Authors: Ruth Francisco
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 bee-lined 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 out laughing.
Nicholas joined her.
I blushed, knowing how doltish I sounded.
“I mean,” I blundered on, “isn’t that the purpose of art?
To create beauty?”
“Americans can be so right sometimes,” said
Marjon
kindly.
“I’m sorry we laughed.
You are delightful.
Please don’t be offended.”
She kissed me on the cheek,
then
whispered into my ear, “They are going to start making speeches soon.
We should get out of here.”
The four of us fought our way out of the gallery.
We wobbled a half block, recovering gradually from the intensity of so many excited people crowded together.
The sun hung low on the horizon, casting a pinkish purple light against the stone walls of the canal.
The black water lapped quietly.
A bicycle bell rang out.
We dashed across the street into the rising mist,
then
paused to absorb the stillness.
“Would you like to come to our house for dinner?”
Marjon
asked.
“We are having a few friends over.
We live just outside of Amsterdam, not far from
Durgerdam
.
Some of the tulip fields are still blossoming.
Please come.
You will make it a party.”
I glanced at Peter, whose expression gave me no clue.
I suddenly felt haggard, and the prospect of hunting down a hotel and a place to eat seemed overwhelming.
Besides, they had been kind and fun, and we were here in Europe for adventure.
“What time?” I asked.
“Why don’t you come with us now?
If you don’t mind squeezing into a Smarty.
Otherwise you’ll have to take a bus.”
We walked to her car, a Smart
Forfour
, built in Holland, about the size of a Mini-Cooper, and stuffed ourselves in.
It felt like being inside a giant sneaker.
I was the only one comfortable, I’m sure.
The men were both over six feet, and
Marjon
was probably five ten.
As
Marjon
and Nicholas whispered fast exchanges in Dutch up front, I nudged Peter, stretching my eyes wide.
He shook his head and shrugged.
“What?” I demanded.
He turned sullenly to look out the window, then, as if to apologize, reached over and squeezed my hand.
I spun my head and glared out my side of the car, my face prickling with anger—if he didn’t want to go, he should’ve spoken up.
Why did he always make me guess what he wanted?
The city quickly turned into open flat land.
The fields stretched to the horizon, with only a church steeple or windmill marking the next town.
Something about the flatness of the land, and the sky rumbling with clouds, backlit and turbulent, felt gothic—like the black and white footage of Kansas in
The Wizard of Oz.
There was something spooky about it.
We arrived at an isolated country cottage nearly a quarter mile from the nearest neighbor in a wide field of wheat.
Built in the eighteenth century, it had low ceilings, white walls, brown woodwork, and exposed beams.
The floor sloped slightly, which gave me the boozy feeling of being on a boat.
It was furnished with a hodgepodge of antiques and brocade sofas, striped durian rugs, gold and red paisley curtains, rose-print table cloths, and lampshades made out of varnished maps.
Eclectic, bohemian, and utterly charming.
It was the type of place I imagined for myself one day.
I was grateful when
Marjon
said she needed help in the kitchen.
Again I got an
embarrassed
pang, sensing that I was merely a child, immature and ignorant, a long way from being a grownup, and here was this woman my age, in control, put together in a way American women seldom achieve until their forties.
It seemed to me she knew how to get what she wanted out of life, whereas I was a girl looking into a store window, a girl who felt too young for anything in the display, doubtful she would ever have money to possess anything there, unsure if she even had a right to desire such things.
Everything
Marjon
did—chopping tomatoes, garnishing the plates with parsley, flipping the pork chops—contained authority, as if she had been preparing dinners for her husband and guests for a dozen years.
Was it simply being married that gave her such poise?
Yet she wasn’t wearing a wedding band.
Was a ring too bourgeois?
Maybe she wasn’t married.
And if she had lied about that, what else was she lying about?
For a moment I distrusted her.
Obviously I envied her.
I felt a sharp stab of suspicion that felt almost like hatred.
Then she smiled and I was back to worshipping her.
While we set the table and waited for the béchamel sauce to thicken, another couple arrived.
They looked very Dutch, wide round faces with blond hair, tall and well-fed.
They were chatty and noisy.
Nicholas looked grateful for the interruption, as if entertaining Peter was a chore.
Peter could be charming in small social situations, but I had also seen him turn into the silent martyr—usually when I flirted or acted badly.
But I was being good.
What was his problem?
I decided not to worry about it.
The rest of us had a fun dinner, joking and laughing, finishing off several bottles of wine.
After we cleared the table and retired to the living room for dessert, the doorbell rang and two young men entered.
I was too tipsy by then to catch their names.
They both had straight dark hair, grayish tan skin with stubble on their faces.
The shorter one had badly scarred cheeks, from acne perhaps, though more severe, as if scars from some third-world disease.
I guessed they were Turkish or Moroccan.
It didn’t seem polite to ask.
They appeared to know both couples well and were very relaxed, greeting Peter and me warmly, though their English was limited.
After the newcomers sat down, Peter grinned at me as if he had just been let in on a joke—a mixture of “I told you so,” and “what the hell,” as if we had walked into a bar where a fight was about to begin.
His smile was such a departure from his grouchy mood that I caught my breath.
I was dying to know what he was thinking.
Nicholas offered everyone glasses of port and cigars.
To my astonishment Peter took a cigar.
I enjoyed the unfamiliar plumes of smoke, which seemed sophisticated and daring, not the toxic clouds I knew them to be.
This was the Europe I had come to see—decadent, sensual, bohemian.
Live it!
Experience it!
We talked late into the evening.
I felt
glowy
, tingling with excitement, as if during the evening I had transmogrified into the person I had dreamed of becoming—a person accustomed to four-hour dinners with friends from many cultures, a person who discussed with ease politics, art, and literature.
I don’t remember exactly what we talked about—I suppose the usual, our academic studies, movies, music, books—but I do remember the lilt and tinkle of dialog, the rise of the women’s voices, the bursts of laughter from the men, the lovely music of Europeans speaking English.
I also remember our hosts seemed unduly careful not to bring up the topic of American politics.
The tension it created—or perhaps I was imagining it—made everyone all the more effervescent.