Margriet de Moor - The Storm

I told you we first met on a sightseeing boat. It’s the best student job anyone can have. You stand with the microphone in your hand and your back to the captain, canals, bridges, to your right that’s a mug of coffee, and for the rest of it you simply tell whatever comes into your head. He was sitting right at the back. He looked from the merchants’ houses to me, from the drawbridges to me, from the whole labyrinth of waterways and water lanes that winds through old Amsterdam in all its alarmingly crumbling glory when seen from this side, and eventually empties into the IJ — from all of that he looked at me to watch (or so I thought) the words coming out of my mouth. Next day he was sitting there again. By chance I was in really good form and babbled on about our great trading city, the jewel of our blessed little Republic, that once set the tone for the entire world economy: first, as I explained superenthusiastically, thanks to the Dutch sailors who so loved going to sea that they didn’t care about being paid; second, thanks to the windmills, such clever technical doodads that could be harnessed to saw wood, grind corn, pump out polders, you name it, they could do it; and third, I said briefly, because what did I know about this stuff, thanks to slavery. On the third day, when he looked at me, I looked back at him. And I could feel that he didn’t understand a word of my set text or even guess what any of it was about, he was just looking at my mouth .

Mama, have I ever told you that I almost never felt attracted to any of the boys at school, and I don’t really feel attracted to any of the guys in my study group at university either? Too much like pals or brothers. I never once felt my heart go thump! After our third trip on the Queen Juliana, he and I went into town, ate at a little table, and took the bus to the apartment he’d rented from friends for the duration of his stay in the Netherlands. Oh, I know, you just won’t get it. I was out of my mind with love. So where did my wedding night take place? In an apartment in a new block, with a fancy roofline that makes it look as if it’s standing up at an angle on the flat polder like a boat that’s sinking .

When he’d gone to sleep, I leaned over him. Is it true that the first thing you fall in love with is a face? But can that be something other than the eyes and the mouth? I think it was already quite clear to me as he lay there, sleeping sweetly, that he had an expression of his, you have to say it out loud in an earthy but friendly way, but that he really did try to reach for my face through my words. And I can visualize them, all in a row, the young guide’s words, out of which all you needed was some intelligence and goodwill and you could conjure a complete merchant fleet sailing laboriously against the wind, and the harbor of Hoorn in bad weather, and Amsterdam harbor half frozen in winter in the eighteenth century, and the storehouses, packed full of produce from the colonies, the churches, the grand houses on the canals with their blazing reception rooms and their women always standing at a window and reading a letter. Luxury, calm, and lots of tea, in mid-May you could watch all of Amsterdam boarding lighters to sail to the tea pavilions and summerhouses on the Vecht and all the way to Haarlem, returning in the fall. I mean it when I say that it was all streaming through me like a dancing river, and now through him as well .

Mama, something’s weighing on me. I think it’s dreadful, but one time I had a really hard time suppressing a pang of pity for him. We were coming home after a late movie. Did I feel like having a late-night supper? He’s already pirouetting toward the kitchen. How about oysters? Of course. And he comes back with a glass full of vinegary pickled mussels, gray blobs of crap in a glass that he holds up like a trophy. My king of the primeval forest. Poor sweet guy. Then he puts a bottle of white wine on the table that’s been standing next to the heater for hours, switches on the main light, and goes to work with a corkscrew. At that moment I would have given anything not to have remembered that a few nights before, in the dark, he’d said to me: You touch the blackness in me. And how blissfully happy I’d been, and had thought: how great, there’s this naturalness between us, and we don’t know each other’s weaknesses, though they certainly exist, and we can just leave it alone, leave it alone! Oh Mama, don’t be surprised by this letter, it’s night, and I’m very alone, I was so captivated by this man!

At this point Armanda raised her head and met the eyes of her father. He was crushed, but still benevolent.

“Shall I pour us a quick cup of tea?” she asked gently, thinking of her father’s prudery, and how he was so stiff-necked in his rejection of all modern developments.

“Oh, finish dear Nadja’s letter.”

His voice, unsure as it always was when his feelings became confused without any prior warning, led her for a moment to her own love life. It was good that a lover was no longer called “lover” these days, but, more modestly, “friend.” Her father liked the disheveled mathematics teacher, one of her colleagues, whom she had brought with her to number 77 on several Sundays now.

“All right.” She picked up the sheets of paper again, hunted for a moment, then resumed her reading. “Now I must tell you something that you couldn’t know back then, but your rage probably picked up on already: he’s married back home.”

Without looking up, she saw her father stretch out his arms, and she knew how shocked he must be.

“Oh, my little one!”

She read out the rest of the letter.

· · ·

And I want to tell you, there’s something else, something strange, that I went through with him. There was a party in the garage in our apartment building. He asked if I was coming. This party was going to be a winti-pre’, an African idol celebration. Do you believe in them? I asked him straight out. He gave me a warning look. Believe? Do you mean believe? You don’t, do you? He began to laugh, poked me in the stomach with his finger, and went to the light switch to demonstrate something to me. Okay, the ceiling fixture in this room uses three bulbs, two of which are burned out, but I could see, couldn’t I, that the light switch itself was working. Don’t ask how … he said maliciously, already dragging me toward the elevator. Basement .

So where are the cars, I thought, as we entered the concrete cavern that took up the entire space under the building. Larger than ten churches. Entrance and exit ramps, pillars, neon lighting, painted numbers identifying the parking spots, everything very orderly, yes, but not a car to be seen. What there was instead, somewhere in these catacombs, was an enormous but invisible drumming; we really didn’t need to ask the way. The Bijlmer, Mama, is terrific, it shows a real vision. Until the last ten years, more or less, there was just a village here on a sandy road between Weesp and Amsterdam. Then along came the architects and drew some enchanting apartment buildings like honeycombs, with garages underneath, in a paradise of meadows and poplars and new stretches of lawn. God, how beautiful, it was supposed to become a city where living, working, and enjoying the fresh air on weekends are separated by nothing more than a few crosshatched pen strokes. But you’ve no idea: right now almost the entire middle class of Amsterdam is sitting on the waiting list for houses with gardens in Purmerend. And I’m looking at people here, striding out to the sound of the drums with towering headdresses… .

So, we went to where the party was in the garage. There were around a hundred people, all of them black of course. Excitement and drumming and a lot of jumping around by a band called Boeing 737. Very appropriate, it seems to me now, because basically what they were doing was picking up somebody’s ancestors from the primeval forest and transporting them at warp speed to a polder southeast of Amsterdam. We moved into the middle of the crowd. My beloved was already doing little steps forward and back . Winti, he said, when I asked him afterward, means: a spirit of your ancestors who moves as fast as the wind. Very simple .