The image of this starless self enchants him. It is as if his reflection, plunged into the canal in the duck’s wake, has emerged renewed from cleansing waters. Purified and anointed, he rises up and examines himself in the canal again. Suddenly he looks older, taller, more handsome. The people on bicycles riding behind him seem to turn their heads toward him in admiration, smiling and singing Dutch greetings, at least in the world reflected on the skin of the canal. He has become a grown man of Amsterdam, a lord of the city. He spins around and faces the street, smiling with confidence verging on arrogance. The city is his!

Across the street towers the monolith itself, the Rijksmuseum. Willem knows what to do. He marches right across the street without even bothering to look both ways for screeching bicycles. Let them cower before him! In an instant his lordship stands at the sign beside the golden door.

WELCOME TO THE RIJKSMUSEUM. Willem reads the words again and hears them as if they were spoken by his old teacher at the Montessori School, whom he imagines standing at the museum’s gate, grinning and shaking his hand. “Welcome to the Rijksmuseum, my dear Willem! Your national treasures await you!” Willem pulls open the museum’s heavy door like a bishop entering his own cathedral. A gust of heated air blows in his face, inflating his thin sweater and shirt on his skinny shoulders into flowing regal robes as he closes the door behind him.

Willem stands in line to enter the museum, posture perfect, head erect. He has urgent business to attend to; his national treasures await. The only problem, he suddenly realizes with embarrassment, is that his wallet and his yellow star travel together—one on the breast of his jacket, the other in its left-hand pocket. He has no money for admission. With shaking hands he searches the pockets of his pants. Not a single coin.

Bit by bit the line moves forward, and now the people directly in front of him have reached the ticket counter. In front of Willem is a large group, a family—a couple in their thirties, a father already balding and a mother with hair so blond it is almost white, both quite tall. They lean against the ticket counter, frowning and exhausted, while their—how many? Willem counts them—six children whine, play, and harass one another behind them. The youngest looks about three, a little blond girl with chubby legs bulging like rolls of dough between her red pinafore and her sagging white socks, and the oldest, a boy with dark hair and glasses swinging one of the younger boys around by the arm, about eleven. A girl of about five hides between her mother’s legs, peeking out from under her skirt. Suddenly Willem has an idea.