Until I Find You

There was no bed, just a large leather couch, and there were no towels. There was even a desk. A comfortable-looking leather armchair was in the window corner, under a reading lamp and next to a bookcase. Perhaps Femke sat reading in her window, not bothering to look at the potential clients passing by; to get her attention, the men must have had to come down the short flight of stairs and knock on her door or on the window. Would she then look up from her book, annoyed to have had her reading interrupted?

There were paintings on the walls--landscapes, one with a cow--and the rug was an Oriental, as expensive-looking as she was. In fact, Femke was Jack's first encounter with the unassailable power of money--its blind-to-everything-else arrogance.

"What took you so long?" she said to Alice.

"Can we go?" Jack asked his mom. He held out his hand to her, but she wouldn't take it.

"I know you're in touch with him," Alice told the prostitute.

" '. . . in touch with him,' " Femke repeated. She moved her hips; she wet her lips with her tongue. Her gestures were as ripe with self-indulgence as a woman stretching in bed in the morning after a good night's sleep; her clothes looked as welcoming to her body as a warm bath. Even standing, or sitting in a straight-backed chair, her body appeared to loll. Even sound asleep, Femke would look like a cat waiting to be stroked.

Hadn't someone said that Femke chiefly, and safely, chose virgins? She picked young boys. The police insisted that Femke require them to show her proof of their age. Jack would never forget her, or how afraid she made him feel.

Virgins, Alice had explained to Jack, were inexperienced young men--no woman had ever given them advice before. That late afternoon in Femke's room on the Bergstraat was the first time Jack felt in need of some advice regarding women, but he was too afraid to ask.

"If you're still in touch with him, perhaps you'll be so kind as to give him a message," Alice continued.

"Do I look kind?" Femke asked.

"Can we go?" Jack asked again; his mom still wouldn't take his hand. Jack looked out the window at a passing car. There were no potential clients looking in.

Alice was saying something; she sounded upset. "A father should at least know what his son looks like!"

"Willi

am certainly knows what the boy looks like," Femke replied. It was as if she were saying, "I think William has seen enough of Jack already." That's the kind of information (or misinformation) that can change your life. It certainly changed Jack's. From that day forth, he'd tried to imagine his father stealing a look at him.

Did William see Jack fall through the ice and into the Kastelsgraven? Would The Music Man have rescued his son if the littlest soldier hadn't come along? Was William watching Jack eat breakfast at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm? Did his dad see him stuffing his face at that Sunday-morning buffet at the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, or suspended in the derelict elevator above the American Bar at the Hotel Torni in Helsinki?

And on those Saturdays in Amsterdam when Jack often sat in the window or stood in the doorway of The Red Dragon on the Zeedijk, just watching the busy weekend street--the countless men who roamed the red-light district--was his father once or twice passing by with the crowd? If William knew what his son looked like, as Femke had said, how many times might Jack have seen him and not known who he was?

But how could he not have recognized William Burns? Not that William would have been so bold as to take off his shirt and show Jack the music inscribed on his skin, but wouldn't there have been something familiar about his father? (Maybe the eyelashes, as a few women had pointed out while peering into Jack's face.)

That day in Femke's room on the Bergstraat, Jack started looking for William Burns. In a way, Jack had looked for him ever since--and on such slim evidence! That a woman he thought was a prostitute, who may have been lying--who was unquestionably cruel--told him that his dad had seen him.

Alice had contradicted Femke on the spot: "She's lying, Jack."

"You're the one who's lying, to yourself," Femke replied. "It's a lie to think that William still loves you--it's a joke to assume that he ever did!"

"I know he loved me once," Alice said.

"If William ever loved you, he couldn't bear to see you prostitute yourself," Femke said. "It would kill him to see you in a window or a doorway, wouldn't it? That is, if he cared about you."

"Of course he cares about me!" Alice cried.

Imagine that you are four, and your mother is in a shouting match with a stranger. Do you really hear the argument? Aren't you trying so hard to understand the last thing that was said--to interpret it--that you miss the next thing that is said, and the thing after that? Isn't that how a four-year-old hears, or doesn't hear, an adult argument?

"Just think of William seeing you in a doorway, singing that little hymn or prayer I'm sure you know," Femke was saying. "How does it go? 'Breathe on me, breath of God'--have I got it right?" Femke also knew the tune, which she hummed. "It's Scottish, isn't it?" she asked.

"Anglican, actually," Alice said. "He taught it to you?"

Femke shrugged. "He taught it to all the whores in the Oude Kerk. He played it, they sang it. I'm sure he played it for you and you sang it, too."

"I don't need to prove that William loved me--not to you," Alice said.

"To me? What do I care?" Femke asked. "You need to prove it to yourself! Wouldn't it bother William--if you accepted a customer or two, or three or four? That is, if he ever cared about you."

"Not around Jack," Alice said.