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the air already thick with strawberry soap and the faint thrill of wrongdoing, three pairs of tiny hands reached for the shelf like thieves in a fairy tale.
There it stood: the big purple bottle,
the one with the thick black marker scrawl across the label in Dad’s shaky handwriting:
They touched it, of course.
The cap popped with a festive pssssh. Thick violet syrup poured into the bathwater like forbidden wine.
Foam exploded upward — first a crown, then a castle, then an entire foaming galaxy.
Tim (five and a half, expert on puddles and monsters under beds) leaned in too close. One fat, shimmering drop of shampoo landed straight in his eye.
The world detonated.
Water turned to outer space. Bubbles became nebulae. Rubber ducks transformed into spaceships with tiny bubble antennae. The bathroom walls melted away and left endless fields of purple grass where foam unicorns galloped in slow motion.
Tim laughed so hard his laughter echoed off distant stars.
His hands became wings. His legs became a mermaid’s tail made of rainbow bubbles. He flew. Swam. Did both at once.
“We’re leaving!” he shouted, and the tub obeyed — shuddered once, deep in its cast-iron bones, and rocketed upward through ceiling, clouds, boring adult Mondays.
Then — silence.
Saturday light.
The terrace of Café de Jaren. Four o’clock. Every table occupied.
Joris was sitting alone in the corner.
His black coffee had gone cold for the third time.
The newspaper lay untouched.
He was the kind of man no one notices
until he starts wondering whether he even exists.
Then —
the bathtub materialized.
Right in front of him.
Steaming.
Containing:
a three-year-old wearing a collapsing foam crown,
a girl with soap-bubble spectacles,
Tim still giggling from his private acid trip,
and Joris himself —
suddenly naked, suddenly wet, suddenly chest-deep in warm purple bubbles,
with a rubber duck nestling comfortably in his lap like an old friend.
The café carried on.
Waitress glided past with spritzes.
Couple debated whether a labrador would clash with their sofa.
Man behind the NRC didn’t lower the paper
even when the rubber duck sailed over and beak-dived into his almond croissant.
Everyone saw the bathtub.
Everyone saw the naked man and three naked children.
No one reacted.
It was as if a grown man appearing naked in a child’s bathtub
was just another charming detail of Amsterdam Saturday afternoons.
Then everyone dissolved.
Softly. Instantly.
Like sugar stirred into hot tea.
Tables stayed. Chairs stayed. Coffees stayed.
People — gone.
Then they arrived.
Bathroom Police.
Very tall.
Dressed in immaculate white towels instead of uniforms.
Serious as judges on Judgment Day.
Joris tried to stand. Water sloshed everywhere.
“I protest!” he began, in the tone of a man who has read Kafka
but never expected to become the protagonist.
“Under what regulation?! This is… this is a violation of… something!
I demand a lawyer! Or at least underwear!”
No one answered.
The towels descended — slowly, inevitably, like a verdict.
“I’m not a child!” Joris cried while being scrubbed with horrifying tenderness.
“I have a mortgage! I have an OV-chipkaart!
I once wrote a polite complaint about insufficient bike racks on Spuistraat!”
The Bathroom Police worked in perfect, wordless efficiency.
Children were wrapped like little burritos.
Joris was wrapped the same way — just a slightly larger towel for the beard.
They were carried away.
Through the door that used to lead to the toilets
and now opened onto an endless corridor of golden afternoon light
smelling of cedar, river, ripe figs, and something far older than memory.
At the end — a low green door,
painted the exact green of the world’s first morning.
White, careful, nursery-school letters:
