Astrid H. Roemer Meets Alice Walker in Amsterdam

It's on a day when it's pretty hard for me to get out of the city; my friend and I were on extremely good terms with each other, my work as a city council member and author was moving along incredibly, and my mother was within heart's reach. However, persistent and charming as my publisher Jos Knipscheer can be, he managed by way of my answering machine of all things to make me feel sensitive about his reception in honor of Alice Walker. Obviously, I'd received the invitation weeks before, but I couldn't find any reason to place myself in the throng around the writer. While we are busy dividing the tasks-my friend, her son and I-my mother calls to say that she'd finally made some moksi-alesi again and that she's coming over with a helping for me. She sounded a little disappointed when I made it clear to her that I was just about to leave for Amsterdam-and that I'd very much appreciate her delivering three helpings to my address, because my beloved plus a family member were staying there, to make my yard presentable again, as it happened. After some contention of a practical nature, I hung up-and while I'm already anticipating my enjoyment of the Creole stew with which, late in the evening, I will finish Friday, I take cordial leave of my friend in the hallway. On the train I let my thoughts as well as my feelings loose on Alice Walker-and the receptions arranged on her behalf. It makes me think of my own reluctance when I receive invitations from abroad, and of my longing sometime to be able and willing to indulge them. Compelling is the sorrow the instant Orsyla Meinzak flashes into my mind-this Surinamese woman of the theater who had pretty much imposed on me to write her a monologue for the personage that Alice Walker had rendered so engagingly, Sister Shug. Night after night Orsyla M. was on the move to bring this character to life on various stages throughout The Netherlands. She had even flown down to Paramaribo (Suriname) to perform Purple Blues. One evening, while Shug was caught in the stage lights, absorbed in a retrospective, Orsyla Meinzak collapsed onstage in Amsterdam, deathly ill. A day later she died in a hospital in her town, alone.