American in Amsterdam

03/02/03

“Hoi! Carnival in Den Bosch on Sunday.” I overheard someone say, my ears perked up. “That’s the town of an ergot eating ancient, Hieronymus Bosch. I’m going.” None of my friends with me in the Green House picked up on my interest. I asked Billy to drive me, my choice, his treat, but he would only say, “I’ll have to sleep on it.” I’d heard that nice ‘no’ before but I was determined to go, even alone. I was at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdamn on Tuesday, with Thera and Simon, where I first heard about the city of Den Bosch and learned more about its famous inhabitant, H. Bosch. I had an invitation to visit with my new friends, their house is just a pleasant walk from Rotterdam Centraal, my train arriving from Amsterdam almost on time despite two changes. Thera is my age, 55, an artist and an art teacher. She spent some time with me and Bosch’s "Der Landfahrer", explaining the iconography, the meanings hidden in symbols, known by the few who looked. Sure, it was a beautiful Realist painting of a fifteenth century man, limping and looking back, focused on something outside of our view. The artist incorporated meanings I never knew existed before; pantaloons hung out the top window of a storied house meant a whorehouse. A man in the shadows is pissing on the side of it. His stream is a silver arc. A bare knee through a hole in der landfahrer’s trousers signifies his Mason status. Undercurrents in art seeming innocent. Going to Jerome’s home town for the annual Carnival was as sunny a thought as Sunday’s gloomy weather; cool, cloudy and the rain always spitting on you.

Before I left I searched the Internet for news of the Carnival, found none. The Official Holland website listed nothing, the Den Bosch website said nothing, I wasn’t sure my tip was real. At Amsterdam Centraal, I boarded the special intercity train to ‘s – Hertogenbosch, another name for Den Bosch, with few other people. I missed the 11:27, the yellow board said they ran every hour, but one showed up at 11:58 and wasn’t a sneltrain or stop train either. Following only that comment about Carnival, I felt better seeing people dressed the same in wild clothing, up in the front of the car. Capped with confetti colored tams, middle aged, all of them, waving their arms, blowing a whistle once in awhile. At Utreche, excited people got on, almost filling the car and in just over an hour I got off. The noise from the city drew people in, very few walked away, there was gaiety in the air. I caught my breath on the canal bridge, breathing breezy clouds before I plunged into the crowd. My costume was an American farmer. My blue windbreaker, down below my pant pockets, was just like the statue of the farmer in the Square. And as plain as a farmer, I wore no adornments, unlike so many Dutch people milling around in costume and makeup. I circulated in the thin streams of moving people, watching bands play songs I didn’t recognize. So many people were singing along, I knew I was a stranger in the Centrum of a southern town below the two rivers.

The parade was over, the bands dispersing throughout the city playing tunes, mixing together in a cacophony of sounds, of drums and trumpets, of tubas and fifes. I looked up at a young man wearing a Jill St. John wig, a glass of beer in his hand, “What’s the Carnival about?” Beneath his straw hat a white smile came from his tan face, “It is an ancient festival of contraries. The farmer comes to town dressed like a city man and the city man dresses like a farmer.” There were many men dressed like me, but with costumes, not street clothes. Or if they were in street clothes, they had frogs fastened to their jackets along with badges from earlier Carnivals. Every age was here; spry or not the elderly sang, too, even infants had little red hearts painted on their tiny noses. The sidewalks blend into the narrow street, a brass band stands in the center, the cymbal player dancing around, bumping shoulders good naturedly with Carnival folk listening, singing, strolling along in their finest costume; farmers and city folk in wild dress. Most choices while warm were original, like Lon and Mark, striking in ski clothes, complete with skis, no bindings, but poles with blunt ends and a sign. Sitting on a wheeled triangle covered with bunting, they must have been in the parade. “We made preparations weeks in advance.” Lon tells me. They both tell me the story of their float, different times in the afternoon; they are après’ skiers parodying a Heineken commercial. “Mark is the spitting image of the man in the commercial”, Lon tells me.

The commercial opens with a peasant looking glum until a few snow flakes fall. He smiles, hurrys home, shaves off his beard, and voila’, a ski instructor. He bursts into a bar and exclaims, ”Biertje!” They thought this was hilarious. “Is the beer free?” I point to the dutch door where biertjes are being passed to people in the street. Mark laughs at me, “No”, reaches down, comes up with a cool can of beer for me, “Bedank.” Lon pumps me for information, wraps a town scarf around my neck when she finds out I am an American, and says, “Come with us.” She shows me three passes on her puffed pink chest, wrapped around her neck, “These will get you in your favorite hangouts.” She thinks abit, looks up at me and smiles, “But they are public places after all.” Another couple, Janine and Patrick, join us; handsome, beautiful and silly at the same time. We walk a labyrinth forced by a crowd of smiling happy people; to a bar so full, people poured out into the street. No one looked for my pass and everyone looked into my eyes kindly. So many looks of recognition to my new friends tells me I am accepted in the midst of old friends.

Somehow we pushed our way inside, my backpack made sideways slips almost impossible for me. There was no space between the people who drank and smoked and danced to a DJ playing traditional Dutch tunes as loud as he could stand it by the speakers in his booth. Lon bought the first round, biertje for five, deftly moving to the bar and back. I kept getting whacked in the back by an older couple behind me, swaying to the music with their arms linked, but I didn’t mind. I crouched down, Lon pressed her chest against mine, put her cheek alongside mine and shouted into my ear, “Do you like it?” A compact woman with strong tan hands, twenty-nine, I believe. That is Mark’s age, she told me, her husband of three years. Her blond wig had two spit curls; she wore plastic gold eyelashes at least 5 cm long, batting them easily and often. She showed me her auburn hair but I liked her hot pink lips best. Mark had a small kiss of lipstick on his, “I like the way he got it.” She wiped it off his kisser as a friend of a friend drew on my face with a fresh burnt cork. A black handle bar moustache swiped over my grey and white one.

“Carnival is three days. The best days are tomorrow and Tuesday, the Northerners will be fewer.” Mark walked alongside me, Lon way ahead, to another favorite hangout. “They come down here to get drunk, expecting sex. That’s not Carnival. This is a day when the town name changes to Oeteldonk. Oetel is frog and Donk is the high ground around where two rivers meet.” I ask him to spell it, writing it down hastily on some fools scrap from my pocket, the drizzle smearing a high point to remember. ‘Kermit would be happy here’, I thought to myself. These people were happy to be together, without expectations for the future, Carpe Diem! Not a cross word, not a frown, the distant siren blare brought faces of concern, briefly, to a multitude of enthusiastic revelers. “This is innocent fun”, I remark. Mark nods at me, smiling, enjoying the pulse of being in sync with so many, “That’s it! Exactly! Innocence!” He could disappear now, leave me with Lon, mingle with the guys a bit. “Where are you staying?” “I have a day ticket back to A’dam.” “You could crash at our place, if you want to stay and do Carnival tomorrow.” Lon kept handing me biertje, I had to start buying rounds. Her sleep over proposal was the first of two, the other from a man my age, who offered me a bed at his home, his wife nodding next to him, if I wanted to stay. We had discovered, in the course of conversation around an outside table under an awning that we had lived in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania at different times. Rapid questions and answers and we know each other. “I’m learning Dutch!” I shout loud enough to be heard. His group of friends hovered around as he patiently taught me to say ‘s – Hertogenbosch like a Dutchman. They laughed when he played Dutch with me, even I laughed, playing Dutch was being contrary. I had experienced this before. At a whim they could be stupid, tell lies, direct you nowhere and be Robin Hood as well. Today they were just friendly, easy going, and liked my pronunciation of gezelligheid, cozy companionship.

I wore my ball cap with ‘Cape May’ on the yellow crown pointing backwards now, the blue bill down my neck, brown hair up in a topknot, contrary to the core. The glow from beer fed faces pushed the late afternoon gloomy light up and away. Lon exchanged my red, white and yellow town colors scarf for her Father’s. He took mine, much smaller, smiled at me and shook my hand. “You can keep this one. The other one my Grandmother made for me. I want to keep it.” She kept touching my hands with hers, linked arms with me when we strolled in the street, made me comfortable with the frenzy all around us. The bands played continuously, a beer truck miraculously drove up, filling the street, forcing the sidewalks to press people together. They pumped beer into the bar through a red hose, drawing power from an extension cord, the truck silent, the cheers going on between sips. I forced a queue at the water closet, good naturedly misdirecting the direct Dutchman, he laughed. The barmaid accepted my primitive Dutch request for beers, fetching glasses quickly, making change, accepting my tithe with grace. People passed two glasses after me as I made my way with three full ones, held shoulder high, getting slopped on didn’t bother me anymore, it was common now, like the dusky light, moods were changing.

I told the man who lived in Huntington Valley and Canada, as it turns out, that my family name had been James in Utreche , maybe five hundred years ago, as my Great Uncle Rob describes our family tree. “So you have come full circle.” He, too, had come full circle, back to the city where he was born. Everyone I meet is from Den Bosch; some tried some other place only to come back. “Everyone knows each other.” I drift between groups, watching the way harmony works its wonders. Greetings are exclaimed, klatches closed and opened, I am accepted into their midst, introductions abound; I meet Lon’s Mother, Father, Aunt, and Cousin Marten. They all want to know everything about me, are willing to teach me. Marten’s turn; he stands in front of me, face close to mine, the band still loud enough for him to shout. I feel his breath against my face, he is intent on teaching me how to act Dutch. “How many beers have you had? Only two, the first and the last.” He cloys befuddled, “I don’t know anymore.” His partner, a man without his black lion whiskers anymore, smiles, says nothing. “Go wash your face”, Marten points to his own where my smudges must be. I laugh and head for the water closet, my handkerchief already smudged, my face aglow like the others. I find my space between people, feeling body heat, rubbing shoulders, happy to be alive. Even in English, I can only capture snippets of conversation directed at me, I wonder how many of my words are heard or remembered.

There is no regular business today, the winkels are closed, so are the museums. Lon’s Mother tells me there is only one painting by H. Bosch in the city; the name of the museum is lost to me in the din. In a corner of Centrum’s Square, facing away from the farmer statue, stands a bronze man of the fifteenth century, his face only guessed at, on the base; Jheronimus Bosch, c. 1450-1516; a spelling that is as new to me as the diminutive, Jeroen. They say the name Den Bosch means The Forest of the Duke. This land was once France wrenched away by religion, Den Bosch at its Donk, Hieronymus, Jheronimus, Jeroen at its heart, so contrary, now so Dutch. Carnival is a living remnant of the past, showing ourselves proudly as humans, free and innocence of all cares, but still wild and mysterious in our Garden of Earthly Delights.

Marten shows me his collection of three hand sized frogs pinned to his fine jacket, proud of the amphibian. I’m not green with envy, politely pay attention out of respect, I’m plain not fancy. “The Dutch can be very rude to outsiders”, he says, the Southern dialect keeps them apart. My scarf of town colors would only get me so far, my speech would give me away. Not today, however, everyone’s rudeness is gone, replaced with exuberant spirits evoked by kikker, the frog, hoping to see Prince Carnival. “Tomorrow he will be crowned. He will rule Carnival with the retinue who found him, and then, on Tuesday at one o’clock, he will go home, like the rest of us.” The streets are darker, fewer people come and go, the bars and cafés are still full of loud, singing folks who love a good time.

Suddenly it is nine o’clock, Mark is knackered, a plastic bottle, once full of strong spirits, swings empty around his neck; the crowd is holding him up. “You can stay”, Lon tells me, “We are going home.” “I’ll go out with you”, said with relief. I followed them away from the smoke and sweat outside. The sky slice through the canyon of gebowen has light clouds and stars, the air is fresh and clearing, I’m thinking of home. “Would you point me to the train station?” We’d been together for six hours; drank, ate, and exchanged connections for the future. Mark shakes my hand strongly; Lon gives me my first true Dutch kiss. She carefully touches each corner of her lips to mine, right, left, right, pulling away, to look at me with innocence.

The train station is close by, the stream of outsiders steadily move up the stairs of the elevated Centraal; a band plays on the first platform below, serenading a crowd of forty waiting for their bus. A man next to me pulls a silver coronet out and trumpets a challenge. The opening bars of a familiar song are answered by the trombone below. Then the rest of the band picks up and answers each refrain, the music filling the station, infusing the travelers with new energy as they move along with me in tow.

Later I look up Oetel Donk in the dictionary; neither word brings Mark’s definition of a frog’s summer palace. Was he being Dutch? Oetel isn’t in three Internet Dutch to English dictionaries I know, the closest word to Donk is donker, with thirteen meanings around dark, gloomy; a good description of the weather that day. I Google search oeteldonk and learn that Mark, just like all the townies, was searching for his Royal Highness Prince Amadeiro Ricosto di Carnavallo, Knight of the Kasam, Lord and Master of Oeteldonk. To be chosen from outsiders at Carnival Oeteldonk, Den Bosc, ‘s – Hertogenbosch by the good burgers who deem him worthy today. They look for his innocence, him not knowing he is Prince Carnival until tomorrow, when he is crowned. ‘Stay with us’, they seem to say, ‘Celebrate our way of life, Honor contraries, and Laugh at Carnival.’ I wish I had stayed to see more. Maybe a great honor passed me by, maybe not next year.