A Turk listened in. The Turk was a dismal import, once welcomed by the Dutch to perform tedious hard labor. Automation made the Turk superfluous. He was on the dole now, for his residential permit was permanent. The Turk was a thin man in a threadbare coat waiting, like Grijpstra, for a streetcar to splash along. The Turk raised wispy eyebrows. "You speak, friend?"
"Inspired," Grijpstra said, "by that empty space I call home, I am composing a poem."
He repeated his line. "Drafty absence…"
The Turk smiled. "You subtle soul."
Grijpstra acknowledged the compliment by sneezing.
The Turk wished him gesundheit.
It rained harder. Grijpstra shuffled backward into the protection of the tramway shelter. The Turk imitated the big man's movements. Raindrops jumped back from the tarmac and lashed the two men against their ankles.
"Home," Grijpstra said, "empty, quiet."
The Turk knew the words but had forgotten their meaning. "Two wives," the Turk said, "two TVs. Five kids moving between loud screens forever. Upstairs neighbors fight on bare boards."
"You speak good Dutch," Grijpstra said.
"Not all that difficult," the Turk said peevishly. "Not too many 'words, no grammar to speak of."
Grijpstra liked that. He passed the Turk a croquette from his paper bag.
"Pig?" the Turk asked suspiciously.
"Calf," Grijpstra said generously.
The Turk said that he had been known to eat pig. Not by mistake either. The Turk was against religious rules that bully. The Turk would consume, Allah be praised, whatever he liked, but if he did eat pig it would be nice to be aware of his sinning. His eye caught the flash of a car's brake lights. The Turk swallowed, smiled, straightened his back, recited: "At alien streetcar stop in slashing darkness my soul glows sudden red, lit up by sin."
Grijpstra applauded a fellow artist.
The Turk said that he found it easier to compose poetry in Turkish but had learned to express himself within the local limitations. So far his Dutch poetry had been of a lower level. He raised a finger.
"Convincingly wags tail the alien mutt after been kicked silly in the butt.
"Doggerel." The Turk nudged Grijpstra. "You like?"
Grijpstra nudged the Turk. "I like."
The calf-croquette-chewing Turk stepped into his streetcar. "Blessings, friend."
Grijpstra waved. "Blessings."
The adjutant took a bus to the suburb of Outfield. He could have telephoned first. He had, in fact, held the coin the public phone would require but returned the guilder to his waistcoat pocket. Say de Gier was not at home-then Grijpstra would not have to make the bus ride, but he liked sitting and staring in crowded buses, "sharing meaningless silence with perfect strangers."
De Gier was home but didn't open up because he was listening to recorded jungle music from Papua New Guinea.
Grijpstra banged on the door and kept his finger on the buzzer.
"Tabriz," de Gier told his cat, "they have returned. Mind if I shoot through the door?"
"Gestapo," Grijpstra shouted because de Gier had Jewish ancestry and often discussed revenge. "Just once, Henk," de Gier would say. "I would feel so much better. You wouldn't mind, would you?" De Gier's Jewish grandmother had been run over by a bus in Rio de Janeiro after fleeing Holland just before the German occupation. De Gier's desire to get even was, in principle, based on Good versus Evil. He considered himself to be good. Good guy kills bad guy. After, maybe, slapping him around some.
While waiting for this opportunity de Gier went out of his way to be helpful to German tourists. He was also known to be particularly thoughtful when dealing with German suspects.
Perhaps, he told Grijpstra, only the fantasy mattered.
"Gestapo, my dear." Grijpstra leaned against the creaking front door.
De Gier opened the door suddenly, hoping that his victim would tumble into the room. Grijpstra had stepped back, however.
"I prefer to be alone tonight," de Gier said, making way so that Grijpstra could enter. "I am sure you understand."
Grijpstra was glad to know someone who put the kettle on to boil water for tea and who dropped bread slices into a toaster. De Gier, ten years younger than the adjutant, looked filmish, Grijpstra thought. The sergeant's short curly hair had been washed and conditioned, his large full mustache was brushed up. He ambled gracefully about in a striped cotton kimono. Mister B movie, Grijpstra thought kindly: our Action Hero, momentarily at rest, between fighting and fucking.
"How is Whatshername doing?" Grijpstra asked when de Gier pushed tea, anchovy toast and napkins, tastefully arranged on a dented silver tray, across the table.
"I don't understand Whatshername," de Gier said.
"I do understand Nellie," Grijpstra said, feeding fish to de Gier's cat, Tabriz. "Nellie wants me to move in but her hotel is too noisy." He brushed crumbs off his pinstripe suit. "I still prefer Living Apart Together."
"I prefer Nothing At All," de Gier said.
Grijpstra had heard inactivity proclaimed as solution, mere hours ago, by the junkie-burglar. But the junkie allowed for exceptions. There was the needle of course. "There could also be," the junkie had suggested respectfully, "direct divine connection via pussy."
"You dare to do away with your sexual quest?"
Grijpstra asked.
"Man may dream," de Gier said.
"Of liberty?"
"Yes, by means of doing nothing. Don't you believe in total negation?"
"I believe," Grijpstra said, "and he who believes is not sure and therefore condemned to keep trying."
Both detectives, in the continuing dialogues, brought up the commissaris as their ultimate authority. The commissaris kept trying to approach the mystery via activity, useful work.
Serving the common good.
Why else would the commissaris go to America now?
Grijpstra sang "When the Saints Go Marching In."
De Gier reached for his trumpet and played the phrase on his instrument. He put the trumpet back.
Grijpstra explained what he knew of the case so far.
"Jo Termeer mentioned that tune?" De Gier stretched his foot toward the cat who rolled over on her back expecting a massage. "How did Jo know the Saints were marching while Uncle Bert was dying? Jo wasn't there, he was here, cutting hair in this very suburb, in Outfield."
Tabriz meowed pleasurably, but loudly, while her master's toes kneaded her bare belly. De Gier kneeled next to the cat. He circled Tabriz's mouth with thumb and index finger, and tightened his grip rhythmically. Tabriz meowing became structured into a musical "wah-wah-wah."
"I spent most of the afternoon questioning Jo Termeer," de Gier said. "If I am collaborating on this case I would like to be properly briefed. I wasn't told about the Saints. I could have caught Termeer in a contradiction."
He frowned at Grijpstra.
"Termeer's information is based on double hearsay," Grijpstra said. "Uncle Bert's neighbor, landlord and part-time help, Charlie, told Jo that the song was being played when Uncle Bert was seen last. Charlie was told by passersby who were there at the time. Charlie is no witness either."
"Did neighbor Charlie interview possible witnesses to Uncle's death?" de Gier asked.
"Musical saints supposedly marched," Grijpstra said. "Not only that, an elderly couple was seen-foreign tourists-pointing out an alleged corpse to a mounted policeman." Grijpstra shook his head. "A policewoman, I should say."
"Aha aha," de Gier said, "all news to me, friend. So you kept the information hidden so as to hear from me what Jo would come up with when I questioned him."
"Jo Termeer didn't mention an elderly tourist couple? Middle class? Foreign?"
"No," de Gier said. "Young Termeer reported he called at the Central Park Precinct and saw the desk-sergeant. The cop only knew about a dead derelict, found under a filthy blanket, a homeless person dressed in rags, and told complainant that an investigation was in progress."