hoped that the furniture could be auctioned. There would also be the car he had seen when they arrived, a sturdy four-wheel-drive vehicle, a station wagon, in good condition but hard to sell he supposed. Everybody around would already have a car. He would have to persuade her to make some sacrifices, but he could always work on her fear of staying. Fear and greed, two powerful urges he might be able to manipulate to everybody's benefit.
She brought the writing materials and he sat down and wrote the letters and licked the stamps. He might be able to post them after dinner if she would let him use her car. He lit a cigar and ambled about the room. A nice room, but the wallpaper was a little elaborate. Suzanne woud have bought it in Holland. A farmer and his wife, in folksy clothes and wooden shoes, doing a jig against the background of a windmill. Good God. He looked away, but the design repeated itself. The jig continued on all the room's walls. The commissaris stared in horror. The farmer and his wife were smiling inanely, a thousand times, many thousands of times. He would have to try to stay away from the walls. But what else was there to look at? The windows. He pulled the shades and sighed with relief as the opaque linen snapped up and rolled itself on a bar.
The view destroyed the jig of the imbecilic couple. He sighed with wonder as he admired the bay below, its ice mirroring the starlight. An icy, immense wasteland of pure beauty, stretching away to a shore covered by a growth of what appeared to be evergreens surrounding an island. The island sloped up to a hill. There were no lights, but a high jetty stuck out into the bay. He looked up just as a moving cloud revealed the half moon, and when his eyes dropped down again the ice of the bay had become a light shade of, of what? Mauve? A very soft blue? The color seemed hard to define. He forgot the question. Why name the color? He stayed in front of the window until his sister called him, and he had time to see the narrow channel in the ice between the island and his side of the shore. The channel would run out to the ocean. He also saw the ridges and domes where ledges and rocks had been frozen over and become raised when the tide went down. He shook his head when he remembered the simple beaches of Holland, a hundred miles of yellow sand protected on one side by monotonous dunes and attacked on the other by steady breakers. He had always liked the Dutch beaches, but this was a different beauty, a distorted beauty almost, dating back to the beginning of the planet, when the first shapes were created out of turmoil.
'Jan?'
There was a sob even in that one-syllable word. He promised himself not to be irritated by his sister's gift to find suffering in anything. He remembered Suzanne as a child, a girl, a young woman. He had been able to find a way to put up with her misery then. All he had to do now was remember the recipe and repeat the performance.
'Yes, I'll be coming down, dear. Just let me shave and dress. It won't take long.'
'The food is on the table, Jan.'
'Very well.' She would get her way. He wondered how Opdijk had put up with her sniffling approach. Would he have hit her from time to time? But Suzanne didn't look battered. Perhaps Opdijk had found ways of keeping himself busy.
'What did Opdijk do here, Suzanne?'
'He did everything, Jan. He chopped wood and he worked in the garden and he often went to town. He was the president of the club-that took a lot of his time. They have boats and things, and there were dinners and parties. I didn't always go.'
'Club? What club?'
'The Blue Crustaceans. Opdijk was always very social. The doctor said he should be more careful, his heart… But he just slipped on the rocks.'
'Had he been drinking?'
'No, he only drank after five. It happened in the morning. He had gone down to cut a dead tree, and when he didn't come back for coffee I went to look for him. The chain saw was still going. I couldn't understand it. The saw was halfway in a log, but he wasn't there and when I looked down I saw him, a long way down, on the rocks. He was looking at me, but his eyes were dead. Oh, Jan…'
'Yes. We'll have a look at the spot tomorrow. Slippery down there, I suppose.'
'Yes, Jan.'
After dinner he looked through the rest of the files and checked Opdijk's bookkeping, which had been kept up to the day preceding the man's death. He found the deed of the house stating that the total property was just under three acres. There were no mortgage payments in the tidily kept records. Opdijk owned his property outright. It would make the sale easier.
'Is there a real estate agency in town, Suzanne?'
She looked up from die sock she was knitting. 'Yes, Jan, Mr. Astrinsky's office.'
'I'll see him tomorrow.'
'He is a nice man, Jan, also a member of the club. Opdijk knew him well. They sometimes drank together, too much I am afraid. I was always so worried when he would come home late, but he would drive slowly and he always made it.'
'Any other realtors?'
'No, there's only Mr. Astrinsky.'
'I see. So I can't make them bid against each other. Well, there's no hurry, dear. You are well off. We can have the house listed, and it can be sold later.'
'But I do want an apartment in Amsterdam, Jan, not a room. Will there be enough to buy an apartment?'
'There's a lot of money in the savings account.'
'Will it buy me a nice apartment?'
He thought, clicking the pencil against his teeth. 'Yes, there is enough for a down payment. You can easily get a mortgage for the difference.'
'I don't want any debts, Jan. I always hated debts, and I would like a three-room apartment.'
'There isn't enough cash for that.'
'Can't you sell this house right away?'
'Yes,' he said. 'Yes. Don't worry, dear. I'll see what can be done and then I'll do it.'
'I am so glad you came, Jan.'
He had his doubts. A forced sale would drop the value, but it would be useless to try to advise her. Under the sadness there was an iron will, misdirected of course, but that wasn't his affair. He had committed himself to be of help and it had to be the help she wanted. The apartment she had in mind might cost over fifty. Still, he wouldn't throw her money away unless she forced him to. And there was the matter of time-he couldn't stay too long. He sighed, got up to look out the living room window, and sighed again. The moon was higher now and the bay had subtly changed. He mentioned the island, and she came and joined him at the window.
'That's Jeremy's Island. I've never been there. Opdijk went a few times, but he didn't like Jeremy; called him a filthy old man.'
'Is he?'
'Yes, in a way. He lives there by himself, and I suppose he doesn't have a bathroom or electricity or anything. But he is very polite. He always waves when he comes by in his boat.'
'You know him at all?'
'Not really, Jan. I don't know anybody except Janet. She comes to tea and I've been to her house, not often.'
He left the window reluctantly. 'Can I use the station wagon, Suzanne? I'll mail the letters. I've asked the pension and insurance people to send the money to you care of my address in Amsterdam. Once you have your apartment you can contact them again or I'll do it for you.'
'Yes,' she said. 'How nice. In Amsterdam. I've been so homesick, Jan.'
He looked at the stacks of Dutch magazines, at the reproductions of paintings of canals, bridges, dikes, views of Amsterdam streets looking cheap in plastic frames. He had seen the kitchen and looked at shelves filled with Dutch cans, jars, pots. She hadn't even changed her food, after that many years in another environment, in America, the land of plenty. An expensive household to run if everything has to be imported. He was surprised that Opdijk had allowed her to waste money like that. Perhaps the man hadn't been as tough as he had imagined him to be.
She went with him to the garage and waited until the station wagon's engine caught, then opened the doors.
