My travel agent was confused. But there’s no scuba diving in Africa, she said.
A lot she knew. There was loads of diving to be done in Africa, in the Red Sea,
along the Ivory Coast, inland at Malawi, and round the Southern Coast. But I
didn’t want to go scuba diving in Africa. I wanted to go on safari.
I chose South Africa. Apartheid had fallen with Mandela, but I suspected that
South Africa might not be safe after the Great Man had passed on. So, the time
was ripe, I thought. No time like the present.
My travel agent was at a loss. Apparently, she had little experience booking
holidays outside of corporate travel brochures, something I was beginning to
suspect after two years of pulling hair and teeth. I suggested Contiki Tours,
pulling that stored nugget from my memory. Contiki catered to travelers under
35. I was 34. I qualified. We found a two-week circle tour of the country,
beginning in Johannesburg, ending in Cape Town. I signed on the dotted line,
checked my passport, and boarded the plane.
I’d never travelled east before, to the Far East yes, but that was heading west. This would be my first experience flying to Europe, into the sunrise. It’s only an eight-hour flight. Getting enough sleep on a red-eye is hard enough without the prospect of such truncated rest. It can be even more problematic with a screaming babe within earshot. Even more so with six. And me without earplugs.
I alit in Schiphol Airport outside Amsterdam without having slept a wink. It was 5 am local time, and I’d been up for about 18 hrs by then. My flight to Jo’burg wasn’t until 10 pm. I was a wee bit tired, and the prospect of spending seventeen hours in the airport seemed an exercise in misery, so I decided to take the train into Amsterdam. Why not? I thought, who wouldn’t want to see De Wallen, the Red Light District?
I passed customs, caught the train after studying the timetables for exhaustive minutes, deciding when the best time to return was, so as not to miss my flight, and I was off. I arrived in Metro-Centraal Station before the sun had risen completely, the early morning still basking the city in a ghastly damp grey. Pigeons roosted and strutted, but not many people. In fact, the only people up and about seemed to be those who’d disembarked with me. I followed them, thinking rather holistically that they knew where they were going. They led me out onto Stationsplein and then to Damrak Street. I found a café, just past the Sexmuseum, that was only just then opening, the waiter’s key still jiggling the lock.
“Coffee?” I asked. He nodded and let me in, gestured for me to sit anywhere I liked, and thrust a menu in front of me. I pointed at what looked like a full breakfast, and said, “Coffee!” again, this time with more certainty, adding, “Juice?” with less. He nodded. I ate, the sun rose. Damrak woke with me, brightening, taking on much needed colour. I found a pad of city maps in the café, so I peeled one off and stepped back out into the newly lit city. Streetcars rolled up and down the street while I continued strolling south. I had no clue where they were going, indeed, I had no clue where I was going, so I watched them pass without caring where they were headed. I noted the District was across from me, just across the canal and made for it, crossing a bricked causeway, still slick with dew.
I crossed at Oudebrugsteeg, smelled the Grasshopper Café as I passed and began threading my way through the warren of De Wallen. It was not at all claustrophobic, if it was narrow. Three and four story buildings, all pressed tightly together rose up from the cobbled ways, giving the impression of a rabbit’s warren. But by and large, the streets were wide, easily accommodating the delivery trucks that were already flitting to and fro within, replenishing the prior night’s excesses. Terraces spilled out onto the streets. Flags of all nationalities hung limp from all manner of bar, café, hotel and hostel. Small signs, neon glass and wrought iron inched out from their fronts. Windows and menus advertised what lay behind and within. But at that time, almost everything was asleep.
I wandered up and down its narrow streets until I saw what I sought, the fabled shopping windows with their overhung red neon rights, made famous long before Sting wailed to Roxanne that she didn’t have to turn on the red light. Where in one, a scantily clad lady of the early morning night in fishnet stockings stood statuesque before the cluster of young men transfixed by her very presence, and I suppose working up the courage to solicit her; in another, a middle-aged woman toiled with the door open to another such den, changing sheets, hoovering up and wiping down the leavings of the night before. I peeked. It was long and narrow. A tiny single width bed, no larger than a cot, stretched back from behind a drawn-back curtain. That room looked so horribly lonely to me. It didn’t hold even the hint of romance. It’s not supposed to, I suppose.
A family of four strolled passed me as I looked in. The mother held up a map, and was tracing their path upon it, the father behind her, dragging their children along hand in hand, hot in pursuit of her as she dashed through the debauchery. I decided to follow.
I spilled out into Oudekerkspein, a wide circle of courtyard surrounding a church. A church! Der Oude Kerk, in fact, Amsterdam’s oldest Parish Church. In the middle of the Red Light District. I could not believe my eyes. I had to remind myself that this had not always been a haven to toking tourists and red lit prostitutes. It was once, and probably still was, a place of all sort of commerce and residence. Who else was likely to fill those other three floors above the street? Tall stately trees burst up from the cobblestones, their leaves dappling the cobblestones with green and gold.
My eyes darted here and there, taking in its red bricked expanse, its iron
works, its stained glass.
That’s when I saw it: a single brass cobblestone amid the multitudes of green
and grey and red directly in line with its entrance.
It was moulded in the shape of a hand clutching a breast.
No comments:
Post a Comment