The streets have no names--22 years ago Tuesdays and Fridays, I attend a Dutch language course at Dutch Royal Shell. This entails catching the stoptrein from Diemen to Amsterdam Central Station. Crossing the street and waiting at a pier on the Ij River. I always look for a no-smoking car when I ride the stoptrein. Women with small children or prams usually stand in the wide passageways between cars. There are pull-down seats.
Dogs always whimper when the train grinds to halt. One usually hears their soft, pathetic, plaintive yelps when the train slows down. The people of Holland have two chief loves: children and dogs. The days are marked off by the comings and goings of the dog owners. At times one hears the jangling of a chain accompanied by marching feet--it's the dog going for his outing. He has to have at least three a day. Snoot, a shaggy, black dog who lives next door, has the face of a devil and brown whiskers. He barks indiscriminately and interminably. The people upstairs have children who bang on the pipes and run around like giant mice.
In the morning the trucks slamming in with their cargos. The sound of metal doors slamming. The sound of bottles rattling in their crates. The sun creeks over the sky.
Buildings of seven or eight stories, apartment buildings,three or four factories stand across the river. Oriental mosques, intricate steeples and spires prick the skyline. There are no skyscrapers. Here and there, a defunct windmill, used as a house. Narrow buildings equipped with miles of winding staircases, juxtapositioned next to each other. The grachten or canals under little, cunning bridges. Only the tightness of the buildings and crampness of the city can hold its own against the sky, which, otherwise, would dwarf everything. A city, tight and condensed, like a fist, holding at bay, sky and sea.
Presently, a medium-size, motor boat from Shell picks me up to deliver me to the Shell complex on the other bank of the Ij River. The huge "Zware Nellie" ferries people back and forth, slowly and silently. Ridges of water begin moving across the surface.
A flat boat carrying a miniature Eiffel tower, a tall, steel crane. It moves like a skeletal, preying mantis.
Seagulls toss about like brittle butterflies, simply riding the currents, sometimes practically stationary in mid-air. Mallards with green heads and yellow bills, tracing delicate V's across the pond. Seagulls amongst common birds always large of foot and bill, ungainly on the ground. I look at the river. It is dark and green and turbulent. I read a little more in Curtains by Agatha Christie. In the distance, a slender pillar of smoke rises. The clouds, the river and the chimney smoke all flow in the same direction. Seagulls dip and dive. The clouds are breaking up. Behind the clouds, the sky is two shades of blue, pale blue and a deeper blue in the upper sky. Last night the wind tore around like a gang of toughs, leaving the trees stripped of leaves. I realized for the first time this morning, how deep we were into Fall. Trees almost bare, except for clumps of dried, yellow leaves. Trunks green with moss. Mr. V_, with tremendous head, bulging forehead, rigid, tall and thin, arch-conservative, loves severe winters and fiece winds.
Solid and ponderous mansions Before I even arrived in Holland, I encountered the tension. On the plane from London to Amsterdam, a Dutch man, taking me for a Surinamese woman, enumerated some of the difficulties that arose with Surinamers in Holland. At least he thought the problem would eventually be solved with intermarriage.
Drove to Europort in Rotterdam. Driving on cobblestone road. Makes a big drone. Tree-lined boulevards. Build you up, as if you were coming into a grand section and then just peters out.
These are the people, who move us (the world) along, whether we want to move on or not. About twenty miles of oil refineries. Cranes, smoke stacks, huge metal drums that hold the crude oil or feedstock. Tall, slender poles belch fire out like torches.
My favorite thing to do is to go to one of Holland's many beaches in the winter. In the winter, the beach is not crowded; there is hardly any tourist trade and the air is cold and stimulating. I like to walk among the sand dunes. There are huge mounds of sand covered by shrubs and hardy vegetation. Many rabbits and small animals and birds inhabit them. After a brisk walk along the beach or sand dunes or in the sea town itself, it is pleasant to dive into a warm, cozy cafe or restaurant for a meal or just a cup of hot chocolate with whip cream and a pancake.
Heavy, lace tablecloth, faded with age, over a printed tablecloth. Silk lampshades hanging from the ceiling. A bar. Several large tables with large wicker chairs. A lovely aquarium--black fish with two white spots, another with phopherescent blue, like a gas flame, along its tail.
Always it is wonderful to stand in the middle of the sparsely-populated sand dunes and hear that marvelous whining of the wind and undertone of waves breaking on the beach. It is so silent there. Just the light so still, the sharply defined shadows and the wind whistling or rustling the grass or tearing across the plain.
I look out at the river again. It is opaque and pale. The green removed and hardly any waves visible. The clouds hang heavily over the low skyline. In the distance a patch of bright smoke tumbled out of a factory chimney. These are the people who stoke our appetites. Smoke and sulfuric fumes--just as smelly as manure. Like the insides of a cybernetic animal. We passed several dead rabbits on the highway--they can't cope with the modern world. I feel that the complex is bigger than me, but the people who control the complex aren't bigger than me?
Temporarily, above the wet, glistening streets hangs, ironically, a bright quarter moon. Wet streets reflect the neon lights. Reflections of cold, neon lights make night colder.
I am an echo in the night. An echo reverberating in the frigid night. The stars, cut like diamonds, in the sky.
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