situation.'
Shouldn't accuse so easily, Karate and Ketchup said. Never guess the worst about the character of a colleague.
Cardozo stated that he would guess what he liked, and voice his theories without making exceptions for possible traitors. Colleagues? Ha! Weren't there colleagues who weren't on the portophone when they should be? Weren't there colleagues who had left him in danger, who had made him hold a heavy pistol for an hour or so, while he was surrounded by gangsters?
They were sorry, Ketchup and Karate said, but they had been busy; drunk and belligerent German tourists had to be wrestled to the ground, and before you know where you are, an hour is gone.
And why, Cardozo wanted to know, was Turkish heroin found on Chinese dealers?
Ketchup and Karate said that they really had to be leaving now, and that any situation is built up out of a large number of unknowable details. You can never get to the bottom of anything. They elbowed Cardozo. 'But isn't it fun?'
'Not right now,' Cardozo said.
He walked home, fuming jenever vapors.
Close to his home, a suspect mounted a bicycle. Cardozo, breaking into a sudden trot, managed to grab hold of the suspect's sleeve. 'Where are you off to? That bike should be in the corridor by now.'
'Since when,' asked the Hider of Bicycles, 'can't I be riding my very own bike?'
'Bring it into the house,' Cardozo said. 'At once. Give me the key to the lock.'
The suspect dismounted. He struck while he turned. Wo Hop's mate watched from a doorway. It had been a long night for him-caught and bound, liberated and arrested, temporarily released and still up and about, in the early hours.
The suspect's fist was caught by Cardozo, who had passed only a few days ago, the examinations of the Unarmed Combat class. Cardozo twisted and pulled the suspect's fist across his shoulder, and turned. The suspect was forced to follow the compelling movements, and lost his footing, fell, got up again, and attacked with a kick. His foot was hooked away by Cardozo's ankle. The suspect again fell.
'Ouch,' the suspect said. 'You don't fight fair.'*
'You shouldn't be fighting me,' Cardozo said. 'Would your name happen to be Cain? Am I, perchance, called Abel?'
'You're so right,' Cain said. 'Will we never learn? The Age of Aquarius is already upon us, and it'll be raining in a minute. From now on we'll practice true brotherly love and fight only to defend ourselves against the enemy from outside.'
Arms linked, Samuel and Simon walked home; Samuel pushed the bicycle along. Simon helped him to carry the bicycle up the stairs. He was given the key. A thunderclap confirmed their mutual decision to cherish their mutual benefit, forever after.
Wo Hop's mate returned to his cheap lodging in the Red Quarter, but first he checked with the boss of bis triad, the venerable Wo Hop.
'So Mophead fought with another Mophead?' Wo Hop asked. 'Amazing. And the first Mophead will be cycling to Friesland tomorrow, by way of the dike? Suprising.'
'And your decision?' Wo Hop's mate asked humbly.
Wo Hop closed his eyes and mumbled, no longer in fluent Cantonese, but in the ancient language of forgotten lore. He lit incense sticks, bowed, threw coins, and was instructed by the book from the past.
'You,' Wo Hop said, 'and the two others of your selection will be bicycling on the dike too, tomorrow at six, which is in just a few hours, tomorrow being today and all time being illusion.'
The mate found the two others and passed the order. The maid of the lodging house brought in tea, and her ears. A little later she telephoned another cheap lodging house, on the other end of the dike.
Cardozo slept peacefully. Six Chinese grumbled in their shallow slumbers, exhausted after having stolen six bicycles, three near the Central Railway Station in Amsterdam and three near the railway station of Bolsward, a Frisian town.
\\ 11 /////
Leeuwarden, the Frisian capital, was Amsterdam in miniature and perfect in detail, as the architects of the Golden Age, over three hundred years ago, had planned their creation. That I'm allowed to partake of that well- meaning and artistic dream, de Gier thought as he strolled along empty quaysides and silent gables, reaching for the expanse of the night, which sparkled with clean stars. No people, but who needs them? Humanity never fails to disturb abstract beauty. The Frisians created this work of art and now they rest, allowing me to admire the beauty of their realization. Tomorrow they'll be about again, each house releasing a fresh female worker who'll immediately drop to her knees and scrub pavement and gable. No crumpled cigarette packs, no dog droppings, not even in the gutter. Too clean, maybe? De Gier felt uncomfortable. Once contrasts are pushed aside, once everything becomes the way it should be, what do you do? And why was he here? Why didn't he find the shortest way to his temporary quarters and extinguish himself in bed? Where would his Spanish Lane be? Could he ask anybody? Was anybody left? At two in the morning?
A gent in a deeply dented, broad-brimmed felt hat emerged from an alley and walked ahead of the sergeant. The gent slowed his pace. He looked around. 'Jun.'
It sounded like a greeting. De Gier said ' Jun ' too.
The gent looked expectant. De Gier explained himself. Out for a walk.
The gent spoke at length. It seemed he was describing undressed women. 'Sure,' de Gier said. Why not? There are women, and they do undress. Their image is a powerful motivation for lone gents walking through the night. Maybe the gent had been saying that.
The gent got hold of de Gier's arm and they were now walking together. 'Mata Hari,' the gent said, and giggled and tittered. He pointed at a bronze statue in charge of a little bridge spanning a miniature canal. They stopped to admire the metal female form. Mata Hari was undressed. The gent again spoke at length, and the sergeant, catching a word here and there, remembered that Miss Hari had once, several wars ago, danced her way into Paris and into the hearts of Prussian spies and that her hosts, French noblemen and officers of rank, became jealous and did away with her.
'Whore!' the gent shouted. De Gier caught more words. Miss Hari's statue was alone now, immobile, a reminder, but once upon a better time this bridge and all the alleys around had been populated by live prostitutes. The gent pointed here and there and suddenly stiffened his arm. The arm, horizontal now, pushed and pulled rhythmically while the gent whistled. De Gier grasped that the movement was symbolic of an activity the gent used to delight in, in earlier days, and lower in his body.
'So that's all over now?'
De Gier didn't quite follow, but according to the gent, the general sexual decline was somehow connected with the cattle market and the development of modern machines. Many years ago, when there were no spacious trucks, the farmers would walk their animals to market. They were stabled somewhere and sold the next day. The night in between was filled with push-of-the-arm-whistle, pull-of-the-arm-whistle.
He would never have guessed, de Gier said politely.
But now, the gent was saying, the big trucks- vrrrum. vrrrum-they throw open their rear doors-whop- the cows charge into the street-kuttubum, kuttubum-where they are chased into the market hall and sold.
'Why would that prevent their owners' later pleasure?'
The gent wobbled his eyebrows. De Gier pushed and pulled his arm, whistling shrilly.
Again, de Gier wasn't quite following the gent's explanation, but the fact that the pleasure had gone would have to do with modern business routine. Cows sold, cash collected, in the middle of the day, rather spoils pleasurable possibilities. Did he mean that again? Sure, push-whistle-pull-whistle. Even so, there might still be a way. He grabbed de Gier's arm again and pushed him along. 'Where?' de Gier asked.
'Hjir' the gent said, and was gone.
De Gier recognized the square building straddling two canals that Hylkje had pointed out before. A sex club?
