Today, at breakfast, I went wandering (in my mind) in Amsterdam, in the area where I stayed for a few weeks some time ago. My host had a house on a corner of a narrow street without a canal. Close by was a small café on the other side of the street, right in front of a bathtub fixed to the wall, hanging just above the ground; in the bathtub, there was a dummy of a woman with a bunch of fresh flowers in her hand and the indifferent plastic face, the hands frozen in motion…it was a body without a heart and without a breath, whose future could be decided by anybody’s whim.
It was on my first Sunday in Amsterdam, when I went to that café, sat outside, at a table with a view of the soulless lady in a bathtub.
A girl in a grey, silk dress left the building. Her décolletage was adorned with red and black flowers, arranged in a geometrical pattern around the neckline with a pale blue shawl around her waist.
As she walked by in her purple shoes, the girl spoke to me in Flemish:
- Amsterdam was designed to rest on powerful undercurrents of all kinds, wasn't it? – And smiled, as if to herself.