Netherland (25 page)

No doubt, I thought, he was also an expert in reviving Anglo-Saxon erotic traditions. A sensualist who embodied a classic yet contemporary approach to carnal pleasure.

I told Vinay the score.

“Oh, fuck that,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Jesus. Martin Casey.”

“Yep,” I said, feeling brave.

Vinay, excited, said, “The dude’s short. He’s a fucking dwarf, Hans. You’re going to blow him out of the fucking water.”

It was good of Vinay to say this, but Vinay, in spite of his own six feet, had a terrible record with women and was, I knew for a fact, a bonehead about anything he couldn’t eat or drink. Moreover there was nothing dwarfish about the Casey I’d uncovered online, a healthily tubby, attractive man in his forties with ruffled black hair and, in one photograph, a crew of fantastically good-and talented-looking sous-chefs who stood ranged behind him like merry pirates.

I told Chuck I couldn’t make it. “I’ve got stuff to take care of,” I said.

“OK,” he said with a surprising readiness.

The following Sunday morning, at eleven o’clock, the house phone rang. It was you-know-who, calling up from the lobby.

“I told you, I can’t do this,” I said. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

“What time?”

“Five,” I said reluctantly.

“No problem. I’ve canceled the mowing—too wet. I’ve got a special program. You’ll be home by two, at the latest.”

“Listen, Chuck, I don’t want to,” I said.

“I’m parked outside,” he said. “Get down here.”

This time Chuck drove. It was a fine day. The East River from the Brooklyn Bridge was a pure stroke of blue.

I thought of my mother, whom I thought of whenever I crossed that bridge.

Two weeks after Jake was born, she made her first and last visit to America. It had taken a number of carefully suggestive calls on my part to persuade her to make the trip, which loomed, as it did for many of her generation, as a voyage of terrific proportions. From the moment she arrived, she seemed downcast and preoccupied in a way that struck me as uncharacteristic, although I could not be sure, since I had not seen my mother in three years. To divert her, I proposed a bicycle ride; and once mounted on a rented bicycle she rode strongly enough, certainly for a woman of sixty-six. We rode to Brooklyn. We admired the brownstones of Brooklyn Heights (“If I lived here, this is where I would live,” said my mother), and after eating a bagel with smoked salmon (“So this is the famous bagel”) we set off on the return journey. It was a cloudy morning in late September. A slight wind was in our faces as we crept up the incline of Brooklyn Bridge. A third of the way across, we stopped. We stood next to each other, bicycles at our side, and somewhat formally observed the sights. A mist had thickened over New York Bay. I explained to my mother that the island directly ahead was Governors Island, and that beyond it, lost in silver murk, was Staten Island. My mother asked about the docking facilities that were just visible in the distance, and I identified New Jersey for her.

My mother said, “And there you have the…” Annoyed, she searched for the name. “The Statue of Liberty,” I said. “We can go there, if you like.” My mother nodded. “Yes,” she said. “We must do that.” After a moment or two, she said, “Let’s go on,” and we climbed back on our bicycles and continued up the bridge. We went forward side by side. My mother pushed the pedals steadily. She was tall and big and white-haired. Her skin wore a raw, slightly meaty flush. She was dressed in that combination of dark blue raincoat and college scarf and leather loafers that is, in my mind, the immemorial uniform of the bourgeoises of The Hague. Beyond the crest of the bridge we started the downhill glide into Manhattan. From the deck beneath us came the rhythmic chuckling of car tires. At the foot of the bridge, by City Hall, we entered the traffic; my mother followed me cautiously, a sweat of concentration gathering on her face. On Broadway she abruptly pulled over and stepped off her ride, and when I asked her if she was all right, she merely nodded her head and walked on, pushing her bicycle alongside her. This was exactly how she’d accompanied me when, as a fourteen-year-old, I delivered the
NRC Handelsblad
in the Boom-and Bloemenbuurt—the Tree and Flower District. On my first day on the job, she escorted me through the opening section of my round, going with me to Aronskelkweg, Arabislaan, and Margrietstraat until she was satisfied that I knew what I was doing. The challenge was to not get lost: I carried a piece of paper on which were sequentially set out the addresses of the drops, the sequence prescribing a route that, if transcribed onto a map, would resemble one of those densely marked puzzle mazes that penciling small children produce. Mama led the way. “I’m going back now,” she said after an hour. “Can you finish on your own?” I could, although it must be said that I was an unsystematic paperboy who generated many complaints. My overseer, a semiretiree who took great pleasure in handing over my weekly envelope of cash, was forced to take me aside and explain that these complaints—
klachten
—were no joke and that I had to take my work seriously. “Have you ever read the newspaper?” he asked me. I gave no answer. “You should. You’d learn a lot, and you’d understand why people get upset if they don’t receive it.” On Saturdays, when sports commitments prevented me from working, my mother substituted for me. She would cycle down to the newspaper depot, load up the heavy black saddlebag, and set off. I took this for granted, of course. My assumption was that it was the job of parents to do such things and that my mother was secretly overjoyed to fill in for me, even though this could require her to wander in the rain and cold for over two hours and certainly to humbly accept a lower station in life.

It was in the course of the paper-round that she met her gentleman friend Jeroen. “I was very curious,” Jeroen told me at the reception he hosted after the cremation. “Who was this woman who delivered the paper every Saturday? It was so mysterious. Don’t forget, she wasn’t much older than you are now. And so beautiful: tall, blond, athletic. Always well dressed. My type of woman. But coming to my door with the newspaper? This was intriguing.” We were in Jeroen’s flat in Waldeck, on the fifth floor of the notoriously long apartment block known to all as the Wall of China. It was just us two; everybody else had gone home. He unsteadily poured another shot of jenever. “After a few weeks of watching her come and go, I decide to make my move.” Jeroen lit a cigarette. “You don’t mind me telling you this, do you?”

“No,” I said, although naturally enough I was hoping he would skip certain details.

“So here’s what I do,” Jeroen said, a wide yellow-and-brown smile in his cadaverous face. Within three months he, too, would be dead. “I dress in my best clothes. Sports jacket, shirt, tie. I polish my best shoes. I put a goddamned handkerchief in my breast pocket. Then I wait. At four o’clock, I hear the garden gate open. It’s Miriam. Just as she comes to the door, I open it. ‘Thank you,’ I say. She just smiles and goes back to her bicycle. I run after her and open the gate. I’m on my way out, you see, that’s my story. I don’t want her to think I’m ambushing her. I introduce myself. ‘And your name is…?’ Miriam van den Broek, she says, getting on her bicycle. And then she rides off.” Jeroen laughed and adjusted his spectacles. “Perfect, I thought. She’s reserved but friendly. Like you,” he said, pointing his cigarette at me. “You see, with reserved people, it’s simple: you have to be direct. So the next week, I’m waiting for her again. I’ve had a haircut. I’ve brushed my teeth. Here she comes, up the garden path. I open the door and accept the newspaper. ‘Would you like to go to dinner?’ I say. I’m not messing around, you see. I’m too old for that, and I’m guessing she is, too. This is what I’ve learned on the subject of women: never delay. The more quickly you act, the greater the chance of success. She smiles and walks back to her bicycle. Then she stands there, like this, like a schoolgirl.” Jeroen sprang up and stood upright, his blue, frozen-looking hands gripping invisible handlebars. “‘Why not?’ she says. Why not. I’ll never forget it.” A convulsion of coughing overtook him, and he lowered himself into a chair. “The rest you know,” he said, exhausted. Which I didn’t, in point of fact. I had very little idea about what passed between them. I didn’t know, for example, why five years later he and my mother had put an end to things.

She had regained enough energy, on our return to Tribeca, to ask immediately if she might take the baby for a walk.

“Are you sure?” Rachel said.

“We’ll just go around the block,” my mother said. “Come, Jake,” she said, lifting the baby into the stroller.

After an hour or so they had not returned. This was worrying. Rachel said that I should go out and look for them.

I found my mother a couple of blocks away, looking distressed.

“What happened?”

“I got lost,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“All these buildings look the same,” I said, and I accepted her arm in mine and pushed the stroller home.

Now Chuck was driving us through Brooklyn. I heard myself tell him, “My wife is seeing another guy.”

He showed no surprise, even though it was the first time I’d raised directly the subject of my marriage. After a moment, he said, “What do you want to do about it?”

“What can I do?” I said hopelessly.

He gave his head a categorical shake. “Not
can
do: first figure out what you
want
to do. It’s Project Management 101: establish objectives, then establish means of achieving objectives.” He glanced at me. “Do you want her back?”

I said, “Let’s say I do.”

“OK,” he said. “Then you should go back to London. Right away. It’s a no-brainer.”

I thought, No-brainer? What would happen in London? A seduction with flowers? A ravishment? Then what?

“Otherwise,” Chuck, growing emphatic, said, “you’re in danger of having regrets. My bottom line is, no regrets.”

This was on Atlantic Avenue, by Cobble Hill, in traffic.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” I said.

“It’s never the same,” Chuck said. “Even if everything goes well it’s never the same. Right?” He tapped my knee. “Let me tell you something: these things have a funny way of working out. You know the best thing that happened to me and Anne? Eliza.”

I wanted to talk about my situation, not Chuck’s. I also wanted something other than the usual from him.

He concentrated on overtaking a bus. Chuck was a speedy, dodgy driver. “Anne and me,” he continued, “we’ve known each other since we were babies. She’s been with me through thick and thin. When we were living in Brownsville with Mike Tyson beating up people on the streets, she didn’t complain once. So we’re together for life. But my theory is, I need two women.” He wore the most solemn expression. “One to take care of family and home, one to make me feel alive. It’s too much to ask one woman to do both.”

“That’s very big of you,” I said.

He gave a snort of amusement. “Listen, what can I tell you? After a certain point, their agenda changes. It’s all about kids and housekeeping and what have you. With Anne, it’s that damn church. We’re the romantic sex, you know,” he said, fighting a burp. “Men. We’re interested in passion, glory. Women,” Chuck declared with a finger in the air, “are responsible for the survival of the world; men are responsible for its glories.” He turned the Cadillac south, onto Fifth Avenue.

We drove through Park Slope. A plotter’s grin formed on his face. We took a sharp turn, passed under a huge pair of arches, and halted at a prospect of grass and tombstones.

He had brought me to Green-Wood Cemetery.

“Look up there,” Chuck said, opening his door.

He was pointing back at the entrance gate, a mass of flying buttresses and spires and quatrefoils and pointed arches that looked as if it might have been removed in the dead of night from one of Cologne Cathedral’s more obscure nooks. In and around the tallest of the trio of spires were birds’ nests. They were messy, elaborately twiggy affairs. One nest was situated above the clock, another higher up, above the discolored green bell that tolled, presumably, at funerals. The branches littered a stone façade crowded with sculptures of angels and incidents from the gospels: a resurrected Jesus Christ prompted Roman soldiers to cover their faces with their hands. Come forth, a second Jesus exhorted Lazarus.

“Parakeet nests,” Chuck said.

I looked more carefully.

“They come out in the evening,” Chuck assured me. “You see them walking around here, pecking for food.” As we waited for a parrot to show, he told me about the other birds—American woodcocks and Chinese geese and turkey vultures and gray catbirds and boat-tailed grackles—that he and his buddies had sighted among the sepulchres of Green-Wood during his birding days.

I was half listening, at best. It had turned into a freakishly transparent morning free of clouds or natural inconsonance of any sort. Huge trees grew nearby, and their leaves intercepted the sunlight very precisely, so that the shadows of the leaves seemed vital and creaturely as they stirred on the ground—an inkling of some supernature, to a sensibility open to such things.

There still was no sign of parrots. Chuck said, “This is by the by. There’s something else I want to show you.”

We followed a roaming lane through a spread of hills and lawns: evidently directness is undesirable in a graveyard. “This is like a Hall of Fame for retailers,” Chuck said. “There are Tiffanys here. You have the Brooks brothers. You have Steinway. Mr. Pfizer. Mr. F. A. O. Schwarz. Wesson, the rifle guy, is out here.” The Cadillac was now traveling in what seemed like circles. A gravedigger wandered by with a shovel.

“OK,” Chuck said, stopping. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a camera. “Right here. I think this is it.”

I followed him off the path. Walking over burned grass, we went past an obelisk, past an angel guarding a plot with outspread wings, past the graves of ex-individuals named Felimi, Ritzheimer, Peterson, Pyatt, Beckmann, Kloodt, Hazzell. We stopped at an angular column several feet high and topped by a globe—an oversize baseball, judging from its meandering seam. The column bore an inscription: