‘Okay,’ he says, ‘baby.’
He leads me in the dark along the ditch. I stumble over holes and rough ground as if sleep-walking. He holds my hand tight, which surprises me, here where everyone can see us even if it is dark.
He stops close to the road and winds my hair round his finger until it hurts. What are we going to do now, where is the car?
‘Okay,’ his catchword, ‘sleep well.’
He gives me a firm slap on the bottom and pushes me up the road.
Whistling softly, he walks back, his feet moving audibly through the grass. I watch his shadow move past the faint circles of light shining in several tents, then it disappears.
I walk to the bridge: and I had thought that I would be staying with him, living with him in his tent, sharing his mess-tins…
The village is quiet. I can see people behind lit windows.
The ditch beside the road has a black and oily sheen. If you didn’t know any better you might have mistaken it for a path you could walk on, so solid and firm does it appear. Above the dimly glowing horizon is a venomous, thin little moon, a trimmed fingernail.
What shall I tell them at home? This is the first time I have missed the evening meal.
But in my heart I know that I am never going to go back. I shall carry on walking and no one will ever see me again. I shall carry on walking until I am back in Amsterdam.
Chapter 7
The master clears his throat noisily and gives a pointed cough. I start and look at him: the cough is definitely meant for me. His eyes are fixed on me as if he can sense that my thoughts are not on the composition.
‘That’s quick,’ his voice is mocking, ‘for once you actually seem to be the first in class.’ He walks up to my desk and swivels my exercise book around: again that disapproving look. As if in disgust, he guardedly turns a few pages over and gives me a questioning look. He is wearing an orange rosette in his jacket, a favour that does not suit him.
He could be nice enough when he needed me to do the drawings, I think, but now…
He turns the exercise book back to me abruptly and stalks off to the front of the classroom. It is stifling inside the room, the heat of the sun seems to release the smell of children’s sweat and of stables from our clothes.
I bend over the paper and try to construct a sentence. I can still feel the master keeping an eagle eye on me and I break out in a sweat which dampens my hair and then starts to trickle down my back. Grimly scratching my head, I write two words. ‘…I walked…’ My hand falters, again the pencil is suspended lifelessly above the white paper. All around me pencils are scraping steadily away and now and then a page is turned over with a rustling sound. The boy beside me raises his head: ‘Finished, master.’
I peer over at his exercise book and see two pages covered with writing.
‘When we heard the war was over, I walked…’ It looks as if I shall never get beyond these few words and I read the unfinished sentence over and over until I feel I’m going mad. I run my finger over the WI have scratched with a nail into the corner of my desk: there is nothing I need write beyond that W; it is my whole liberation story.
I can hear the loudly tapping feet of a bird hopping angrily to and fro in the gutter. After a short silence, seemingly to catch its breath, it starts to whistle: gently swelling notes that turn into excited twittering, now high, now low, as if it is choking on its own passionate sounds.
I lean my head on my hand and shield my eyes. The pencils continue to write. Whatever can they all have to say? I look for a handkerchief and blow my nose. It presumably wouldn’t do to burst into tears about a composition that refuses to come.
When the master collects the exercise books he leaves mine untouched.
‘I am curious to find out what you have to say about the past few days, to read what is bound to be a wonderful record of this unforgettable time.’ He coughs solemnly. ‘From now on everything is back to normal, the celebrations are over, but when, in the future, you re-read your compositions, these days will again shine bright before you. Our liberators have other duties, they will be leaving us now, but we shall never forget what they have done for us…’ Silence and a penetrating look. ‘They have rid us of a curse, the Lord has sent us help just in time. If ever you are at your wits’ end and no deliverance is at hand, do not forget, God does not abandon you. How true the words of the hymn are.’
I brace myself at my desk, spent, squeezed empty.
‘Let us therefore pray.’
A little later I hear the voices fade away across the school yard. I am sitting alone in the classroom, forcing myself to put down one word after another, making short sentences that are stupid and meaningless: it doesn’t matter to me as long as there’s something.
The master comes in and draws a curtain to keep the sun off his desk. He leafs through the exercise books and yawns.
…‘Stop now,’ I hear him say, ‘just bring me what you have done.’
Punctiliously, his eyes follow the lines I have written. ‘Later you will realise what momentous events occurred in these days, and then you will be ashamed that you could find so little to say about them.’
I look at the dry hand shutting my exercise book. ‘Pity,’ he says, ‘truly, I feel sorry for you.’ He walks before me through the door and holds it open for me affably. ‘Is everything all right at home? Do give Akke my kind regards.’ Taken aback by his genial manner, I walk along the corridor by his side. ‘No doubt you’ll be going to join the rest at the bridge, the whole class went there I think. But all of them will have gone by now, of course.’ He locks the outside door carefully. I cross the little yard. It smells of summer in the village, you can almost hear the trees bursting into bud and growing.
‘But all of them will have gone by now, of course…’ What did he mean by that, why does that sentence keep sticking in my mind? Reluctantly I walk towards the bridge, Meint is sure to have gone straight back home, why don’t I do the same then? Hadn’t I made up my mind never to go there again?
The people in the village are sure to have seen through me long ago: ‘There he goes, off again to the soldiers, what do you think he can be up to there?’
I feel more and more anxious, and slow down. Shall I turn back? A farm cart overtakes me, I run after it and hang on to the tail-board, hoping it will get me there more quickly.
The cart stops by the canal. I jump backwards from it, out of breath, take a few steps to the edge of the water and stand stock-still. The light is overpowering. Across the canal lies a cleared and trampled-down field. Wheelmarks run through the grass and it is easy to tell from the flattened areas where the tents used to be.
What have they done, what has happened? I run across the bridge and up the road: their cars must be parked somewhere. The fields are bare and empty. I stand still, then run back, hollow footsteps over the bridge and strange sounds in my head. People in the street turn around to watch me race past. My thoughts spin furiously upon a single point until I turn giddy and fall. Blood runs from my grazed knee. I race up the road to Bakhuizen, stop suddenly, and race back, a well-trained dog.
The bridge and the spot where the tent had stood: in a frenzy I chase around in circles, an animal looking for a prey that has vanished from sight. There has to be a sign, a note, a letter with some explanation, an address… I have been left no name, no country, no destination, neither his smell nor his taste… I feel panic, smell fear: where are you, where am I to go?