The Sergeant's Cat Read online

  Uncle Franz was my grandfather’s brother. The family is, in origin, German. We used to be called Muller, but my father changed that to the Dutch word, Molenaar. Uncle Franz stuck with the old name. He studied physics and mathematics in Ham­burg, and later, when my great-grandfather moved to Holland, got his PhD’s at the famous technical university of Delft, Hol­land. Everything summa cum laude. The family had Dutch pass­ports by then. When Germany invaded Holland, anybody with German ancestors became German again so Uncle Franz and my dad were drafted into the German army. Uncle Franz got out because he offered his talents to the makers of the dread sub­marines. My father, a professed anti-Nazi, was shipped off to occupied Norway to service a huge cannon pointed at the sea. He never had any leave and spent five years polishing the useless weapon, confiscated from the former French Army that had managed to lose the juggernaut’s ammunition. As soon as the war was over, my father burned his uniform and walked home in clothes he had stolen off a wash line. I was born in 1961. Father was in his forties by then. My birth killed my mother. Dad struggled along alone, became depressed, swallowed some­thing, and pulled a plastic bag over his head. Uncle Franz in­herited the family mansion at Bickers Alley, at the corner of Wester Dock, an antique warehouse that my great-grandfather remodeled into a villa, complete with a roof garden overlooking the harbor. When Dad died, I moved in with Uncle.

  After the liberation, back in Amsterdam, Uncle Franz was charged with treason, but the case didn’t hold up in court. The Nazis had forced him to become German during the war; now how could a German betray Holland? Of course Uncle Franz defended himself, he made the judge laugh. He made me laugh, too. Often. I won’t say it wasn’t fun to live with the old lunatic, but I didn’t mind leaving the house on my eighteenth birthday. Uncle Franz wanted to pay for my studies at Amsterdam Uni­versity’s School of Music, but I never wanted to be a professional piano player. I applied for a scholarship to the Police School. After graduation I became a regular cop, starting as constable, moving up to constable-first-class, aiming to be a sergeant.

  As soon as I got my badge I found the Marnix Street apart­ment and did my best to evade Uncle Franz’s efforts to oversee my career. It seemed that he felt sorry for his occasional neglect, and frequent abuse, at the Bickers Alley villa. I didn’t avoid Uncle totally, however. I did owe him some gratitude. He did, in his own perverse way, mean well, I’m sure.

  He really was an asshole, my dear little uncle. He looked bad, too. “A bald dwarf,” he called himself. His baldness was hidden under a huge curly wig that sat askew on his oversize head.

  “Tell me,” Uncle Franz said, that evening when he dialed 911 and I happened to pick up the telephone. “How many of you work the phones there?”

  There were four constables on duty that night, with a fifth standing by, making coffee.

  “Good,” Uncle Franz said. “One out of five and you are the one who answers my call—a good omen, my boy.”

  I asked what kind of emergency was bothering him. Were there burglars in the house? Knowing Uncle, surely he would have trapped them with one of his inventions and had the un­fortunates in chains by now. Did he want us to send a bus to pick up suspects?

  Bickers Alley at the corner of Wester Dock, is part of one of the mysterious black holes of the city of Amsterdam. Human flotsam likes to congregate in the area, to sleep under the bridges, especially during the warm season. We were having a mild sum­mer and drug and tourism were rife. A rich old hermit living on the waterside, between unguarded warehouses and offices—the situation is an invitation to evildoers.

  “I am calling the emergency number,” Uncle Franz said, “in connection with a future murder slash manslaughter.”

  I said I would send a patrol car right away.

  “No need as yet, my boy.”

  “You’re sure you’ve not been at the bottle, Uncle Franz?”

  Uncle Franz protested. The famous reformation date was mentioned again: the fifth of November 1987, the day that uncle joined Alcoholics Anonymous, Haarlemmer Street branch. He told his fellow converts that he had decided to quit “because of practical reasons.” Uncle was an athlete as a youth and was able to defend himself when sober, which he was not while out on the town. With old age adding to his handicap he was helpless at times. A gang surrounded him near the Harbor Building, took his wallet, and, when he offered resistance, broke his nose and glasses and damaged his expensive dentures. He was in the hos­pital for a while. “Life, when subject to unforeseeable periods of alcoholic weakness, gets complicated, so I quit,” he told me sadly.

  “Walter,” Uncle Franz had said, patting my arm, “your loving only relative, thoughtful caregiver and staunch significant person is, from now onwards, sober.” He was too damaged for me to tell him I only agreed that he was a relative, and that I didn’t believe him anyway. He did, however, quit drinking. Thinking back now, I have to admit that he always took his promises seriously. Normally, he didn’t commit himself to any­thing—in spite of my pleas and protests when, as a child, I was at his mercy. His lifestyle always irritated me. I didn’t like being a judge of female beauty when he had ladies he’d picked up in a bar strip on the grand piano in our living room. I preferred to do my homework rather than help construct a symbolical maze in the basement, with philosophical obstacles and spiritual downfalls. I got upset when I had to join Uncle and his current rooster (yes, rooster—they got drunk sometimes and fell to their death) in concert (I sang and played harmonica, Uncle took care of percussion and, sometimes, slide guitar) in the roof garden. Uncle, when suffering from hangovers, never promised he would better his ways, but when he said that we would do something nice for a change he did comply. When we celebrated our birthdays (August first for both of us) he always thanked me profusely for whatever I bought him and he would give me something that I really wanted. There was the bicycle, the elec­tric train, and the annual membership that got me into the movie museum. When I was ten years old he bought me a round-trip ticket to New York and came along to show me the Museum of Natural History and have me listen to the Miles Davis quintet in a concert hall.

  He was pleased the enormous revolving globe in the mu­seum interested me.

  “Those are the real colors, Walter; the ones in your atlas are all made up. See, there are no frontiers on the real globe?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “But you can see the stains, can’t you? The stains are us. We are the sickness of the earth, but soon we will choke our­selves and the planet will be like new again, for some better beings that will come after us.”

  “Like who, Uncle?”

  “Like us again, Nephew, but we’ll be part starlight then.”

  We had dinner in New York’s Chinatown, and when I lost my cool because I couldn’t find my kind of Amsterdam/Chinese food on the menu, he told me how fortunate I was that I could now see things from a different angle. He ordered something weird that tasted great, I wish I could remember now what it was.

  The flip side of his genius was that I was often left alone in the villa at Bickers Alley, for days and nights on end sometimes, with only Dizzy Gillespie, the rooster, and Nietzsche and Nisargadatta, the cats, for company. If the food ran out, I ate cat food on moldly bread, or a chicken-feed soup of my own in­vention. On other nights I might have unexpected company if Uncle pushed a drunken lady into my bed: “Move over, my boy.” I sometimes wore the same underwear for weeks. Uncle never came to Parents’ Night at school. When Miss Bekker, the mathematics teacher I was in love with, showed up at the house once, he tried to seduce her. There was the night that I had to call the fire brigade. He had kicked over the barbecue on the roof and the wind had blown sparks into our curtains below. He didn’t want to phone himself because he couldn’t take time out from watching the flames licking through the villa. He kept drinking while the firemen stamped about, waving their hatchets and hose nozzles.

  And now he bothered m
e at work. August the first. Four a.m.

  “Are you in the roof garden, Uncle?”

  He was. “It’s going to be a lovely day, Walter. So it should be, seeing that it’s our birthday. There’s that deep red glow on the river and the gulls are soaring over my head quietly, dark silhouettes against the lightening sky. Wish you were here, Nephew.” He grunted disdainfully. “But no, you have to be a mole, in that dark windowless bunker.”

  I knew he wasn’t referring to my place of work, or even my dark apartment in depressing Marnix Street. He was telling me, once again, that I lived in spiritual darkness. He would say that when I was a little boy. He was always trying to manipulate me into some kind of breakthrough.

  “Your limited point of view saddens me, Walter.”

  I protested, and he said he wouldn’t give up on me, that it was his duty, as my heaven-appointed mentor, to try and get me to see the light.

  “Uncle Franz, this is the communications room of the Am­sterdam Municipal Police. You are blocking an emergency line, you’ll get me fired.”

  “I tell you, this is an emergency, my boy.”

  “Are you home alone, Uncle?”

  The rooster was keeping him company. He maintained that all his successive Dizzies were the same “familiar,” a term he had picked up while studying medieval magic. A familiar, I un­derstood, was a kind of protective spirit, and Uncle had taken the liberty of programing his with a liking for bebop jazz. It was true that the bird would start strutting around as soon as Uncle put on certain types of jazz on the record player.

  Dizzy clucked at me through the phone.

  “Dizzy,” I said, “tell Uncle to hang up.”

  Uncle was on the line again. He swore that any moment now—in any case, before the sun had properly risen—a violent situation would occur at Bickers Alley. “There will be beauty confronted with evil. There will be blood on the cobblestones. This is the sort of event that will delight your cop’s soul, Wal­ter.”

  “That’s it, Uncle, I am about to hang . . .”

  “Don’t do it, Officer.”

  His voice was cold and precise. He told me that breaking the connection would not prevent what was about to happen there. But I could help take care of the aftermath. It was like the six o’clock news—nothing the viewer can do about it, but as long as he knows he can help pay for blankets to be helicop­tered to the refugees.

  My voice was cold and precise too. I told him I was about to turn off his channel.

  He thought that sounded funny. He imitated the voice of the black communications officer in Star Trek who was always talking about closed channels to Captain Kirk.

  I told him he was stuck in the past now, that Kirk had been replaced three times already.

  “Remember,” Uncle asked, “how we would laugh when that stupid Dr. McCoy said, ‘He’s dead, Jim!’”

  “Uncle Franz, please,” I said kindly.

  He chuckled. “That’s better. Keep talking, Officer. You forget you told me yourself that it is better to have crazy folks talk themselves out over the phone, it releases their tension.” He lowered his voice. “Prevents crime.”

  “You admit you’re crazy, Uncle?”

  He told me others were crazy, dangerously crazy, lethal, others who were about to show up down there in Bickers Alley.

  I had to laugh. Uncle might be crazy but he wasn’t dan­gerous, he wouldn’t harm a soul, except unwittingly. During the war he had constructed those efficient U-boats, but he wasn’t trying to kill then, he was just creating fascinating toys. Besides, as far as police procedure goes, he was right. We don’t hang up on bizarre calls. Quite often the bizarre is true. There was the apparent madman who screamed, “Frogs on the speedway, millions of frogs on the speedway.” It was early in the morning then, too. I did believe something was up and directed a patrol car to the speedway where the constables saw a square kilometer of baby frogs, oozing out of the wetlands and slithering across the tarmac. The constables managed to block the way in time and prevented an overloaded tractor-trailer, which came thundering along, from skidding and turning over and spilling its inflammable cargo across four lanes.

  “Walter,” Uncle asked, “did you read the Charles Willeford books I left on your doorstep?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “How does Willeford, America’s most analytical crime writer, define a psychopath?”

  “As someone who knows the difference between good and evil, but doesn’t give a shit. Uncle. This is it. Bye now.”

  He raised his voice. “You should know by now that I am a possible psychopath, Officer, and you have to let me talk to you.”

  “Uncle, dear, please tell me the nature of the future hap­pening.”

  Too early to tell, Uncle said. He was prepared to fill me in on the actual situation. He was in the roof garden on the fifth floor, and the roses were ready to open in the light of the soon-to-be-rising sun.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Me and Dizzy.”

  “I know what the problem is,” I said. “You are constipated again because of an overdose of codeine you took for your pain­ful knees. You are going nuts because of bad cramps, and you are hallucinating because of the dope. Just like last month. Want me to come over with an enema, Uncle?”

  “Maybe,” he said, “you should send that car now.”

  I knew Grijpstra and de Gier were on duty that night. This wasn’t a case for rookie constables in uniform, and Grijpstra and de Gier were experienced detectives operating in civilian clothes out of an unmarked vehicle. I knew them. We play music to­gether. Grijpstra is a drummer with a talent for side percussion and de Gier plays mini-trumpet. They say they like my “thoughtful” style on the keyboard. De Gier isn’t a half bad composer. I have never understood why he and Grijpstra are policemen. Grijpstra is a good painter, too; he could sell his work. His girlfriend owns a hotel. De Gier is a minimalist/loner like I used to be, doesn’t even want to own a car. He could make a living playing jazz in the city’s bars. Live off all the beautiful women who pursue him. The rascal is quite handsome. Looks like a hussar officer, with his handlebar mustache.

  “Okay, Uncle,” I said. “I’m sending a car, to see what’s what, and I’ll be along later. Just a few more hours and I’m done.”

  The information seemed to please him. “To celebrate our birthday, Nephew? The day of the roaring lions? Today the world is ours, you know. How about sharing my dinner to­night?”

  I thanked him for the invitation.

  “So are you coming?”

  “Yes, Uncle Franz.”

  “You would have come anyway, right?”

  Trying to be polite, I said, “Of course,” but if he hadn’t reminded me I would have forgotten both his and my birthdays completely.

  “And you have already bought me a present?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “You’re lying through your teeth,” Uncle said angrily, then changed his tone of voice again. “It doesn’t matter at all. Your company is enough, my boy.”

  I felt relieved. “So the cop car isn’t necessary anymore, Uncle Franz?”

  “Not just yet.” He was using his cordless phone. I heard his shoes crunching through the roof garden’s gravel. “Downstairs on the street level, I hid two microphones in the ivy on the alley wall. You want to hear a good radio drama play, Nephew? Like in the old days? The cowboy series you liked so much?”

  “Damn it, Uncle . . .”

  “This is an important call,” Uncle Franz said. “Believe me, you are trying to pacify a true public enemy. Bear with me and there will be blood in the street, Officer, ladies will yell, a sports car will growl, bullets will be fired, there’ll be tension galore.”

  I sighed. “Uncle, what claptrap is this?”

  “There they are,” Uncle said. “I was looking for the co­conut shells. I knew th
ey had to be around here somewhere. You know Dr. Portier has me eat coconut to strengthen my heart muscles? Listen to this, Nephew.”

  I heard the sound of cowboy horses, trotting along. Clippety-clop. Clippety-clop.

  “Uncle!”

  He read my thoughts. “This is no lie, Walter. Ten long years have passed by. Not a drop of alcohol has touched my lips. I wouldn’t dare. I promised the AA boys that I would be back the day I slipped, and I can’t bear the idea of ever doing that. Of all the boring judgmental assholes I have ever met . . .” I heard him click his dentures in desperation. “Never again, dear boy.”

  I tried loving kindness. “In an hour and a half I can leave here. I’ll swing by, Uncle. Would you like me to do that?”

  “No, no,” Uncle said pleasantly. “Now listen to this, Wal­ter, the microphones will amplify the coming sounds of horror just beautifully. Navy quality. I still have my connections. Here is a sample.”

  I heard a thrush sing, a complete cantata, to accompany the first rays of the morning sun.

  “What do you think, Walter?”

  “Wonderful.”

  “I call him Miles,” Uncle said. “I’m up here every day­break, just to hear that bird chant. You know I only believe in a system of happenstance, but that system did create birds that sing like this, and that is proof of divinity, Nephew.”

  I began to understand something. “Uncle? Are you helping divine happenstance perhaps?”

  Uncle Franz giggled.

  “I thought you had told me you were retired,” I said des­perately, “that there was no need for any extra bullshit anymore. What are you doing, Uncle?”

  I head a loud chuckling, no doubt leading to a majestic cock-a-doodle-doo, but it ended abruptly.

  “Dumb Dizzy,” Uncle said. “He was ready to explode ahead of time. I covered him up with the teapot warmer. Aha! There we go now. About time.”

  I heard, first through Uncle’s phone and then through the microphones down in the alley, the mighty growl of an expen­sive sportscar’s engine.