Nescio - Amsterdam Stories

And the vague expectations from back then rose within me again, and the longing, without knowing what for.

But I also had a feeling I hadn’t known before. All those days had passed and many more days would pass as well, and on every one of them my expectations would remain unfulfilled and my longings unsatisfied. Bavink had worked for years, on and off, on his View of Rhenen — on the river, the mountain, the Cunera tower, the blossoming apple trees, the red roofs of the city, the chestnut trees with their red and white flowers and the brown beeches between the houses in the distance, and the little windmill somewhere up on the mountain. For years Bekker had spent every Sunday in the cabin on the mountain that Bavink rented, translating Dante and writing little poems now and then, for years I had drifted around the world. And what did it all mean? For the world, for God, or even for us?

I stood on the Rhenen tower and looked into the distance, and my heart went out into the distance, to the red sky in the west. But even if I could have flown off the top of the tower into that distance, I would have found only that the distance had turned into the nearby, and my heart would have gone out to the distance once more. And what good did it do me — the wisdom that taught me that nothing would ever change, it would be like this forever?

Every day we longed for something, without knowing what. It got monotonous. Sunrise and sunset and sunlight on the water and behind the drifting white clouds — monotonous — and the darker skies too, the leaves turning brown and yellow, the bare treetops and poor soggy fields in the winter — all the things I had seen so many times and thought about so many times while I was gone and would see again so many more times, as long as I didn’t die. Who can spend his life watching all these things that constantly repeat themselves, who can keep longing for nothing? Trusting in a God who isn’t there?

And now the gorse was blooming again, and the lilacs and apple trees and chestnuts, and the sun was blazing down on all of it. Full of emotion, I had seen it all again. And while I was thinking about it, my vague longings and expectations faded away.

God lives in my head. His fields are immeasurable, his gardens are full of beautiful flowers that never die, regal women walk there naked, thousands of them. And the sun rises and sets and shines low and high and low again and the endless domain is endlessly itself and never the same for an instant. Broad rivers run through it, curving and meandering, and the sun shines on them and they carry the light to the sea.

I sit quiet and content beside the rivers of my thoughts and smoke a clay pipe and feel the sunshine on my body and see the water flow ceaselessly into the unknown.

The unknown doesn’t bother me. I nod now and then to the beautiful women plucking the flowers in my gardens and I hear the wind rustling through the high pines, through the forests of certainty, of knowing that all this exists whenever I decide to think it. I am grateful that this has been given to me. And I puff on my pipe in all humility and feel like God himself, who is infinity itself.

I sit there aimlessly, God’s aim is aimlessness.

But to keep this awareness always is granted to no man.

When I arrived in Amsterdam, about nine the next morning, and stood on the square in front of Centraal Station, I saw lots of electric streetcars, which I had never seen there before, and taxis, and policemen with caps instead of helmets. But they hadn’t filled in the Damrak yet, I saw the backs of the houses on Warmoesstraat right on the water and the Oude Kerk spire up above. So that was all right.

And the same fine gentlemen were still walking around, their hair was perfect and there was not a crease in their jackets or a speck of mud on their shoes. They still looked like they knew absolutely everything and felt that they’d pretty much succeeded in life. They were friendly and polite to each other, as always. Their clothes were slightly different from a few years before, but basically the same. You could see that they had everything figured out: A suit was a suit, same as ever, and a jacket was still a jacket, and a respectable woman was still a respectable woman and a girl was a girl. It all worked out perfectly. And they also knew perfectly well who and what were beneath them, I had no doubt about that. The Damrak would certainly be filled in too once they got around to it.

I took Tram 2 down Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. So it was a good thing they’d filled it in after all, otherwise the tram probably couldn’t drive down it, and now you could cross from one side to the other wherever you wanted.

Tram 2, the line par excellence for fine and important gentlemen. A couple of terribly important gentlemen were on the tram, I was nothing next to them. The good old sun was shining happily down on Voorburgwal, the buds on the trees were still pale green, and I saw that the shadow of Nieuwe Kerk didn’t reach the other side of the street, not by a long shot. And I remembered that years before, in late May, I had seen the same shadow looking exactly the same. And that on a sunny winter day, when there were no trams on Voorburgwal yet, I had walked through the shadow of the church which covered the whole width of the street. Now it didn’t even reach the rails, the tram drove past the church in the sunlight. In a few months the same tram (it was still brand new) would be driving in the same place through shadow. And when I looked back at the two terribly important gentlemen, I decided that the whole time Rhenen had been the center of the world, this world had hardly changed at all.

I thought about when these two gentlemen would die, and stand naked at the Last Judgment, and be forgotten down here. And about terribly important gentlemen coming and taking their place. Would they still have their silent self-possession when they arrived up there without their nicely polished shoes? And what would become of the perfect part in their hair? What about their idiotic air of superiority, might their faces not show a hint of modesty when they got there and saw the other, even more important men they had looked up to for so many years, and they were naked too?

And how many idealistic young people down here would have written essays by then, and written little poems and painted little pictures, and gotten angry and gotten excited about things. And kissed. And then grown important too, perhaps, and been forgotten as well.

Then a girl with a violin got on the tram and looked at the tips of her shoes with her dark eyes, and I looked at the rounded curves of her summer coat and forgot all about the elegant gentlemen.

Hoyer was home. He had a very proper apartment in a side street behind the Concertgebouw and he received me in a sitting room I hardly dared walk in because the carpet was so expensive. His curtains were velvet, his chairs were upholstered in yellow moquette, a black pendulum clock and candelabras were on the mantelpiece and I think I saw a bronze horse somewhere, all things from expensive shops. I didn’t dare to really sit down either, I sat on the edge of the chair the whole time, but I don’t think Hoyer noticed a thing.

Hoyer had had an amazing stroke of luck. They had made the same old stupid mistake and refused one of his nudes. He’d named the lady Lust and I must say, since I am writing for a respectable publication, that she did look “very nice.” And now Hoyer was living large in furnished rooms managed by an elegant widow with an aristocratic name, along with a female lawyer and a colonial official on leave with his wife and child. Hoyer ate out since the widow was far too elegant to cook for her boarders. Shoeshines cost extra.