John Irving - Until I Find You

Yet she had her allies—among the older prostitutes, especially. And when she discovered those other music lovers assembled in the Old Church in the wee hours of the morning, Femke established some fierce friendships. (Was Jack wrong to imagine that it might have been an easy transition for both choirgirls and prostitutes to make—namely, to love the organist as a natural result of loving his music?)

To judge Femke by her revenge against her ex-husband, one might have thought she would have been more possessive in her attachment to William Burns. But Femke had rejoiced in his music, and in his company. In her liberation from her former husband, she’d discovered another kind of love—a kinship with women who sold sex for money and gave it away selectively. If more than one of the music lovers in William’s audience at the Oude Kerk had taken him “home,” how many of them had given him their advice for free?

Jack would wonder, much later, if those red-light women were his father’s greatest conquest. Or were women who gave advice to men for money inclined to be stingy advice-givers to those rare men they didn’t charge?

To a four-year-old, it was a very confusing story. Then again, maybe you had to be a four-year-old to believe it.

Confusing or not, that was Femke’s story, more or less as Els told it—altered (as everything is) by time, and by Alice’s retelling of the story to Jack over the ensuing years. When the boy and his mother went to see Femke in her room on the Bergstraat, it was clear she’d been expecting them.

Femke didn’t dress like a prostitute. Her clothes were more appropriate for a hostess at an elegant dinner party. Her skin was as golden and flawless as her hair; her bosom swelled softly, and her hips had a commanding jut. She was in every respect a knockout—like no one Jack had seen in a window or a doorway in Amsterdam before—and there emanated from her such a universal disdain that it was easier to believe how many men she turned away than to imagine her ever accepting a customer.

What a sizable contempt Femke must have felt for Alice, who had ceaselessly chased after a man who’d so long ago rejected her. Femke’s evident contempt for children struck Jack as immeasurable. (The boy may have misinterpreted Femke’s feelings for his mother; Jack probably thought that Femke disliked him. ) He instantly wanted to leave her room, which, compared to the other two prostitutes’ rooms he’d seen, was almost as pretty as Femke—it was also lavishly furnished.

There was no bed, just a large leather couch, and there were no towels. There was even a desk. A comfortable-looking leather armchair was in the window corner, under a reading lamp and next to a bookcase. Perhaps Femke sat reading in her window, not bothering to look at the potential clients passing by; to get her attention, the men must have had to come down the short flight of stairs and knock on her door or on the window. Would she then look up from her book, annoyed to have had her reading interrupted?

There were paintings on the walls—landscapes, one with a cow—and the rug was an Oriental, as expensive-looking as she was. In fact, Femke was Jack’s first encounter with the unassailable power of money—its blind-to-everything-else arrogance.

“What took you so long?” she said to Alice.

“Can we go?” Jack asked his mom. He held out his hand to her, but she wouldn’t take it.

“I know you’re in touch with him,” Alice told the prostitute.

“ ‘… in touch with him,’ ” Femke repeated. She moved her hips; she wet her lips with her tongue. Her gestures were as ripe with self-indulgence as a woman stretching in bed in the morning after a good night’s sleep; her clothes looked as welcoming to her body as a warm bath. Even standing, or sitting in a straight-backed chair, her body appeared to loll. Even sound asleep, Femke would look like a cat waiting to be stroked.

Hadn’t someone said that Femke chiefly, and safely, chose virgins? She picked young boys. The police insisted that Femke require them to show her proof of their age. Jack would never forget her, or how afraid she made him feel.

Virgins, Alice had explained to Jack, were inexperienced young men—no woman had ever given them advice before. That late afternoon in Femke’s room on the Bergstraat was the first time Jack felt in need of some advice regarding women, but he was too afraid to ask.

“ If you’re still in touch with him, perhaps you’ll be so kind as to give him a message,” Alice continued.

“Do I look kind ?” Femke asked.

“Can we go?” Jack asked again; his mom still wouldn’t take his hand. Jack looked out the window at a passing car. There were no potential clients looking in.

Alice was saying something; she sounded upset. “A father should at least know what his son looks like!”

“William certainly knows what the boy looks like,” Femke replied. It was as if she were saying, “I think William has seen enough of Jack already.” That’s the kind of information (or misinformation) that can change your life. It certainly changed Jack’s. From that day forth, he’d tried to imagine his father stealing a look at him.

Did William see Jack fall through the ice and into the Kastelsgraven? Would The Music Man have rescued his son if the littlest soldier hadn’t come along? Was William watching Jack eat breakfast at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm? Did his dad see him stuffing his face at that Sunday-morning buffet at the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, or suspended in the derelict elevator above the American Bar at the Hotel Torni in Helsinki?

And on those Saturdays in Amsterdam when Jack often sat in the window or stood in the doorway of The Red Dragon on the Zeedijk, just watching the busy weekend street—the countless men who roamed the red-light district—was his father once or twice passing by with the crowd? If William knew what his son looked like, as Femke had said, how many times might Jack have seen him and not known who he was?

But how could he not have recognized William Burns? Not that William would have been so bold as to take off his shirt and show Jack the music inscribed on his skin, but wouldn’t there have been something familiar about his father? (Maybe the eyelashes, as a few women had pointed out while peering into Jack’s face.)

That day in Femke’s room on the Bergstraat, Jack started looking for William Burns. In a way, Jack had looked for him ever since—and on such slim evidence! That a woman he thought was a prostitute, who may have been lying—who was unquestionably cruel—told him that his dad had seen him.

Alice had contradicted Femke on the spot: “She’s lying, Jack.”

“You’re the one who’s lying, to yourself,” Femke replied. “It’s a lie to think that William still loves you—it’s a joke to assume that he ever did!”

“I know he loved me once,” Alice said.

“If William ever loved you, he couldn’t bear to see you prostitute yourself,” Femke said. “It would kill him to see you in a window or a doorway, wouldn’t it? That is, if he cared about you.”

“Of course he cares about me!” Alice cried.

Imagine that you are four, and your mother is in a shouting match with a stranger. Do you really hear the argument? Aren’t you trying so hard to understand the last thing that was said—to interpret it—that you miss the next thing that is said, and the thing after that? Isn’t that how a four-year-old hears, or doesn’t hear, an adult argument?

“Just think of William seeing you in a doorway, singing that little hymn or prayer I’m sure you know,” Femke was saying. “How does it go? ‘ Breathe on me, breath of God ’—have I got it right?” Femke also knew the tune, which she hummed. “It’s Scottish, isn’t it?” she asked.