“Peter Van Houten w
ill get it, trust me. There are like seven thousand Magritte references
in
An Imperial Affliction
.”
“But it
is
a pipe.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s a
drawing
of a pipe. Get it? All representations of a thing are
inherently abstract. It’s very clever.”
“H
ow did you get so grown up that you understand things that confuse your ancient
mother?” Mom asked. “It seems like just yesterday that I was telling seven
-year-old Hazel why
the sky was blue. You thought I was a genius back then.”
“Why
is
the sky blue?” I
asked.
“Cuz,” she answered. I laughed.
As it got closer to ten, I grew more and more nervous: nervous to see Augustus;
nervous
to meet Peter Van Houten; nervous that my outfit was not a good outfit; nervous that we
wouldn’t find the right house since all t
he houses in Amsterdam looked pretty similar; nervous
that we would get lost and never
make it back to the Filosoof; nervous nervous nervous. Mom
kept trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t really listen. I was about to ask her to go upstairs and
make sure Augustus was up when he knocked.
I opened the door. He looked down at the shirt and smiled. “Funny,” he said.
“Don’t call my boobs funny,” I answered.
“Right here,” Mom said behind us. But I’d made Augustus blush and put him enough off
his game that I could finally bear to look up at him.
“You sure you don’t want to come?” I asked Mom.
“I’m going to the Rijksmuseum and the Vondelpark today,” she said. “Plus, I just don’t
get his book. No offense. Thank him and Lidewij for us, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. I hugged
Mom, and she kissed my head just above my ear.
Peter Van Houten’s white row house was just around
the corner from the hotel, on the
Vondelstraat, facing the park. Number 158. Augustus took me by one arm and grabbed the
oxygen cart with the other, and we walked up the three steps to the lacquered blue-black front
door. My heart pounded. One closed door away from the answers I’d dreamed of ever since I
first read that last unfinished page.
Inside, I could hear a bass beat thumping loud enough to rattle the windowsills. I
wondered whether Peter Van Houten had a kid who liked rap music.
I grabbed the lion’s
-head door knocker and knocked tentatively. The beat continued.
“Maybe he can’t hear over the music?” Augustus asked. He grabbed the lion’s head and
knocked much louder.
The music disappeared, replaced by shuffled footsteps. A dead bolt slid. Another. The
door creaked open. A
potbellied man with thin hair, sagging jowls, and a week-old beard
squinted into the sunlight. He wore baby-blue man pajamas like guys in old movies. His face
and belly were so round, and his arms so skinny, that he looked like a dough ball with four
sticks stuck into it. “Mr. Van Houten?”
Augustus asked, his voice squea
king a bit.
The door slammed shut. Behind it, I heard a stammering, reedy voice shout, “LEEE
-
DUH-
VIGH!” (Until then, I’d pronounced his assistant’s name like lid
-uh-widge.)
We could hear everything through the door. “Are they here, Peter?” a woman asked.
“
There are
—Lidewij, there are two adolescent apparitions outside the door.”
“Apparitions?” she asked with a pleasant Dutch lilt.
Van Houten answered in a rush. “Phantasms specters
ghouls visitants post
-terrestrials
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