Eavesdropping and Styx

both are present - to the letter

 
     








5
Eavesdropping and the Styx

 The next morning, both siblings woke up with heavy heads. Carl hadn’t been able to sleep well at all, wriggling and jerking all night on his broad bed in a delirious half-sleep, chasing�"always chasing�"someone, or else escaping from a labyrinth of cobblestone-walled dining halls, velour-covered streets, and gigantic corn barrels with moustached guys in mirrored sunglasses lurking at the bottom. He woke every hour or so and raised his sweaty head, listening. Whose cautious steps were those approaching? Were they coming? Were they by the door? Were they already in?

Carl sneaked home deep in the night, after having cycled, straight from the train station, with his bike’s light off, to a forest on the city’s outskirts where he dug a pit with a dry stick, his pen knife, and his bicycle pump. In that shallow hole, the coordinates of which he noted only with his eyes (no traceable GPS points saved on his smartphone, no!), he placed the counter-intelligence card in its tin corn container. He camouflaged the pit with dry leaves so that the card would be well protected from radio receivers, satellites, and curious Martians. He hands trembled, as did his knees, his jaw, and even his hair, which was now adorned with a little spruce twigs.

John, by contrast, slept like a log, despite (or, thanks to) all the stress and neurons burned the day before. So long did he enjoy Morpheus’s embrace that he was almost forty minutes late getting to his desk. As he slid through the front doors, he noted the clock above reception and bit his lip. Tardiness was not a trump card to employ when hinting about a salary raise.
The usually boringly busy office was today in a rare mood: everyone seemed upset, expecting, and suspecting. The clerks, presales agents, and even department managers were sitting with long faces, mechanically tapping keyboards or receiving phone calls; the secretaries and cashiers were chatting or smiling or both, yet with rubber smiles and deep-frozen eyes.
What’s up? John thought as he passed through the long lobby to his place.
No sooner had he hung up his jacket than Boss’s secretary peeked through the door. “John, come along. Mr. Stelling would like to see you.”
John nodded, then pouted. Of course, his forty minutes had been noticed, and he thought he had no trick in his hat to cover it up. He was wrong.
“We are very pleased with the contract you arranged yesterday,” said Boss after the junior clerk had perched his narrow bottom on the edge of a chair, which was rooted in front of a table as spacious as a small yacht’s deck.
John nodded, not knowing what to say. Then he smiled lightly.
“I’d love to see all my employees work like you do,” Boss went on, leaning back in his broad leather chair, “and bring us that much profit. To show my appreciation, I’ll give you a half day free today.” The director trimmed his tie and settled his metal-rimmed glasses back on his nose, which meant that the brief audience was over.
“Thank you very much,” John said, with a smile that was broader, but still modest. “I’m just doing my best.” But what is this all really about? he wondered, though he didn’t dare utter a word.
Adding a tasteless platitude to the witless, watery, hazy mood, John stood up, resisting the temptation to shrug, and departed. A half day off wasn’t bad, but much better would have been to have a half day off on Friday�"that is, tomorrow. Oh, man, Carl will come today, and he’ll bring along that crazy card and his home-brewed spy microphone, John thought, feeling a bit happier at the thought that lucky coincidences didn’t always shun him. But why didn’t he call? I guess I’ll call him...
After four tries where Carl did not pick up, John began to wonder. Finally, on the fifth try and a full half hour later, there was an answer. “Hi, brother!” he called into the warm-with-use receiver. “Are you okay? I’ve got the afternoon off, you know!”
“Dash it,” he heard from the other end. “I’m, um... I am not really ready to...”
John misunderstood his tone. “Are you sick? But ... you’re at work!”
“Yeah.” Carl coughed a couple of times. “But ... I had a terrible night.”
“Understood,” John said. He felt the pain. He always did, even when not asked to.
A brief silence hung in the air. The younger brother didn’t want to force the conversation, and the older hesitated. “Know what?” Carl finally said. “I’ll come along, at twelve o’clock. But this will be the last time.” There was a pause, then came Carl’s weak voice again. “Johnnie, are you... happy?”
“That I am.” John grinned, refraining from any more comments.
To tell the truth, both the senior engineer and the junior clerk had had enough of being spies; they were already through with the chilling fright and the costly adventures. Yet, as Murphy’s Law would predict, the spies hadn’t yet had enough of them...

***

While the younger Cheesekop had slept in, and while the older had been gulping down a handful of pain killers for his headache, there was a lot happening behind the curtains of the money temple where John served the volatile, faddy goddess of Mammon to earn his chunk of bread with butter. In fact, John had been right: it wasn’t just the top quality work that had prompted his director to grant him a sudden furlough. There was more to it than that�"much more...

***

By the time John had rolled in forty minutes late, it had already been a long day for Boss. He had been brutally woken up at half past five in the morning by two guys in plain clothes who had appeared at his door. The doorbell rang long and demanding.
“Mr. Stelling?” he heard through the intercom.
“Yes, but�"?” he tried to protest.  It was not even dawn yet!
“Open the door!”
The director, still in flannel pyjamas with a birds of paradise pattern, flogged downstairs. Grappling with the rails, he pressed, unwittingly, a hidden switch that automatically inflated a life-sized rubber boa constrictor meant to scare away potential burglars.   
Once on the ground level, he opened all five sophisticated locks and warily let two similarly looking chaps into his spacious vestibule. Police? he guessed. Or something worse? Goodness, not the tax office! But I’m clean, Boss thought frantically. At least, as far as I know...
They weren’t from either agency. Without further overtures, and without conjuring up any papers, one said plainly in a sotto voce (like a bus driver who must utter the same intersections aloud hundreds of times a day), “Algemeen Inlichting en Veiligheids Dienst, inland security department. We need your help, sir.”
The drowsy, pyjama-clad gentleman glanced at the mousy guys in similarly drab jackets and worn jeans, without mirrored sunglasses or any other conspicuous stuff. By now, the springy inflatable reptile (which had assumed the size of an adult anaconda) was staring at the uninvited guests, too. Their faces began to lose their trained blankness.
“Yes?” he replied, half readily. An unpleasant out of control feeling gripped him like a chilling steel glove. What on earth...?
“Please come to your office straight away. We’ll follow you at a distance.” The words plunked down like oversized pieces of hail: still, cold, and colourless, but not so weighty�"perhaps because the inflated, computer-manipulated ‘beast’ had just unhinged its sizeable jaw and poked its pointed, black tongue in the direction of the first guy. The long-faced agent stumbled back, stepping on his colleague’s toe.
“Now?” asked the boss of the house, feeling that he was becoming the boss of this situation, too, though he lacked any clue as to why the tables were turning in his favour. He didn’t see his snake lurching beside him at knee height.
“Now. And don’t forget to leave the rear door of the bank open.” The last phrase was spoken with the speed of a professional auctioneer.

That said, they hurriedly turned around without another word and, bumping into each other, slipped into the early morning fog. Mr. Stelling was left almost alone, in the company of his speechless, albeit hissing, ten-foot-long orangey-black ‘pet’. He scratched his ear, grinned, switched the python pump off, and indulged in a brief bout of doubt. Are they real agents? he wondered for a transient moment, but he soon shoved the shameful heresy aside�"the colourless, deadpan voice and their stony (at least, until they had seen the rubber monster) faces spoke volumes. Plus, who else could know his address, so carefully hidden from all phone books, marketing directories, and advertising agencies?
He reached his bank’s tall doors an easy twenty-one minutes later, hours before the tormenting morning rush. Roughly a minute after he’d finished up with switching off all the alarms, he climbed into his chair (which felt uncomfortably hard and suddenly less broad) and he heard the sound of cautious but sure steps tapping down the hall. So, the faceless men were punctual. They clomped in without knocking and sat down without an invitation.
“Sir,” the clandestine officer said, peering dully at the wall behind the manager’s chair. “A certain action is taking place. Your bank is a part of it.”
“Oh,” he nodded, then shrugged. Dash, why does stuff like this always happen to us? he thought. First, the leaking roof, and now such... guests?
“It is necessary for the security of our State,” came the next phrase.
Of course. Boss nodded, thinking sarcastically but trying to assume a patriotic face. Or, failing that, to at least assume a respectful one.
“We are installing operation officers in several banks. These officers will be stationed in direct proximity to the cash receptions,” the same voice uttered in the same deadpan tone.
The manager nodded again, suppressing a yawn. And...?
“Your bank is supposed to take part in the operation from thirteen-fifteen today to sixteen-fifteen today.”
Humph, thought the director. There goes my extended lunch break. He wriggled in his chair. “Can I ask something?”
“Later,” came the dry, sobering, almost curt reply. “First, let’s see the place.”
The banker stood up and followed the duo downstairs to the main ground floor hall, switching the lights on as they went. Once in situ, he noticed the guys walking around the reception area with plans in their hands.
How’d they get our building plans? he thought with brief disgust, bleak respect, and slight panic. His private bank’s plans had never been made public...

After a short trip around the room, the two mystery men stalled, gazing at a narrow door in the wall�"a built-in closet for brooms, buckets, and the like. Without such lowly implements, the necessary lustre to allure more high-end depositors would never shine up.
“We need a key for this chamber,” the first nameless person requested.
“Um, I think it has no lock,” supposed Boss modestly. “Go ahead and try it.”
The second guy pulled on the handle to open the flimsy plywood door and peer into a dusty, secluded, claustrophobic receptacle that was only deep enough for one slender person to stand. At the moment, a very lean, undernourished broom and a cracked blue bucket were its only occupants.
“Fits?” asked the manager, no knowing if he could finally ask something, or whether he’d better keep his peace.
“It does,” uttered the agent, without looking at the director. Glancing around, he added, “Another?”
“Another what?” clarified Boss dryly. Another hall? It’s in the bank across the street, dummies, he thought.
“Another such room?” The man’s tone didn’t budge. His face remained blank.
“A-ha. You mean another storage closet.” The director was already feeling pretty cross, but he didn’t dare let his impatience slip into his tone. “It’s on the other side of the counter, if I remember correctly.”
The tacit visitor walked around to the other side where, normally, waiting clients were seated. He gripped the door handle. This time, the stubborn door didn’t yield.
“Sir?” the talking one of the two men, who appeared to be in charge, awarded the director with a prompting glance.
“A-ha. You need a key.” The manager was fed up with the agents’ cheekiness. They’re lucky that this bank isn’t one of those bloated, mammoth types where one could barely give a tinker’s damn about things such as closets, he thought. At this bank, Boss knew all of his employees by name, and what each did. He even knew that this closet was used to harbour the presales team’s car kits.
“One moment.” The solid, plump-faced man turned around and trotted, like an errand boy, back to the offices. The presales department, where John de Cheesekop and Matt Dapperman sat, was fourth on the right. Okay, and the car kit box key would be... right here, between the desks. Bull’s eye! Boss thought. Matt will never notice, but John... Well, I’ll figure that out later.
He triumphantly returned to the front counter, dangling the key from the end of his outstretched arm. “Please,” he said with feigned gratuity.

The key screeched and turned in the lock. The agent glanced inside, nodded, and then�" then he stored the key in his pocket without any pardon asked! Boss gulped. What a pity I can’t have the same inflated beast here, he thought ruefully.
“At twelve-fifteen, our officers will take up their positions in these closets. Can you make a small lunch break, so that no visitors will enter this hall at that time?” This was the concluding question of the defender of the State. “And can you, um, also arrange your staff in such a way that people who are, let’s say, overly spontaneous will be kept out of this area for the afternoon?”
“Of course.” Boss smiled smugly, not knowing (nor caring) if he was more amused by the ad hoc staff juggling that he’d have to plan, or by the fact the uninvited parvenus were leaving�"for the moment, at least.

***

When the fair-haired junior clerk ambled through the ornate front door punctually at noon (that is, at twelve-ten or so, in John’s terms), he didn’t need long to spot Carl’s café-latte brown Rover  parked�"or rather, crammed�"in a narrow space between a tree and a footbridge. He opened the car door and tossed his thin briefcase in.
“Hi! Who’s next on the crosshairs?” the younger brother began jovially, but he stopped short. One look at Carl’s dark-circumferenced eyes was enough for John to conclude that today’s hunt wouldn’t be all that frenzied. “Um, are you all right?”
“I’m not... sick,” the engineer wheezed out, sounding like a broken-down engine. “I’m just not very well, either. I haven’t slept at all.”
John nodded, compassionately. Indeed, James Bond’s burdens could be heavy.
Carl started the engine and turned to his brother. “I’ve buried it!” he hissed.
“What? Why? ...When?” John’s thoughts were racing around. “Did your dog die last night?”
“No, not my dog. It!” Carl repeated, in an even more mysterious and quiet tone. He joined his fingers to form a rectangle. “You follow?”
“Where?” John couldn’t believe that the same person who’d been so ardent about their spy mission just hours ago would chicken out so easily.
“In the forest,” came the short, hoarse reply. Carl sneezed and blew his nose.
“In the city, you mean?” John frowned, considering that the city’s colloquial name was Den Bosch, which also meant ‘the forest’ in Dutch.
“No, not in the city, man!” Carl forced a smile. “Deep in the woods. Not far from the spot where we had a barbecue last year, you know?”
John nodded a couple of times. He felt some degree of relief that was mixed, nonetheless, with a light, brief regret that they couldn’t hack it for even one week as spies. After all, the Dutch were known for their angelic patience and endless endurance! But still, he understood his brother’s hesitation. To risk losing their hard-earned solid citizen status, and to gamble up to five years’ incarceration wasn’t peanuts. He sighed, however.
“But don’t worry. I didn’t bury the remote microphone along with it,” Carl rustled, barely audibly.
“Ohhh,” John said, grinning. “Are we going to follow some girls, then?”
“Oh, Johnnie, when will you grow up?” the power plant boss chuckled. “You are still so... so...”
“I was joking,” the younger brother suddenly countered, with a slightly singed tone.
“Fine then. Sorry!” Carl was, as usual, unable to grasp John’s humour, few and far between as his jokes were. He usually meant everything he said with one hundred percent earnestness.
For a while, the two explorers of the  unknown drove in silence. The traffic lights, which at times exceeded the number of cars, turned red for the umpteenth time.
“Let’s do it!” Carl whispered aloud, gradually feeling more light-hearted after the card burial. “We need to switch our mobiles off, and then I’ll turn the microphone on.”
“Fine,” John agreed, without much enthusiasm. “But why do we need to turn our mobiles off?”
“So they won’t interfere with the mike’s magnetic field,” the engineer said curtly, like it was the most obvious answer in the world. That said, he felt even better still. Maybe not quite on par with yesterday’s manic level, but just well enough to tap into someone’s conversation... for the good of the land and the English reading public, of course! His thoughts began to slowly turn back to his Dutch-English article, which he’d postponed for just the week... it was lucky for him that the spy nightmare had been brief.
“Ready?” the enlivened would-be spy asked.
“Ready,” the enervated would-be assistant echoed.
“Let’s go!” Carl zipped open a narrow dust cover and pulled out a pen-sized object with a fluffy round end that resembled a bear’s head. He placed the sincerity-discovering tool on the dashboard, inserted the power cable into the lighter, and turned on a miniscule switch.
John glimpsed at the gadget. “Do you hear anything?” he asked, noticing that Carl had lodged an earphone into his right ear.
“Uh huh,” Carl replied, but vaguely. “I should set up the distance and volume,” he then said, wholly to himself. Carl rummaged inside the dust-cover, pulling infinite small levers and pressing evasive buttons. Suddenly, he frowned. Something had gone off messier than expected.
“Can I help?” John asked cautiously.
“Please,” the mission commander replied with relief. “I’ll connect the system to a speaker. You just need to pull the volume lever up and turn the range switch down to, say, twenty yards.”
“Twenty yards?” John called aloud, sour-faced from the sudden realisation that they were really about to eavesdrop in on their fellow citizens. There must be a law against that...because we, the Dutch, have laws about everything practical, and then some...  he thought uneasily. But he didn’t utter a word of his uneasiness to his brother.
“Do twenty!” the engineer replied, also too loudly for the small space they were in. Then he plugged the jack into the advanced radio socket.
The corners of John’s mouth were pulled down as if by gravity. How on earth could someone measure those evasive yards without a roll ruler, and then set a microphone lever without any markings on the road or any scale on the device?
Suddenly, there was a loud metallic squeal, and then a cacophony of words, an endless shuffling of feet, a chaotic rattling of motors, and even a growl of boats’ underwater engines that all blended together in one formless clamour to fill the interior of the stakeout vehicle, as though the observers had suddenly landed with parachutes in the middle of an Eastern bazaar.
“I hear everyone within two hundred yards around!” John called, louder still.
“One moment,” Carl said as he pulled the jack out of the socket. “I’ll try to focus the range.”
John nodded dully. He always did when unable to delve into technical depths.
Carl pulled the car over, grabbed a screwdriver from his case in the rear seat, fetched a magnifying glass from the glove box, and began to tamper with the device.
“Hmmm, it should be focused to within one yard of the subject now,” he mumbled, searching for their first guinea pig with his short-sighted eyes. “There! Huh?”
John looked in the direction his brother had pointed to and nodded. On the other side of the canal there was a cafe. Most tables were vacant, for the lunch rush had not yet begun. A lonely guy with a trembling newspaper shivered at a corner table. Carl rummaged in his briefcase and hauled a pair of binoculars from it. John’s eyes didn’t even twinkle. His brother’s coffer could contain anything, from parts of an Assyrian chariot to an astronaut’s boot with lunar dust still on it. Nothing surprised him anymore.
“John?” Carl raised his finger.
“Yeah?”  
“Set thirty!” came the command, as though the two were a fighter jet squadron hunting down an enemy aircraft.
“Done,” the clerk replied as he moved the unscaled lever, not sure of where he was adjusting it to.
“Uh huh,” Carl grunted in satisfaction and plugged the audio jack back in. This time, the result was very different; the sounds were coherent and clear.
“Shala-le, shala-la, shala-le, shala-la, I’m in love again,” heard the primed ears of the self-made spy officers. Carl grinned. The crooning vocals from the opposite side of the canal went on before shifting to more serious matters. “Oh-oh-oh, those darn waiters won’t raise a finger! Where’s my coffee? I’m freezing! Shala-le, shala-la... well, at least that waitress has a nice a*s... why’s she not my server, eh? Come here, kitty, come to me, please! ...I’m in love again!”
“Carl!” John poked his brother, who was quivering from suppressed laughter, in his side. “Is this the kind of information we are here for?”
“Well, it’s you who’s setting the range. Aren’t you?” his widely grinning brother replied.
John didn’t ask what amused Carl more�"the pop song or the horny joke. “Forty yards!”  the fair-haired junior spy declared.
Carl swung the fuzzy bear-headed mike to the right. This time, the mood was dry, rough, and petulant. “No! I said no!” a man’s voice yelled over a cell phone. “Four per cent? Who do you think I am, a bum? Four and a half? Offer it to your granny to pay for her undertaker, or to some charity. Nope, no less than six, or I’ll see you in court! Yes! No! I’m done with this discussion! Next week? No, next week is too late; kiss my rump! I won’t�"”
Without waiting till the end, Carl snatched the jack out of the socket and glanced askew at his comrade.
“Huh,” he uttered. The second talk didn’t paint their fellow compatriots in any prettier a light. Carl’s thoughts about writing a glistening essay had become overcast, even a bit sombre. As though ceding to his mood, the natural sun also frowned and hid its tired face behind the greyish flannel of a cloud passing by.
“I know!” Now it was John’s turn to raise his pointing finger. “We shall first find out who’s talking in a calm, cosy, easy way. Then we’ll know they’re surely talking about something that makes them happy, as we Dutch often do! And then we’ll point the device at them, so we won’t waste any more time.”
“Great idea,” Carl nodded. “Try people sitting in a car so there won’t be too much background noise.”
“Okay.” John took the binoculars from his bespectacled sibling. To tell the truth, he rarely needed any help at all seeing within a range of a hundred yards. His eyes, an heirloom from their grandma that Carl for some reason didn’t possess, were sharp as snipers’. After a brief survey, he spotted three middle-aged ladies seated in a small red car with a rear window open. They were chatting, it seemed, in a calm and comfortable way.
“Sixty yards: what do you think?” he asked Carl, who, without the binoculars, couldn’t tell a bike from a scooter from as close as twenty yards.
“Yep,” the engineer agreed, without even looking in the direction.
“Okay, I’ll set sixty.” John cranked the lever a little bit one way.  “Can you flip the volume up, please?”
“Yep!” Carl turned a round handle clockwise. And then...

“And?” the first voice they were eavesdropping on seemed to be echoing their thoughts.
“We’ve visited all the flats, from number two to number one-twenty-four.  We talked to three people who were open enough to listen. We offered them the writings about the last days and Armageddon.”
“So, how many have received the word of truth?” enquired the first voice. It was peremptory, conceited, and stern.
“None...” came the weak answer, followed by a weary sigh. “But I hope...”
“You can’t just hope, Sister Elizabeth! You must do what the organisation had entrusted us to do,” the first voice shut down Sister Elizabeth’s flimsy excuses like a rock slide cutting off a mountain trail. “We’re in charge of saving the world, and gathering the elect from among the twelve tribes!” There was a meaningful pause, filled only with two deep sighs. After a moment, the monologue started up again. “Still, when you approach our mission the way you do... it’s little wonder that our district has the lowest conversion rate in Holland!” The holy tirade ended on a dramatic, phony tone.
There came no answer. All John and Carl could hear was what seemed to be a soft, not very calm and not very comfortable sobbing. The older brother lifted his brows, and the younger brother frowned. The steep contrast between saving the world and the district’s low results was too abyssal to bridge.
“Hmm, Johnnie,” Carl began, his face still sour. He switched the microphone off and began to open the passenger side window with the electric controls on the centre consol. “Our problem is that the sound quality would be too low if we tried to tap a conversation with all our windows shut, especially if all their windows were shut, too. Am I right?”
“Umm, perhaps,” John shrugged, not sure what his brother was getting at. ”And?”
“So, we should set the mike outside!” came his brother’s answer, clear as day and followed by an even clearer smile.
“But...” John had just seen how often the device’s head had needed repositioning. “But how could we move it right or left?”
“My car has got electric side mirrors, hasn’t it?” the engineer replied plainly. “Just tape the thing to your side mirror, and we can control it from in here! Get it?” He reached into the rear seat and, without even glancing at his briefcase, he pulled out a roll of black double-sided heavy-duty tape.
John couldn’t help but smile as he took the tape. He flung his door open, squatted next to the mudguard, and began to stick the tape to the top side of the mirror.
“Johnnie, under the mirror, please!” Carl pleaded, gripping his head with both his hands. “Otherwise they’ll see it at once!”
“All right,” the junior clerk mumbled, unrolling the sticky tape with his unskilled hands and cramming the gadget inside the narrow recess between the side mirror and the door. “Like this?”
Carl nodded once. “Fine. We’ll test it as we go.” He seemed to be in a sudden hurry. “Now, get in!”
The engine growled and, once again, the common grey fabric of cobblestone Dutch streets spread under the wheels of the genteel English vehicle that was equipped with a remote microphone and crew of two smart agents in plain clothes. The window on John’s side couldn’t close fully anymore, owing to the cable running from the microphone to the device. The outside noise and draught from the lowered window were annoying. John plugged his right ear with his finger.
“We’re only driving at a snail’s pace,” Carl said with an apologizing air. “And, if you want, you could tape your window up.”
“Oh, Carl, don’t worry. It’s not that bad,” John said as he waved with his free hand. “Anyways, we’re on a mission, aren’t we?”
“Yep,” Carl agreed without listening�"which was, perhaps, better than listening without agreeing. “Set the range to fifteen yards, won’t you?”
“Why so close?” John asked, glancing askew at his brother.
“Because we can only tap the car in front of us, right?” the expert explained.
“Right.” John fumbled inside the dust cover, trying once again to remember which way had made the lever go ‘down’.

#

The first victim of their travelling eavesdropping was dumb as a stone. So was the second. Carl furrowed his brow. We Dutch are renowned for friendly chatting, he thought sourly. We must be in a district full of foreigners. And indeed, in the third car sat two busily chatting men speaking in Mandarin, and in the fourth the radio blasted out heavy-metal music that was so heavy that John snatched the jack out of the radio to save his ears.
“I’ll turn left here! There’ll be more Dutch to the east of us, I bet,” Carl declared, making a U-turn instead and skipping over the opposite curb, barely avoiding a head-on collision with an ice-cream booth.
John sat motionless, piqued by every bump of the cobblestone lanes, and feeling that he was getting tired of all these spy charades. He wanted to finish their aimlessly clandestine mission as soon as possible. “Carl, let’s try to find a car with at least two people in it,” he advised wearily.
“That’s what I’ve been doing!” Carl growled. He clearly wasn’t used to the aggressive style of driving in the capital. His hands were wet with sweat, and he hawed and moaned at every innocent trick like cutting in to change lanes�"the very tricks that were, for John, a piece of cake.
“Carl, shall I drive, maybe?” the younger brother asked, taking pity on Carl, whose provincial clumsiness wasn’t well suited for the pushy capital.
“Would you mind? Please!” the chief engineer agreed readily. The problem with the draughty window seemed now to have disappeared on its own�"two birds with one stone. Carl pulled over and the brothers switched seats, careful not to nudge the complicated knot of wires on the passenger side.
“I’m going to drive along the Amstel embankment,” John said. He knew by heart when and where the next traffic jam would occur. “Then we’ll switch to the south, towards the Olympic stadium, and then back. It will take an hour or so. Will that be enough?”
“Yep!” Carl nodded. He felt much better with his hands on the gadget, instead of on the steering wheel. He frowned down at the device. What on earth has John done to the levers? he wondered.
For the next half hour, however, the big game hunters were chasing small fry. Most folks in the cars they were lucky enough to tap were sales agents talking about the same witless money stuff that John had had more than enough of already that day. At times there was a technician hassling a client, or a couple bickering about shopping and kids, or some babbling tourists in a rental car.
The travelling tapping wasn’t too safe, either, for John had to keep a close and steady distance behind the car in question�"but few drivers tolerated an unwanted ‘tail’ hanging close behind them. Annoyed, they’d skip, all too soon, into the next lane, between two buses or the like, suspicious that perhaps the police in a civie car were about to scrutinise their modest sins against the state’s shrinking purse.
“Know what, Carl?” John said after half an hour of that tricky cat-and-mouse game. “I’ll head back downtown.”
 
Carl nodded. It was a logical step for his cool-headed, city-wise brother. After all, in the centre of the city, most lanes were one way and they ran along canals; the tempo would be slower and there would be lots of foreigners, complete with spies... But no, no spies anymore! the solid citizen thought in a rush of self-preserving instinct, recalling the long face of the guy they’d arrested in the Bristol hotel the day before. Luckily, we’re back to earth just in time to glean some truly Dutch feelings and words. He sighed with both relief and brief grief.
“What?” John reacted to his brother’s mixed mood, turning the steering wheel with one hand like a toy, easily manoeuvring between bicycles, trams, and jaywalking tourists. “Already fed up with a tough man’s job?” He grinned lightly.
“No, Johnnie,” the engineer looked sullen and sombre, like an eclipsed moon. “I’ve been feeling a real pity on... my countryman from...” he trailed off mysteriously.
“What about?” John asked. “Are you having a big feud with your neighbour?”
“Nope.” Carl brushed the thought away with his hand, as though he were chasing away a bumbling June bug. “I mean, ugh... that poor Englishman, whoever he was!”
“Now, come on, Carl,” John snorted. “Are you getting old? You’ve never been so sensitive before!”
“Well,” Carl tidied his necktie up, “all that chocolate, and that nutty theatre yesterday...  I’ve played a nasty joke on that guy, and I should ask his pardon�"if he’d ever accept it! The cops snapped him the very next minute he left the taxi, eh? That was probably all my fault. I feel... really lousy!”
“Man, you’ve got it all confused,” the clerk shook his head. “It’ll just take the guy a mite of time�"a half minute or so, or less!�"and he’ll have scrubbed all the cocoa off his passport, and voila! Clean as a baby. Besides, walking around with a case full of cash isn’t a crime. Except, to be honest, his bank certificates were fishy, to say the least.”
“Yeah, maybe.” The engineer leaned his head to the side. “But the whole thing just doesn’t sit right with me. I’d love to ask his forgiveness, if we ever meet again. Maybe I’ll see him in London.”
“Carl, I don’t even recognise you any more!” John rubbed his forehead with his palm. “One day you’re set to stage a daredevil show, then you’re afraid to say ‘boo’ to a goose!”
Carl turned his head. “But men aren’t geese. If I ever meet him in, say, ten years, I bet I’d still recognise his face as sure as I would my own!”
“And then he’d flip your driver’s licence into a loo and call a road cop!” John giggled. “Would that make you feel better?”
Carl didn’t reply. Spinning his thumbs around each other, he thought. Maybe I should spend this year’s summer holiday in England. I’ll take the kids along and try to find him... in Brighton, perhaps? Just to say that I’m an honest man, not a real spy basher. Or, maybe I should announce something in the local press? ‘Someone is sought to ask pardon?’ But where? In Kent, or Surrey, or maybe Auckland? Where do English spies normally go on holiday?
The traffic suddenly slowed�"not to the paralysed level of the evening jam, but it did slow down noticeably. Carl peered anxiously forward. John didn’t�"it wasn’t worth the effort; it was probably just a lorry being discharged one street ahead. Or maybe two cars had a fender bender and the drivers are exchanging insults, injuries, or business cards.
To switch his sights from the endless grey pavement dotted with pink and creamy-coloured chewing gum clumps, the junior clerk glanced above him. There, between the modestly tall buildings that were well spaced by the canals, a good chunk of modestly blue sky was visible. That’s why he loved Amsterdam on the whole, and its downtown in particular: for the mood, light, and space its broad canals brought along. I should remember to tell Carl that one when he’s not feeling so anxious, John thought, eying his brother.
This time, however, amidst the company of the fluffy, gleaming white clouds, which leisurely sunbathed in their invisible rocking chairs, chatting and tidying up their intricate coiffures, one whirling round object floated right in the middle of the spot in the sky that was visible to John.
It’s the silver cloud! The thought electrified him. He felt both excited and confused. He wanted to share a conversation with the talking cloud like he’d done twice before, but he wasn’t alone this time; his brother would likely think he was crazy if he started talking aloud to the sky. Well, he wondered, can the cloud read thoughts?
Hi! John greeted the cloud with his eyes alone, intensifying their gaze towards the round object, which had always had a response in the past. What’s up?
“I’m up, and all is fine!” he heard the immediate reply, in the same, silver-clear tone. “In four days, a ship sinks, the engineer flees, the pants burn; you cross the river, but return.”
“Umm,” John gulped aloud. It was the first time the cloud had spoken in a rhyming riddle, and he could only grasp it in part�"and a very little part at that. He didn’t know what to think...
“Yeah?” Carl turned his face to him.
“Oh, nothing,” John replied weakly. Too much explanation would baffle anyone, and there had already been enough suspense yesterday.
“Do you think the jam will last for long?”
“Well,” John began as he glanced more upwards once, noticing the silver cloud bouncing a couple of times between its creamy colleagues before launching off with its usual, neck-breaking speed. “To tell you the truth, I’m thirsty.”
“Then let’s make a stop,” said Carl firmly. The solid citizen had almost reconstructed his normal crust of indifferent philistine normality, which he’d dreamed of shedding with the help of the spy card only a day before. “I’ve just smelled popcorn!”

By an occasion or a miracle�"or maybe some legacy of the silver-sided cloud�"a parking spot ten yards in front of them became vacant at that very moment. The clandestine officers, almost forgetting the game they were playing, steered their tired, coffee-coloured Bucephalus into it.  
“Oh, man, we’re only a hundred yards away from my bank.” John slapped his knee and chuckled. “What fun!” He loved coincidences as much as he liked his office.
Carl (who didn’t hear John’s statement because of the alluring smell, which was clogging his ears, too) was already standing with his binoculars in hand, scanning for a cafe.
“Hey, what’s up, Charlie?” John tapped the car’s roof to get his brother’s attention. “There’s a vendor just over there!”
“All right, all right,” Carl muttered, disappointed that there was no need for more gadgets on this snack mission. He sighed and put his last spy accessory back into his bottomless briefcase. “Let’s go.”
Back inside the car after visiting the vending cart, the brothers consumed their provisions, for the first few minutes, in silence. Then, Carl pulled the microphone jack from its cover and plugged it into the socket. He turned the ignition key halfway to power the device.
John knit his brow. “More?” he demanded with a sour face. “Haven’t you had enough for today? I have.”
“Well, just another minute or so,” the older brother said excusably, unwilling to go into depth about how beneficial the unique gadget could be to a true electronic engineer.
“What for?” John refused to cease. “Are you planning on starting a detective agency?”
“Um,” Carl scratched his head in suddenly deep thought. “Maybe that’s a good idea!”
John, frightened that he was once again brewing a beer that he himself would have to drink�"and he was already fed up with the first�"kept his sultry peace. Carl, feeling the heavy mood, plugged the jack in and squeezed the earpiece into his ear. John watched with growing amusement as his brother’s thoughts fluttered around his face like frivolous butterflies about a stump.
“Girls?” he asked Carl’s unplugged ear, sure that this time he’d hit the bull’s eye.
“Gulls!” the engineer replied. He was indeed following the winged dancers turning somersaults over the shimmering pale blue water with his sparkling brown eyes.

John chuckled openly. His brother had taken half a day off work, had driven a hundred miles from home, had even brought secret gadgets along�"and all just to hear the screechy, sharp, guttural calls of the sea fowl. What an oversized child in a square suit and shiny shoes!  
“Feed them your pop corn, then,” John said to the electrician’s ear. “They’d fly nearer so you wouldn’t need your gadgetry.”
“Oh, indeed!” Carl flung the door open, and stuck his right foot outside,  ready to celebrate nature.
“Sheeps!” he cussed as the seat belt he’d pulled by accident recoiled sharply like a bowstring, then caught on the open bag of popcorn and dragged it backwards until it smashed against his shoulder, upsetting the bag’s powdery contents all over his jacket and the car. “Darn it! I just cleaned the car last week!” He stared at the endless salty-sweet crumbs scattered in all possible crevices with the silent fury of a hostess who’d burned her prize pie just minutes before the big party began.
“Hang on, Carl!” John finished his juice and whopped the engineer’s shoulder, now white from salt, several times until both brothers began to sneeze. “I’m just two steps from my office, right? I know we’ve got a vacuum for our sales team’s cars. I’ll just grab it from the closet, clean the car, and bring it back.”
“Oh, great, Johnnie. Thank you!” After John climbed out of the car, the older brother walked around the vehicle and got into the driver’s seat.
John hurried towards those elaborate doors he knew so well, searching for his key ring in his pockets as he walked. He smiled slyly to himself. Good thing I’ve got this spare key for the car kits closet, he thought. Boss will never be any the wiser...

***

In the bank’s reception hall, four sour-faced clients were lingering, filling in reams of dull forms or reading even duller financial services adverts. Two early, lazy spring flies sat on water cooler, rubbing their legs together and crawling around. John, greeting everyone he passed with a glistening eye, rushed to the car kits closet, snatched the key from his pocket, and plunged it into the lock�"all within four ephemeral seconds.
“John, wait, wait!” the reception lady called to him while she waved her hand frantically. The customer who’d just stepped up to the reception desk peered, with a grumpy face, at his watch. John, too busy with his search to hear or notice anyone else, turned the handle.
The rumpled junior bank clerk swung the door open and stood there, frozen stiff, his previously carefree face growing long. Instead of a mobile vacuum cleaner, two car kits, and extra sets of windshield wipers, a complete stranger peered out at him from inside the dusty closet.
“Sorr...” John mumbled, slamming the door closed, turning pale, and gazing around him in growing horror. Had he come, by mistake, to the wrong bank? No, this is definitely my bank, he confirmed. The lady waving at me from the reception desk is the same one who waves at me every morning...
“John, lock the door, please!” The receptionist ran hurriedly up to him, trying to rescue the situation while looking back over her shoulder to soothe the disgruntled client with a most charming smile she’d learned from TV shows. “Okay?”
But John didn’t hear her. He’d feverishly deduced that the guy in the closet was surely a bank robber. He ran out into the street, snatched his mobile from his pocket, and tapped 1-1-2.
“Amsterdam Police, how can we serve you?”
“Our bank has been broken into!” the junior clerk yelled. “I just saw a robber hiding in the broom closet! Please come quickly! My name is John, and I work at the bank, and I know that no one should be in that closet besides a vacuum and brooms, but there was someone standing inside of it! Please, it’s probably a gangster! Hurry up!”
“What is the address?” the dispatcher asked dryly, without sharing his fright.
“Singel, twelve-thirty-seven!” the clerk shouted into the phone, scaring off the innocent gulls that had just been lured by the pop corn floating down the sidewalk on tiny gusts of wind.
“There’s no bank at Singel twelve-thirty-seven, sir,” came the unemotional answer.
“Oh, sorry. I meant, twelve-seventy-three. The office at the corner, near the post office.”
“Are you sure there’s no one at work on the electrical or plumbing?”
“Absolutely not!” John couldn’t believe that the police wouldn’t believe him. The Dutch were supposed to be trusting! “It was a locked closet, and there was someone standing inside it! He’s a robber!” A thought suddenly came to him like popcorn on the breeze. “What if he’s armed?”
“Your name, please?”
“I’m John... that is, de Cheesekop, John, born on September the twelfth, in Rea�"”
“We’ll share your information with the street patrol. Thank you, sir.” Suddenly there was a dial tone in his ear. As usual, he thought grudgingly.

John whirled around on his heel a couple of times, not knowing what to do. Should he run back into the bank? Or wait outside for the police? Or call Carl and tell him to flee for safety? A car tooted behind him, interrupting his frantic thoughts. Who, what, why? John’s mind raced. The police? So soon?
“Johnnie, is your vacuum cleaner broken? I’ll cope, I guess. Get in!” Carl must have seen him come out of the bank through his binoculars and assumed that the errand had met a roadblock.
“Oh, brother, I’ve found a bank robber in the closet! Will you come and look?” his lips fired, his eyes skipping from Carl to the still-unguarded front door. What if the thief was indeed armed? John gulped, beginning to fall prey to his own fears as his power of persuasion, usually employed to enchant clients, turned inwardly against himself.
In the meantime, another car�"this one stuck behind the brown Rover, which was blocking the way�"tooted loudly. A line of cars and lorries had begun to queue up, reminding John that one-way streets weren’t always a windfall.
“I’ll drop the car at the bridge!” Carl called as he pressed the accelerator. The civvy vehicle screeched its modest tires for the first time in its life and dashed ahead just thirty yards. Carl parked crookedly and jogged back to where his brother was standing.
“Johnnie, what’s going on? Are you sure it’s a robbery?” Carl’s voice was hesitant. He still hadn’t fully recovered from yesterday’s foibles. “Haven’t you got cameras all around?”
“Come, Doubting Thomas, please!” Suddenly regaining his bravado, the ardent warden of the investors’ riches pulled the reluctant technologist towards the bank door. “Come and see!”
“Do I really have to... have a look?” doubted Carl again. Though he was sure of his ability to view the scene, he was hesitant to become a witness. All that signing of endless papers, and then a court case... And few things are more costly and boring than a Dutch court case, he thought suddenly and rather unpatriotically.
“All right, then come and listen!” John still wanted to nab the crook�"if not with his own nimble hands, then at least with the brawn and firearms of others.
Inside the reception hall, there were now at least eight sullen customers sitting or standing, waiting their turn. The lonely receptionist at the desk was toiling like a Korean factory robot, yet the line up of disgruntled bank clients only grew. Even the flies weren’t relaxed anymore�"they buzzed around the water cooler like two small aircraft, feeling the stress and smelling the sweat (of which there was currently an abundance) around them.

The poor receptionist was swamped; there was no way she would notice the Queen of Sheba, complete with a caravan of twenty gold-laden camels, entering her reception hall�"much less  an ‘overly spontaneous’ employee returning for the second time on his afternoon off.
Thereby unnoticed, the two scared brothers hurried through the hall and snuck, on their tippy-toes, towards the unguarded closet.
The clerk set his ear to the door and cupped his hand around it. Carl did the same. Several clients glanced at them askew and retreated, tactfully, a couple of steps away. What a bank ...
“Hear anything?” John asked, himself hearing a sort of remote rumble from within.
“Yeah.” Carl’s ears were a notch better than his eyes. “It’s almost as though someone is... um...”
“What? As though someone is what?” John’s heart raced quicker than a gnu fleeing from a leopard.
“As though someone is, um, flatuating inside,” declared Carl, rubbing his chin. He couldn’t decide if he should grin, frown, or show no emotions in light of the gravity of the situation. “Are you sure that’s not a W-C?”
“A W-C?” John exclaimed, insulted. Catching the irked looks of the distracted customers, he straightened up and switched back to whisper. “Our only rest rooms are a floor above. This is my car kits closet!”
“Have you got the key?” Carl asked, too simple-mindedly for the situation.
“Ye-es!” John hissed, lowering his voice to the level of a night breeze. “I already opened it, and instead of the normal stuff, someone was standing inside it! A total stranger!”
“Hum.” The engineer’s deepest instinct was telling him that John’s take was a little fishy. “How could he get through a closed door?” he asked.
“Well, Carl... um, bank robbers use picklocks, don’t they?” John asked with a shrug. “Haven’t you ever watched a crime show on TV?”

Carl straightened up, then tapped his fingers on the door. He set his ear back against the wood, listening. The muffled sounds continued, now followed by an acrid, unwholesome smell. “Um, I think we better wait,” he concluded, scowling and waving his hand under his nose to dispel the odour. He nodded towards the exit. “Come along; let’s get some fresh air.”
 Back in the tiny entry lobby, the older brother leaned towards John’s ear and whispered, “To my judgement, you’d better keep out of that.”
“Why?” John couldn’t believe his ears. “A gangster’s inside! You mean�"”
“A gangster�"or maybe an undercover cop?” Carl grinned shrewdly, memories of their own recent undercover escapades still fresh in his mind.
“What for? Put there by whom?” John shook his head, disbelieving, but he felt himself cooling down a bit.
“Johnnie, don’t be so simple,” Carl said with a frown. “People pilfer at work�"is that news for you? A year or so ago, I had hidden cameras set up in my power plant, and guess what? The pricey copper wires stopped ‘disappearing’. You get it?”
“Dash,” John puffed. “I’ve already called the police.”
 Carl groaned and clamped his head with both his hands. “That was a silly move! We’d better get in the car, and the quicker the better!” The older brother lurched off towards the Rover, but John lingered behind, biting his lip. He felt like a yacht caught in a strait between a ferocious western current and a lashing eastern wind�"he was pushed out by his yearning for safety, yet pulled back by his unwavering sincerity. One moment, please, he wanted to beg, but there were no moments to spare.

No sooner had the engineer’s shoes crossed the narrow lane than the blinking blue lights of a police car sped up to block the bank’s entry. Two officers sprang jauntily from its doors, one of them almost hitting John with his elbow.  
“Police Corps Amsterdam, good afternoon!” he said. “Your documents, please?”
“Are you coming to my call?,” John asked, displaying the bank ID badge that still hung around his neck. “I guess I’ll take you inside, then.”
The officers followed John to the reception hall. Finally able to glance up from the unending queue, the receptionist gaped in astonishment at John and his posse. Seeing the insolent clerk messing up all the instructions she’d got from Boss, the receptionist pulled out her mobile.
“Sorry, Mr. Stelling, but can I... um, have a moment of your attention?” she almost whimpered  into the device. After a moment she said, “Yes. Quite serious, sir.”
But John and the two officers were unaware of the lady's dread.
“Where?” asked the officer in charge, looking at John expectantly.
“Here!” John led them to the closet door and tapped on it with his fingernails�"subtly, though, as if he were unwilling to disturb the gassing gangster inside. The officers stood by, unmoving for a brief moment. Then, one of them spoke a couple of words into his radio and stretched his hand toward the door knob.
The receptionist spilled into the hall, the mobile clamped to her ear. “Sir!” she urged as she touched the police officer’s blue-clad elbow. “Our director would like to talk to you.”
The officer took the phone. John stood by, blinking, feeling helpless, lonely, and empty. His proverbial yacht was about to run aground ...
“Yes, captain de Leeuw...” spoke the guy in uniform into the receptionist’s cell phone. “Yes... yes, I understand... uh huh... yes... who?” he reached for a note in his pocket. “Mr. de Cheese ... Kop ... something like that... no, I can’t tell...yes, of course... I understand, sir... Goodbye!”
He passed the phone back to the owner. As he did so, he noticed the many pairs of astonished eyes staring up at him from their financial briefs.
“Sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” the head policeman uttered. “Just a routine control call. Goodbye!”
 As the four riveted, black-polished heels rattled down the stairs towards their city cruiser, John, himself riveted to the floor, felt a streak of cold sweat on his forehead. He knew what was about to happen...
“John!” the no longer friendly lady said curtly as she passed the mobile to him. The sternness in her eyes barely mingled with a miniature trickle of compassion. “Mr. Stelling is on the line for you.”
The junior clerk shuddered and turned pale. How could a boon like a free afternoon have ended almost with a swoon?

***

This afternoon, both brothers were again men of few words. Carl felt guilty that he’d opted out too rapidly and left John behind for what boiled off to be heavy talk with his bank’s boss. John, on the other hand, was too stunned to babble. The last words the director had roared into the phone were still reverberating over and over again in his ears: “Mind your own business and be as still as death!” John tried to explain that he’d just had the bank’s best interests at heart, but the director hung up on him before he could get the words out.
As he listened, for the second time in less than an hour, to the lifeless dial tone, something broke inside him. It felt like a spring or a valve in the intricate, delicate machinery of his soul had let go.         
“How about I give you a ride to Utrecht?” Carl asked, trying to drive out the self-imposed guilt with self-sacrificial chauffeur service. “Eh?”
“Just give me a ride to the train station, please.” John’s voice was suspiciously slow, notably colourless, and eerily empty. “That way you won’t spend the whole evening on the A2.”
Carl nodded slightly. Of course he knew that the motorway between Utrecht and Den Bosch was incessantly plagued with heavy traffic jams, and he also sensed that John would like to be alone�"but that it would not be good for him to be alone now. Luckily, he won’t be alone at home, the older brother comforted himself. He agreed to take his now-deflated sibling to the train station, and they drove there in silence. John got out of the car and closed the door softly behind him.
“Bye, Johnnie,” Carl called as his brother gave a quick farewell wave through the window. “Call me after the weekend.” The engineer’s spectacles oozed a little warmth and a tiny light, while over the bluish, now sparkless eyes of the junior bank clerk, a patina of cold, dark, and lonely night began to fall.

***

 After the train ride, John listlessly cycled home from the Utrecht station. He could barely find the strength to turn the pedals, even though his legs weren’t sore; no, his pain sat deeper, where no medicine could reach and where no medium could see.
He gobbled up dinner without tasting the spicy food on the plate. Afterwards, he stood motionless by the kitchen window before he trailed into the living room and plunked down onto the sofa next to Sveta, who was watching an Indian soap. After an hour, he wandered upstairs absentmindedly to his home office and tried to read a couple of reports just to keep his mind busy and dissolve the pitch-black clouds that seemed to be engulfing, strangling, and petrifying his heart.
“I’m going to bed,” he told his wife at about ten o’clock, and he padded into their bedroom, feeling a strange numbness in his chest.
Sveta knew that something unusual was going on: her usually lively, eloquent, and sunny-eyed man had no more joie de vivre. The man who had come home to her that evening had been a grey shade of a person, with stony eyes and a wooden voice.
John lowered his darkened face onto the pillow and lay on the bed, motionless, still, quiet. Too quiet...

***

 Am I asleep? John wondered. Or am I in a weird dream?  I’m walking down a steep slope. It’s dusk. It’s turning dark, and shadows and shuffling sounds are creeping around everywhere, but I’m alone. Or am I? I look around to see that I am ... Where am I? The slope is endless. The lights that at first shone above, somewhere above, are now desperately remote, weak, sputtering. They’re beginning to disappear! I’m groping in the darkness. It’s like a wall, this pitch blackness... but somewhere over there, a feeble twilight is beckoning...  yes, a weak silver twilight... It’s not light, exactly. It’s a... a misty shadow of... of what? A river? A river of mercury...

***

“He came home as though he’d been stricken by a bolt of lightning or bitten by a cobra.” Sveta stood downstairs by the phone, speaking worriedly into the receiver. “No, I’ve never seen him like that before... No, he wasn’t drunk!... No, Mom, not everyone, even in Amsterdam, smokes dope. I just don’t like the way he was... it was as though his heart had been pumped out, with no more sap left. You know?”
***

It’s a broad, a very broad strip of mist... a very pale, lifeless, still lake... or is it a bay? Or a river? Where am I? Why can’t I feel the ground? Why can my hands pass through each other like they’re immaterial? Why is it so dark... Is anyone there? Sveta? Carl? Anyone? Mother? Matt? ...Whose shuffling and moaning can I hear? Is there anyone alive out there? What’s that dot emerging from the mist? Is it a boat? What is it? A boat... a lonely boat by the shore...
My eyes see only shades, shadows, and whirling darkness creeping around like endless spiders and snakes ... there’s someone in the boat, a lonely figure in a long robe... does he know the way? Does he know where I am, or what this is all about? Could he hear me call out if I tried?

***

Sveta finished her talk with her mother on the west side of Holland and hurried upstairs. Her heart was heavy with suspicion. There was a foreboding, a feeling of a dreaded peril, weighing her down. It seemed like an ominous event, or the touch of a poisoned glove, was about to fall upon her household. She perched on the edge of the bed and touched her husband’s cheek. It was pale, parchment-coloured, and too smooth. Why is it so cold? she wondered.
“Boatman, boatman, what sea is this?” she heard John mumble. She turned pale ...
#

My voice is dull, hoarse, stuffy, as though I’m speaking from the depths of a cave�"a lifeless, pitch-black cave where a single ray of light has never once fallen, not even the light of a half-shade... And the cave is full of thick, condensed, impenetrable darkness... Boatman, who are you? Who is that in the boat?
“This is the Styx, the river of the dead,” the hoary-haired boatman spoke.
Why? Why am I here? I’m alive, aren’t I? Or? Or...
I try to move and speak, but I can’t. I move my hands in front of my face and my skin looks  ghostly white. I pinch myself to wake from the dream, but feel nothing. I'm elastic, like the tongue of a flame... I feel weightless... I should enter this boat, I just know it... After all, there’s no way back. My feet aren’t obeying me, and they pull me, they move me forward, they push me into the vessel...  I’m already inside ...Why? No, I want back. No... why? No! I want back... why can’t I speak when I need it most? The boat is launching out into the silent water. I’m crossing the water, but why? To where? Where am I going...

            ***

“Hello? Good evening, my name is Sveta. I’m calling to talk with a doctor... Yes, it’s urgent... Thank you.”
Sveta drummed her fingernails on the wooden top of the hall table. She played with the pumpkin-coloured edge of her sari. She nervously twirled her hair around one finger. Where is the doctor? I said it was urgent, didn’t�"
“Oh, good evening, sir. I’m calling because... my husband seems to have stopped breathing. No, no alcohol! No, no funny stuff... He’s thirty-four ... Yes, I know! That’s why I called! ...Did I what? ...No, I don’t know how... Yes, he’s very pale. What should I do? ...What do you mean? What!? It’s Pandorastraat one-thirty-nine in Utrecht. What? Sir?”
Sveta heard long tones on the other end of the phone. The ambulance was coming, the doctor had said. He also said that the only thing she could do now was pray.
She rushed upstairs to the small storage chamber one floor above their bedroom, where her movable altar with the little statuettes of gods usually stood. It wasn’t there.
Her thoughts whirled. She moaned, thinking that the altar should have remained with her mother, some hundred miles away. She joined her palms and bowed before the empty shelf where the altar usually stood. Which names should I call in a time like this, Brahman ... Vishnu? she wondered, feeling her head begin to whirl as well.
***

I’m on the other side. The shore is dark and stony. It’s very cold... it’s icy now. There are no sounds, no movement in the air... There’s no air... I’m not breathing anymore...  I’m sliding down, down, down, as though on a runaway railway cart with a cement block tied around my neck. Are there no posts to catch hold of? No trees, no stumps? There’s not a single feeble blade of grass, not a stone... nothing to catch and grasp and clutch and cling... There’s no way back...

***
“Om, Adyanta shakti devi, Adi shakti Maheshwari, Om Jaya Jagadheesha Hare, bhakta janonke sankat, bhakta janonke sankat, kshan me dor kare.” Sveta stopped for a moment, unable to remember the proper lines in Sanskrit, then she went on anyways. She knew she must be mixing up all the prayers and mantras, but it was she, not the learned pundits from Vrindavan, who was now desperate in the cold, silent home as her man lay breathless in bed. She had no time to waste with pondering. She felt, with an inborn intuition inherited from uncounted generations of her diligent Vayshia ancestors, that time was running out like sand through her fingers. The caravan was departing.
“Gods, give me my husband back!” she pleaded, this time in Hindi, feeling a strange emptiness in her head. “Send him back, even from Nirvana. Please, please!” She stopped, unsure if she should dare to bother the major gods over one little soul, which had perhaps reached an end of one of its lives on earth�"and was ready to be infused into a body of a baby somewhere in Orissa. How could she dare grab his soul back and risk turning him into a pariah who never reached Nirvana?  
She needed a smaller god, or a younger god, one who wouldn’t be so soon resented... a smaller god... Goodness, which one in her sizeable pantheon was 'smaller'? And how could she, a mere mortal, judge which god is inferior, if they are all eternal? No, there’s no time to call mom and ask for names...  
She clasped her head with her hands, trying to visualise all the ochre- and saffron-coloured figures so well known from her youth. They blended together in her mind like one thick crowd with many faces, hands, and legs, much like the dancing Shiva.
Wait a minute! she thought. She learned from her mother that, when a Hindu arrives in a foreign land, if there is a valuable god to find there, then he could be added up to the rest. When she’d arrived in Holland as a young girl with her parents she’d done as her mother had told her and bought, in a large, empty downtown edifice, a small porcelain figure of a bearded man in a white overcoat. The robe was, in her judgement, a bit too short for a major god. Maybe that was why most people in her new country had deserted him?
She’d put the statuette among the others on her now-missing altar, and later she’d painted over it when the other members of her pantheon had their yearly decoration time. Only the bearded face remained white, for the glossy porcelain didn’t keep the gouache well, and everyone knew that shabbily-painted deities couldn’t be happy. They could take revenge, scaling her karma down�"or worse.
“What’s his name?” she muttered aloud feverishly, feeling that she was losing the very last seconds she had left to save her husband. “Oh, you young unknown god in a white robe, find my husband and bring him back... please!” She stopped to wipe tears, which suddenly and abundantly streamed down her cheeks. Deep within, however, she felt some tiny, weak relief, like the invisible presence of an invisible god�"a good god�"had entered her cold, lonely home.

#

Who’s pulling on my hands? Go away! Why? Why can’t I cry out, or even speak, or whisper? My lips are burning with thirst... thirst... I’m pining from thirst! My mouth can’t close anymore, my tongue is swollen. My tongue is larger than my head. It’s larger and hotter than a volcanic bomb! I’m writhing from thirst... Water...  water... water ... who's wrenching my hands? Have you any water? Just a sip of water? Even just a drop ... a dew drop... a drop of ... slop that the pigs slurch up ... the pigs ... the pigs ...with those funny coiled tails ... why are they here? Why do they have such strange fiery eyes and ...claws? Such sharp claws! Any water here, anyone? Red, searing pig tails... coiling and clasping around my legs ... tails ... Why, are those tails, or snakes? Or leeches swarming under my feet? ...Water ... is there any? ... please, anyone, a drop ... one drop ... one drop of water ... Why? ...Why are those worms creeping up? ... I shudder, yet they don’t fall off ... Who’s bound my hands behind my neck? ... The worms ... they climb up to my throat... No, not worms... they’re crimson snakes! The snakes and the worms are searing me! Burning snakes are creeping over my face... Water... wh... ah... ter...

#

The doorbell rang, long and loud. Sveta launched her slippered feet down the stairs, taking the steps four at a time. Maybe those physicians could bring John back to life, if all the gods were too busy...
“Thank goodness! He’s in here! Follow me!” A small procession quickly moved through the tiny home.
It didn’t take long for a diagnosis. “A full cardiac arrest. Defibrillator, quick!” The two ambulance men snatched a boxy device from their bag, ripped John’s pyjama open, and pressed two ebonite handles to his narrow chest.
“Three kilovolt, discharge!” one of them commanded.
Sveta closed her eyes, watching the body of her happy-go-lucky, always supportive husband jerking up and limping back down like a deflated doll.
“Pulse is weak,” one finally declared after the seventh or so attempt. The man in the apron wiped sweat from his forehead. “pulse is stabilising...” He sat down on the bed and kept his fingers trained on John’s wrist for quite a while.
Sveta stood on her tip-toes, afraid to move even an inch. “Can I... come closer?” she asked finally.
“Sure,” the physician stood up and retreated to the other side of the bed. “Now he needs to see you, not us.”
She leaned over her husband’s exposed chest and whispered into his ear. Slowly, little by little, the eyes of the pale-faced man began to open.
“John, can you see me?” Sveta asked anxiously.
“Where am I?” he responded, rubbing his arms, trying to shake off the invisible burdens that were still so real, so harsh, so weighty. “No chains? No river? Where are ... the pigs? Gone? And the snakes? Where...” his voice trailed off and his eyes closed. His head drooped back onto the pillow.
Sveta burst into silent sobs. Had John lost too much oxygen to his brain? The doctor, however, seemed to retain a cool head.
“Bring a glass water,” he told his assistant.
“The bathroom sink is across the hall,” said Sveta, half-waking up from her paralysing grief.
The assistant was back in an instant. “Water,” he said to the seemingly listless man. “Here, drink up.”
John suddenly lifted his head, took the glass, and drank it all in one go. “Have you got... any more?” he wheezed quietly, slowly, brokenly.

This time, Sveta hurried to the sink for the precious liquid. When she returned, she squatted down next to the bed and touched her husband’s hand. John smiled weakly and sat up.
“I’ve had a ghastly dream,” he whispered. “Or maybe it wasn’t a dream...” He put the glass to his lips and emptied it once more, this time a bit slower.
Sveta nodded a couple of times. “It’s over,” she said, smiling softly, wiping the rest of her tears with her already wet sleeve. “You’re all right now.”

***

After carefully listening to and tapping on John’s chest in a variety of rhythms, the specialist nodded to Sveta. She waded out to the front hall, anxious and stiff, bracing herself for the bad news.
“Your husband has a very, very healthy heart,” the doctor said, shaking his head. “I’ve no clue why it so suddenly stopped. He had a short clinical death�"or was on the brink of it at the very least.”
 “What should we do now?” she asked, biting her lip. “What does he need?”
“Exercise,” suggested the doctor with a shrug. “Less stress. More... love.”
“You mean...” she began, then frowned. This is a bad time for lewd jokes, sir!
         “I mean just that, madam,” the man nodded, without any hint of a smile. “It’s good for the heart. I’ll write a letter to his bosses to excuse him from work and I’ll fax it tomorrow. Now good night.”