With me on the back, he cycles as far as the Concert-gebouw, where he leans the bike against a wall and walks with me past a large green space with badly worn grass. Here, too, there are soldiers, tents, trucks. Why don’t I look this time, why do I go and walk on the other side of my father and cling – ‘Don’t hang on so tight!’ – to his arm?
…‘Now, you’ll see something,’ he says, ‘something you’ve never even dreamed of, just you wait and see.’
Walt moving his quivering leg to and fro, his warm, yielding skin, the smell of the thick hair in his armpits…
I trudge along beside my father, my soles burning, too tired to look at anything.
We walk through the gateway of a large building, a sluice that echoes to the sound of voices, and through which the people have to squeeze before fanning out again on the other side. There are hundreds of them now, all moving in the same direction towards a buzzing hive of activity, a surging mass of bodies.
There is a sweet smell of food coming from a small tent in the middle of the street in front of which people are crowding so thickly that I can’t see what is being sold.
I stop in my tracks, suddenly dying for food, dying just to stay where I am and to yield myself up to that wonderful sweet smell. But my father has already walked on and I have to wriggle through the crowds to catch up with him.
Beside a bridge he pushes me forward between the packed bodies so that I can see the canal, a long stretch of softly shimmering water bordered by overhanging trees. At one end brilliantly twinkling arches of light have been suspended that blaze in the darkness and are reflected in the still water. Speechless and enchanted I stare at the crystal-clear world full of dotted lines, a vision of luminous radiation that traces a winking and sparkling route leading from bridge to bridge, from arch to arch, from me to my lost soldier.
I grip my father’s hand. ‘Come on,’ I say, ‘let’s have a look. Come on!’
Festoons of light bulbs are hanging wherever we go, like stars stretched across the water, and the people walk past them in silent, admiring rows. The banks of the canal feel as cosy as candle-lit sitting-rooms.
‘Well?’ my father breaks the spell. ‘It’s quite something, isn’t it? In Friesland, you’d never have dreamed that anything like that existed, would you now?’
We take a short cut through dark narrow streets. I can hear dull cracks, sounds that come as a surprise in the dark, as if a sniper were firing at us.
My father starts to run.
‘Hurry, or we’ll be too late.’
An explosion of light spurts up against the black horizon and whirls apart, pink and pale green fountains of confetti that shower down over a brilliant sign standing etched in the sky.
And another shower of stars rains down to the sound of muffled explosions and cheers from the crowd, the sky trembling with the shattering of triumphal arches.
I look at the luminous sign in the sky as if it is a mirage.
‘Daddy, that letter, what’s it for? Why is it there?’ Why did t have to ask, why didn’t I just add my own letters, fulfil my own wishful thinking?
‘That W? You know what that’s for. The W, the W’s for Queen Wilhelmina
I can hear a scornful note in his voice as if he is mocking me.
‘Willy here, Willy there,’ he says, ‘but the whole crew took off to England and left us properly in the lurch.’
I’m not listening, I don’t want to hear what he has to say.
W isn’t Wilhelmina: it stands for Walt! It’s a sign specially for me…
The army has arranged a dance for the neighbourhood. The playground is brightly lit up with floodlights and is chock-full of people, pressed close together up against the fence and listening to a small band seated on the steps of the gym.
I hear the fast rhythm, the seductive, slithering tones, the trumpet raising its strident voice, sounds you cannot escape.
‘Off you go,’ says my father. ‘Liberation happens just once in a lifetime. Mummy and I will be coming to have a look too.’
There is frenzied dancing on an open piece of ground ringed by curious spectators. Most of the men are soldiers.
They hold the women and girls tight, then suddenly thrust them away fast, turn round, catch them on one arm and bend over them with practised ease.
The girls move about on agile, eager legs, turning flashily in time with the music and moulding themselves compliantly to the masterful bodies of their partners.
The few older residents who are dancing do so sedately, moving around carefully with dainty, measured steps, smiling about them politely.
‘Swing’s great, hey?’ Jan is leaning over my shoulder, his mouth close to my ear. ‘See how tight a grip they’ve got on those bits of skirt?’
His body moves in time with the music, and he hums along with delight.
We look at the couples clamped together, the quick bare legs under the short skirts, the firm grip of the soldiers’ arms, the heavy boots moving effortlessly like black, hot-blooded beasts. The heat given off by the dancers transmits itself to us, rousing us.
‘Christ, take a look at that, will you? That sort of thing oughtn’t to be allowed. Look, quick!’ I feel a push and am propelled forward. ‘See her? You keep your eye on her, it won’t be long before she’s walking around with a big belly.’
I admire them, I think they’re exciting; I want to go on looking at them for a long time, the way the two of them dance, the way he puts his arm around her and looks at her.
‘Come on,’ says Jan, ‘let’s go and have a smoke, I know somebody with a packet of Players.’
The soldier spins around like greased lightning, kicking his heels so high that they tap his bottom. He presses the girl hard up against him, his hands on her buttocks as she hangs meekly on to him. They whirl about between the other dancers, disappearing from view and turning up suddenly somewhere else. Whenever he finds enough space the soldier throws the girl up in the air, swings her between his legs as she comes down, sleekly rotates his quick hips and then takes a few long steps, one of his legs thrust out between hers.
In a corner of the playground some boys are sitting on their haunches against the fence, and when Jan joins them I squat down as well. They are smoking with self-important expressions and an appearance of doubtful enjoyment. When the military band strikes up a new tune they snigger and sing along softly so that the bystanders cannot hear them:
They fall about laughing and one of the boys holds the burning cigarette high up between his legs. I look sideways at Jan. Don’t you start laughing now, I plead with him silently, don’t leave me in the lurch, please don’t laugh.
He gives me a broad grin and holds out the cigarette to irye with a friendly gesture. I grin back weakly.
Slowly I climb up our dark stairs. Players, nookie do, the shocking dancing, what a strange world these soldiers live in. None of it has any connection with Walt, even though he held me between his bare legs and pushed his thing into my mouth.
Above me a door is being opened and my mother, who has heard me coming, calls out, ‘You don’t have to walk up in the dark any longer, the electricity’s on again!’
With a click the little light on the stairs comes on.
My mother is singing, and at the word ‘you’ she points Bobbie’s little arm in my direction.
A small present is lying beside my plate, wrapped in thick brown paper. When I open it, I find four exercise books, a pencil sharpener and a small rubber in two colours.