3 January 1672, late evening
The sleet kept lashing Jacob on his hands and brow. The wind was howling in his ears that tingled from the cold. His candle fought its own battle against the battering gusts, huddled within the forged lantern. The lantern swung against his every step, dragging him astray from the path his flickering candle was way too weak to light for him. Knowing how many lives had ended in this city with a sudden splash off the unlit quay, he had carried his lantern anyway. One more rite to fulfill. He had chosen Uilenburg for his approach, hoping to be sheltered from the worst of the winter storm. Jacob only had himself to blame. He had picked his own cover.
As he approached the end of the street, he braced himself for the stretch over the bridge, and after, towards the shore, before he would cut to the right to find the spot beyond the builders of the Admiralty. He was pretty sure he would be able to find it again. He struggled on against the wind, and out of breath he reached the formidable shapes of the men-of-war creaking in the docks. "These are not quite ready to fire at the English," Jacob thought, while hurrying on. His candle, still a foot ahead of him, seemed to flicker less, beckoning him to duck lower, sheltered in the lee of the row of hulls. Stooping, the roar of the gale receded, and for a second he felt like the candle, shielded by the shards of glass. He blew on his hands while the lantern dangled. He took a big breath as he reached the end of the main docks, readying himself for a final rush to his destination.
He threw himself into the gashing wind again, seeking grip with his soaked shoes between the cobbles and mud. "A hundred yards, and a bit more," he thought, "and my stock will be taken. Seven fifty-thirds." He paced on as the breaking and slushing of the waves on his left across the dike added to the roaring wind. "Seven fifty-thirds and passage." He peered towards the right, where he was willing one shape to appear. Merchantman after merchantman in varying stages of completion and repair were all facing off the storm in their own way. They all trembled. His pace quickened, lunging leg after leg, like spears through the wind, until a flash of doubt suspended him in the air, where the wind collected him and slammed him back onto the ground. He turned around, staring past the sleet, the piles of timber, until he caught the corner of the bend he had just walked past. Tucked away in the least accessible corner of the shipyard lay the bulging hull of a fluyt. He scanned the length, holding his back firm against the wind. "They must have moved it! Could they? But it's seventy feet, bow to stern. This is it. It must be ours. Seventy feet and seven fifty-thirds."
Breathing out in relief, he looked across the yard, looking for a spot to climb down. Then, as he thought he found it and took the tiniest of steps, the blubber under his foot started giving way. Between the moment he realized that he was lost and his merciless landing on the rough beams of the shell, hardly more than a second or two could have passed. But he lived through every passage with the same level of awareness, and the same inevitable corollaries, as he had experienced during his long argument that afternoon. He felt his behind hit the mud, and being launched, with the same sense of fearless provocation of the man's hypothesis. His trajectory down the dike as maddening and frightening, and at least as long, as his meandering yet unstoppable inferences. He saw the kegs with tar and caulking, as far in advance as the conclusion he had not wanted to listen to. His crash was almost satisfying, confirming, rather than pain and dismay, his sanity. And with his cheekbone pressed against the hull, he felt his bruise glow up in a thousand little incrementations. Away seeped the soaking cold. He blinked and felt his lashes grate across the massive beam. His eye shot back, towards the flash. He clasped his hand, the piece of glass nestling deeper. He blinked again and saw the piercing stare that had terminated his visit that afternoon. Opening his eyes he saw the kegs, like drunken friends dancing around a shifting center, the lantern and its liberated flame prancing in between. With a twirl and a thud that finally dislodged Jacob's face from the hull, the tar and caulking ignited and sprayed the ship with fiery tongues.
Jacob still was seeing slow. He wrestled himself up against the mass of beams against his back. "Is this what I am seeing? Is this real?" flashed through him. He reached out towards the flames. "Why are they so pretty? Why do I think I should not feel this way?" At last the flames had reached back to him. He shrieked. He screamed as he launched himself against the hungry beast. Again, time stood still, but now it was his mind, his hands, his arms, his trembling legs that scraped every shred of time off the devils that were burning his hopes, his belongings. He ducked, spread out his arms, and started scooping, scraping the miserable layer of sleet off the ground, carrying it to his chest, and then propelling himself towards the flames, smearing the icy paste wherever he could. He continued to rake ground, timber, and piles of waste for more slush, flicking whatever he found on the fire lighting his ship. It could have been ten minutes, a moment, or an hour - Jacob felt like trapped in a pile of sand, an endless hourglass pouring its gritty stream over him.
Whenever it was that he realized he was just standing there, the rain had stopped. The wind was still blowing, but vapor and smoke were wafting off his hull, the ground, his body.
- "Seven fifty-thirds," he whispered, as his voice broke. "Seven fifty-thirds," he cried. "Seven fifty-thirds and passage!" The face of the man he had wordlessly saluted that afternoon drifted through his mind once more. "All these devils, they won't take me. I killed the fire." He started to look around, finding his bearings in the dark night. He seemed to remember where he was, pointing his nose into the North-western wind. He stood there, his chin up, mouth open, as the air blew back into him. And with a last glance back over his shoulder, he headed into the wind, back towards the city.
He stumbled, without his lantern. Several times he felt his foot slip off the edge of the dike and he threw himself forward, his hands grabbing whatever they landed on, clawing back to the path and up on his feet again. After a half hour of this struggle, he managed to distinguish the silhouette of the city again, between the gusts of wind that shook him. After a half hour more of pecking against the wind, he reached Zeedijk. He threw himself around the corner, desperate for the reprieve from the wind he had fought for several hours. As the ringing in his ears subsided, the glowing, icy stabs replaced the howling assaulting them a few moments before. He rubbed both of them roughly with his wet hands. A blind clattered against the facade across the street. He kept on walking, now faltering because the resistance he had fought before had dropped away.
As he followed the bend down the street, he spotted a group of people further down on his left. They were speaking, though he could not hear them. One of them was gesturing with a raised hand, his other pointing at something he could not see. "Was the coffee house still open?" he thought. "Had they been thrown out? This was hardly a night to go out and chit-chat with strangers." He hunched his shoulders, tipped his head forward and eased over to the right side of the street, trying his best to make his legs to stop shuddering and walk as quietly as he could. He kept his eyes fixed to the ground, but just as he was passing them on his left, he heard the call.
- "Hey!" He kept on walking still. "Hey, you old Jew! You must have climbed out of hell, tonight! Look at you!" He slowed down, then stopped. He recognized the voice. He looked back, peering at the man calling at him. Maarten.
- "But it's you, Jacob! What are you doing out here tonight? But look at you. What happened? Did Appie send you on an errand? Let's go in. You're shaking. Let's clean you up. What happened?"
Only then, approaching the sectioned window of the coffee house did Jacob see his reflection in the glass. His hair stuck in clusters around his blackened face. He shivered and followed the man inside. The man walked over to a table in the corner, littered with printed sheets. He pulled out a chair for Jacob and let go of his full weight on the one next to it. "Annie'" he called. Bring us two cups, will you? And a damp cloth for my friend here. He's not used to seeing ladies like you and he needs some cleaning." He winked at Jacob, who turned to look sheepishly at the woman behind the counter. As he turned, he saw the woman quickly recover from her initial shock. She walked off through an open doorway in the corner behind the counter. Smoke and fumes wafted through the room. He looked around and found at least one source for the smoke in an elderly man, stooped so low over the pamphlet in front of him that he was trying to decipher, that his pipe sat on the page, emitting puffs as the man moved his lips in the rhythm of his reading.
An object flew through his line of vision, caught by Maarten next to him. He looked back, saw that the woman had returned, and was busy heating their coffee. Maarten held out his hand with the ball of cloth, offering it to him. Then he shook his head curtly, unfolded the cloth and said: "Okay. Sit still." And as he continued to shake his head, he started very carefully to wipe the soot off Jacob's face. He showed him the blackened angle of the cloth and shook his head again. He sought a relatively clean spot and continued wiping down the man beside him.
- "Those clothes... Look at you! You can't go around like this. Traders talk. Before you know it, they stop crediting you. You know that, Jacob. You're lucky I was up and about tonight. It could've been someone else. We've done some good business together, with Appie, and you in between. What in hell were you doing?" Maarten kept wiping his face, spot by spot. Then he held up the blackened cloth to him, looked him in the eyes and shook his head once more.
The woman had approached with two cups, filled with a brew as black as the smudges of soot left on Jacob's face. She placed one cup in front of Jacob, handed the other one across the table. "There's for you, prince charming. I'm glad you calmed down. I get to see a whole different side to you," she said. He threw the cloth at her. "I've always been charming! But better keep that prince to yourself," he replied. She giggled, was about to turn around, then seemed to remember something. "Maybe you should be careful, too," she said. "People like you... You're just like De Witt. You think you're so smart, and that that's as good as being in control. You keep juggling those fancies of yours, one of them is going to land on you with a knife stretched out." She did not seem happy with the way those last words had sounded. She looked him over with something close to tenderness. "You know I don't like you, but there's no one in the city who can drink as much of this stuff as you do." Then she ducked forward, kissed him on top of his head and sped off on her toes, behind the bar, and through the door behind it.
The two men sat there in silence. They were in no hurry to finish their drinks, carefully eyeing each other over the edge of their cups. After ten minutes of this silent pact, they both rose and headed for the door. Maarten opened the door for Jacob and said "Monday". Jacob nodded, and said "Monday," before both disappeared in the trails of the storm.