‘You shouted out in the night, do you know that? You don’t have to be afraid any longer, everything is over, you’re back at home now. Life is back to normal again.’ My mother lays a hand softly and protectively on mine. My forehead begins to tingle, a feeling of anxiety comes over me, but I daren’t draw my hand back. Nobody may touch me, it’s not allowed. She puts a big square biscuit on my plate.
‘Would you like some of this? Don’t pull such a face, it’s a ship’s biscuit, delicious! From the Canadians.’
I smell it and push the thing away. ‘Isn’t there any ordinary bread?’
She goes to the kitchen and cuts a slice of the Frisian rye-bread. ‘I thought you might want to eat something else for a change.’ She looks disappointed.
In the little side-room my brother is making spluttering noises in his cot. My mother gets up and takes him in her arms. She kisses him, holds him up in the air at arm’s length and then pats his wet nappy fondly.
At the table she feeds him bits of ship’s biscuit dipped in tea and his little chute-like mouth becomes covered in brown blobs. He waves his arms about wildly and uncontrollably, knocking the spoon out of her hand so that the tablecloth, too, becomes covered with mess.
‘Da-da-da-da,’ he sings, happy, ignoring me completely, as if I am not there, as if everything is the same as always. ‘Jeroen,’ my mother prompts him. ‘Toon-toon.’ ‘Da-da-da.’
‘You’ll have to repeat the sixth year,’ my father says. ‘We’ll just have to write off this last year, they can’t have taught you all that much in Friesland.’
Who says so? How do you know? Aren’t the Frisians good enough for you all of a sudden?
‘We’ve found you a 6A class where they prepare pupils for high school. It’s quite a long way from here, in town, but they’re sure to bring your maths up to scratch.’
I go back into my room and sit down on the unmade bed. My books are stacked in a neat little row, my toys on a shelf in the cupboard, the drawing-book, the pencils, my sponge-bag, everything is there, all my things. When I was in Laaxum I missed them, but now I don’t even touch them. I am listless and anxious and don’t feel like moving.
My little brother is crying, whining and whimpering. I can hear my mother talking in a subdued voice out in the passage, as if I were still asleep.
‘I’ll take him outside for a bit of a walk, the weather’s lovely. Then we can leave Jeroen here a while longer, he still has to get his bearings back.’
For a long time I sit there motionless. What shall I do? Quietly I open the door. My father is standing in the kitchen.
‘Well, did you give your room the once-over? Is everything just as it should be?’ There is a teasing undertone to the way he says it. He goes out onto the veranda and hangs a row of nappies on the line. When I go and stand beside him and look over the railing, he kisses my hair. ‘Great to have you back,’ he says, ‘we missed you.’
I look at the green gardens, the canal and the cultivated fields beyond. There is a barn and vegetables planted in long straight rows. My mother is sitting on a bench by the water, a pram next to her, and she waves when my father calls her name. She looks pretty and happy. ‘Come,’ she beckons to me.
‘Go and get some fresh air, sitting about indoors won’t do you any good. Soon you’ll be stuck inside school all day again.’
We walk through the house and my father shows me everything. ‘Look, we’re back on the gas and the electricity. The radio is going again too, just listen. If you turn this little knob you get music.’
‘Perhaps I’ll just go into town this afternoon,’ I say, ‘to have a look what’s going on.’
‘You go and have a good look round, there’s a lot to see, celebrations and exhibitions everywhere. I’ll come later in the week and we’ll look at things together.’
He watches me as I go down the stairs and turn round once more, as if I am asking for help. Downstairs I stop inside the main door for a while, summoning up the courage to open it and venture out into the street. Then I run around the corner and sit down on the bench beside my mother. She is rocking my brother’s pram to and fro, first forwards, then backwards, making me sleepy just watching.
‘Go and find the other children, they’ll be glad to have you back. You must have a lot to tell them about where you’ve been.’ But I stay sitting next to her, clutching her arm as she rocks the pram. When a soft drone of engines can be heard she says that it’s sure to be the Canadians. ‘They’re quartered in your school, but I don’t know for how much longer. Go and have a look. Sometimes you can see a whole procession of cars passing by.’
At the end of the street, by the White School, I watch two cars being driven out of the playground and disappearing around the corner. Men in the familiar green uniform are walking about in front of the wide-open doors that lead into the gymnasium.
So, they’re here, right next to our house…
Suddenly I run back home and sneak up the stairs, feeling almost caught out, ashamed and agitated.
‘No,’ I tell my father when he looks surprised to see me back so soon. ‘I’m not going to go out today, I’d rather stay at home, I don’t want to go out on the street.’ I walk onto the balcony and look at the school, at the open gym and the soldiers’ comings and goings. I feel sluggish and washed out. Should I go and look to see if he is there? And if he is, what then?
I go into my little room to sit down, and notice that some of the pages from my books have been ripped out while others have been covered with big scratches. The work of my little brother, that’s for sure. Restlessly I leaf through the books, read a line here and there, look at the pictures, then push the books to one side again.
My father puts a small plate with neatly cut sandwiches and a peeled and quartered apple down next to me.
The terror inside me wells up, takes possession of me slowly and paralyses me. I don’t ever want to move again, ever go down in the street again. I don’t ever want to see anybody again.
I put the plate down on the windowsilclass="underline" I don’t like the food here either. Nothing in Amsterdam tastes of anything.
In the afternoon my mother takes down the nappies while I sit on the kitchen doorstep and watch her quick hands collect the washing. She hangs other pieces of clothing on the line: my shorts, underwear, my towel, the socks knitted by Mem.
I stiffen when I suddenly realise what has happened: the wet shirt with the small pocket is hanging from two pegs among the other washing. The photograph.
When my mother has gone into the kitchen, I slip my fingers quickly into the opening in the shirt. How could I have forgotten! I touch a small, crumpled wad but keep on fumbling wildly and incredulously. Then I pick it up between my fingers and unfold it, a matted, mangled bit of paper.
‘What have you done?’ My voice sounds distorted and shrill. ‘There was a photograph in my shirt. Couldn’t you have waited?’ I almost scream the words at her.
My eyes fill with tears. Back in my room I fling myself onto the bed and squeeze the scrap of paper desperately between my fingers.
‘I don’t know what’s got into him.’ From the sound of her voice I can tell that my mother is crying as well.
My father soothes her, their voices disappearing towards the living-room. When the door shuts there is a deathly silence.
‘If you don’t go down to play today I’m just going to push you out of the door,’ she says next day as she sets a cup of warm milk before me on the table. ‘Don’t you turn into a stay-at-home, you hear? Children are meant to play outside.’
She talks gently and I can see that she is smiling. And yet I hear the anxious undertone in her voice and her whole attitude suggesting that she is feeling her way with me.