“For Chrissake,” Hoyer said, “would you please be so kind as to shut the door?” “Koekebakker,” Bavink said, “this is Japi, a guy who knows how to have a good time. Hoyer’s polite as ever, I see. Have a seat, Japi,” Bavink said, flopping down into the one free chair, “just pull up that trunk.” A gallows-colored sea chest was sitting there, which contained one clean shirt and my sister’s letters. “Wait, I’ll help,” I said. Then we slid the trunk over to the table, Japi and I, and then Japi saw an empty crate of Hoffmann’s starch with a picture of a cat on it. I had put soil in it but nothing would grow. “How about that instead,” Japi said, “otherwise I’m so low.” “I’ll take one of these,” Bavink said, lighting up one of my cigars. “You too, Japi?” That suited Japi just fine. “What’s that you’ve got there?” Bavink said. Le Lys dans la vallée by Balzac was lying on the table. “Ah, good old Balzac. He’s no young whippersnapper. Dead, right? Dead a long time. Of course. Where’d you blow in from, Hoyer? What a beautiful coat you have on. Stand up. Too short, man, much too short.” Bavink was in an expansive mood. “Geez, I know,” Hoyer said. “Why don’t you tell us where you’ve been hiding out, and who’s this gentleman?”
Then came the story, accompanied by nods and grins from Japi. And now and then his hand would reach out toward my table, and Hoyer was smoking like a chimney too, I had stopped smoking. “Wait a minute,” Bavink said. “Here, I have some special cigars. Kamper Middelburgs, from Bessem & Hoogenkamp by Lange Delft.” “I know them,” I said.
“My boy,” Japi said, taking a look around my attic room, “it looks cozy here. By God, it’s cozy here.” He stood up and walked over to the wall. “Ah, Breitner. Very good. And what have we here? It’s a bit dark in here. So, good old Anton Mauve. And there we have the city hall, by God.” It was a sketch of the Veere city hall. “Bavink,” Japi said, “I do believe you’re familiar with this. I’ll go look for a job right now if that isn’t a little something of yours.”
“You’re in luck,” Bavink said. “I thought so,” Japi said, and he sat back down. “No, really, I’ll definitely be coming back here again. I like it here.”
Just then the gramophone belonging to the diamond cutter across the street started up. “Clap,” Japi said. And we clapped. The four of us stood at the open window and applauded our hearts out. You could hear porch doors opening everywhere, people came outside, some applauded with us, a child started crying, a dog howled as though the whole block would be dead within a month. The diamond cutter never flinched — he was magnificent. A young woman across the street shouted, “Buncha idiots!” A little girl shrieked a few times: “It’s Papus! It’s Zeppelin!” A kid started playing his harmon-ica. “It’s about time we left,” Hoyer said.
So we stomped downstairs. On the fourth and third floors there were loud discussions going on inside. “About us,” Japi said. On the second floor there was no one home. “Say, Japi,” Bavink said on the street, “you need to get this round.” “Sure,” Japi said, “let’s go.” So I got to see what Japi was like that same night. Hoyer’s theory was that beer never did any harm, so we drank a very respectable amount of it. Japi didn’t have a penny. Hoyer flat-out refused, Bavink was drunk and staring vacantly into space and insisting that “This guy is a damn good fellow and he’s getting this round”—he meant Japi— ”and the waiter is a damn good fellow too.” I had nineteen cents; Hoyer slipped out. I decided to put “the situation” on my tab, the waiter knew me, and at one o’clock the three of us were crossing Frederiksplein, yodeling happily. I got the money back from Bavink later; he absolutely insisted I take it. Japi found it all splendid and three days later he was sitting on the edge of my bed, swinging his legs back and forth; he said it was stupid of Bavink to get so plastered, but “everything worked out.” When he left, he had Le Lys dans la vallée in his hand.
It was a month later. It had been below freezing for a fortnight but at the beginning of the week there was a sudden change. And now it was night, and raining heavily. All day long it had been raining hard, almost without a break. The water ran in streams down my window-pane. It felt cozy inside. I liked it. I had no stove and my summer coat was still at the pawnshop. I had never owned a winter coat. The frost was a problem; you had to stay in bed out of poverty, it was the only way to keep warm. Usually in these circumstances I would just drop by Bavink’s. But just then the man had taken to sleeping all day and walking around all night. I had sat by his stove all night, alone and abandoned — he would have wanted me to but it wasn’t exactly fun. And now I sat listening to the rain clatter on the roof and was glad it was thawing, thawing hard. My bread, two thick slices, was directly on the tabletop; my last plate had gotten broken the previous night. Next to the bread was my cash: four blue bills, two rijksdollar coins, three guilders, and a few cents. And my kerosene burner stood on the floor in the corner, the water was starting to bubble in the little kettle on it. Next to it was my teapot, lid off, ready for the water to boil; there was already tea inside. And I sat with my legs stretched out under the table, barefoot, in a shirt, my hands in my pants pockets, and I looked at my food, at my wonderful money, at the flame of my oil lamp, at the single light of my little burner, and I listened to the rain and I was happy.
It was eight o’clock. I put my watch down on the table next to my money, the watch that was no longer on its way to the pawnshop, and I said, “For now you’ll stay right here with Old Man Koekebakker, little watch,” and I put my hand back in my pocket. I was used to having conversations with my things since there’s so little that’s worth saying to most people.
I was out of the woods for now — dear Autumn hadn’t let me down. The falling leaves, the southwest wind bending the trees on Veerschenweg even farther to the northeast and blowing snatches of Tall Jan’s bells to my ears and making the towers sway and shake in fear beneath the black clouds — I had finally transmuted it to gold at my writing desk and now I could sit and look at it in the form of my own money, money you can count on and that never lets you down and never leaves you in the lurch. I had gotten home an hour before, soaked to the skin, with a loaf of bread, a half pound of butter, six ounces of sausage, a half pound of sugar, three ounces of tea, and a box of cigars, twenty-five for four cents — riches I hadn’t known since my birthday, and that was months ago. I had already put away the sausage, that was for tomorrow. I had had a little cupboard built next to the window, and that’s where I put everything all in a row on the bottom shelf: butter, tea, sugar, sausage, all the things that can taste so good when you haven’t had them for a long time. And the rest of the loaf of bread, minus the two slices, was up on a higher shelf.
My clothes were hanging up to dry at the top of the stairs, under the rafters: jacket, sweater, pants, underpants, shirt, and socks. The water started to boil, the lid of the kettle rattled up and down. I looked at the steam and started thinking about how I would get my coat from the pawnshop tomorrow and for once not eat dinner in the kosher restaurant — beef and potatoes for thirty cents, pea soup with meat for thirty-five cents. And I was just thinking that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think about getting a little something to drink in the house when my meditations were interrupted by a heavy footstep outside the door. Someone was fumbling with my door. You couldn’t knock because the door was made of wallpaper glued to a couple of screens, if you knocked you would put your hand right through it. People knew that. “It must be Hoyer,” I thought, “he can never find the hook.” The hook was on the inside but the door never closed properly and you could just get your finger through the crack and open the door from the outside. “Come in,” I shouted, too lazy to get up. “Easier said than done,” I heard a voice say, “how does it work?” “I don’t recognize that voice,” I thought, “who can it be?” I stood up and opened the door, and a trickle of water ran over my hand. “It’s Japi,” the man said. “Come in,” I said again. There he stood, water streaming from every fold of his clothes and off his hat too.