Amsterdam Stories by Nescio Page A

hundred times fifty-three years. Longer. Now there’s a bridge over it. Since just a short time ago, a few years. Which is still a long time. Every year is 365 days; ten years is 3,650 sunrises. Every day is 24 hours, and every hour more goes through the heads of all those constantly worrying people than you could set down in a thousand books. Thousands of worriers who saw that bridge are dead now. And still, it’s only been there a short time. The water there has been flowing for much, much longer. And there was a time when the water didn’t flow there. That time was even longer, much longer. The worriers have died by the hundreds and hundreds of millions. Who remembers them now? And how many more are going to die after them? They just worry away until God gathers them up. And you’d think God was doing them a favor when he suddenly wiped them away. But God knows better than you or me. All they want to do is fret, and struggle, and keep on struggling. And meanwhile the sun rises, the sun sets, the river there flows to the west and keeps flowing until that too will come to an end.
    No, he had no more plans and he wasn’t planning to let it get to him anymore either. He would make sure not to do that. He did accept an invitation to dinner that night, and even sang a funny song and gave a crazy speech standing on a chair.
    Japi stared for a few months more. He was not in the best of health and the sick benefits from his office had run out. He spent the winter in Amsterdam, where everyone was busy tearing down beautiful houses to replace them with hideous ones, worrying the whole time.
    In May he moved to Nijmegen.
    He wrote me a postcard from there to say that Jeanne had died of her lung ailment. He had been waiting for that, he wrote.
    At half past four one summer morning, during a majestic sunrise, he stepped off the bridge over the Waal. The watchman saw him too late. “Don’t worry, old boy,” Japi had said, then he stepped off the bridge, his face to the northeast. You couldn’t call it a jump, the watchman said, he stepped off.
    They found a walking stick in his room that had belonged to Bavink, and six notes on the wall saying “Dammit” and one with “All right then.”
    The river has kept flowing west since then and people have kept on worrying. The sun still rises too, and Japi’s parents still get their Daily News every evening.
    His trip to Friesland remains a mystery to this day.
    1909–1910

YOUNG TITANS
I
    W E WERE kids—but good kids. If I may say so myself. We’re much smarter now, so smart it’s pathetic. Except for Bavink, who went crazy. Was there anything we didn’t want to set to rights? We would show them how it should be. “We”: that meant the five of us. Everyone else was “them,” the ones who didn’t see it, didn’t get it. “What?” Bavink said. “God? You want to talk about God? Their pot roast is their God.” Other than a few “decent fellows” we despised everyone —and secretly, I still think we were right. But I can’t say that out loud to anyone now. I’m not a hero anymore. You never know who you might need later. Hoyer also thinks you shouldn’t offend anyone. No one ever sees or hears from Bekker anymore. And Kees Ploeger talks about the good-for-nothings who led him down the wrong path. But back then, in our crazy days, we were God’s chosen ones, we were God himself. Now we’re sensible, again except for Bavink, and we look at each other and smile and I say to Hoyer, “What did it all get us?” But Hoyer doesn’t see it that way, he’s a lost cause, he’s turning into one of the bigwigs of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party and all he does is raise his hands in doubt and shrug.
    We were never clear about what we were going to do exactly, but we were going to do something . Bekker had some vague idea about blowing up