Until I Find You

2 VOET

TREMULANT POSITIEF

Jack struggled to hear the Lord’s noise in the music. But even when Vogel played the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei, the Lord wasn’t speaking to Jack.

Willem Vogel had never met Jack’s dad. Once, in 1970, Vogel had been out to dinner rather late with some friends; one of the friends suggested that they go to the Oude Kerk and listen to William Burns’s concert for the fallen ladies, but Vogel was tired and declined the invitation. “I regret I never heard him play,” the organist told Jack. “Some say he was marvelous; others say that William Burns was too much of an entertainer to be taken seriously as a musician.”

The next morning, Jack went with Nico Oudejans to a cafe where they were meeting Saskia for coffee. Saskia had stopped being a prostitute more than ten years before; her retirement hadn’t improved her disposition, Nico forewarned Jack. She’d gone to a school for beauticians and had learned how to cut hair, maybe also how to do makeup and manicures; she worked in a beauty shop on the Rokin—a wide, busy street with many medium- expensive shops.

Saskia hadn’t wanted Nico and Jack to come to the beauty shop. Given her former line of work, even a friendly visit from the police was unwelcome. And Saskia feared that—in a beauty shop, of all places—the ladies would make too much of a fuss over her knowing Jack Burns.

When Jack saw her coming, he thought she’d had more than a career change. She’d had a whole makeover. Gone was the winking armload of bracelets, hiding her burn scar. In her fifties now, she was still thin, but the gauntness had left her face. There wasn’t a trace of the come-on of her former profession about her. Saskia’s hair was cut as short as a boy’s. Over a white turtleneck, she wore what looked like a man’s tweed jacket. Her baggy jeans were unflattering; her ankle-high boots, with a low heel, gave her a mannish walk.

Jack got to his feet and kissed her, but Saskia was a little cool to him—not unfriendly but not warm, either. She was only marginally friendlier to Nico. She was carrying a Yorkshire terrier in her oversize handbag. The dog and Nico appeared to be old friends; the Yorkie hopped out of Saskia’s handbag and sat contentedly in Nico’s lap while the waiter took Saskia’s order.

Jack half expected her to order a ham-and-cheese croissant, but she asked for a coffee instead. He wasn’t surprised that she’d had her teeth fixed. Why wouldn’t a new mouth have been included in her makeover?

“I know why you’re here, Jack, and it doesn’t interest me,” Saskia began. “I don’t go along with it.” Jack didn’t say anything. “Everyone took your dad’s side. But I hate men, and I liked your mom. Besides, I wasn’t working in the district to take time out to go to church and listen to him play his bleeding-heart organ.”

“I remember bringing you ham-and-cheese croissants,” Jack told her. (He was trying to calm her down, because she sounded angry.)

“Your father hung out there—that was where your mother let him see you, when she was buying a bloody ham-and-cheese croissant. I think I would die on the spot if I ever ate another one.”

“You and Els took turns being my babysitter?” Jack asked her.

“Your mom helped Els and me pay the rent on our rooms,” she answered. “Alice paid part of Els’s rent and part of mine. The three of us shared two rooms. It made sense, businesswise.”

“And Mom admitted only virgins?” he asked.

“Some of those boys had been with half the ladies in the district! It only mattered to Alice that they looked like virgins,” Saskia said.

“Did she honestly believe that my dad would get back together with her, just to stop her from being a prostitute?”

“She believed that your dad would do almost anything to protect you—to give you the life he thought you should have, which wasn’t a life in the red-light district,” Saskia said. “It was the fuckhead lawyer who worked out a way to make your mother stop being a prostitute.”

“You didn’t like the lawyer?” Jack asked. He remembered how Saskia and Els had screamed at Femke; how he’d thought that Els and Femke had come close to having a physical fight.

“Femke was as much of an asshole do-gooder as your fucking father, Jack. On the one hand, she was this outspoken advocate for prostitutes’ rights; on the other hand, she wanted us all to go back to school or learn another profession!”

“What was the deal that she offered Mom?”

“Femke told your mother to get off the street and take you back to Canada. Your dad wouldn’t follow you this time, Femke promised. If your mom would put you in a good school—if she kept you in school—your dad would pay for everything. But your mother was tough; she told Femke that your father had to promise he would never seek even partial custody of you. And he had to promise that he wouldn’t look you up, not even when you were older—not even if Alice was dead.”

“But why would my dad promise that?”

“He opted to keep you safe, Jack—even if it meant he could never make contact with you,” Nico Oudejans said.

“If your mom couldn’t have your dad, then he couldn’t have you,” Saskia said. “It was that simple. Listen, Jack—your mother would have slashed her throat and bled to death in front of you, just to teach your fucking father a lesson.”

“What lesson was that?” Jack cried. “That he should never have left her?”

“Listen, Jack,” Saskia said again. “I admired your mom because she put a price tag on his leaving her—a high one. Most women can never be paid enough for the terrible things men do to them.”

“But what terrible thing did he do to her?” Jack asked Saskia. “He just left her! He didn’t abandon me; he gave her money for my education, and for my other expenses—”

“You can’t get a woman pregnant and then change your mind about her and not have it cost you, Jack,” Saskia said. “Just ask your father.”

Nico hadn’t said anything since telling Jack that his dad had opted to keep him safe. Saskia, like Alice, had clearly chosen revenge over reason.

“Do you cut men’s hair, too?” Jack asked her. “Or just women’s?” (He was trying to calm himself down a little.)

Saskia smiled. She’d finished her coffee. She made a kissing sound with her lips, and the Yorkshire terrier sprang out of Nico’s lap and into her arms. She put the tiny dog back in her handbag and stood up from the table. “Just women’s,” she told Jack, still smiling. “But now that you’re all grown up, Jackie boy, if you ever want someone to cut your balls off, just ask me.”

“I guess she didn’t learn the castration part in beauty school,” Nico Oudejans said, after they’d watched Saskia walk away. She didn’t once turn to wave; she just kept going.

“What about Els?” Jack asked Nico. “I suppose you know what’s happened to her, too.”

“Fortunately for you,” Nico said, “Els has a somewhat sweeter disposition.”

“She’s not cutting hair?” Jack asked.

“You’ll see,” the policeman said. “Everyone has a history, Jack.”

Nico led Jack past the Damrak, away from the red-light district. They wound their way through streams of shoppers—across the Nieuwendijk to the tiny Sint Jacobsstraat, where Els occupied a second-floor apartment. Her window with the red light was a little uncommon for a prostitute’s window, not solely for being outside the district but because her room was above street-level. Yet when Jack considered that Els had taken an overview of her life in prostitution—she’d grown up on a farm and took an overview of life on a farm as well —he thought that Els in her window above the street was where she belonged.

During the day, she greeted passersby with boisterous affection, but Nico told Jack that Els was more judgmental at night; if you were a drunk or a drug addict pissing in the street, she would turn her police-issue flashlight on you and loudly condemn your bad manners. On the Sint Jacobsstraat, Els was still a prostitute, but she was also a self-appointed sheriff. Drugs had changed the red-light district and driven her out of it; alcohol and drugs had killed her only children. (Two young men—they’d both died in their twenties.)