Nick’s already written up two shows. There was the Kiefer installation at the Stedelijk, this giant aeroplane with old encyclopedias nestling in dried bracken behind glass panels mounted in its wings and a stuffed snake lying in its cockpit. Nick mentioned in his piece the Soviet cosmonaut stuck up in space, which Julia liked, and called the work “an allegory of the Western epistème”, which she told him was pretentious bollocks and excised. The other show was at the Praktijk: a US artist called Daniel Todd, whose paintings had vaguely human figures looming out of muddy, neutral backgrounds. Nick worked a quote from T.S. Eliot into his review, a line from The Waste Land about dry banks and arid plains, which Julia sneered at but let stand. Today, though, he’s doing listings, which is boring as fuck. Julia found out he spoke French, German and Czech and gave him a list of galleries in those three countries, plus Austria and Switzerland, to phone up for their programmes over the next three months. The MXM is on there: that gallery in Kampa Park, by Maňásek’s mother’s place. He hasn’t phoned them yet — but he’s phoned Gábina, who wasn’t in. He’s waiting for a callback from a gallery in Cologne called Schröder.
Julia has the radio playing all day long, always the same Dutch pop station. The DJ’s voice between each track reminds Nick of Joost van Straten’s: it has the same upturn in it, as though each utterance were a question. In the white bar by Gábina’s after they’d left Maňásek’s mother’s place, Joost gave Nick his number and told him to call when he came to Amsterdam. He’s been here almost a month now; he wanted to look him up when he was at the Stedelijk but didn’t have the number on him. He’s got it here, in the black-and-red notebook he bought in London just before he left for Prague, scrawled somewhere towards the end or the middle, in some margin … He should be organized like Lucy or Johanna. Loose papers fall to the floor as he flips through the pages. He finds the number, bends to pick the papers up and is just about to call when Lucy, receiver hooked across her shoulder, tells him that she’s got a call for him and is sending it across. His own phone rings and he picks up:
“Nicholas Boardaman.”
“Hello?” It’s a man’s voice: foreign, not Dutch.
“Yes, hello.”
“That’s Nikola Boardaman?”
“Yes. Who’s that?”
“Nikola Boardaman?”
“Is that the Galerie Schröder? … Hello?” But the guy’s gone. “Who the fuck was that?” he asks Lucy. She smiles at him and shrugs.
“Swearing!” warns Julia, with her trademark air of detached irony.
“Didn’t he say?” he asks Lucy again, ignoring her.
“No. He sounded Russian.”
“To me he sounded like this Bulgarian guy I know.” He never went round and said goodbye to Anton, or found out if Helena got a reply from the UNHCR to that letter he cleaned up for her. The phones ring again. Julia picks up first:
“Art in Europe. What? Yes, hang on.” She cradles her receiver like Lucy did a moment ago — a kind of office knack they like to show off here — turns to Nick and says: “Another Russian-sounding bloke for you. You’re popular with the KGB this afternoon.” She presses a button and the phone on his desk rings.
“Maybe it’s him again,” Nick murmurs, picking up. “Hello?”
“Nick?” It’s a different person, someone he knows.
“Yes?”
“Sasha here.”
“Sasha! Hello.” What’s he calling here for? Nick’ll be back in a couple of hours. “What’s new?”
“Listen: we have receive a letter from the lawyer of the man who owns this building.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yes, oh shit. He’s got the necessary documents to make us leave.”
“Can’t we contest it?”
“A judge already has made his decision. A copy of the judgement’s arrived with the letter.”
“Can’t we appeal?”
“Frankie says this kind of paper means the decision is final.”
“When must we move out?”
“Five weeks from today maximum. If we stay longer he can send police round to break the door down … You hear me?”
“Yes. So what do we … Where will you go?”
“I’ve been with Jessica this afternoon to the Herhuisvesting place. They’ve given me a form. Because I’m an official refugee, I should have priority for a new place. They said they will certainly give me one. If you don’t find somewhere before we leave, you can stay with me until you do.”
“Well, thank you. I’ll try to find somewhere by then, though.”
“Bring some toilet paper when you come here.”
“Right. Yeah. Bye.” He hangs up, then, for Lucy’s benefit who’s already been half-listening, adds: “Shit.”
“You’re fired,” sneers Julia across her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” asks Lucy.
Nick tells her. She listens, then says:
“Well, you can use my sofa for a week if you have nowhere.”
Does she like him after all? Maybe her sofa’s in the same room as her bed: it will be if her flat’s a studio. Nick pictures black tights hanging over radiators … He tries not to sound overenthusiastic as he answers:
“Well, thanks, that’s really kind. I don’t think it’ll come to that. I mean, I can stay with my friend Sasha.”
“Well, the offer’s there.” She turns back to her work. Is she blushing? Johanna’s noticed him looking at Lucy; he buries his eyes in his list, picks a random gallery in Hamburg and phones them up. Warhol, Bourgeois. Cindy Sherman in April. He writes the dates down, then decides to call Joost like he meant to twenty minutes ago. Some guy, not Joost, answers:
“Met Han.” Like mit, as in You’re speaking with.
“Hello. May I speak to Joost van Straten?”
There’s a silence on the far end of the line.
“Hello?”
“Who calls?” The voice sounds cautious, suspicious.
“My name’s Nicholas Boardaman. I know Joost from Prague.”
“Yes. He wrote about you in one letter.”
“Oh! Right … Is he not back yet from …” Where did he say that he was going? Lithuania? There’s a Lithuanian painter called Vaitkunas showing at the Stedelijk; maybe Joost’ll know him. This guy Han’s being very slow in answering. “He told me he was going to collect paintings for a show, or …”
“He is dead.”
Nick holds the phone and looks at the empty desk.
“Hello?” the man on the far end says. “Are you there still?”
“Yes,” he answers. “When did he …” Lucy’s looking at him again: she can sense from his tone that something’s wrong. Julia and Johanna too. Han speaks slowly, in a voice that still has that upswing at the end of every sentence even though it’s deep and pained:
“In Tallinn. In Estonia. He died there, walking on ice. In the bay the water was frozen, and he walked out far across it. He didn’t come back.”
“Jesus Christ! I …”
“Nicholas?”
“Yes?”
“Would you like to meet? Joost wanted to see you here. He said you might write a catalogue piece for the exhibition he was planning. We will make this show, as a memorial.”
“Well, yes. Of course. I’d …”
“When is good for you? Next Friday?”
“Sure.”
They arrange to meet at Han’s workplace. Han gives him directions, which he writes down. When he hangs up Lucy tells him he’s gone white.