Read Online Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem van de Wetering - Free Book Online Page A

mind. Grijpstra had been punished anyway. He, de Gier, was walking, wasting the state’s time. He could have taken a streetcar. De Gier had gone further than Grijpstra had intended him to go. He was even saving the state the price of a tram ticket.
    De Gier smiled. He had analyzed his own thoughts. He now faced the conclusion with courage. He was a petty little man himself. De Gier always tried to analyze his own thoughts, trying to find the real motivation of his actions. And always he had to conclude that he, de Gier, was a petty little man. But the conclusion didn’t discourage him. He shared his pettiness with all of humanity. He didn’t have a very high opinion of humanity. He had, once, when they were drinking together, told Grijpstra about his line of thought and Grijpstra had nodded his heavy head. It had been one of the rare evenings when Grijpstra hadbeen prepared to talk. Unwilling to meet his family, and after a long day, he had accepted de Gier’s invitation to have a meal at one of the cheap Chinese restaurants and afterward they had found themselves in a small bar of the Zeedijk, the long spine of the prostitution quarter. The owner of the bar had recognized them as plainclothes policemen and had filled and refilled their glasses, quietly and with a hurt smile on his cadaverous face. Grijpstra had done more than agree. He had finished his glass of jenever with one tremendous sip and raised a finger.
    “You can,” Grijpstra had said, “divide humanity into a few groups.”
    “Yes?” de Gier had asked with his softest and most melodious voice. He had been almost breathless with anticipation. Grijpstra would talk!
    “Yes,” Grijpstra said. “Listen. First of all we have the big bounders. You know them as well as I do. Chaps with red heads and fat necks who drive large American cars and who smoke cigars. Their coats are lined with real fur. There are pimp-bounders and banker-bounders, but in essence they are all the same. The bounders have understood. They know what people want. People want to be manipulated and the bounders manipulate. They find out, or rather, they pay others to find out (bounders are surrounded by very intelligent slaves) what people want to have and then they buy it cheaply and sell it for the most ridiculous amounts you and I can imagine. The principle works for goods as well as services. Bounders always make money. They never join a queue and they often go on holiday. The own big yachts on the Usselmeer and villas in Spain. Their mistresses are kept in the best apartments of the Beethoven Street. They never have any problems and they never make any problems. Whatever crops up is taken care of quickly or rather, as I have already indicated, is taken care of for them. They pay very little tax. They are the first group.”
    De Gier listened with all the concentration he could muster. The man behind the bar refilled their glasses.
    “The second group,” Grijpstra continued, slurring his words slightly, “is the biggest group. This is the group of the idiots. You can, if you like, subdivide this group into a fairly large number of subgroups, but why should you?”
    De Gier shook his head energetically, he didn’t want to subdivide.
    “Very well,” Grijpstra said. “If they are idiots anyway why should you? There is this type of idiot and that type of idiot but their skins are always grey, they have a variety of illnesses, they stand in queues, they take a holiday once a year, they drive small secondhand cars that break down continuously and they buy the expensive rubbish the bounders sell to them, and they pay a lot of tax of course. It is taken off their pay so that they won’t notice much. They do as they are told, not just what the boss tells them to do but also what advertising tells them to do, and the TV, and the newspaper, and anybody who has a loud voice and a few simple words. They’ll even get into a cattle truck to be taken to a concentration camp, and when the camps