Amsterdam/London:
Transit
16 May 2012
The Rijksmuseum was on my list of things to see in Amsterdam, but I’m afraid that I’m going to miss it. We got going this morning rather too late for an outing of that kind, and, even if time were not an issue, my legs wouldn’t carry me through. As it was, I had just enough élan vital to walk up to the café in the Gerard Douplein (De Pfaardje) that Kathleen and I lunched at on Monday — not quite to the Singelgraacht, in other words — and my quads gave me a fair amount of pain on the stroll back. I was very glad to get back to the hotel.
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At Scheltema yesterday, I cast about for something to read — something to re-read, really. I packed as little in the way of fiction as I could: the Amsterdam Stories of Nescio, which were such a pleasure to read; Paul Torday’s More Than You Can Say, a brisk homage to John Buchan; and Coral Glynn, just in case: I mean to re-read James Cameron’s new book at some point. I knew that I’d be visiting Amsterdam’s excellent bookshops, not to mention Hatchard’s, in London, and that there was no need to try to anticipate my mood while on the road — always difficult and usually vain. As it happened, yesterday found me in a mood for Henry James. Ideally, I’d have bought The Princess Casamassima, which I’m in the middle of re-reading at home, and then left the book behind me in London, but it wasn’t on offer. (Only two James titles were, The Portrait of a Lady, which feels too familiar at the moment, for some reason; and What Maisie Knew, which I am keen to re-read, but not while traveling, because the prose is perhaps James’s most demanding.) Similarly, I’d have picked up Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, but I wasn’t in the mood for The House of Mirth, much less Ethan Frome. I considered trying Jennifer Egan in Dutch, but that hasn’t happened yet; and when I looked at the lineup of Ian McEwans, I was poked by the reminder of Bootekleid (Atonement), which has sat undisturbed on my bookshelf for ten years. In the end, I settled on The Swimming Pool Library (in English), by Alan Hollinghurst.
I disliked The Swimming Pool Library when it came out. I found the “gay culture” aspect of the book irritating. Not the sex or the romance of the longing or the bad behavior — not any of that, but the queeny backchat of the cruisers in the club locker room and the fumbling around in the “cottages.” It doesn’t bother me so much now, because it’s vaguely historical; there is no longer any need, in the interesting parts of the world, for gay ghettos and their ways. Homosexuality may still be a vice in some eyes, but it is no secret, and the furtive appropriation of female pronouns, possibly the most perverted practice ever resorted to, has largely ceased. (I continue to find the word “darling” grating, but it really doesn’t matter who’s saying it; it’s the word’s breezy insincerity that I can’t stand.) This time, in any case, I’m enjoying the novel for the beautifully-written masterpiece that it is, and shouldering its sadness without grudging the occasional rough edge.
Nantwich proved to be a voracious eater with poor table manners. Half the time he ate with his mouth open, affording me a generous view of masticated pork and apple sauce, which he smeared around his wine glass when he drank without wiping his lips. I attended to my trout with a kind of surgical distaste. Its slightly open barbed mouth and its tiny round eye, which had half erupted while grilling, like the core of a pustule, were unusually recriminatory. I sliced the head off and put it on my side-plate and then proceeded to remove the pale flesh from the bones with the flat of my knife. It was quite flavourless, except that, where its innards had been imperfectly removed, silvery traces of roe gave it an unpleasant bitterness.
Aside from the apt comparison of the popped eye to a blemish, there’s not a metaphor in sight. Â
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Last night, I was graciously permitted to join Kathleen on a canal-boat excursion that filled, I think, four or five floating cocktail lounges. (The convention that brought Kathleen to Amsterdam gets bigger every year.) We were picked up and dropped at the hotel’s landing, on the Amstelkanaal, and a very nice little tour we had. Aside from a strange pause in the Kloveniersburgwal, it was smooth sailing in several directions, from the canals around the Artis/Zoo to the Herengracht — how grand the grand houses seem from water level! — the Leidsegracht, a bit of the Singelgracht, and home via a radial canal whose name I can’t determine. (It is bordered, not particularly charmingly, by the Hobbemakade and the Ruysdaelkade.) We had several pleasant chats, one of them with a young American from London who must have been a boy when the first Exchange Traded Fund, midwifed by Kathleen, came onto the market. Kathleen was sure that we’d never been able to get a table at the “affordable” restaurant in the lobby, what with hundreds of men debouching all at once, but my doubts proved correct: for it’s not the sort of place that average sensual financial services provider wants to spend money on unless there’s a lady involved. (And I was the only spouse.) When, for the second time, I said “Tot ziens!” to our server, I really meant it, although I have no idea of ever coming back.