Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM
by R. Eric Swanepoel
(First published by Deliberately Thirsty Magazine, Issue 4, Argyll
Publishing, Glendaruel, Argyll PA22 3AE, Scotland)

Today I'm in Amsterdam. Strange this is the first time. I'm in
shipping, so you might have thought that Rotterdam would have brought
me here sooner. Anyhow I'm here now, in my thirtieth year with the
company.

We lease container ships and tankers which take cargoes all over the
world. I'm the trouble-shooter, you might say. I sort out problems with
crews, breakdowns, accidents, schedules. Indonesia last week - kicked a
bit of government ass, as far as one can - those buggers have got to do
something about piracy. Five of the crew dead. New York yesterday -
Liberian container ship not up to scratch safety-wise, trouble with the
authorities. A demanding job, not much rest but I like it that way.
Since the marriage broke up, I guess. Ha, using Americanisms again -
well it figures, they don't follow the Queen's English - one must
adapt/you gotta adapt.

Christ, I hope that Brazil deal goes through, old Werner won't take too
kindly to a $15 million loss, not with the South African investment
looming. That's funny, I'm in Amsterdam, thinking about colonising the
Cape. D?j? vu, sort of.

Almost there. What I'm looking for is not far from the Rijks Museum,
according to that hotel receptionist.

It's not work all the time. I've taken to visiting the galleries in the
cities - the only holidays I get: mini rest cures. Galleries, not
museums mind you, with all their painstaking labels which you feel
obliged to read. Exhausting.

It's further than I thought. I ask a young chap with granny glasses.
Nope, German tourist, no idea. Ah, there it is. I always breathe a bit
easier when I enter these places 'luminous and cool'. Comes from a
haiku I read in a Japanese garden - in Aberdeen of all places. Aberdeen
Scotland, not Aberdeen Hong Kong, though I'm there often enough.
Shoson, I think: 'Luminous and cool , the way the round pebble sinks in
the blue pool'. Beautiful. Exactly what an art gallery should be.

So here I am at the Vincent Van Gogh. I even stumble mentally over that
double guttural. Easier to use Vincent. Always liked Vincent's work but
horrible yellows - probably changed with age, or is it just the quality
of reproduction in the calendars and postcards? Big business
anyway.

Wide open space. White. Quiet. I pay, hand over my coat and take a
token from the clean-looking chap behind the deep counter. Don't bother
with a camera these days. I breathe. Out of the rush. No bicycles here.
Almost empty of people too. I look at the counter proffering taped
guides in umpteen languages - no, better to view it with an uncluttered
mind. I can always read his biography later. Read a lot of biographies
over the Atlantic this year.

As I turn to climb the stairs to the main section a man and a woman
enter. The bloke is tall, muscular, in a camel hair overcoat,
distinguished, grey hair receding over a broad Dutch forehead, blue
intelligent eyes. The woman is amazing: dark-haired and dark-eyed,
lithe and vibrant, an energy about her. She's thirty perhaps. Perfect
make-up, belted black mid-length dress, bolero jacket. She sees me and
perhaps flicks a smile at me? I'm not sure. Latin-American I think. She
insists on keeping her bag but lets them search it. Again a glance my
way as she takes his arm. They follow me up the stairs to the first
level. I'm pleased that they too have left the tape machine attendant
undisturbed in her meditations. Comrades!

The mezzanine floor set-up means the ceiling is very high. Space to
relax. This is my sort of gallery. The paintings are mounted in simple
frames in a row round the white walls. Chronological order. Places and
dates on discrete cards. They're a lot bigger than I thought - and so
many. I make a wide visual sweep and let the colours soak in.

Wonderful. I feel my arms hang relaxed, my feet square, and I drink in
the panorama. I have my way of doing things. General impression first -
no thinking, slackness, colours, peace. These paintings are alive - I
can feel that already. Now to really look at them.

I am astounded! Beauty and goodness radiate. Nature and man are so...
right. Pastel colours, leaves, shade, wood, earth, peasant faces,
peasant houses, sunshine, flowers, so "just so". Vincent has filtered
obscuring details and has bared the soul of things. I am enraptured,
entranced, "entranced" into something new.
Or something very old?

Movement at my left. It's them. He looks serious, and points and says
something like 'roofs not regular,' he finds it 'interesting.'
She is wide-eyed. Her and an olive tree in mutual rapture. Iconic,
electric moment. The corners of her mouth twitch slightly at his
banality.

He is not here with us and he knows it, and grows alarmed.

Now they are what interests me: an elderly Dutch man and a young
Latin-American woman, speaking English, obviously at least fond of each
other judging by the formerly linked arms.

The story is coming to me: a Chilean refugee, parents disappeared
during the Pinochet years; father, a publisher, told her to flee; old
friend of his in Amsterdam would help. She had come over and the
inevitable happened - so much turbulence in her life she had shut out
all but the present. Lived life on the cusp of time, but now she was
getting restive, not just with the relationship: her homeland was
calling. She yearned to fill the vacuum her parents had left, even with
knowledge of death.

This is their last week together and he witnesses his youth leak away.
She is a mass of emotions - as good an explanation as any, I
think.

God, she's beautiful!

We are two-thirds of the way along the paintings and something is
beginning to impinge: this work is accelerating! Dates clustering at
the end, coarser brushwork. All superficialities gone now. Stark
"being-ness" of things screaming at him.

Focus. God - a painting a day! Literally howling&;#8230; Pain? Went
mad. Chopped an ear off. Never sold any paintings. Lonely screaming:
People, don't you see, we all belong to here and to now and to
everything?
Knife-edge pain, taking him to the edge of existence. Wanting to feast
replete on the beauty of things. Pushing creativity. The undercurrent
is too strong. The yellows. Jaundice yellow.

Liver problem comes up from memory: genetic? "Hepatic encephalopathy" I
dredge also: toxins affect the brain. Lot of booze when Mary left. Grim
stories at AA meetings.
Pain, faintness, dizzy, bright sun on fields, death looms, crows.
Whorls hurling to eternity. Sky vortices screw his pain into my brain,
and shriek: NOW, HERE, BE, CREATE!

She is next to me, also spiral-spitted. We breathe rapidly. We turn.
Eyes commune in the void. He is outside and fading. Vincent is with
us.

Never went back to shipping.