thoughts went from the ice on the Hudson, which struck me as a kind of filth, to the pure canal ice of The Hague. Unless I am dreaming, during most winters in the seventies the standing waters of The Hague froze over and for a few days or weeks were the scene of the playful communal activities so familiar from paintings of Dutch life through the centuries. As I sat half-listening to Chuck, what struck me most strongly about these remembered glacial shenanigans—the ice hockey, the pirouetting of a crazed dancing soloist, the hand-in-hand maneuvers of lovers, the tender pairings of tots and parents, the rich residual silence off which the shouts and laughs and clacks of sticks seemed to bounce—was their peculiar Dutchness. I was gripped by a rare homesickness. There, by the Hudson, I had what I can only describe as a flashback. What came to me was a water-filled ditch near my childhood home covered in new ice, which is black. The ditch—a
sloot,
as we called it—was a few blocks from home and ran between the white grass of football pitches and, on the opposite bank, the wooded dunes that held back the always-thundering North Sea. I was skating. I should have been at school, learning Greek, but like countless thirteen-year-old schoolboys before me I’d been lured by the freeze into truancy. Nobody else was around. Save for the scraping of my blades, all was noiseless. Forward I skated, past sinking alder trees, past the netless goals in the fields, past whatever else was contained in the world. I spent an hour or two like this. As my ankles grew sore and my mind turned to the inventing of excuses for my absence from school, a figure approached on the ice. For a moment I was terrified. Then I saw that this approaching skater was a woman, a woman who as she drew nearer became my mother. How she’d guessed she would find me in this lonely place is something I still cannot explain. But she had guessed, and here she came now, methodically thrusting sideways and moving with the sweet excess of physical efficiency that is the first and last bliss of ice-skating. I was busted; I thought for a moment about sprinting off. When my mother caught up with me, however, she simply said, “Would you find it terrible if I skated with you?” She and I glided side by side along the edge of the fields of white grass, our hands clasped behind our backs. We pushed in harmony, the one occasionally dropping behind the other where branches leaned into our way or when a cracking sound betrayed a stretch of thin ice. My mother, a large woman and somewhat plodding in shoes, was graceful on runners. It was she who presided over my first wobbling, upright motions on frozen water, who first placed bladed little boots on my feet and, with gentle tugs, pulled tight their crisscrossing white laces.
“OK,” Chuck said. “See that? That’s where I got my cricket idea.”
We had reached Pier 40, a brick, hulking, boxlike old shipping terminal that jutted out into the river.
“After the attacks,” Chuck said, “this was where the Humane Society of New York started up an emergency triage, practically from day one.” We quickened away. “My God, what a scene. Cats, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, pigs, lizards, you name it, they were all here. Cockatoos. Monkeys. I saw a lemur with a corneal inflammation.” Chuck volunteered his services and was put to work “re-homing” the pets. “It was a wonderful experience,” Chuck said. “I made friends with people from Idaho, Wisconsin, New Jersey, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ireland, Portugal, South Africa. People from out of state came for a couple of days and ended up spending weeks here. Tourists that were vets, even regular tourists, gave up their holidays to help out. And we weren’t just looking after the animals. Right over there, you had a feeding area for the rescue personnel, and food and clothing: men would work for days without stopping and their boots and coats would be destroyed.”
sloot,
as we called it—was a few blocks from home and ran between the white grass of football pitches and, on the opposite bank, the wooded dunes that held back the always-thundering North Sea. I was skating. I should have been at school, learning Greek, but like countless thirteen-year-old schoolboys before me I’d been lured by the freeze into truancy. Nobody else was around. Save for the scraping of my blades, all was noiseless. Forward I skated, past sinking alder trees, past the netless goals in the fields, past whatever else was contained in the world. I spent an hour or two like this. As my ankles grew sore and my mind turned to the inventing of excuses for my absence from school, a figure approached on the ice. For a moment I was terrified. Then I saw that this approaching skater was a woman, a woman who as she drew nearer became my mother. How she’d guessed she would find me in this lonely place is something I still cannot explain. But she had guessed, and here she came now, methodically thrusting sideways and moving with the sweet excess of physical efficiency that is the first and last bliss of ice-skating. I was busted; I thought for a moment about sprinting off. When my mother caught up with me, however, she simply said, “Would you find it terrible if I skated with you?” She and I glided side by side along the edge of the fields of white grass, our hands clasped behind our backs. We pushed in harmony, the one occasionally dropping behind the other where branches leaned into our way or when a cracking sound betrayed a stretch of thin ice. My mother, a large woman and somewhat plodding in shoes, was graceful on runners. It was she who presided over my first wobbling, upright motions on frozen water, who first placed bladed little boots on my feet and, with gentle tugs, pulled tight their crisscrossing white laces.
“OK,” Chuck said. “See that? That’s where I got my cricket idea.”
We had reached Pier 40, a brick, hulking, boxlike old shipping terminal that jutted out into the river.
“After the attacks,” Chuck said, “this was where the Humane Society of New York started up an emergency triage, practically from day one.” We quickened away. “My God, what a scene. Cats, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, pigs, lizards, you name it, they were all here. Cockatoos. Monkeys. I saw a lemur with a corneal inflammation.” Chuck volunteered his services and was put to work “re-homing” the pets. “It was a wonderful experience,” Chuck said. “I made friends with people from Idaho, Wisconsin, New Jersey, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ireland, Portugal, South Africa. People from out of state came for a couple of days and ended up spending weeks here. Tourists that were vets, even regular tourists, gave up their holidays to help out. And we weren’t just looking after the animals. Right over there, you had a feeding area for the rescue personnel, and food and clothing: men would work for days without stopping and their boots and coats would be destroyed.”
Similar Books
