I sit there aimlessly, God’s aim is aimlessness.
But to keep this awareness always is granted to no man.
When I arrived in Amsterdam, about nine the next morning, and stood on the square in front of Centraal Station, I saw lots of electric streetcars, which I had never seen there before, and taxis, and policemen with caps instead of helmets. But they hadn’t filled in the Damrak yet, I saw the backs of the houses on Warmoesstraat right on the water and the Oude Kerk spire up above. So that was all right.
And the same fine gentlemen were still walking around, their hair was perfect and there was not a crease in their jackets or a speck of mud on their shoes. They still looked like they knew absolutely everything and felt that they’d pretty much succeeded in life. They were friendly and polite to each other, as always. Their clothes were slightly different from a few years before, but basically the same. You could see that they had everything figured out: A suit was a suit, same as ever, and a jacket was still a jacket, and a respectable woman was still a respectable woman and a girl was a girl. It all worked out perfectly. And they also knew perfectly well who and what were beneath them, I had no doubt about that. The Damrak would certainly be filled in too once they got around to it.
I took Tram 2 down Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. So it was a good thing they’d filled it in after all, otherwise the tram probably couldn’t drive down it, and now you could cross from one side to the other wherever you wanted.
Tram 2, the line par excellence for fine and important gentlemen. A couple of terribly important gentlemen were on the tram, I was nothing next to them. The good old sun was shining happily down on Voorburgwal, the buds on the trees were still pale green, and I saw that the shadow of Nieuwe Kerk didn’t reach the other side of the street, not by a long shot. And I remembered that years before, in late May, I had seen the same shadow looking exactly the same. And that on a sunny winter day, when there were no trams on Voorburgwal yet, I had walked through the shadow of the church which covered the whole width of the street. Now it didn’t even reach the rails, the tram drove past the church in the sunlight. In a few months the same tram (it was still brand new) would be driving in the same place through shadow. And when I looked back at the two terribly important gentlemen, I decided that the whole time Rhenen had been the center of the world, this world had hardly changed at all.
I thought about when these two gentlemen would die, and stand naked at the Last Judgment, and be forgotten down here. And about terribly important gentlemen coming and taking their place. Would they still have their silent self-possession when they arrived up there without their nicely polished shoes? And what would become of the perfect part in their hair? What about their idiotic air of superiority, might their faces not show a hint of modesty when they got there and saw the other, even more important men they had looked up to for so many years, and they were naked too?
And how many idealistic young people down here would have written essays by then, and written little poems and painted little pictures, and gotten angry and gotten excited about things. And kissed. And then grown important too, perhaps, and been forgotten as well.
Then a girl with a violin got on the tram and looked at the tips of her shoes with her dark eyes, and I looked at the rounded curves of her summer coat and forgot all about the elegant gentlemen.
Hoyer was home. He had a very proper apartment in a side street behind the Concertgebouw and he received me in a sitting room I hardly dared walk in because the carpet was so expensive. His curtains were velvet, his chairs were upholstered in yellow moquette, a black pendulum clock and candelabras were on the mantelpiece and I think I saw a bronze horse somewhere, all things from expensive shops. I didn’t dare to really sit down either, I sat on the edge of the chair the whole time, but I don’t think Hoyer noticed a thing.
Hoyer had had an amazing stroke of luck. They had made the same old stupid mistake and refused one of his nudes. He’d named the lady Lust and I must say, since I am writing for a respectable publication, that she did look “very nice.” And now Hoyer was living large in furnished rooms managed by an elegant widow with an aristocratic name, along with a female lawyer and a colonial official on leave with his wife and child. Hoyer ate out since the widow was far too elegant to cook for her boarders. Shoeshines cost extra.
And I sat on the edge of my chair the whole time and looked at the ornamental table legs and the gilded frame of the mirror. It was deadly. I had to tell Hoyer about my trip, of course, but I didn’t know what to say, I heard myself talking and listened, scatterbrained, to the sound of my own voice. The light in the room was dim and gloomy, I think the widow was afraid of people looking in. I just wanted to leave, and I looked around at the three walls I could see without turning around in my chair but they didn’t dissolve, I couldn’t see through them. I looked at the door — I couldn’t help it — I sat there staring helplessly. My eyes were just drawn to the door. I had vague visions of Cunera, of the Grebbeberg with its river, of the sunny square in front of Centraal Station and the clockface gleaming on the Oude Kerk spire, and through these semitransparent visions I saw the painted grain of the fake oak wood on the door. Someone was talking the whole time, oh, right, Hoyer. Then I myself answered, or not actually my self, but my tongue did move and sounds did come out of my mouth, I could hear them loud and clear.
Hoyer didn’t notice anything. His studio was upstairs. Shall he lead the way? I numbly followed. “This must be the lavatory?” I thought something along those lines was the proper thing to say when a gentleman was showing you his house. Hoyer didn’t notice anything. “No, that’s a closet,” he said. And I thought, why didn’t he say, “I beg your pardon, that’s a closet”? Surely that’s what he would be saying within a year or two.
The hall was a tight squeeze, the runner was narrow, the stairs proportioned accordingly, there was a thin banister with slightly turned posts, but everything was very fine and in good taste, I have to admit. Hoyer still didn’t notice anything.
Upstairs I recovered a bit, at least there was light, the famous “studio light.” The easel stood empty. There was an expensive chair in the studio and I sank into it. Never in my life had I sat in such a chair. Hoyer was painting portraits these days, of ladies and gentlemen, all in elegant clothing. He showed me the portrait he had just started of the lawyer in the building. She was traveling at the moment. Hoyer used to have his studio in another building at first, but the lawyer had convinced “Madame” to allow part of the attic to be converted into a studio. They had had a hard time persuading her and managed to only when she heard that Hoyer was going to paint a portrait of a young lady from Willemsparkweg, in winter hat, boa, and muff. And the rest of her clothes too, of course. And that he had been put forward as a member of Arti et Amicitiae.
Did Bavink ever come by? No, never, he’d never been here. Had he heard anything about Kees? Yes, Bavink had run into Kees on the street a while back and they had talked. He had gone through three or four jobs in the past couple years, with long stretches unemployed in between. His father had finally found him something with the gas company.