If the Biblical explanation of the variety of languages at the Tower of Babel has always carried the association of a great morning commotion, the hotel breakfast rooms in Europe suggest a different reaction β the cautious, discreet murmuring and whispering of many tongues as people woke up, had some food and drink and made no more noise than the odd bang of utensil against utensil, as they got their heads together in unfamiliar circumstances. What really made the Saturday night there, in the Grasshopper hash bar on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, was the episode with the guy who came up the stone steps inside the front door and then collapsed across the table beside us, smashing cups and saucers before hitting the floor like a dead man.
At least, I thought he might be dead. The most famous song about Amsterdam is also in French and Jacques Brel had put it well. Sitting nearest the body, I helped her pick him up as a girl asked one of my companions P.
The guy we hauled up and plonked on a seat rested for a minute or two before making his way unaided to the toilet. Later that same night, the Bamboo bar was where we met another young American, a chancer who came in with a Dutch mother and daughter. This chap discreetly explained the presence of his two companions. The daughter was in her early forties, a good-looking Germanic blonde, among many, among the menacing trams and bicycles.
Her mother was maybe seventy. She looked like a grandmother. The American had gone up to them in the burger debris and given them a little-boy-lost story. The charm worked and later he bought them a drink or two before they all arrived at the Bamboo and squeezed in around the big, round table. At this stage the daughter was clearly on a high, which was only added to by the fact of getting into the bar, away from the cold and the snow and the slush and the frozen canals.
I imagined a suburban home and a divorce. She looked calm with the bar lights reflecting on her glasses. There was a crowd and a blues band down the back. The young American looked to be on a definite promise that night.
