Janwillem De Wetering - Outsider in Amsterdam

"Marvelous marvelous," de Gier said irritably to van Meteren, "and I came to see if we had overlooked anything yesterday."

He realized that he was treating van Meteren as yet another colleague.

"Can we go now?" the girls asked.

De Gier nodded.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Don't worry," Johan said. "We'll stay in town. Eduard and I found a houseboat at the Binnenkant, opposite number 10. The ship is called The Good Hope. She belongs to my brother but he is on his way to India and he left me the key."

De Gier noted the address.

"And what are you going to do?" he asked the girls.

"I am going with the boys," the fat girl called Annetje answered and moved closer to Johan. De Gier had to suppress an expression of horror, he didn't mind fat girls but if they were wearing dresses with flower patterns… He was sure that she was barefoot, and that her feet would be dirty. He dropped his pack of cigarettes and bent down to pick it up. Her feet were dirty.

"And you?" he asked the beautiful girl.

Therese stared.

De Gier repeated his question.

Therese began to cry.

"There there," van Meteren said and moved over so that he sat next to her.

"She is pregnant," he said to de Gier, "and she doesn't know where to go."

"It's all right," de Gier said to the girl. He had become interested and watched her closely. A lovely girl, long black hair, green cat's eyes, a tall rather thin girl but with a good full bosom. He dropped his matchbox. Her legs were long and well shaped and she wore sandals, and her feet were clean.

"Can't she stay here for the time being?" he asked van Meteren.

"I don't know. The place is closed. I sent a telegram to Piet's wife. Paris isn't far, she can be here any minute now. She used to be a director of the Society, together with Piet, and now she would be the only one in charge, I suppose. I never saw the Society's articles, perhaps the accountant can be of help. The house will probably be sold."

"But she could stay for the time being," de Gier insisted.

"I don't want to stay," Theiese said. She had stopped crying. "It's the house of a corpse. And now they have broken in as well. I'll go to my mother."

She gave an address in Rotterdam and de Gier wrote it down in his notebook. Johan, Eduard and Annetje said goodbye. Their bags were packed and had been stacked in the corridor, very neatly. De Gier touched Annetje's hand. Van Meteren got up as well.

"I'll see you later," de Gier said to van Meteren. "I'd like to have a few words with Th6rese."

When they were alone he offered a cigarette and lit it for her. She sucked on the Gauloise and began to cough. "Put it out," de Gier said, "it doesn't help. I wanted to ask you who caused your pregnancy."

"Piet," the girl said.

"Is that why his wife left?"

She shook her head. "His wife was used to it. Piet tried to make us all and sometimes he was lucky. I kept away from him at first but he insisted and it was hard to refuse him all the time. I lived here, and he could be rather charming at times."

"Was he really nice?" de Gier asked.

The girl stared.

"Was he?"

She began to cry again. "No. He was a bastard. With his insane health ideas. Why did I have to get involved in all this? Now I need an abortion if it isn't too late. And I don't want his child."

De Gier let her cry. Van Meteren showed himself in the open door but de Gier made a gesture and he disappeared.

"Did you have any fights with him?"

The girl wasn't listening. De Gier got up and held her by the shoulders but it complicated the situation for she allowed her body to drop into his arms.

"Hey," de Gier said and put her back, carefully, onto her chair. He repeated the question.

She nodded.

"Did you have a fight with him yesterday?"

She nodded again.

"In his room?"

"Yes," the girl said. "I shouted at him but he didn't answer. All he said was that I could leave if I didn't like it here, and that I was over twenty-one, and that he was married already. I should have been more careful. After that he shut up. I called him names. It has happened before. 'Karma,' he said. Everybody has to accept the consequences of his own actions. Karma is very useful. It teaches you things. Haha."

"Did you hit him?"

"I threw a book at his head."

"A heavy book?"

"Yes, a dictionary."

"Did it hit him?"

She didn't answer. He took her by the hand and they went upstairs. The dictionary was on the floor of Piet's room. There were other books on the floor as well.

"Can you remember whether it hit him? Did he fall over?"

"I don't know," Th amp;ese said. "I walked out of the room and slammed the door. I never looked around."

De Gier rephrased his question in several ways but got nowhere. She hadn't hung Piet. When he asked her she began to laugh, through her tears.

De Gier tore a sheet of paper from a notebook on the table and wrote a short statement. He read it to her and asked her to sign.

"You don't really think I hung him, do you?" she asked. De Gier didn't answer but telephoned Headquarters and was connected with Grijpstra. Grijpstra played his drums and spoke at the same time, the telephone hooked between his head and his shoulder.

"I am coming," Grijpstra said.

'Take the car," said de Gier, "it's a long walk," and hung up.

"The noose," he said to the girl. "Did you know that there was a noose in the room and someone had screwed a hook into one of the beams supporting the ceiling?"

"That hook has always been there," Therese said. "Piet used to have a mask hanging from that hook but it frightened me when I was on the settee with him and then he sold it. And that noose is nothing but an ordinary bit of rope isn't it? We have a lot of that sort of rope in the house. Piet used to import foods from Japan and it would come in lovely little casks, wound with rope. We used to take it off and use it for decoration. The noose was made with it."

"Did you see the noose?" de Gier asked quickly.

"No," the girl said. "Van Meteren told me."

"You think he committed suicide?" de Gier asked.

The girl looked indifferent. "It wouldn't surprise me. He wasn't quite right in the head, I think. When his wife left him he complained terribly. Even to me, while we were in bed together."

"What else did he complain about?" de Gier asked.

"Anything you like to mention. The purpose of life, and enlightenment. He thought he wasn't enlightened. He should be, he said, for he had lived according to the rules, but nothing had happened."

"Enlightenment?" asked de Gier.

"Yes," Th6rese said. "It always made me think of light bulbs. Buddhists, and Hindus too, I think, claim that you will be enlightened if you live according to the right rules. You should do everything you have to do as well as you can and meditate a lot and gradually you will begin to understand all sorts of things you never did before and you'll have visions, I believe. I don't know anything about it really. But I thought that enlightenment meant happiness, and absence of problems, and I think Piet thought that way too from the way he talked. But he kept all his problems, he said. And he didn't know what he was doing wrong."

"Suicide doesn't seem to be very Buddhist to me," de Gier said, "or Hindistic, or what he called it. A man who commits suicide stops trying and if you give up trying you won't get anywhere. Or not?"

Thgrese had sat down on the settee and rubbed her eyes. "Piet said that there had been Japanese, Samurai or monks, I can't remember what, who had committed suicide because they had found themselves to be in a hopeless situation. Then it's all right, he said. Admirable even. But you have to do it in the right way. First you have to clean your body and your spirit and then you have to find a quiet spot and meditate for a while and then, when everything has become very quiet and you have said goodbye, in your mind, to all you love, you can do it."