Six
Two days later, one hundred thousand euros appears in my bank account, as if by magic. But of course, it’s not magic. It’s been a long time since I was kicked off my economics course, but I’ve since come to understand that the universe operates on the same general equilibrium theory as markets. It never gives you something without making you pay for it somehow.
I buy a beat-up bike off a junkie and another change of clothes from the flea market. I may have money now, but I’ve grown used to living simply, to owning only what I can carry. And besides, I’m not staying long, so I may as well leave as few fingerprints as possible.
I wander up and down the Damrak looking at travel agencies, trying to decide where to go next: Palau. Tonga. Brazil. Once the options increase, settling on one becomes harder. Maybe I’ll track down Uncle Daniel in Bangkok, or is it Bali now?
At one of the student agencies, a dark-haired girl behind the desk sees me peering at the ads. She catches my eye, smiles, and gestures for me to come inside.
“What are you looking for?” she asks in slightly accented Dutch. She sounds Eastern, maybe Romanian.
“Somewhere that isn’t here.”
“Can you be more specific?” she says, laughing a little.
“Somewhere warm, cheap, and far away.” Somewhere that with one hundred thousand euros, I can stay lost as long as I want to, I think.
She laughs. “That describes about half the world. Let’s narrow it down. Do you want beaches? There are some fantastic spots in Micronesia. Thailand is still quite cheap. If you’re into a more chaotic cultural affair, India is fascinating.”
I shake my head. “Not India.”
“New Zealand? Australia? People are raving about Malawi in Central Africa. I’m hearing great things about Panama and Honduras, though they had that coup there. How long do you want to go for?”
“Indefinitely.”
“Oh, then you might look into a round-the-world ticket. We have a few on special.” She types away on her computer. “Here’s one: Amsterdam, Nairobi, Dubai, Delhi, Singapore, Sydney, Los Angeles, Amsterdam.”
“You have one that doesn’t stop in Delhi?”
“You really don’t want India, huh?”
I just smile.
“Okay. So what part of the world do you want to see?”
“I don’t care. Anywhere will work, really, so long as it’s warm, cheap, and far away. And not India. Why don’t you pick for me?”
She laughs, like it’s a joke. But I’m serious. I’ve been stuck in a kind of sluggish inertia since coming back, spending whole days in sad hostel beds waiting for my meeting with Marjolein. Whole days, lots of empty hours, holding a broken-but-still-ticking watch, wondering useless things about the girl whom it belongs to. It’s all doing a bit of a number on my head. All the more reason for me to get back on the road.
She taps her fingers against her keyboard. “You have to help me out. For starters, where have you already been?”
“Here.” I push my battered passport across the desk. “This has my history.”
She opens it. “Oh it does, does it?” she says. Her voice has changed, from friendly to coy. She flips through the pages. “You get around, don’t you?”
I’m tired. I don’t want to do this dance, not right now. I just want to buy my airplane ticket and go. Once I’m out of here, away from Europe, somewhere warm and far, I’ll get back to my old self.
She shrugs and returns to leafing through my passport. “Uh-oh. You know what? I can’t book you anywhere yet.”
“Why not?”
“Your passport’s about to expire.” She closes the passport and slides it back. “Do you have an identity card?”
“It got stolen.”
“Did you file a report?”
I shake my head. Never did call the French police.
“Never mind. You need a passport for most of these places anyhow. You just have to get it renewed.”
“How long will that take?”
“Not long. A few weeks. Go to City Hall for the forms.” She rattles off some of the other paperwork I’ll need, none of which I have here.
Suddenly I feel stuck, and I’m not sure how that happened. After managing for two entire years not to set foot in Holland? After going to some absurd lengths to bypass this small-but-central landmass—for instance convincing Tor, Guerrilla Will’s dictatorial director, to forgo performing in Amsterdam and to hit Stockholm instead, with some half-baked story about the Swedes being the most Shakespeare-loving people in Europe outside the UK?
But then last spring Marjolein had finally cleared up Bram’s messy estate and the deed of the houseboat transferred to Yael. Who celebrated by immediately putting the home he’d built for her up for sale. I shouldn’t have been surprised, not at that point.
Still, to ask me to come and sign the papers? That took gall. Chutzpah, Saba would call it. I understood for Yael it was a matter of practicality. I was a train ride, she was a plane ride. It would only be a few days for me, a minor inconvenience.
Except I delayed for one day. And somehow, that’s changed everything.