handmade cigarettes. The house was close to the wide IJ River, right in the center of Amsterdam. A huge oil tanker was coming past, filling each window with its rusty bulk, honking its high-powered hooter moodily, like a lonely male whale complaining about its solitude.
'Beautiful house you've got here, Bert,' Grijpstra said. 'There won't be too many people in the city who've got such a clear view of the river as you have here.'
'Not bad, hey? The house has been in the family since my great-grandfather built it. Could get a good price for it now, but why sell if you don't have to? The vegetable business is bringing in the daily penny and the wife and I've got a bit in the bank and no mortgage to worry about and the children all gone and settled. What ho! Like a beer?'
'Yes,' Grijpstra said.
'Or a shot from the big gun? I've got some jenever that will make your ears wave and it's nice and cold too. You won't be able to drink it all night but a snort to set you off maybe?'
'I'll have a snort,' Grijpstra said, 'and a beer.'
Bert slapped his thigh. 'That's what I like. You're like me. I always want everything. If they give me a choice, that is.'
'If I may,' Grijpstra said, remembering the manners which his mother had once tried to hammer into him.
'You may, you may,' Bert said, and steered his guest to a large trestle table loaded with bottles and plates heaped with large green gherkins, shining white onions, fat hot sausages and small dishes filled with at least ten varieties of nuts.
'Nuts,' Grijpstra shouted. 'Nice.'
'You like nuts?'
'Favorite food. I am always buying them but they never reach my house. I eat them from the bag on the way.'
'Eat them all,' Bert said. 'I've got more in the kitchen. Heaps of them.'
Grijpstra ate, and drank, and was grateful he had been too late for his dinner and had refused Mrs.
Grijpstra's grumpy offer to warm up the cheap dried beef and glassy potatoes she had fed her family that night. The jenever burned in his throat and the nuts filled his round cheeks as he studied the room where de Gier, immaculate in a freshly laundered denim suit and a pale blue shirt, smoking a long thin cigar which accentuated his aristocratic nose and full upswept mustache, was listening to a middle-aged woman, flapping her artificial eyelashes. Cardozo was studying a TV set which showed a dainty little girl being pursued by a tall thin black-haired man through an endless and overgrown garden.
The room was as full of furniture as it was of people and it was only after his third glass of jenever that Grijpstra could accept its wallpaper, gold foil printed with roses the size of cauliflowers. There was no doubt about it, Uncle Bert was well off. It was also clear that he wasn't paying his taxes. Grijpstra turned and flattened his left hand and picked half a dozen nuts each from the ten small dishes with his right. The job took some time, and as the time passed Grijpstra thought and when Grijpstra had finished thinking he had decided that he didn't care about Uncle Bert's tax paying. His left hand was full now and he swept its contents into his mouth and chewed.
'You like music?'
Grijpstra nodded.
'I bought a record player the other day,' Uncle Bert said, and pointed at a corner of the room. The corner was filled with a collection of electronic boxes, each one with its own set of knobs and dials, and connected to loudspeakers, which were pointed out one by one.
'I'll put on a record,' Uncle Bert said. 'The sound is magnificent. You can hear the conductor scratch his arse.'
'Is that all he does?' Grijpstra asked.
'That's what he does before the music starts.
Scratch, scratch and then 'tick' (that's his baton, his little stick you know) and then VRRAMMM, that's the tuba. It's nice music, Russian. Lots of brass and then voices. They sing fighting songs. I like the Russians. They'll come one day and do away with the capitalists here. I've been a member of the party all my life. I've been to Moscow too, six times.'
'What's Moscow like?' Grijpstra asked.
'Beautiful, beautiful,' Uncle Bert said, and spread his large hands. 'The metro stations are like palaces, and all for the people, like you and me, and they play good football down there, and the market is better.'
'But you can't make a profit.'
Uncle Bert's eyes clouded as he refused to let the thought in. 'Yes, yes.'
'No,' Grijpstra said. 'They won't let you make a profit. They all get the same wage. No private initiative.'
'It's a good street market, and the vegetables are better. Here. I'll play that record for you.'
The record started. There was too much noise around for them to hear the conductor's scratching but when the tuba broke loose the room was drowned in sound and the guests were looking at each other, still moving their mouths, dazed by the unexpected clamor and wondering what was hitting them.
'Karoompf Karoompf,' the tuba grumped, and the tall thin man was still chasing the dainty girl through the endless overgrown garden, in glaring color, on a screen the size of a small tablecloth. Grijpstra put his glass down and shook his head. His spine seemed suddenly disconnected, each vertebra rattled free by the combined attack of raw alcohol and brass explosions. A choir of heavy voices had come in now, chanting a bloodcurdling song in words which seemed to consist of vowels linked by soft zylee's and zylaa's. Uncle Bert was dancing by himself in the middle of the room, his eyes closed and his mouth stretched in a smile of pure ecstatic bliss.
'What…' Grijpstra began, but he let the question go. He would have a beer, he thought, and drink it slowly.
Cardozo thumped de Gier's back. He thumped too hard and the whisky which de Gier had been holding spilled down the dress of the middle-aged woman, who was still trying to talk to him. There had been ice cubes in the whisky and the woman shrieked merrily, trying to dislodge the ice cubes between her large breasts and mouthing some inviting words which nobody could hear.
De Gier spun around, drawing back his fist, but Cardozo smiled and pointed to the window, beckoning to de Gier to follow him. They passed the TV on their way. The tall thin man had caught the girl and had his hands around her slim lovely neck. The man and the girl were still in the overgrown endless garden, close to a stone outhouse, greenish white and lit up by the moon. The girl struggled and the man leered. The warrior's chant was swelling into a gigantic crescendo and tubas, trumpets, bassoons and clarinets honked and wailed shrilly in turn, framing the voices which were coming closer and closer as the girl's lace collar was being slowly torn away.
They had arrived at the window and de Gier saw two large parrots, one gray and one red, each in its own cage.
'Listen,' Cardozo shouted.
De Gier went closer to the cages. Both parrots were jumping on their narrow wooden swings. The gray parrot seemed to be singing but the other was throwing up.
'He is puking,' de Gier shouted.
'Nope. He is only making the sound. Uncle Bert told me. Uncle Bert was sick some days ago and the red parrot has been imitating him ever since. He does it very well, I think. Listen.'
But de Gier had escaped. He didn't want to hear a parrot vomit. He was in the corridor, away from the noise, wiping his face with his handkerchief.
'I am getting drunk,' de Gier thought. 'I don't want to get drunk. Must drink water from now on. Lemonade. Cola. Anything.'
There was a telephone in the corridor and he dialed his own number, steadying himself against the wall with his other hand.
'This is the house of Mr. de Gier,' the telephone said.
'Esther?'
'Rinus.'
'I am glad you came. I am at a mad party but I'll try to get home as quick as I can. How are you feeling?'
