IN THE OOSTERDOK, on the city’s outermost eastern reaches, where ships docked to offload containers, was a very large squat called Het Einde van de Wereld. It was distinctly modern, from the 1950s perhaps, and architecturally unremarkable. Not much more than a compact and rectangular series of unplastered grey brick and rows of identical sash windows with peeling paintwork. It ran the entire length of a wharf. It had once served as quarantine quarters for returning sailors with tropical diseases, and had also had a spell as maritime administration offices. This meant that over the years it became a labyrinth of abandoned wards, dormitories, mess halls and offices. Now almost a hundred people lived there and an anarchist flag flew over a chimney breast.
There was a bar here, Het Breekijzer, which was a focal social point for the squatter movement. I had been there with M. in summer, when the café tables were set out on the dock and one had a view over the broad IJ water to a horizon truncated by the barges and container ships coming into port. Flocks of gulls swirled overhead and occasionally schools of mackerel would rise with a wave, their fins glinting in the late afternoon sun, making a sequinned dappling in the waves.
Here on an empty dock was where the circus camped when it came to town. Once I came upon the incongruous scene of elephants feeding at bales of straw on the wharf, trumpeting at me as I cycled up to them. Another time I watched a group of trapeze artists cavorting in the dark water, their physiques perfect from the exertions of flight. They had provided a mild erotic charge to the afternoon.
I particularly enjoyed going there in the mid-evening after Allegro had closed, when the late summer sun was swiftly setting over the city. I would cycle along the balustrades of the Prins Hendrikkade, with the cold sea spray catching at my face as the waves crashed against the docks, always awed by the massive containers that rose from the wharfs and enchanted by the honeycomb reflection on the harbour’s flat, listless water of the cabin lights of the ships that were in port. You could see the silhouettes of sailors moving on the decks as they went about their duties. And always on the air the strong smell of diesel oil. As the light faded the deep bassoon of ships’ horns as vessels began to move out to sea would float eerily back to shore from the dark, unfathomable water.
Het Breekijzer had gone for a self-mocking, maritime theme for its interior: rusted anchors, cork lifebuoys and discarded fishing nets on the walls, and a miscellany of sofas and armchairs of contrasting colours, styles and states of disrepair. Upended diesel oil-drums served as tables, and the place was lit by hurricane lamps suspended from the overhead beams. The insistent atonal rhythm of German Neue Welle played over the speakers was a continual soundtrack. The place was always packed. On any given evening you could rub shoulders with all sorts of interesting people: punk rockers, their hair teased with egg-yolk into stiff combs, coloured green and pink by food dye, rings in their ears and noses; the leather jacket strung with chain-link crowd; or the hard-core squatters in their denim and keffiyehs. Here you would also encounter the run-of-the-mill politicals. Their style was more eclectic, arguing the complexities of the internal differences in the Dutch Communist or the Pacifist Socialist parties. In the close heat of the room there was always a buzz of animated conversation.
One evening I pushed into the densely packed room, squeezing sideways through the crush of bodies to reach the bar. I leaned into the counter and tried to catch the attention of the barman. Someone pressed in next to me, close. I was confronted by a man of such striking beauty for a second I had to catch my breath. He was holding a pamphlet out to me.
“A demonstration against the evictions from De Groote Keijser tomorrow,” he said, “on the Dam. I hope you will come.”
His was a particular look, what I saw as a Moorish maritime strain – black hair, lush dark brows, angular, precise features and striking blue eyes.
“Mauritz,” he said, smiling and offering his hand. He pressed in against me as someone else tried to get to the bar. The taut outline of his body through his denim jacket was electrifying.
“Matthew,” I stammered.
When there was a break in the crowding of bodies around the bar, he stepped slightly back from me and I was able to take him in fully – his startling blue eyes contrasted with an alabaster skin, a sheen to it where his denim collar opened at the base of his neck. I was transfixed. Pinned on his jacket lapel were the badges of several movements, demonstrating his solidarity with various Third World struggles – Polisario, Palestine, Nicaragua and, most distinctively, the pink triangle of gay liberation. He must have caught something in my expression because he ran his long delicate fingers along my shirtsleeve. “What are you drinking?” he asked.
“Amstel and a jenever,” I replied.
Instead of waiting his turn, Mauritz simply called out to the barman. “Kees, here, please!”
“In a moment,” the barman shouted back.
As soon as I had it in my hand I threw back the jenever.
“What is that accent?” asked Mauritz. “You are not from here.”
“South African,” I told him.
He was immediately interested. “South Africa? Apartheid?”
I nodded.
Over the course of the next half hour we made our way from the bar to a couch and Kees kept the jenevers coming. Mauritz was captivated by my story – political resistance in South Africa and the choice of exile. He also wanted to know what I made of Amsterdam and its politics.
It turned out that he was a convinced anarchist – living by the accepted wisdom about anarchism as the deliberate perpetuation of chaos and nihilism to undermine the state. He was steeped in the theory. He had come the route of communism but rejected the rigidity of communism’s structures and its doctrinism. The squatter movement represented, for him, anarchism in miniature.
I listened to him talk, enjoying the deep timbre of his voice. The clarity of his diction gave him away as middle class and I wondered what had brought him here. In the background the hurricane lamps hissed and the Neue Welle was replaced by lighter pop. By now it was getting late and the bar was emptying. In the confines of the couch, Mauritz and I had moved closer together. During a pause in our conversation he ran his hand over my thigh. Then he leaned in and kissed me tentatively. I gave myself up to it. At first gentle and exploratory, and then more insistent, he sought out my tongue. I was taken up by him and drew him closer to me, running my hand under the denim jacket. His ribs were smooth beneath my fingers.
Suddenly he pulled back from me. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Why?” I asked, feeling robbed of the fullness of the moment.
“So that I can hear you come in that accent,” he answered.