Герман Кох - Amsterdam Noir

On the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, Waldemar takes a few uncertain steps, and then his knees buckle and he falls. Instinctively, he places his hands on his stomach, and, when he looks down, sees blood seeping between his fingers. Thick drops fall on the cobblestones.

He topples onto his back and is soon surrounded by shocked prostitutes, a coffee shop bouncer, a dozen tourists, and three drunken English hooligans, one of whom, well-meaning, tries to drape his jacket over Waldemar’s head.

Waldemar fends them off with some difficulty. He turns his eyes to the gates of hell, sees that the red light above his daughter’s room is out, and dies, suffused with satisfaction.

Van der Pekbuurt

“Is this your first visit?” the girl in the red jacket asks.

The elevator ride is apparently part of the attraction. Gita hadn’t realized that, hadn’t expected there to be an operator in the car with her.

She nods, and the girl smiles. “This is the fastest elevator in Western Europe,” she says. “It only takes fifteen seconds to get to the top. You should look up.”

The girl cranes her head back, and Gita follows her example, but she’s not sure what to do with her hands. Oddly enough, she misses her rolling suitcase — its handle has been the only thing she’s had to hold on to this evening. She checked it when she came in from the street, though, handed it off to a girl whose hair was tied back in exactly the same ponytail worn by this child who stands beside her. Gita watched her tuck it away in a corner, with another suitcase and two carry-ons, the luggage of others just arrived from Schiphol or on their way there. She wonders if anyone can tell from her appearance. Can the bag-check girl and the elevator girl see that she’s a local, not a tourist?

Tourists, Schiphol... at the thought of the airport, Gita feels nauseous, although that might just be the light show, as bright images flicker along the car’s ceiling: the three Xs from Amsterdam’s coat of arms, the Dutch flag, a tree, a cat, a skull — is that really a skull ? — a house, a child, something blue, something red, an orange dog, a pink smiley.

“We’re there,” the girl says.

The silver doors whoosh open. The observation deck is larger than Gita had imagined it would be.

“We’re open for another hour. If you have a ticket for the swing, though, you’ll have to hurry — it closes at nine.”

Gita nods, and the girl retreats into the elevator. Does she still tip her head back when she’s alone?

It’s peaceful up here on the roof. A couple strolls along the railing to her right, two teenage girls take selfies with the city spread out below them in the gathering dusk. A boy standing beside the huge steel swing wears the same red jacket as the girl in the elevator and looks at her questioningly. She shakes her head.

Of course , she thinks. Of course there’s hardly anyone here tonight: it’s almost dark, it’s drizzling, it’s practically freezing — but, God, the view is gorgeous.

You can see for miles in every direction, despite the fence on the other side of the railing. The fence is six feet tall, she got that tidbit from Femke. The couple, an older man and woman in white sneakers — probably Americans — examines a signboard with a line drawing of Central Station and other landmarks. But the station’s not very interesting anymore, since the grand renovation it’s actually quite ugly, and Gita finds the other landmarks — the Old Church, the Palace on the Dam, the Stock Exchange — equally unappealing, so she walks around to the far side of the roof for the view of Amsterdam-North.

And there is the neighborhood where she grew up. The streets, the houses, the trees, all laid out in miniature; she can hold a streetlight between her thumb and forefinger. From the ferry dock, the Buiksloterweg ambles northeast, then, just past Pussy Galore, forks off to the right. To the left, it changes its name to the Ranonkelkade and then the Van der Pekstraat, a caterpillar with fat legs extending to either side. The legs are the Anemoonstraat, the Oleanderstraat, the Jasmijnstraat, the Heimansweg.

Mireille lives in a house on one of those legs. Right now, she’s probably sitting in front of the TV.

Gita’s parents lived for many years on the highest floor of an old building on the next leg, until the block was torn down and renovated and the prices went sky-high. Atop the new building on the site where she was raised, there’s now a penthouse that seems unoccupied, since no light ever burns in its windows.

The caterpillar’s head is a square, the Mosplein, and Gita knows that, at this moment in the Café Mosplein, Sjors and Maya are lowering the metal shutters across the plateglass window that looks out on the square. She wonders if she can make out her own building from here. Yes, there, the street just south of the square, that must be it.

What would happen if she went there now? Climb the stairs, slip her key into the lock, and then immediately the scream, the uproar that only she can understand. She left the heat on but turned out all the lights — had she been hoping for burglars? The longer she stares at her building in the distance, the more clearly she can hear the screams.

She turns away and sees Femke’s complex, those buildings there on the right. Femke pointed it out to her once, from the ferry: “That one, there, with the big windows!”

Earlier this evening, Gita checked all the mailboxes and buzzers in the lobby, but she couldn’t find Femke’s name. She’d actually grabbed a complete stranger by the arm and said, “Sir, you don’t happen to know Femke de Waal, do you?” The man shook his head and scowled at her suitcase. “Airbnb’s not allowed in this building,” he said severely, pulling a ring of keys from his jacket, and Gita had turned away and left but not gone home. Instead, she’d wandered aimlessly through the warren of streets until she found herself at the foot of the A’DAM Tower, the tallest building on the waterfront.

Gita fishes her cell phone from her pocket. No new messages — nothing from Femke. Without thinking, she scrolls up, past dozens of texts, maybe hundreds, until she comes to the very first one in the chain: Red leather gloves!

Johnny hadn’t wanted to wear his rain jacket that day. It had rained all week, fat drops pelting the windows, the bed of Johnny’s plastic dump truck filling with water — Gita hadn’t had the energy to bring it in from the backyard. Johnny shook his head angrily when she held the jacket up for him. He made a face like he’d swallowed something gross and growled what sounded like a no. It was only a few steps from the front door to the curb, where the school bus would stop, and, if he wanted, his teachers would let him stay indoors all day. Strictly speaking, he didn’t need the jacket, but Gita had just bought it and wanted to convince herself that the money hadn’t been wasted — it had cost more than she could really afford.

Their argument unfolded like most of their arguments. First Johnny began to scream, his eyes already tearing, his cheeks flushed, and then he started kicking. His flailing arms struck her in the face, but Gita knew he didn’t mean to hurt her. Finally, he broke out in uncontrollable sobs.

She was reminded of a video that had been going around on Facebook for weeks. A man tells his three-year-old daughter that steak comes from cows and the girl bursts out in tears. “Poor cows,” she whispers to the camera.

Every time Gita saw that clip, she felt a mixture of anger and jealousy. She was jealous of the parents, who had a healthy, beautiful little girl with two pigtails, a child who felt empathy for other living creatures. But she was mad at them too, for bragging so shamelessly about their blessings. Why would anyone be interested in the private happiness of strangers?