After You've Gone. Jeffrey Lent
concierge he’d hiked the beguiling and still mysterious network of streets in the old city and found this apartment. On the third floor, spartan and old but filled with light from the four tall windows overlooking the canal, two large rooms and he’d sat with the landlady in her groundfloor chambers for what seemed an unnecessarily long time as she dictated all the conditions as if he were a young man, a student or striving artist not quite to be entrusted with the magnificent rooms. Already, then, there, scheming how he’d bring Lydia here the first time. He was a welcome guest at her suite, even owning a key but she’d been emphatic that he maintain a separate residence.
“I’m already all the scandal I need. Not that I mind adding you to the mix,” she smiled. “But I’m not without peculiarities.” As if he’d needed to be told that.
The apartment was spotless, the bed linens fresh and starched. Knowing she’d wonder where he’d been that afternoon, even as she’d sent him off—pointing to the stack of correspondence awaiting after her month-long absence. So, freed anyway, he’d wandered the neighborhood and found what he was looking for, stocking the apartment carefully, selectively and all for one purpose.
“So where’d you go?” she’d queried when he arrived back at her suite, the stack of waiting letters disappeared as if spirited away by unknown hands.
“Oh,” he’d said, glancing out her windows toward the evening bustle of the Dam. “Walking. I found my way back to the old square, with the weighing house—”
“Nieuwmarkt.”
“Why yes. Actually I almost missed it, just crossing the easternmost tip but then went on along the other side, into the old neighborhood over there—”
“Isn’t it lovely? I’d planned to take you over there myself. It’s one of my favorite parts of the old city.”
She was beside him, pressing gently and his arm was about her waist. Feeling delightfully sly and free of guile, he said, “Well let’s explore it tomorrow. What do you say?” Turning toward her.
“Absolutely.” Her face, heart shaped, subterranean brown eyes, the lock of auburn hair tumbled onto her forehead, her hair cut shorter than was the style but he liked the way it showed her delicate neck, the tautened strain of tendons of her throat when she lifted her face to his, her breath like warm bread upon him.
It was after noon the next day when they set off. Henry’s excitement not diminished but growing although he’d said nothing that morning about her suggested excursion. From time to time he fingered the silent key in his trouser pocket.
So off they went, cutting through alleys and side streets, Lydia leading Henry although to onlookers they would’ve seemed just another couple strolling in the crystalline languor of an early summer afternoon, Henry soon with no clear idea where they were but for the general north-northwest of their bearings, when abruptly she plunged down a side street. The canal here was narrow and domestic and the overhanging trees spread nearly across it, the sun speckling down through the new leaves onto the still-green water, the trees allowed a strip of soil canalside and then the cobbled lane also in shade before the narrow four and five story domiciles of white painted brick with their gabled pitched roofs. Between the cobblestones of the roadway, too narrow but for the smallest of automobiles, and facades of the buildings, lay another small strip of soil, broken by the entrance steps and the ornate iron railings that guided up those three steps. And here they paused, looked at each other and smiled.
It was, all of it, a miracle of small perfections. Each railing was different, with its own twists and spirals, hammered buttons, vined metal stalks and leaves, and at the base of each entry its own flower garden in those smallest of possible plots. Some a profusion of density and blooms, others a single careful pairing of tall and short flowers, some so exotic Henry was sure they’d come from far distant lands. And so they went, Lydia in the blue sleeveless dress coming just below her knees, hand in hand, until one or the other paused without warning so the other was caught up, turned back face to face for the quick kiss and on again. To the next discovery, the next intriguing pairings of metal and flowers that would take Lydia into a squat to breathe close, Henry leaning behind her, his hands on her shoulders, peeking around her head to try and gain the scent also but often as not the scent he sought and found was that which came from her, the faint delicate perfume she dabbed from a vial so small he doubted his own fingers could open it—then her face tipped back to him as she rested the curve of her back against his knees, to know he was seeing what she was.
Squeezing his hand as he squatted beside her, canes of yellow roses the size of his fist rising above diminutive dimples of mounded flowers dark red with white centers, their foliage a green so deep as to be almost black and it was these leaves that allowed the combination of majestic roses and the tiny profusion of blossoms to work, to create a balanced beauty, thoughtful, intentional.
Which was when she stood and said, “Something else I’ve been meaning to show you but so far every day we’ve been out I forget about it but recall it later. Don’t you have that happen to you?”
He paused a beat. “Of course,” he said. “Lead onward.” And helping her to her feet she came without effort or signal against him and kissed him again.
They broke out onto Nieuwmarkt faster than he’d expected and the Waag lay almost in front of them and he knew now that without effort he could find the apartment and decided this was again all happening because it had to, because there was no choice.
The square was ringed with cafés with tables set out for the afternoon sun and people sat with hats off and collars loosened against not just the warmth but the slowed draining conviviality of late afternoon. A beer wagon with a four-horse hitch trundled in the shadows on the far western side and ragged streams of cyclists pedaled by. An elderly gentleman walked a brace of small off-white terriers, his past-century mustache the same color as the dogs. Lydia’s hand in his had grown warm, damp in the full sun as they worked their way, Henry thinking they were crossing over to the far side and then realizing they were aimed for the faded green and brown canvas canopies just beside the ancient weighing house.
She fell back and leaned against his arm. “The flowers in my rooms?” she said. “This is where they come from. Even in winter they’re here, with gas blowers to keep them from freezing. Now of course all the flowers are cut from the fields fresh each morning. But when it’s cold you can still get flowers. They have huge hothouses, all over just outside the city. One day we’ll ride the tram so you can see them.”
“It seems a great deal of work to have flowers in winter.”
She stopped then, just feet short of the backside of the canvas stalls and took his elbows. “Flowers, having flowers, is not a luxury. I see them as being both ephemeral and a mark of civility. Which perhaps are the same thing.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I’d always mostly thought of flowers as decorative.”
“They are not.” Emphatic not challenging. She led him around to the front of the stalls and said, “Now wait here.” And was gone, but not from sight.
Tin buckets filled with flowers of all types, shades and colors lined the fronts of the canvas stalls and in the strained light within he could see tiers of more buckets, more flowers, these likely more delicate against the afternoon sun. But what he was watching, as much as the splendor before him, was the woman in the blue dress pacing back and forth, dipping to look, sometimes raising a finger and one of the vendors would move behind her as if that finger communicated all that was needed. He stood considering this being versed deeply in what lay before her. As she had thus far ever appeared. And it was then, the fleet thought, that he knew he had yet to learn where she lacked command. This with no quickened pulse but only a jab of dread—one day, one way or another, he would learn that place in her. As she would in him. And how they’d muster themselves, each alone again.
She came forth with a trimmed bouquet, wrapped and tied and hugged tight to her chest, almost hiding her, her eyes tracked onto his as if he were a beacon.
“Look,” she proclaimed, her excitement rippling.
And he did,