Amsterdam Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

longer on its way to the pawnshop, and I said, “For now you’ll stay right here with Old Man Koekebakker, little watch,” and I put my hand back in my pocket. I was used to having conversations with my things since there’s so little that’s worth saying to most people.
    I was out of the woods for now—dear Autumn hadn’t let me down. The falling leaves, the southwest wind bending the trees on Veerschenweg even farther to the northeast and blowing snatches of Tall Jan’s bells to my ears and making the towers sway and shake in fear beneath the black clouds—I had finally transmuted it to gold at my writing desk and now I could sit and look at it in the form of my own money, money you can count on and that never lets you down and never leaves you in the lurch. I had gotten home an hour before, soaked to the skin, with a loaf of bread, a half pound of butter, six ounces of sausage, a half pound of sugar, three ounces of tea, and a box of cigars, twenty-five for four cents—riches I hadn’t known since my birthday, and that was months ago. I had already put away the sausage, that was for tomorrow. I had had a little cupboard built next to the window, and that’s where I put everything all in a row on the bottom shelf: butter, tea, sugar, sausage, all the things that can taste so good when you haven’t had them for a long time. And the rest of the loaf of bread, minus the two slices, was up on a higher shelf.
    My clothes were hanging up to dry at the top of the stairs, under the rafters: jacket, sweater, pants, underpants, shirt, and socks. The water started to boil, the lid of the kettle rattled up and down. I looked at the steam and started thinking about how I would get my coat from the pawnshop tomorrow and for once not eat dinner in the kosher restaurant—beef and potatoes for thirty cents, pea soup with meat for thirty-five cents. And I was just thinking that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think about getting a little something to drink in the house when my meditations were interrupted by a heavy footstep outside the door. Someone was fumbling with my door. You couldn’t knock because the door was made of wallpaper glued to a couple of screens, if you knocked you would put your hand right through it. People knew that. “It must be Hoyer,” I thought, “he can never find the hook.” The hook was on the inside but the door never closed properly and you could just get your finger through the crack and open the door from the outside. “Come in,” I shouted, too lazy to get up. “Easier said than done,” I heard a voice say, “how does it work?” “I don’t recognize that voice,” I thought, “who can it be?” I stood up and opened the door, and a trickle of water ran over my hand. “It’s Japi,” the man said. “Come in,” I said again. There he stood, water streaming from every fold of his clothes and off his hat too.
    â€œSure is raining,” Japi said. “Can I put my jacket somewhere? Wait a minute, have to put this down first.” He took a package wrapped in newspaper out from under his jacket—books, you could tell—and put it on the table. “So, is there somewhere to hang this?” he said, handing me his jacket. He leaned his hat against my little cooking stove.
    â€œOne minute, old man,” I said, and I took his jacket and hat out to the common area, hung the jacket next to my own wet clothes, and shook out the hat and put it on the floor in the corner.
    Japi was already seated, squeezing out his pants legs and looking around. “To what do I owe the pleasure, sir?” “Just call me Japi,” he said. He unwrapped the package and put Le Lys dans la vallée down on the table. “There you go, friend.” “Thanks,” I said, “and what are those?” “Oh,” Japi said, “some of Appi’s books.”