Bubba, my countryman, spends most of his day voluntarily hooked up to every available source of information. Bubba’s daily phone calls raise my drowsy consciousness to a state of emergency.
“Hello, you there? Get yourself to the bank, quick.”
“Why?”
“Withdraw the lot.”
“There’s nothing to withdraw.”
“Christ, you must have something!?”
“Loose change.”
“Take it out!”
“But why?”
“Buy provisions.”
“What kind of provisions?”
“You know, food.”
“What kind of food?”
“Flour, oil, tinned stuff, dough, zwieback, definitely zwieback. . Didn’t you ever do the weekly shopping with your mom?!”
Actually, I do remember. On the first of the month Dad would fetch a canvas satchel and we’d all go grocery shopping together. Mom would buy just enough to see us through to the next payday: oil, flour, rice, pasta. Mom’s pantry was a place of wonder: lined up in neat orderly rows were jars of preserves, jams, pickles, paprika, beetroot, sacks of potatoes, small casks of sauerkraut, smoked bacon, crackling, and ham, jars of lard and honey, little boxes of cookies. .
“Don’t forget the garlic.”
“Why garlic?!”
“In case of riots and a police crackdown.”
“What’s garlic got to do with the police?!”
“If you’re out and about and there’s a riot you can rub the garlic into a scarf and cover your mouth and nose. Garlic’s great against tear gas.”
“What are you on about?”
“Buy batteries, a transistor radio, a torch, a pocketknife, and a few essentials from the local camping store.”
“But why?!”
“Haven’t you heard of nine meals from anarchy?”
The phrase “nine meals from anarchy” was apparently coined by Lord Cameron of Dillington in the hope of rousing shopping drunk British consumers from their slumber. Let’s imagine, for instance, that one day there’s no petrol at the pump. Trucks wouldn’t be able to make their daily food deliveries to the supermarket. And given that almost no one keeps provisions at home, it’s estimated that the food on supermarket shelves would go in three days. At three meals a day, we’d only have nine meals before total anarchy. Things are, of course, much more complex. It’s a matter of chain reactions. Every increase in the price of petrol increases food production costs, and increased production costs increase the price of the product. Chaos would ensue if cash machines crashed for a day. Nobody keeps cash at home anymore. But things are, of course, much more complicated still. Today the crisis is all pervasive, and unemployment is all pervasive, and this means that hunger is crouching at the door of millions of people — those who don’t have the faintest idea what hunger is. Because until now hunger has always been somewhere else. On television reports of starving African children covered in burly flies.
A few years ago I was in Sofia, Bulgaria. The acquaintance I was staying with lived downtown in a typical East European apartment block. Thirty years ago they were pretty apartments, that much is apparent from the spaciousness and the detailing. The apartment was now in a desperate state of disrepair. We went out onto the balcony for a cigarette. On the neighboring balcony I noticed an unusual wire contraption.
“What’s that?”
“Ah, that’s our ingenious neighbor,” said my acquaintance. “He hunts pigeons with it. He made it himself.”
“What does he want with pigeons?”
My acquaintance laughed tartly and shrugged her shoulders.
“A lot of people are struggling here. .” she said.
It’s been a few years since that conversation on the Sofia balcony, but at this very moment I remember that resourceful Bulgarian with respect. Things have changed in the space of several years. Even I’ve wised up recently, in every respect. I’ve honed my consumer instincts, and for the first time in my life I’ve started comparing prices and am more than willing to travel a little farther if it means saving a few pennies. I recently bought a load of Dutch cans of condensed milk at about a dollar and a quarter a can. The cans are identical to the old Soviet ones, Russians called the contents zguschenka. From a single can of zguschenka you could make a liter of milk. As opposed to the Dutch cans, the Russian cans didn’t have an expiry date, edible for eternity.
And as far as pigeons go, I’m resolute there: no way, ever. Pigeons are plain revolting.
“You’re right,” says Bubba. “Set limits. It doesn’t matter how hungry you are, don’t ever ingest what revolts you.”
Thank God I’ve got a copy of the Croatian translation of the famous Apicius cookbook. Flamingo was one of the greatest delicacies on the ancient Roman table and luckily Amsterdam Zoo is full of the elegant pink birds. Flamingo needs to be boiled a little first, then you flavor it with spices, douse it with white wine, and put it in the oven. Pheasant doesn’t hold a candle to flamingo.
Amsterdam’s parks are hopping with hundreds of thousands of rabbits, and numerous flocks of plumpish ducks paddle the canals. For now, it seems, there’s no reason for concern. The Dutch were long kind to immigrants. They’re not anymore. But there are some exceedingly cunning fauna that manage to flout the strict legal controls, sneaking their way in undocumented. That’s what happened a year or so ago when, tired of the long south-north flight, a gaggle of Egyptian geese landed on Dutch soil and decided to set up camp. The feathery Egyptian felons would have gone unnoticed had a few articles not appeared in the tabloids about how these brawny Egyptian geese were threatening their autochthonous counterparts with extinction. I’ve got no idea what an autochthonous Dutch goose looks like, but I’ve clocked the Egyptian geese sauntering around the neighborhood tram stop. Egyptian geese are unusually chunky, so as you approach the tramlines it’s as if there are big clumps of snow lying there. Yes, things have changed: Today immigrants are good to the Dutch.
Like I said, I’ve honed my instincts. I run the scenarios in my head. I’ve got a Plan B up my sleeve and a Plan C under development. Apart from the kidnapped flamingos, rabbits, and ducks of unidentified origin, and renegade Egyptian geese, lately I’ve been eyeing up my Chinese next-door neighbor. He’s youthful, compact, shortish, has supple joints, toned, tanned calves (he wears shorts in the summer!), a cute face and smooth skin. My Dutch neighbor on the other side I don’t even give a second look: He’s my age, gone to seed, has big ashy eyelids and an unhealthy complexion. All in all, more sausage than steak.
SOUL FOR RENT!
I think it’s just elegant to have an imagination, I just have no imagination at all. I have lots of other things, but I have no imagination.
(Marilyn Monroe, The Seven Year Itch)
SHORTLY BEFORE THE whole world slid into financial crisis a Dutchman, the head of some kind of association, contacted me explaining that he was a fan of my books, and that he’d like to organize a literary evening.