Death of a Hawker

"He is dead," the soft veiled voice said, "dead. He is on the floor. His head is all bloody. When I came into the room he was still breathing but now he is dead."

She had said it three times already.

"Yes, madam," the constable said again. There was patience in the way he said it, understanding. Love, perhaps. But the constable was acting. He had been well trained. He was only concerned about rinding out who was speaking to him, and where she might be. The constable had been working in the central radio room of Amsterdam Police Headquarters for some years now. He took a lot of calls. Anybody who dials two six times gets through to the central radio room. Anybody means a lot of people. Some of them are serious citizens, some of them are mad. And some of them are temporarily mad. They have seen something, experienced a sensation. The experience may have knocked them tree of their usual routine, perhaps to the point where they are suffering from shock. Or they are drunk. Or they just want to talk to someone, to know that they are not alone, and there is someone amongst the million inhabitants of Holland's capital who cares enough to listen. Someone who is alive, not just a taped voice which tells them that God is Good and All is Well.

"You say he is dead," the constable said quietly. "I am very sorry about that, but I can only come to see you if I know where you are. I can help you, madam, but where do you want me to go and look for you? Where are you, madam?"

The constable wasn't planning to go to see the lady. It was five o'clock in the afternoon and he would be off duty in fifteen minutes. He was planning to go home, have a meal and go to bed. He had put in a lot of hours that day, many more than he was used to. The central radio room was managed by a skeleton staff, short of three senior constables and a sergeant. The constable thought of his colleagues and smiled grimly. He could picture them clearly enough, for he had watched them leaving the large courtyard of Headquarters that morning. White-helmeted, carrying cane shields and long leather sticks, part of one of the many platoons which had roared off in blue armor-plated vans. It was riot time in Amsterdam again. They hadn't had riots for years now and the screaming mobs, flying bricks, howling fanatics leading swaying crowds, exploding gas grenades, bleeding faces, the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles were almost forgotten. Now it had started all over again. The constable had volunteered for riot duty but someone had to man the telephones, so he was still here, listening to the lady. The lady expected him to come and see her. He wouldn't. But once he knew where she was, a car would race out and there would be policemen in the car and the lady was now speaking to the police. Police are police.

The constable was looking at his form. Name and a dotted line. Address, and a dotted line. Subject, dead man. Time, 1700 hours. She had probably gone up to call the dead man for tea, or an early dinner. She had called him from the corridor, or the dining room. He hadn't answered. So she had gone up to his room.

"Your name, please, madam," the constable said again. His voice hadn't changed. He wasn't hurrying her.

"Esther Rogge," the woman said.

"Your address, madam?"

"Straight Tree Ditch Four."

"Who is the dead man, madam?"

"My brother Abe."

"You are sure he is dead, madam?"

"Yes. He is dead. He is on the floor. His head is all bloody." She had said it before.

"Right," the constable said briskly. "We'll be right there, madam. Don't worry about a thing now, madam. We'll be right there."

The constable slipped the little form through a hole in the glass window which separated him from the radio operator. He waved at the operator. The operator nodded, shoving two other forms aside.

"Three one," the operator said.

"Three one," Detective-Sergeant de Gier said.

"Straight Tree Ditch Four. Dead man. Bloody head. Name is Abe Rogge. Ask for his sister, Esther Rogge. Over."

Sergeant de Gier looked at the little loudspeaker underneath the dashboard of the gray VW he was driving.

"Straight Tree Ditch?" he asked in a high voice. "How do you expect me to get there? There are thousands of people milling about in the area. Haven't you heard about the riots?"

The operator shrugged.

"Are you there?" de Gier asked.

"I am here," the operator said. "Just go there. The death has nothing to do with the riots, I think."

"Right," de Gier said, still in the same high voice.

"Good luck," the operator said. "Out."

De Gier accelerated and Adjutant-Detective Grijpstra sat up.

"Easy," Grijpstra said. "We are in an unmarked car and that traffic light is on red. They should have sent a marked car, a car with a siren."

"I don't think there are any left," de Gier said, and stopped at the traffic light. "Everybody is out there, everybody we know and a lot of military police as well. I haven't seen a police car all day." He sighed. "The crowd will clobber us the minute they see us go through the roadblocks."

The light changed and the car shot off.

"Easy," Grijpstra said.

"No," de Gier said. "Let's go home. This isn't the right day to play detectives."

Grijpstra grinned and shifted his heavy body into a more comfortable position, holding on to the car's roof and the dashboard at the same time. "You are all right," he said. "You don't look like a policeman. They'll go for me. Crowds always go for me."

De Gier took a corner and avoided a parked truck by forcing the VW's right wheels onto the sidewalk. They were in a narrow alley leading to the Newmarket, the center of the riots. Nobody was about. The riots had sucked people into their vortex while others stayed inside, preferring the small rooms of their seventeenth-century homes to the raw danger of violent hysteria which stalked the streets, changing apparently normal people into robots swinging fists and primitive weapons, intent on attacking and destroying the State which, through their bloodshot and bulging eyes, showed itself as the Police, rows and rows of blue-uniformed and white-helmeted warriors, nonhuman, machines of oppression. They saw the riot police guarding the exit of the alley and a commanding gloved hand was raised to stop the car. De Gier turned his window down and showed his card.

The face under the helmet was unfamiliar and de Gier could read the words on the badge pinned on the man's jacket. "THE HAGUE," the badge said.

"You from The Hague?" de Gier asked, surprised.

"Yes, sergeant, there are about fifty of us here. We were rushed in this morning."

"Police from The Hague," de Gier said surprised. "What next?"

"Rotterdam, I suppose," the constable said. "There are plenty of cities in Holland. We'll all come and help you on a nice day like this. Just give the word. You want to go through?"

"Yes," de Gier said. "We are supposed to investigate a manslaughter on the other side of the square."

The constable shook his head. "I'll let you through but you'll get stuck anyway. The water cannon has just charged the crowd and they are in a foul mood now. One of my colleagues has caught a brick full in the face and they rushed him when he fell. We got him to the ambulance just in time. Maybe you should try to get there on foot."

De Gier turned and looked at Grijpstra, who smiled reassuringly. Inspired by his superior's calm, de Gier nodded at the constable. "We'll park her here."

"Right," the constable said, and turned. The crowd was coming their way, pushed by a charge of unseen policemen on the other side of the square. The constable braced himself, raising his shield to ward off a brick, a heavy man suddenly lurched forward and the constable hit him on the shoulder with his stick. The blow made a dull sound and the heavy man faltered. There were a dozen policemen between the detectives and the crowd now and Grijpstra pulled de Gier onto a porch.

"We may as well wait for the fight to shift."

Together they watched a brick dent the roof of their car.

"Cigar?" Grijpstra asked.

De Gier shook his head and began to roil a cigarette. His hands trembled. What on earth inspired these people? He knew about the official causes of the riots, everybody knew. The underground, Amsterdam's new means of transport, had tunneled as far as this old and protected part of the inner city and some houses had to come down to make way for the monster eating its way through down below. There would be a station here sometime in the future. Most of Amsterdam accepted the underground; it had to come, to relieve the impossible traffic trying to get through the narrow streets and fouling the air. But the inhabitants of the Newmarket area had put up a protest. They wanted the station to be built somewhere else. They had written to the mayor, they had marched through the city, they had printed tens of thousands of posters and pasted them up everywhere, they had harassed the offices of the Public Works Department. And the mayor and his aldermen had tried to appease the protests. They had said "yes" sometimes and "no" at other times. And then, one day, the demolishing firm that had won the city's contract suddenly arrived and began to tear at the houses, and the citizens had fought with the wreckers and chased them off and had grappled, successfully at first, with the police.

Now the wreckers were back and the police had come out in force. The citizens would lose, of course. But meanwhile they were organized. They had bought two-way radios and put up guard posts. They had coordinated their defense and thrown up barricades. They were wearing motorcycle helmets and had armed themselves with sticks. They were even supposed to have armored trucks. But why? They would lose anyway.

Grijpstra, sucking at his small cigar, listened to the growling of the mob. The mob was very close now, its snout no farther away than ten feet. The policemen were holding their ground, being reinforced by a squad which had rushed up through the alley. Three constables had stopped when they saw the two civilians hiding on the porch but Grijpstra's police card had sent them on their way again.

Why? Grijpstra thought, but he knew the answer. This wasn't just a protest against the building of an underground station. There had always been violence in the city. Amsterdam, by its tolerance for unconventional behavior, attracts crazy people. Holland is a conventional country; crazy people have to go somewhere. They go to the capital, where the lovely canals, thousands and thousands of gable houses, hundreds of bridges of every shape and form, lines of old trees, clusters of offbeat bars and caf6s, dozens of small cinemas and theaters encourage and protect the odd. Crazy people are special people. They carry the country's genius, its urge to create, to find new ways. The State smiles and is proud of its crazy people. But the State does not approve of anarchism. It limits the odd.

The Newmarket area is very odd. And now, when the odd tried to argue with the State's choice of an underground station, and lost the argument, and reverted to violence, the State lost its smile and produced its strength, the strength of the blue-uniformed city police, and the black-uniformed military police, resplendent with white and silver braid, and reinforced with steel helmets and truncheons, and backed with armored cars and mechanical carriers equipped with water guns, spouting thousands of gallons of pressurized water on and against the bearded yelling hooligans who, only this morning, were artists and artisans, poets or unemployed intellectuals, gentle misfits and innocent dreamers.

De Gier sighed. A paper bag filled with powdered soapstone had flown into the alley and exploded on the pavement. The right side of his stylish suit, made out of blue denim by a cheap Turkish tailor, was stained with the white sticky substance. De Gier was an elegant man who took pride in his appearance. He was also a handsome man and he didn't like the feel of the powder in his mustache. Some of it would be on his thick curly hair. He didn't relish the idea of having a white mustache for the rest of the day. Grijpstra laughed.

"You caught some of it too," de Gier said.

Grijpstra looked at his trousers but he didn't care. All his suits were the same, baggy and made of English striped material, thin white stripes on a blue background. The suit was old, like the gray tie, and he wouldn't mourn its loss. His shirt was new but the police would replace it if he filled in a report. Grijpstra leaned back against the door at the back of the porch and placed his hands on his stomach. He looked very placid.

"We ought to try and get through," de Gier said. "That lady will be waiting for us."

"In a minute," Grijpstra said. "If we try now we'll only be food for the ambulance. If the hooligans don't get us the police will. They won't take the time to study our cards. They'll be nervous as well."

De Gier smoked and listened. The fight had moved, it seemed. The screams and thuds were a little farther away now.

"Now," he said, and stepped into the alley. The constables let them through. They ran across the square and dodged a heavy motorcycle and sidecar which came straight at them. The sergeant in the sidecar was beating the metal side of his vehiele with his rubber stick. His face had been cut by a woman's nails and blood had run all over his tunic. The constable driving the contraption was gray with dust and sweat streaked his face.

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