Postcards From No Man's Land (39 page)

At which point he remembered riding this route in the opposite direction last Thursday after Alma had rescued him on his first day in the city and the last day of his
previous life. So he would soon pass the café where they talked and the shop where Ton helped him buy the chocolates on Monday, the day (smiling, to himself) he fell in love with the city. For I have, he thought, haven’t I? It’s just like falling for a person. Not wanting to be parted from it, wanting to know everything about it, liking it as it is, the bad as well as the good, the not so pretty as well as the beautiful, its noises and smells and colours and shapes and oddities. Liking its difference from everywhere else. And its history as well as its present. And its mystery, for there was so much he did not understand. And the people who had begun to show him how to see it, Daan and Ton. And of course, its funniness. He had never thought of a city being funny. But Amsterdam was. He had not realised until this minute that it made him smile just to look at. Never mind what he saw on its streets. That man now, for instance, walking at a fast rate through the crowd, everyone making way for him, a very tall slim well-muscled bronzed black man with endless legs, wearing nothing but a black leather thong and posing pouch, a black leather halter round his shoulders, and a kind of black cap made of strips of leather. And not just walking but parading, showing himself off. An artwork. As beautiful as anything in a museum. A living mobile sculpture.

Keizersgracht was coming up. Prinsengracht next. He knew the order of the canals now and took pleasure in his growing confidence. Prinsengracht, where Alma lived. He had promised he would tell her about his ‘adventures’ before he left.

Over Prinsengracht to the stop in the middle of the road outside Panini. A promise. And, anyway, why not? On impulse, he got up just in time to slip out before the doors hissed closed. As he crossed to the pavement he saw the flower stall on the bridge. He bought a bunch of red tea roses, in deference to Sarah’s instructions about visiting the Dutch, but also as placation for not having phoned to
arrange a visit, as Alma had asked. And what if she were out? Leave the flowers tucked into the window grille and tringaling tramborne as previous.

But Alma was in, and greeted him warmly enough for him to feel unashamedly welcome. The guard-grille was opened to him and he climbed through the garlanded window-door, down three steeply raked steps, like the steps to a little ship’s cabin, and in to the neat square cave of her living room. With the window-door closed, it was warm and cosy, the light filtering through the foliage soft and tinged with green, a globe standing on a shelf in the corner pooling a yellow glow round the chair where Alma had left a book open on the seat to answer his knock. The room was as unpretentiously elegant as anyone could wish.

Coffee and
kaneel
-flavoured biscuits, the smell reminding him of Hille, were conjured from a kitchen that was somewhere beyond the door through which Jacob could see part of a single bed covered with a daffodil yellow duvet in a room half the size of this one. Alma sat in her chair facing Jacob, who was perched on a squashy black linen sofa set against the street wall, above which was the window that made a pair with the entrance.

He had apologised while coffee was on the way for turning up unexpectedly. The roses had been exclaimed over and vased and set on the round antique dining table, where their blooms shone like a spray of blood against the deep aged chestnut of the table. His leaving next day had been discussed—his time of departure, which train to catch for Schiphol in order to allow enough time to check in, how long the flight would be (an hour and twenty minutes), who would meet him (his mother), and how long to get back home from Bristol airport (an hour’s drive).

Then Alma said, ‘Now, you visited Anne Frank’s house? What did you think?’

Story time again.

‘To tell the truth, I’d already been there when we met
the other day.’

‘Oh? You didn’t say.’

‘No. I wasn’t exactly in the right mood to start with. I don’t mean because of being mugged. Before that. You see, I’d just got here, to Daan’s parents, the day before. I think I told you that. And his mother, Tessel, who’s very nice actually, I like her a lot, but then, well, she told me there was family trouble, she didn’t say what, only that her mother, Geertrui, needed a lot of attention, and, well, anyway, I didn’t feel too welcome, just the opposite.’

‘You didn’t mention any of this last week.’

‘No. I’d been sent to Amsterdam for the day just for something to do and to get me out of the way, or at least that’s how it felt. So I wasn’t in a good mood.’

‘I can understand why you wouldn’t be.’

‘And I’m never too happy on my own in a strange place. I’m not a city person at all, in fact. Except, I’ve really got to like Amsterdam. But that’s another story. So here I was, in a bad mood, and went to Anne Frank’s house because it was the only place I knew about and wanted to go to.’

‘Because of the diary of course.’

‘There was a queue.’

‘As usual.’

‘Quite a long one, which didn’t help my bad mood one bit. I’m not very patient when it comes to queues. But I joined it and it seemed like waiting to see the two-headed man or the bearded lady at a fun fair. And when I got inside, people ahead of me, people behind me, all of us tramping up the stairs in to the rooms. In to her rooms. Which were crowded with people already, everyone kind of gawping and shuffling along. They weren’t behaving badly. Just the opposite. Quite reverential really, quite silent, not talking, just whispering, and pointing and peering. I don’t know. It just came over me that we were invading Anne’s privacy. Treading all over her. But apart from that, the really stupid thing …’

‘Yes?’

‘Seems ridiculous. But, seeing all those people, and most of them about my age, all of us like pilgrims visiting a shrine, well, suddenly Anne wasn’t mine any more.’

‘Not yours?’

‘No. Here were these other people who wanted to be where she had lived. Where she had written her diary. And I said to myself, “They think she’s theirs too”.’

‘But, Jacob, you must have known how famous she is.’

‘Of course I did. But that was different. I mean, there’s knowing and
knowing
, isn’t there. I knew it in my head, like a statistic, like a
fact
. But I didn’t
know
it inside me. She was famous—
so
? So what? I read the diary all the time. Highlighted passages, like I told you. I don’t think I’d ever thought about it. It was as if she were my best friend and I just, I don’t know, assumed, believed, took it for granted, that Anne had written her diary for me. Only for me.’

‘Then you saw those people in the secret annexe—’

‘Especially in the room where she slept. You know how small it is and how the pictures she stuck up on the wall, the postcards and clippings from magazines—’

‘I know.’

‘—are still on the wall. No furniture. Stupid again, I suppose, but I’d expected to see the rooms just like they were when she was there. But they aren’t. Nothing there. Just empty. Except for the model in a case, like a doll’s house, showing how they used to be. That upset me a lot. I mean, I realised afterwards that the rooms couldn’t be the same. I knew the Germans cleared everything out after the arrests. But it hadn’t kind of seeped in to my mind what that meant. Except for the pictures Anne had stuck on the wall by her bed. That’s what did it, I think. When I saw them, it was like she was still there. Or not her, but her ghost. And I started to go to pieces. All those times I’d read the diary. Everything it meant to me. Especially those parts I’d marked because they were so important. Anne talking to
me. Saying what was in my head. Speaking my own thoughts and feelings. And then, these bare rooms, and all these people coming between me and Anne. And they thinking about her just like I was thinking about her. And why not? That’s what she wanted. She wanted to be a famous writer, that’s all she wanted, and that’s what she was. What she is.’

‘So you ran out?’

‘No. Not straightaway. I tried to keep a grip on myself. I knew I’d been ridiculous to think the way I did. I knew I should be happy, should be pleased. Happy that so many people loved her the way I did. I managed to work my way in to the corner by the window and stand right up against the wall, trying to recover. I was shaking like a leaf and sweating cold sweat. I remember there was a man standing next to me, looking out of the window. He was English, middle-aged, a bit like my dad. There was a woman with him, he called her Joke, so I guess she was Dutch. While I was standing there, trying to pull myself together, I heard him say, “You see those houses across the garden?” And the woman said, “They are on Keizersgracht.” And he said, “Did you know that Descartes lived in one of them?” “I think, therefore I am,” the woman said. And the man said, “I think, therefore I am. I am, therefore I am observed.” And then they laughed, and she kissed him.’

He looked at Alma.

‘I think, therefore I am,’ she repeated. ‘And then?’

‘I am, therefore I am observed.’

‘Never heard that before,’ she said.

‘Nor me,’ Jacob said.

‘Not Descartes.’

‘And don’t you think it’s strange that I remember it, every word?’

‘Perhaps. And when you’d pulled yourself together, what did you do?’

‘Followed the crowd. And you know how you go down
from the hiding place in to the museum part.’

‘Where her story is told in pictures.’

‘And where there’s the glass cases with things in them belonging to Anne.’

‘The real diary.’

‘Yes, the diary itself. Well, I saw the diary and I could hardly bear it any more. The pictures in her room were bad enough. But they weren’t her. Not Anne herself. But the diary—! When you come to think of it, that’s what she was. That’s what she
is
! Her diary is Anne. The book she wrote. Her handwriting. Her words that she wrote with her pen. I looked at it and looked at it. Couldn’t take my eyes off it. I wanted to smash the glass so I could pick it up. I wanted to hold it. Wanted to smell it. Wanted to kiss it. Wanted to steal it! I really did! And people were jostling around me and trying to get as close as they could. Just like I was. I wanted to shout at them, “Go away! Leave her alone! You’ve no right here! Get out!” But I didn’t, of course. Just got out myself. Don’t remember doing that. Not at all. Next thing I remember is coming to when a tram nearly knocked me down. That was when I reached Leidsestraat, though I didn’t know what street it was at the time. And ended up in the plein where I got mugged.’

‘And then I found you,’ Alma said, breathing out a sigh as people do at the end of a story. ‘No wonder you were so upset. Perhaps more from your visit to Anne’s house than from being mugged.’

‘That’s right.’

‘The thief only took your money. What you lost at Anne’s house was something much more precious.’

‘I know. That’s what I feel. But I still don’t understand what it was, even though I’ve thought a lot about it.’

‘Perhaps you lost some of your childhood innocence. Every time we learn an important lesson about life we suffer a sense of loss. That’s my experience. We gain. But there’s a cost.’

As Alma was speaking, Jacob knew quite clearly why he had come to see her. Without introduction or permission, he told her about Geertrui’s memoir. Said how worried he was about how Sarah would take the news. Did not say that Daan and Ton and Tessel all thought he should keep it to himself. And ended without a pause by asking what Alma thought he should do. Tell Sarah or not?

She was silent. He could feel the weight of the question hanging in the air above their heads.

At last, when he was beginning to think he had asked something so offensive to her that she was not going to reply, Alma said, ‘Are you sure your grandmother does not already know what happened?’

Her question took his breath away. The possibility had never occurred to him, not even for a hint of a second.

‘She’d have told me,’ he said when he could.

‘And what makes you so sure of that?’

‘We talk about everything. Wouldn’t she?’

‘You talk about everything. She sent you to see your grandfather’s grave?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why not until now?’

‘She said I was old enough to understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘How he died, I suppose.’

‘And how did he die?’

‘Well, there was his wound. But from a heart attack, I think.’

‘Yes, a heart attack. So she sent you to see his grave. Or did she really send you to Geertrui?’

‘Geertrui invited Sarah, but she couldn’t come.’

‘You saw the letter?’

‘No.’

‘Then how do you know what Geertrui said?’

‘I don’t. It’s just what Sarah told me.’

There was a silence before Alma spoke again.

‘Why is it that young people so often think that old people cannot deal with life as well as they? Or that they cannot bear the truth any longer?’

Jacob regarded her for a moment, trying to assess what he was being told, what she was really saying. But her eyes were steady and her face gave nothing away.

‘You mean, if Sarah doesn’t know, she’ll be able to take it?’

‘I don’t know your grandmother. It’s for you to decide.’

‘And if she knows, she’ll be waiting to hear what I say.’

‘Quite a dilemma,’ Alma said, smiling.

She got up with a push on her knees like old people with arthritis do, and took the coffee cups to the kitchen.

When she came back she said in her cheery sociable voice, ‘Your flowers are lovely.’

Time to leave. Jacob got up.

‘I’d better go.’

‘You’ll come to Amsterdam again?’

‘Yes. I’ll be coming back, I’m sure.’

‘I thought so. I hope you’ll visit me and tell me what you decided.’

‘Yes. Promise.’

Alma held out her hand. He shook it and gave her three of the most restrained and polite of up-cheek kisses.

‘You’re learning our ways very quickly,’ Alma said, laughing.

Jacob
.