His house no longer had a façade. Hocke and Zesgever, quite detached, concerned only insofar as they had to wonder if their own home was going to hold, let their eyes wander over the exposed interior of the Gabriëllina’s attic as it still stood above the water. Oh, the stuff, the worn-out inner spring mattress, the cast-iron stove. The cupboard with long out-of-date and unusable cans, jars, preserving jars, horsehair sieves: it was all there in total conformity with the situation, as if the objects had just fled from downstairs to upstairs like the people. But not a trace of Simon Cau’s nephew, Marien. No sign of life in the attic across the way.
But that was made up for by the human cargo on rafts that were being swept past them, and other flotsam and jetsam. Under a bad spell, bemused, the little group of men stood at the window and heard the screams of terror and cries for help, and the curses.
“Bastards! Help us or drown!”
A chunk of a roof went whirling past.
“Vipers! You’re godforsaken!”
Most of its roof tiles were missing. It came, with at least eight people, perhaps an entire family, aboard, from the direction of Gabriëllina Farm and swept southward past the top floor where Hocke and his evacuees were sheltering. There wasn’t even any point in wrenching open the window and trying something with a rope. The family, about to be submerged, was seized almost at that very moment by the current that was pouring past the house and away at an angle toward the grayish horizon. The screaming man’s protests changed immediately, merging, as they could see from the house, with the last movements of people struggling with all their might to stay alive one more minute, one more second, and who knew, even in that last minute, the fullness of that last second — you could tell — that a child was still a child, a novice in conditions that were sometimes glaring and senseless, and that a parent was a parent. Don’t be afraid, just hold tight to me … two of the onlookers, van de Velde and Zesgever, squeezed their eyes as the roof capsized and they heard a sort of animal howl. Izak Hocke turned around. Another similar freight was coming at them from the right.
“I can’t look anymore!” he said, absolutely at his wit’s end, talking to his mother’s back as she wandered around in the half-darkness.
The only one left looking out into the storm now was Cornelius Jaeger. His head low, immersed in the din as if he had become its medium and was internalizing it, he stood at the window. Did he feel that at least one person had to bear witness that the high-pitched, multi-toned whistle was in the process of obliterating the communities of Dreischor, Ouwerkerk, Nieuwerkerk, and Oosterland? Midday had already passed. The tide was slowly beginning to rise again. Out on the great polder of Schouwen it crept forward insidiously across the ditches, because the sea dike that ran from the coast all the way to Zierikzee had been breached only at Schelphoek. But even on the heaving, drowning polders of Duiveland, the majority of the victims were still at this point alive. From attics, rooftops, and rafts, they did what victims who are still alive always do: they scream, and they wait for help.
Up in this particular attic, they were waiting for something that can be characterized, questionably perhaps but also not wrongly, as deliverance. The birth, almost upon them now, took precedence over the storm. The cervix was fully dilated, the head of the baby had emerged and was pointing down through the pelvic girdle. Lidy, among those surrounding the bed, was the one most involved in what was happening. Leaning far forward she watched as the little head, with its skull bones that, as she knew, were as flexible as the whalebones in a corset and could move over one another, pushed its way forward a tiny bit, then slid back again.
“It’s going fine!” she encouraged the not-so-young mother, who was looking around as if she were hoping to break out of an encirclement. She too, if she remembered correctly, had made quite a spectacle of herself during this last phase, but this woman chose from now on to let not a single sound escape her. So whether they wanted to or not, everyone could hear the screams coming from outside. Lidy looked at the red face, saw the arms that tried to cover it. With the clarity that comes with exhaustion, she registered that death cries and birth cries are similar, that they both resemble and illuminate one another.
Muffled barks from the dog.
When a child is born without professional help, those present have to use their own good sense. Unwind the umbilical cord from round its neck. Rub the soaking wet little body till it’s dry. Wrap it up warmly. Clamp off the umbilical cord, cut it with something sharp. If the child is a bluish red because blood or slime is blocking its throat and windpipe, suck them out. Lidy, with a strange, salty taste in her mouth, heard the child whimper a little, then scream. Cathrien Padmos had given life to a healthy boy.
Moving heavily, weak at the knees, she went from the bed to the window, where the strange deformed boy took a step to one side to make room for her. She leaned her forehead against the window. Feeling light-headed, she sank back for a moment into what she had not forgotten, home, Nadja, Sjoerd, her sister, her brother. One could not describe it as coherent thought. It was more a knowledge, certain but as vague as fantasies of heaven and hell, that they were there, in some unimaginable place in safety. She forced her eyes open and craned her neck, for in the middle of the stream of debris that was sailing past her on the waves she saw a raft with a high rim around the edges, maybe the upturned roof of a hut or something like that, and on it was an animal, alone, motionless, it looked to her like a pig. Before she could wonder if it was still alive, she saw the animal lift itself a little on its front legs and then tread forward into the water in a way that looked intentional.
“My God!”
Now there wasn’t a human being or an animal to be seen anywhere. Not even a bird.
Utterly shocked, she turned away. The boy, right next to her, looked at her and she stared back into the eyes under the continuous line of the eyebrows, at the mouth, already with a hint of fuzz on the upper lip. Nadja? Sjoerd? Sarphati Park, number 36? A paradox of danger and safety: there had to have been a moment of clarity, a short leap between its onset and its end, that was a rude awakening for her. The world was under a flood, the universe was turning in the wind, and they in this attic were the only ones to have been spared.
24. My Wife Doesn’t Understand Me
One beautiful day in May 1962, in an Amsterdam bedroom, a man who could only describe himself as contented and happy both in his private and professional life awakened with the immortal words in his head: my wife doesn’t understand me. Nonplussed, he rolled onto his side. Armanda was still asleep, on her back, chin pointing up in the air, a position she’d taught herself to use, initially with playful light-heartedness, after reading a newspaper article about double chins. Where did these words come from? Heavy and awkward, they ran through his mind. He stretched out an arm; she was wearing a short nightgown she called a babydoll. He could see the beginnings of her responsive smile, because the unbleached linen curtains let a lot of light into the room.