Until I Find You (19 page)

“Where’s Nico when you need him?” Saskia said facetiously—Els didn’t appear to need Nico’s help.

Alice began again with “Breathe on Me, Breath of God.” That was when they all saw him—the boy who had not argued with Els, the one who’d run backward out of the Bloedstraat. He was there because he needed another look at Alice. This time, he was alone. Els spoke to him in Dutch; she looked as if she intended to shove him, now that Bril was retreating.

“Leave him alone. He was the only nice one,” Alice told Els; she had finally stopped singing. She smiled at the boy, who stood helplessly in front of her. “He looks like he needs advice, doesn’t he?” Alice asked.

“Alice, you don’t have to,” Saskia said.

“But he looks like he needs advice,” Alice said.

“Saskia or I can give it to him,” Els told her.

“I think it’s
my
advice he wants,” Alice said.

“You should call it a night, Alice,” Els repeated.

“Would you like to come inside?” Alice asked the boy. He didn’t look as if he understood English. Els translated for him and he nodded.

“Come on, Jack,” Saskia said; she took his hand. “I could use a ham-and-cheese croissant. Couldn’t you?”

The boy in need of advice had an olive complexion and very dark hair, cut short; he was small-boned with wide, staring eyes and features as fine as a girl’s. He had not moved since he’d been invited inside the prostitute’s room—he just stood there. He’d wanted to have another look at Alice, never imagining that he would get up the nerve to ask her again, or even have the opportunity to do so—that is, if he’d asked her the first time. (From the look of him, he’d been too scared; probably one or more of his friends, the hecklers, had asked her.)

Els stepped up behind him and pushed him toward Alice, who took his hand and pulled him inside the room; the top of his head barely came to her chin. When Alice had closed the door and the curtains, Els joined Saskia and Jack. “Is he a virgin?” Jack asked them.

“Definitely,” Els said.

Remembering what Nico Oudejans had said to his mom at the police station, Jack asked: “Is he too young a virgin?”

“Nobody’s too young at this time of night,” Saskia said.

Jack had been napping half the afternoon and night—first for an hour or so in Els’s room, and then in Saskia’s, and of course in Els’s arms when she carried him here and there—but now he was exhausted. When they got back to Saskia’s room, Saskia closed her curtains so Jack could go to sleep. She stood in her doorway, guarding him, while—every fifteen or twenty minutes—Els would walk back to her room on the Stoofsteeg to see if Alice was still advising the virgin.

Jack managed to stay awake for the first two trips Els took. “I thought Els said virgins were quick,” the boy remarked.

“Go to sleep, Jack,” Saskia said. “It’s taking a long time because the virgin’s English isn’t very good. Your mom probably has to speak very slowly to him.”

“Oh.”

“Go to sleep, Jack.”

Much later, the sound of whispering woke Jack. The three women sat on the edge of Saskia’s bed in the glow from the lamp with the red glass shade; there was hardly any room on the bed for Jack, who didn’t let them know he was awake. His mom’s string of pearls was broken. Els and Saskia were trying to help Alice put her necklace back together. “The clumsy oaf,” Saskia said. “That’s the trouble with virgins.”

“He didn’t mean to—he’d just never taken off a necklace before,” Alice whispered. “I think they’re cultured pearls. Is that good or bad?”

“You should have kept the necklace on, Alice,” Els told her.

“He was really very sweet—he’d just never done
anything
before,” Alice whispered.

“He must have had a lot of money, for all that time,” Saskia said.

“Oh, I didn’t charge him—that would have made me a
prostitute
!” The three women laughed. “Shhh! We’ll wake up Jack,” Alice whispered.

“I’m awake,” he told them. “Did you give that boy some good advice?” he asked his mom. She gave Jack a hug and a kiss while Saskia and Els went on trying to reassemble her broken necklace.

“Yes, it was pretty good advice, I think,” Alice replied.

“The best advice he’ll ever get,” Saskia said.

“At least for
free,
” Els added. The three women laughed again.

“You’ll have to take this damn thing to a jeweler,” Saskia said, handing Alice the damaged necklace and a bunch of unstrung pearls. Alice put the loose pearls and the necklace in her purse.

Saskia and Els volunteered to walk them back to the Krasnapolsky, but Alice proposed a slight detour. She wanted to walk by the Oudekerksplein, just to show those old prostitutes she was still standing. “It’s too late—most of them will have stopped working,” Els told her.

“It’s worth doing,” Saskia said. “Even if only one woman is working, the others will hear about it.”

It must have been two or three in the morning. They had just come off the Oudekennissteeg when the music hit them; it was even louder on the bridge across the old canal. That organ in the Oude Kerk was a holy monster. “Bach?” Jack asked his mother.

“It’s Bach, all right,” Alice said, “but it’s not your father.”

“How do you know?” Els asked. “Femke is such a bitch. You should at least have a look and see.”

“It’s Bach’s Fantasy in G Major,” Alice said. “It’s popular at weddings.” Weddings were not exactly William’s cup of tea, apparently, but Saskia and Els insisted on having a look at the organist.

Alice wanted to walk around the Oudekerksplein before going inside the Old Church, so they did. Only one prostitute was standing in her doorway, listening to the music. She was one of the younger ones—Margriet. “You’re up late, Jackie,” Margriet said.

“We’re
all
up late,” Els told her.

They went into the Oude Kerk. Two of the older prostitutes were sitting in a pew, and one of them, Naughty Nanda, appeared to be asleep; the other one, Angry Anouk, wouldn’t look at Alice.

They went to the staircase at the back of the great congregation hall, but only Saskia and Els and Jack started up the narrow stairs. Alice waited for them at the bottom of the staircase. “He’s in Australia, or sailing to it,” she said stubbornly. “Just imagine all the ladies he’ll get to meet on a cruise ship!”

The faint, innocent smell of baby powder preceded their view of Frans Donker, the junior organist. The sudden appearance of Saskia and Els startled the boy genius—he stopped playing. Then Donker saw Jack standing between the two prostitutes.

“Oh, I suppose you thought it was your father,” Frans said to Jack.

“Not really,” Saskia said.

“Don’t talk—just keep playing,” Els told him. The child prodigy had returned to the Bach before they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“It’s that Donker kid, right?” Alice asked. They all nodded. “He
plays
like an organ-tuner,” Alice said.

Bach’s Fantasy in G Major followed them past the Trompettersteeg, where several of the younger prostitutes were still selling themselves. They were nearly to the end of the Sint Annenstraat when they finally outdistanced the music.

“You’re not going to Australia, are you?” Els may have asked Alice.

“No. Australia is too long and hard a trip for Jack,” Alice might have answered.

“It’s too long and hard a trip for anybody, Alice,” Saskia said.

“I suppose so,” was all Alice said. Her speech was uncharacteristically slurred, and her expression—from the moment Jack had awakened to the women’s whispers on the Bloedstraat—was unfamiliarly dreamy and carefree. Jack would later assume that this had to do with how many joints she’d smoked, because—until Amsterdam—his mother and marijuana were not on close terms. But they were on close terms that Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Saskia and Els walked them back to their hotel—not because the two prostitutes thought the red-light district was unsafe, even at that hour, but because they didn’t want Alice to run into Jacob Bril. They knew Bril was also staying at the Krasnapolsky.

After the women hugged and kissed Jack and Alice good night, Jack and his mom got ready for bed. It was the first time Jack remembered her using the bathroom ahead of him. Something amused her in there, because she started laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“I think I left my underwear in Els’s room!”

The advice-giving business had clearly distracted her—and by the time Jack finished brushing his teeth, Alice had fallen asleep. Jack turned out the lights in the bedroom and left the bathroom light on, with the door ajar—their version of a night-light. He thought it was the first time his mother had fallen asleep before him. He got into bed beside her, but even asleep, his mom was still singing. Jack was thankful it wasn’t a hymn. And maybe the marijuana had resurrected Alice’s Scottish accent, which, in the future, Jack could detect only when she was drunk or stoned.

As for the song, Jack had no way of knowing if it was an authentic folk ballad—something his mother had remembered from her girlhood—or, more likely, a ditty of her own imagination that, in her sleep, she’d put to music. (Why not? She’d been singing for half a day and night.)

Here is the song Alice sang in her sleep.

Oh, I’ll never be a kittie

or a cookie

or a tail.

The one place worse than

Dock Place

is the Port o’ Leith jail.

No, I’ll never be a kittie,

of one true thing I’m sure—

I won’t end up on Dock Place

and I’ll never be a hure.

Hure
rhymed with
sure,
of course. Jack thought it might be a nursery song, which—even in her sleep—his mother meant to sing for him.

Jack said their nightly prayer—as he always did, with his eyes closed. He spoke a little louder than usual, because his mother was asleep and he had to pray for both of them. “The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended. Thank You for it.”

They slept until noon Sunday, when he asked her: “What’s a hure?”

“Was it something I said in my sleep?” she said.

“Yes. You were singing.”

“A hure is like a prostitute—an advice-giver, Jackie.”

“How can a person be a kittie or a cookie or a tail?” Jack asked.

“They’re all words for an advice-giver, Jack.”

“Oh.”

They were walking hand-in-hand through the red-light district to Tattoo Peter’s when the boy asked: “Where’s Dock Place?”

“Dock Place is nowhere I’ll ever be,” was all she would tell him.

“How did Tattoo Peter lose his leg?” Jack asked for the hundredth time.

“I told you—you’ll have to ask him.”

“Maybe on a bicycle,” the boy said.

It was midafternoon in the district; most of the women were already offering advice. All of them greeted Jack and Alice by name—even those older prostitutes in the area of the Old Church. Alice made a point of walking around the Oudekerksplein; they passed every window and doorway, at a pace half the speed of Jacob Bril’s. Not a soul hummed “Breathe on Me, Breath of God” to them.

They went to the St. Olofssteeg to say good-bye to Tattoo Peter. “Alice, you’re welcome to come work with me anytime,” the one-legged man told her. “Keep both your legs, Jack,” Peter said. “You’ll find it easier to get around that way.”

Then they walked up the Zeedijk to say good-bye to Tattoo Theo and Robbie de Wit. Robbie wanted Alice to tattoo him. “Not another broken heart,” she said. “I’ve had enough of hearts, torn in two or otherwise.” Robbie settled for her signature on his right upper arm.

Daughter Alice

Rademaker was so impressed by her letter-perfect script that he requested one, too. Tattoo Theo got his tattoo on his left forearm, which he said he’d kept bare for something special. The lettering ran from the bend at Rademaker’s elbow to the face of his wristwatch, so that every time he looked to see what time it was, he would be reminded of Daughter Alice.

“What do you say, Jack?” Tattoo Theo asked. “Shall we listen again to der Zimmerman?” (He wasn’t German; he didn’t know
der
from
den.
Not that Jack knew German, either—not yet.)

Jack picked out a Bob Dylan album and put it on. Robbie de Wit was soon singing along, but it wasn’t Alice’s favorite song. She just went on tattooing, leaving the singing to Robbie and Bob.

“
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn,
” Bob and Robbie sang.
“Look out your window and I’ll be gone.”
At this point, Alice was starting the
A
in
Alice.
“
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on,
” Bob and Robbie crooned.
“Don’t think twice, it’s all right.”

Well, it wasn’t all right—not by a long shot—but Alice just kept tattooing.

Els took them to the shipping office, which was a confusing place—they needed Els’s help in arranging their passage. They would take the train to Rotterdam and sail from there to Montreal, and then make their way back to Toronto.

“Why Toronto?” Saskia asked Alice. “Canada isn’t your country.”

“It is now,” Alice said. “I’ll never go back to sunny Leith—not for all the whisky in Scotland.” She wouldn’t say why. (Too many ghosts, maybe.) “Besides, I know just the school for Jack. It’s a good school,” Jack heard her tell Saskia and Els. His mom leaned over him and whispered in his ear: “And you’ll be safe with the girls.”

The idea of himself with the St. Hilda’s girls—the older ones, especially—gave Jack the shivers. Once again, and for the last time in Europe, he reached for his mother’s hand.

II

The Sea of Girls

8

Safe Among the Girls

I
t was Jack’s impression that the older girls at St. Hilda’s never liked having boys in their school. Although the boys couldn’t stay past grade four, their presence—even the presence of
little
boys—was seen as a bad influence. According to Emma Oastler: “Especially on the
older
girls.”