One of the joys of an extended stay abroad is again becoming a tenant, subject to the whims of one’s landlord, but also insulated from the cost of maintaining an apartment that was built at least a century prior. In our case, our landlord has been excellent – kind, attentive, cool, happy to have people using his place who give it the care and appreciation that it deserves.
In the first days, the combination washer and dryer stopped working, not an immediate issue given that we packed enough for a military campaign, but an inconvenience as we pushed into our second week of living in Amsterdam. After a couple of false starts with delinquent repairmen, I opened the door to greet Riki, the man tasked with getting the dryer operational.
Riki burst into the stairwell full of bluster – Holland’s answer to Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. As we ascended the five narrow flights to our apartment, Riki’s frame barely squeezing around the corners, he was already off and running on his fascinating commentary and historical disquisitions.
The Dutch have such a masterful command of English that interacting with people in this city is quite simple, almost too easy at times for someone such as myself who likes to feel a bit out of place, thrives on figuring out how to go along and get along. Riki was no exception, the only thing stopping his linguistic outpouring was the time he took to catch his breath as we arrived at our flat.
I had intended to get some work done while Riki fixed the dryer, but I soon realized that Riki was too interesting of a character to ignore. Not even remotely mechanically inclined, I appreciated his detailed explanation of the machine’s inner machinations, his impromptu lesson on European electronic codes, and his lamentations about the thin iron pipes that plagued the city.
Riki immediately diagnosed the problem with the dryer – apparently nothing was wrong with it. He then lambasted my landlord for being so silly as to rent his apartment to Americans (no offense intended, of course), who do not know how to operate things properly and/or lack the patience to deal with the glacial pace of European-spec washer/dryers. He was so convincing in his explanation that I, already taking a dim view of a certain species of U.S. traveler, was inclined to believe him.
Riki had grown up in our neighborhood and was soon regaling me with sordid tales from decades past, intrigues with adjacent property owners, architectural dissections of the surrounding buildings. This soon segued into a soliloquy about Dutch welfare economics, followed immediately by a scorching take on the current Amsterdam city government. Riki being a white man of a certain age, I was neither surprised nor pleased by his coded racism.
It is rare that I am the quiet one in a conversation, but I could hardly even nod before the subject switched. Noting that I had a daughter, Riki was keen to impart some fatherly wisdom upon me. He was surprisingly tender and insightful. A couple of his points struck me poignantly. It is not easy to raise a burgeoning young woman, the constant push and pull of autonomy and protection, and Riki had some salient ideas about striking that balance.
As I checked the time, I wondered internally how Riki was maintained his schedule, given that we had spent the better part of two hours together for a fix that did not even need to happen. But, I also took the moment to appreciate this interaction, a chance to glimpse another world on a deeper than surface level. As a keen student of humanity, I found Riki to be an advanced course.
Riki bade me a hearty farewell after giving me detailed instructions for operation of the proper washer/dryer cycle. He then strode off onto Wilheminastraat, a man motivated for his next mission. I was impressed by him to the point that I started writing this article immediately, focusing on the joy of finding sagacity in unexpected corners.
Epilogue – After a three-and-a-half-hour wash cycle and an equal length of drying, I returned to the apartment to find our clothes still soaking wet. I was mystified, convinced that I had somehow failed to follow Riki’s directions. And then I spied a little port on the bottom of the machine, got a knife to pry it open, and as I unscrewed the filter I found behind there, a torrent of water escaped. I reached in and pulled out tons of detritus, that clog being the actual culprit. Improbably, I was the one that fixed the issue. As it turns out, Riki might not know a damn thing.