John Irving - Until I Find You

They went to the staircase at the back of the great congregation hall, but only Saskia and Els and Jack started up the narrow stairs. Alice waited for them at the bottom of the staircase. “He’s in Australia, or sailing to it,” she said stubbornly. “Just imagine all the ladies he’ll get to meet on a cruise ship!”

The faint, innocent smell of baby powder preceded their view of Frans Donker, the junior organist. The sudden appearance of Saskia and Els startled the boy genius—he stopped playing. Then Donker saw Jack standing between the two prostitutes.

“Oh, I suppose you thought it was your father,” Frans said to Jack.

“Not really,” Saskia said.

“Don’t talk—just keep playing,” Els told him. The child prodigy had returned to the Bach before they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“It’s that Donker kid, right?” Alice asked. They all nodded. “He plays like an organ-tuner,” Alice said.

Bach’s Fantasy in G Major followed them past the Trompettersteeg, where several of the younger prostitutes were still selling themselves. They were nearly to the end of the Sint Annenstraat when they finally outdistanced the music.

“You’re not going to Australia, are you?” Els may have asked Alice.

“No. Australia is too long and hard a trip for Jack,” Alice might have answered.

“It’s too long and hard a trip for anybody, Alice,” Saskia said.

“I suppose so,” was all Alice said. Her speech was uncharacteristically slurred, and her expression—from the moment Jack had awakened to the women’s whispers on the Bloedstraat—was unfamiliarly dreamy and carefree. Jack would later assume that this had to do with how many joints she’d smoked, because—until Amsterdam—his mother and marijuana were not on close terms. But they were on close terms that Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Saskia and Els walked them back to their hotel—not because the two prostitutes thought the red-light district was unsafe, even at that hour, but because they didn’t want Alice to run into Jacob Bril. They knew Bril was also staying at the Krasnapolsky.

After the women hugged and kissed Jack and Alice good night, Jack and his mom got ready for bed. It was the first time Jack remembered her using the bathroom ahead of him. Something amused her in there, because she started laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“I think I left my underwear in Els’s room!”

The advice-giving business had clearly distracted her—and by the time Jack finished brushing his teeth, Alice had fallen asleep. Jack turned out the lights in the bedroom and left the bathroom light on, with the door ajar—their version of a night-light. He thought it was the first time his mother had fallen asleep before him. He got into bed beside her, but even asleep, his mom was still singing. Jack was thankful it wasn’t a hymn. And maybe the marijuana had resurrected Alice’s Scottish accent, which, in the future, Jack could detect only when she was drunk or stoned.

As for the song, Jack had no way of knowing if it was an authentic folk ballad—something his mother had remembered from her girlhood—or, more likely, a ditty of her own imagination that, in her sleep, she’d put to music. (Why not? She’d been singing for half a day and night.)

Here is the song Alice sang in her sleep.

Oh, I’ll never be a kittie

or a cookie

or a tail.

The one place worse than

Dock Place

is the Port o’ Leith jail.

No, I’ll never be a kittie,

of one true thing I’m sure—

I won’t end up on Dock Place

and I’ll never be a hure.

Hure rhymed with sure, of course. Jack thought it might be a nursery song, which—even in her sleep—his mother meant to sing for him.

Jack said their nightly prayer—as he always did, with his eyes closed. He spoke a little louder than usual, because his mother was asleep and he had to pray for both of them. “The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended. Thank You for it.”

They slept until noon Sunday, when he asked her: “What’s a hure?”

“Was it something I said in my sleep?” she said.

“Yes. You were singing.”

“A hure is like a prostitute—an advice-giver, Jackie.”

“How can a person be a kittie or a cookie or a tail?” Jack asked.

“They’re all words for an advice-giver, Jack.”

“Oh.”

They were walking hand-in-hand through the red-light district to Tattoo Peter’s when the boy asked: “Where’s Dock Place?”

“Dock Place is nowhere I’ll ever be,” was all she would tell him.

“How did Tattoo Peter lose his leg?” Jack asked for the hundredth time.

“I told you—you’ll have to ask him.”

“Maybe on a bicycle,” the boy said.

It was midafternoon in the district; most of the women were already offering advice. All of them greeted Jack and Alice by name—even those older prostitutes in the area of the Old Church. Alice made a point of walking around the Oudekerksplein; they passed every window and doorway, at a pace half the speed of Jacob Bril’s. Not a soul hummed “Breathe on Me, Breath of God” to them.

They went to the St. Olofssteeg to say good-bye to Tattoo Peter. “Alice, you’re welcome to come work with me anytime,” the one-legged man told her. “Keep both your legs, Jack,” Peter said. “You’ll find it easier to get around that way.”

Then they walked up the Zeedijk to say good-bye to Tattoo Theo and Robbie de Wit. Robbie wanted Alice to tattoo him. “Not another broken heart,” she said. “I’ve had enough of hearts, torn in two or otherwise.” Robbie settled for her signature on his right upper arm.

Daughter Alice

Rademaker was so impressed by her letter-perfect script that he requested one, too. Tattoo Theo got his tattoo on his left forearm, which he said he’d kept bare for something special. The lettering ran from the bend at Rademaker’s elbow to the face of his wristwatch, so that every time he looked to see what time it was, he would be reminded of Daughter Alice.

“What do you say, Jack?” Tattoo Theo asked. “Shall we listen again to der Zimmerman?” (He wasn’t German; he didn’t know der from den. Not that Jack knew German, either—not yet.)

Jack picked out a Bob Dylan album and put it on. Robbie de Wit was soon singing along, but it wasn’t Alice’s favorite song. She just went on tattooing, leaving the singing to Robbie and Bob.

“ When your rooster crows at the break of dawn, ” Bob and Robbie sang. “Look out your window and I’ll be gone.” At this point, Alice was starting the A in Alice. “ You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on, ” Bob and Robbie crooned. “Don’t think twice, it’s all right.”

Well, it wasn’t all right—not by a long shot—but Alice just kept tattooing.

Els took them to the shipping office, which was a confusing place—they needed Els’s help in arranging their passage. They would take the train to Rotterdam and sail from there to Montreal, and then make their way back to Toronto.

“Why Toronto?” Saskia asked Alice. “Canada isn’t your country.”

“It is now,” Alice said. “I’ll never go back to sunny Leith—not for all the whisky in Scotland.” She wouldn’t say why. (Too many ghosts, maybe.) “Besides, I know just the school for Jack. It’s a good school,” Jack heard her tell Saskia and Els. His mom leaned over him and whispered in his ear: “And you’ll be safe with the girls.”

The idea of himself with the St. Hilda’s girls—the older ones, especially—gave Jack the shivers. Once again, and for the last time in Europe, he reached for his mother’s hand.