‘Are we going to have anything to eat? My stomach hurts.’
‘In a moment. We’ve only just started. Go and find Jan but don’t stay away too long.’
Listlessly I walk through the ship. The flag flaps above the bubbling water, making the same sound as a big fish flung by Hait onto the deck where it would beat on the planks, thrashing about, contorted with desperation.
The ship’s propeller churns up clouds of sand and air in the water and rolls them up to the surface, creating an eddying grey maelstrom, binding us to the mainland like a living, twisting cord.
The small town and the coastline have become a blur, an unknown domain I have never visited and at which I now stare with a stranger’s eyes. The sea is covered with scales of glittering and sparkling light that hurt my eyes. We have been cast into the void, adrift in a shoreless sea, and I would not be in the least surprised if Amsterdam never appeared, if our passage turns out to be a journey without end. Amsterdam, what is that to me now, what am I going there for?
Jan has joined me; he spits overboard and tries to follow the course of the blobs until they touch the water.
In the distance ships lean in the wind and I strain to make out the letters on their brown sails. Imagine if Hait suddenly drew up alongside to give me a surprise and I saw those familiar faces close-to again: Hait, Popke, Meint. Aren’t they coming nearer, isn’t one of them getting a little bit bigger?
The water glitters and the wind blows tears from my eyes. The little boats have hardly moved. When Jan calls to me, I quickly turn my head away in case he thinks I am crying.
‘There are soldiers on board,’ he says a little while later. ‘They’re keeping to themselves, they’re probably not allowed to mix with us.’
I almost force him to take me then and there to where he has made this discovery, and a moment later, peering furtively through some little round windows, I see the green uniforms and hear the familiar sound of voices speaking an incomprehensible language.
We clatter down a stairway. How can we find where they are, where is the way in? People are sitting about who look at us silently, bags and parcels beside them. They seem tired and worn out.
‘Psst, come and look at this.’
We go into a w.c. cubicle with a sharp, penetrating stench. Jan points up to a corner of the wall where a small sign has been scratched, a sort of circle with a line through it and a dot in the middle.
‘Cunt,’ says Jan triumphantly. He laughs and slams the little door shut. I hear him racing up the iron stairs.
Our mothers have gone inside, because it’s too hot on deck, they say. We have a drink of milk from the bottle Mem gave us and eat a clammy sandwich. ‘The bread in Amsterdam must be less coarse than this by now,’ says Jan’s mother arid I wonder how this can be with the war hardly over.
I feel myself getting furious: they’d better not start running Friesland down all of a sudden.
Jan leans against his mother and goes to sleep; my mother has shut her eyes as well. There is a leaden silence and scarcely a breath of wind comes through the little open windows. For a while I listen to the muffled thudding of the engine, then I get up and walk quietly around the deck until I find the windows where we heard the voices. There is the sound of soft music and of people talking so low that I can hardly make anything out, even when I stand right next to the porthole. As soon as anyone comes by, I go quickly and lean over the railing, pretending to study the sprawling waves, but a moment later I am back trying to look into the little half-open window to catch a glimpse of what is going on inside, waiting for the sound of a familiar voice.
Suddenly someone is looking me straight in the face, then with a furious tug the small curtain is drawn.
Enormous numbers of close-packed houses, roofs, cranes, the commanding dome of the Central Station and everywhere people and bicycles, a mysterious, bustling, gloomy world: that’s how Amsterdam looks to us as we watch it slip by from the deck. Even Jan is silent and subdued. He leans on the railing, looking tired, and has nothing to say.
Army cars are parked alongside the station, not just a few but scores of them. I pretend to be looking elsewhere, at the milling crowd on the waterside, at the crowded quay, and I try hard to make conversation with my mother. But my mind is elsewhere.
‘Come on, pick up your things,’ she says, ‘it’s time we went down.’
We stand beside our bicycles anxiously and nervously, ready to disembark as quickly as possible.
‘Stay by me,’ says my mother, ‘hang on tight to the luggage carrier, or else I’ll lose you in the crowd.’
A lot of people are standing on the landing stage, some craning upwards as if looking for somebody, but most seem to be hanging about aimlessly. We go down a gangplank much broader than the one in Friesland, hemmed in by the other people from the boat. Dusk is falling and I feel cold.
‘Isn’t Daddy coming?’
‘Of course not, he doesn’t know when to expect us, this way we’ll be giving him a surprise. He’ll be at home as usual, looking after Bobbie.’
Bobbie! When I get home there will be a baby, a little brother waiting for me in this dark, mysterious city.
We tie on the luggage a bit tighter as Jan jumps up and down impatiently, dying to be off. As we start bicycling I can see that the soldiers, wearing rucksacks, are just coming off the ship. I wrench around so suddenly to look at them that my mother nearly falls to the pavement. Then, like an oppressive shadow, the back of the station engulfs us.
The evening sun shines over the Rokin where hundreds of people are milling about. Everywhere there are flags, placards, decorated lampposts and triumphal orange arches, an overwhelming riot of colour and sound.
And everywhere I can see uniforms and army cars, driving around or parked in the street; a truck full of singing soldiers brushes right past us. I shall find him again, of course he is here. I wonder if he is living in a house or if they have put up tents somewhere, near us perhaps, on the field by the Ring Dyke.
His bare legs will fold around me again, his fingers close teasingly about my thin neck. Keep bicycling, Mum, come on, quickly, I want to get home, I want to make plans!
We swing off towards Spuistraat and at the turning I look at Jan, waving both arms enthusiastically at him. ‘Don’t be silly, hang on tight or we’ll have an accident.’ I cling to the yellow dress again and feel the rotating hip joints.
The Dam is like an ant-heap, impossible to get through, and the street alongside the Royal Palace has been blocked off. We have to dismount and make our way through the crowd on foot, my mother ringing our bicycle bell for people to make way. I peer over the barrier into Paleisstraat; it looks eerily empty and deserted, as if some disaster has struck it. That’s where the lorry had stood, parked right next to the Royal Palace. The sparrows twittering in the sun seem to be the only thing I can still remember clearly.
The Rozengracht, and we get back onto our bicycle.
‘Mummy, a tram! Are the trams running again?’
We bump over the uneven road and I become steadily more excited as I recognise more places and as everything starts to look familiar and to tie in with my old life. On Admiraal de Ruyterweg workmen are busy laying sleepers under the rails, the large piles of wood surrounded by groups of curious neighbourhood children.