BY JL MORIN
***** A VERSION OF THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE HARVARD ADVOCATE, ONE CHRISTMAS FORTY YEARS AGO*****
Letters. Letters from America and everywhere else lay open and half read on the banquet table. Rosa presided over them like a benevolent, if not slightly frantic, queen. The banquet table was no longer for food; it was a paper geography of the family diamond business. There were letters from America, smelling of ambition and filtered cigarettes, Belgium, waxy and efficient, and Australia, full of complaints about fires and deadly spiders.
Technically, these weren’t addressed to Rosa. They were for Menno. But Menno was currently “out of order,” and since he couldn’t tell a postmark from a pancake, Rosa had stepped in. She didn’t just see addresses; she saw stories.
Rosa’s filing system was a masterpiece of “Rosa-logic”: The Northern Hemisphere neatly stacked near the saltshaker. The “Why is Dutch So Difficult?” pile was reserved for the maid, who arrived at four o’clock to translate words that Rosa was convinced were just typos. And then there was the big pile on the floor for the country of the Dead. A sprawling tragedy on the pile for people who had stopped answering their mail.
“Oh, Hans,” she muttered to a weathered airmail envelope. “From Germany to France, then on to Sydney to escape the war? Exhausting. Have a seat near the butter dish.” At 2:00 a.m., she filed a Luxembourgeois in the German pile—a diplomatic incident of first order—and had to extradite him with apologies back across the table before bed.
And then there were the ones in Dutch, which she had never managed to learn, that had to be saved until the maid came at four o’clock. She turned back to her typewriter, huffing a stray lock of white hair out of her eyes. But all things considered, Rosa was enjoying the task; it gave her purpose. And she was finding a lot of them, too. And they would come, she was sure of it; of course, they would come, and from anywhere, because he was Menno, their ‘Wonderbaarlijk Menno’.
On the fourth day, she set down her lists and her letters, folded her glasses, and stared blankly out the window at the street below, vaguely looking for the redhead, who didn’t pass this way anymore. Rosa stood there, watching the people hurrying about, packages under their arms and chins, busy, busy.
Four o’clock. The door clicked open, and Ineke, the maid, walked in. She was a woman of sturdy Dutch stock who viewed Rosa’s paper empire with the weary patience of a zookeeper.
Rosa was currently holding a letter at arm’s length, squinting at it as if she could intimidate the Dutch language into becoming English through sheer willpower.
“Ineke! Thank heavens,” Rosa heralded, waving a blue envelope. “The Dutch are at it again. They’ve sent a letter that consists almost entirely of the letters ‘G’ and ‘Z’. Is it an invitation or a grocery list? I’ve had it sitting in ‘The Netherlands’ pile for three hours, and it’s starting to look smug.”
Ineke set down her mop and took the letter. She glanced at it for half a second. “It is a bill for the gas, Mevrouw.”
Rosa gasped, clutching her chest. “A bill? We shall not have such negativity on the banquet table. Put it in the Country of the Dead. It ruins the vibe of the South African correspondence.”
“I cannot put the gas bill with the dead people, Mevrouw,” Ineke sighed, moving a stack of Australian letters away from a puddle of spilled tea. “The heat will go out. We can’t have a frozen statue at your window.”
“Ineke, look at this one. From America! This man named ‘Tex’ writes like he’s shouting from a horse. I’ve put him next to the Belgian pile so he can learn some manners.”
“What are these?” Inke picked up the pile on the windowsill.
“Those are…I don’t know. I’m waiting for the sun to hit them at a certain angle and reveal the whereabouts of the hidden chocolate.”
Ineke set the letters down again, hidden affection twitching at the corner of her mouth.
And then she was gone, and Rosa stood alone at the window, her nose nearly touching the cold glass. She wasn’t just observing the street; she was conducting it.
Her current target was a man in a very serious grey coat who looked like he was in a hurry to be miserable. He was carrying a briefcase and walking with a stiff, rhythmic thud.
“No, no, Grey-Coat,” she muttered, her breath fogging a small circle on the pane. “You aren’t going to the office. You look like someone from The Australian Pile. You need to walk with more… bounce. Think of a kangaroo.”
She pressed her palms against the glass, closing her eyes to send a concentrated beam of Rosa-energy down into the slushy street.
“Turn left at the canal,” she commanded under her breath. “Go on. There’s a bakery there. You look like a man who has forgotten what a cream puff feels like. If you go to the bakery, I go to the bakery. We are one, Grey-Coat. We are joy.”
The man paused at the corner. He looked at his watch. He looked at the sky.
“That’s it.” Rosa’s fingers twitched as if she were moving a chess piece. “The bakery is calling. It smells like cinnamon.”
The man took a hesitant step toward the canal, then ducked into the bakery.
Through the lead glass windows, the sun made an appearance, etching diamonds on the cherry-wood table. She sat back down at her typewriter, her fingers hovering like a concert pianist about to play, ‘You are cordially…’, in A minor. Now and again, her eyes would wander back to the window pain and meet with Whomever, glancing up for a moment before plodding on through the snow. She was up there at her typewriter every day, and had been there every day for a long time…how many people had caught her eye as she stared out of her beveled windows…how many had known her, if only briefly?
Many. A picture of the white-haired woman hunched over her typewriter implanted itself in a chamber of each passerby’s mind, and each carried it onward through the winter world. In this way, Rosa traveled without ever leaving her house. She glided with them down, down the street that skirted the harbor of neglected boats, frozen in their icy graves, and on to Damstraat’s tiny shops in the heart of the city. There, Rosa scattered, as each carrier chose a different path through the city’s arteries, some following brick avenues lining sunken canals, others heading for arched bridges connecting northbound pedestrians with southbound over water. Hitchhiking in the minds of strangers, flowing through the city’s arteries like a very caffeinated blood cell, she was everywhere at once. In this way, she joined their dissonant ensemble, even felt the pulse of the ancient city as they did, flowing onward like blood cells into a flow of minute attractions and repulsions.
They skidded past one another, collided, separated, swirled through turnstiles, funneled into narrow alleys. And among the looming and dissolving shadows and colors of their memories, lived the dim face of the white-haired woman. The pulse slowed as they coagulated on corners at red lights, clinging to each other as if they had a reason for coming together, a purpose, something to exchange―perhaps the dim memory….
They bunched up around Freya, but she didn’t want to know right now. They, too, would pay for the fancy college that taught how to hate parents. She stepped out from the crowded curb. A driver skidded to a stop. She grinned at him, and flounced through the streets―out and about, at a speedy pace. She was mad, and could read the fear in the faces she met. Strange that they should be frightened by the little red Freya in her big boots and black leather jacket. Yes, it felt strange… and good. She laughed and tore down the street, open jacket flapping loud in the back. Heads turned as she passed―a thief? She went through the Museumplein and the Vondel Park the day of the incident at the Happy Family. This libertine bar was full to the brim with freaks of every size, shape and color. The reggae beat ricocheted off the walls, and spider plants crept down from the rafters over the tables, never quite reaching the customers’ plates. The room was dark and solid with smoke. Green sawdust had been spread out on the floor to soak up the slush from the streets. It was dinnertime. Plates of rice and stew were being passed out at all the tables.
Freya climbed onto a barstool with the grace of a caffeinated cat and ordered a plate of deep-fried cod and a beer that looked like it could dissolve a penny.
She became aware of a stare. It was coming from the boy next to her. He must have been about eighteen, too. A blond, farm-fresh boy who had obviously never seen a girl in a leather jacket before, and seemed frightened but intrigued.
Freya cleared her throat and turned to him. What a normal, blond guy.
He looked down, embarrassed.
“What’s the matter.” Freya said in a loud voice. She hadn’t caught on to the genocide yet, and played her part unwittingly. She was, in fact, currently under the impression she was in a gritty movie.
The boy turned a ripe shade of radish. “No, no, I’m…”
“You don’t like my face? ls it my hair?” she demanded, gesturing to her flaming red locks, which looked like they were trying to escape her head. “Does it remind you of a forest fire? Do you need a bucket of water?”
The boy panicked and retreated into a frantic string of Dutch that sounded like a bag of marbles falling down stairs. Freya didn’t understand a word, so she did the only logical thing. She threw her head back and barked a laugh so loud it nearly rattled the foam off her beer.
On a much higher dosage, three boys at a nearby table looked up. They saw the country boy—camouflaged against the wallpaper—and they saw Freya, a tiny, leather-clad fireball.
“He’s apologizing!” one of the boys shouted in English. “He thinks you’re going to hit him!”
“I might!” Freya roared, sensing she was the star of the show. She laughed harder. The boy’s English amends were getting more desperate, his hands fluttering like trapped birds.
Between thick clouds of various substances floating in the air and the sheer absurdity of the couple, the bar began to crack, not in giggles, but from a structural failure of respect.
The Sawdust cacaphony caught like frying butter in a hot pan—popping and spitting on all the surfaces. Bored, stoned customers looking for a reason to exist began to erupt like a series of volcanoes. The laughter seeped into the floor, turning the sawdust carpet a shade of green that was probably biologically concerning. The ripples of sound literally shook the boy’s stool. The laughter traveled up his legs, into his arms, and finally cracked his offended face wide open. He stopped being a victim and started being a participant in the madness.
For a moment, the entire bar was a pool of common hysteria. The walls reverberated until somewhere, neighborhoods away, Rosa, staring out her window, nodded knowingly.
●
Now the snow had fallen, and walking the streets must be like stepping into a Christmas card. Leaving the chocolate shop, past the tall, skinny canal houses—with curtains wide open, you can see into cozy living rooms where Christmas trees stand against floor-to-ceiling windows, and candles flicker on cherry wood tables like Rosa’s. Her party room was vast and dark, but for the flickering of the living room candles and the light in the kitchen, where Rosa was mixing eggnog in the blender. He liked it sweet, she thought, scooping out eight tablespoons of sugar. Then, she began counting out vitamins from an assortment of brown and green medicine bottles, eight, nine, ten, and a teaspoon of sugar makes the medicine go down, in the most …. The blender hummed.
With a full tray, she approached the La-Z-Boy by the fireside. “Would you like some eggnog, Menno?” Rosa bent over the chair. “Eggnog, Menno? Menno.”
●
The boy slid off his stool like an electrified eel and sprinted out the door as if he’d just realized he’d left his tractor running.
Freya blinked. The audience—the bored, stoned customers—immediately lost interest in her. Their faces folded back inward, their eyes glazing over as they returned to staring at the cool, neutral blue spots at the back of their own skulls, as if someone had flipped a switch.
“Well,” Freya muttered, looking at her half-eaten plate of deep-fry. She had a nagging feeling that Menno wouldn’t have been particularly proud of her for terrorizing a farmhand, but Menno wasn’t here, and the farmhand had been remarkably easy to startle. She slapped some money onto the bar and walked out into the night.
Outside, the Amsterdam mist had settled in, and a neon sign was having a breakdown above the door. The neon heartbeat of THE… THE… THE… HAPPY… HAPPY… HAPPY… FAMILY… FAMILY… FAMILY…pulsated RED, then BLUE, as if it had just run a marathon. On either side, neon dolphins leapt through hoops, looking far more athletic than Freya felt. Painted neon teardrops splashed off their wave crests, frozen in a loop of eternal frolic.
The sky leaked a quiet, unconscious drizzle. Down the block, a street musician’s clarinet wailed a final, lonely note. Freya pulled her leather jacket tighter. She started walking, her boots clopping against the wet cobblestones.
Standing at the intersection of the Reguliersgracht and Herengracht, Freya paused. The frost on the iron railings caught the light, making the ancient metal look as if it had been powdered with sugar. The water in the canals shone amber and emerald blue, ice floating under the Seven Bridges, lined up. Their illuminated arches created a tunnel of light that went on infinitely into the mist.
●
Somewhere, blocks away, Rosa was tucking her letters into bed, subtly aware that her fiery redhead was feeling like a very damp matchstick.
●
Bundled in a yellow comforter, his feet elevated, Menno’s withered mass lay back in its easy chair, looking less like a man and more like a very expensive, very tired lemon crepe. Freya turned on his Walkman, and “Claire de Lune” played softly in his eardrums.’ He gulped down the pill she gave him and waited for the stabbing pain to be lifted away, while Rosa was sleeping.
The fire licked the warm, smoky air, like the tongues of Freya’s red hair, slipping out the door. Its rhythm melted his limbs into weightlessness. A good pill. Not like the ones the doctors were giving him. He could feel sweat running off his nose and cheekbones, dripping into his ears and over his scalp, so slowly. Down, down, until it reached the pillow. Or was that his hair growing? Yes, his hair, slowly coiling out of his head. Yes. He could feel it crawling like a microscopic crab ant, down, down onto the pillow-a creature of direction, despite its ridiculous size, one will, one aim: down. He felt it touching his skin with its every step, every step a moment, every moment, a lifetime.
His family. His friends. They melted into his pillow like the phantom ant. He watched their shapes, rising and sinking, crawling all around him in different directions, laying out their histories like lines on a map, drawing their lines into a tangle. Never stopping. Just passing through. Just looking, not buying anything today, thank you, just browsing your consciousness…just… passing… through….
Rosa, buzzing in his ear,” Menno, would you like…,” but no energy to shoo her away.
“Menno?”
“Mennooo….” Like a persistent bumblebee in a cardigan.
He swam deeper and deeper, to where the water was warmest. He would stay down here among the undulating fingers of seaweed and the penetrating shafts of light emanating from that mysterious, perilous, buzzing world above. He would stay down here with the seaweed and the light. Beautiful shafts of light, playing off the blue ocean currents and the sandy bottom and all the backs of all the underwater creatures, giving color to everything …to everything… The light. How dark and horrible, never to see the beautiful light again. Never. Forever. As if it never was. Farewell. No.
Behind Menno’s eyelids, shapes rose and fell like waves. A new day. Fields of tall grass, dried to golden lifelessness by the ravaging torch in the sky, and at the same time soothed in their death beds by the coolness of breezes running through the grass like fragmented sunlight rippling over bodies of water blue and deep, deep as eyes. Cool, joyful, lurching waves, their tips bleached pale green by the savage rays the moment before breaking onto the sand, breaking, rolling, crashing on and on until their deliverance into a winter landscape. One moment, he was looking at pinkening skies and weeping willows; the next, they were whisked away by an eggnog intrusion.
“Mennooo… would you like…?”
The buzzing was back. The goddess of the banquet table had returned from her letter-sorting to offer him a mortal sacrifice.
“No. Thank you,” he whispered. His sunken eyelids twitched, but they were currently locked from the inside by purple veins. He couldn’t let her in. He was in the middle of a very important tangled-lines sequence. “I must go there alone.”
“Come on, Menno. Sit up,” Rosa chirped, her voice cutting like a laundry pin through his pale green waves. “I thought you liked eggnog. I made a nice pitcher just for—”
“No, thank you,” he repeated like a man trying to decline a telemarketing call.
“Mennnooo… it has chocolate sprinkles on top!”
The Surrender. “Okay,” he finally groaned. His lashes parted—a monumental effort that felt like opening a set of heavy theater curtains. He extended a limp club of fingers toward the sound.
Rosa, ever the devoted caregiver, didn’t trust him with the glass. She shoved it toward his face herself. Menno, sensing that the only way back to his beautiful fluidity was through the drink, began to swallow.
Thick, sticky fluid dripped down his neck, creating a sugary swamp in the folds of his yellow comforter. Rosa refilled the glass. She added nutmeg. Menno hated nutmeg, but in his current state, it tasted like the dust of a thousand stars. He gulped. He swallowed with the desperation of a man drowning in custard. He powered through the eggnog situation. until the pitcher was bone-dry.
Satisfied that she had successfully refueled her husband, Rosa finally retreated to her typewriter. Menno slumped back, smelling strongly of holiday spices, and waited for the seaweed and the lemon moon to take him back.
●
The room was cold and full of sleeping bodies tightly wrapped in woolen blankets. Freya opened her eyes. She focused on the clock hanging squarely in the middle of the white wall in front of her: it was one o’clock. The winter sun invaded the room via the balcony window, but it wasn’t bringing warmth—it was just bringing enough light to see how much dust was in the air.
The blanket slipped from her shoulders as she stood erect, nudity blasting back at the metallic air. Her companions, still huddling under their blankets, followed her strut to the toilet. She stepped over and around them in perfect indifference, and even slowed at the window. But at the mirror, she crumbled, breasts sagging, intrusive. Her posture went from warrior queen to question mark. She felt the invisible weight of the room’s disappointed eyes on her back. She ducked into the stall and sat there, her head resting on her knees. It was today.
But she was too weak. Her knees became hot with tears. Too, too weak…. She was Becky again, small, stupid, with that silly ponytail, waiting at bus stops in Michigan, only a year ago.
It was really cold there, colder than Norway. She walked swiftly from the lab to the bus stop. She could almost see the yellow sign, “Coach Stop,” only a few blocks away. She couldn’t walk any faster without running, and that would be a mistake.
Sagging houses with fallen porches frowned out their warnings under the influence of blackening skies. She heard their voices in her own breath, though she did not dare look to either side. Windowless cars with ratty tires sank in to weedy driveways of broken concrete and glass. A Cadillac, newly polished, red and black, sparkled on the side of the road. It belonged there, too; this was Detroit, and red ladies came with the night. She was running.
Someone was back there following her. She ran and ran down the sidewalk, imagining herself falling down, over and over again with every step. She turned around.
There was no one there. Her muscles relaxed. She laughed, and resumed thinking about the warmth of her pockets, out of reach- her hands were locked together around the biochemistry books Dr. Hammerman had lent her.
Then she was at the bus stop. She put the books down, all but one, which she opened and tried to read. A grimy-looking man came from across the street. He looked Becky up and down. She returned his smile. Shit. This was the worst place to be white in at dusk.
Pretty cold, huh?” the black man said.
The conversation had begun. There was no way to stop it. Her reply must embody a precise tone of ease, invulnerability. She must not betray any fear that could be misconstrued as prejudice. “Yeah. And I bet the bus isn’t anywhere near here1” she agreed, suddenly afraid that perhaps she was right.
“You know it. I wonder why them buses don’t ever come on time. Wisht we had a subway.”
“I know, but then who would Ford sell cars to?
“Seems they got their hooks in everything. I been livin’ in this city my whole life, and I found out a long time ago.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know? You’s just a baby. You look so young. How old, sixteen?” He stepped a little closer. 1’Don’t be scared, now. Just tell me how old you are.”
She felt a cavern open up in her throat. She had to meet her mom…. They were supposed to walk back to the office together.. .. She swallowed . “I’m…seventeen…. How old are you ?”
He was grinning, stepping closer….
No! She could handle anything now. Freya got dressed.
She had to get out. Hunt for a Christmas present for Menno.
●
At five o’clock, Christmas lights came on throughout decorated streets. The vibe was thickly gezellig—that untranslatable Dutch word for a kind of cozy imbued with social warmth. The sound of bicycle tires hissing over wet cobblestones. Dusk rolled over the Amsterdam rooftops like a heavy velvet curtain, chasing the latest batch of Menno-philes to the doorstep of Prinsengracht 14.
These were his citoyen-du-monde clique—a group of people who had come for the legend: Wonderbaarlijk Menno! In their minds, Menno was still the titan who let children climb all over him like gym equipment. Was a mathematician, a chess grandmaster, and a patron of the arts with a statue in a museum (though no one could remember if it was in storage in the Rijksmuseum or had been a wax work that had melted).” They reminisced about dancing into the mornings on the hotel verandah, which jutted out over the river, where the people of the little houseboats floating quietly below came out on deck to listen to their bands. And Menno, dancing on and on in the center with one lady after another….
“Dag! You must be Rosa. I’m Kees,” said a gray man, thrusting a box of chocolates at her.
“How lovely,” Rosa chirped, already mentally filing the chocolates under ‘Supplies: Emergency/Sugar.’ “Do come in. Menno is… in his station.”
She pointed to a corner of the hall where a colossal armchair was currently swallowing a very small, very confused man. Kees and his wife, Els, approached the chair with the reverence usually reserved for an unexploded bomb.
“Dag, Menno. It’s Kees and Els!” Kees shouted, leaning in as if Menno’s ears were in a different time zone.
“Kees… Els… hello… mmmm,” Menno murmured. He felt he should stand. It was the polite, non-hallucinatory thing to do. He managed to rise, his legs feeling like two overcooked noodles, and began the ritual of the triple-cheek-kiss. Left, right, left… Everything was going swimmingly until Menno’s internal compass decided to spin like a roulette wheel. The world turned into a dark tunnel. Desperate for a handhold, he saw a blur of vivid color—the only thing his brain could recognize.
It was the bright pink of Els’s dress. He lunged. Menno tackled Els. Els tackled the coat rack. The coat rack tackled the floor. A sound like a falling chandelier echoed through the hall. Rosa didn’t even flinch. She just stepped over the pile of limbs and mahogany to
A few minutes later, Menno was back in his chair, looking slightly more disheveled but surprisingly unbothered.
“Mennooo?” Rosa checked in.
“Okay, okay,” he whispered, staring into the middle distance. “Just another fall. A vertical adventure. I’ll sit here and… greet… but I don’t know where the hors d’oeuvres are, Rosa. People keep asking for the little sausages. I haven’t seen a sausage in years.”
His head sank forward, his spine arching over his lap like a burnt-out street lamp.
Around him, the party ignited. The voices of his friends rose in a chaotic swell, sounding like every note on a piano being hit at the exact same time. Rosa, sensing the Wonderbaarlijk energy was peaking, grabbed Menno’s arm and hauled him toward the rich firelight and warbling voices. Kees, apparently recovered from the coat rack conundrum, began to bash out “De Zak Van Sinterklaas” on the baby grand. The room erupted into song, the firelight danced, and Menno sat there, smelling of nutmeg and eggnog, wondering if the piano was also made of pink fabric. Kees’s boisterous voice led the singers gathered around the baby grand.
Menno stared into the fiery, music-making blur of friends. They were all there, though much changed, much changed, indeed. Could that be Ruth? Yes, her eyes were the same as they had been years ago at his father’s summer house, walking together through the mud in wooden shoes, transplanting flowers. She was singing beautifully. He opened his mouth, but the music, so loud and solid, formed a wall between his lips and their ears. He would find a chair….
There was his stepson, Arnout, sitting on the couch next to the Christmas tree. Menno sat down in a nearby chair. Arnout was with a girl. A pretty girl, Menno noted, good, good….”Hello, Menno. This is…,” the boy was saying. He pointed to the girl. Menno watched intently, as the couple shifted on the couch and resumed their conversation. They seemed to be drifting into slow motion, and Arnout,”…but I…,” seemed to be extending a spider’s thread to the girl, and she, “…Oh, Arnout…,” in turn, spun a thread back to his stepson. How strange…. Menno could see the threads issuing from the one, hanging on air currents for a moment, and then attaching themselves to the skin of the other. Back and forth, again and again, until an elaborate web had been stretched in a fine pattern between them. Strange ….
The dinner bell tinkled. The guests flocked to their places. Two blinking candles commanded the poles of the long banquet table. Behind one sat Rosa, behind the other, Menno. At her pole, Rosa looked like a high priestess; at the other, Menno, looked like he was trying to remember if he was the host or the centerpiece.
“Speech, speech-.” A chorus of pleas. The faces flickered in the candlelight, yellow, then mauve, as they begged their host, their dear old friend, Menno, “Wonderbaarlijk Menno,” who used to….
Expectant eyes rolled from face to drooping face. Surely this awkward silence wasn’t necessary to induce a toast from Menno’s lips. Arnout stared into the glowing candle, his hands sweating up the chair’s arms. “Come on, Menno,” Rosa urged. Everyone was waiting. The food would get cold.
His eyes were fixed on the candle in front of him.
Someone’s napkin fluttered open.
He raised his head. “Just…keep the cobwebs away from the flame,” he said.
“Yes! Let’s all keep the cobwebs away from the flame of life! Cheers!” Rosa quickly exclaimed. She raised her glass.
“Proost! Proost!” the table exhaled, relieved that they didn’t have to look for the spider Menno had just seen. Instead, the elaborate feast began. There were blue boats of gravy and mountains of sweet potatoes. Ham and turkey bathed in buttery sweat towered over stuffings. The maid brought in pools of apple sauce topped with cinnamon, molds of cranberry sauce, elongated bottles of wine, steamy thin soup, fresh vegetables with dips, marzipan pigs, and more wine… all served in etched crystal and Delft china.
There were many questions. Menno nodded and tried to swallow the food.
“Have you seen the White Friar’s Glass Works in London?” someone asked him. “One rarely sees such magnificent paperweights and bottles. You like glass works, don’t you, Menno?”
He nodded.
“Well, it’s certainly worth a side trip next time you’re traveling through those parts.”
Or: “Do you see cousin Loes much these days? Last I heard, she moved to Iceland, but that was years ago. Do you remember her? She was a dear little child―all covered with freckles and ….”
Menno nodded again, Cousin Loes was now a freckled penguin living in a London glassworks, mmhmm. He knew it.
“Would anyone like tea or coffee?” Rosa asked, folding her napkin. “Or perhaps some pastries or brownies?”
The table was cleared, and more trays brought out. “Arnout, I made the walnut brownies with you in mind.” Rosa zeroed in on her son.
“No thanks, Mom.”
“Don’t you like walnut brownies?”
“No,” he said, looking down at his knife.
“You’ve always liked walnut brownies. I thought they were your favorite.”
He stared.
She looked forlornly down at the sad walnut brownie on its tiny red and green napkin square….
He grabbed it from her hand and shoved it into his mouth whole. He held his mother’s eyes. His jaws worked, but he would not swallow.
She smiled; she’d known all along that walnut brownies were his favorite.
They decorated the Christmas tree and put their presents on the rug underneath. The affair was reduced to drinks and idle banter. Rosa had gone off to prepare the guest rooms. Hypnotic flames in the hearth soothed everyone’s lungs into speechlessness. Shadows danced. The doorbell rang.
Someone got up to answer it. Arnout sank back behind the Christmas tree. The dull sound of an argument peaked and ended abruptly. In walked Freya with a big red smile. “Hi folks, Merry X-mas.”
The guests whispered. What a sight! Was this Rosa’s daughter?
“Where’s Menno?” she demanded, and tossed a present under the tree. “That’s for you, Arnout.”
Arnout moved out from behind the tree.
“So where’s Menno?”
Heads turned involuntarily to point him out.
“Hey there, Menno.” Freya picked her way through the legs and drinks and patted Menno on the back.
“Freya,” he sighed. “Yes.”
More whispers.
“How’s the party?” she asked. Silence.
“The party?….I don’t know,” he said.
”Hmm. Well you look a little tired. Do you want to go to bed?”
“Yes…I’m very tired.”
“Come on. I’ll take you.” She helped him out of his chair.
The room shattered into motion. All were exclaiming how tired they were themselves. Someone’s foot knocked over a drink. Ice toppled onto the carpet. As the “clique scrambled for their coats like passengers on a sinking ship, Rosa stepped into the fray, her eyes gleaming with the light of a thousand filing cabinets.
Arnout followed Freya downstairs. Freya led Menno into his room. They deposited him onto the bed with significantly more care than she had used on her barstool the other night. “A lot of old friends, huh?” she asked, pulling off his shoes.
Menno lay there, looking like a discarded marionette. “The cobwebs, Freya… the cobwebs are winning.”
“Not on my watch,” she whispered.
They dressed Menno in pajamas and helped him into bed. Arnout stared at her as she pulled the covers up to Menno’s chin, kissed him, and sat down in the recliner. She reached into her pocket for a cigarette, struggling to steady her hands. The match burst. So here was Arnout, after all this time.
Arnout looked at his hands. Then his eyes found her boots and traveled up her legs to her leather jacket, and then to her spiked hair. Her skin seemed thin and white, stretched over an ashen core. “What the hell have you done to yourself?” he said.
Freya inhaled deeply. She blew the smoke into her brother’s mortified face. “It’s nice to see you,” she said. “Why didn’t you get out of here? Why didn’t you just go back to America?”
“Why don’t you?” She stood up and put her cigarette out on her mother’s desk top. Smoke streamed up into the lamp shade for a minute. “And Menno?”
The floorboards creaked above them.
“Don’t you see, Arnout?” Freya leaned over to latch the window shut. The wind howled outside. There would be a blizzard. ”We can’t just leave…”
“Mm mm…,” issued from Menno’s torpid body. They turned their heads to the solemn heap of blankets covering their stepfather. “Remember …,” Menno’ lips pronounced. “You promised, Freya …tonight….” She saw his sunken cheeks, flushed and running over with sweat, become pale and drawn. Pain. He was in pain. He was pain. He was the last of Menno, the only thing she still felt for, the only thing she….
Her shoulders heaved forward in a silent plea. Her hand shook uncontrollably.
Arnout’s eyes widened as she reached into her breast pocket. “Freya!” Arnout stood between them. “What…!”
“You promised, Freya, mmmhummm.”
She reached into the secret pocket of her leather jacket and produced a small, silver foil packet. “This is the Christmas special. It’s from a guy in the Jordaan who claims he can see colors through his elbows.”
She popped the pill into Menno’s mouth and followed it with a swig of water from the bedside carafe. Menno swallowed, his eyes already beginning to glaze over with a look of profound peace. “Will I see the lemon moon again?” he asked hopefully.
“Menno, with this one, you’ll be the lemon moon. You’ll be the whole citrus department.”
●
Rosa awoke. Sunlight streamed in through her flowered curtains, and onto her pillow. She blinked the sleep from her eyes. Then a thought occurred to her. It was Sinterklaas morning! She breathed deeply. The previous night budded in her memory. The party. She had done it! Everyone had had such a wonderful time. It was therapeutic for Menno as well. She would have him cured in no time. A good party was like a medical poultice—enough nutmeg and social pressure could cure anything from a common cold to a spiritual crisis. She believed that if you gathered enough people in a room and fed them until they couldn’t stand, the sheer collective weight of their presence would anchor a drifting soul back to the shore. She looked in on Menno, sleeping contentedly in his heap of gnarled blankets.
It was a good thing that he had not spent the night pacing about, as he had been doing for the past months. The excitement had obviously worn him out. She would let him sleep a little longer. Rosa tiptoed over to the closet. She donned her big, fluffy bathrobe and slippers. Then she combed out her hair and applied orange lipstick. She looked in on Menno again. He was still asleep. She’d better wake him. Rosa crept across the tile floor and slid her hand onto his back. “Mennoooo?” she whispered, giving him a shake. Then a harder shake. The kind of shake one gives a vending machine that has withheld a bag of pretzels.
Nothing.
She shook him harder. Still nothing. This would not do. Shake, shake…. She patted him on the cheek: cold—the kind of absolute, uncompromising cold that signaled the end of a conversation. Her facial muscles fell limp for a split second, mouth opening into a simple 0, a perfect zero of comprehension. The scraping of a snow shovel on the walk outside barely reached her ears through the wind. The neighbors were already about their chores. In here, the chores had just become very complicated.
But as she looked at him, the panic failed to arrive. Instead, she saw the lack of tension in his jaw and the profound stillness of his hands.
“Wonderbaarlijk Menno” who had been chased by shadows trying to entangle him in the “Country of the Dead” letters for months, finally looked like he had reached the right address. He wasn’t pacing; he wasn’t shivering. He was, for the first time, completely organized. Menno had finally recovered himself entirely from the burden of existing.
Her wrinkles screwed back up, tight―better close those curtains so Menno can sleep in the dark. She trotted over to the window, then hurried back through the dimness to his bed. She knelt at his feet. She would just straighten out these covers; it was cold season. She pulled them up to his face. He was on his back, his mouth gaping open as if he were mid-sentence in a debate he had already lost. The scraping continued outside. Scrape. Scrape.
Rosa thought he still didn’t look very comfortable. He lay on his back, mouth gaping open. The scraping continued outside. Her body straining, she rolled Menno onto his side. The wall faced him. Then, she bent his arms and heavy legs into his favorite sleeping position—the fetal tuck of a man who has successfully opted out of the twentieth century. She fluffed the pillow. She straightened the duvet until the lines were parallel with the floorboards…there, that’s much better. He looked happy, younger, and remarkably cured of everything that had been bothering him. Rosa crossed the room and slipped through the door, and closed it softly behind her.
●
Two days later, Meno’s eyes fluttered open. He glowed with the feeling of wellbeing and benevolence only fathomable after a deep rest. He was a little surprised to see his whole family together again. In his bedroom. Milling about as if making preparations. And finally decided to put a halt to the annoyance. “Where’s my glass of water?”
Rosa and Arnout rushed to his bedside. The floodgates were open. Freya shook with laughter and weeping, tears streaming down her face. Soon the whole family was one big puppy heap over the bed. Wonderbaarlijk Menno had really pulled off a miracle of biological growth this time. He emerged from his chrysalis transformed, and it brought with it real structural strength. Even Freya forgot her hot temper as if touched by peaceful frost spreading across a windowpane. His mending seeded the crystalline example to the rest of the family lifting it into a clear and stabilized peace.