ruth neither nodded nor waved; she didn't even smile. All Ruth did was ask Wim--casually, in passing--"What do you think of her ?"
"Too old," the young man said.
Ruth felt certain that she was through with him. But although she had dinner plans for that evening, Wim told her that he would be waiting for her after dinner at the taxi stand on the Kattengat, opposite her hotel.
"Shouldn't you be in school?" she asked him. "What about your classes in Utrecht?"
"But I want to see you again," he pleaded.
She warned him that she would be too tired for him to spend the night. She needed to sleep--to really sleep.
"I'll just meet you at the taxi stand, then," Wim told her. He looked like a beaten dog who wanted to be beaten again. Ruth couldn't have known then how glad she would be to see him waiting for her later. She had no idea that she was not through with him.
Ruth met Maarten at a gym on the Rokin that he'd told her about; she wanted to see if it would be a good place for the woman writer and her young man to meet. It was perfect, meaning it wasn't too fancy. There were a number of serious weight lifters. The young man Ruth was thinking of--a much cooler, more detached young man than Wim-- would be a devoted bodybuilder.
Ruth told Maarten and Sylvia that she'd "virtually spent the night" with that devoted young admirer of hers. He'd been useful; Ruth had persuaded him to "interview" a couple of prostitutes in de Wallen with her.
"But how did you ever get rid of him?" Sylvia asked.
Ruth confessed that she wasn't finally rid of Wim. When she said he'd be waiting for her after dinner, both Maarten and Sylvia laughed. Now, if they took her to her hotel after dinner, Ruth wouldn't have to explain Wim to them. Ruth reflected that everything she'd wanted had fallen into place. All that remained was for her to visit with Rooie again. Hadn't Rooie been the one to tell her that anything could happen?
In lieu of lunch, Ruth went with Maarten and Sylvia to a signing at a bookstore on the Spui. She ate a banana and drank a small bottle of mineral water. Afterward, she would have most of the afternoon to herself--to see Rooie. Ruth's only concern was that she didn't know when Rooie left her window to pick up her daughter from school.
There was an episode at the book-signing that Ruth might have taken as an omen that she should not see Rooie again. A woman Ruth's age arrived with a shopping bag--evidently a reader who'd brought her entire library to be autographed. But in addition to the Dutch and English editions of Ruth's three novels, the contents of the shopping bag also included the Dutch translations of Ted Cole's world-famous books for children.
"I'm sorry--I don't sign my father's books," Ruth said to her. "They're his books. I didn't write them. I shouldn't sign them." The woman looked so stunned that Maarten repeated in Dutch what Ruth had said.
"But they're for my children!" the woman said to Ruth.
Oh, why not just do what she wants? Ruth thought. It's easier to do what everyone wants. Besides, as Ruth signed her father's books, she felt that one of them was hers. There it was: the book she had inspired. A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound .
"Say it in Dutch for me," Ruth asked Maarten.
"It's god-awful in Dutch," he told her.
"Say it anyway," she asked him.
"Het geluid van iemand die geen geluid probeert te maken." Even in Dutch, the title gave Ruth the shivers.
She should have taken it as a sign, but she looked at her watch instead. What was she worrying about? There were fewer than a dozen people still standing in line. Ruth would have plenty of time to see Rooie.
The Moleman
By midafternoon at that time of year, only small patches of sunlight lingered on the Bergstraat; Rooie's room was in the shade. Rooie was smoking. "I do it when I get bored," the prostitute told Ruth, gesturing with her cigarette as Ruth came inside.
"I brought you a book--it's something else to do when you get bored," Ruth said. She'd brought an English edition of Not for Children . Rooie's English was so excellent that a Dutch translation would have been insulting. Ruth intended to inscribe her novel, but she'd not yet written anything in the book--not even her signature--because she didn't know how to spell Rooie's name.
Rooie took the novel from her. She turned it over, paying close attention to Ruth's jacket photo. Then she put the book down on the table by the door, where she kept her keys. "Thanks," the prostitute said. "But you'll still have to pay me."
Ruth unzipped her purse and peered into her wallet. She needed to let her eyes adjust to the dim light; she couldn't read the denominations on the bills.
Rooie had already sat down on the towel in the middle of her bed. She had forgotten to draw the window curtains, possibly because she'd presumed that she wouldn't be having sex with Ruth. There was a matter-of-factness about Rooie today that suggested that she had given up the idea of trying to seduce Ruth. The prostitute had become resigned to the fact that all Ruth wanted to do was talk .
"That was a darling boy I saw you with," Rooie told Ruth. "Is he your boyfriend or your son?"
"He's neither," Ruth replied. "He's not young enough to be my son. Not unless I had him when I was fourteen or fifteen."
"It wouldn't be the first time someone had a baby at that age," Rooie said. Remembering the open curtains, she got up from the bed. "He was young enough to be my son," the prostitute added. She was closing the window curtains when something or someone out on the Bergstraat caught her eye. Rooie closed the curtains only three quarters of the way. Before she moved to the outside door, the prostitute turned to Ruth and whispered: "Just a minute . . ." She opened the door a crack.
Ruth had not yet sat down in the blow-job chair; she was standing in the darkened room, with one hand on the armrest of the chair, when she heard a man's voice speaking English out on the street.
"Should I come back later? Should I wait?" the man asked Rooie. He spoke English with an accent that Ruth couldn't quite place.
"Just a minute," Rooie told him. She closed the door. She closed the curtains the rest of the way.
"Do you want me to leave? I can come back later . . ." Ruth whispered, but Rooie was standing beside her, covering her mouth with her hand.
"How's this for perfect timing?" (The prostitute also whispered.) "Help me turn the shoes." Rooie knelt by the wardrobe closet, turning the shoes from toes-in to toes-out. Ruth stood, frozen, by the blow-job chair. Her eyes had not adjusted to the weak light; she still couldn't see well enough to count out Rooie's money.
"You can pay me later," Rooie said. "Hurry up and help me. He looks nervous--maybe it's his first time. He won't wait all day."
&
nbsp; Ruth knelt beside the prostitute; her hands were shaking and she dropped the first shoe she picked up. "Let me do it," Rooie responded crossly. "Just get in the closet. And don't move ! You can move your eyes," the prostitute added. "Nothing but your eyes."
Rooie arranged the shoes on either side of Ruth's feet. Ruth could have stopped her; she could have raised her voice, but she didn't even whisper. Ruth later thought--for about four or five years--that she hadn't spoken up because she was afraid that Rooie would be disappointed in her. It was like responding to a childhood dare. One day Ruth would realize that being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.
Ruth instantly regretted that she'd not unzipped her jacket; it was stifling in the wardrobe closet, but Rooie had already admitted her customer to the small red room. Ruth didn't dare move; besides, the zipper would have made a sound.
The man seemed disconcerted by all the mirrors. Ruth had only the briefest glimpse of his face before she deliberately looked away. She didn't want to see his face; there was something inappropriately bland about it. Ruth watched Rooie instead.
The prostitute removed her bra; today it was black. She was about to remove her black panties, but the man stopped her. "It's not necessary," he said. Rooie appeared to be disappointed. (Probably for my benefit, thought Ruth.)
"It costs the same, whether you look or touch," Rooie told the blandfaced man. "Seventy-five guilders." But her customer apparently knew what it cost--he had the money in his hand. He'd been carrying the bills in his overcoat pocket; he must have taken the money out of his wallet before he came into the room.
"No touching--just looking," the man said. For the first time, Ruth thought that he spoke English with a German-sounding accent. When Rooie reached for his crotch, he sidestepped her hand; he didn't let her touch him.
He was bald and smooth-faced with an egg-shaped head and a nondescript body--not very big. His clothing was nondescript, too. The charcoal-gray trousers of his suit were loose-fitting, even baggy, but the pants were crisply pressed. The black overcoat had a bulky appearance, as if it were a size too large. The top button of his white shirt was unbuttoned, and he'd loosened his tie.
"What do you do?" Rooie asked him.
"Security systems," the man mumbled. "SAS," Ruth thought he added--she couldn't be sure. Did he mean the airline? "It's a good business," Ruth heard him say. "Lie on your side, please," he told Rooie.
Rooie curled herself up on the bed like a little girl, facing him. She drew her knees up to her breasts, hugging herself, as if she were cold, and gazing at the man with a coquettish smile.
The man stood over her, looking down. He'd dropped his heavylooking briefcase in the blow-job chair, where Ruth could no longer see it. It was a misshapen leather briefcase of the kind a professor or a schoolteacher might carry.
As if in reverence of Rooie's curled figure, the man knelt on the rug beside her bed, his overcoat trailing on the broadloom. A long sigh escaped him. It was then that Ruth heard him wheeze; his breathing was distinguished by a bronchial-sounding whistle. "Straighten your legs, please," the man said. "And reach over your head, as if you're stretching. Pretend you're just waking up in the morning," he added, almost breathlessly.
Rooie stretched--fetchingly, Ruth thought--but the asthmatic wasn't satisfied. "Try yawning," he suggested. Rooie faked a yawn. "No, a real yawn--with your eyes closed."
"Sorry--I don't close my eyes," Rooie told him. Ruth realized that Rooie was afraid. It was as sudden as knowing a door or a window had been opened because of a change in the air.
"Perhaps you could kneel?" the man asked, still wheezing. Rooie seemed relieved to kneel. She knelt on the towel on her bed, resting her elbows and her head on the pillow. She peered sideways at the man; her hair had fallen a little forward, partially hiding her face, but she could still see him. She never took her eyes off him.
"Yes!" the man gasped enthusiastically. He clapped his hands, just twice, and swayed from side to side on his knees. "Now shake your head!" the man told Rooie. "Toss your hair all around!"
In an opposing mirror, on the far side of the prostitute's bed, Ruth caught a second, unwanted glimpse of the man's flushed face. His small, squinty eyes were partially closed; it was as if his eyelids were growing over his eyes--like the blind eyes of a mole.
Ruth's own eyes darted to the mirror opposite the wardrobe closet; she was afraid she would see some movement behind the slightly parted curtain, or that there would be a detectable tremble in her shoes. The clothes in the closet seemed to gather themselves around her.
Rooie, as instructed, shook her head--her hair falling over her face. For not more than a second-- maybe two or three--her hair covered her eyes, but that was all the time the moleman needed. He lunged forward, his chest dropping on the back of Rooie's head and neck, his chin on her spine. He clamped his right forearm across her throat; then he grabbed hold of his right wrist with his left hand, and squeezed. He slowly got off his knees, coming to his feet with the back of Rooie's head and neck pressed to his chest--his right forearm crushing her throat.
Several seconds passed before Ruth realized that Rooie couldn't breathe. The man's bronchial whistle was the only sound Ruth could hear. Rooie's thin arms flailed silently in the air. One of her legs was bent beneath her on the bed, and the other leg kicked straight out behind her so that her left high-heeled shoe shot off her foot and struck the partially open door to the WC. The sound got the strangler's attention; he wheeled his head around, as if he expected to see someone sitting on the toilet. At the sight of Rooie's far-flung shoe, he smiled with relief; he returned his attention to suffocating the prostitute.
A rivulet of sweat ran between Ruth's breasts. She thought of bolting for the door, but she knew the door was locked and she had no idea how to unlock it. She could imagine the man pulling her back into the room, his forearm collapsing her windpipe, too, until her arms and legs were as limp as Rooie's.
Involuntarily, Ruth's right hand opened and closed. (If only she'd had a squash racquet, she would later think.) But Ruth's fear so immobilized her that she did nothing to help Rooie--a memory of herself that she would never forget or forgive. It was as if the clothes in the prostitute's closet had held her.
By now Rooie was no longer kicking. The ankle of her one bare foot dragged on the rug as the wheezing man appeared to dance with her. He'd released her throat so that her head was thrown back in the crook of his arm; his mouth and nose nuzzled the side of her neck as he shuffled back and forth with her in his arms. Rooie's arms hung at her sides, her fingers brushing her bare thighs. With an extreme gentleness, as if he were doing his utmost not to wake a sleeping child, the moleman returned Rooie to her bed and once more knelt beside her.
Ruth could not help feeling that it was with intense recrimination that the prostitute's wide-open eyes stared at the narrow part in the wardrobe-closet curtain. Apparently the murderer didn't like the look in Rooie's eyes, either. He delicately closed them with his thumb and index finger. Then he took a tissue from the box on Rooie's bedside table, and, with the tissue as a barrier between himself and some imagined disease, he poked the prostitute's tongue back inside her mouth.
The problem was that the dead prostitute's mouth would not stay shut; her lips had remained parted, and her chin had dropped down to her chest. The wheezing man impatiently turned Rooie's face to one side, propping up her chin with the pillow. The unnaturalness of the prostitute's pose obviously vexed him. He sighed a short, irritated sigh, followed by a high-pitched, rasping wheeze, and then he tried to attend to the matter of Rooie's sprawling limbs. But he could not bend her into the position he desired. Either an arm slid here or a leg flopped there. At one point, the moleman became so exasperated that he sunk his teeth into Rooie's bare shoulder. His bite broke the skin, but Rooie bled very little--her heart had already stopped.
Ruth held her breath; almost a minute later, she realized that she shouldn't have. When she needed to breathe again
, she had to take a big breath; and for several breaths thereafter, she virtually gasped for air. By the way the murderer stiffened, Ruth could tell that he'd heard her; at least he'd heard something . The killer instantly stopped fussing over Rooie's most desirable pose; he stopped wheezing, too. He held his own breath and listened. Although Ruth had not coughed for several days, her cough was now threatening to come back; there was a telltale tickle at the back of her throat.
The moleman slowly stood up, scanning all the mirrors in the red room. Ruth knew very well what the killer thought he had heard: he'd heard the sound of someone trying not to make a sound-- that's what he'd heard. And so the murderer held his breath, and stopped wheezing, and looked all around. The way his nose twitched, it appeared to Ruth that the moleman was sniffing for her, too.
To calm herself, Ruth didn't look at him; instead, she stared at the mirror opposite the wardrobe closet. She tried to see herself in the narrow slit where the curtain was parted; she picked out her shoes among the shoes pointed toes-out beneath the curtain. After a while, Ruth could make out the bottom hem of her black jeans. If she looked hard enough, she could see her feet in one pair of those shoes. And her ankles and shins . . .
Suddenly the killer began to cough; he made a terrible, sucking sound that convulsed his entire body. By the time the moleman stopped coughing, Ruth had regained control of her own breathing.
The secret to absolute stillness is absolute concentration. "In the whole rest of your life," Eddie O'Hare had told her when she was a little girl, "if you ever need to feel brave, just look at your scar." But Ruth couldn't see her right index finger without moving either her head or her hand. Instead she concentrated on A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound . Of her father's stories, all of which she knew by heart, she knew this one best. There was also a moleman in it.
"Imagine a mole twice the size of a child, but half the size of most adults. This mole walked upright, like a man, and so he was called the moleman. He wore baggy pants, which hid his tail, and old tennis shoes that helped him to be quick and quiet."