Janwillem De Wetering - The Hollow-Eyed Angel

Cardozo tried. "Giant uncrested grebes?"

Bieber tittered again. "Wiseass. You, sir?"

Grijpstra thought the birds were sea geese.

Bieber nodded. "Red-throat divers, pearl divers, ice divers-not too many of those left nowadays-yellow-beaked divers. No bone divers, but what the hell." He winked. "Thing is to get clients interested. You don't want to stand around passive-like all the time. Got to pull 'em in and make them buy. Get some action. Most folks like to buy bird pictures." Bieber waved his coat sleeves like a heron waves its wings before stumbling into flight. "Birds are special."

"Apart from refusing to explain his bone diver sign," Grijpstra asked, "what else did your colleague do to attract attention?"

"He was different," Bieber said. "Altogether." He looked hopefully at the adjutant, as if expecting understanding from a peer. "You know?"

Grijpstra knew, but he wanted Bieber to expand his knowledge.

Bieber's theory, based on observations made during years of watching Termeer's antics, ruled out craziness. The used-book trade is too marginal to allow for madness. Bieber therefore theorized that Termeer fit the "surrealist niche."

Bieber showed his false teeth in a helpful smile. "Fitting regular things together differendy to get something different across? Different knowledge?"

Grijpstra was patient. "So what regular things did Termeer fit together differently, Mr. Bieber?"

"Like how?" Cardozo asked.

"Well," Bieber said, "there was the sign, there were the animals.

"Termeer," Bieber continued, "owned a mongrel that was so smart he knew when to look stupid. The dog would grab people by their coats and drag them over to Termeer's trestle table.

"There was also the macaque." Bieber liked the dog but he never cared for the monkey. Monkeys defecate anywhere. This one preferred bird books.

"The monkey brought in clients too?"

Bieber nodded. The macaque danced ahead of people and pulled faces and pointed at the so-called spiritual books.

So Bert Termeer invented ways to get through to people to impart different knowledge?

"Right," Bieber said. Termeer would insult his clients. He might recommend books and then refuse to sell them, charge outrageously, even tear books up. He might give a book away and then run after the client and try to get it back.

"Lots of funny old ladies hanging around that table, I bet," Grijpstra said.

No, Bieber said. Bert Termeer wouldn't deal with so-called spiritual old ladies. He would shoo them away.

"And he still sold well?"

Oh yes, Bieber said. People would come from all over. Americans. British. There was the mail-order side too. His catalogue did well.

Cardozo interrupted. "You keep saying 'so-called' spiritual, sir. You mean…?"

"Listen," Bieber winked, beckoning Cardozo closer, "can anyone write, print, read the truth about meaning? Or origin? Or the future? Or the present for that matter?" Bieber cackled diabolically. "You want peace of mind?" Bieber squeezed Cardozo's cheek. "Can the mind be peaceful? Aren't minds filled with thoughts? You want to read in more thoughts?"

Bieber pointed his beaklike nose at the sky and flapped his sleeves, looking more like a heron than ever. "That's the infinite out there. The great secret." He poked a wing at Cardozo. "You think you can put infinity into books?"

Grijpstra said, "But that was Termeer's living. He lived a lie?"

"Who doesn't?" Bieber asked.

So how to become truthful? Bieber asked Bieber.

Maybe by creating seemingly crazy circumstances, Bieber answered Bieber. By creating a crack in the regular world regular folks build up for themselves. Then slip through it.

"Through the crack?"

"Yessir," Bieber said.

"Into what?"

"Reality."

"And what so-called spiritual exercises did Termeer himself engage in to become real, Mr. Bieber?" Grijpstra asked patiently.

Bieber frowned.

"Not so so-called?"

"Not the exercises," Bieber said.

"And those were?"

Bieber became hesitant. "I told you. Termeer would wander about the city, evenings and weekends, searching for the right moments, the right locations."

"To do this bone diving?" Cardozo asked.

Bieber's eyes were half closed, his arms moved slowly, as he seemed to enter a trance.

"Mr. Bieber, you okay?"

Grijpstra held up a hand, to silence Cardozo.

"Termeer played good trumpet," Bieber said after a while. "He would set himself up facing a terrace filled with people. He would have his dog on one side and the monkey on the other. The monkey would be dressed up in a robe and a hat. Then Termeer would play his trumpet. Some fine jazz phrasing. Like Louis Armstrong; maybe 'St. Louis Blues,' maybe 'Basin Street Blues,' that sort of thing."

"That's nice," Cardozo said.

Bieber nodded. "A fine sense of the dramatic. And then, once he had the public's attention he might talk for a while, asking them how they were doing, making a few odd remarks, disconnected. The monkey would go around, grimacing and jabbering. People might offer him money and the little beast would bow and back off. No money for the monkey. The dog would bark commas and question marks, a semicolon here and there. After that Termeer usually played his trumpet again.

"This was long ago, mind you. Cops still wore brass helmets and little sabers. A cop would come up and ask Bieber for his license, and then…"

Bieber laughed. "Haha, the dog would be standing behind the cop, and the monkey would sit on Termeer's shoulder with his hands behind his ears and tongue out, chattering, infuriating the copper, and then Termeer would push-"

Bieber clapped his hands. "The cop would fall over backward, the dog would run off, Bieber and the monkey would step into a passing tram car-they still had running boards in those days-the dog would be waiting at the next stop and everyone would go home." Bieber looked triumphant. "And be happy. The public too. You should have been there."

Grijpstra and Cardozo thanked Mr. Bieber. They were about to walk away.

Grijpstra turned. "Last question, Mr. Bieber," Grijpstra said. "There is a nephew, Jo Termeer, partly raised by Bert Termeer. Did you get to know the nephew?"

Bieber vaguely recalled a boy coming to Old Man's Gate, calling Bert "uncle." Not too often.

The boy seemed shy.

"There was a good relationship between uncle and nephew?"

"Sure," Bieber said. "Yes, I think so. Why not?"

De Gier, after a tour of the Village and dinner at a Chinese fast-food place, was taken to Maggie's apartment on Twelfth Street. Maggie apologized for the apartment's appearance. She knew it was dreary but it belonged to her roommate and nobody liked housework.

"We do clean occasionally though."

"You eat here?" de Gier asked.

"Hardly ever. In the morning maybe. I put a frozen waffle in the toaster." She patted her flat stomach. "Today I binged. That means dieting for a week."

She switched on the TV, told him to sit on a beige plastic couch with factory-embroidered pink cushions in each corner, handed over a large remote control and went off to shower and change. A newscaster appeared, adjusted his cuffs, bowed and dramatically recited headlines. They all sounded bad. De Gier pressed the remote's mute button. The first clip was war: He watched hungry-looking soldiers in summer uniforms getting shot at in a winter landscape. A beautiful woman in an ofF-the-shoulder dress danced about a cruise ship where fat men laughed as impeccable waiters heaped more food on their plates. The newscaster reappeared to smile briefly. Old folks in a home were beaten by their attendants. A hidden camera showed the pictures in black and white. The black-and-white old people screamed soundlessly as leering attendants forced them to sign papers. The newscaster nodded. A beautiful woman ate breakfast cereal on a terrace overlooking a lake. She closed her eyes and showed the tip of her tongue after daintily chewing her crispy breakfast. The newscaster smiled, then faded as the screen was filled by a burning bus under palm trees, then by mangled bodies of children at the side of the road. The newscaster came back. De Gier read his lips. "More news in a moment." A compact car looking like any other compact, but clean and polished, was driven by a beautiful woman in an evening gown and gloves up to her elbows. The woman pursed her lips as if waiting for a kiss while she made her vehicle accelerate effortlessly in an empty city street. More newscaster's smiles before a two-story house slid down a hill's steep slope towards cars buried up to their roofs in mud.