Amsterdam Stories by Nescio

her like Kees is. It was different six years ago.
    In his father’s attic, where Kees used to have his “place,” his sisters’ underwear is hanging up to dry.
XIII
    And Bavink?
    In the battle against the “goddamned things,” Bavink lost, or surrendered. The things that wanted to be painted and then, when you thought “Well in that case it’ll have to happen,” turned out not to want to be painted after all. He was just starting to become famous when the struggle came to an end.
    Two months after my return he came and told me, in a very calm voice, that he had cut his View of Rhenen to pieces. And so he had. The river, the mountain, the Cunera Tower, the blossoming apple trees, the red roofs of Rhenen, the chestnut trees with their red and white flowers, the brown beeches and the little windmill somewhere up on the mountain—into sixty-four identical rectangles 15 by 12 1/2 cm each, with a blunt penknife. It was hard work too.
    The thing just wouldn’t stop pestering him. It was worthless, totally worthless garbage. He wanted me to tell him why anyone would paint. What’s the point? He didn’t know anything anymore. He stretched out his arm and waved it around. There, that’s where the things are. He hit his forehead with his fist. And here . They want to come out, but they don’t come out. It’s enough to drive you out of your mind.
    Almost a year later I saw him at Centraal Station, seeing someone off on the eight o’clock train to Paris, a hairy guy with long black curls and a huge beard, more hair than man, and a high forehead with nothing behind it. The setting sun shone big and red, it was at the edge of the glass and metal roof, there was a reddish light in the windowpanes and the varnish on the train cars. Bavink was drunk. The train pulled away, slid out from under the station roof and curved to the left. As it turned, the light flashed brightly on the cars.
    We strolled to the end of the platform. We came to a man with a signal lamp and I saw that as he passed us he looked at a conductor standing on another platform and made a drinking movement with his hand near his mouth. We stopped past the end of the roof and looked at the sun. “You see the sun, Koekebakker?” The sun was especially clear, right in front of us, close by, bigger and redder than I had ever seen it. It almost touched the rails, it didn’t flash brightly on things anymore, there was a dull glow only on the frosted windowpanes of the train shed to the right of the track.
    â€œYou think I’m drunk?” I did indeed. “It doesn’t matter, Koekebakker, when I’m sober I don’t understand anything anyway.”
    â€œDo you understand what the sun wants from me? I have thirty-four setting suns leaning against the wall, one on top of the other, all facing the wall. But every evening it’s there again.”
    â€œUnless it’s cloudy,” I said. But he wouldn’t let himself be distracted.
    â€œKoekebakker, you’ve always been my best friend. I’ve known you since—how long has it been?”
    â€œAbout thirteen years, Bavink.”
    â€œThirteen years. That’s a long time. You know what you need to do? Do me a favor. You have a hatbox?”
    I didn’t say anything.
    â€œPut it in a hatbox, Koekebakker. In a hatbox. I want to be left alone. Put it in a hatbox, a plain old hatbox. That’s all it’s worth.”
    Bavink blubbered drunkard’s tears. I looked around helplessly. A man in a uniform with a yellow stripe on his cap came up to us and spoke to me.
    â€œI think it would be better, sir, if you took the gentleman home.” I saluted and held out my arm for Bavink. He came willingly. He fell asleep in the taxi and woke up for a minute on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal when we drove over a pothole, and he wanted to start in on the hatbox again. But he fell right back asleep.
    One morning he sat