Spice and Speculation
It was day three and we'd been on the canals, out to see the flowers blooming at Keukehof, in and out of the Rijksmuseum two days running and now we were on our way to see a Greek about a riddle.
Barbara had never been to Amsterdam before. She had never been anywhere, as far as I knew. Twenty years ago she had backpacked from Wolfcreek, Montana, to Denver, met Tom the oil executive and settled down forever to raise babies and look after retired business executives who could no longer wield a hatchet. Barbara was a forever person, emotionally volatile, who had spent almost forty years clinging to a few material possessions, without which she probably would have become disoriented; a husband who spent all his time working to keep Barbara from becoming disoriented; and a scrap book with a powder blue cover in which all the pertinent data of her life had been reduced to measurable, glossy squares of Polaroid. She was on the verge of a divorce, didn't want to talk about it yet, hadn't worked it out for herself yet, found herself in a state of shock, not quite certain what to do about it yet. Persuading her to visit me in Amsterdam wasn't necessarily the answer. But it might help take her mind off Tom and the New World express. The way she was put together -- all those absolutes and firm convictions that followed her around like demons, getting in the way of her better judgment -- she was a bit like a bomb which was liable to explode at any moment, spraying bits of emotional slag through my and everybody else's life.
The ponderous Dutch sky looked exactly as it looked in those 17th Century paintings in the Rijksmuseum -- ominous, depressing, about to rain. It always looked that way in Amsterdam. We caught a tram that took us cross town to a street full of Tower-of-Pisa townhouses, which looked as though they were going to topple over any minute and crash into the canal opposite.
The woman who opened the door was in her late twenties, with short blond hair and mischievous features -- eyebrows that arched all by themselves, a nose that tilted just enough to draw attention to itself, a mouth that curved down on the sides, like a clown's. She was wearing jeans and a sweater that was two sizes too big.
"You must be from the Salvation Army," she said in English.
Barbara had an uncomfortable moment or two until I made it clear that this was, indeed, the person I had intended to find behind the door of that particular flat.
"Barbara," I said, walking uninvited into the apartment, "This is Cassandra, Lupus Neerlandicus, the last of a dying species."
"Were you followed?" Cassandra said, closing the door behind us.
"Why should we be followed?" Barbara looked worried.
"I think she's kidding," I said, examining Pandora's Box which Cassandra kept on a kitchen shelf. Dull grey pewter with an oversized padlock. Pandora's Box was not the original, of course. It was Cassandra's name for it. Supposedly it contained all the reckless mistakes of her mysterious past, all her secret yearnings and lurid desires. Which was the reason she kept it locked and did not open it for people like me -- especially people like me.
"Coffee?" Cassandra called, disappearing into the kitchen.
The Dutch drank coffee ritually around the clock, morning, afternoon, evening and late at night. Not everyone, of course. Tea was a strong second. Cassandra was a coffee freak.
Barbara took a seat near the window, seemingly fascinated with a mirror that was positioned outside the window to reveal the door to the building four stories below."It's called an Amsterdam Spy," Cassandra said, indicating the mirror outside the window. "The forerunner of the intercom."
"Nice idea," Barbara said.
Cassandra pushed a mug of coffee in front me. I dropped in a cube of sugar, letting it dissolve without stirring, which was phase two in my plan to give up sweets.
Barbara and Cassandra seemed to get along well enough, considering they had grown up on different continents, with different values and a totally different perspective as to what life on the Big Ball was all about. Cassandra was a free-lance journalist, had her own television program. Investigative reporting, new kid on the block in Holland. There were few political scandals in The Netherlands, probably due to the nature of the parliamentary system where parties and issues tended to take precedence over personalities and power mongers. The Dutch thing seemed to be discovering ingenious ways to screw the public and fellow businessmen by devising borderline scams that required a lot of digging into to get at the facts and the people responsible. I had a partner, a Dutchman named Rien van der Broek, who was an expert on the subject -- a practicing expert. Together we had formed a dynamic little duo in an effort to live life on the big foot (the Dutch equivalent of living high on the hog). It was not so much a business plan as a philosophy of life. The main tenet was: don't get caught. The point was taking advantage of a world that was organized for the wrong ends. If everybody's going after a pot of gold instead of trying to help one another survive and attain happiness, we intended to get our share; or, rather, more than our share. That -- and a couple of decades of missed opportunities -- explained what I was doing in Amsterdam with sister Barbara sitting on Cassandra's couch.
I had known Cassandra about a year. We had met at somebody's party, discovered one another's sense of humor and started a friendship of sorts. For some reason, perhaps because of the shields of mirth, we had never had an intimate relationship. It was part of the undercurrent of tension that ran through the infrequent encounters we had. I used her to get invited to interesting parties. She used me to get information and ideas on the various business practices she was investigating. We had formed a sort of mutual aid society and kept it going by making little unannounced intrusions, like the one today, into the each other's private lives.
Cassandra had been trying to explain to Barbara what makes a journalist tick, the tools of the trade, the subtle difference between lying and not telling the truth, for example.
"Is there a difference?" Barbara asked.
"Of course," Cassandra said. "A lie is a deliberate falsehood. You say white when you know it's black. But not telling the truth is an art. It's what we journalists do all the time. You simply omit things, leave blanks in the story, don't mention pertinent facts, deviate. You have a point to make, so you make, even if it means leaving out a few pertinent details. You don't tell the full truth, but you're not lying, either. Als je begrijp wat ik bedoel?"
The reference in Dutch was to a feature-length cartoon which was based on a Dutch comic strip. It was the catch phrase of the story's leading character, a bear named Olivier B. Bommel. Als je begrijp wat ik bedoel? (If you get my meaning?) Don't commit yourself. Let the other guy fill in the blanks.
"I bet Harvey's very good at it," Barbara smiled.
"He is."
"You're forgetting why I came to see you today," I said, ignoring the gibes.
"You didn't tell me why you were coming."
"I want you to fix Barbara up with the horniest man you know."
Barbara blushed, then emitted a tiny ha-ha.
"I don't know any horny men," Cassandra smiled.
"Walbanger," I said, offering a hand, "You may call me Harvey."
Barbara laughed, "I still can't get used to that name. Back home it's a little hard to explain why I have a brother named after a cocktail."
"We Dutch wonder about that, too," Cassandra added. "What's your real name? And why did you change it?"
"My," I said, attempting a wry grin that probably looked more like a sneer, since I felt no compulsion to elaborate on my former, short-lived career as a stand-up comic. "You are the curious one. Some other time, my Greek lovely, when I'm feeling vulnerable."
"I can't wait," Cassandra smiled, with just a pinch of seriousness in her tone.
"Do you have my card?"
"All of them," Cassandra produced a crooked grin.
"Not the trump card, though."
"Oh?" she drew back in mock fear. "Sounds intriguing."
"Is intriguing," I assured her.
"Some other time," she said, showing me a lot of teeth. "What about dinner?"
We made reservations for three at an Indonesian restaurant in Amsterdam, the Bali. There would be no horny man in my sister's life that particular evening. Cassandra and Barbara clearly came from two different worlds. Cassandra wore a long, flower-child dress (the kind they wore in San Francisco in the sixties) with a sash around the waist and a sweat band to keep the hair out of her eyes; Barbara wore an outfit resembling a Safari outfit in palpitating purple instead of khaki green. My sister's private rebellion against fashion and good taste did not go unnoticed.
We had a two-Kir wait in the bar upstairs before our table was ready. Barbara, surprisingly, seemed totally absorbed by Cassandra's unorthodox views on just about everything.
"I know I should have stuck to hashish," Cassandra said at one point (and I noticed Barbara's backwoods' eyes open a little wider than usual), "but I got hooked on alcohol. It's habit forming." And: "The biggest problem in Dutch politics is whether to tighten the laws on abortion or loosen the ones on euthanasia. In both cases, it's mainly a woman's problem. Men don't have babies and they usually don't live long enough to have to worry about Alzheimer's."
Halfway through the second Kir the Indonesian Maitre d' beckoned us to our table to face the Rijsttafel.
"Now, I'm only going to explain this once," I said, as the throng of waiters and waitresses set up our table, placing several candle-powered hot plates at strategic locations on the table, followed by an assortment of meats, vegetables, rice and certain miscellaneous dishes. "The Rijsttafel is the most original meal in Holland. It's one of those treasures the Dutch brought back from Indonesian after they raped the country."
"You're wrong about that, Harvey," Cassandra cut in. "Not about the rape, the Rijsttafel -- they actually invented it. It's more Dutch than Indonesian."
"I didn't know that," Barbara said, "about the Dutch in Indonesia, I mean. Where was I?"
"Probably in school learning that the American Indians were brutal savages who massacred white settlers without provocation."
One of the waitresses placed a plate of thin wafers on the table and Barbara said, "What are those?"
"Kroepoek," I said, "Shrimp bread."
Barbara tasted one, nodded approvingly.
"When you eat the Rijsttafel," Cassandra explained, "you are going to experience sensations that you have never before experienced."
"Sounds kind of racy," Barbara smiled.
"Spicy is the word," I assured her. "The various dishes are flavored with spices and peppers, some hotter than others. The trick is to eat them in the right order and to mix them as you do so. Rijsttafel should be eaten with a fork and spoon. You take bits and pieces of everything on your plate and mix it together on your spoon. It's kind of a symbolic experience, a bit like life in Amsterdam."
Cassandra's green eyes turned ever so slightly in my direction, shining mischievously.
When everything was ready, I ordered three beers.
"The thing to do," I said, "is to start with the rice." Cassandra did the serving, lacing the warm plates with a layer of white rice. "To the rice we're going to add some of the meat dishes," which Cassandra proceeded to do. "Some vegetables," she selected two kinds.
"This is to take the sting out," she said, putting a small helping of Atjar Tjampoer on our plates. "Don't eat the fried bananas until later," I cautioned. "Nothing sweet the first time around."
"This," I said, pointing to a bowl with red sauce, "you can add if it's not hot enough for you. It's called Sambal."
"I'll try it without," Barbara winced.
A waiter brought the beers. I said, "Cheers", Cassandra said "Proost" and Barbara raised her glass, clinked it first against Cassandra's and then against mine, mumbling something like "wonderful to be here." My Dutch friend cast a sarcastic little smile in my direction. Glass clinking was very American. "You're probably going to need a lot of this," I grinned. "Bon Appetit."
We all drank a lot of it and, when the meal was finished and we were waiting for coffee and Tia Marias, Cassandra sat with her head propped in both hands, watching me wash fingers in the finger bowl. I only ate Rijsttafel once every four to six weeks. It was hard on the system. Barbara's only comment after the meal had been: you were right, it was hot.
"You know what?" Cassandra said. She sounded a little high.
"What?" I said, drying my hands with a small towel.
"This is the first time we've shared a Rijsttafel, Harvey. I liked your performance. We are what we eat, as the man said. It tells me something about you." She blinked twice in my general direction. The alcohol was taking charge. "I think we're going to have to get to know one another a little better. One of these days I may even show you Pandora's Box."
"In America we call that teasing," I smiled.
Unfortunately, Cassandra had a date later on. A sometimes lover, was the way she put it. Pandora's Box would have to wait until a more appropriate occasion. Anyway, I couldn't have left poor Barbara wandering all alone through the streets of Amsterdam without a horny date. Well ... in any case, I didn't.
After dinner Barbara and I walked Cassandra back to her flat.
Outside her building a car pulled up. An attractive girl with long slender legs and blond hair emerged from the passenger seat. Cassandra introduced her: "Margo, Barbara -- and Harvey, the crazy American I told you about. Want to come in for a nightcap?" We declined and left Cassandra and her sometimes lover arm in arm to do their thing. That was part of the fascination of living in Europe, constantly being surprised and puzzled by the people in my life, the ones I thought I knew so well. (Those cultural bones gonna dance around!) I walked Barbara back to my flat on the Prinsengracht. I don't think she even realized. Amsterdam was full of surprises.
"Amsterdam's kind of nice," Barbara said over a night cap in my miniature living room.
"It's not quite Colorado or Montana," I smiled.
Amsterdam was like a vast, pulsating, warm, moist, inviting, enter-at-your-own-risk vagina. If you hung around long enough it would entice you to enter its pleasure dome, assimilate you like the Borg on Star Trek. Hold you captive in its womb. After awhile, you didn't mind. You even grew to like it. Then you became an irrevocable part of it and were trapped forever. It wasn't all that different from New York or San Francisco, except there was no underground because there was no woodwork.
"People seem to be so ..." -- she searched for a word -- "tolerant. No hang ups, that kind of thing. It's amazing."
"The Dutch will tolerate anything except--" I shot her a secretive, about-to-be-profound smile as I finished my drink, starting to feel the evening folding up and slipping away from me. "--people who tell them they're not tolerant."
There was no sense of amusement in her eyes, only the dull, puffy look that comes from too much jet lag. Almost forty years had not been particularly kind to my sister. The fast-food barons had given her a few extra inches of midriff. The Rockies had sketched a road map around her eyes. The positive thinkers had skillfully kept her from the path of self-knowledge. Her life had been reduced to the photo album that she carried around like an stillborn child, its powder blue cover lying on my Venezuelan leather table. For some reason I shuddered.
"Cassandra's not very typical," I said, pouring a second, final, lovely glass of Bailey's. Barbara declined.
"I liked Cassandra," she said dreamily. She was half gone. Tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow we would talk about her life, pick up the pieces, put Humpty Dumpty together again.
I played the new Madonna record, the one they had banned in Italy, the one that had gotten Pepsi Cola into trouble.
"You like Madonna?"
"Was that the other girl's name?" Barbara mumbled, then fell asleep on the couch.
Our worlds did not coincide. They were not even remotely close. I saw a tall, long-legged blond named Margo, a bit too fashionable, too well-trimmed like a suburban lawn, too neat and hairless for Cassandra. I wonder what Barbara saw? It surprised me, I had to admit. Dear, sweet-and-sour Cassandra, girl of a thousand mysteries. Sometimes I wondered if she were a relic of some degenerate past or the promise of an eye-opening future. The more I discovered, the less I seemed to know. Are we what we eat, or do we devour what we are? Will we live again, are we living at all? Wouldn't hash be more sensible than Bailey's? Will a world full of Barbaras destroy us in the end? I had a foot on both sides of the Atlantic but it was probably better to be like my sister, firmly planted in the Rocky Mountain sod. She would divorce, take the children, return to Montana, pick up the pieces, degenerate, die. Perhaps she would spend a night with Cassandra, or watch me spend a night with Cassandra? Perhaps we would spend a night together? No, there was too much Rocky Mountain sod in both of us for that.
It's a long way from Wolfcreek, Montana, to Amsterdam, Old World culture, foot in the future world. The cliche of wind in the hair, climb every mountain vision of my youth was gone, an ideal that no longer existed for me, no sign of it on the horizon, going going gone, the never-ending universe retreats in the face of standing still, ungrowing, nothing to compare with living beneath a dike watching the night glisten in the rain, thinking of Cassandra opening Pandora's Box and not giving a damn, a thousand years of watchful eyes pointing the way, imagining the green scum of the canals in Amsterdam sparkle like mountain springs with the last of the Bailey's putting me in the right frame of mind to postpone telling Barbara who Madonna really was or Margo or Cassandra -- all the secrets of my world.
There are some things people will never understand. And some people who will probably never understand even those things that are capable of being understood.
Als je begrijp wat ik bedoel?
posted by J. DeVincent @ 3:49 PM
