“Truly, brother, I don't care about religion.”
“One last time, brother, before I shoot. What religion?”
“Allahah akbaar,” the man sighed.
Clink of pistol cocking. “Recount the faiths.”
“Do not hurt. Do not lie. Do not steal.”
“Which of those are you doing tonight?”
“I was just going to Rue Hamra. My family –”
“You are truly a Muslim, brother?”
“Truly.”
“You're in luck, brother: so are we.”
Rosa took three grenades from the sack, laying them side by side on the ground. She retied the sack tight around her abdomen, put a grenade in each pocket and took the third in her hand.
“Allah be praised,” the man in the pale shirt kept repeating. His voice was shivering. The other men were joking with him now, about his being almost shot for a Christian. “Those pigs!” he said, “eat their own children's entrails.”
“How do you know, brother?” one of the men laughed.
“Because I've made them do it.”
“Really, now?” One voice took interest. “Tell us.”
“No, not really. Just joking...”
“It is a joke, really,” another put in, softly. “The joke is that we're Christians.”
“And you're a filthy little Muslim,” said the first questioner, “who sucks his own cock.”
“Please, brother, oh God, please! I'll help you – I've got money –”
“Open his legs!” one said.
The man was screaming then moaning through something, then choking. “See!” one laughed. “I told you Muslims suck their own cocks!”
“That's homosexuality,” another said. “You know the sentence for that.”
“Certainly.” There was a sharp, three-shot burst.
Beretta parabellum, Rosa decided, 9 mm, Israeli issue. Thus perhaps truly Christians. No way could she go back up the shattered corridor without them seeing her shadow cross the opening where the roofs had fallen in. Stay here and sooner or later one of them would light a match, a flashlight, and see her. Or circle round, to take a piss, run right into her.
The grenade was a hard perfect weight in her hand. But even then could she be sure? Should she move back into the rubble by the wall of the room and wait for them to leave? She put down the grenade, cupped a hand over her wrist and slipped back the sleeve to check her watch: 21:42.
She felt behind her with her toe for a clear place in the broken concrete, stopped when it made a slight hiss against plaster and cement dust. She found another place for her foot, further back, slowly shifted her weight and moved a step backward.
7
RAIN STREAKED the windows. Holland is the only place on earth, Neill thought, where the rain comes down sideways.
In Beirut there’d be no rain now. The wind down from the hills, pine and lavender, the cafés on Rue Hamra full of espresso and cigars and sweet liquor and sex, the sounds of traffic, music, laughter.
No, Hamra's barricaded and bombed. And the only people who go out become the dead ones on the pavements.
“You've been married nineteen years,” Inneka said. “No one else I know, but for my parents, their generation, has stayed married so long. How are you going to explain divorcing to Edgar? Even worse, to Katerina?”
“They'd barely notice if I went.” He slid his hand slowly up the curve of her waist. So smooth, he thought, nothing stops you.
“I refuse to be the one who makes that happen. If you're going to break from her, do it for yourself, not me.”
“I'm crazy,” he let his hand fall, “to be thinking of going from one of you to the other.”
“You're the one you have to learn to live with, darling.”
They dressed in the hesitant glow of the streetlight through the window; he couldn't find one sock till she put on the lamp. “We'll have to go all the way to Rembrandts Plein,” she said.
The rain had cleared, white clouds dashed across the moon. Wind cut up Prinsengracht, ruffling the black canal, sharp as a knife at his neck. She wrapped her coat tighter, hugging his arm as they walked. “You should've worn trousers,” he said.
A bell tinkled coming up behind them on darkened Keizersgracht by the Advent church, making him jump up on the pavement. “Just a bike,” she said.
It was a black rattletrap ridden by a girl in a long blue wool coat who took the bridge across Reguliersgracht, parked the bike and went into the Coffeeshop African Unity.
“It's because you don't want to go on this trip,” Inneka said. “That's why you're so jumpy.”
The Rhapsody on Rembrandts Plein was still open. At a chilled table on the terrace they ate Greek salad, tournedos and spaetzle. The couple at the next table were arguing gently in Italian, under the Motown on the café stereo. On the pavement an electric sign of a woman in blue, a gray cat, and a red-labeled black bottle of instant coffee: “Sheba. Een teken van liefde.” The sky had lifted, the moon's light slinking down the slate roofs, the wind chasing scraps of paper and dust around their ankles. On the far side of Rembrandts Plein flashed a red neon sign, “La Porte d’Or – Live Music”, and he realized he'd been thinking of going in there as if it were a place where he could forget everything, as if there'd be a truth there. A secret.
A trolley ground past, absurdly painted. “Damn graffiti,” she said.
“This used to be a nice town.”
Behind them three dealers were talking low in French, one with great wide hairy ears. “Seventy balles,” another said, “I'd take that.”
“We should try seventy-five,” great ears said.
The first pointed at a car outside. “Look at him, turning round in the street!”
“Like Paris, do whatever they want.”
The third raised a finger. “Je veux dire un truc, moi. Let me say something.”
“But he's not so great. He hustles sometimes but then he just lets himself go...”
“Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, still on your side,” sang the stereo.
“That's four thousand balles each.” Great ears held up his cigarette, shrugged. “Not so bad.”
The third raised his finger. “Moi, je veux dire un truc.”
Going down Reguliersgracht, the canal kept catching the moon, its reflection ducking under the bridges. Cars passed furtively like hunted animals. Inside the tall peaceful living room windows, books stood seriously on shelves, pictures hung meaningfully on white walls, and people dined under crystal chandeliers at long tables, all talking animatedly. What, Neill wondered, do they have to talk about? What can they believe?
Outside a girly bar a kid in jeans with torn knees, a cloth cap, and holey coat was playing a beaten white Strat hooked to a twenty-watt Peavey, the wind so cold his fingers were blue, his caved-in junkie face all caught up in the music that soared out of the black box as the blue fingers raced up and down the strings. A shorter man in a white jacket came round with a cup.
“Amazing,” Neill said.
“My student,” the man in the white coat said.
Neill dug out his change. Three guilders. “All I have.”
The man nodded peremptorily, moved toward another couple.