‘See how hard they’re working? They go on right through the night. Everything has to be repaired.’
I say nothing. We’ll be home in just a moment. How dark and bare it looks here, all the trees gone. Across the big stretch of sand I can see our housing block, sunny and out in the open, and children digging holes and chasing one another through the loose sand, shouting and laughing.
My heart beats violently and my joy evaporates. The boys, school, break: ‘Wait till we catch you alone, you’ll get what’s coming to you after school!’ Fleeing back home, back to the safety of our doorway.
Our street. Open windows and balcony doors, and yet more tricolours, stretched-out lines with little fluttering flags, strange white stripes chalked down the street like a sportsfield.
And, in the middle of the street, the patch of grass. The remaining rose bushes are in bloom.
I feel dizzy and dejected. What I would like best would be to disappear and arrive back home unseen. As it is, a lot of people seem to be standing at their windows especially to have a look, and when we dismount outside our door children come running up to the bicycle.
I shake Jan’s mother’s hand to say goodbye. Jan has already run across the road and is shouting up to the balcony where his father and little brother are standing. I walk quickly across the pavement past the children and bolt inside the building. I am so confused that I haven’t taken in who anybody is.
My mother puts the bicycle in the lock-up and I stand in the doorway and peer inside, listening to her rummaging about in the dark and untying the panniers.
‘Will you carry this?’ As we go up the stairs I can hear voices, and without having to look I know that somebody is hanging over the banister and looking down the stair-well.
The neighbours and my father are standing on the second-floor landing. He is beaming all over – What a funny face, I think – flings his arms around me and pulls me close. Dazed and numb I allow it to happen, and then we go on blankly to shake hand after hand.
‘Leave him be,’ says my mother in a whisper, ‘he’s tired, we’ve been travelling all day.’ And then, louder, ‘Hey, Jeroen, we’re going to go up now and then you can get in your own bed, won’t that be nice?’
‘Doesn’t he look terrific?’ she asks my father when we are upstairs.
They are standing side by side in the passage and look at me with the eyes of children who have wound up a toy animal that then begins to move as if by magic. ‘When you hear him talk you’ll hardly understand him. He’s turned into a real country boy.’
Inside, I see immediately that the furniture has been moved: this is not the room I kept thinking about in Fries-land, this one is different and strange. Against the wall, where the sideboard ought to be, there is a baby’s highchair. A small, solid person with fair, curly hair is sitting in it giving me a frank inspection with expressionless eyes as if to say, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Give him a kiss, go on.’ My mother pushes me gently towards him, but he begins to scream and leans far out towards my mother. Is she my mother any more? She lifts him out of the chair and tries to turn him towards me.
‘Yes, sweetheart, Mummy’s back, don’t cry. Just look who’s come. That’s your big brother, he’s back with us for good now. Say "Hello, Jeroen".’
She tries to drown the deafening screams. ‘He can say a few words already: dada. Go on, say dada. He can say mama as well and we’ve tried to get him to say Jeroen, sometimes he says toon.’
But the fair-haired little boy doesn’t say toon, it takes quite some time before the house is quiet again and I am depressed and aggrieved to see how often they keep on going to the cot to try and calm him down.
‘The shower isn’t working yet,’ says my mother. ‘Shall I give you a wash in the kitchen?’
How can I tell her that I’d rather do that on my own. ‘In Friesland,’ I say, ‘we always had to wash ourselves.’
She puts out a tub in the kitchen and mixes a kettle of boiling water with cold water from the tap.
‘You can go now,’ I say, and shut the kitchen door.
I remember in amazement how, before I left, she would soap me down every Saturday night while I stood shivering beside the little tub.
‘Here are some clean underclothes, I shan’t look, no need to get alarmed,’ she says teasingly and her arm places some clothes on the edge of the kitchen dresser. I allow her back in when I have put on my underpants.
‘What’s that?’ she says and takes hold of my arm. The wound festered and there is still a scab.
‘Nothing. Hurt myself playing.’
After that I am allowed to sit out on the balcony for a little while. It is dark but warm and we drink ersatz tea. I can hear the tinkle of cups from the neighbours’, and voices through the open windows, peaceful, unimportant sounds that make me feel sleepy. Down in the street Jan is already playing with the boys as if he had never been away.
I move back a bit and sit where no one can see me from downstairs. The street resounds with shouting and singing.
Inside my mother is unpacking the panniers.
‘Bacon,’ I hear her say, ‘real bacon. And rye-bread. And that’s sheep’s cheese, just smell it. They made that themselves.’
I go back inside quietly.
‘Poor dear, he’s worn out,’ she says compassionately. ‘Come, I’ll make up your bed, it’s been quite a day for you, hasn’t it?’
My father lets the bed down. I give him a kiss. Go now, I think, leave me by myself. But he lingers on.
My little room looks bare, lifeless. Everything has been tidied away carefully and is in its proper place.
My mother pulls the blankets up to my chin and sits down on the bed. ‘It’s nice at home with your own mummy and daddy, isn’t it,’ she says enthusiastically. I seize hold of her arm. Who can help me, what will happen to me? ‘Tomorrow we’ll go up to town together, there are celebrations all over the place,’ she says, ‘in our street, as well. How wonderful that you’re back in time to join in. There isn’t such a lot happening in Friesland, is there?’
She opens the window a crack and draws the curtains.
‘Off you go to sleep now. You’re sure to have some wonderful dreams.’
I listen until the door has been pulled to. Then I bury my head deep under the blankets.
FREEDOM AND JOY
Chapter 1
There are sounds all around me: the clumping of footsteps on the floor above us, the rattle of dustbin lids on the verandas, voices in the street, a song echoing over the gardens across the road. Is it late? I close my eyes again and try to shut out the day. My bed feels good now that I am awake, wonderfully soft and yielding, and I let myself sink into it as into an embrace. During the night I woke up with the anxious feeling that I was sliding into a substance from which, try though I might, I could no longer extricate myself. I had finally struggled upright and had sat on the metal edge of the folding bed, panting and worn out. The little room looked ghostly and unreaclass="underline" walls that seemed too far away, dawn glimmering in the wrong corner, unfamiliar sounds. Confused, I had slipped back under the blankets.
At breakfast, in our room that seems spacious and sunny and where there are only three instead of nine sitting at table, I feel like a guest who has merely spent the night and is about to set off again.
I can’t get used to the new way the furniture is arranged.
‘Did you sleep well?’ my father asks. I can hear the probing tone in his voice.
‘Yes, thanks. But the bed is so soft, I’m going to have to get used to it again. The cupboard-bed in Friesland was made of wood.’