I entered
the room with my twin boys. Like the hall and hearth downstairs, it contained
the furniture necessary for the most meager hospitality of a guesthouse in
Amsterdam. It was 11:00 P.M., It had an
iron bed with a brown-drab-colored spread over it, a wooden chair next to it, a
hat-rack and a washbasin, nearby. The walls were a dirty pale yellow, and naked
of any pictures, a nail here and there, short and rustic, a sinister looking
room.
I fed the boys a ham and cheese sandwich, they were per near four years
old. Then I put them to bed, “What can
I do until I’m tired?” I asked myself; a rhetorical question perhaps. Horrified by the
idea of being shut up in this room sober. I paced the room shrugged my
shoulders, it was fall of 1975, and there was a chill in the Amsterdam air.
I had noticed a little bar at the end of the street was opened, prior to
finding this guesthouse. I could go there for something to drink, —if I didn’t
make any noise the boys would remain sleeping, and I’d be back in a jiffy,
otherwise I’d have to remain in the hotel room, dry as the night is long.
Half an hour later, after washing up a
bit, I was per near jogging along the way to find the bar. With my eyes wide
open trying to remember the signs, to the bar, and for my way back, it was
farther than I imagined. I gave myself
over to my thoughts:
This was for me and my boys a weekend vacation, I was twenty-eight years
old, I had a good job in Darmstadt, Germany, the long weekend, a four day
weekend, was mine to do with whatever I pleased. And I wished, as I always
wished, to travel with my twin boys. This desire had frustrated me at times, my
job strangled me night and day.
If I could live my life again, I would give
up my drinking, the boring routine of professional drinking and live the
unlived life which attacked me, with my
boys, for so often I am teased by Satan’s demon of the countless opportunism
and paths which my feet would have trotted, had they not followed the will of
the drunk.
Since then I have wrote my poetry in dreams, to save for a later date.
As I made it to the bar, at the top of the
foothill my thoughts came to a halt, the path to the door of the bar was like a
path that a reptile crawled ahead of me, as to guide me in. I looked behind me, it was a slope of a hill
I had climbed, curved: thus, I lost sight of my hotel-guesthouse, this area
covered by low buildings, and now connecting streets, made me feel a bit lost.
Inside the bar, it was a blessing to see all the booze I witnessed; it
had a mildew odor, as all bars seem to have, and smoke circled about like you were in Charlie Chan’s dope den; it never
seemed to settle in anyone place. I ordered a liter of beer; I noticed four
hooligans were watching me.
Now before me laid the long path back. It was a modest walk, surrounded
by a crude brick and stone wall I hadn’t noticed before, or if I had, it now
came clear to my mind. My walk was like a deserted orchard. I counted four
blocks, I judged it should be six total, hence, I had two more to go. It stuck me for a moment, I might be lost, I
mean, not lost but I wasn’t sure of the archway to the guesthouse, which one
was it? They all looked comparatively the same. That is to say, the sprawling
designs on each one looked similar.
At the far end of the street those four young hooligans had been
following me, I meticulously watched them. I thought of them as pebbles and
weeds the earth spit up, that posed for a fight, this was my way of prepping
myself. I let them draw nearer, picking my glass liter of beer up like a weapon
for them to see. I stood under a streetlight, thus I was half-buried in light.
I struck the liter of beer hard against a body of cement. It seemed to carry an
echo, a death threat to the hooligans. I
don’t think I felt any surprise or fear, I have found myself suddenly face to
face with grave situations before, and this was no different. I began to yell
at the hooligans that it would be a mistake not to turnabout, and head on back
the other way, and the sharp edges of the glass, sparkled, as the beer dripped
out of it to its last drop. I even scrutinized closer, made a step two towards
them. The night was left blank.
They turned about, and then I got moving
slowly looking for the right archway. That was more a nightmare than the
hooligans. Then it appeared. I brushed the sweat off my forehead with my
sleeve, and sat down on the bed next to the boys, whom were deep asleep. Many
minutes passed, my brain appeared to have shut down, stopped functioning, yet
it refused to provide any logical explanation for my strange act of breaking my
liter of beer, perhaps I could have chased them away without do so!
As night advanced, sleep spread
its ink-colored darkness over me, and for one night out of three-thousand, I
fell to sleep sober.
5072/2-14-2016
For Samantha Shields (by Request)
Part one to this story is under the title
“A Hearth in Amsterdam” written 2008.
Where Part one leaves off, Part two, takes
over.
Nonfiction
