For a Lost Soldier

Chapter 1

And then, suddenly, the days grow lighter and warmer, the land seems to brim over with blossom, birds and frogs and the breeze is laden with scents and sounds. Young calves BCamper among the calmly grazing cows and spring in the air without warning as if taken by surprise at the touch of the sun in their skin.

Each day we make our way stolidly to school through the burgeoning landscape: there in the morning, back in the Bllernoon, our daily treadmill. We still go about in our shabby winter clothes despite the tumultuous renewal of life trumpeting its arrival everywhere around us. To us everything is .is it has been, the men working the land and the women In icing the weeds in the vegetable garden or stoking the fire in the stove. Though the land grows busier by the day, to our eyes everything looks unspeakably dull, and most of the time we walk silently along the road paying no attention to our surroundings. Occasionally there is a sudden brief remark or a laugh, and we career around after one another playing tag in a sudden outburst of energy.

It is a cool morning, the sky steel blue and almost cloudless. On the way to school Meint and I trudge along on different sides of the road while Jantsje walks purposefully in front. All three of us, in our own way, are wrapped in thought, reacting huffily to any intrusion by the others. Then, as we approach Warns, we notice that the monotonous everyday pattern seems to have been broken. Something unusual is going on in the village: there are villagers standing about everywhere along the road talking to each other and people have taken to the street whom you don’t normally see about on a weekday. Everyone is walking in the same direction towards the crossroads by the church, where they congregate in an excited huddle.

‘Bet you if s something to do with the Germans,’ says Meint, ‘they’re up to their dirty tricks again, for sure.’

‘Betting is against the Bible.’ Jantsje gives her brother an injured look, but her voice sounds triumphant. ‘Hait won’t even let us say that, "betting". The Germans can bet, if they like, they’re heathens. But not us.’

I have become used to the rivalry between these two over who is going to have the last word. Meint sometimes strikes out at her, suddenly and feebly, but somehow or other Jantsje always seems to get the best of the battle. In any case she gives the impression that she is coolly and level-headedly putting our affairs to rights.

A good thirty people are milling about at the crossroads, talking excitedly, gesticulating vigorously, and moving from group to group. Some of the women look as if they have just rushed out of their houses, and everything suggests that something unusual is going on. When Meint and I walk up to the villagers Jantsje stays obstinately behind. She makes an attempt to keep me back as well, but I can sense that really she wants to come along too and see for herself what is happening.

From snatches of conversation we gather why so many people have come out on to the street: the Germans have blown up the bridge across the canal, at the end of the village; it’s kaput, gone, destroyed, all blown to smithereens!

We run back to Jantsje. ‘The Germans, what did I tell you? Come on, let’s go and have a look!’ Meint runs ahead of us. ‘We’ve got to see.’ I am torn between wanting to stay with Jantsje and running after him to the bridge. I have learned not to overreact to things but to let them take their course: whatever happens is bound to be a disappointment. But you don’t see a blown-up bridge every day. Reluctantly at first, then faster, I follow Meint.

‘Just so you know, I’m going on to school!’ shouts Jantsje, ‘and I’m going to tell Hait everything!’

I take my clogs in my hands and run exuberantly through the village street: something is really happening at last. More and more people are walking up the road, singly and in groups, in an obvious confusion which in many of them has turned to fear and uncertainty. I am aware that my rushing along is adding to the confusion, but, as far as I am concerned, the more commotion there is the better. The village is coming to life at last, everything is astir and on the move. I stop when I reach the next knot of people. Meint beckons frantically and seems to be giving a kind of victory dance. ‘The bridge has been blown up, but the Germans have gone, sent packing by the Americans. Really and truly!’ He talks in gasps, half shouting, and balls of spittle appear in the corners of his mouth. ‘They say that there are American cars over there, army cars. And as soon as the bridge is repaired they’ll be crossing over to this side of the village to liberate us!’

What shall we do, go on to the bridge or go to school? It seems silly to go back now. ‘Come on,’ says Meint, ‘let’s go and see if we’re too late for school. If everyone’s gone inside, then we’ll carry on to the bridge.’

But all the children are still standing in the small yard in front of the school and a boy comes out, leaves the doors wide open and shouts, ‘No school today, we’ve got the day off!’ His voice cracks with excitement, and this excitement spreads like wildfire across the yard. Everyone is suddenly moving, an ant-heap of shouting and curious children. Just as we are about to leave, the master calls us back; he stands solemnly on the steps in front of the open doors and slightly raises his arms.

‘Silence!’ Everyone stops talking. ‘The school will remain closed for the day, but be sure you all go home quietly now, all of you, and don’t hang about in the village. The bridge has been blown up by the enemy, but you must on no account go there, there may well be more shooting.’ He looks across the yard like a general, ‘We do not yet know what else the day may bring, but that…’ – he points to the other side of the street where a man has firmly planted a red, white and blue flag outside his house – ‘that is forbidden anyway. So be careful: the Germans haven’t gone yet.’

A Dutch flag in the garden! We crowd up to the fence to look at the man who is defying all the regulations so openly. ‘They’ve hopped it,’ the man laughs, ‘so we can do what we like again. Down with the Jerries!’ He spits contemptuously and I am shocked by his open disrespect.

‘Come on, we can do as we like as well. Let’s go and have a look.’ Meint grabs hold of us excitedly and pulls us up the road.

‘Mem,’ says Jantsje, ‘we have to tell Mem, and Hait. Someone has to go back.’ Both of them look at me.

‘Yes, you go, you don’t come from here after all. It’s our bridge.’

I feel the unfairness of what they are saying, I feel it deeply and woundingly and yet I can also see their point: the bridge is theirs, my life is in Amsterdam. And anyway, I’m too keyed up to protest and on top of that I don’t really know what I want right now: to be alone or to tag along with them to the bridge.

Without saying a word, I turn around and begin to run back home. On the way I yell like a madman to anyone who comes out of the isolated houses I pass, ‘The Americans are here, on the other side of the bridge, the Germans are beaten. Hey, hey, hey, we’ve been liberated!’

Before I know it I have reached Laaxum. I clamber over the fence, race across the meadow and find Mem and Pieke alone in the improbably quiet and brightly gleaming living-room. Panting, I lean against her chair. ‘Mem, the Germans have gone, there are American cars…

Mem has sat down – her predictable reaction to any big news – and she looks at me with eyes wide open.

‘I know, my boy, I know. Hait has already been round to tell us. It’s some news, isn’t it? Pieke…’ She gropes for the girl and hugs her with rough affection, ‘Did you hear that, what Jeroen said? The Germans really have gone, he’s just been in the village. Jantsje and Meint haven’t gone to the bridge, have they?’ she adds suspiciously, her voice now carrying a threat in anticipation.

Ten minutes later I am running back, amazed that Mem hasn’t abandoned her work for the day, amazed too that she hasn’t come with me to Warns to see for herself what’s going on. But she had said that there might well be some more fighting – hadn’t I seen any guns? – and that I must go and find Jantsje and Meint at once and bring them straight home, or else they’d be sorry.

Fighting for air, arms flailing, my breath rasping painfully in my throat, I run back to the village, exhausted yet ecstatic. A few more flags have made a cautious appearance along the village street, like timidly raised hands. The sight of the road adorned with unexpected splashes of colour heightens my excitement. It is as if everything were happening for me alone, the flags, all the commotion and suspense. This is the final stage of my exile, the arrival of the soldiers means the end of my separation from my parents, they’ll be fetching me home soon!

After the grey sleep of winter this is the culmination for which we seem unwittingly to have been waiting. I feel I’m ready to burst, everything inside tingling and swirling. My feet are making strange, light clattering sounds under my body, beating out an irregular rhythm on the paving stones. One of my clogs, which has split, is held together with an iron band and makes a different noise on the road from the other, so that a little tune is sounding away in my ears: lib-er-at-ed, lib-er-at-ed…

There is nothing at the crossroads any longer. The junction of the three roads looks bright and still in the morning sun and it feels almost like a Sunday. I walk past the school, where is everybody? At the bridge, I find the answer: gathered there is the largest crowd I have ever seen, with the possible exception of the funeral of the minister’s wife. I work my way forward through the people and look for Jantsje and Meint. Shoving against backs and wriggling past dirty overalls I suddenly see the bridge, the bridge that is no longer there.

Torn in half, the two ends are hanging in the water, a shocking and pathetic picture of violence in this slow, quiet landscape. Snapped-off railings, planks broken in two and twisted struts overturned in the water, it seems beyond repair, destroyed once and for all. I look at it in dismay. The bridge is like a great animal, blown to pieces and crumpling as it dies. It will never be put right again, suddenly I know it, it can never be rebuilt. I have an immediate foreboding that the war may never come to an end.

I push in among the other children standing close together at the edge of the water, silent and dejected. Uncertainly, I stop still, afraid to move any further; my elation has made way for panic.

There is Meint, right in front. But where has Jantsje got to? I have to take them back home, they must be dragged out of here quickly, back to Laaxum, back to the stillness by the sea.

‘Have you seen the Americans? Over there, that’s them!’ A village boy pulls me forward and points, ‘Our liberators, now we’re free!’ He waves across to the other side and then cries out with a sob, ‘Long live Wilhelmina!’

A few green trucks have been parked on the other side of the canal and soldiers are walking about among them. There are also some odd-looking open cars, small and innocent like toys. Disappointed, I look at the peaceful scene, a scene that seems so unconnected with war, a handful of soldiers moving about calmly, almost lethargically, between the cars, carrying poles and piling moss-coloured bags onto the grass. They don’t appear to be giving us a thought, but just go about their business imperturbably, looking neither left nor right.

Armies as far as the horizon is what I had thought the word liberation meant, masses of soldiers carrying heavy guns, rifles and banners to the blare of bugles; an incalculable host of julibant, heroic fighters, muddy, tired and dirty, but still singing triumphant songs. The entry of heroes…

Two men get out of one of the trucks and begin to put up tents. One of them, who is stripped to the waist, walks to the edge of the water and waves: the first liberator to look at us! An awkward arm goes up stiffly here and there in answer to his greeting, but only the children cheer out loud and respond to the wave with exuberant leaps and yells.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘we’ve got to get back, Mem is worried, she doesn’t want us to hang about here. It might still be dangerous.’

‘Just as well, I’m hungry,’ Meint says matter-of-factly. ‘Don’t those Americans eat? Where do they do their cooking?’

That question occupies us for most of our homeward journey: what and where do the soldiers eat, and where do they come from? ‘Americans come from England as well, of course,’ I maintain, because I have always been told that we would be liberated by the English. My father had always listened in secret to the English radio, so these men simply had to be English, and that was that.

‘Do they have to live in those little tents?’ Jantsje asks, and, ‘Will they be coming to liberate Laaxum as well?’

‘Liberate us? What from?’ asks Hait, shifting about impatiently at the table. ‘No one has ever set foot in Laaxum, they don’t even know it exists.’ He looks at us cheerfully. ‘Everything stays here the way it always has been, and just as well too.’

We are sitting side by side on the quay wall, captivated by the mysterious darkness of the water beneath us. A fish darts through a strip of sunlight, a brightly glittering star thrown off course. I follow the twisting movements, the almost complete halt and the flashing away at lightning speed, but my thoughts are on tomorrow, on the bridge, the soldiers and the fact that what is happening there is the liberation.

Mem had forbidden us to go back to the village: ‘There’s nothing for you there, it’s grown-ups’ business.’ It seems incredible that, half an hour away, something so important should be going on while we are hanging about the harbour dangling our legs with nothing to do.

Jantsje lifts her head, looks across the sea and points vaguely at the horizon. ‘Perhaps the Americans have crossed over already, and your mother and father are being liberated as well.’ I make no reply and stare at a school of minnows slipping from boat to boat. Carefully I work a small pebble to the edge of the quay and suddenly let it fly in their direction. There is a violent rush, as scores of fish vanish as one like magic in the shadow of a boat.

I had wanted to ask Hait a lot of questions over lunch, but for a long time I had been afraid of talking about home and the war, a fear that had eventually turned into glum resignation. The answers they gave me were always evasive: ‘How long will the war go on?’ ‘Young ’un, we have no idea.’ ‘Is there any food left in Amsterdam?’ ‘Let’s just hope so, and don’t you pay any heed to what people are saying, they know no more than we do. One day they’ll come to fetch you, after all they brought you here.’ ‘When?’ ‘It depends on the war, and who knows how long that’s going on for?’

No letters and no news from home, for months now, only those vague non-committal evasions which were absolutely worthless and merely added to my confusion. This morning, when I had watched the soldiers across the canal, I had felt my courage ebb away: how could that handful of men possibly liberate all of us, they would never make it…

The school of minnows slips back along the hull of the boat and the little fish start to sip with small, fastidious mouths. Pieke, who keeps hobbling up and down along the quay wall, kicks my hand as I search for another pebble to throw. Whimpering, she cries that she wants to see the Americans, that she is always being left out and that she wants to go to the village right now.

Meint has clambered into the boat, and, getting down on his knees, begins teasingly to throw small sticks from the deck in our direction. ‘Why don’t you ask Mem,’ he mocks, ‘she’s sure to let you.’

Then, unexpectedly, Jantsje takes her little sister under her wing and says she’ll borrow a bicycle and take Pieke along to Warns. I go on sitting where I am, suddenly feeling sleepy and worn out, just wanting to curl up in the warm sun and to think of nothing at all. Still, it might be a good idea to go and look up Jan, he might not have heard anything yet about the soldiers by the canal.

I remember how the boys in Amsterdam always said to each other, ‘Just you wait, when the English get here they’ll finish Jerry off in no time.’ And now our liberators have turned out to be American, and not English at all! While I’m Still feeling just a little triumphant, I’ll go over to Jan’s and tell him what’s happened, Jan, who always knows everything. He won’t know what’s hit him this time though!

But I am afraid to go to Scharl. Imagine if the woman there says that Jan left some time ago, that he’s gone back home and hadn’t told me. I would be all on my own then, deserted, betrayed. Whenever Jan doesn’t turn up at school for a little while the thought creeps over me, dimly at first and then more and more insistently until the shattering truth dawns: Jan has gone, I am all alone… Then I can think of nothing else, my longing for Jan assumes frightening proportions, and I am given over, heart and soul, to homesickness.

‘Hey,’ says Jantsje, bicycling over the dyke with Pieke on the luggage carrier, ‘we’re off, Jeroen.’

‘Wait for me.’ I slip into my clogs and run up the path. Jantsje has already bicycled away and I run after the girls at a jog-trot.

A miracle has happened by the blown-up bridge. A narrow gangway of brand new planks is in place across the water. Three soldiers are working on it, hanging down over the canal, sawing and knocking in nails with loud, determined hammer blows. Behind the army trucks small green tents have sprung up right across the fields, and a kind of storage depot has risen next to the largest of them, with boxes and tins and a mountain of kit bags half-covered with a tarpaulin.

Close by, on a bench, a few men are having a relaxed conversation, so relaxed one might think they were enjoying a Saturday afternoon chat in their front garden. And a bit further on, to our amazement, a couple of them are swimming in the canal, laughing and shouting like small boys, disappearing under the surface, now and then sticking their legs up to the sky and spitting water out of their mouths in small arcs when they come up for air. Large swathes have been cut through the duckweed, showing where the swimmers have been.

One of them climbs out on to the bank, hoisting himself up between the reeds, and as he stands up I realise with a shock what Jantsje is saying out aloud – ‘See that, it looks as if he’s got nothing on at all.’ Suddenly silent and sullen, the girls turn their heads away and I, too, take a startled step backwards. I can’t tell if the soldier is actually naked, but it’s a strange enough sight anyway to see grown men being so playful and high-spirited, trying to push one another into the water, giving each other bear hugs, wrestling and kicking out at one another with loud yells, tearing exultantly through the water like young animals, as if neither war nor liberation meant anything.

Jantsje walks back to the bridge and I push the bike with Pieke behind her, hoping she doesn’t hang about there too long; it would be just as well not to get too close to those soldiers. I can see Pieke peeping secretly at the swimmers and suddenly I feel cross. What is happening over there is nothing to do with her; Mem was quite right, it’s grown-ups’ business.

One of the soldiers on the bridge is singing and the hammer blows sound loud and clear. Someone puts down a tin from which they take sandwiches. The war seems a peaceful and friendly affair.

I feel ashamed as I catch myself peeking at the swimming soldiers, just what I wanted to stop Pieke from doing. What is it that fascinates me so much about them, why does my mind keep wandering back to them, and why does that make me feel ashamed? The swimmers have wrapped towels around themselves, and hit their heads to shake the water out of their ears. One of them does a handstand in a free and fluent movement, poised athletically like a fairground showman, a strange contrast to this sober landscape.

‘Come on, we have to get back,’ says Jantsje, taking the handlebars from me, ‘or Mem’ll realise we’ve gone.’

Then to my own surprise I take an unusual decision and suddenly give voice to my own will. ‘You two go home if you like, but I’m going to stay here a bit longer.’

Unexpectedly, Jantsje raises no objections, gets onto the bike and pedals off without sparing me another glance. As she rides away I hesitate; Mem will know now and be cross. Behind me I can hear the singing voice and the rhythmical tapping of hammers, an enticing new world. I drop into the grass next to a couple of village boys, put my arms around my knees and, avid-eyed, settle down to watch.

The swimmers are standing by the tents, one is combing his hair in a small mirror, the others are drying themselves. Now that they are closer I can see that they are not much older than Popke, eighteen or nineteen. How do you teach people so young to fire a rifle, how can such youngsters make war? Can they really have beaten the Germans, these playful, boyish swimmers? But they are here in Friesland; they’ve got this far, anyway. I look at all the little bursts of activity in the camp with growing interest, at the toiling men, at the comings and goings of cars, at an oilcloth being spread out on the ground and one of the boys sitting in front of a tent and cleaning his rifle. Imagine if these soldiers were going on to Amsterdam and they offered me a lift, and we fetched Jan and we sat together in the back of one of those cars and we drove right through villages and polders straight on to Amsterdam…

I am startled out of my daydream by a noise that makes all of us on the bank leap simultaneously to our feet. An armoured car is driving out of the village street, making straight for us, hooting loudly for our attention, solid and outlandish as an elephant.

It stops at the canal with its engine growling. A soldier beside the driver leans out of the window and calls something to the men on the bridge in an incomprehensible language.

A curious crowd has poured out of the village to take a closer look at the car and the soldiers, a large circle forming around the unwieldy monster, at a safe distance not only because it might easily start firing at us from all sides but also because the people feel uneasy about the foreign language and the unfamiliar behaviour of the men. When the soldier beside the driver opens the door and steps out, everyone falls respectfully silent. Then there is a crush and the circle closes in.

I take a few steps back because the craning and the jostling scare me. I’d really much rather go back home, now that everything is getting so much closer and more real. I remember Mem and the clear warning she gave us.

As I try to break away from the circle someone puts an arm around my chest from behind and pulls me back hard. Popke, I think, or Hait. Now I’m for it… Another arm is thrust out past my head, an arm I do not know, strong and tanned, with a down of blond hair and a watch on the wrist. Between the fingers is a little oblong packet wrapped in blue and red paper with a thin silver edge.

I stand there in a state of terror, numb and cowering, staring at the hand: what does it all mean, what is happening, who is behind me holding me so tight? The people around me move back a little and look on curiously, some laughing as if it is all a great joke. I should have gone back with Jantsje, now I am all on my own with no one to help me. I am taken by the shoulders and turned around. Behind me a soldier is squatting and looking straight at me with piercing grey eyes. He has rough, cracked lips that are open in a smile and the corner of one of his front teeth has been broken off. Close-cropped, sandy hair with a bit of a curl, a white undershirt and a small chain around a powerful straight neck; I take all this in with one glance, an intense moment of guarded acknowledgment. I try and pull away. Leave me alone, I think, let go of me. It’s all up with me now, I’m for it. Fear wells up and floods through me, I ought to start yelling and kicking. But I remain standing stock-still, clasped in his arms.

He seems surprised and pats me gently on the head, takes my hand and presses the oblong packet into it. His hand enclosing my fingers is warm and reassuring. ‘For you,’ he says in English.

I hear the words, sounds that mean nothing, and I turn my head away, tongue-tied. What should I do? Why are they all staring and why does nobody do anything? The soldier gets up from his haunches, his voice still friendly and gentle, but making me dizzy with fear. I hold the hand with the little packet in it as far away from me as possible and see that all the boys around me are looking at it. But that hand does not belong to me, I have nothing to do with it, it’s just a mistake, surely they realise that?

The soldier walks over to the car and leans through the window; there is a fresh burst of hooting and an arm waves from inside.

‘He’s hooting for you.’ The boys push me forward. ‘We can go and look at the car, hurry up!’

The soldier lifts me on to the running-board. I can feel two strong hands against my ribs pushing me forward awkwardly, as if trying to squeeze me through the door. In the car, behind the wheel, sits a black soldier, a Negro with shining dark eyes and a big, happy-go-lucky smile. A narrow cap is perched on his frizzy hair, the point pulled down in front to just over his eyebrows.

‘Hello!’ He almost sings the word, in one long soothing, drawing-out of breath. ‘Hello, mister.’ He puts out his hand but I don’t take it. ‘What?’ He pats my cheek, then I watch his hand sliding along the inside of the car and pointing things out with a brief tap of his fingernails: knobs, round glass panels, little handles. He is smoking a stream-lined, snow-white cigarette – quite unlike the crumpled butts that Hait smokes – and puffs the smoke with an emphatic noise out of the window. Every so often he gives a high-pitched, childish laugh and gestures to a soldier on the bridge. The soldier who is holding me steps up on to the running-board behind me and bends over into the car, pushing me tightly against the door, pressing my throat against the top of the rolled-down window. Above my head a cigarette is being lit. I hear them talk and feel the painful weight of his body burning against my back. His voice reverberates through me, as if I were a sounding-board.

I’ll wait without moving until this ordeal is over, it can’t go on for ever. He coughs and my body shakes with him. He has placed a hand next to me on the window and I look at his short broken nails.

Before I know what has happened, I am suddenly back on the ground next to the car and the boys are pushing me out of the way to have their turn on the running-board. In the ensuing confusion I make good my escape as quickly and unobtrusively as possible through to the back of the circle. The soldier looks round for me, but when he spots me and starts to move in my direction I take to my heels. Quick, I think to myself, back to Laaxum, back home! Halfway to Laaxum I slow down a bit, the oblong packet still in my sweaty hand. Dispassionately, I examine it, as if it were something dangerous. The blue and red coloured wrapper contains thin strips neatly packed in silver paper. They have a sharp pepperminty smell. I peel back the silver paper and find a soft pinkish-grey slab inside which bends easily and seems to be lightly dusted with powder. It is a small, delicate miracle of precision and smell, streamlined and perfect.

As I chew the little slab it turns into an elastic, pliable little ball that I can work between my teeth and mould with thrusts of my tongue. The more I allow it to wander slowly through my mouth, tasting, testing and savouring it, enjoying its sweetness, the more it is brought home to me: I was given this present by an American soldier, this little packet is for me alone, he picked me out specially…

They will hardly believe me at home, it all seems like an incredible adventure story, a voyage of discovery through strange lands: the car, the black soldier, the packet pressed into my hand… I forget how passive and terrified I had been, how, paralysed with fear, I had just allowed it all to happen, and how I had run away as fast as I could. What remains is the memory of a glorious adventure.

I squeeze the other little slabs carefully back into the wrapper and push it deep into my pocket, my hand covering it protectively. I am no longer so sure that I shall tell them about it at home.

Chapter 2

Next day a surprise is waiting for us at school: the only thing we have to do is to write out the words of the Frisian and Dutch national anthems because, the master tells us, we shall be singing them at the liberation celebrations.

Using exaggerated flourishes, he writes the words on two separate blackboards and our two classes, joined into one for the occasion, dedicatedly copy his ornamental letters into our exercise books.

one of the anthems begins. How can we sing that now: ‘a prince of German blood’? Shouldn’t we be going and wiping out all the Germans, now that the war is over? I had taken it for granted that we would all be marching straight into Germany with pitchforks, sticks and rifles to give them a really good hiding in their own rotten country.

‘Anyone finished copying may go home, there are no more classes today. The school will remain closed for a few days, until after the celebrations. Off you go and enjoy yourselves.’

It is drizzling, and we hang about undecided in the school porch. Should we go back home or shall we make for the bridge? We walk, awkwardly because of the strange time of day, through the village street, hugging the house fronts for shelter.

A moment later Jantsje catches up with us, panting, her exercise book with the anthems pressed protectively to her chest. ‘Jeroen, the master wants you, you’ve got to go back.’ She is looking at me gleefully, has it got something to do with that packet of chewing-gum? I never told anybody at home about it, but this morning as we filed into school Jantsje suddenly whispered to me in passing, ‘I know what you’ve got!’

I feel in my pocket where the packet is tucked away, warm and pliable. They won’t be getting any, it’s just for me and no one else is going to touch it, I’ll make sure of that! I run back to school, walk down the stone passage and stop when I hear voices. I can see the master in the classroom with two men I know vaguely by sight. They live in a part of the village we seldom visit and they are standing stiffly and awkwardly beside the blackboard.

I walk up to the master’s table, wondering what it is this time, what they can want with me. ‘This is one of the pupils from Amsterdam,’ he says. ‘Shake hands with the gentlemen, boy.’

Silently I put out my hand, my eyes riveted to the tabletop. Am I about to get news from home?

The master’s voice sounds friendlier than usual and I listen in amazement. He says that the visitors are members of the festival committee for the liberation celebrations and that they are looking for a pupil who can draw nicely.

From his desk he brings out a drawing I once made of a wintry scene, a farmer pulling a cow along by a rope. ‘You didn’t know I’d kept it, did you now?’

The men bend over the drawing and then look at me. Do they like what I’ve done? You can’t tell from their faces.

‘You will understand, of course, why we thought of you. The drawings have to be about Friesland, a fishing boat or something to do with our dairy products. And a national costume never comes amiss either. We shall have the drawings copied on a larger scale and then hang them up in the Sunday school.’

‘It would be very nice if they were in colour,’ says one of the men in a drawling voice, ‘that’s always more cheerful. After all, it’s for the celebrations. And that’s why we also thought of putting these words underneath.’ He fetches a piece of paper from out of his pocket on which we thank you and underneath V = victory are written in big capital letters in English.

I can’t believe it: they need me, they want me to do something for the liberation celebrations! Everyone will look at the drawings and know that it was me who did them…

‘I’ll do my best. When do they have to be ready?’ I am back in the porch, a box of coloured pencils they have given me in my hand. The school yard is deserted, the drizzle has turned to rain. The houses across the road are reflected in the smooth pavement.

The emptiness of the yard seems to increase the solemnity of the moment: there I stand all alone on the steps with my newly commissioned assignment, ready for a fresh, unknown start. Yesterday that present from the soldier and now this. My luck has changed!

A green car drives through the deserted street, the tyres making a lapping sound over the rain-washed stones. A piece of canvas hanging loose and blowing like a flapping wing in the wind looks like a ghostly apparition, lending the village street, in which I have never seen any other car since our arrival from Amsterdam, a completely different appearance. The houses seem smaller and the road, with the car in it, looks suddenly narrow and cramped.

Like a messenger from the Heavenly Hosts, of whom I have heard so much about in church, the vehicle whirrs past me, an imposing, combative angel. I slip into my clogs and start to run after it. At the crossroads the car stops and a soldier leans out. He calls. I stop and look behind me, but there is no one there. Surely he can’t be calling me!

‘Hey, you!’ He leans out of the window and waves to me. I look up into an intently inquisitive face. It is the soldier who gave me the packet of chewing-gum yesterday, the same chapped lips, the same searching eyes.

He opens his mouth as if he wants to say something and then realises that there is no point. Perhaps I ought to say something, but what? ‘Thank you’, or ‘V = Victory’, the English words the master wrote in my exercise book? But I don’t know how to pronounce them, even if I were brave enough to try.

The soldier looks inside the car for a moment and then holds another red and blue packet with a silvery sheen up above my head. ‘Yesterday,’ he smiles suddenly with a friendly grin that makes all my heaviness of heart fall away. He is like a divine apparition enthroned above me against the grey, massed clouds, as he raises the little packet up to heaven in what might be a gesture of blessing. Small beads of drizzle glisten in his hair, and a thin gold chain gleams under his throat, moving gently as if he were swallowing his words. It is in strange contrast to his strong hairy arms and unshaven chin. His face is like something I had forgotten and am seeing again after a painfully long time. It is almost with gratitude that I recognise the tooth with the chipped corner and the sharp groove setting off his mouth. The door opens; a leg jerks nervously and impatiently, as if there is a hurry. ‘Hello, come on in.’ I understand because he pats the seat beside him invitingly and nods his head. Should I really get in, can I refuse to? I ought to be getting back home, so I can’t really… He whistles impatiently and spreads his arms out in a questioning gesture. Before I know what has happened, he has leaned out and seized me by my coat. Reluctantly, I step onto the running-board and allow myself to be pulled into the seat, where I edge as far away from him as possible. Why am I so frightened, he has a friendly face and won’t do me any harm. On the contrary: with a few determined movements he beats the rain off my coat and puts an arm around my shoulder.

‘Hello,’ I hear again. I try to say the same thing back, hoarsely and timidly. They are right, I’m a scaredy-cat, too frightened to say boo to a goose. I clutch the box of coloured pencils as if my life depends on it and look at the door.

‘Okay.’ He stretches across me and slams the door shut. ‘Drive?’ he asks. ‘You like?’ His hand goes to my thigh and gives my leg a reassuring pat.

The car judders and then we are away. I hold tight to the seat, and whenever I see people I make myself as small as possible, no one in the village must see me sitting in a car belonging to the Americans.

While we are driving he looks at me, his face half turned towards me and his eyes veering from me to the road and back again. Why is he watching me like that, doesn’t he trust me?

We have left the village behind and are driving towards Bakhuizen, on a road I do not know. I have never walked here and the unknown surroundings frighten me as the familiar ground disappears from under my feet.

In the middle of an open stretch he slows down and then stops the car by the side of the road: that’s it then, now I’ll be able to get out and hare back to Laaxum. But the soldier lights a cigarette, leans peacefully to one side, and gazes across the rain-drenched land and at the shiny wet road. Carefully, I move my hand to the door handle and try to turn it without his noticing: I can barely budge it. The soldier takes my hand from the handle with a smile and continues to hold it.

‘Walt,’ he says pointing to himself. ‘Me, Walt. You?’ and digs a finger in my coat. I quickly free my hand and mumble my name under my breath, ‘Jeroen.’ I am ashamed of my voice.

‘Jerome?’ He puts out his hand and pinches mine as if trying to convince me of something. ‘Okay! Jerome, Walt: friends. Good!’ His lips make exaggerated movements as they form the words he utters with such conviction.

It is as if his hand has taken complete possession of me. I feel the touch run through my entire body. He has narrow fingers with bulging knuckles, the clipped nails have black rims. His thumb makes brief movements over the back of my hand in time with the windscreen wiper.

We are moving again, he gestures around the cab and gives me a questioning look. ‘Is good, Jerome, you like?’

I nod, and I’m beginning to feel a little bit easier. When the road makes a sharp curve, I lurch sideways and fall against the soldier. He puts an arm around me and stretches out the word ‘okaaaaay’ for as long as it takes to go round the bend.

We pass houses that seem to be bowing under the downpour and bedraggled trees that appear more and more often until they have grown into a wood. Everything slides past me through a veil of rain, whisked away from the windscreen with resolute flicks of the wiper. The arm around me feels warm and comfortable, as if I were enfolded in an armchair. I let it all happen, almost complacently. This is liberation, I think, that’s how it should be, different from the other days. This is a celebration.

His hand lies lightly on the steering-wheel, now and then making a few routine movements with it. That too is a celebration, this fast and trouble-free progress. I surrender to pleasant thoughts: he is my friend, this soldier, he will see to it that I get back to Amsterdam soon. Walt, what a strange name, just like Popke or Meint. Foreign. It’s a wonder he picked on me of all people, that’s surely something to do with God, the reason why so many sudden changes should be happening to me…

His hand, one finger having slipped inside the collar of my shirt, is kneading my neck, casually but deliberately. The landscape has become hilly and for a long time we speed along a forest road. I have never been so far from Laaxum. We stop at a clearing where a few other cars are parked, all looking like ours, green and with canvas roofs. A small group of soldiers is hanging about, some on their knees looking under one of the cars while another is holding a coat over their heads to keep the rain off.

‘Wait,’ says my companion, ‘just a moment.’ He winds down the window and calls out to the other men, then jumps out of the car and winks at me as if we are sharing a secret.

His boots grate across the quiet road and a moment later he is leaning against one of the cars talking with the others. I hear their voices and see them gesticulating vehemently and pointing to our car. The patter of the rain on the roof is lessening and a bright band of sunlight drifts across the road and the encircling trees. I look around the cab and put the coloured pencils in a groove between the seat and the backrest, clearly visible so that I shan’t forget them. Beside the wheel, under the buttons and the little dials, some strange words are written. They’re bound to be in American: I must try to remember them.

A small chain hangs down from the little mirror above my head, a silver cross and a few coins dangling from it, and next to it someone has jammed a shiny coloured print of a lady with bright yellow curly hair, smiling with a tight-set, red mouth. Her neck is long and bare, the yellow curls fall in gentle waves onto her shoulders. Do such women really exist, so sleek and brightly coloured? My eyes keep returning to that shimmering face with its carefree come-hither look.

A chill sun breaks through every so often. The talking on the road that had seemed endless to me fizzles out, the soldiers climb into their various cars. At last! My soldier jumps cheerfully behind the wheel and holds a chilly hand against my cheek. ‘Cold!’ He presses on the horn, making a loud noise, and the other cars sound their replies promptly through the still air. As they pass us one of the men whistles shrilly through his fingers and bangs on the roof of our car, giving me a fright. ‘So long!’

Then silence descends between the trees. We are alone again. The soldier opens a packet of cigarettes and holds it out to me. Me, smoke?

He chuckles and lights one for himself. The smell of wet clothes and cigarette smoke fills the cab, making me drowsy: it’s high time I went back home.

‘Tomorrow?’ he asks then. Seeing my look of incomprehension, he points to his watch and makes a circling movement on it. ‘Tomorrow,’ that same gesture again, ‘you’, a finger in my direction, ‘me’, a finger towards himself and then he makes steering movements.

Tomorrow, I think, another ride, and I hesitate. Nice though it is, I don’t really want any more.

‘Tomorrow-tomorrow,’ two little turns around the watch, ‘Jerome, Walt, yes?’

When I act as if I don’t understand, he points in answer to his mouth and makes a gesture of despair. He tries again, but I am suddenly tired and feel limp and listless. All I want right now is to go back.

He takes a map from a small compartment and studies it, then lays it open on my knees. We are again driving along stretches of road that seem to have no end, houses, woods, a patch of water. Is this the right way back to Warns? As we take a narrow side-turning, the soldier gives a whistle. Between the trees a small building comes into view that bears a slight resemblance to our Sunday school. He drives the car to one side of the house, jumps out and helps me down.

‘Come,’ he says when I hesitate, and lifts me to the ground like a little child, carries me to the side of the house where it is dry under a protruding eave, and gestures ‘wait’. From the back of the car he fetches a few tins and disappears with them round the corner. The car makes ticking noises, hard and dry, an accompaniment to the leaves that are rustling in the falling rain. I wish I knew what time it was…

A moment later loud voices come from the upper floor, interrupted by short bursts of laughter. I recognise Walt’s voice. There is no one to be seen anywhere. A twig snaps and every so often the smell of damp moss, earth and mushrooms drift across to me. I listen in surprise to the bursts of jollity in the house: has the soldier forgotten all this time that I am waiting for him and want to get back home?

I walk to the back of the house. The rain has stopped, but water continues to drip from the edge of the roof and there are puddles in the drive. A bright patch of sunlight appears on the wall and at that very moment someone flings open a window upstairs, casting a glaring reflection of light over the rain-soaked treetops. Is he still up there, how long is he going to be?

Behind the house a few neglected shrubs are growing and in a dark corner a lone hyacinth adds a shimmer of blue.

There is a wooden barn and a bit further away sits another car coloured the same green. A railway track runs behind the barn, looking as if it has not been used for a long time, grass and tall weeds growing between the sleepers. Beyond that, trees and silence. Carefully, so as not to make too much noise, I move back across the crunching gravel and go and sit down on the running-board. Should I just run away by myself?

The sounds upstairs have ceased. All I can hear now is a rhythmical, slight knocking noise, mingled with the sound of a tinkling bell.

‘Jerome?’ The soldier is standing at the back of the house and beckons to me. We walk around to the back of the barn. It is raining again. I press up against the wooden wall while the soldier steps onto the rails and smokes a cigarette, balancing on one leg. Swaying, he keeps his body poised, looking straight at me while he does so. What are we hanging about for, what is the point of this childish game? I feel a mixture of impatience and boredom.

Suddenly he sets his cigarette flying into the bushes in a wide arc and squats down in front of me. I can’t avoid his gaze, try to smile, but can only feel a nervous, uncertain tug around my mouth. What is he up to, is he teasing me? Then, moving fast, he stands up, looks around the side of the barn and with a quick grab pulls me to him. Paralysing fear shoots through me, my fingers tingle and a blindingly bright white veil is drawn over everything. My body is clenched as if a scream were about to burst out, but nothing happens. I feel the hard fabric of the uniform jacket against my forehead and smell a bitter tang of rain and metal. Awkwardly and tensely I stand there in his harsh embrace. He could kill me, here, behind the barn, he could throttle me or rip me apart without my uttering a sound, breathless and paralysed as I am. I’ll just let it happen.

From far, far away, I hear his hoarse voice: ‘Jerome, you okay?’ and feel something warm on my hair and then against the side of my face. He is kissing me. I do not move a muscle, hoping I might disappear and dissolve into nothing.

When he lifts my head I can see his eyes close to mine, a fierce, haunted look. His breath is coming fast, as if he is anxious. Then I am aware of real fear, a panic that pierces straight through me: I should never have gone with him. I ought to have known that something would happen. Unspoken and formless, it had been present from the very start, it had been lying in wait all along and now it had pounced…

His mouth moves over my face. I begin to tremble, uncontrollably and convulsively, and lose my balance so that he has to push me against the barn to keep me on my feet. Did I fight back without realising? There is brute force in any case, my body bangs several times against the clapboard and my elbows and shoulder-blades hurt. My head is bent backwards and I can feel rain on my face and then his face which seems to melt into mine. I seem to be drowning slowly, his suffocating weight enveloping me and pulling me down. I claw my fingers into the wood of the barn until my nails tear and I try vainly to push myself high up against the clapboard wall as my clogs slip away in the soft mud.

His hand gropes in my clothes. Restlessly and feverishly, he tugs at my coat and pushes his fingers up my trouser leg. Like an empty, helpless object I am glued to his mouth, an empty balloon, a trickle of slime. The grating surface of his jaw rasps across my skin, crushing my eyes and tearing my mouth. I try to jerk away and to make a noise, but all I can produce is a furious gasping.

The tip of his tongue moves between my lips, which he keeps parting stubbornly every time I press them tight together, slipping like a fish into my mouth. Then, when I relax my jaw a little, he suddenly pushes his tongue between my teeth and fills my mouth. We melt and fuse together, he turns liquid and streams into me. I look into strange, wild eyes right up close to my own, searching me. I am being turned inside out, shaken empty.

He breathes words against my face and when he lifts me out of my clogs I hear them clatter against each other with a dry, no bright sound. ‘Listen,’ he hisses and twists me awkwardly against him, ‘listen. Is good, is…’

Voices sound from the house, footsteps pass over the gravel, for a moment I am free and catch my breath as if coming up from deep water. Then he pushes me against the wall by my shoulders and tilts his head to listen. Nearby an engine starts, but the sound moves away from us and disappears.

Gently he wipes away a thread of spittle running down my chin, as if to console me. I am standing in the mud in my socks looking for a clog. Everything feels grubby to me, wet and filthy.

‘Jerome,’ he asks, ‘Jerome, okay?’

It happens all over again, the mouth, the hands, his taste which penetrates me, which I can’t shake off, and the rough lunges that suddenly turn gentle. I feel cold, my face is burning and hurts; from my throat comes a strange, strangled sound. I am afraid that if he lets go of me I shall fall down and will never be able to get up again, that I shall die here in the mud and the rain, forgotten behind an old barn.

He puts an arm around my waist and pushes me quickly through the wet shrubs alongside the barn. His car starts silently and quickly. A little further along the road he stops and pulls me to him. I start to cry, softly at first then harder and harder, my shoulder-blades, back, arms, knees, everything shaking and trembling.

Why is he smiling, how can he be so friendly and act so ordinarily? Why didn’t he do what I thought he was sure to do, leave me behind trampled flat in the mud?

He takes out the map and opens it, his finger follows a red line and then points to a dark spot: he is looking for a lonely place to throw me out at the side of the road.

‘House?’ I hear him ask, ‘Jerome house?’ I bend down over the spread-out map, which rustles on my unsteady knees.

‘Jerome, look.’

When I start to cry again, he holds me against him and lifts the map up in front of my face.

‘Warns,’ I read beside the small dot where his finger is. I point to Laaxum, printed there clearly in small letters. Is he taking me home, do they have to see me step out of an American car?

He kisses my eyes dry and to my horror licks away the threads running from my nose with a mouth that is coaxing and soft and cleans me lovingly.

We drive on again, the soldier stroking my back continuously. I no longer cry.

‘Say Walt, say it,’ he begs, ‘Jerome, come on, say Walt.’

In surprise I listen to my voice reacting hoarsely as it is asked. I feel an overwhelming urge to lie down on the seat, but stay sitting up, looking straight ahead with smarting eyes: I must know where we are. He takes my hand and places it on his leg where it remains limp and lifeless. The rain has stopped. His taste is in my mouth and refuses to go away. Will it stay with me for the rest of my life, this sense of being immersed, of being steeped in filth and fingers? I sag sideways on the seat while the soldier lights a cigarette.

He lets me out at almost the same place I got in. Awkwardly I remain standing beside the car as if waiting for something more, a sign or a command to disappear. He raises a hand and winks, then the door swings shut and I take to my heels without looking back. I race through the village, along the edge of the road, my head hunched between my shoulders so that no one can see my face. But the street is quiet, it is raining and there is no one about.

I can’t go home, that much is certain, I have to be alone and think what to do. Beyond the village I crawl down the side of a ditch, to the bottom where the ground is wet and the chill penetrates my clothes. I can feel his taste in my mouth, in my throat and on my tongue, a bitter smell clinging to me, a mixture of metal and hospital odours. When I sniff at my sleeve, the smell of the soldier is so strong and immediate that he might be sitting right next to me. I taste my spit, let it travel down my throat, dividing it with my tongue and gathering it together again. I want it to go away, I must be rid of it. I spit and it drips in a long stream into the grass.

Mem will know straight away what has happened to me, she’ll be able to read it in me as if it were written in large letters all over my body. I am sure that my eyes are bloodshot and swollen, and my face feels battered, grazed and smarting.

Without thinking any more I take the turning to Scharl and trudge towards the isolated farmsteads in the distance, pushing against the strengthening wind. Muddy pools sometimes cover the entire road, reflecting the yellow-white streaks that now and then break through the black clouds. A gust of wind blows a pair of screaming birds across my path. I keep an eye on Jan’s farm, wondering whether I should go over there and see him. He is the only person I can tell, but perhaps he, too, will just tease me and then go and tell everybody else. I stand still, in two minds. If he talks about it, then I’ll be utterly lost. Quickly I walk past his house and hope that no one has seen me. I must remain invisible, unnoticed.

A moment later, there is a downpour. I run past the dark slope of the Cliff and clamber across the dyke. The sea is a grey, tumultuous mass into which the torrential rain is drumming small punched holes. Near Laaxum, where the sea wall begins, I huddle close to the piles and sense the water under me, hurricanes of furious spray, foaming as it streams between the blocks of basalt. I run my fingers over my face. Everything appears askew, pulled apart. Can I present myself at home like this? I do not move and slowly start to stiffen.

At home they are still at table, a closed circle under the oil lamp. Faces look at me, all except Meint who continues to eat, bent over his plate.

‘Where on earth did you get to, why are you so late?’

I have no answer.

‘Don’t just stand there, take off your coat.’ Mem pushes her chair back and looks appalled. ‘You’re making everything wet.’

‘School. I had to stay behind at school, do some drawings.’ With a shock I realise that I have left the precious box behind in the car. Now everything is bound to come out.

Hait takes me by the shoulder and ushers me out of the room. ‘We must have a bit of a chat, my boy.’

So that’s it, he knows everything already, I won’t be able to hide anything. Leaning against the wall, I strip off my wet clothes and pretend to be busily occupied.

‘Is it true, Jeroen, what Jantsje tells me?’

I try to look surprised and innocent. ‘What?’

‘Jantsje says a soldier gave you sweets, the boys from the village saw it all.’

Relief leaps up in my throat, I bow my head and nod.

‘If you’re given something, you mustn’t keep it to yourself, surely you know that? It isn’t very nice to keep things for yourself.’

I look into his thin face, a tired man trying to look severe. I am not his child but a guest, a refugee from the city. He stands awkwardly facing me in the dim little room and almost smiles at me. I want to go and stand next to him, I want him to hold me close. Dispassionately, I lay the little packet in his hand. ‘One of them is gone. I’m very sorry, Hait.’ Now I’m crying all the same.

Hait tears the blue and red paper open and holds the four thin silver slabs in his hand. My secret, my precious secret… ‘Four. One for each of you. Go and hand them out.’ He steers me gently back into the room. I lay one slab each next to Meint’s, Jantsje’s and Pieke’s plates, that’s how Hait would want it. But the fourth, is that for me? I put it down beside Trientsje but she pushes it back gently. ‘Keep it for yourself.’ I leave it on the table for them to decide who gets it, Diet or Popke. In any case I’m rid of it, I don’t need it any more. It came from the soldier and he has to be banished from my memory. I sit down at my place, but don’t eat. ‘Don’t you want anything? Are you sick?’ Please don’t let them ask me any more questions, please make them leave me in peace. I listen to the others cleaning their plates, the smell of the food and the heat making me dizzy.

When I swallow I can taste the soldier, strong and sickly. I must eat something, I think, then it will go away, then I’ll be rid of it. But suddenly, inexorably, I know that I don’t want it to go.

In the morning, Mem comes to look at me. She places a large searching hand on my forehead and says, ‘Much too hot. You’d better stay in bed for the day.’

Behind the closed doors of the cupboard-bed, waking and dozing off again, I am aware of scraps of the day passing by: distorted voices float up from breakfast, and a penetrating smell of tea gives my stomach cramps from thirst.

As I clasp Mem’s hand and take greedy gulps from the mug she holds to my mouth, I notice that the soldier’s taste has vanished, dissolved in my sleep, gone. I keep swallowing.

One dream later, the soldier is pressing me against the wall, his tongue an eel that creeps into my ears, into my nostrils, into my throat. The soldier reaches out for me, grinning and winking. I can feel the eel wriggling around my feet and then slithering up my legs. When I pull away, the soldier jumps into the car with a soundless scream and drives wildly after me. Behind the car rushes a bloodthirsty, furious mob led by the minister’s wife. I hide beside the sea and they all fall into the water, one by one…

Then I hear the sound of peeled potatoes plopping into a bucket. The cupboard-bed is unimaginably large. I lie like a dwarf between the blankets, the narrow walls miles away.

‘Mem?’ Am I making a sound or am I merely moving my mouth? Tea, I’m thirsty, I want to say, but I can’t talk, I have no voice. Eternities later, I look into Mem’s anxious face.

‘What’s up with you, what are you talking about? Coloured pencils, we don’t have any of those here, you must have had I those in Amsterdam.’ She pulls the blankets up. ‘Just you lie quietly now and try to get some sleep.’ Her hand is stroking me gently. Or is it him, suddenly back?… the soldier pushes chewing-gum into my mouth, a gag that grows thicker and thicker. He shoves it down until it’s stuck in my throat and I can’t draw breath any longer. I fight grimly to free myself and thrash about wildly…

Befuddled, I look into a small basin Mem is holding in front of me. A long thread of slobber is hanging from my mouth and stinging morsels burn in my throat. Mem pats me patiently on the back.

When I try to clutch Mem’s hand so as to have somebody to hold on to, she has already gone. I can hear her clogs in the lane and a dragging sound as if she is moving something, or somebody. Who? I sit up.

But perhaps it’s just the wind…

In the evening, Trientsje softly opens the cupboard-bed doors. ‘Aren’t you sleeping?’

I can see the others in the room having a cold meal, hear the clicking of knives, distant voices, and I see Hait nod to me. Mem feeds me porridge, her hand rises insistently each time to my mouth, and dutifully I accept the spoon. Afterwards, I feel better, the warmth settling like a cossetting wrap around my body. Content and babylike I let Mem get on with the business of wiping my face and neck with a wet cloth and then she tucks me in firmly under the blankets.

‘He’s on the mend, his temperature is down,’ she reports to the room.

Could I ask them for my coat? I want to smell the sleeves and have the soldier near me. I must know what he smelled like again…

When I feel somebody beside me I sit bolt upright, in a panic.

‘I shan’t eat you, you fool,’ Meint chuckles.

In the dark I listen to the creaking of the floorboards and feel him tugging at the blankets.

‘Can you get anything you like from that soldier? Even chocolate?’

I pretend to be asleep and say nothing. If only I had my coat with me, I long for his smell. I turn to the wall and try to recapture his face, the slope of his cheek, the broken tooth.

Meint is asleep, I can hear him breathing gently and regularly.

Did I get sick because I had somebody else’s spit in my mouth, is that dangerous? Then I remember with a shock that he had wanted to take me for another drive today. My body grows hot and wet: will he be cross with me, did he wait for me? I can feel small drops on my forehead and my heart is beating fast.

The soldier crouches on the rails behind the small barn. He looks at me, holding me prisoner with his eyes.

Chapter 3

Because she thinks I am still sick, Mem tells me not to go to church next morning. The dirty breakfast things stand on the table in chaotic confusion. The living-room is deserted.

I step outside and watch Hait, who is walking down the road to Warns with the children. It is glorious spring weather, the girls’ coats are unbuttoned and Popke and Meint are gaily sporting white shirts. An army car comes towards the small group of church-goers, hooting loudly as it passes them, tearing a hole in the Sunday morning stillness.

The car turns off on to the sea dyke, stops a bit further on and a few soldiers get out and walk along the dyke. They look around before disappearing out of sight down the other side. I stroll back indoors and look through the window: the car looks lost on the road, like a motionless decoy, frozen in silence. I am in two minds whether to go up to it or stay at home. Mem is sure to find it suspicious if I’m suddenly well enough to go to the harbour.

I take a few faltering steps. ‘I’m just off to the boat, to see if everything’s all right.’ Obediently I put on my coat. ‘Else you’ll get sick again,’ Mem calls after me.

There’s not a soul at the harbour. A white goat is grazing at the end of a rope and gives a piercing bleat as I pass. The boats’ masts rock lazily to and fro, gleaming like knitting needles. The quay is deserted. I kick a stone into the water: placidly ebbing circles. Should I go back? My longing for the safety of my cupboard-bed into which I can creep and shut out the world becomes stronger with every step I take: the darkness and the seclusion, and the caring hands of Mem bringing food and straightening the blankets.

I walk to the other side of the little harbour. Seagulls flying over the sea wall retreat when they see me, still gobbling helplessly struggling fish in their hooked beaks.

Further along the dyke sheep are grazing. From a long way off I can hear the regular sound of their grinding jaws tearing out the grass.

Silence and wind, not a living soul, no soldier, nothing. A metal drum makes ticking noises as if the heat were blasting the rust off it in flakes. I walk up to it under the nets hung out on poles and lay my hand against the hot surface. A hollow sound. I look at the reddish brown powder that has stuck to my hand and smell it. Iron.

I am vaguely reminded of the smell of the soldier; how is it that I can remember the smell of his touch? On the pier which protects the little harbour from the sea I walk alongside the beams of the weathered sea wall, placing my feet carefully on the rocks, afraid to lose my balance. In the shelter of the timber boarding the heat is suddenly overwhelming. I sit down, my head swimming.

A broken beam gives me an unexpected view of the sea, a greenish-grey surface moving restlessly and filled with light. The wind blows straight into my face and when I open my mouth wide to catch the current of air it is as if the inside of my head is being blown clean, and the last remnants of my lingering sickness are swept away.

The turbulence of the water washes away my lethargy. I stick my head through the opening between the beams and look out over the wide, empty expanse of the coastline. On the distant rocks the vivid, irregular shape of a human figure intrudes upon the splendour of the view, a man lying on his back in the sun, a completely isolated, insulated being.

I quickly turn my head away as if my mere look could disturb the perfect stillness and privacy of that distant man. My gaze settles on the quiet tedium of the harbour boats bobbing against the quay and roofs dipping away behind the dyke. But the sunbathing figure behind the sea wall draws me like a magnet, pulling me with invisible threads that tremble with tautness as if they were about to snap.

Without hesitation I climb over the fencing and am suddenly quite alone at the mercy of the hurrying waves and the solitary sunbather. Holding tight to the beams, I balance across the stones towards him. Every so often, the water splashes up between the rocks and makes white patches of foam in the bright air.

The sunbather has heard me and turns towards me, calling out something cut short by the wind: it is my soldier. He lies stretched out on a rock and smiles at me with his eyes screwed up. When I am quite close, he sticks out his hand. I take it and immediately let go of it again. ‘Hello, good morning.’

Best walk on calmly now, as if I had to be getting on, as if I were on my way to somewhere else. But his hand clasps my ankle so that I can’t move. ‘No, no. Where you go?’ He tugs at my leg and pulls me closer. He is wearing nothing but khaki shorts. ‘Sit,’ he says, ‘sit down.’

He moves up to make room for me and then stretches out in the sun again. His arms are folded lazily under his head and he surveys me with an almost mocking look. The front of his shorts gapes open a bit, confronting me with a part of his body I am not supposed to see. Embarrassed, I turn my head away and look out across the sea as if something in the distance were suddenly attracting my attention. Even his hairy armpits, exposed so nonchalantly, make me feel that I should not be looking: there is something not quite right, something that doesn’t fit.

The soldier pulls me down next to him on the rock. Now and then I throw a quick glance at his half-naked body in the hope that his flies will have closed again. ‘Jerome,’ I hear him say. ‘Sun. Is nice, is good.’

He yawns, stretches and slaps himself on the chest with the flat of his hand, hollow, resounding slaps. I feel relieved when he sits up. His legs dangle down from the rocks and his feet have disappeared in the water. His back is a smooth, unblemished curve with a pronounced hollow down the middle. The unevenness of the rock has left white impressions on his skin and some sand and pieces of dirt have stuck to his shoulders. He makes splashing sounds with a foot in the water, but every so often, as if to take me by surprise, he turns his head towards me; trapped, I quickly avert my gaze. From out of the corner of my eye, I see him get down and stand in the water, one hand on his hip and whistling a tune between his teeth. A jet squirts straight and hard from his body into the water making a frothing patch of little bubbles and foam in the waves. Before he sits down again, he walks up to the fencing and looks over it, searchingly.

The water has a salty tang. A small white fish drifts about between the rocks, staring up with a dull, sunken eye as it continually collides with the dark volcanic rock. Casually the soldier taps a slow rhythm out on his thighs. Spread over the edge of the rock, his upper body moves about jerkily, and he hums softly to himself. Above us two gulls hover on motionless, outstretched wings, their heads turned inquisitively towards us as they keep us under close scrutiny.

Suddenly he stretches his arms and makes flying movements, uttering screeching noises in the direction of the birds. I make an attempt to laugh. The gulls slip away, but keep their heads turned suspiciously towards us. The soldier stands up, then squats down by a small pile of clothes and lights a cigarette. I lay my hands on his trail of wet footprints on the rocks. It suddenly seems important to me to do this and I want to memorise the contact: the foot of a liberator I have touched, have felt with my fingers.

The soldier leans against the sea wall, puffing hard at his cigarette and smiling at me. From further away he seems less overwhelming, the feeling of oppression he gives me and the memory of what he did with me have begun to fade.

He sits down beside me and puts a cigarette between my lips; by way of demonstration he takes in a deep breath, but the smoke has already reached my throat so that I splutter and cough.

He lies back again and blows smoke rings in the air that float away leaving a sweetish smell behind. The more I try to hold back my nervous coughing the more violent it grows, as if about to choke me. He takes my wrist and brings it hesitatingly to his face, watching my reactions intently. He blows smoke teasingly at me, his lower lip stuck far out, while I try convulsively to stifle a cough.

He bites softly into my fingertips and licks my palm; I clench my fist and he laughs. Then my hand is led to his throat, and I feel a swallowing sound transmitted to my fingers. He guides my hand across his chest, an uneven and mobile surface radiating warmth. Under the skin, where little hairs curl under my fingers like crawling insects, I feel a heavy, hidden heart-beat, a booming that tells me that I am not alone, another life, real and throbbing, next to my own. My hand travels across the small hills of his ribs, then over an even stretch, across a little hollow into which my fingers sink and where they remain: I am a blind man being helped from place to place, standing still, waiting, going back. The soldier is taking me on a guided tour of his body, inch by inch. I am his doll, a plaything with which he does as he pleases.

I look at the sky, a vivid blue flag over the circling gulls. Why is this happening to me, why has my life changed so suddenly, so utterly? I feel his stomach, smooth and flat. When he presses my hand down, there is scarcely any resistance. But when he inhales smoke, the surface hardens, remains taut for a few moments until he blows the smoke out again, when it all gives and goes soft again.

Bouncy little sand heaps, that’s what it feels like. In Amsterdam we used to jump on the pumped-out sand at the building site until the ground turned elastic under our feet and the water would come up. We would jump and jump until our shoes sank down in the mud. Then we would go home with wet socks: Mummy would be furious…

Unexpectedly my fingers encounter the edge of his pants, which he raises and pushes my hand inside. I pull my arm back and sit up straight. Silence. The soldier looks at me sideways. He fumbles with his pants and his fingers manoeuvre a floppy brown shape out through the flies, a curved defenceless thing. He lays his hand over it protectively, pulls me towards him and presses his mouth to my cheek. His voice is soft and soothing. What is he saying, what is going to happen now?

My ear grows warm and wet and a slopping sound seeps into my head, stupefying me. I pull my shoulders up and goose-pimples shoot in sudden shivers down my back and up my arms. He is licking the inside of my ears, I think, and they’re filthy, when did I last wash them? I am filled with shame, not because of the tongue licking my ear, but because of the yellow that sometimes comes out of my ears on to the towel and which he is probably touching with his tongue right now.

He lifts his hand from the thing and starts to turn it around slowly. It falls between his legs, then rolls across his stomach and comes to a standstill between the folds of khaki. As he rolls it around I can see it grow larger and stiffer. It seems to be stretching itself like a living creature, a snail slipping out of its shell. My dazed eyes are glued to this transformation, this silent, powerful expansion taking place so naturally and so easily.

‘When you grow up, you’ll get hair on your willy,’ the boys at school used to say. I had had a vision of some misshapen, hairy caterpillar, and I had hoped that they were wrong or else that I would never grow up.

The thing is now sticking up at a slant from the soldier’s body. There are no hairs growing on it, though I can see some tufts through his open pants. He makes a yawning sound, lazy and relaxed, as if the way he is lying there were the most natural thing in the world.

‘Is good, Jerome,’ he says, ‘no problem. Okay?’

The thing has a split eye which stares at me. I try not to look at it, but my own eyes seem riveted to that one spot. It is a clenched fist, large and coarse, raised at me. The soldier grasps it roughly and a drop of liquid seeps out from the split eye in the pink tip.

My own prick and Jan’s are small and thin, slender, fragile branches of our bodies. When the soldier lays my hand against his belly, the lurking thing suddenly springs up higher still, flushed out of its lair by the touch.

Under the rocks the sea surges to and fro, eddying and making gargling noises. Suddenly I can see my little room in Amsterdam quite clearly, the books placed in orderly array on the ledge of the fold-away bed, the framed prints on the wall and the place where I like to sit, under the window, out of sight from the neighbours. The sun falls across the rough surface of the coir mat where I have put a toy donkey out to grass. The voices of children can be heard outside playing by the canal. It is after school and I can smell food and feel the summer languor in my stomach.

It is far away, almost forgotten, a steady way of life that often seemed boring, a monotonous stringing together of days.

Mummy, I think, where are you?

The soldier presses himself closer to me. I can smell his nearness. Like a blanket, his smell spreads over me, protective and threatening all at once. His quick breathing unsettles me and he pants as if he were in full flight. But I am the one who should be running, running away…

I try to get to my feet, but the soldier suddenly uses force. We have become opponents, doughty and fierce. ‘Come on.’ He holds me firmly in his grip, his voice curt and impatient, squeezing my fingers more firmly around the knob and throwing his leg across me, the painful pressure of his knee pinning me to the rocks.

‘Let go of me!’ I shout the words out in a panic, and days later I can still hear their shaming sound. I know he can’t understand me, but the weight of his body grows less and his grip weakens. My arms are trembling.

‘Sorry, baby.’ He relaxes but goes on moving my hand up and down. What does he want, why does he make me do this, this horrible clutching?

I had heard stories about men who kill children; perhaps that’s how it happens, just like this. The thrusting inside my hand grows fiercer, he again bends over me and I turn my head away. On the rock beside me lies the stub of his burning cigarette; the smoke climbs up in a straight line and then tangles and disappears. When voices can suddenly be heard, clearly and close by, I pull my hand away like lightning, paralysed with fear. The soldier has already stood up, trying hastily to hide the awkward shape in his pants. Two unsteady steps and he is standing in the water. He falls forward and swims a few side strokes.

Two soldiers have climbed onto the sea wall, one of them whistling shrilly through his fingers and shouting. Walt turns round and stands up in the waves on strong, tensed legs, the sun casting luminous patches over his wet skin. The water barely reaches his knees. ‘Cold,’ he calls out.

He lets himself drop over backwards and swims off, sending up fountains of splashing water. One of the soldiers strips and wades in after him, the other one sits down a little to one side of me and lifts up his hand to me indifferently; he has bright blond hair and broad, round shoulders which he fingers constantly with obvious satisfaction.

I squeeze against the sea wall and hope that Walt will swim far out so that I can slip away unnoticed, but the two swimmers clamber onto the rocks nearby and then walk into the grass.

The blond soldier points to the small pile of Walt’s clothes, waits for me to pick it all up and then runs ahead, leaping from rock to rock. Close to the dyke we put the clothes down in the grass. Walt has slung a shirt over his shoulders and shakes himself dry. The blond soldier disappears behind the dyke and comes back with a crate of small bottles in a folded piece of oilcloth. He puts the crate down in the grass and whips the tops off a few of the bottles with a knife.

‘Coke?’ Walt passes me a bottle. The contents have a strong smell and at the first gulp a charge of bubbles fly up my nose.

With tears in my eyes, I hand the bottle back and shake my head: I am convinced I have been drinking beer.

In Amsterdam I once saw drunken Germans, with beer bottles in their hands.

‘Swine,’ my mother had said, ‘what a nation…’ and walking quickly had dragged me away.

The soldiers lie chatting on the opened-out oilcloth, smoking and rapidly emptying the bottles. Now and then Walt turns around and calls something out to me. Then he sings the song he hummed earlier and the two soldiers whistle along shrilly.

‘Jerome, sing. Come on.’ He walks across to me, pulls me up and does a few dance steps making me stumble over his feet. The others laugh. ‘Sing!’ He gives me an almost pleading look.

What am I to sing? Every song I ever knew has been wiped instantly clean from my memory. Walt holds my shoulders tight and seems to be trying to force it out of me.

‘Come,’ he says and squeezes me against his hard body,’sing.’

Confused, I look at the soldiers, what must they be thinking? One of them puts a finger to his lips and gives me a conspiratorial look. He steals closer and pours the contents of one of the bottles down Walt’s back.

Then, shouting, the two of them chase each other up and down the dyke. I don’t know if it’s in earnest but whenever they catch each other you can hear resounding slaps. I go and sit a bit higher up on the dyke to watch the fight from a safe distance.

Walt comes running back out of breath and both of them fall into the grass, fighting and dealing out blows to each other, yelling like schoolboys. Then both the soldiers grab Walt’s arms and pull the wet shirt off him. Walt struggles to break free and kicks out with his legs. Yet he is laughing. I can feel myself losing my temper: what are those two doing, are they hurting him? Why don’t they get back into their car and leave us alone? I am scared that I may be forced to join in the fighting, to take sides and defend myself. Will I be able to help Walt? Suddenly, the scuffle is over and there is an ominous silence. Walt is lying on his back on the oilcloth, the other two sitting next to him, talking in subdued tones and looking around. Are they expecting somebody? The blond soldier gets up, walks past me, goes up the dyke and stands there. Walt leans back on his elbows, tilts his head, and looks at me.

‘Jerome, come here,’ he says. His voice is soft and coaxing.

What is it now, what do they want from me? I.don’t stir, and they seem to forget all about me once more. The land smells of earth and manure, insects buzz low over the grass and the air near the Red Cliff is shimmering. I narrow my eyes to small slits. Below me I hear mumbling and a short laugh. The mysterious goings-on worry me; I feel left out. The soldier sitting beside Walt has bent down low over him, as if to take a close look between Walt’s raised knees. Walt has spread his arms and keeps turning his head to and fro. I look on with half-shut, smarting eyes: the soldier’s head is still bent greedily over Walt. I get up. I’d like to run over to them and kick the other soldier furiously out of the way; I feel ungovernable hatred welling up inside me. But with a stiff smile on my lips I work myself backwards up the dyke instead, my eyes fixed on the two men. The soldier is pummelling Walt’s stomach with quick short thrusts, grimly and silently at work as if giving him artificial respiration.

I know exactly what is happening, I know it from my suspicions and vague fantasies. And yet these baffling and ominous goings-on make me ill at ease: why does Walt let him do it, has he forgotten that I am here?

I race up to the car parked on the other side of the dyke and look inside. My coloured pencils are still on the seat, fallen half under the back. The blond soldier has run up after me; he reaches into the car and hands me the box. ‘Here.’ When I try to go back up the dyke, he grabs hold of me, giving me a look that is both kind and aloof. ‘No,’ he says firmly and points to the road. ‘Not now. Go. I want to see Walt. I want to know what is happening to him. Why can’t I go to him? The soldier pushes me down the slope and disappears behind the dyke. A moment later the other one comes up, looking right and left as he buttons up his shirt and stuffs it into his pants. Then he sits down in the grass and starts to whistle.

Why hasn’t Walt come yet, should I wait for him?

All is quiet, nothing moves. The sun bakes the road and fills the stillness with unbearable oppression. I turn on my heels and run home. When I reach our fence I hear the car horn in the distance. I look back: more hooting. For me?

Laboriously the car turns around on the narrow road, but I am already over the fence. Mem is standing on the grass beside the house, her hand shielding her eyes as she watches the vehicle slowly approaching.

‘The Americans,’ she says, ‘did you see them? Were they at the harbour?’

When she realises that I have been running fast, she adds, disparagement in the tone of her voice, ‘What’s the matter with you? Surely you’re not afraid of them? Do you think they’re going to hurt us?’

The car drives past, a raised arm sticking out of the window.

‘The liberators,’ she says, ‘look, they’re waving.’

She doesn’t dare return the wave, but nods her head graciously at the passing car.

I walk to the other side of the house and place my head against the wall. The box of coloured pencils tips open and the pencils fall out, vivid little streaks of colour in the grass. I hear the sound of the car dying away gradually in the Sunday stillness.

Chapter 4

On the day of the celebrations the sky is stretched tight, a blue sheet flecked with birds. The shrubs are in blossom and the trees dressed in young green shoots. Today everything seems to be on its very best behaviour.

We set out early from Laaxum, excited but silent at the thought of what is to come. Hait and Mem are joining us later. There is to be a procession with a band, a street display with pictures of the queen, and a tribute to the soldiers when we will sing the songs we were taught specially at school. For the soldiers, our liberators!

I keep thinking of Sunday: the soldier on the rocks by the sea, my hand on his body and the strange things that happened after that at the foot of the dyke. I try to shut it all out because it bothers me, but the image keeps returning. Don’t think of it, today is celebration day… Meint is carrying a small, shiny trumpet which he is going to be playing soon with the brass band, and he holds the instrument in his arms like a trophy, proudly and triumphantly.

Just don’t let me see the soldier in the village. I must try to stay inconspicuous and not get into any more trouble. But secretly what I am hoping is that I shall be seeing his face again and that maybe he’ll want to talk to me.

The road is a line of people all making for Warns. Clearly something out of the ordinary is going on there. Meint jumps exuberantly on to my back and waves his trumpet. ‘Keep walking, you’ve got to carry me all the way to the church. Gee up!’ I push him off and join the girls. Trientsje takes my hand.

‘It’s going to be a lovely day, poppet,’ she says, ‘you’ll see. Everybody will be there.’

The village is all decked out: flags have been hoisted in many of the gardens and in front of one of the houses there is an arch decorated with paper flowers and orange streamers fluttering in the gentle breeze. The street is one long colourful festoon.

A narrow piece of cloth has been strung up across the road between two poles with ‘THREE CHEERS FOR THE LIBERATORS’ blazoned on it in big letters. We stop and look at the writing above our heads, solemnly, as if we were in church. Walt is one, too, I think proudly; he is one of them. Three cheers for my liberator…

There are a few carts standing next to each other by the crossroads, the horses’ backs gleaming in the sun. Every so often a slight odour of horse manure drifts through the village and mingles with the strong smell of mothballs and eau de Cologne given off by the Sunday best of the crowds out in the village street.

‘You must come with me to the Sunday school,’ I tell Trientsje as soon as we have reached the village, ‘to see if my drawings have been put up.’

We push our way through the crowd and I hold her hand tight.

‘First the exhibition.’ She pulls me to the side of the road where picture postcards and photographs cut from newspapers have been set up on display in a booth.

‘Our queen and the princesses,’ says the man running the stall. I see pictures of a short, stout woman in a long creased overcoat and a funny hat, her arms hanging limply by her side in sleeves that are too long for her. She is looking into the distance with a vague, rather haughty smile.

Is that her then, our queen? Up with Orange, long live Wilhelmina? She must have been made poor by the war.

A large picture, coloured with garish greens and blues, seems to be the main attraction. Trientsje has to elbow her way in to get close to it. We see a woman sitting on a sloping meadow, her arms folded around her knees, with three girls in white dresses and bows in their hair smiling happily beside her. Behind them is a white house, and just to their left is a man in spectacles with his head held on one side, his shiny hair plastered down and smoking a pipe.

‘Juliana with the little princesses,’ says Trientsje, and swallows. ‘Lovely, aren’t they? What little darlings.’

I look at the well-cared-for children on that improbably green grass. ‘Do they have soldiers to protect them?’ I ask, but Trientsje is busy talking to the man from the booth.

A picture postcard with scalloped edges is lying under a sheet of glass among some sombre prints. The Royal Palace In Amsterdam, it says in white letters underneath. I bend forward to get a good look: that was the street where the lorry was waiting, that’s where my journey to Friesland began. A boy is standing there beside a delivery bicycle, and a woman in a long dark dress and a wide-brimmed hat looks in surprise at the camera while a little girl hides her face in the woman’s skirts. It is a fetching scene that has nothing in common with my grey memories of the place.

There is music in the distance now. Everyone is suddenly moving in the same direction, and Trientsje, spurred on by the general commotion, pulls me along. ‘If we’re quick, we can still get to the front.’

A bit further up the road I can see the band coming towards us, a group of people marching shoulder to shoulder with flags and banners held gaily in the air, instruments flashing in the sun. Their footsteps are sending clouds of dust up into the sunny sky and the monotonous thump of the drum lends the approaching dust-shrouded procession an air of doom. ‘Hullo.’ Jan is standing beside us, wearing a jacket that is too small for him so that his wrists stick out from the sleeves. He is pale and his eyes have a defensive look. Wrinkling his nose, he points meaningfully to Trientsje and gives me a knowing grin. ‘Walking out with your own sister, huh?’ He whispers something incomprehensible in my ear and gives a disdainful laugh. His hands have grown broader, there are black edges to his bitten nails and his eyes examine me closely.

‘Have you heard from home yet?’ I ask. I must remain friends with him, the two of us are going back together to Amsterdam. Jan spits into the palms of his hands and rubs them together vigorously.

‘No,’ he says, ‘but I don’t care, I’m staying on here anyway. I like it better here.’ There is a soft shadow on his sweaty upper lip and little white spots of sleepy dust in the corners of his eyes. He gestures with his head in Trientsje’s direction, gives me a knowing wink, and says, ‘She’s a bit of all right. Mind you squeeze her good and proper.’ He digs me in the ribs and runs across the road, right in front of the brass band. The noise thunders over us and overwhelms me. The musicians march past taking small shuffling steps, the sound they make rising up like a cloud of dust into the sky.

I can see Meint blowing his trumpet, red-faced, his eyes starting from their sockets. He keeps his gaze fixed rigidly on the sheet music clamped to the front of the trumpet, looking neither up nor down. My throat tightens at the sound of the music, I am being ground down between the mournfulness of the melody and the doleful counterpoint. A small open car follows behind the band with a soldier at the wheel and beside him another military man with a cap who brings his hand up to his head every so often in solemn salute. A tulip with a bright green leaf comes sailing out of the crowd, lands on the bonnet and lies there limply.

The car behind is full of soldiers hanging over the side and waving, some holding bunches of flowers in their hands. I look for a special face among them, but in a few seconds the procession has passed by. The people throng the road once more in the wake of the car and walk together towards the church.

I look around, but Trientsje has disappeared. Someone puts two arms around my neck from behind. ‘But if your father and mother come and fetch you, then I’ll go back with you,’ says Jan, continuing our interrupted conversation and pulling me back. ‘Remember, now, don’t you sneak off without me. Just tip me the wink, that’s what friends are for.’ He gives my shoulder a friendly push which sends me stumbling into a garden fence.

The brass band is lined up on the road in front of the church playing a solemn tune, the crowd joining in hesitatingly. Over their heads I can see the top of the army car. I walk towards the side where Hait and Mem are standing between villagers. Hait is singing. Mem looks impressive in her Sunday frock, a broad dark shadow engulfing Hait at her side. She listens with her chin raised, looking subdued and helpless, a little as if she badly wants to sneeze. Now and then she rubs her eyes awkwardly and nervously with a handkerchief. Hait could be her child, standing there beside her with a shy smile, his mouth moving as he sings.

When the song is over an engine starts up and the car with the soldiers drives off. The man in the cap has stayed behind; he walks up the church steps as if proudly showing off the gaudy stripes on his uniform jacket. In gleamingly polished shoes he goes up to the church doors, and stands there stiffly to attention.

As the car nudges a path through the crowd I try to get as close to it as I can. Isn’t that Walt, that soldier hanging on to a strut with upraised arms? Is he looking for someone or am I just imagining it? I use my arms to push through to the front, but the car is already too far away and gathering speed.

The church clock starts to chime and while everybody looks up, a gigantic flag is hung out from the tower. A hush descends over the houses: all that can be heard is the chiming of the bell and in the distance the drone of the car driving away through the village. I follow the crowd as far as the church doorway, then disappear as quickly as possible along the side of the little graveyard to the back of the Sunday school. A bit further on I find myself standing in the quiet street and without hesitating start running quickly across the bedecked road in the direction of the canal.

Walt is standing on the bridge as if he knew I was coming. He is hanging over the parapet and straightens up when he sees me, calm and relaxed, a lifebuoy to which I can swim.

‘Good morning,’ he says and kicks a pebble neatly into the water. He presses my head to his chest as if he were my father, then crouches down and lifts me up. ‘Hungry? Eat?’ We are walking to the field with the tents, his boots making a hollow sound over the water. Outside the biggest tent, several soldiers are sitting at a long table, listening to crackly music coming from a small radio. Walt sits down at one corner and pulls me down beside him.

‘Jerome,’ he says and turns me to face the men as if he were selling me. They mumble something and someone taps hard on the table with a spoon.

‘Eat,’ says Walt and pats his stomach.

I keep my eyes trained on the table-top and listen to the voices and the sound of the dinner things. Will the two soldiers from yesterday be there as well? Sun, music and the smell of hot food. I am handed a metal mess-tin and walk with Walt to the tent where somebody shovels a helping of crumbly, snow-white rice into it. ‘Enough?’

A young fellow with gleaming, freckled arms ladles a thick sauce with a sharp smell over the rice. I swallow and suddenly feel terribly hungry: American food, soldiers’ food, I really seem to belong here!

Staring into my tin, I start to spoon the food into my mouth, but I am so overwrought that I can’t taste anything, everything burns on my tongue and in my throat. Just so long as they don’t look at me. I can feel Walt’s knees against my leg under the table, pushing gently but insistently. The touch is electric. Carefully I edge my leg away from his.

Rice, chunks of meat, raisins, voices I do not understand and the sun shining in my eyes. My head swims. His leg is touching mine again, shaking gently as if it were laughing. Quickly I take a sip from a small mug Walt has pushed towards me and hold back a shiver. A soldier on the other side of me starts talking to me – slowly and emphatically. I try to listen to the patient voice steadily repeating the same words and short phrases as if I were at infant school, but all I am really taking in is the pushing knee demanding my attention.

I can still hear the bell in the distance. Now they are sitting in the church, I think, and feel a pang of regret. Am I going to be able to get away from here soon? With a shock I recognise the blond soldier who has come up and is standing next to Walt. They are reading something Walt has taken out of his pocket. Seeing the soldier’s hand on Walt’s shoulder makes me feel uneasy.

A bit later we are walking through the tents. Walt has placed a hand on my neck and is using the pressure of his fingers to steer me while he talks to the blond soldier. I am like a dog on a lead.

They stop by a small tent in which a man is lying down writing something. The blond soldier goes and sits beside him and unties his boots. ‘See you,’ he says. We walk to the last tent, at the very edge of the field. Suddenly I feel sorry that the other soldier is no longer with us. Walt seems lost in thought and says nothing. Swallows are darting over the grass and the sun feels warm on my back; from a long way behind us a monotonous voice is talking on the little radio.

Walt throws the tent flap open and crawls in. I crouch down: it is dim inside and smells of oil, like the sails of our boat.

‘My house,’ he says and rolls out a sleeping bag. I sit down on it when he points and see a rifle lying next to it. He takes a small book from a bag lying at the back of the tent and hands it to me. Photographs, some in colour, have been stuck in it behind transparent, shiny paper.

‘Me,’ he says, and points to a face staring tensely into the camera among a number of other boys’ faces. Can that skinny young boy really be the man sitting next to me? I bend over closer to get a better look.

The soldier puts an arm around my shoulder. I catch an immediate smell of metal. ‘School,’ he says and bends his head close to mine. ‘Me, school.’ I see the same boy at the edge of a swimming-pool and again with a dog on a lawn. Then suddenly I realise that the boy is obviously Walt. He is sitting on a floral settee beside a beautiful woman with a big, smiling mouth, their heads leaning affectionately together. I look carefully: who is she, this woman who is so obviously fond of him? His mother? She could just as easily be his sister or his fiancee. With her red lips and her blouse with its large open collar, this woman is smarter and more beautiful than our queen in the pictures I saw back in the village. Her hair falls neatly in glossy curls around her face.

I feel empty and disappointed: I look at all the people I do not know but who belong to him, who are his friends and more important to him than I am; the people in the photographs, and the two soldiers, too. I turn the pages automatically: Walt in a garden with the same dog – and even the dog bothers me – and with another boy, their arms slung amicably round each other’s shoulders. I turn the page quickly. Walt crawls across the tent, takes off his boots, sniffs at his socks and puts them outside on the grass.

When I close the book I realise that he has undressed. He is folding his clothes deliberately, wearing nothing but the shorts I saw him in on Sunday behind the sea wall. Opening a letter, he lies down next to me, scratches his knee and reads. I quickly open the album again and pretend to be looking at photographs.

A buzzing fly bumps along the tent wall, falling down from time to time on to the sleeping-bag. Time passes slowly, the letter rustles between his fingers and now and then he gives a long drawn-out yawn. A small card falls out of the album, a tiny photograph of Walt as he is now, with short hair and pinched, sunken cheeks, ‘Narbutus, Walter P.’ written under it in printed letters. So that’s what his name is.

Walt snatches the little card from my hand, pushes it back into the album and folds his letter up. As he touches my hand, I notice that my fingers have gone numb and are ice-cold, as if they are about to snap in two.

‘So?’ he says and adds a questioning, ‘Now what?’

He lies down and touches my knee. I can see the gentle curve of his back and the breath moving his stomach. I don’t have to be afraid, he is a nice man, anyone can see that. Gently, he pushes me over backwards.

Narbutus, Walter P., I think. I must remember that for later, then I can write to him.

He grips my hand and my heart throbs in my ears: everything has gone too still, why doesn’t he say something? When I swallow I have the feeling it can be heard all over the tent. I grope sideways with one arm and touch the cold barrel of the rifle. The fly buzzes up the slanting walls and I can see a patch of grassy field and the cloudless sky through the open tent-flap.

The soldier sits up and, reaching across me, tries to tuck the letter into a pocket in the side of the tent. As his body, leaning over, edges further forwards, I can see that his shorts have got stuck and that the naked spheres of his buttocks are emerging from the bunched-up material. I can touch them if I stretch out my hand.

He is lying there with a bare bottom, I think, his pants are coming off and he hasn’t even noticed.

When the letter has been put away in the side pocket, he lifts his body until he is arching over me like a bow and looks at me from under his arm. He gives his backside a few resounding slaps, takes my hand and repeats the action. The contact with the softly moving curves makes my hand begin to glow, a burning sensation as if his bare skin is contaminated with some mysterious substance.

He drops down and moves closer to me, propping his head up on his hand. Deliberately he unbuttons the top of my shirt, slipping his hand inside under my vest, until it meets the top of my pants. My heart beats wildly, I seem to be spinning over backwards, tumbling deeper and deeper. Don’t be frightened, nothing will happen: but my heart hammers furiously, ready to burst. ‘Okay, Jerome. No problem.’ He pulls his hand back. The hairy place in his armpit is close to my face. He uses his upper arm to wipe away a drop that is running down his ribs. Metal, the smell almost stupefies me. He places his lips on mine, I remember that from before and obediently open my mouth in the shape of a soundless scream. He is sucked fast to me and conducts a scrupulously close examination with his tongue. I dare not resist, he is bigger than I am, and stronger. He has a gun.

He speaks words I cannot understand, repeating the same sound over and over, and draws wet lines across my face with his tongue. Outside everything is still, the fly buzzes monotonously in the tent and further away someone whistles a tune. Walt fumbles clumsily with my clothes, pulls my vest out from under my belt and pushes it up. A button snaps off, making a tiny sound as it rolls to the side of the tent.

Suddenly he stops, lifts up his head and listens: voices are coming closer. What if they are people from the village, what if Hait and Mem missed me at church and have come here to look…

Walt crawls to the front of the tent and I breathe freely again. It’s over now and I’ll be able to go. But I am wrong: carefully he draws the tent-flap tight, shutting out the stretch of green field and the summer sky. On his knees he turns towards me and pushes his shorts down his legs.

What naked bodies I had seen up to now had always appeared in a flash, during embarrassed quick fumblings in the school changing room or at the swimming-baths. All I ever got to see were glimpses of lean, bony bodies, angular knees or part of a skinny ribcage hastily covered with a piece of clothing. Only Jan had been different, at the Cliff, a pale and fleeting memory.

The soldier kneeling over me is a collection of threatening shapes – shoulders, thighs, neck, ribs and arms – under which I lie imprisoned.

At night, on our street, we had sometimes talked about grown-ups, about what they do in bed. We would speak about it in excited whispers and then choke with laughter. Now this man is shoving my pants down, tugging at my vest and running his hands over me, touching me with his big fingers. My heart is like an overwound spring about to give one fatal bound and break. I push him away from me and try to say something, stumbling over my words. The raised-up body of this stranger is a grotesque reflection of all our whispered juvenile confidences, a feverish dream in which things swell to a monstrous size.

He spits into his palm – in a flash he has become a mirror image of Jan – and runs his hand between my legs. Then, warily, as if I might break, he starts to lie down on top of me, a building collapsing above me, a loosened rock about to crush me in its fall. He leans on his arms, his eye right above me, and gives me a reassuring smile. As he reaches down with one hand, he says, half-whispering: ‘Socio…’

I feel something – his hand? – making a smooth unchecked dive between my tightly squeezed legs. He slides down and in one short movement squeezes all my will power out of me. His arms seem to hold me in an embrace, but he is involved in a grim battle, snarling and straining convulsively as his breath comes fast and furious and his bristly hair brushes against my face.

When he raises himself up on his knees he looks past me as if I do not exist. Much as I once watched the hands of a doctor reaching for the gleaming instruments with which to snip the tonsils in my throat, so I watch his movements now. He spits large gobs into his hand, and then resumes that frantic activity of his. Why am I making no sound or protest, why am I not screaming out loud?

Suddenly he bites the top of my arm hard with knife-sharp teeth, and then I do give a twisted scream, tears burning in my eyes. The soldier has a red smear across his chin. Annoyed, he puts a hand over my mouth and makes a hissing sound.

His fingers smell of tobacco and iron. He is cutting off my breath and throttling me slowly, a great roaring pressure in my ears, a swelling-up of noise. Then he heaves himself up a little and something shoots across my body, running on salamander-like feet over my belly and my ribs in a thin line. As he collapses on top of me our bodies give a strange squelch, like a wet foot in the mud.

His voice is against my ear, whispering words: I can make out my name. A. hand travels groping down my belly: you have to pull, and to push… Embarrassed, I draw my legs up, I want to lie still like this, I don’t ever want to move again, ever see anybody again. He kisses me and looks at my arm. I feel no pain; I am shaken and drained, and dirty. The fluid between our bodies is turning cold and sticky. ‘Jerome, okay?’ Sweet and gentle. He pulls my vest down, there are damp patches on it. He wipes a cautious hand across my wet skin, pulls me up and puts my arms around his hips. I tremble, first in my hands and elbows, then all over my body. He pulls my pants up, fastens the buttons and buckles my belt, touching me all the time with his lips.

I crawl to the front of the tent. ‘Wait,’ he says, ‘tomorrow, swim.’ He picks up a piece of paper, writes something on it and puts his hands up, ten outspread fingers. ‘Tomorrow, yes?’ He is sitting with his legs apart, and with his finger he picks up a thin thread running from his sex to the sleeping bag and wipes it across my mouth. Then he kisses me. I shudder, the foulness of it all, all the things I was taught never to do… He pushes me towards the opening of the tent: ‘Go.’

The light outside is blinding: ditches, farms, the road. I can hear him coughing inside the tent. It’s as if I had never been inside: all over and done with, the cough just that of a stranger. I walk past the tents. Soldiers lying in the grass give me an unconcerned ‘Hello’. Do they know what happened inside the tent, do they think nothing of it?

I stand still on the bridge from where I can see the flags in the village: a great day. I look for his tent, the last one, a small green triangle in the field, peaceful and remote. No movement, no feelings, nothing, only the piece of paper in my hand. When I walk on, the wet patch on my shirt feels unpleasant against my skin. I pull my stomach in as far as I can.

Hait is sitting by the window, a shadow looking out into the colourless night. Now and then he rubs his foot and says under his breath, ‘My oh my oh my…’ It has a contented and reassuring sound. The family is safely back in its home again, the celebrations over for the day. We have been eating as if we were dying of hunger: white and rye bread, bacon, milk. Now we are waiting for the bar of chocolate that lies invitingly in the middle of the table, I keep seeing eyes straying towards it, but nobody will touch it and the mysterious object remains intact. My arm is burning; a small dark red stain has appeared on the sleeve of my shirt. Every so often I try to touch the spot and soothe the burning without being noticed.

‘That was a lovely celebration,’ Mem says, ‘and a lovely sermon, I haven’t heard the minister preach like that for a long time. And so many people, they were spilling out of the church.’

Pieke leans against my chair and rocks gently to and fro. Darkness is spreading without a sound and enveloping us.

Diet puts the enamel teapot on the table and hands mugs around, the steam from the pot rising in grey wisps.

‘Are we going to have a piece of chocolate now?’ asks Pieke.

The soldier crouches over me like a beast, threatening and watchful. Frightened, I look at Hait.

‘You’ll have to ask Trientsje, the Americans gave it to her. She must decide.’

He moves his chair closer to mine at the table. Still I see the soldier, naked and large.

‘Ask, and it shall be given you, knock, and it shall be opened unto you,’ says Mem. ‘Asking, we’ve been doing that for a long time, haven’t we, Wabe? How often didn’t we ask God for an end to the war. And now it’s here!’ She drinks her tea with small, careful sips.

The finger moves from his prick to my mouth and rubs along my lips. I feel sick and swallow hard. ‘How did the minister put it again, that we have opened our hearts to our liberators, that they are guests in our souls?’

‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware,’ Meint says fervently.

I squeeze my legs together so as not to feel that movement between them any more, and tense my belly. I must think of something else. Hait looks at me. ‘And you, my boy, did you have a good day?’

I slide down from my chair, glad that I can move about freely, and go and stand beside him. He breaks Trientsje’s bar of chocolate into pieces and neatly wraps what is left into the silver paper. I make for the door.

‘I’m going to pee.’

The darkness outside descends upon me, an on-rolling ocean of muffled sounds; a voice calling in the distance, the short nocturnal cry of a lapwing.

The sheep are huddled against the wire fence in a grey clump, making human sounds, mumbling and coughing. In the distance are the small glowing spots of illuminated windows.

‘God,’ I say, and hope he can hear me, ‘let the soldier be my friend, let me always be with him. And don’t let anyone ever find out.’

I stand there, the cold spreading upwards from my feet. ‘I shall always go to church and always pray, I promise You. Please make him take me along with him.

I can hear a door opening in the house and a gust of speaking voices that wafts out and is quenched.

‘Jeroen?’ calls Trientsje.

I say nothing and crouch down in the dark. I put my hand inside my shirt and gently rub the sore place.

She takes a few steps outside and looks around the corner of the house, then steps into the cookhouse.

It hurts, I think, but it doesn’t matter if he stays my friend.

Suddenly I feel happy, he is probably lying in his tent right now thinking of me, or perhaps he’s at the table with the other soldiers, writing me a letter.

I feel the piece of paper in my pocket and clench it in my hand. Tomorrow he wants to go swimming with me, I shall be seeing him again, and I shall no longer be frightened. He is a liberator and he has chosen me, perhaps with God’s help. Thank You very much, God. With audible wing beats a silent shadow glides low across the meadow. I run to the ditch and look towards Warns. There is the bridge, there are the tents. I want very much to shout out into the dark over the still countryside, or to kneel in the grass, to do something.

When Mem calls me in an annoyed voice, I act surprised and innocent.

Shivering in the sudden warmth I get undressed and leap into bed before Meint has a chance to see my stained shirt and bruised arm.

I stare at the wall. His naked buttocks are so shamelessly close to my face that I hug them tight, a redeeming round shape that keeps me afloat…

The blood rises up inside me, beating in my throat and through my lips. Vaguely I hear Meint climb into bed and shut the little doors as quietly as he can.

Say nothing now, and don’t disturb my dreams…

Chapter 5

I hardly sleep that night. Every time I turn over I wake up with the pain in my arm, thinking of the soldier. A small shutter falls open in my head and I have a clear vision of all those things he did with me, as if it had all only just happened. Afterwards I can no longer close the shutter, I feel so guilty.

You must not kiss, kissing isn’t allowed, no one had ever kissed me, except at home, quickly and softly on the cheek. And there he had lain on top of me, naked, something that was completely forbidden. Suddenly I feel afraid: if I don’t go to meet him tomorrow, will he come here and take me prisoner?

My arm burns and my back is wet with sweat. I crawl over Meint to get out of bed and go to the privy. I pause at the back door; there are figures hiding everywhere in the dark, holding their breath, but I can sense their watchful presence as they lurk in the dark, waiting to pounce on me. I flee back to bed where Meint mumbles protestingly and turns over with a groan.

If you kiss a person, it means that you like him: Walt had held me tight in his arms, as if he wanted to squeeze the life out of me. Why did he do that, he didn’t even know me… I shut my eyes and try to sleep. Don’t think of ‘that’… Is it bad someone goes stiff down there? Diet says it’s a sin to talk about such things, but when it’s to do with an American it surely can’t be a sin; they only do what’s right and proper.

Just make the burning in my shoulder stop. He comes sneaking down on top of me and grins as he hisses at me to keep quiet, because no one must hear us. His hind legs are hairy and his tongue hangs pink and long from his snout. He is a dead cat…

I wake up with my head swimming. The mere thought of having to get up fills me with despair. Meint is already out of bed, yawning and stretching exaggeratedly, but curled up motionless I sullenly pretend to be fast asleep. I shall say I am sick so that they’ll let me lie in, life outside this bed seems bleak. There is nothing I want any longer.

In two minds I pull the blankets over my head; the hard patches on the bottom of my vest and the pains in my arm are problems I don’t want to face. But Mem flings the cupboard-bed doors open and whips the blankets off me. ‘Up you get, boy, this isn’t a holiday camp.’

Hait and Popke are still sitting at the table. It’s like a Sunday morning, everyone up late after the celebrations and still at home. Trientsje helps Mem clear the dishes and looks at my pale face.

‘Well, poppet,’ she says, ‘the celebrations are over now, so it should be back to work again. But the farmer’s going to have to do without me this morning. If all of you have been let off school, I don’t see why I can’t skip a morning as well.’

The water is ice-cold on my face and when Trientsje is not looking I push a wet hand inside my shirt and place it on my arm; it feels as if needles are being stuck into the wound. Mem is in a bad mood and sends all the children outside. She can’t seem to cope with the irregularity of this free morning. I have a slice of bread pushed into my hand, ‘Here, go and eat that outside.’

Hait strolls uneasily with Pieke along the fence, a free morning and no church! Meticulously he plucks tufts of sheep’s wool from the barbed wire and kneads them into a ball. I chew on my bread, my throat tight. There is the clattering noise of something falling inside the house, followed by raised voices. Jantsje rushes out sobbing and disappears into the barn. The celebrations are playing on all our nerves now.

I walk to the back of the house where the wind is less strong and fling my buttered bread across the ditch. The folded piece of paper lies in my trouser pocket, fingered so much that it feels as soft as a piece of cloth. I want to read it, I want to see those letters again, that secret message, and feel it between my fingers like a priceless possession.

Meint is crouching by the ditch parting the duckweed with a stick. The sun sends a shaft of light right to the bottom of the still, black water where a water-beetle is moving about amongst the weeds, its little legs furiously thrashing. ‘It eats tadpoles,’ Meint whispers, ‘we’ve got to kill it.’

I poke the water. The duckweed folds up over a small crimson creature that wriggles down towards the bottom in agitated circles.

‘We’ve got to find something to keep frogs in,’ says Meint, but I go off to the wooden privy without helping him.

‘Wednesday, 10 o’clock,’ and the thin lines with the letters L and W and the small cross showing where we are to meet. It looks like a capital T, the downstroke is the road from Warns to Laaxum and the cross-stroke must therefore be the dyke. Ten o’clock, how much time have I got left?

Meint bangs on the door. ‘Haven’t you finished your shit yet? I’m off to look for a tin at the harbour. Come on!’ Through a crack I can see the deserted, sunny road to Warns. I push my pants down, sit on the round hole in the plank and hope Meint will go off to the harbour by himself. I pick at the crusts on my stomach. My life is like a funnel that gets narrower and narrower, constricting me until I can’t escape. I tear up the piece of paper and let the snippets flutter down through the hole into the stinking pit below. Meint puts his face to the crack and makes spluttering noises with his tongue. ‘Shit-house,’ he laughs.

Crossly I go back into the house. ‘When is dinner?’

Mem laughs. ‘You’ve only just had your breakfast, we don’t keep going non-stop, you know.’

Down at the harbour I keep my distance from Meint, who is hunting about among stacks of crates on the other side. I must try to slip away unnoticed, which means hiding myself when he isn’t looking. My legs, dangling over the quay wall, are reflected in the water. The heat is oppressive and there is no one else in the harbour. Now and then the door of the shack bangs shut, breaking the silence like gunfire. Meint gives a shout and triumphantly holds up a tin can which he has fished out of the harbour with a stick. Thick blobs of sand drip out of it.

‘Got it! Come on, now we can go and catch some frogs.’

If we go back home I shall never be able to get away. I take the tin and, lying on my stomach, scoop up some water with it. ‘It leaks, it’s got a hole in the bottom. It’s no good.’ I try to fling it into the water, but Meint snatches it out of my hand.

‘Don’t be stupid. I can easily mend it with a bit of tar.’ He makes for the shack and disappears behind the banging door. Instead of following him I race past the little building up a grassy slope, drop into a hollow and press myself close to the ground. Meint calls out, first round the back of the shack and then towards the side where I am lying hidden. ‘I can see you. Come on out, I’ve mended the tin.’

Why don’t I go along with him, catch frogs and play by the ditch? I have to stop myself from raising my head. When I hear the sound of his clogs. I peer through the grass and see him disappear behind the dyke. Doubled over, I take to my heels and run across the bare, open fields towards the Mokkenbank. I don’t know if I’m too early or too late, but I keep running, away from Meint, away from the frogs, away from deciding whether to go back.

The sandbars of the Mokkenbank lie grey in the advancing and receding waves. Overhead the gulls climb like whirling scraps of paper, hover in the wind and dive down. I clamber on to a fence and look around: not a soul in sight. Straining my eyes I scan the line of the distant sandbars; maybe he is there already, lying in the sun or taking a swim.

On the other side of the fence I stop to scrape the mud from my clogs. Isn’t he coming, or has he already been and gone? The sun is broken by the sea into dazzling splinters of light. I go and sit down at the foot of the dyke and shut my eyes tight against the glare. A cricket makes bright little chirping noises beside my ear, the sound becoming thinner and thinner, a wire vibrating in the sun.

I wake up when a pebble plops into the grass next to me. Walt is lying close by, looking at me. I feel dizzy. The earth is filled to overflowing with sounds, all nature seems to have sprung to life. Walt says nothing, he just whistles – I remember the tune – and turns over onto his back. I had thought the two of us would rush up to each other, that it would be like yesterday and he would be pleased to see me.

A little later we are walking through the marsh grass towards the sea. He carries me over a swampy patch, taking long strides and pressing on my burning arm. I am suspended in the air, without speech or will. Where is he taking me? Suddenly he stops, turns round and pushes me down roughly in the reeds. Two cyclists are riding along the dyke, I can hear the squeak of pedals and snatches of conversation in the distance. ‘Sssh. Don’t move,’ he says and pushes me further down. ‘Wait.’ He watches the approaching cyclists, his hand patting my knee reassuringly. ‘Kiss me.’

We stay there crouching for a moment longer, then he pulls me along to the beginning of the sandbar and goes and sits down in the cover of a circle of reeds. He holds me at arm’s length as if looking me over, brushes the hair from my forehead and tweaks my nose. He pulls off my clogs and draws me between his knees, pursing his lips to kiss me, a dry mouth against mine. He pulls his clothes up a little and puts my hand on his bare waist, a warm curve under my fingers.

‘You happy? You like?’ He has closed his eyes as he talks to me. I keep my hand nervously where he has put it, but his hand lies softly kneading between my legs. My body gives answer, I can feel it move under his touch and stretch out in lis hand, and I turn away to one side.

‘Jerome, come on.’ He speaks gently, as if whispering to me in his sleep, and pushes my mouth open. I let him do it, but remain tense under the squeezing and kneading of his hand. ‘Sleep,’ he says then, takes off his jacket and kisses the hillock in my trousers. Humming softly he lies down next to me; I listen: everything he does is beautiful and fascinates me. When I place my arm on his he looks at me in surprise.

The sand turns cold and wet under me, as if the sea were seeping into my clothes. He has stopped moving, his head has drooped to one side and his breath is heavy and deep. Above us the gulls complain and call.

I look into his defenceless face, the mouth that has fallen open slightly and the small white stripe between his eyelids. Every so often he makes a sound like a groan. He’ll take me away with him, I tell myself, if I don’t hear from home I’ll stay with him, he’ll wait for me in his car and then we’ll drive away to his country.

His cracked lips, the hollow sloping line of his cheeks, the eyebrows that almost join and his strong round neck, I pass them all in review, taking them in carefully, the colour, the outline, every irregularity, every feature: I must never forget any of them!

I slip my hand cautiously back under his shirt. He opens his eyes and looks at me in surprise, as if wondering how he has landed there, on this sandbar, with this boy and in this situation. He makes a chewing movement and swallows audibly.

I would like to say something, to talk to him; the long silences are oppressive and each time add to the distance between us. With a moan, he moves closer to me and I bury my face in his sandy hair. He folds his cold hands between our bodies.

Why does he keep falling asleep? I had thought he would do the same as yesterday; I was frightened of that, but now that he doesn’t I am disappointed. I think of Amsterdam: will I ever hear from them again, from my father and mother? What if they are dead, what will happen then?

I feel cold and tired; I ought to get up and go home or else I’II be late again, but Walt is sleeping peacefully, like a child. Now and then there is a rustle in the reeds as if someone were moving behind us and I lift my head quickly to look. The waves make startled sounds against the shore, over and over again the glittering water sucked into the sand.

Time passes, why doesn’t he move? A small beetle runs across his hair, trying laboriously to find a way through the glistening tangle. Then he is awake and scratches his neck.

‘Baby.’ He looks sleepily at me.

I am no baby, I am his friend. He looks at his watch, gets up with a start and pulls me to my feet.

‘Go,’ he says and gives me a gentle push. ‘Quick.’

It feels like being sent out of class at school. I slap the sand from my clothes and slip into my clogs.

He doesn’t remember, I think; he’s forgotten what we did yesterday. And he probably won’t be taking me away with him, everything is different from what I imagined. ‘What about tomorrow?’ I want to ask, but how?

He sits down by the edge of the sea and lights a cigarette. No kiss, no touch?

When I am standing on the dyke he is still sitting there just the same. I want to call out but a hoarse noise is all my voice will produce.

The rest of the day seems endless. In the afternoon we go down to the boat with Hait and help him bail water out of the hull. I do the monotonous job of emptying a tin mechanically over the side of the boat, filling the tin with a regular movement and listening to the dull splashes beside the boat, time after time, first Meint, then me, in endless repetition. Meint keeps talking to me while Hait gives us directions. I pretend to listen. They mustn’t notice anything. I mustn’t I give them the slightest inkling of suspicion, but must act as if nothing is happening. I speak, I eat, I move about, I bail water out of the boat, I answer Hait and make jokes with Meint, everything as usual…

But later, doggedly, I run a little way back up the dyke and scan the horizon. Clouds of white gulls rise brightly against the darkening grey sky: I can hear the far-off screeching very clearly.

I stare intently: that’s where he was, that’s where we lay…

‘Give us a hand, come on,’ says Diet and pushes’ the breadboard into my hand, ‘don’t just sit there daydreaming.’ The evening meal is over and I help her clear away. ‘You must have met a nice girl at the celebrations yesterday. I can tell by just looking at you.’ It sounds like an accusation.

I pretend to be indignant: me? In love?

‘Don’t try to deny it, it’s nothing to be ashamed of!’ She throws her arms around me aggressively, sticks her head out of the door and shouts with a laugh, ‘Hey, boys, Jeroen is courting, he’s going to take a Frisian wife!’

I find a big marble in the grass and walk back towards the harbour. The sun is low and deep red between long strips of cloud and the grey walls of the shack have taken on a pink glow, as if lit up by fire.

I go and sit beside the little grave among the stones. I push the marble into the sand, a beautiful one with green and orange spirals running through it. Over towards Amsterdam the horizon is a bright line. Will a letter ever come? How will I ever find my way back to them?

Chapter 6

The same house. It stands hidden between the trees at the end of the overgrown path. I recognise it at once: this is where we were.

The engine is turned off. The soldier gets out cautiously and walks towards the garden behind the small building, then disappears around the corner. A moment later he hurries back, his feet crunching on the gravel path. ‘Quick,’ he takes my hand and pulls me impatiently to the door. It feels pleasantly cool in the shade of the house after the hot car. I take a deep breath. The cry of a bird echoes clearly and challengingly among the trees.

Before putting the key in the lock the soldier listens out and looks back at the road a few times. We stand like thieves outside the deserted house. The turning of the key seems to break the spell, shattering the stillness.

People are bound to hear us, I think, someone will come.

He pushes me into the house and immediately locks the door behind us. Inside it smells of damp wood; subdued light filters through the windows. We stand motionless and listen. I feel his hand touch my cheek. When I look at him, he nods reassuringly, but I can see how tense he is.

Meint had not gone back to school in the afternoon but had gone to help Hait with the boat. Mem had looked surprised when she saw that I wanted to go with him. ‘You can learn a lot from Hait,’ she said. ‘Not the things they teach you at school, but they’ll come in very useful later on.’ On the road to Warns I had let Jantsje go on ahead, thinking that with a bit of luck I would be too late for school. I took a quick look down the village street: was there anybody left outside or had they all gone into school? If no one was about then I could take my time about deciding what to do next. Perhaps there was some trace of the soldier somewhere, a car, something.

I noticed how oddly I was behaving, stopping, looking around, and then taking another few steps: why was I being such a fool, I really ought to be at school as usual. Then I heard a voice calling my name hoarsely, followed by a short whistle. Immediately I was torn between wanting to run away and looking back, and as I walked on I was surprised at myself: this was the sound I had been hoping for, that I wanted to hear, and here I was making off as if I was scared.

‘Jerome!’ Walt is waving to me. ‘Come.’

He is standing next to the Sunday school and starts coming towards me. We walk down the street out of the village. But I really ought to be at school…

‘Sit down.’ Hurriedly he pushes me onto the verge. ‘Wait.’

I make myself small, slide down towards the ditch where the grass is taller and watch him walking back along the road until he disappears around the bend in the village. I could get up now and run to school. I could say that I was late because I had a sore foot, and yet I do not move at all, the suspense ringing in my ears. Supposing I go back and run into him, supposing he sees that I’ve been disobedient; he could easily turn up suddenly in the classroom, point to me and order me outside, in front of the whole school.

The time that passes seems like an eternity, I could have run back to school a good five times over by now. My indecision grows: perhaps he won’t ever be coming back.

Then I hear a car in the village, a reassuring purring that is coming closer. A moment later, the car rounds the bend and makes straight for me. The door swings open, but instead of getting out Walt calls something that sounds curt and impatient. As soon as I am inside he accelerates and we are swishing along the road. He takes hold of my arm without stopping driving. I can feel a small tin in the warmth of his trouser pocket, keys, a few coins.

I can’t see the road at all. We are driving fast and it frightens me. I keep my hand on the hard place which every so often moves upwards.

I could easily have gone back to school a good five times over…

Walt walks further into the house and opens a door. I can hear him drawing curtains somewhere. There is a desk with a row of drawers down one side in the corner of the room, and under one window a sagging brown settee, a small round table and two wooden chairs with grotesquely bulging seats. A calendar is hanging behind the desk and several sheets of paper have been stuck to the wall with drawing pins. The ashtray on the small table is full of cigarette ends. Does that mean there are people about? I listen.

An imprisoned brown butterfly flutters against one of the windows, its wings rustling across the glass. The soldier comes back into the room and pulls the shutters at the front of the house across the windows; there is a rattling noise and it is dark. Then he shoots the bolt of the door with a loud click and it suddenly dawns on me: I am a captive, I shall never get away from here.

A narrow staircase at the back leads up to a landing with three doors. We go into a small room which has a mattress on the floor and some blankets flung down on to it rather untidily. Walt sits on a chair, pulls me towards him and kisses me. I allow it to happen, unyielding and resentful: I have been locked up, there is no one here but the two of us.

I can watch the slight movement of the leafy branches through a small window. I shall never see anybody again, this is the end. Yet somewhere among the shaded leaves the same bird is still singing, clearly and challengingly.

The soldier has gone out of the room. I am alone. What is he up to, is he going to leave me all on my own? I prick up my ears for any sound. It is like being kept in after school, being aware of the silence and emptiness in your body, the injustice of being the only one left behind in a deserted room. A tap is running somewhere, making a gushing sound through the house. ‘Hey, where are you?’ His voice sounds normal, he hasn’t sneaked out of the house after all, hasn’t left me behind, hasn’t gone for his rifle to threaten me with but is standing in the room next door, his back towards me. He has put his clothes in a pile in a corner of the little passageway and he is washing himself at a basin, the water running down his body on to the floor.

From his hips to halfway down his thighs his body is as white as chalk, the dividing line running straight and clear-cut across his skin. His movements are quick and nimble, his arms slipping over his body, sliding from his back across his knees to the half-raised foot. The foaming white soap on his belly smells sweet. He rinses himself clean with quick handfuls of water, then he takes off my clothes without saying a word and hangs them on the door-knob.

I catch my breath as he runs a cold, soapy hand over my shoulder-blades and ribs. His knowing fingers handle my terrified sex deliberately, then slide across my belly and my buttocks.

When he touches my injured arm I can see that he is startled. ‘Me?’ He points to himself.

I shrug my shoulders and shake my head, I am afraid to accuse him.

He examines the wound and touches it with anxious fingers. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I am so sorry.’ He feels around the sore spot carefully as he brings his head close to my ear. ‘Jerome?’ He shakes me as if he wants to wake me up. ‘I love you.’

I know what that means, the soldiers call it out sometimes to the girls in the village, whistling and smiling, and the girls walk grimly ahead without looking at them.

He sits down on a chair and dries himself with his shirt. It looks strange, a naked man sitting on a chair. I stare at the lino on the floor and move my foot: in a moment he will get dressed, then we’ll go back to Warns. I take a look through the door to where my clothes are hanging.

‘Come here.’ He wipes the wet shirt along my back, gripping me tightly between his legs so that I can feel his little wet hairs tickling my belly. ‘I love you.’ Again he shakes me gently from side to side. What should I say back, what does he want from me? I look at him: he is an unknown person, a stranger of whom I am afraid, to whom I can say nothing, of whom I can ask nothing. Thin and miserable I continue to stand between his rock-like limbs until he pulls my head backwards and forces me to look up at him… ‘No problem,’ he says, ‘no problem.’

He has stood up and is holding that soft thing, from which I have scrupulously averted my gaze, right in front of my face. I feel him push it carefully against my tightly compressed lips and turn my head away. When I start to make for the door, he grabs hold of me and pulls me back. It’s okay, Jerome. Okay.’

We fall onto the mattress. His body is hostile and hurts me. It is nothing but parts that stick out and that burrow and thrust and force themselves upon me. We are having a gigantic wrestling match, a painful performance accompanied with jerkings, twitchings and torrents of low, panted whispers.

He rolls me over him, kneels above me, turns me on to my stomach and licks my body like an animal. Then all of a sudden he interrupts the wrestling, lifting up a corner of the mattress and feeling about with his hand. A small metal lid falls to the floor; I sit up and look at it. He rubs a smooth, cool finger between my buttocks as he says unintelligible words in a gentle, soothing voice. He strokes and cuddles me, he caresses me, but all the while one hand continues to hold me tight in an iron grip. With my forehead pushed into the mattress I let him do what he wants, afraid to make the least sound.

‘Baby.’ It sounds like a husky, warm laugh in my ears. ‘Give me a kiss.’ He twists my head to one side and in his hurry drives his teeth hard against mine. I cry out with pain.

‘Is okay, is good. No problem.’ His tongue moves greedily between my lips as his weight gradually squeezes the breath out of me. I try to swallow his spittle but his tongue, a ramrod inserted in my mouth, prevents me. I clench my fingers around the mattress. In the other room the tap is dripping, an imperturbable sound of falling drops, as if nothing were happening in here.

I arch my back and tense my legs, his thing prodding my body impatiently, insistently, an unimaginably coarse and blunt instrument trying to make an opening into my body.

…We are sitting in a small circle at the corner of the street. It is evening and already dark. ‘When we go to the country tomorrow,’ one of the boys says inscrutably, ‘we must catch a frog. If you stick a straw up its arse you can blow it up.’ I have never seen anyone do that, the whole thing has remained a gruesome, unsolved mystery, but now I see the frog, transfixed and grotesque, blown up like a balloon, a cruel and horrible picture…

As soon as the pressure of his body lessens a little, I wrench myself frantically from under him and crawl to the furthest corner.

‘Sorry, baby,’ he says and gives me a lop-sided smile. A flaming sensation is shooting spasmodically through me, paralysing me. Walt moves up close and runs his finger over the spot where he hurt me, tilting his head to one side and thoughtfully scratching the corner of his mouth with his other hand. Why is he smiling at me so compassionately, does he think I’m stupid or that I’m babyish? I hold my hands to my face, ashamed. The pain is like a knife slicing me in two.

‘Easy,’ I hear him say. ‘Easy, baby.’ When he pulls my hands away I see that he looks serious. He blinks his eyes and clears his throat. ‘Come over,’ he says and pouts his lips at me.

I hesitate. He brushes his hand over my eyes and keeps looking at me, his own eyes grey and clear. Suddenly I am crying.

‘Come.’

I put my lips to his mouth.

‘Sooo,’ he mumbles, drawing it out, ‘good boy.’

Then he lays his head between my legs as if he were going to sleep, his hair soft as rabbit fur against my skin. He touches my feet, my legs, then slowly and insistently he strokes my collapsed sex. I no longer move; just so long as everything stays calm and gentle and safe.

It happens without me, the unhurried straightening of my legs and the slow, embarrassing erection. I can do nothing to stop it, I do not look at it, just register numbly the jerking of my body under his hand.

I twist my hips round to try and screen the movements and find myself ludicrously exposed to his searching gaze. He closes his lips around the erect little shape and it vanishes into a sucking wetness.

He is going to bite, just the way he bit my arm: as soon as the thought occurs to me, it shrivels up, is gone, it’s all over.

‘Not good,’ he laughs. ‘Jerome baby.’

He draws thoughtfully on his cigarette and blows smoke into my face. Then he stubs the cigarette out on the floor, calmly and decisively. He takes hold of my chin like a dentist and presses on my jaws, puts the hard thing between my lips and pushes it in firmly.

‘Kiss me.’

It sounds loud and flat in the empty room. I clasp his legs tightly to withstand the lazy movement in and out. Then I resist no more. He has me under his control as he bends thrusting over me, while I perish in the spurting waves that cut off my breath and beat against my throat and the roof of my mouth. An opposing wave is rising in my stomach, a surf that breaks upwards at furious speed, and it is all I can do to force it back down.

The muscles of my throat contract, I gag and struggle for air. He pulls his body away and the thing slips out, suddenly slack and harmless. A sickly sweet taste seems to be sticking to my gullet with rubbery tentacles. I feel clammy and cold and shiver so violently that my whole body shakes.

Walt stretches out beside me and puts his arms and legs around me: a smell of iron, of warmth and sleep. I hear his soothing voice in my ear and with every breath his belly presses against mine. He is suddenly gentle again. I feel him putting his arms around my neck. Slowly, following his breathing, I calm down. Without being asked, I press my mouth to his neck.

I lie shut in between the wall and the protecting rampart that is his body. He has turned away from me and stopped moving. Is he asleep?

His back is a landscape, his shoulder-blades the hills, his skin a sloping field under which pale blue rivers flow. At the curve of his neck little glossy mouse-hairs grow in strangely symmetrical formations, a miniature display of toy armies on the march. The landscape and the armies move slowly with his breathing.

He is fond of me, that’s why he said, ‘I love you’.

His arm gropes backwards and pulls me closer. When I push up against his hips he makes a satisfied sound.

He picks up his watch from the floor, and takes a long look at the dial. Is it time, do we have to go? I wonder where he will be taking me; not back to Warns, anyway, that’s out of the question now, I’m sure of that. He turns over on to his back and smokes a cigarette, flicking ash into a neat pile on the floor.

My head is lying on his chest, his arm moving across me, from his mouth to the floor. The thing is lying limp and harmless on his belly, looking at me with its split eye: it is a silkworm, a docile roll of putty. Now and then Walt puts his hand over it. I study how he handles the thing and moves it about. A grown-up’s body is strange, different. It enthrals me and repels me.

He holds out both hands to me, pulls me up from the mattress and gives a meaningful laugh. But I don’t laugh back. I don’t understand his laughter: why, what is there to laugh about?

I stand close to him and feel his skin, warm and shifting like sand in the sun. When I move my hand over the little curly hairs, I wonder if he understands that I am giving him a guarded caress. Persuasively he thrusts his body against mine, so that we move together to the window. He pulls it open. The air that falls over us is crisp and smells of dry leaves. The cooing of a pigeon breaks off abruptly and I hear hurried rustling and clumsy fluttering in the branches.

Walt bends over me and looks out. It is motionless and still and yet the trees are full of chirping sounds. He rubs his body against my back, first imperceptibly and then more obviously, but I pretend to be looking out undisturbed as if I feel nothing: if I don’t notice anything then nothing will happen. The car is parked by the side of the house, large and lumbering, like a watchdog waiting patiently for his master to finish his business and to come back to him. The movements behind my back continue. It is as if the thing were an intruder, another person standing between Walt and me, an obstinate bore conducting his affairs with no reference to us. I rest my chin on my arm and look at the trees: how tiresome grown-ups can be.

‘Let’s go.’

He stands big and strong by the basin and shamelessly fingers the thing with soapy hands. He has no secrets from me and behaves as if everything were normal. I get dressed and wait patiently for him to lace up his boots. What now?

I can’t go back home: if somebody has undressed you and done things with you, then you belong to him, that’s how it is with grown-ups; you’ve been singled out, it means he wants you.

On the ground floor, just when I think we are finally leaving, Walt suddenly becomes very busy, fetching tins from a crate and carrying them to the car. I sit in the front of the car and listen to him walking about in the house, shutting the window upstairs and locking the door. Then he is sitting beside me, leaning back. Now I shall know what is going to happen, where we are going.

He smokes.

His cheek gleams in the light, I can see his nostrils quiver as if he were smelling trouble. Every so often he blows smoke in my direction by way of making conversation. The cigarette is taking an exasperaringly long time to grow smaller.

Now I want him to put his arm around me, so that I can smell his nearness. The sudden longing carves painfully through my insides. I wait for him to pull me towards him so that I can lean into the folds of his clothes.

He flips the butt outside and starts the engine.

Evening creeps soundlessly over the land. When I look out of the tent I can see the twilight slowly shrouding the distant trees and farmsteads.

I am sitting in the middle of a groundsheet and hardly dare move or touch anything, not the sleeping-bag rolled up beside the laced-up green bag at the head of the tent, nor the magazines with the colour photographs on top of the small pile of folded clothes, nor the two mess-tins, the pocket torch or the small bits and pieces drawn up in strict formation along the sides of the tent. My eyes have examined them all dozens of times now. I have taken it all in and fixed it in my memory: this is where he lives, this is his home and these are his possessions. Everything is confined inside this small square around me, the shapes that I see turning greyer and greyer until they blend with the fading cloth of the tent.

I can hear voices in the distance, violently flaring up and then dying away again, and music from a radio. A little while ago I had smelled food and heard the familiar sounds that go with a meal: the clatter of pans, the irregular clicking of cutlery and people talking with full mouths. I had not moved and had listened holding my breath until I grew giddy trying to distinguish that one voice. Could I possibly hear it from so far away, would it reach me over such a distance?

But the conversations remained a jumbled skein of sound to which I could put neither figure or features, no matter how hard I listened. The smell of the food does not disturb me, because all the time he has been away – an hour, one and a half hours or more? – I have felt no hunger, nor have I minded the chill that has invaded the tent with the night air.

Will this be my life from now on, in tents, cars and deserted houses, waiting for him to return? Will I, as now, always have to gaze out aimlessly and bored, dreaming my life away, apathetic and without a will of my own? And will I be travelling with him from one country to the next, making war and celebrating liberations and sleeping inside this little square? Then it will be my tent, my kit-bag and one of the mess tins will perhaps be mine alone.

Do I really want that, to leave Laaxum for good, to forget Amsterdam, live inside this canvas house? But why not? Even if it is small in here, it is well laid out and private, a protected existence like a rabbit’s in a hutch.

I turn that thought over and over, chew it and chew it again.

Outside, the farmsteads have been as good as swallowed up by the dark and an alarming red glow has traced a fiery tear on the horizon. Suddenly I feel cold and when I try to move I realise that I have grown stiff.

I shiver, as if I have just woken from a bad dream. Of course it is good to be here, I like this tent and Walt is my friend. If I go away with him he will look after me well.

Everything will be all right, then.

From the house we had continued along a different road; so now it was going to happen, my journey into the unknown had begun. But the start hadn’t been very pleasant; Walt had said almost nothing, all he had done was yawn every so often and then smile apologetically. I wondered if he felt the same as me. My body seemed to be a jumble of separate parts that had been pulled to pieces and then thrown haphazardly and painfully together again. Was that why he was being so unfriendly?

But then, unexpectedly, he had seized me roughly and pushed my head into his lap. Now and then his hand would slip down from the wheel and move over my face which made me feel less uneasy. Where were we going, how far had we come?’

‘Come.’ I had heard the car slow down and from his movements I had understood that I was to sit up. When I had looked out I was confused, but then I recognised the tents and the camp and the bridge beyond – it was just that I was approaching them from a different angle. We had come round in a circle to the same place.

The first thing I had felt was disappointment: so we were back in Warns after all. But perhaps it was only for a short while, perhaps Walt had things to settle before we left.

We had walked to the big tent where a few bored soldiers were sitting at the table. One of them had poured us coffee and while I finished off the tepid liquid that tasted strong and bitter, gulp by gulp, I had listened to the sound of their voices and tried as hard as possible to be one of them, sitting on my chair like them, leaning on the table and drinking from my mug just as they did. The more everything was done like them, the better.

A little while later two of them had dragged a large crate from under a tarpaulin and carried it to the car. Walt had started to walk with me towards his tent, then stopped and pointed to it.

‘Wait there.’

As I walked on I saw him go towards the car, a bag over his shoulder. He stopped for a moment and waved his arm. ‘Go in!’ It had sounded brusque, like an order, and obediently I had opened up the tent and slipped into the quiet, warm little space that was both tidy and empty.

Later he had come in, changed his shirt for a clean one, squatted down for a bit and then gone out again.

‘You wait. Me…’ He had mimed bringing food up to his mouth and pretended to chew.

‘Jerome wait. Okay?’

He had placed a finger to his lips and given me a conspiratorial look.

‘Good boy.’ It had sounded like praise and approval and had banished my feelings of disappointment. Even when he had been gone for a long time I hadn’t dared move, had touched nothing and waited.

When he throws the tent flap back it is almost completely dark outside. For a moment it is as if he is surprised to find someone there. Had he forgotten me or had he expected me to have gone? Then he puts down an apple for me and tears the wrapping from a bar of chocolate, rolls the sleeping bag out and sits me down on it.

The smell, the odour of metal filling the tent!

He crawls in behind me and speaks in a lowered voice while he looks for something in the dark. Stopping what he was doing he puts his mouth to my neck. But I don’t move, just sit there motionless, waiting.

He lies down beside me, breaks off a piece of the chocolate and carries it to my mouth. ‘Eat. Come on, eat!’ He is whispering and yet his voice sounds loud. I grow giddy with the sweet taste that floods through my body, with the smell of his clothes and with his caressing hand on my knee. I feel as if I am softening and melting like the chocolate between my fingers: this is the way I want to live, of course, so long as he is there to fill the tent with warmth and smells and food.

He looks in the side pocket of the tent, rustling envelopes and paper, switches his torch on and shines it on something he is holding in front of me.

It is a photograph of him standing with his arms folded across a blue check shirt, leaning against a wall. I recognise his watch. He pushes the photograph into my shirt pocket and pats it.

‘For you. Jerome, Walt: friends.’

He pulls me towards him and I disappear into his arms.

Feeling a heaviness in my eyelids, I slowly start to doze off. Outside I can hear a soldier talking softly and somebody seeming to hum an answer, everything sounding vague and far away. Are we going to sleep now?

He loosens his belt, picks up my hand and takes it inside his clothes. Why doesn’t he leave me alone, can’t he see how tired I am? Will it always be like this?

Soft and curled up, the thing lies sleeping contentedly under my palm. I touch it gingerly, afraid to wake it up. The sleeve of Walt’s jacket presses against my eyes and sleep overwhelms me.

‘Don’t stop.’

The murmuring voice sighs in my ear. I am stroking it, aren’t I? Wearily I notice that the silkworm, as if scenting danger, is beginning to straighten, suddenly springing upright, like that dog I never dare touch in the village.

‘No, hold it. Move.’

I move it.

‘Don’t stop.’

I don’t want to any more, I am tired, we must go to sleep. The thing stands on stiff, threatening paws. Its upper lip is drawn back, the hairs on its back bristle and it bares shiny yellow fangs…

‘Faster, yes. Do it.’

…and utters angry and repulsive sounds.

I bury my face deep in Walt’s sleeve until he lets go of my hand and I can hear him moving about in the dark. Then everything is still.

The quietness takes me by surprise. It is as if I have been left alone in a deserted, empty room. But Walt is close by: the pressure on my shoulder is the arm he has thrown across me. Are we going to sleep with our clothes on, and without any blankets?

When I hear whispers and suppressed laughter outside I have to use great effort to force my eyes open. Walt sits up and pulls his sleeping-bag over me. The childrens’ voices are close by, I can hear their smothered sniggers. Then a corner of the tent is lifted up and I see the smudge of faces bent down looking under the canvas.

Who are they, do they know me, do they know that I am here? But it doesn’t matter, I’m leaving here anyway, they won’t ever see me again…

When Walt leaps up and shouts something at them, they run away, a flock of excitedly cackling chickens. He crawls outside and sticks a peg back into the ground, talking meanwhile to some soldiers in another tent. Then he sits down beside me and turns on his torch: one side of the tent is hanging in loose folds. We wait and listen. I can hear his breath and the beating of his heart. The crackle of a small radio comes from a neighbouring tent.

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘baby.’

He leads me in the dark along the ditch. I stumble over holes and rough ground as if sleep-walking. He holds my hand tight, which surprises me, here where everyone can see us even if it is dark.

He stops close to the road and winds my hair round his finger until it hurts. What are we going to do now, where is the car?

‘Okay,’ his catchword, ‘sleep well.’

He gives me a firm slap on the bottom and pushes me up the road.

Whistling softly, he walks back, his feet moving audibly through the grass. I watch his shadow move past the faint circles of light shining in several tents, then it disappears.

I walk to the bridge: and I had thought that I would be staying with him, living with him in his tent, sharing his mess-tins…

The village is quiet. I can see people behind lit windows.

The ditch beside the road has a black and oily sheen. If you didn’t know any better you might have mistaken it for a path you could walk on, so solid and firm does it appear. Above the dimly glowing horizon is a venomous, thin little moon, a trimmed fingernail.

What shall I tell them at home? This is the first time I have missed the evening meal.

But in my heart I know that I am never going to go back. I shall carry on walking and no one will ever see me again. I shall carry on walking until I am back in Amsterdam.

Chapter 7

The master clears his throat noisily and gives a pointed cough. I start and look at him: the cough is definitely meant for me. His eyes are fixed on me as if he can sense that my thoughts are not on the composition.

‘That’s quick,’ his voice is mocking, ‘for once you actually seem to be the first in class.’ He walks up to my desk and swivels my exercise book around: again that disapproving look. As if in disgust, he guardedly turns a few pages over and gives me a questioning look. He is wearing an orange rosette in his jacket, a favour that does not suit him.

He could be nice enough when he needed me to do the drawings, I think, but now…

He turns the exercise book back to me abruptly and stalks off to the front of the classroom. It is stifling inside the room, the heat of the sun seems to release the smell of children’s sweat and of stables from our clothes.

I bend over the paper and try to construct a sentence. I can still feel the master keeping an eagle eye on me and I break out in a sweat which dampens my hair and then starts to trickle down my back. Grimly scratching my head, I write two words. ‘…I walked…’ My hand falters, again the pencil is suspended lifelessly above the white paper. All around me pencils are scraping steadily away and now and then a page is turned over with a rustling sound. The boy beside me raises his head: ‘Finished, master.’

I peer over at his exercise book and see two pages covered with writing.

‘When we heard the war was over, I walked…’ It looks as if I shall never get beyond these few words and I read the unfinished sentence over and over until I feel I’m going mad. I run my finger over the WI have scratched with a nail into the corner of my desk: there is nothing I need write beyond that W; it is my whole liberation story.

I can hear the loudly tapping feet of a bird hopping angrily to and fro in the gutter. After a short silence, seemingly to catch its breath, it starts to whistle: gently swelling notes that turn into excited twittering, now high, now low, as if it is choking on its own passionate sounds.

I lean my head on my hand and shield my eyes. The pencils continue to write. Whatever can they all have to say? I look for a handkerchief and blow my nose. It presumably wouldn’t do to burst into tears about a composition that refuses to come.

When the master collects the exercise books he leaves mine untouched.

‘I am curious to find out what you have to say about the past few days, to read what is bound to be a wonderful record of this unforgettable time.’ He coughs solemnly. ‘From now on everything is back to normal, the celebrations are over, but when, in the future, you re-read your compositions, these days will again shine bright before you. Our liberators have other duties, they will be leaving us now, but we shall never forget what they have done for us…’ Silence and a penetrating look. ‘They have rid us of a curse, the Lord has sent us help just in time. If ever you are at your wits’ end and no deliverance is at hand, do not forget, God does not abandon you. How true the words of the hymn are.’

I brace myself at my desk, spent, squeezed empty.

‘Let us therefore pray.’

A little later I hear the voices fade away across the school yard. I am sitting alone in the classroom, forcing myself to put down one word after another, making short sentences that are stupid and meaningless: it doesn’t matter to me as long as there’s something.

The master comes in and draws a curtain to keep the sun off his desk. He leafs through the exercise books and yawns.

…‘Stop now,’ I hear him say, ‘just bring me what you have done.’

Punctiliously, his eyes follow the lines I have written. ‘Later you will realise what momentous events occurred in these days, and then you will be ashamed that you could find so little to say about them.’

I look at the dry hand shutting my exercise book. ‘Pity,’ he says, ‘truly, I feel sorry for you.’ He walks before me through the door and holds it open for me affably. ‘Is everything all right at home? Do give Akke my kind regards.’ Taken aback by his genial manner, I walk along the corridor by his side. ‘No doubt you’ll be going to join the rest at the bridge, the whole class went there I think. But all of them will have gone by now, of course.’ He locks the outside door carefully. I cross the little yard. It smells of summer in the village, you can almost hear the trees bursting into bud and growing.

‘But all of them will have gone by now, of course…’ What did he mean by that, why does that sentence keep sticking in my mind? Reluctantly I walk towards the bridge, Meint is sure to have gone straight back home, why don’t I do the same then? Hadn’t I made up my mind never to go there again?

The people in the village are sure to have seen through me long ago: ‘There he goes, off again to the soldiers, what do you think he can be up to there?’

I feel more and more anxious, and slow down. Shall I turn back? A farm cart overtakes me, I run after it and hang on to the tail-board, hoping it will get me there more quickly.

The cart stops by the canal. I jump backwards from it, out of breath, take a few steps to the edge of the water and stand stock-still. The light is overpowering. Across the canal lies a cleared and trampled-down field. Wheelmarks run through the grass and it is easy to tell from the flattened areas where the tents used to be.

What have they done, what has happened? I run across the bridge and up the road: their cars must be parked somewhere. The fields are bare and empty. I stand still, then run back, hollow footsteps over the bridge and strange sounds in my head. People in the street turn around to watch me race past. My thoughts spin furiously upon a single point until I turn giddy and fall. Blood runs from my grazed knee. I race up the road to Bakhuizen, stop suddenly, and race back, a well-trained dog.

The bridge and the spot where the tent had stood: in a frenzy I chase around in circles, an animal looking for a prey that has vanished from sight. There has to be a sign, a note, a letter with some explanation, an address… I have been left no name, no country, no destination, neither his smell nor his taste… I feel panic, smell fear: where are you, where am I to go?

The blue sky, birds tumbling and calling. Untroubled.

God, I think, You were going to raise me up, You were going to help me. Oh, God, together we were going to perform miracles…

Where his tent stood there is now a square in the grass, a flattened shape of bent stalks and trampled-down flowers, a clearly outlined, life-sized sign. I run over to it and kick my foot into the grass, claw at it, digging, finding nothing but a rusty, bent fork.

Go home, I think, he’ll be waiting along the road, of course.

Winding broadly, the road runs through the summery landscape to Laaxum.

Chapter 8

I move the bar of soap between my hands and then lather my forehead and neck. I look at my face in the slanting little mirror, a normal face with small, tired eyes, sleepy and drained white. I can no longer see traces in it of the anguish, the terror and the despairing rage that seemed to turn my eyes to stone, emptied of tears, hard and dry as if stuck together with clay so that they would not open in the morning.

I can hear voices and footsteps in the cookhouse, the creaking of the pump, and I feel an arm nudging me: ‘Get a move on, it’s our turn.’ I am here and I am not here.

The hard-ridged pattern of the coir matting bores into my feet and the ice-cold water etches tingling spots on my face. I lean closer to the mirror: are there really no tell-tale signs left of my laborious breathing, of the hollows around my eyes, of my panicky distress? I curl my toes and move my feet in little circles over the matting.

When I put my shirt on I feel the flat little place on my chest where his photograph is. I don’t take it out because I know for certain that he will never come back if I look at it now. I must be strong and wait.

At table they all talk and laugh, everything is as usual. I force myself to eat the bread and butter which piles up in my mouth, turning into a solid gag. Take a sip of tea, swallow, work it down, another sip; all is well, no one seems to notice anything. Is okay, Jerome, is good…

Of course he hasn’t left, he is in the village, waiting in the car: suddenly everything inside me lights up and I feel a sense of freedom and relief. He is sitting behind the wheel, waiting for me to come. I must hurry to school before he goes… Come on you lot, get that food down, don’t dawdle, can’t you see I’m waiting, that I’ve been ready for hours? Come along, hurry up, please, before I miss him, do hurry up, I’m in a terrible hurry…

Meint and Jantsje are still a bit sleepy and take their time walking to school through the countryside, breathing in the cool morning air and stillness. They chat and laugh and I feel forced to join in. We stop for a long time beside the twisted body of a dead gull at the side of the road, its rigid claws sticking up into the air. Walt, I think, don’t go away, I’m just coming, I’ll be with you in a moment.

Why don’t I go on ahead, why don’t I run, why do I hang about with them meekly instead? Meint shoves the gull over the edge of the ditch with his clog. ‘It’ll take two weeks to turn into a skeleton,’ he says, ‘we’ll keep on looking every day and see how it happens.’

We walk on, a bit more quickly now, but in my thoughts I am racing ahead, careering up the road, flying to the crossroads, to the church, to the bridge. He is sure to be there, somewhere not far away, my patiently waiting liberator, and everyone will see me step into his car. I shan’t be ashamed, not even when his puts his arm around me. We shall drive off and leave the gaping villagers behind and I shall hold tight to his jacket and never let go again.

At lunch, Mem puts a dish on the table with a gigantic, furiously steaming eel laid out on it. It is pale and shiny and the thick skin has burst open revealing its greasy, white flesh. The smell of fish hangs heavily in the small room, seizing hold of me and clinging to my nostrils, mouth, skin and clothes. I shiver.

Hait slips a long knife along the blue skin, splitting the hideous bicycle tyre into two steaming wet halves. I reluctantly hold out my plate. Hold it, yes, go on…

‘They eat corpses,’ a fisherman in the harbour had once told us with a laugh as he emptied a bucket of squirming eels into a crate. ‘They crawl into anything lying dead at the bottom of the sea and suck it dry.’

It lies steaming on my plate, the potatoes swimming in a white, watery fluid with yellow islands of fat floating on top. Mem is proud of her big fish and looks on anxiously to make sure that Hait has given everyone a good helping; I am going to have to eat it all up or she will be angry.

Walt is suspended upside down in the water, his round, muscular arms relaxed as they float above his head, moving gently in the sea current. He has a wild, distant look in his eyes and a mouth like a fish, wide open, as if he wants to scream. But all sounds have been silenced.

I see a long, coiling fish circling lazily in his head, through his open mouth and in his eyes, feeding and searching with a lisping, slippery tongue and sliding through the torn, white vest. Where his hair used to be, green, slimy seaweed waves about, and his chest moves, rising and falling, in and out…

I stare into my plate at the indefinable morsels and narrow my eyes to slits. Don’t start crying now, go on eating, if I don’t do any chewing, and swallow very quickly, then I won’t taste a thing.

‘It’ll take two weeks to turn into a skeleton, we’ll keep on looking and see how it happens.

Back to school again: Walt will be there, he’s waiting, of course he’s there, he waves and smiles without a care in the world. Nothing wrong!

The afternoon heat scalds my throat and eyes making me feel sick. I must go to bed; my blood is beating in my throat and I can’t move. But I have to get to school, to the village, where he will be sitting relaxed and patient in the car, where he will lift me up, touch me, fondle me. we thank you. v = victory… I have to get there. Come along now, you lot, don’t dawdle, keep walking, honestly, that gull hasn’t changed yet, we can look at it tomorrow. Keep walking, or I might miss my lost soldier…

The village is empty and hot, the road stretching lazily

between small gardens with shrubs in bud and young plants flowering profusely. A goat bleats like a plaintive child and a cat crosses the road slowly, sits down and licks its fur, one paw extended high in the air.

The church, the crossroads. But there is no car outside the school.

‘We thank Thee, Lord, for granting us good health this day in one another’s company. Forgive us our sins, of which we have a multitude, and help us to confess our misdeeds.’ The master walks to the door and holds it open for us.

And suddenly I am sure they must know all about it at home, that they are angry with me and that my last foothold is about to splinter under me.

‘Go away, get out of here, we detest you, you and your townish ways.’ They have always known about it and have simply been biding their time. Now they will pack my suitcase and put me down by the dyke. And they are right, I am disgusting, I am a sinner, I am sure to go to Hell. I shall be punished, tormented…

As I sit by the window and look at the birds still flying about in the cool, noiseless evening air, Mem brings me a mug of milk. She pats my cheek and says, ‘Don’t fret, my boy, everything will turn out just fine. You’ll be getting a letter from them any day now, I think the post in Amsterdam is working again.’

I wake up because my body is shivering, my limbs shaking uncontrollably. I press myself flat into the mattress and clench my teeth. Beside me Meint is sleeping the calm, docile sleep of the young. I stare into the dark, but it stays black and void, his face, his voice, his smell, not reaching me, no matter how desperately I seek them.

Next morning I fold my shirt carefully with the breast pocket turned inside and quickly store it away in my suitcase. I do not so much as glance at the small photograph.

We go back to school and once more I run ahead of myself, up the road and through the village to the crossroads. But each day my haste seems to lessen and I slow down: I seem to be marking time and quite often freeze into immobility right in the middle of running.

I realise that it is all in vain, my hurrying, my hoping, my waiting. He has gone.

Chapter 9

The sheep behind the fence look at me with chilly, inscrutable eyes as they scratch their fleeces against the fence; one of them appears to be giving me a sardonic smile, chewing continually with its mouth askew. I have to turn my eyes away: does everyone know my secret?

I pretend to be reading, but my eyes see neither the words nor the lines, just a dazzling bright spot that shimmers and glitters in front of me. Everything appears faded and washed out: the sleeves of my pullover, my socks, the reeds beside the ditch.

From the other side of the house comes the dull, thumping rhythm of a ball bouncing against the wall; every time I hear the sound it is as if somebody were banging away persistently in the middle of my head. I look at the hundreds of letters making up the sentences and flick impatiently through the pages of the book. I must read it properly and not keep thinking of other things.

He has been gone for nearly two weeks now and with every passing day he is hundreds of miles further away, his distance from me growing unimaginably great. Is he thinking of me, is he planning to come back? At first I was convinced he was, but now I am no longer certain. I pluck a dandelion from its stalk and the milky sap that wells up out of the little ring leaves black marks on my fingertips. Then I pull off the yellow petals and reduce them to a few sticky, powdery wisps between my fingers.

The thumping behind the house has stopped to make way for an ominous silence: why aren’t they playing any more, are they about to come over here? The small bouncy ball, a construction of orange rubber bands wound tightly round each other, flies past me, rolls through the grass and comes to a halt close to the ditch. I quickly bend over my book.

‘Are you still sitting there?’ While Jantsje runs after the little ball Meint leans over me and says, ‘Still on page twenty-one, I see. Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time? Come on!’

I turn over a page. I can hear them snigger and whisper conspiratorially behind my back. Why do I always feel so tired these days, with that empty, sick feeling in my body that doesn’t want to go away?

‘Come over to Hettema’s with us, just wait till you see what’s going on there, it’s fantastic…’

The sheep are walking alongside the ditch now, their feet sinking in the mud, so many round balls of wool stuck onto four brittle little sticks. Soon they will be shorn and thin as dogs, then it will be my turn to smile sardonically and chase those nosy riffraff all over the countryside. Stupid creatures.

I allow myself to be pulled up from the grass, but then Mem’s voice rings out from the house. ‘Jantsje, you aren’t going anywhere. Pieke’s always being left here all by herself, none of you ever give her a thought. Either she goes too or else you are all going to stay right here.’

‘Make her hurry, that’s all, we’re not going to wait for her, everything takes ages when she’s around.’

As if to prove how quick she is the little girl hops lickety-split through the grass, tossing and flailing her arms about, her callipers clattering over the tiles that serve as a path through the meadow. She stops out of breath by the fence and stands there waiting until we heave her impatiently and roughly over it. On the other side, in the lee of the dyke, lies Hettema’s farm, surrounded by tiny fishermen’s cottages like a big mother hen ruling over her roost.

‘Come on, you lot, hurry up or it’ll all be over!’ We run through the sheets of mud in Hettema’s yard towards the stables. A large animal stands four-square on a narrow path behind the barn, two men keeping it under control. The beast grunts protestingly and shakes its enormous head, making a jingling sound.

‘Albada’s bull from Warns,’ Meint whispers, ‘he could go straight through a wall if he wanted to. Just look at those legs!’

The soft nose, wet and dripping slime, has a thick iron ring stuck through it on a solid chain that one of the men is pulling while the other beats the animal’s flanks with a piece of wood. ‘Get moving, blast it, you lazy devil…’

Hettema is standing by the cowshed. ‘Not behind the beast, Meint, get the children away from there, he can turn nasty.’

Goaded, the bull turns its head from side to side in soundless protest, then lets out a bellow as if maddened by pain. I can see a streak of blood in the slime from the nose and cringe suddenly with every blow I hear. I’m not going to stay here, I tell myself, I’m going back home.

Then the bull is thwacked on its hindleg and moves forward reluctantly, meandering along the narrow path. Meint grips my arm. ‘It’s all right, it’ll all be over in a minute. And they don’t feel that hitting at all.’

They’re going to slaughter the bull, I think, fascinated by that large chunk of life that for mysterious reasons will suddenly cease to be, like a storm that dies down in the twinkling of an eye. In Warns I once saw them slit a cow’s throat: a sure, razor-sharp movement of a piece of steel across the soft skin, the eyes turning surprised and glassy, before a moment of dazed silence, and then, suddenly, a gush of blood and the huge body caving in as blood and shit spattered up the walls. I was frightened that time, going rigid with revulsion and yet I didn’t avert my eyes for a single moment.

As the bull stamps rebelliously past the barn Pieke and I watch from a safe distance, our hands excitedly clasped together, while Jantsje leaps to and fro, nervous as a hare.

‘The cow’s over there,’ says Meint solemnly. ‘Now you’ve got to pay attention, that’s what the bull has come for.’

The bull is brought round behind the meekly waiting cow, stays standing for a moment stock-still, then heaves his unwieldy, leaden body up onto the thin, tottering hindlegs, snorting violently as if under enormous exertion, and places his front legs comically on the cow’s back.

‘He’s dancing,’ laughs Pieke, ‘can you see, he’s going to do a dance!’

Meint pushes us anxiously along the wall to the front. ‘Otherwise you won’t see a thing.’

The animals take a few clumsy, stumbling steps as in some primitive fox-trot, until one of the cow’s legs slides off the path into the mud and the bull loses his balance and falls back onto his own legs. For a moment there is nothing but angry bellowing – we have all run away giggling nervously – then the cow starts to trot about impatiently, her udders swaying under her stomach. Where the path meets the fence she tries to turn round, but the men have already grabbed her by the head.

‘Go and fetch us some hay, boys!’ Meint runs back to the barn and throws an armful of fragrant grass onto the ground in front of the cow. She shakes her head stupidly at first, then the tufts of hay begin to disappear steadily into her grinding mouth, nothing else seemingly able to distract her attention. The bull is brought up again, but this time Hettema has to use all his strength to slow him down. He rises up like a furiously rearing horse, the prize-fighter’s muscles so powerful and contorted that we beat another hasty retreat.

A long, shiny spear, scarlet and naked, protrudes from the belly of the rearing animal, a defencelessly displayed sex organ probing and trying to find its way. Dribbling, the bull clumsily seeks support with his forelegs on the cow’s back, while she continues to chew absent-mindedly as if failing to notice that the point of the spear is being pressed quickly and battle-ready into her body. Mesmerised, I watch as the bull, with a vacant, confused expression, takes impatient little steps along the cow’s back, moving jerkily like a lamb tugging at an ewe’s udder. On the other side of the animals, which loom up between us like a mountain range, stand Jantsje and Meint. I meet their eyes, feel deeply ashamed and turn red. Are they laughing at me? I suddenly break into a sweat and my skin starts to prickle. Why are they looking at me like that?

The bull is standing on all four legs again, with what is now no more than a long thread dangling from his belly. ‘Well, that didn’t give him much trouble,’ says Hettema, flicking a cigarette butt over his shoulder, ‘but then he’s an old hand at it.’ He gives a short laugh.

The bull snorts and blows along the cow’s flanks, licking the soiled skin with a caressing movement, showing such devotion and gentleness that I feel myself going weak at the knees and am afraid of falling. Did the bull really go deep inside those elongated, dark folds, into that sticky place he is now licking so quietly and patiently? Was that fucking I had just been watching, the ‘doing nookie’ that the boys in Amsterdam were always whispering and smirking about so mysteriously at school?

Was that what I did with Walt, fucking? Surely you can only do that with girls, fucking has nothing to do with boys, has it?

‘Go in the barn, I’ll get you all something to drink.’ Hettema picked up a few mugs and poured milk into them from a tin. I look at the manure lying all over the floor in lumps and puddles and think of the sticky thread dangling under the bull. ‘Fresh from the cow,’ says Hettema, ‘full-cream milk, the best you can have. It’s still warm, have a taste.’

The milk rolls about heavily in my mug, little black bits floating on its surface.

As soon as I have the chance and no one is looking, I pour the mug out into the straw.

Jantsje and Meint stay behind to play in Hettema’s yard but I go back to the road and start walking towards the harbour. Pieke, weaving along on her lame leg, trudges behind. Why doesn’t she leave me alone, why does she keep following me, can’t she tell from my mood that I don’t want her company?

I wait for her to catch up with me. Panting because the dyke is too steep for her, she smiles, baring a set of milk teeth full of gaps in a grateful grimace.

‘Did the bull frighten you?’ she asks.

‘Don’t be so stupid.’

What do they all want from me, why do they look like that and ask questions all the time? When we reach the pier she takes hold of my hand, startling me with her touch.

‘Shall we wait until Hait gets back from the sea?’ She careers towards the little beach and hops about collecting pebbles. Sitting at the water’s edge, my arms tight around my knees, I think of Walt, of the leg he threw over me and the impatient thrusts after that. Now I long for those hurried actions that frightened me at the time, I pine for the touch of his belly, of that private, secret place that had need of me. My longing is so strong that it makes me feel weak and ill.

I watch Pieke squat right next to the place where the kitten lies buried. Does it matter if she finds the grave? The paper flower is still there, faded and crumpled now, no longer looking like a rose. Everything else has vanished.

‘I think I can see a boat.’ I am lying, but Pieke hops towards me and peers along my outstretched arm. I stare across the water and fling a pebble into the waves. Plop, a mean little sound, a splash, the beginnings of a ripple and then it is all washed away. I try to picture my mother but I can’t, I am no longer able even to imagine that she still exists. Probably everything has gone, all of them, our house, all vanished in the war, swallowed up in an abyss of horror.

Plop…

I try to pretend that I don’t really care about the letter that doesn’t come, that I almost despise the whole idea. What difference can it make now? And Walt, where is he, is he still having to fight the war? The sea wall he lay behind is across the harbour. That’s where he was waiting for me and where I walked towards him over the rocks. How far away it all seems.

Plop, another pebble…

I don’t think about Jan any more. It doesn’t bother me at all that I hardly ever see him these days, it all seems quite unimportant, a dim memory. The minister’s wife is with God, she can see everything that happens, and perhaps my mother is with her too and they are looking down together to find out what I am doing. I place three pebbles next to the little rose, one for Walt, one for my mother and one for the minister’s wife, in that order.

They are sitting together on a large, grey bench, fused into an ageless whole. Their eyes are not cast down but look out across the mass of grey-white cloud that stretches before them. And yet they see me, they follow me and speak about me, tonelessly, without words.

Are they pleased with the pebbles, have I made them feel more kindly, can I mollify them, win them over?

Bye, angels, I think, oh, angels, bye!

The boat comes into harbour like an all-conquering, dark-brown bird. Pieke shouts and we hop, skip and jump to the landing stage as fast as we can.

While we are walking back home Hait puts his hand on my shoulder familiarly, as if I were a man, a mate of his. ‘Don’t look so unhappy, young ’un, that won’t get us anywhere. You’ll see, there’ll be news very soon, things are happening very fast now.’

I bite my lips. Who will hold me tight, who will take me in his arms, let me feel another person’s warmth? I am dark and dirty inside and out, and that’s how it will always be if his mouth is not there, the tongue that licks me clean, that i ouches me considerately and selflessly, beyond my shame.

‘Pieke, girl, come on, make Jeroen laugh for a change!’

At table I toy with my food and use my fork to make two piles on my plate, intending to leave the bigger one uneaten.

That’s all the thanks we get,’ says Mem. ‘Don’t ask me what’s been wrong with him these last few days. But you don’t get down from this table until that plate is empty.’

‘Lord, we thank Thee for this food and drink. Amen.’ Everyone gets up, while I am still wrestling with myself. The bull’s gigantic body rears up threateningly and yet helplessly, the spear stuck out in triumph like a blood-red flagpole…

I have laid my head in my arms and sniff at the oilcloth on the table. Overhead I can hear a fly caught in the flypaper, a piercing, penetrating buzz. All of a sudden Diet pulls my chair back so that I nearly fall to the floor; the world does a half turn in front of my eyes and my heart misses a beat. I let out a shriek and run sobbing out of the house, across the meadow in my stockinged feet. As I race through the grass I can still hear my scream, a ludicrous yet terrifying cry, echoing in the emptiness that I feel all around.

When I go back home a little later the sheep are standing huddled together behind the fence, looking at me with cold, searching eyes. One of them is smiling at me, pointedly and sardonically.

Chapter 10

Rarely does the postman come out to Laaxum; generally he waits until somebody can take the letters, if there are any, back with them to our small hamlet.

Halfway home on our way back from school we run into him, bending far over the handlebars of his bicycle as he pedals against the stiff wind, and a ray of hope shoots through me, even though I have gradually managed to eliminate all feelings of expectation.

While Jantsje and Meint quench their thirst at the pump, I hurry into the little passage as inconspicuously as I can. The house is unusually quiet, the living-room door is closed and Mem is nowhere to be seen, which is odd. When I push the door open with a gesture of apparent unconcern, she is sitting idly at the table, her hands on her knees and she gives me a strangely gentle look, dreamy and far away. Her jaw makes soft movements to and fro. Is she trying to suppress a smile? Before I can open my mouth she stands up and, as if caught out, starts to move the little framed portraits on the mantelpiece, rearranging them.

I let my eyes run over the room and almost instinctively spot where the change is: on the little chest there now stands a square white envelope, modestly tucked away behind a little vase. There is a green postage stamp in the top right-hand corner, but the place where the handwriting of the address should be is hidden from my view by the little vase.

I look away quickly, turn around and put my exercise book down. As I open it and pretend to be giving all my attention to what I am reading, I watch Mem out of the corner of my eye: she is standing leaning across the table, her head turned towards me. I wait, but she says nothing.

‘We’ve been given some really hard sums to do.’ I talk to break the silent tension between us. My mouth is dry and I bite my lips. I have an almost irresistable urge to push her out of the way and to read the writing on the envelope.

When Jantsje and Meint come in Mem sends them out brusquely. ‘Go and play with Pieke by the house,’ she says, ‘or give Diet a hand with the cooking. I’ll call you in good time.’

But I take care to slip out quickly with the others to avoid being left alone with her again. I don’t want to know – let her keep the secret to herself.

I wonder if she has read the letter, if the envelope has been opened. I try feverishly to recall the image of the small white square: what did it look like, had it been opened along the top?

What if it is a letter from home with bad news, a note from the neighbours to say that there is nobody left at home, that they are all dead… But it could just as easily be a letter from Walt, even though he doesn’t know my surname or our address, because all he would have to do is put ‘Jerome, Laaxum, Friesland’ on it and it would still get here, everyone would know that it was for me.

I go rigid. What if she has read it, what if she understands English? Perhaps that is why she’s been giving me such strange looks.

‘Is there enough time to go down to the harbour? I’ll make sure I’m back for dinner.’

Diet gives me a surprised look, she has pulled up her sleeves and wipes her wet hands over her hair. ‘You can see the food is ready, can’t you?’ She puts her head outside the cookhouse and points. ‘The menfolk are on their way now.’

I had wanted to escape, to put off the evil moment. They’re going to have to open the letter without me, I don’t want to be there when it happens. But how can I get out of dinner? Popke and Hait are already by the door, stepping out of their clogs and disappearing into the little passage, leaving behind them a salty tang of fish, tar and wind.

As we make for the table, Hait and Mem stop by the door for a moment and talk together in undertones. I squint at then-faces out of the corner of my eye while my heart beats fast; do they look serious, is it bad news? I dig my fingers into my thighs and move my palms across my trousers. God, be nice to me and help me.

After grace there is complete silence, as if everyone knows that something is about to happen. Hait stands up and walks over to the little chest, picks up the small white patch and carries it towards me. Why? I want to disappear under the table, I am horribly frightened and ashamed. How can I avert this evil moment?

‘A letter has come for Jeroen, from his father and mother in Amsterdam. I think it’s going to be a nice letter.’ When I don’t take it from his hands he puts the envelope down on the table in front of me.

So it’s not from him. Why do I think that, why is that the first thing to come into my head? He hasn’t sent me a message…

All of them are looking at me now, the whole table full of beaming faces, and still there is silence. Should I say ‘thank you’ now, open the letter and leave the room, or should I wait until after the meal?

‘Don’t you want to read it?’ Mem asks. ‘Would you rather Hait read it out to you?’

The white patch flickers before my eyes on the tablecloth, there is an enormous distance between us. Why aren’t I pleased, I think, how is that possible? But what I want is news from him, that’s what I’ve been waiting for.

Suddenly there is a large empty space under my eyes in which shiny flowers begin to take shape, little bunches of daisies, some roses, symmetrically placed garlands and blue forget-me-nots, all sprinkled with the grease spots the oilcloth has gathered over the years.

Hait’s voice reaches me from a distance, hoarse and solemn. I can tell by his tone that he is looking at me and addressing the words to me. I edge backwards until I can feel the back of the chair pressing into me. I hear snatches of sentences, a single word here and there, or a name, but the beating of my blood distracts me and drowns out even Hait’s steadily reading voice.

After dinner Mem keeps me in, leads me to the chair by the window and puts the envelope in my hand. ‘You’d best read it over quietly, by yourself,’ she says and sits down facing me. ‘Oh, my boy, what wonderful news this must be for you!’

The small sheets of paper come rustling out of the envelope. I unfold them and recognise my father’s handwriting.

My eyes stop moving. My dear son, is that me?

Is that what Daddy calls me, does he mean me? Is that the eternity that lies between us, the longing, the poignant homesickness? Kiss me Jerome. Is good, I love you. My head rests against his neck and his hands clasp my shoulders tight as if he is afraid I might escape. Say it, baby: I love you. Yes, that’s good, very good.

And then, in a schoolgirl’s hand:

Is that all? I turn the sheets of paper over. Nothing. Mem has got up and looks at me expectantly. Her eyes are soft and she comes and stands close to me.

The lady who is putting me up.

‘Isn’t that lovely?’ she asks. ‘Now everything is sure to be all right.’

‘Were they liberated in Amsterdam by different soldiers to ours?’ is the first thing I want to know. ‘Ours were Americans, weren’t they?’ I look at her, but she shrugs her shoulders.

‘I don’t exactly know, my boy, you’d best ask Hait about that.’

‘The letter was sent on the ninth of May,’ I say, ‘what day is it today?’

She goes up to the small calendar and slowly counts the days.

‘The twenty-seventh,’ she says, ‘it took a long time getting here.’

I put the letter back in the place where it stood, behind the little vase on the chest.

In the little passage I take my coat off the hook and press my face into the cloth. I move my nose slowly over the sleeves, the collar, the back.

Sometimes it is as if I can vaguely identify his smell, that mixture of metal and hospital, and when I do I am indefinably happy and reassured. But now I can smell nothing, no matter how fiercely and desperately I try.

Without warning, Mem opens the door and gives me a somewhat disconcerted look. ‘Don’t you want to put the letter away in your suitcase? Then it won’t get lost.’

‘No,’ I say. I hang my coat back on the hook.

Chapter 11

The living-room floor creaks, a chair is pushed back, a plate clatters across the table. Meint is not yet asleep, he has a cold and his breath sounds laboured and congested. Outside it is still warm and light, but I can tell from the muted impenetrability of the sounds that the heat is dying down and seeping into the earth.

The fields are lifeless, no sound can be heard, and the house is immersed in an ocean of stillness. Inside, too, no one has spoken for a while, the silence broken only by an occasional sigh or a tired yawn.

Night in the country, the day’s work done.

Mem sits by the window, as she does every evening, looking out over the countryside as she knits. Almost no one is about at this time of day, just a few cows or a fisherman still straining his eyes out to sea.

Two people are coming over the Cliff,’ I hear her say. Hait answers the broken silence with an indistinct mumble. I turn over and pick at the scab on my arm. One edge has come away and I try carefully to continue the painful process of levering it off. Just so long as it doesn’t start to bleed again.

Silence, nothing moves, except for the scab slowly coming off.

‘It’s two women.’

I can hear Hait turn his chair around. His footsteps move across the floor and the door gives a sharp creak.

Mem yawns and shifts in her chair. There is the noise of the pump in the shed: Hait is filling his mug. I can hear the gurgling flow of the water.

‘They’ve got bicycles.’ Mem gets up, her voice growing agitated. Hait has come back inside and I hear him put the mug on the table and then drink in slow gulps so that I can follow the course of the water as it passes through his body with funny little sounds.

‘They aren’t from round here, they’re wearing townish dresses,’ the report continues, getting faster.

I push one of the cupboard-bed doors a bit further open and see Mem leaning against the window, one hand over her eyes to see better. ‘What could they possibly want here, so late?’ Hait has moved next to her. The evening sun falls over their faces and lingers on a piece of furniture. Dust whirls in the late light, astonishing quantities of minuscule particles on silent, everlasting journeys.

Why do I just lie there, why don’t I move?

‘Oh, my goodness, they’re turning this way!’

I gather that the two women have left the dyke and are coming in the direction of our house. Two women from the town. My heart begins to thud, an unreal feeling pervades my body.

‘They’re pointing at our house,’ says Mem, now clearly excited, ‘could it possibly be for Jeroen?’

I sit up straight, petrified.

‘Take it easy, man, nothing’s going to happen,’ says Meint and blows his nose noisily.

‘They’re climbing over the fence, they’re either going to Trientsje, Ypes next door, or coming here. Goodness knows which. My, oh my!’

She drops back into her chair, looking like a goddess sensing disaster. Then she gets up, looming large in the low room, and goes to the back of the house. The outside door rattles violently.

‘Could well be your mother come to fetch you,’ says Hait and opens the cupboard-bed doors. I am sitting bolt upright, completely at a loss. There are more voices from the other cupboard-beds and Meint beside me gives a protesting cough.

My mother.

If it is her, then the war is definitely over…

But is it her? Has she really come? Has their longing for me finally become strong enough? My body feels feeble and limp, my belly seems to have dropped to the floor. When I try to take a step, my knees are out of control and I have to cling to the wall in case I collapse.

I can’t believe it and I mustn’t believe it either: I can’t afford to any more, it’s sure to be just another empty hope drifting by like a useless tuft of sheep’s wool.

I stand in the doorway and lean my head outside just far enough to take in the stretch from the side of the house to the fence. Hait and Mem are standing halfway down the path, and when I see that Hait has quickly slipped on his Sunday jacket my knees start giving way all over again: what’s going to happen next? Mem is busy with a lock of hair that refuses to stay in place, her hand patting her head and running down her hip in turns. Seeing her standing there, solemnly, yet on her guard, watchful as if she were about to have her photograph taken, makes my breath escape with a jolt, like a gasp. I am suddenly very aware that the inevitability of the moment has been impressed on everything around: on the gusts of wind bending the tall grass, on the evening sky as it dims to pale grey, and on the expectant silence of the landscape in which the two dark figures have now become motionless. I had tried to steel myself against my own fantasies and dreams, but all of a sudden I have become defenceless and vulnerable, an abject and easy target.

As if sensing that I am hiding in the doorway, Mem turns and looks straight at my face peering around the corner. She takes a few steps towards the house and calls out in an attempt at a whisper, ‘Surely you’re not standing there in your underclothes? Hurry up and get dressed, they’re nearly here.’

I dash back into the room, breathlessly pull my trousers on, wrestle with the buttons and leave my shirt undone.

‘Don’t bother with your socks,’ says Diet, when she sees me bending over. They are all sitting up in their cupboard-beds and are following my frantic scramble with curiosity but also with some awe: I feel that I have suddenly taken the centre of the stage, that tonight I have taken over the main role in the household’s doings, that they are all aware that the denouement of an unfinished tale is about to be played out.

The first thought to spring to my mind when I see her climb over the fence, loose-limbed and youthful, is that she doesn’t look in any way hungry or poor and that makes me feel almost cheated and disappointed. Quickly and apprehensively the two women walk towards Hait and Mem. I can see that they are talking to each other nervously and that they are feeling ill at ease on the grass without a proper road under their feet.

I recognise my mother at once, her movements, her hair-do, her familiar yellow dress. Both of them are wearing colourful summer frocks, billowing out behind them.

Mummy, I think, as the sound of her girlish voice suddenly reaches me. For a moment it seems as if I have lost all control over my muscles and am about to wet my pants. Desperately I squeeze my legs tight together and arch my back.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ I hear Mem say as the slight figure in the yellow dress walks up to her, ‘isn’t this wonderful. So you are Jeroen’s mother.’

Far away on the sweltering horizon I can hear an indistinct threatening rumble, as if the war is still going on, and behind the deserted dyke the sky is a luminous white. The evening is stifling and the air full of dancing mosquitoes. I watch them shaking hands, laughing, their delighted surprise: we have made it, we have found you!

Suddenly, as if on command, all four turn round towards the house. I can hear their footsteps in the grass. If I go back to bed, I think, I might be able to put off having to meet them until tomorrow.

‘Come on, Jeroen, it’s your mother. Here she is now.’ Mem’s voice sounds like a trumpet in the night air. ‘What are you hanging about back there for?’ and she adds in an apologetic tone, ‘He had already gone to bed, Mevrouw.’

I don’t move, pressing myself against the wall. All at once I have become suspicious and mortally afraid of the moment for which I have been waiting for nearly a year. I look down at the floor and keep quite still.

‘He’s never like that normally, is he now, Wabe? He’s a bit shy because everything has happened so suddenly.’

Gently insistent, Mem pushes me towards the back door. I can feel the pressure of her large warm hands as they lie calmly but firmly against my shoulders. Outside stands my mother, a stranger still, somebody I know no more than vaguely and have no wish to know better than that.

‘Hello,’ I say and walk towards her. ‘Hello, Mum.’

She throws her arms around me, kisses me, and then holds me at arm’s length and says in a choking voice, ‘How tall he’s grown, and how he’s filled out! My word, son, don’t you look well, haven’t you put on weight!’

I recognise the catch in her voice, the same pinched way of speaking she used when there was an argument at home and a row suddenly flared up with Daddy.

Don’t cry, I think, please don’t cry, not now and not here.

But she doesn’t cry, her eyes shine and her hair dances in light curls around her forehead. Her joy is something I recognise and it sets off a thrill inside me, as if to drive home to me how strong the ties between us are.

She pulls me back against her once more and this time I am aware of the gentle slope of her belly and the curve of her thigh. The familiar smell of her clothes tickles my nose and brings me closer to home, to our street. I can see the bedroom again, the kitchen, the veranda, the stairs.

Mechanically I put one arm around her, but it feels awkward, artificial. When I turn my head a little I see Hait and Mem standing stiffly side by side in the doorway with lost little smiles, as if they don’t know quite what to do with themselves or about the situation. When I meet Mem’s gaze she nods at me with gentle, helpless eyes and raised chin, as if trying to stifle a sneeze.

And then recognition floods up from deep inside me, a wave that runs through my knees, my belly, my gullet and stays stuck in my throat. My hand makes a few panicky movements and finds a small hole in the soft material of my mother’s dress. I bore my finger into it, a burrowing, frantic finger. I can feel the material give and gently tear.

‘What are you doing?’ My mother’s voice has a sharp, nervous edge to it. ‘Are you trying to ruin my dress? My only good dress!’

She gives a childlike laugh and abruptly pulls my hand from her body. When she sees how crushed I look she bends down and kisses me warmly. How odd to be kissed without the rasping prickles of a beard; it takes me by surprise and I’m not sure if I like it.

Now I ought to put my arms around her neck, hold her tight and never let go again, tell her everything that happened while she listens patiently and finds the answer to all my problems. But again I don’t move and just stand there sullenly between the adults.

‘What do you say, young ’un, isn’t that something now? They must have gone at a fair lick to get here so quickly, musn’t they?’ Hait bends down and shakes my shoulders gently as if waking me from a deep sleep. ‘Don’t just stand there. Say something to your mother. Why don’t you show her round the house?’

I nod and say nothing. The words won’t come and my throat refuses to move. I lift my head to see if my mother is looking at me and discover that Jan’s mother is standing next to her with an arm around her. What is she doing with her hand over her eyes? Is she crying?

Then we all move into the house, somehow.

‘Why don’t you say hello to Mevrouw Hogervorst?’ My mother’s voice sounds worried, she whispers the words almost inaudibly into my ear. My feet are wet and cold from the grass and I put one on top of the other to warm them. Jantsje and Meint are standing huddled together in the semi-darkness of the room. I can hear their suppressed laughter and see that Meint is trying to draw my attention by waving his hands about urgently.

‘Scharl is a bit further back, you passed it on the way here.’ Hait is standing by the window and points into the dusk for the benefit of Jan’s mother. ‘In the daytime you can see it clearly, it isn’t far.’

Of course, they’ve come for Jan as well. Will they go back again after that, will everything be as before, this family, this little house, my loneliness? For a split second I fervently hope so.

‘I’ll walk with the lady down to the harbour to find Popke, then he can show her the way to Scharl. And I’ll bring your bicycle over the fence at the same time.’

My mother sits at the table, her eyes radiating light. As she looks around the room, her gaze always ends up on me so that I begin to feel ill at ease. It is strange to see her here, small and slender, a little bird unflustered by her sombre surroundings. She doesn’t belong here, I think, she makes the room look strange. The yellow dress, her townish ways of talking, the little shoes that she had kept on inside the house.

‘How small it is in here for so many people,’ she says, ‘it must be terribly hard for you with so large a family. Jeroen did tell us in one of his letters, but I never imagined it would be this small…’

Stop, I think, for goodness’ sake stop.

She strokes my cheek and I draw back shyly. ‘It was awfully good of you to be willing to take in one more.’

‘My goodness me,’ Mem folds her sturdy round arms, ‘it’s no more than our duty. God arranged it that way.’ She pours tea into the best cups with careful, almost respectful movements. ‘It’s nothing to feel grand about and for us one more doesn’t make that much difference.’

I hear a mixture of modesty and pride in her voice and her eyes are filled with the gentleness that always disconcerts me.

‘Jeroen has been a good boy. He’s never given us the least trouble. He was like one of our own.’

My mother pulls me towards her and takes me onto her lap. ‘Darling,’ she laughs brightly, ‘you come and sit with me. You’re a little bit more used to me again now, aren’t you?’

I strain away from her slightly.

The children are sitting around the table, unusually still and obedient, staring at the lady from the town without uttering a sound. I feel the gulf, plainly and painfully, and am ashamed.

‘Has he always been as quiet as that here?’ my mother asks softly and anxiously, as if I shouldn’t be listening. ‘Was he homesick a lot? You know, he always was a bit different, always a dreamer. He could sit in a corner playing for hours, not a bit like a child. Hey, Jeroen?’

Suddenly I fling my arms violently round her and cling to her tightly.

Walt, why aren’t you here? Why did you go away like that?

From her movements I can tell that she has begun to sob uncontrollably, although sometimes it almost sounds as if she were laughing wildly. I look at her in astonishment.

‘Yes, we’ll be going back home pretty soon now,’ she says. ‘Back to your Daddy and your little brother. Don’t cry.’

I am not crying.

Won’t Mem find it odd to see me sitting on somebody else’s lap, since I still belong a little bit to her too?

‘Are you glad that we’ll be going back home soon?’ asks my mother.

‘But not straight away,’ I say quickly and almost imploringly. It suddenly hits me that if we leave here, Walt will never be able to find me again; I will have vanished without trace.

In the cupboard-bed Meint whispers to me. ‘How pretty your mother looks, she could be your sister.’

I hear subdued voices from behind the cupboard-bed doors, and time and again they speak my name.

‘Perhaps I’ll be staying on here all the same,’ I say hopefully.

‘I’m sure she’s not taking me back with her.’ I no longer know what I really want. Leaving seems unthinkable and yet I don’t want to stay here either.

‘Ah, well,’ says Meint with a laugh and gives me a dig under the blankets. ‘In a month’s time you’ll have forgotten all about us.’

I hear footsteps and then the little doors open a chink. ‘Keep quiet and go to sleep,’ says Hait, ‘dream about being back home.’

When I am about to say my prayers I realise with surprise that I won’t need to pray for my parents any longer. The only one left will be Walt.

God, please keep him safe. Don’t let him be wanted for the war and please let him come back. I’ll always go to church, even in Amsterdam. If he just comes back.

He unbuttons my clothes and puts his hand inside my shirt, sliding it down between my shoulder blades. I shiver and stiffen.

Not until next morning does it really sink in that my mother is here, and then the day seems unimaginably bright and carefree. I scramble up the attic stairs to wake her up, but she is already sitting on the edge of the bed pulling her socks on.

‘How peaceful it is here,’ she whispers, ‘what a wonderful time you must have had. All I can hear are the birds.’ She looks at me long and hard. ‘Thank your lucky stars you were able to come here, you look so well. Back in Amsterdam we had a horrible time. Aunt Stien’s little Henk is dead, and Mijnheer Goudriaan as well. Thank goodness, darling, all that horrible business is over now. Won’t Daddy be surprised to find you looking so well!’

We walk around the house and I show her everything, the sheep, the little plant I sowed myself under the window, my collection of pebbles. As for the grave, I think, I’d better not show her that, because a little bit of her is buried there. My prayers have changed now and the grave feels different as well: it is as if all the cornerstones of the life I have built up here have caved in.

‘Look, that’s where Jan lives.’ I point across the sunny landscape to the group of trees in the distance. I recall with surprise how long ago it was that I used to stare across to those trees, sometimes day after day, longing for Jan and weaving fantasies around him.

Her bicycle is leaning against the wall at the side of the house, old and rusty but with real tyres. ‘Daddy got those from a colleague at work,’ she says, ‘especially for our trip. But they are old ones, let’s just hope we don’t get any punctures on the way back.’

I walk round it and touch it. So I shall be leaving Friesland on that. I look inside the pannier bags hanging from the carrier, and see that they are empty. ‘That’s where we can put your bits and pieces. It’s easier than a suitcase. We’ve got quite a long way to cycle.’

After breakfast we go and see Jan. During the meal Pieke had stood right next to my mother the whole time, fondling her and clamouring for attention. She had admired everything, the dress, the shoes, the watch, and by the time we went outside the two of them were as thick as thieves.

‘If we go on the bicycle, she can come along too, on the back,’ says my mother, but I insist that we walk and that we go alone. Suddenly I feel that I don’t want to share my mother with anyone else. We walk along the dyke, and near the spot where the car had parked she says, ‘Is the sea behind this? Let’s have a look!’

She runs up the dyke and spreads her arms out wide. ‘Wonderful,’ she shouts, ‘oh, isn’t this wonderful!’ The wind blows her yellow skirt up as she comes flying through the grass. ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘I’ll race you.’

I do not want to go up the Red Cliff. ‘It’ll take too long,’ I tell her, ‘we’ve got a lot to do still. First we’ve got to go to Jan.’

Jan’s mother is sitting in the front room with the farmer’s wife looking at photographs spread out on the table.

‘Jan?’ The farmer’s wife opens the door to his little room and calls up.

‘He’s probably in the barn,’ says his mother, ‘he’s full of it, he talks of nothing else.’

She shows a photograph to my mother.

‘Just take a look at that,’ she says. ‘You can’t tell from looking at it, but he’s dreaming of cows and sheep. He is set on being a farmer.’ She roars with laughter at the thought. ‘He’s a real boy, that’s for sure!’ she says bluntly, looking straight at me. What does she mean, a real boy?

The farmyard. I seem to be seeing it all in slow motion now; the light over the tiled roof, the stinking yellow-brown manure heaps, the weeds shooting up in corners, the muffled sounds from the stables, it all comes home to me suddenly and I go cold for a moment: am I here for the last time?

‘How nice it all is,’ says my mother. ‘Wouldn’t you have preferred to live on a farm, too, with all these animals?’

Stung, I answer crossly. ‘Laaxum is much nicer, and you don’t have to work there all the time. And I’d much sooner go to sea, anyway,’ I add sourly.

We walk through the lofty stables towards the sound of intermittent banging and find Jan on his knees in a dusty corner, doggedly hammering away at some boards.

‘Hello,’ he pants. ‘A pen for the calves.’

He stands up and with an air of satisfaction plants his boot on his work. With a manly gesture he blows his nose, calmly wipes the back of his hand down his overalls and holds it out to my mother. ‘It’s a bit different from Amsterdam here, hey?’

I am amazed to hear him talk to my mother like an adult, calmly and easily. She takes him seriously, too, and they have a short conversation that makes me jealous. If Walt were here now they would see that I am grown up as well, that I have a big friend who likes my company.

‘Hey, you,’ Jan gives me a companionable nudge, his shining eyes close to mine, ‘we’ll be going back home in a few days. On the boat, my mother says, that’ll be fun.’ He drums his fists in a friendly way on my ribs and then, in an outburst of exuberance, throws an arm around my neck.

‘The two of you are sure to be inseparable,’ says my mother, ‘you’ve had such a lot of good times here together.’

‘Oh yes, lots,’ Jan shouts with laughter. ‘Hey, Jeroen?’

Next we make for Warns, walking straight across the fields. The sun is hot and the maze of ditches and fences – ‘No, Mum, those aren’t bulls, they’re cows!’ – makes us tired and sweaty.

‘Let’s just sit down for a moment,’ she says. I walk along the edge of the ditch trying to find an egg for her, a lapwing’s or a duck’s.

‘Don’t bother,’ she calls, ‘just come and sit down with me. I don’t want an egg.’ She almost disappears among the tall, shiny buttercups and tufts of grass and points in surprise at all the little beetles wheeling about in the sunlit patches of water between the duckweed. ‘We shan’t go back ever,’ she sighs. ‘Daddy will just have to move here.’

She picks a bunch of flowers, yellow and white, mixed with plumes of reeds and pink clover, and walks across the field in her yellow dress carrying the bouquet, and then through the village: suddenly I feel proud of her, now I too have somebody; look, this is my mother!

The church, the crossroads, the school, then I don’t want to go any further.

‘What’s wrong with you, suddenly,’ she says. ‘Don’t be a bore, all I want to see is that bridge Meint talked about such a lot.’

‘But that bridge isn’t there any longer,’ I say, ‘it was all smashed up and there’s a new one now. And it’s a long way, quite far from the village. We’ve got to get home.’

Silently we walk back along the twisting road to Laaxum and all at once I know for sure exactly where the man with the bicycle let me off that time when he went back to fetch the suitcase I had left behind. But I don’t tell her that.

Mem has put the faded flowers in a jug on the table and keeps brushing fallen petals and pollen from the table-top. My suitcase, too, sits on a corner of the table and my mother is busy repacking everything into one of the panniers. I want my clogs to go in as well, I insist on that, but the straps won’t close.

‘Then I’ll wear them tomorrow.’

‘But you can’t do that, darling,’ she says, ‘you can’t possibly be thinking of going to Amsterdam in those things.’

Offended, I walk out of the room and Mem walks after me.

‘Come on,’ she says, ‘don’t take on so, your mother’s only just come. You’re making too much fuss.’

I stand alone by the fence and look across to the little tower in Warns. I feel an inexpressible ache in my body, a longing that crushes me and that is screaming at the top of its voice inside me. I want to stay behind and wait, stay here until inundated by the smell of the earth, until turned into the same substance as the ground beneath my feet, riddled through by the roots of grass, by the grubbing about and the digging of insects. I want to stay at one with these surroundings, with the ground where I lay with him, stroked his skin, breathed his smell, felt the warmth of another human being flooding over me, throbbing, shaking, taking possession of me.

Chapter 12

To Lemmer. We cycle over the dyke and when I look back I can see the handful of houses that is Laaxum lying down below. On the other side, the elongated shape of the Mokkenbank stretches out some way ahead of us, a waving green sheet of reeds enclosed by a restless, greyish-brown sea. I can see and hear the gulls tumbling and swooping about, as multitudinous and fidgety as clouds of mosquitoes.

We have to leave home early to catch the boat. When we say our goodbyes, the whole family gathers at the back of the house, standing stiff and solemn in a semicircle, and I can see how anxiously Mem follows every movement I make.

‘Come,’ says my mother, ‘we must be off. Say goodbye to everyone.’

My heart knocks and thuds. I daren’t look them in the face, feeling like a traitor, a coward. I shake hands with Popke, then Trientsje, then go along the row shaking hands with everyone. I feel torn apart and when it is Mem’s turn I fling my arms around her neck and burst into a fit of tears that reaches wrenchingly and quiveringly deep inside.

Hait takes us to the road, opens the gates for the bicycles and helps me onto the luggage carrier. Jan and his mother are standing waiting for us on the road. There is a lot of excited talking, waving and shaking of hands, and people come out from the other cottages to look and to wave goodbye.

‘Upsy-daisy,’ says Hait, ‘off you go.’ He gives my head a quick hug. ‘Write Mem a nice letter soon, now.’

I grit my teeth and bite my lips so as not to cry aloud, but my face is wet and what with the tears and my nervous state I no longer see anything.

How is it that everything has happened so quickly? For months I have been waiting and waiting and now suddenly everything has come down on me like an avalanche and dragged me away before I have even had time to think about it.

‘Is everything all right, Jeroen, are you sitting comfortably?’ I can hear the concern in my mother’s voice, but I cannot answer.

‘We’ll just have a nice day and if we miss the boat, well, that’s just too bad. We’re not going to rush,’ she says to Hait.

From the sound of her voice I can tell that she is afraid to mention my leaving and that she is trying to take my mind off it.

I have put my hands carefully on her hips so as not to fall off, but I don’t like the feel of another body. The material of her dress is thin and soft under my hands, yielding like water, and through it I can feel the rotating movements of her legs. And is that her skirt or the wind blowing against my bare knees?

Jan and his mother are cycling behind us. In the distance, disappearing into the sparkling green landscape, lies our little house. They are still standing Outside and waving, like tiny fairy tale figures in front of a doll’s house, far away and of no significance.

I wave back.

‘You wave, too, Mum.’

The heavily-laden bike gives a dangerous lurch and she quickly looks straight ahead again. The gulls fly upwards in screeching clouds. I look out for the spot where I sat with Walt, a sandy little patch of ground at the edge of the reeds. Has it been overgrown or have we just passed it?

We stop and my mother gets off; the flapping of the pannier’s little strap between the spokes is irritating her. I peer vainly into the jigsaw puzzle of sand, reeds and water while I hold the bike for her. It’s hot already and we still have a long way to go: I can see dark sweat patches under the short sleeves of her dress and her face looks tense.

Jan and his mother bicycle past us.

‘Beat you to it!’

Nobody is standing outside the little house now, or is that someone walking across the meadow to the road? The sun falls in fitful patches over the landscape and the fields dance in an abundance of yellow flowers.

‘Don’t just stand about like that, try and hold the bike up properly.’ Her voice is suddenly hurt and desperate. ‘It looks as if we’ve got a puncture, the tyre is much too soft.’

If anything is wrong we’ll have to ask Jan to fit it. I’m still as bad with my hands as I was before I went to Friesland.

We are back on the bicycle again and I try to make myself as light as possible.

We pass a young farm-hand.

‘Hullo, Jeroen.’

I greet him proudly, feeling quite a man: this is my world, these are my friends. They know me here, she can tell that, can’t she? The boy stops in the road, but we carry on past him.

‘We’re going to Amsterdam,’ I call back to him importantly.

My heart lifts, I look at the passing farms, the gardens, the animals scattered over the fields. The changing scene diverts me and imparts a feeling of adventure. I lean forward past my mother to see if we are catching up with Jan.

‘Keep pedalling, Mum, they’re miles ahead. Don’t let them leave us behind.’

Life has turned into a light-hearted game. We pass the Gaasterland woods and I look out for the house; isn’t that the path between the trees? What if they are still there, what if I should suddenly spot his car?

‘Do you think the Americans will still be in Amsterdam when we get back home?’

She is out of breath and her voice sounds laboured, as if every word were too much for her. ‘I told you not to worry, they’re going to be around for quite a while yet. And they’re not Americans, they’re Canadians.’

If we stopped, I could look around, even explore a little along the path. The road seems familiar, those overhanging trees and the low bushes on the verge.

‘How about a short rest, Mum? I’m as stiff as a board.’ It’s no more than the truth, because I have to sit on the luggage carrier with my legs spread wide across the two full panniers and the insides of my thighs feel as if sandpaper had been run over them. But my mother pedals on obstinately until we catch sight of the other two by a side-road.

We sit down on the verge and Jan’s mother unwraps a packet of sandwiches. ‘It all seems to be forgotten again,’ I hear my mother say in a half-whisper, ‘how quickly things change: one moment they’re crying and the next they’re having the time of their lives.’

I chew my sandwich and look down the side-road for a roof between the trees with a small dormer-window. When I think of that room I can still smell the wood and the blankets on the mattress.

Jan, who is already starring on his third sandwich, sits leaning against a tree on top of the verge. He flicks off the ants running over his legs with his fingers, aiming them towards me. ‘Nice, a trip like this, isn’t it? You get to see quite a bit.’

He doesn’t realise that I have been here before and much further too, with an American soldier, in an army car. From where I am sitting I can look up his trouser leg, up his smooth, slim frog’s thigh. But I am unmoved and can hardly believe that once upon a time – long, long ago – I used to yearn so desperately for that body, that I would dream about it, torturing myself with the mere thought of it.

I walk as nonchalantly as possible to the other side of the road and peer between the trees to see whether there is a clearing or an old railway track inside that wall of green. The hairy legs tighten around my hips and the jaw rasps painfully across my neck and cheek while I listen to the breathless voice: ‘Hold it, yes, go on, move. Yes.’

The bicycles have been lugged up from the verge with much groaning and sighing and they are all looking at me

impatiently. Jan’s mother rings her bell. ‘If you don’t hurry up you’ll have to walk to Lemmer!’

Awkwardly, I manoeuvre myself, hopping and wide-legged, onto the luggage carrier and aim a furious kick at the bulging panniers.

‘Try and put up with it a bit longer. Just another hour, I think, and then we’ll be in Lemmer.’

She is pedalling again, the chain creaking and the wheels making heavy weather of the forest path. I am tired, I want to rest my head against her back. Any moment now I’ll fall off the bicycle. There is rye-bread stuck in my mouth which has a sour taste. I run my tongue over my teeth and chew on a left-over morsel.

If only I can remember Walt’s taste, his breath and his spittle in my mouth. But how do you do that, how do you remember a taste, a smell?

Chapter 13

…Two men in blue overalls are standing by the boat, one carrying a rifle and looking ready to go into action any moment.

A small group of people has gathered on the quay, but to join them we must go past the two men.

‘Come on,’ says my mother, ‘nothing to be afraid of.’

I look back for Jan who is still standing with his mother by the small office where we paid for our boat tickets.

‘They’re coming. If we hurry we’ll be able to find a good spot on the boat.’

I walk with her up to the men, who ask to see her identity card, open up the panniers on the bicycle and search them thoroughly and suspiciously.

‘What on earth are you after, I thought the war was over?’ She says it curtly and yet her voice sounds cheerful. When the panniers are closed again, they start joking with my mother and I hear one of them call her ‘sweetheart’. I feel excited and almost flattered because they are being so nice to her, but at the same time they make me nervous and their easy laughter infuriates me.

‘Is the boy with you?’ they ask. ‘Is he going on the boat as well?’

‘He’s my son. He’s been in Friesland for a year and now we’re going back to Amsterdam. I’m fetching him home.’

The conversation comes to a sudden halt. Someone is bringing our bicycle up the narrow gangplank and we follow behind carefully. I can see the black water below and hear it making gurgling noises between the ship and the quay.

The ship looks enormous to me, bright and white and full of little stairs, doors and corridors. The wooden floors are wet, the puddles giving off a soft salty smell, reminding me of holidays and of Walt’s tent, of lashings of sweet-scented security.

‘Come along,’ says my mother, ‘let’s go and sit up on the deck, it’s lovely weather.’

We clamber up an iron stairway and I run to the rail and look down. The little town is quiet, there are just a few small houses around the harbour. I can see a baker’s shop, some fishing boats, a large pile of crates and the two men leaning against a fence and concentrating on smoking a cigarette.

‘How quiet it is,’ says my mother,’ I think there’s hardly anybody else on board. Can you see Jan and his mother?’

As I bend over further I hear Jan’s voice and see him running up the stairway.

‘Wow, what a great place.’

We race along the railing and go down another stairway, making for the front of the ship to watch the crates being loaded on board.

‘See that fellow? What a he-man,’ Jan says admiringly. But, secretly, I compare the man’s arms with the ones that I know, and look away unimpressed.

Our mothers are sitting silently on a bench in a sunny corner of the deck, suddenly looking tired and anxious. My mother has laid her head on her arms, looking across the water. Jan’s mother lies slumped over her bag with her eyes shut.

‘Are you tired, Mum?’

‘Just leave us be for a moment, darling. We’ve been bicycling for three hours, with you on the back, and we’re not used to it.’

I sit on the floor next to the bench and run my hand over the silky, uneven surface of the planks. The sun is hot and dazzles me. I look at the pannier and wonder what other food might be in it. Then the boat begins to judder, the planks shake softly under my hands and the trembling spreads right through my body. After a slight lurch I see that the quay has moved, that the houses are slipping away from us. I jump up and run over to Jan who is calling to me and hanging over the railings gesticulating wildly. Then there is a deafening noise, a shattering, almost unbearable hurricane in my ears that nearly scares me to death: the ship’s funnel emits a dark cloud of smoke like black vomit being blasted up into the sky.

My mother has clapped her hands to her ears, her face looking pale and miserable, and suddenly I realise that this is farewell to Friesland. I run back to the railing and stare at the harbour which already seems an amazing distance away from the boat.

My mother puts her arm around my shoulder. ‘Here we go,’ she exclaims and I have to listen very hard to hear what she is saying. ‘Take one more look. But next year we’ll go and visit them, that’s allowed again now.’ She sighs and then gives the receding little town an impulsive wave. ‘Bye Fries-land!’ She pulls me towards her and suddenly everything feels pleasant and carefree, as if nothing had happened. ‘That adventure is behind you now.’ Her hand touches my hair lightly, and I feel an irrepressible longing for the hand that slid down my back fingering me roughly and yet carefully and attentively. Suddenly I feel sick.

‘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.

‘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.