Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
six o'clock we would have a reefer, as a sort of appetizer, and then repair to an Indonesian restaurant next
door. Then, as darkness fell over the city and the whores took up their positions on the street corners, and
the evening air filled with the heady smells of cannabis and frites, we would wander out into the streets and
find ourselves being led gently into mayhem.
We went frequently to the Paradiso, a nightclub converted from an old church, where we tried without
success to pick up girls. Katz had the world's worst opening line. Wearing an earnest, almost worried look,
he would go up to a girl and say, 'Excuse me, I know you don't know me, but could you help me move
something six inches?'
'What?' the girl would reply.
'One and a half fluid ounces of sperm,' Katz would say with a sudden beam. It never worked, but then it
was no less successful than my own approach, which involved asking the least attractive girl in the room if I
could buy her a drink and being told to fuck off. So instead we spent the nights getting ourselves into a state
of what we called ACD - advanced cognitive dysfunction. One night we fell in with some puzzled-looking
Africans whom Katz encouraged to foment rebellion in their homeland. He got so drunk that he gave them
his watch (he seemed to think that punctual timekeeping would make all the difference in the revolution), a
Bulova that had belonged to his grandfather and was worth a fortune, and for the rest of the summer
whenever I forgot and asked him the time he would reply sourly, 'I don't know. I have a man in Zululand who
looks after these things for me.' At the end of the week we discovered we had spent exactly half our funds of
$700 each and concluded that it was time to move on.
* * *
The Dutch are very like the English. Both are kind of slobby (and I mean that in the nicest possible way):
in the way they park their cars, in the way they set out their litter bins, in the way they dump their bikes
against the nearest tree or wall or railing. There is none of that obsessive fastidiousness you find in
Germany or Switzerland, where the cars on some residential streets look as if they were lined up by
somebody with a yardstick and a spirit level. In Amsterdam they just sort of abandon their cars at the
canalside, often on the brink of plunging in.
They even talk much the same as the English. This has always puzzled me. I used to work with a Dutch
fellow on
The Times,
and I once asked him whether the correct pronunciation of the artist's name was Van
Go or Van Gok. And he said, a little sharply, 'No, no, it's Vincent Van - ' and he made a sudden series of
desperate hacking noises, as if a moth had lodged in his throat. After that, when things were slow around
the desk, I would ask him how various random expressions were said in Dutch - International Monetary
Fund, poached eggs, cunnilingus - and he would always respond with these same abrupt hacking noises.
Passing people would sometimes slap him on the back or offer to get him a glass of water.
I've tried it with other Dutch people - it's a good trick if you've got a Dutch person at a party and can't
think what to do with him - always with the same result. Yet the odd thing is that when you hear Dutch people
speaking to each other they hardly hack at all. In fact, the language sounds like nothing so much as a
peculiar version of English.
Katz and I often noticed this. We would be walking down the street when a stranger would step from the
shadows and say, 'Hello, sailors, care to grease my flanks?' or something, and all he would want was a light
for his cigarette. It was disconcerting. I found this again now when I presented myself at a small hotel on the
Prinsengracht and asked the kind-faced proprietor if he had a single room. 'Oh, I don't believe so,' he said,
'but let me check with my wife.' He thrust his head through a doorway of beaded curtains and called, 'Marta,
what stirs in your leggings? Are you most moist?'
From the back a voice bellowed, 'No, but I tingle when I squirt.'
'Are you of assorted odours?'
'Yes, of beans and sputum.'
'And what of your pits - do they exude sweetness?'
'Truly.'
'Shall I suckle them at eventide?'
'Most heartily!'
He returned to me wearing a sad look. 'I'm sorry, I thought there might have been a cancellation, but
