Amsterdam

174 Pages·2016·0.79 MB·English

by  Francisco Ruth

Amsterdam 2012

a novel by

Ruth Francisco
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Kindle Edition
Copyright, 2010 by Ruth Francisco
All rights reserved
Also by Ruth Francisco
Sunshine Highway (New Release)
Hungry Moon
Primal Wound
The Secret Memoirs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Good Morning, Darkness
Confessions of a Deathmaiden
The Pigtailed Heart

For children
Beach City Indigo
Note from Author:
I finished the first draft of this book in March of 2007. I am not prescient
in any way, but it is alarming how many of the things I wrote about have come
to pass, from the spike in gasoline prices in 2008, the election of a democratic
president, the terrorist attempts in Denmark and Amsterdam, the ideological
confusion in the Republican Party, and the emergence of Somalia as a hotbed of
terrorism. I did not predict the killing of Osama bin Laden or the banking
meltdown in Europe, and the ramifications of the “Arab Spring” still have to be
played out. Yet the similarities to reality are startling. I hope the events I
predicted for 2013 and 2014 do not come to pass.
We’ll see, won’t we.
If they do, I’ll wish I had used my predictive powers on lottery tickets.
I know for sure that you, Oh America, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Europe, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Holland, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh unbelieving fundamentalist, will go under.
—Mohammed Bouyeri, 2004
Murderer of Theo van Gogh
No, my former countrymen, you are
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty! . . . The
streets of America shall run red with
blood.
—Adam Gadahn, 2004
American born member of Al
Qaeda

The ruling to kill the Americans
and their allies—civilians and military—
is an individual duty for every Muslim
who can do it in any country.
—Osama bin Laden
Fatwa signed in 1998
Chapter One

Kan ya ma kan.
There was and there was not a time when women walked the streets, hair
blowing, without fear of attack, and married men they loved and of their
choosing, when girls danced and played at school and competed on swim teams,
when writers and artists expressed opinions to engage controversy and
discussion, when our rights and our democracy seemed as assured as the sun
above our heads, and you and I could while away the day at a café or bar, and
talk about anything we pleased. That time, like this tale, is now for the
storybooks.
I was there when the first shots rang out that started the Muslim
rebellion, which touched off riots throughout Europe and led to the Great
Eurabian War—World War III, as some now call it since the United States got
involved. The guns went off less than sixty feet away from me, yet I didn’t hear
their report. I was asleep in the arms of my lover in the loft of a restored
windmill, beneath a goose down comforter on a soft rag mattress, a gentle wind
spinning the turbine outside. Like the bullet delivered by the Serbian Nationalist
Gavrilo Princip that assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne,
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and started World War I, any number of things could
have set off the Great Eurabian War—a racist cartoon, an act of terrorism, an
inflammatory speech by a Dutch Muslim imam, a new policy implemented to
discourage immigration. Europe was bubbling with dissension. Yet it was these
six bullets that started the war that would change the course of Western
civilization.
Peter and I arrived in Amsterdam after an exhausting flight from New
York City. Security had been tight at all of the airports. Before we left JFK,
everyone was ordered off the plane, which was searched. We had to go through
security screening a second time before reboarding. By the time we got to
Schiphol Airport, we were beat. We splurged on a taxi, which dropped us off on
Prinsengracht Street, right in front of the Anne Frank Museum.
I had come to Amsterdam with a burning passion to see the house of
Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who hid with her family from the Nazi
occupation from 1942 to 1944 in a secret annex. I don’t know why my feelings
were so strong. I have read that Anne Frank’s diary—her fury at her
confinement and the brutality of the Gestapo, her hope for release and dreams of
making her own future, her yearning for love, her escape into fantasy—affects
many young women this way. As if through Anne Frank’s words—the reality of
her looming extermination—young women realize the only answer to oppression
is defiance and independent thinking.
Peter offered to watch our packs while I went into the museum. I sensed
his indifference was nearly as strong as my obsession. Rather than trying to
coax him out of his obstinate mood, I left him on his own.
I spent nearly an hour inside. Afterward, Peter and I walked south along
Prinsengracht Canal. How I loved the mix of people, the counterpoint of foreign
languages, the chaos of bicycles and pedestrians. How I loved the soothing
canal waters, the elegant trees and quaint doorways, the tipsy rooflines and
gables. How I loved peeking into the old brick houses to see rooms lined with
bookcases, tidy collections of glassware, ancient clocks, cozy couches and chairs
—scenes that stood outside of time, as precious and charming as snow
globes.
We stopped at one of the many canal side cafes, drank a couple of beers,
then continued on until our adrenaline ebbed and weariness seeped from our
bones. We staggered over a few more bridges and discovered Vondelpark, a
large English style green with ponds and winding paths, lawns and thickets.
After finding a grassy spot, we laid our heads on our backpacks for a snooze.
We slept for several hours and woke up starving.
The air was filled with the smell of butterscotch. We followed our noses
to a cart on the edge of the park that sold Liège waffles, fluffy squares of butter-
fried batter coated with caramelized sugar. Ever sensible, Peter suggested we
get something more substantial in our stomachs. I allowed him to pull me down
the street—how my mouth watered for those waffles—until we came to a cart
that sold raw salted herring sandwiches. I begged for something else, but Peter
said he was too hungry to take one more step. Several other young couples
stood at the cart. A tall blond woman turned and smiled at me. I must’ve worn a
crinkle on my nose, because she laughed and said in excellent English, “The
herring is very tasty here. We come almost every day.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
The woman shifted her chin—almost imperceptibly—to the left, her lips
flinching, eyebrows raised. It was a look I would later come to recognize, a
uniquely European scowl bestowed on Americans to express disdain and
forbearance. “No, no,”—I rushed to clarify—“I don’t eat horsemeat. God no.
It’s an American expression, like ‘raining cats and dogs’ for when it showers.” I
lifted my hands over my head and fluttered my fingers as I lowered them, as if
performing the gestures for The Teensy Weensy Spider. “Americans don’t eat
horses.”
She laughed, amused by my embarrassment. She wore a black raincoat
over a grey ribbed turtleneck and black slacks, simple and chic. She made me
think of Emma Peel in her black cat suit—unflappable, gorgeous, ready for
anything. “My name is Marjon,” she said. “This is my husband Nicholas. You
are students?”
Peter and I introduced ourselves. The four of us chatted while we ate our
herring sandwiches, which, with the onions and mustard, were not as awful as
they sounded, although kind of squeaky on the teeth. We told them of our
horrible flight, and when I complained that we thought the airport security
measures were excessive and probably did little to stop terrorism, they nodded
their heads silently. Marjon changed the subject and said she and her husband
were on their way to a friend’s opening at a nearby art gallery. She invited us to
join them.
It was the kind of spontaneous encounter young people expect when
traveling abroad. I was eager for adventure and—after a quick glance to Peter,
who appeared noncommittal—didn’t think twice about accepting the invitation.
We hoisted our backpacks and tagged along.
The four of us talked and joked as we ambled back across Singelgracht
Canal and down Lijnbaangracht into the Southern Canal Belt. I was a little awed
by Marjon. Like us, she was in her early twenties, yet she seemed so much more
mature and sophisticated. She moved like a giraffe, her forward momentum
initiated by a barely perceptible jutting of her chin, which slowly rippled down
her spine to her hips until her long legs swung into motion. She was friendly
and gracious, as if assigned by her embassy to entertain us, and exuded an
almost imperial elegance. Even the fact she was married—unthinkable to me at
our age—seemed somehow glamorous.
Marjon’s husband, Nicholas, was tall with very short hair and an already
receding hairline. He deferred to her, standing attentively by her side,
occasionally adding to her descriptions or offering a word in English she
searched for. She was like a magician and he her assistant holding a top hat
while she pulled out a rabbit.
We came to a warehouse type building that teetered on the edge of a
canal. Twenty or so people were milling around on the sidewalk holding drinks.
Marjon led us inside.
The room was crammed with art revelers: street-waif artists, flirty vixens,
stately white-haired men in elegant suits, vivacious matrons with fingers full of
rings, diffident intellectuals with bad posture and bad skin. While the socialites
and art dealers worked the room, shaking hands and reciprocating hugs, the
artists sipped their free drinks, peeking shyly from beneath unruly hair.
Marjon took us around—she seemed to know everyone. We felt
awkward and shabby in our backpacks and jeans, but everyone was gracious to
us. Amid the jangle of Dutch, Italian, and German, I picked out words in
English bandied about like volley balls above the crowd—“fantastic,”
“stupendous,” “genius,” “crap,” “fucked,”—used, I assumed, as Americans use
French, to impress.
The artwork was difficult to see through the crowd, so we went upstairs
and looked down from the balcony. The enormous fifteen-foot square
canvasses, painted in black and red with a shiny almost vinyl-looking finish,
depicted smokestacks and angular industrial complexes graffitied with slogans
about global warming and terrorism. They were gaudy, monstrous, and surreal,
quite disturbing really—like having the worst of Western civilization shoved in
your face.
Marjon pointed out the gallery owner, a gangly, rosy-cheeked man with a
scruffy beard and buzz cut. He waved back. “His name is Leo Klausner,” she
said. “Leo came to Holland from Israel to avoid military service. He shared a
flat with two artists and began selling their work in order to pay his part of the
rent. He now represents a dozen young artists from all over Europe—mostly
German neo-expressionists. The man over there—” she pointed to a panicky
looking man in a black suit, black shirt, and white tie “—is Aidas Aligimanus,
the artist. He’s Lithuanian. He was sent to a mental hospital while serving in
the Soviet Army, then to Afghanistan to fight the mujahideen. After the war he
went to Berlin to study art.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“Yes. He does the sets for our little theater group. Will you excuse me
for a moment?” She waved to someone and beelined through the crowd.
Peter was staring off across the room. I tugged his sleeve, but he didn’t
turn to me, his eyes glued to a cluster of artist types. “Do you know those
guys?” I asked. Slowly he dropped his gaze and kissed me on the head. As long
as I was being adored, I didn’t fret about his social skills.
“What do you think of the art?” he asked.
The elephant in the room—one had to say something at some point. One
hoped to sound intelligent or thoughtful or sophisticated, and not offend.
Honesty was not the point. As someone with a long list of character flaws—
lying among them—I have no idea why I chose that moment to be candid.
“Why is it,” I asked, “no one paints art that is pretty anymore?”
Marjon, suddenly appearing at my side, caught my comment, and burst