outside, and then he walked home, one boot on, one boot off.'
'To his apartment?'
'Right.'
'From the whore's quarter?'
'Yes, Jan.'
'No cabs?'
'He was swaying so badly no cabdriver would risk it.'
'Yes,' the commissaris said. 'They don't like passengers throwing up on their back seats. Poor de Gier. Totally out of control. Oh dear.'
The commissaris slept badly that night, tossing, turning, mumbling to himself.
'Who is DArtagnan?' Katrien asked, shaking his shoulder.
The commissaris had been a musketeer, one ofthe three in the French novel; de Gier was D'Artagnan, his pal, but de Gier had got shot.
'Why are you speaking German?' Katrien asked, shaking his shoulder again.
The commissaris was replaying a talk show where elderly German middle-class people, on TV, were asked to review their lives. They kept saying that, looking back, they saw nothing but mistakes and calamities; looking ahead they saw only death.
'Please,' Katrien said, 'stop rubbing your feet. Now what are you doing?'
He mumbled that he was cleaning off dog poop. He'd been walking through the city, barefoot, the last citizen left. All others had fled because Holland's dikes were about to break behind them, due to global warming that melted the polar ice caps. On his way out he kept getting stuck in dog poop. Katrien made hot milk and honey and sprinkled cinnamon on top. She watched him sip.
'Calms the nerves.' She patted his cheek. 'Feel better now?'
A little later he was mumbling again. 'Rinus? I'm coining. Hold on, my boy.'
'Go for it, mon Capitaine,' Katrien whispered.
The commissaris slept well after that, and woke up with a plan. He unfolded his plan.
'Maritime maps of the Maine coast? A tape recorder that connects to a phone?' Katrien asked. 'Where do I get those? Connect the gadget to Nellie's phone? Help her to tape her conversations with Grijpstra? Tell her what to ask him? Please… where do you think you are? At your ofHce?'
Chapter 4
'Bright and early,' Grijpstra said.
El Al had left Amsterdam's Schiphol at 2:00 A.M., flown quietly for five and a half hours, a nice tail wind pushing, and touched down at Boston's Logan at 1:30 A.M.
'Wow,' Grijpstra said. He had traveled back in time, he was half an hour younger, he could start part of his life again. If he kept doing this he'd be a baby, still remembering everything, ofcourse. Then what would he do? Be an artist? Stay away from de Gier? Make quite sure he'd never arrive at Boston's Logan at 1:30 A.M. again, with no one to take him nowhere?
There was an agent still on duty but she wanted to go home. 'I'm sorry, sir, there's no connection to Maine.' She checked her screen. 'Flights begin at eleven A.M. but they're all booked up for today and tomorrow.' She smiled sadly.
'It's the season, sir.'
'Bus?' Grijpstra asked. 'Please?'
She thought there might be one at 8:30 A.M. but it might be full and he'd have to connect to at least one other bus and the total trip might take twelve hours, stop-over time not included.
'Air taxi?' Grijpstra asked. 'Please?'
All the numbers the agent dialed played recorded messages that suggested waiting for beeps.
The agent went home.
Grijpstra went to the restroom.
There was another man there, within the vast emptiness of tiled walls and ceilings. The other man did what Grijpstra did-unzip, let go, wait, drip, shake, zip, push faucet, wash hands, push soap button, wash hands, pull towel, rip towel, rub, drop towel into bin.
'Mannequins,' the man said. 'That's what we are, doing the routine. Like on earth, so in heaven.' He looked at Grijpstra. 'Don't you think? That this is what heaven's going to be? All this clean space?' He gestured toward the restroom's tiled walls and ceiling. 'Sinless?'
Grijpstra was cursing, both his fate and this fellow man, maybe a moron.
'You sick?' the man asked. He looked into Grijpstra's eyes. 'You don't look sick. Got something in your throat?' He clapped his hands. 'Go on. Cough. Clear it.'
'I was swearing,' Grijpstra said, 'in Dutch.'
'You're from Pennsylvania?'
'From where?'
The man and Grijpstra shook clean hands. The man's name was Ishmael. He said he was from the Point in Maine. That'd be in Woodcock County. Grijpstra said he was from Amsterdam. Thafd be in Holland. Ishmael said his sister had married a man from there, that'd be in Copenhagen. Where the breakfast buns came from.
'What?' Grijpstra asked.
'The sticky buns,' Ishmael said. He knew more, about Danish cheese called Gouda, about Saab cars you could win as prizes that go with magazine subscriptions, about Hans Brinker sticking his finger in the dike.
'Who is Hans Brinker?'
Ishmael said Hans was the Dutch boy you saw on paint labels, and that Hans was also known from textbooks. Finger in hole in dike. Grijpstra thought of Oedipus, desiring his mother, frustrated by his father, therefore, symbolically, sticking his finger in any hole at all. Hans Oedipus?
The name was definitely Brinker, Ishmael said, and Brinker specifically filled holes in Dutch dikes. Ishmael was surprised Grijpstra didn't know his own national hero.
Grijpstra, although willing to please, couldn't place the boy's name.
Ishmael also knew about Holland being a part of Germany. There was World War Two, but he wasn't one to bear grudges, even if a cousin didn't return from the Battle of the Bulge. Too long ago, from the black-and-white days-all that old anger… even so, Japan was coming on strong again.
'Holland fought Germany, too,' Grijpstra said. 'For all of five days.'
'Defeat?'
Grijpstra admitted defeat.
'Germany still got you?'
'They gave us back.'
'Didn't want to keep you, eh?'
It was all joined into a kind of Europe now, Grijpstra said. They were in it together. That might be better. 'Wipe out some borders.'
'Like the Canadian border,' Ishmael said, 'and the Mexican while we're at it. They aren't there anyway. I never see them when I fly across.'
'What are the black-and-white days?' Grijpstra asked.
'War documentaries,' Ishmael said. 'Kind of faded. That's how we saw it then, as little kids. Didn't care much then. No TV, no nothing.'
'Ah.'
'After Korea it was color.'
'To us World War Two was color too,' Grijpstra said.
Ishmael thought that was amazing.
Ishmael, a small man, wiry, some fifty years old, wearing greenish wide-bottomed cotton trousers and a windbreaker, both well worn and faded, and a duck-billed hat, brand new and bright green, with a weathered face
