'Oh yes, oh yes, oh YES?' Grijpstra had asked, stomping down the stairs at Nellie's.
Nellie kept a hotel at the Straight Tree Ditch. A water pipe had broken that day and food had burned. Reciprocal irritation prevented sexual togetherness from reaching the level of love.
'But it did,' Grijpstra said.
'Maybe for you,' Nellie said and tried to explain the idea 'together' but Grijpstra heard only criticism.
He was tired, after several hours of questioning a junkie charged with breaking and entering. The junkie kept falling asleep and couldn't quite remember where he had worked, the nature of the loot and where or to whom he had sold it.
'Or maybe not,' the junkie said after every statement, not so much because he wanted to obstruct the course of justice but because he wanted, philosophically, to indicate relativity and the chaotic nature of All and Everything.
'But what do you know?' the junkie asked Grijpstra. 'Eh? You loutish moron. You should try the drug yourself, man, then you'll be on God's steps. Won't have to try to figure out what's what anymore. Won't bother free souls like me.'
Grijpstra extracted croquettes from a vending machine in Leyden Street. He could have gone to his own place, a neat upstairs apartment on the Linenmakers Canal vacated some years ago by his family. He had, in order not to be reminded of her, urged his wife to take most of the furnishings. He had never redone the large rooms. The idea at the time was that 'an intelligent man really needs little.' Now it often seemed as if the empty space had no need of Grijpstra. 'Pure emptiness illuminated by the glow of the void,' chanted poet Grijpstra when She and the Noisy Ones got the hell out. That day the sun was shining.
Appearances change. He now saw the empty apartment as an extension of Holland's overall overcast climate. 'Drafty absence of necessities partly illuminated by a dangling bare bulb,' composed poet Grijpstra.
A Turk listened in. The Turk was a dismal import, once welcomed by the Dutch to perform tedious hard labor. Automation made the Turk superfluous. He was on the dole now, for his residential permit was permanent. The Turk was a thin man in a threadbare coat waiting, like Grijpstra, for a streetcar to splash along. The Turk raised wispy eyebrows. 'You speak, friend?'
'Inspired,' Grijpstra said, 'by that empty space I call home, I am composing a poem.'
He repeated his line. 'Drafty absence…'
The Turk smiled. 'You subtle soul.'
Grijpstra acknowledged the compliment by sneezing.
The Turk wished him gesundheit.
It rained harder. Grijpstra shuffled backward into the protection of the tramway shelter. The Turk imitated the big man's movements. Raindrops jumped back from the tarmac and lashed the two men against their ankles.
'Home,' Grijpstra said, 'empty, quiet.'
The Turk knew the words but had forgotten their meaning. 'Two wives,' the Turk said, 'two TVs. Five kids moving between loud screens forever. Upstairs neighbors fight on bare boards.'
'You speak good Dutch,' Grijpstra said.
'Not all that difficult,' the Turk said peevishly. 'Not too many 'words, no grammar to speak of.'
Grijpstra liked that. He passed the Turk a croquette from his paper bag.
'Pig?' the Turk asked suspiciously.
'Calf,' Grijpstra said generously.
The Turk said that he had been known to eat pig. Not by mistake either. The Turk was against religious rules that bully. The Turk would consume, Allah be praised, whatever he liked, but if he did eat pig it would be nice to be aware of his sinning. His eye caught the flash of a car's brake lights. The Turk swallowed, smiled, straightened his back, recited: 'At alien streetcar stop in slashing darkness my soul glows sudden red, lit up by sin.'
Grijpstra applauded a fellow artist.
The Turk said that he found it easier to compose poetry in Turkish but had learned to express himself within the local limitations. So far his Dutch poetry had been of a lower level. He raised a finger.
'Convincingly wags tail the alien mutt after been kicked silly in the butt.
'Doggerel.' The Turk nudged Grijpstra. 'You like?'
Grijpstra nudged the Turk. 'I like.'
The calf-croquette-chewing Turk stepped into his streetcar. 'Blessings, friend.'
Grijpstra waved. 'Blessings.'
The adjutant took a bus to the suburb of Outfield. He could have telephoned first. He had, in fact, held the coin the public phone would require but returned the guilder to his waistcoat pocket. Say de Gier was not at home- then Grijpstra would not have to make the bus ride, but he liked sitting and staring in crowded buses, 'sharing meaningless silence with perfect strangers.'
De Gier was home but didn't open up because he was listening to recorded jungle music from Papua New Guinea.
Grijpstra banged on the door and kept his finger on the buzzer.
'Tabriz,' de Gier told his cat, 'they have returned. Mind if I shoot through the door?'
'Gestapo,' Grijpstra shouted because de Gier had Jewish ancestry and often discussed revenge. 'Just once, Henk,' de Gier would say. 'I would feel so much better. You wouldn't mind, would you?' De Gier's Jewish grandmother had been run over by a bus in Rio de Janeiro after fleeing Holland just before the German occupation. De Gier's desire to get even was, in principle, based on Good versus Evil. He considered himself to be good. Good guy kills bad guy. After, maybe, slapping him around some.
While waiting for this opportunity de Gier went out of his way to be helpful to German tourists. He was also known to be particularly thoughtful when dealing with German suspects.
Perhaps, he told Grijpstra, only the fantasy mattered.
'Gestapo, my dear.' Grijpstra leaned against the creaking front door.
De Gier opened the door suddenly, hoping that his victim would tumble into the room. Grijpstra had stepped back, however.
'I prefer to be alone tonight,' de Gier said, making way so that Grijpstra could enter. 'I am sure you understand.'
Grijpstra was glad to know someone who put the kettle on to boil water for tea and who dropped bread slices into a toaster. De Gier, ten years younger than the adjutant, looked filmish, Grijpstra thought. The sergeant's short curly hair had been washed and conditioned, his large full mustache was brushed up. He ambled gracefully about in a striped cotton kimono. Mister B movie, Grijpstra thought kindly: our Action Hero, momentarily at rest, between fighting and fucking.
'How is Whatshername doing?' Grijpstra asked when de Gier pushed tea, anchovy toast and napkins, tastefully arranged on a dented silver tray, across the table.
'I don't understand Whatshername,' de Gier said.
'I do understand Nellie,' Grijpstra said, feeding fish to de Gier's cat, Tabriz. 'Nellie wants me to move in but her hotel is too noisy.' He brushed crumbs off his pinstripe suit. 'I still prefer Living Apart Together.'
'I prefer Nothing At All,' de Gier said.
Grijpstra had heard inactivity proclaimed as solution, mere hours ago, by the junkie-burglar. But the junkie allowed for exceptions. There was the needle of course. 'There could also be,' the junkie had suggested respectfully, 'direct divine connection via pussy.'
'You dare to do away with your sexual quest?'
Grijpstra asked.
'Man may dream,' de Gier said.
'Of liberty?'
'Yes, by means of doing nothing. Don't you believe in total negation?'
'I believe,' Grijpstra said, 'and he who believes is not sure and therefore condemned to keep trying.'
Both detectives, in the continuing dialogues, brought up the commissaris as their ultimate authority. The commissaris kept trying to approach the mystery via activity, useful work.
Serving the common good.
Why else would the commissaris go to America now?
