Excerpt... "Mannequins," the man said. "That's what we are, doing the routine. Like on earth, so in heaven." He looked at Grijpstra. "Don't you think? That this is what heaven's going to be? All this clean space?" He gestured toward the restroom's tiled walls and ceiling. "Sinless?"
Grijpstra was cursing, both his fate and this fellow man, maybe a moron.
"You sick?" the man asked. He looked into Grijpstra's eyes. "You don't look sick. Got something in your throat?" He clapped his hands. "Go on. Cough. Clear it."
"I was swearing," Grijpstra said, "in Dutch."
"You're from Pennsylvania?"
"From where?"
The man and Grijpstra shook clean hands. The man's name was Ishmael. He said he was from the Point in Maine. That'd be in Woodcock County. Grijpstra said he was from Amsterdam. That'd be in Holland. Ishmael said his sister had married a man from there, that'd be in Copenhagen. Where the breakfast buns came from.
"What?" Grijpstra asked.
"The sticky buns," Ishmael said. He knew more, about Danish cheese called Gouda, about Saab cars you could win as prizes that go with magazine subscriptions, about Hans Brinker sticking his finger in the dike.
"Who is Hans Brinker?"
Ishmael said Hans was the Dutch boy you saw on paint labels, and that Hans was also known from textbooks. Finger in hole in dike. Grijpstra thought of Oedipus, desiring his mother, frustrated by his father, therefore, symbolically, sticking his finger in any hole at all. Hans Oedipus?
The name was definitely Brinker, Ishmael said, and Brinker specifically filled holes in Dutch dikes. Ishmael was surprised Grijpstra didn't know his own national hero.
Grijpstra, although willing to please, couldn't place the boy's name.
Ishmael also knew about Holland being a part of Germany. There was a World War Two, but he wasn't one to bear grudges, even if a cousin didn't return from the Battle of the Bulge. Too long ago, from the black-and-white days—all that old anger...even so, Japan was coming on strong again.
"Holland fought Germany, too," Grijpstra said. "For all of five days."
"Defeat?"
Grijpstra admitted defeat.
"Germany still got you?"
"They gave us back."
"Didn't want to keep you, eh?"
It was all joined into a kind of Europe now, Grijpstra said. They were in it together. That might be better. "Wipe out some borders."
"Like the Canadian border," Ishmael said, "and the Mexican while we're at it. They aren't there anyway. I never see them when I fly across."
"What are the black-and-white days?" Grijpstra asked.
"War documentaries," Ishmael said. "Kind of faded. That's how we saw it then, as little kids. Didn't care much then. No TV, no nothing."
"Ah."
"After Korea it was color."
"To us World War Two was color too," Grijpstra said.
