For a Lost Soldier

Chapter 1

There are sounds all around me: the clumping of footsteps on the floor above us, the rattle of dustbin lids on the verandas, voices in the street, a song echoing over the gardens across the road. Is it late? I close my eyes again and try to shut out the day. My bed feels good now that I am awake, wonderfully soft and yielding, and I let myself sink into it as into an embrace. During the night I woke up with the anxious feeling that I was sliding into a substance from which, try though I might, I could no longer extricate myself. I had finally struggled upright and had sat on the metal edge of the folding bed, panting and worn out. The little room looked ghostly and unreal: walls that seemed too far away, dawn glimmering in the wrong corner, unfamiliar sounds. Confused, I had slipped back under the blankets.

At breakfast, in our room that seems spacious and sunny and where there are only three instead of nine sitting at table, I feel like a guest who has merely spent the night and is about to set off again.

I can’t get used to the new way the furniture is arranged.

‘Did you sleep well?’ my father asks. I can hear the probing tone in his voice.

‘Yes, thanks. But the bed is so soft, I’m going to have to get used to it again. The cupboard-bed in Friesland was made of wood.’

‘You shouted out in the night, do you know that? You don’t have to be afraid any longer, everything is over, you’re back at home now. Life is back to normal again.’ My mother lays a hand softly and protectively on mine. My forehead begins to tingle, a feeling of anxiety comes over me, but I daren’t draw my hand back. Nobody may touch me, it’s not allowed. She puts a big square biscuit on my plate.

‘Would you like some of this? Don’t pull such a face, it’s a ship’s biscuit, delicious! From the Canadians.’

I smell it and push the thing away. ‘Isn’t there any ordinary bread?’

She goes to the kitchen and cuts a slice of the Frisian rye-bread. ‘I thought you might want to eat something else for a change.’ She looks disappointed.

In the little side-room my brother is making spluttering noises in his cot. My mother gets up and takes him in her arms. She kisses him, holds him up in the air at arm’s length and then pats his wet nappy fondly.

At the table she feeds him bits of ship’s biscuit dipped in tea and his little chute-like mouth becomes covered in brown blobs. He waves his arms about wildly and uncontrollably, knocking the spoon out of her hand so that the tablecloth, too, becomes covered with mess.

‘Da-da-da-da,’ he sings, happy, ignoring me completely, as if I am not there, as if everything is the same as always. ‘Jeroen,’ my mother prompts him. ‘Toon-toon.’ ‘Da-da-da.’

‘You’ll have to repeat the sixth year,’ my father says. ‘We’ll just have to write off this last year, they can’t have taught you all that much in Friesland.’

Who says so? How do you know? Aren’t the Frisians good enough for you all of a sudden?

‘We’ve found you a 6A class where they prepare pupils for high school. It’s quite a long way from here, in town, but they’re sure to bring your maths up to scratch.’

I go back into my room and sit down on the unmade bed. My books are stacked in a neat little row, my toys on a shelf in the cupboard, the drawing-book, the pencils, my sponge-bag, everything is there, all my things. When I was in Laaxum I missed them, but now I don’t even touch them. I am listless and anxious and don’t feel like moving.

My little brother is crying, whining and whimpering. I can hear my mother talking in a subdued voice out in the passage, as if I were still asleep.

‘I’ll take him outside for a bit of a walk, the weather’s lovely. Then we can leave Jeroen here a while longer, he still has to get his bearings back.’

For a long time I sit there motionless. What shall I do? Quietly I open the door. My father is standing in the kitchen.

‘Well, did you give your room the once-over? Is everything just as it should be?’ There is a teasing undertone to the way he says it. He goes out onto the veranda and hangs a row of nappies on the line. When I go and stand beside him and look over the railing, he kisses my hair. ‘Great to have you back,’ he says, ‘we missed you.’

I look at the green gardens, the canal and the cultivated fields beyond. There is a barn and vegetables planted in long straight rows. My mother is sitting on a bench by the water, a pram next to her, and she waves when my father calls her name. She looks pretty and happy. ‘Come,’ she beckons to me.

‘Go and get some fresh air, sitting about indoors won’t do you any good. Soon you’ll be stuck inside school all day again.’

We walk through the house and my father shows me everything. ‘Look, we’re back on the gas and the electricity. The radio is going again too, just listen. If you turn this little knob you get music.’

‘Perhaps I’ll just go into town this afternoon,’ I say, ‘to have a look what’s going on.’

‘You go and have a good look round, there’s a lot to see, celebrations and exhibitions everywhere. I’ll come later in the week and we’ll look at things together.’

He watches me as I go down the stairs and turn round once more, as if I am asking for help. Downstairs I stop inside the main door for a while, summoning up the courage to open it and venture out into the street. Then I run around the corner and sit down on the bench beside my mother. She is rocking my brother’s pram to and fro, first forwards, then backwards, making me sleepy just watching.

‘Go and find the other children, they’ll be glad to have you back. You must have a lot to tell them about where you’ve been.’ But I stay sitting next to her, clutching her arm as she rocks the pram. When a soft drone of engines can be heard she says that it’s sure to be the Canadians. ‘They’re quartered in your school, but I don’t know for how much longer. Go and have a look. Sometimes you can see a whole procession of cars passing by.’

At the end of the street, by the White School, I watch two cars being driven out of the playground and disappearing around the corner. Men in the familiar green uniform are walking about in front of the wide-open doors that lead into the gymnasium.

So, they’re here, right next to our house…

Suddenly I run back home and sneak up the stairs, feeling almost caught out, ashamed and agitated.

‘No,’ I tell my father when he looks surprised to see me back so soon. ‘I’m not going to go out today, I’d rather stay at home, I don’t want to go out on the street.’ I walk onto the balcony and look at the school, at the open gym and the soldiers’ comings and goings. I feel sluggish and washed out. Should I go and look to see if he is there? And if he is, what then?

I go into my little room to sit down, and notice that some of the pages from my books have been ripped out while others have been covered with big scratches. The work of my little brother, that’s for sure. Restlessly I leaf through the books, read a line here and there, look at the pictures, then push the books to one side again.

My father puts a small plate with neatly cut sandwiches and a peeled and quartered apple down next to me.

The terror inside me wells up, takes possession of me slowly and paralyses me. I don’t ever want to move again, ever go down in the street again. I don’t ever want to see anybody again.

I put the plate down on the windowsill: I don’t like the food here either. Nothing in Amsterdam tastes of anything.

In the afternoon my mother takes down the nappies while I sit on the kitchen doorstep and watch her quick hands collect the washing. She hangs other pieces of clothing on the line: my shorts, underwear, my towel, the socks knitted by Mem.

I stiffen when I suddenly realise what has happened: the wet shirt with the small pocket is hanging from two pegs among the other washing. The photograph.

When my mother has gone into the kitchen, I slip my fingers quickly into the opening in the shirt. How could I have forgotten! I touch a small, crumpled wad but keep on fumbling wildly and incredulously. Then I pick it up between my fingers and unfold it, a matted, mangled bit of paper.

‘What have you done?’ My voice sounds distorted and shrill. ‘There was a photograph in my shirt. Couldn’t you have waited?’ I almost scream the words at her.

My eyes fill with tears. Back in my room I fling myself onto the bed and squeeze the scrap of paper desperately between my fingers.

‘I don’t know what’s got into him.’ From the sound of her voice I can tell that my mother is crying as well.

My father soothes her, their voices disappearing towards the living-room. When the door shuts there is a deathly silence.

‘If you don’t go down to play today I’m just going to push you out of the door,’ she says next day as she sets a cup of warm milk before me on the table. ‘Don’t you turn into a stay-at-home, you hear? Children are meant to play outside.’

She talks gently and I can see that she is smiling. And yet I hear the anxious undertone in her voice and her whole attitude suggesting that she is feeling her way with me.

After looking out of the window to make sure none of the boys are outside I decide to go downstairs. I run towards the canal and then, as if doing something that is not allowed and that mustn’t be seen by anyone, I turn down another street towards the White School. It feels as if everyone is watching me, that they are wondering what I am up to, why I am there and what I am going to do.

I walk past the school fence alongside the deserted playground. There is a broken-up-for-the-holidays air about the place: thick clumps of grass and weeds are sprouting here and there between the paving stones, and the narrow flower-beds under the windows look neglected and overgrown. Most of the classrooms appear empty, the plants and drawings on the windowsills gone, all the colour and gaiety vanished. From an open window comes the loud voice of someone talking over the radio in a foreign language. I stop and fumble cautiously with one of my socks, trying to look inside unnoticed. One classroom has been turned into a store, piled high with crates and bags, and my own classroom has been converted into a kitchen or dining hall, the windowsill lined with cooking pots and metal pans. In the gym there are long rows of narrow beds on crossed legs; rucksacks, boots and helmets stand underneath them in orderly array. The recognition of all these things throws me into total confusion. I want to walk away but I remain where I am with my fingers clutching the wire netting of the fence, listening to the sounds echoing across the square, the metal clink of boots, a car starting up, the laughter sounding through an empty classroom.

It seems that the whole street is staring at my back, as if my clothes bear a message writ large: this boy is in love with a soldier. ‘The slimy creep, that dirty sneak,’ I can hear them call after me in my imagination. A soldier crossing the playground looks at me and takes a few steps in my direction. He rummages about in his pocket, whistles, and then flings something at me as to a dog: a colourful, hard little object which lands on the ground by my feet. I stiffen and walk away.

Back in our street a group of boys is sitting on the pavement. Appie is there, and Wim and Tonnie. I go and stand beside them, leaning against the wall and listening to what they are saying. Wim turns round to look at me. ‘Hey, are you back too, then? Did those peasants stuff you full of food?’ It doesn’t sound unfriendly, at worst mocking, but I feel hostility and a great gulf. The boys laugh. Should I sit down with them, behave as if everything is back to normal, as if I have never been away and nothing has happened to me?

A squad of soldiers comes marching down the street and the boys run over to them, leaping around them, shouting and drawing attention to themselves, then fawning on them sweet as sugar.

I am shocked by the liberties they take, grabbing hold of the soldiers’ arms and running along with them like that.

‘Hello, boy. How are you? Cigarette, cigarette?’ they pester, and the soldiers smile back at them, seeing nothing bad or rude in that sort of behaviour.

I am ashamed and jealous at the same time. I should love to walk along like that and be so free and easy with those soldiers, laughing up at them and holding on to their clothes. Even with Walt I shouldn’t have dared to act like that, it would never even have occurred to me.

Tonnie walks slowly back to me and nonchalantly brings a small box out of his pocket. There is a picture on it of a bearded man wearing a sailor’s cap under which you can see sandy hair.

‘Players,’ he says, opening the packet. I see two smooth round cigarettes lying at an angle inside the silver wrapping. ‘Want to swop? What have you got?’

When he realises that I have nothing he looks surprised and then disdainful. He calls the others over.

I must try to get away, I am wasting time when I could be searching, watching the classrooms, keeping an eye on the cars. When the boys get into a huddle in a doorway, their heads conspiratorially close together, I disappear around the corner and run to the other side of the school.

There they are, a whole lot of soldiers sitting on the running-board of a car, on the paving stones, some in a school window with their legs dangling out; they are like a group of animals basking in the sun on a rock. They talk, polish their gear, laugh, laze about; one of them even has a needle and thread and is mending something.

Brown arms, pliant necks under short-cropped hair, nonchalantly outspread legs, a young boy squatting on his heels who confuses me so much that I dare not look in his direction: the wad of a photograph, in my cupboard, the face that has been lost. I feel the skin of my cheeks tighten and my eyes start to burn.

A small open car comes driving across the playground with three girls sitting in it, their arms wound provocatively around each other’s waists, bursting again and again into noisy giggles, doubling-up with laughter then collapsing against one another. The soldier at the wheel has huge shiny arms and deep black eyes that, half-amused, half-bored, take stock of the other soldiers who come running up to the car, shouting incomprehensibly. The girls shriek, allowing themselves to be lifted out of the car. A moment later, they go inside the school, tittering and holding tightly on to each other, followed slowly by the soldier with the muscular arms. His hands are in his pockets and he has a powerful, bow-legged walk.

‘And have a guess what they’ll be doing inside?’ says one of the boys who has come to stand by the fence a short distance away from me.

‘They’ll be having it off,’ bawls another and rams his body against the railings, setting off a devastating din.

He is just a monkey in a cage, I think, the whole lot of them no better than animals the way they carry on making an exhibition of themselves. Why can’t the soldiers see that? But the soldiers are gesturing to the boys, pulling faces and giving them knowing winks.

I am cross, and jealous of everyone, of the boys, of the giggling girls and of the soldiers. Why are they looking so pleased with themselves, what are they doing inside, why is there such a strange air of excitement about the place? I don’t even think of that other thing, because that was only between me and him. The girls are probably being given rice with raisins right now, or chewing-gum.

But why should I care? I must go into town and look around some more, try to find those places I saw from the boat, where the cars were parked.

I walk as far as Admiraal de Ruyterweg and suddenly, when I see all the buildings and the streets full of people walking about, queuing outside shops or busy repairing the pavements and the tramlines, I daren’t go on. Must I really go through these crowds all by myself? What if I lose my way, or if something happens to me?

But I still have to find him, as soon as possible. Every day I fail to look for him is a day lost. He may still be here today, but tomorrow he could have gone.

I walk another block, my anxiety growing all the while, then I turn on my heels and run back home without stopping.

I thump on the front door, fly up the stairs and stand panting in the passage.

‘Was it fun playing with your old friends again?’ asks my mother. I pretend not to hear and disappear into my little room. When, cautiously, she opens the door a little while later, she gives me a worried look.

‘Nothing happened, did it? You didn’t get into a fight? If there is anything the matter, you will tell me, won’t you? Promise?’

Chapter 2

That evening there are celebrations in our street.

Loudspeakers have been tied to two lampposts, and every so often a man’s voice comes out of them, cutting right through the cheerfully blaring marching music to address the people of the neighbourhood. ‘You are all invited to join in this evening’s festivities and enter the competitions for the attractive prizes you will see specially displayed. The celebrations will be graced with the presence of a neighbourhood personality well known to one and all, whose name I am not yet allowed to divulge but who will be treating us to her glorious talent.’ For a moment the marching music drowns out the announcement, then, ‘By way of a bonus I am pleased to be able to tell you that Mijnheer Veringa has kindly agreed to open the festivities with a special address.’

By eight o’clock our street is jam-packed with children and their parents. There can be nobody left inside. From our balcony I can see men in blue uniforms – ‘Look, the Resistance,’ says my mother admiringly – small groups of girls walking arm in arm, lots of families from other streets, and, among the crowd, knots of soldiers drawing nonchalantly on their cigarettes and hanging about looking expectant.

‘Come on,’ says my mother, ‘it’s time we went downstairs. You must want to join the fun.’

I make a face.

‘There’s so much going on, surely you don’t want to miss anything? You don’t have to join in if you don’t want to, you can just stand there and watch.’

When we come out of the front door the crowd is thronging towards the other end of the street, the children running excitedly through the crush, shouting and pushing people out of the way, laughing exuberantly. I fall silent, my spirits dampened by their boisterousness, and as we join the motley stream of people I clutch my mother’s arm, longing to be back home. The street is like an empty swimming-pool with pennants hanging from long strings fluttering overhead in the wind. I walk along the bottom next to the tall sides and look for a way out.

At the other end of our street, close to the school, an apartment window on the first floor has been flung wide open, the windowsill draped with a flag and a few sad-looking daffodils with broken heads fastened to the woodwork.

Everyone is gathered under the window and looking up eagerly. The loudspeaker music stops with a loud click in the middle of a tune and the hubbub of voices in the street grows softer and dies away.

A man appears in the window, wearing a bow tie and with an orange ribbon pinned to his coat. His plump face is set and solemn.

‘Who is that man?’ I whisper to my mother.

How can anyone be so fat after the war? He must be someone very important.

‘Ssh. I don’t know either.’ She tugs at my arm and I shut up. The gentleman surveys the crowd with a haughty and satisfied expression. He is standing in front of a microphone which he taps a few times, making the loudspeakers resound with a series of drones and crackles.

‘Fellow countrymen,’ he cries. ‘Neighbours. Friends.’

Suddenly there is a piercing whistle, a high screeching sound that makes some people clap their hands to their ears. And there is suppressed laughter as well, which shocks me: how can they stand there and snigger so disrespectfully, what is there to laugh about anyway?

A few arms reach from out of nowhere to snatch the microphone away and there is more grating and booming.

Now my mother is laughing too…

‘Fellow countrymen. Neighbours. Friends. The enemy has been beaten, our nation has been liberated from the German yoke and our liberators’ – here he makes a sweeping gesture over the street – ‘are amongst us. Before very long our beloved queen and all her family will be joining us…’

He is holding a sheet of paper which, as I can see clearly even from below, is shaking in his hands as if caught in a stiff gust of wind. The flood of words roll over me, sounds whose meaning escapes me. When he folds up his paper there is a deathly hush, and then I hear the strains of a familiar tune.

‘Whose veins are filled with Netherlands blood…’ The man stands stiff as a ramrod in the window-frame, his stomach sticking out. Around me I hear more and more voices joining in the singing, hesitantly at first, then louder and louder.

‘Why isn’t he singing himself, Mum?’

The mood is subdued and solemn now and some people are dabbing their eyes. The song is over and the silence is unbroken. My mother looks at me from out of the corners of her eyes, nods at me encouragingly, then takes my hand and squeezes it hard.

A startled dog runs barking through the crowd, scattering a cluster of shrieking girls; a moment later I hear a loud, high-pitched whine as if someone has given the dog a kick.

‘Our neighbour Marietje Scholten will now oblige us with Schubert’s Ave Maria. Her father will accompany her on the piano.’

The gentleman bows, making way for the milkman’s daughter who takes his place at the microphone. Her cheeks are scarlet as she looks straight across the street with staring doll’s eyes, as if she does not see any of us and is standing up there against her will, about to burst into tears.

‘Are you ready?’ she asks, looking behind her into the room. When her question comes loud and clear over the loudspeakers, she gives an apologetic laugh and places her hands over the microphone. The crowd claps sympathetically as a few hesitant, searching chords become audible.

‘I want to leave now,’ I whisper, ‘can we go?’

The thronging crowd is stifling me, and I have the feeling that the girl will never get her song started; she has brought the microphone close to her petrified face, clutched in both hands, and still nothing is happening.

Then, all at once, she sings. I stand rooted to the spot: the sound of her voice and the music she sings echo deep within me, as if a stone is being turned over inside me. An ecstatic feeling of happiness and abandon soars up in me, growing all the time. My chest feels tight and I pull my hand away from my mother’s. I am being torn apart.

The people stand side by side listening in total silence, neighbours, soldiers, children, nobody moving. We have forgotten about the shrillness of the microphone, we are held captive by that voice, soaring over our heads into the night sky.

The applause ebbs away. Marietje bows awkwardly and knocks the microphone over.

‘What’s the matter?’ my mother asks, but I turn my face away from her furiously. ‘Darling,’ she says, ‘don’t be like that.’

I watch the rest of the celebrations from our balcony, the people standing in place by the white lines down the whole length of the street, craning their necks and jostling one another. Where the lines end, and someone has chalked the word FINISH in large letters, other people are crowded around the table with the prizes: a bag of flour, a few bars of chocolate, a packet of tea and some small bags of milk and egg powder.

Our next-door neighbour, apparently in charge of the competition, shouts, ‘Attention!’ and blows a whistle.

To the accompaniment of encouraging yells the competitors stumble, hopping and falling about between the white lines, their legs stuck inside jute sacks.

My mother, too, has joined in this grotesque parade. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed of her, and am in two minds about cheering her on. The bystanders call out names and urge the competitors on, and my father, standing beside me, whistles shrilly through his fingers.

‘Keep going, Dien, don’t wobble!’ but by then she has stopped and fallen into the arms of some bystanders, helpless with laughter.

‘You ought to have joined in as well,’ says my father, ‘why didn’t you, lazy-bones? Such fun and you could have won a bar of chocolate.’

I don’t answer and. watch my mother wriggle out of the jute sack still screaming with laughter. When a voice announces that the winners’ names are about to be called I try to slip inside unnoticed.

‘Hang on a minute, Jeroen, you want to hear who’s won, don’t you?’

What difference can it make to me, you can all do what you want, behave like little children if it pleases you, but leave me in peace.

‘Do you hear that? Jan has come third!’

But I am looking at a couple of soldiers who are disappearing over the grass bank along the canal, followed by two girls. They saunter to the edge of the water and sit down, so that I can see little more than their heads. One soldier puts his arm around a girl and they slide backwards into the grass, disappearing from sight.

The water in the canal is black and still, a few pieces of weed floating in it and a duck balancing on a rusty bicycle wheel that sticks above the surface. A glimmer of light from the gardener’s house on the other bank makes an oily reflection across the water.

I walk into my dim little room where the hubbub from the street sounds unreal. The house is empty, cavernous.

I bite my pillow and try not to think. I fold my hands between my tightly-squeezed legs and curl up small.

Please God, make him come back, make him find me. If You let him come back I’ll do whatever You want.

I am bicycling to Warns. I have no clothes on. Walt is sitting on the luggage carrier with his arms around me, stroking my belly.

I can see people everywhere, behind windows, in gardens, on the pavements and ducking around corners. I pedal like one possessed but the bicycle hardly moves. I sweat under the firing squad of prying looks. I gasp and struggle on. Mem stands in front of the house, crying and beckoning me with her dependable, stout arms. I can’t reach her. I pedal and pedal.

‘Move,’ Walt whispers, ‘move. Go on, faster.’

His fingers caress my stomach and I feel ashamed, everyone watching us. I want him to stop, I want to cry and shout at him but I have lost my voice.

He puts me up against a wall and points his gun at me, one of his eyes is screwed half-shut and looks cold and inscrutable.

Don’t let me fall, I think, if I fall I’ll drop in the mud.

But my feet are already slipping…

I am standing in the passage and there are my parents, in their pyjamas, giving me surprised and anxious looks.

‘What are you doing out here, why aren’t you asleep? Do you have to go to the lavatory? Jeroen, can you hear us?’

My mother leads me back to my bed. I let her tuck me in, her hands soft and familiar.

‘Did you have a bad dream? You must tell us if there’s something frightening you.’

My father stands in the doorway with a sombre face. I can see him vaguely against the light in the passage.

‘You could have won, you should have carried on. Why did you stop?’ I say to her face bending over me.

‘Whatever’s the matter with him, he sounds delirious,’ I hear my father whisper. Why did he carry on like that about Jan on the balcony tonight, I wonder, was that just to tease me? Doesn’t he think very much of me, just like Jan’s mother? ‘He’s a real boy.’

‘I’ll leave the light on, maybe that’ll make him feel better.’

Their footsteps go creaking back to their own bedroom.

Chapter 3

I set out on a series of reconnoitering expeditions through Amsterdam, tours of exploration that will take me to every corner. On a small map I look up the most important streets to see how I can best fan out to criss-cross the town, then make plans on pieces of paper showing exactly how the streets on each of my expeditions join up and what they are called. To make doubly sure I also use abbreviations: H.W. for Hoofd-weg, H.S. for Haarlemmerstraat. The pieces of paper are carefully stored away inside the dust-jacket of a book, but I am satisfied that even if somebody found the notes, they wouldn’t be able to make head or tail of them. It is a well-hidden secret.

For my first expedition I get up in good time. I yawn a great deal and act as cheerfully as I can to disguise the paralysing uncertainty that is governing my every move.

‘We’re going straight to the field, Mum, we’re going to build a hut,’ but she is very busy and scarcely listens.

‘Take care and don’t be back too late.’

The street smells fresh as if the air has been scrubbed with soap. I feel dizzy with excitement and as soon as I have rounded the corner I start to run towards the bridge. Now it’s beginning, and everything is sure to be all right, all my waiting and searching is about to come to an end; the solution lies hidden over there, somewhere in the clear light filling the streets.

The bright air I inhale makes me feel that I am about to burst. I want to sing, shout, cheer myself hoarse.

I have marked my piece of paper, among a tangle of crossing and twisting lines, with H.W., O.T., W.S.: Hoofdweg, Overtoom, Weteringschans.

The Hoofdweg is close by, just over the bridge. It is the broad street we have to cross when we go to the swimming-baths. I know the gloomy houses and the narrow, flowerless gardens from the many times I’ve walked by in other summers, towel and swimming trunks rolled under my arm. But beyond that, and past Mercatorplein, Amsterdam is unknown territory to me, ominous virgin land.

The unfamiliar streets make me hesitate, my excitement seeps away and suddenly I feel unsure and tired. The town bewilders me: shops with queues outside, people on bicycles carrying bags, beflagged streets in the early morning sun, squares where wooden platforms have been put up for neighbourhood celebrations, whole districts with music pouring out of loudspeakers all day. An unsolvable jigsaw puzzle. Now and then I stop in sheer desperation, study my hopelessly inadequate piece of paper, and wonder if it would not be much better to give up the attempt altogether.

But whenever I see an army vehicle, or catch a glimpse of a uniform, I revive and walk a little faster, sometimes trotting after a moving car in the hope that it will come to a stop and he will jump out.

Time after time I lose my way and have to walk back quite far, and sometimes, if I can summon up enough courage, I ask for directions.

‘Please, Mevrouw, could you tell me how to get to the Overtoom?’

‘Dear me, child, you’re going the wrong way. Over there, right at the end, turn left, that’ll take you straight there.’

The Overtoom, when I finally reach it, seems to be a street without beginning or end. I walk, stop, cross the road, search: not a trace of W.S. Does my plan bear any resemblance to the real thing?

I take off my shoes and look at the dark impression of my sweaty foot on the pavement. Do I have to go on, search any more? What time is it, how long have I been walking the streets?

Off we sail to Overtoom, We drink milk and cream at home, Milk and cream with apple pie, Little children must not lie.

Over and over again, automatically, the jingle runs through my mind, driving me mad.

As I walk back home, slowly, keeping to the shady side of the street as much as I can, I think of the other expeditions hidden away in the dust-jacket of my book. The routes I picked out and wrote down with so much eagerness and trust seem pointless and unworkable now. I scold myself: I must not give up, only a coward would do that. Walt is waiting for me, he has no one, and he’ll be so happy to see me again.

At home I sit down in a chair by the window, too tired to talk, and when I do give an answer to my mother my voice sounds thin and weak, as if it were finding it difficult to escape from my chest. She sits down next to me on the arm of the chair, lifts my chin up and asks where we have been playing such tiring games, she hasn’t seen me down in the street all morning, though the other boys were there.

‘Were you really out in the field?’

‘Ask them if you don’t believe me!’ I run onto the balcony, tear my first route map up into pieces and watch the shreds fluttering down into the garden like snowflakes.

When my father gets back home he says, ‘So, my boy, you and I had best go into town straightway, you still haven’t seen the illuminations.’

With me on the back, he cycles as far as the Concert-gebouw, where he leans the bike against a wall and walks with me past a large green space with badly worn grass. Here, too, there are soldiers, tents, trucks. Why don’t I look this time, why do I go and walk on the other side of my father and cling – ‘Don’t hang on so tight!’ – to his arm?

…‘Now, you’ll see something,’ he says, ‘something you’ve never even dreamed of, just you wait and see.’

Walt moving his quivering leg to and fro, his warm, yielding skin, the smell of the thick hair in his armpits…

I trudge along beside my father, my soles burning, too tired to look at anything.

We walk through the gateway of a large building, a sluice that echoes to the sound of voices, and through which the people have to squeeze before fanning out again on the other side. There are hundreds of them now, all moving in the same direction towards a buzzing hive of activity, a surging mass of bodies.

There is a sweet smell of food coming from a small tent in the middle of the street in front of which people are crowding so thickly that I can’t see what is being sold.

I stop in my tracks, suddenly dying for food, dying just to stay where I am and to yield myself up to that wonderful sweet smell. But my father has already walked on and I have to wriggle through the crowds to catch up with him.

Beside a bridge he pushes me forward between the packed bodies so that I can see the canal, a long stretch of softly shimmering water bordered by overhanging trees. At one end brilliantly twinkling arches of light have been suspended that blaze in the darkness and are reflected in the still water. Speechless and enchanted I stare at the crystal-clear world full of dotted lines, a vision of luminous radiation that traces a winking and sparkling route leading from bridge to bridge, from arch to arch, from me to my lost soldier.

I grip my father’s hand. ‘Come on,’ I say, ‘let’s have a look. Come on!’

Festoons of light bulbs are hanging wherever we go, like stars stretched across the water, and the people walk past them in silent, admiring rows. The banks of the canal feel as cosy as candle-lit sitting-rooms.

‘Well?’ my father breaks the spell. ‘It’s quite something, isn’t it? In Friesland, you’d never have dreamed that anything like that existed, would you now?’

We take a short cut through dark narrow streets. I can hear dull cracks, sounds that come as a surprise in the dark, as if a sniper were firing at us.

My father starts to run.

‘Hurry, or we’ll be too late.’

An explosion of light spurts up against the black horizon and whirls apart, pink and pale green fountains of confetti that shower down over a brilliant sign standing etched in the sky.

And another shower of stars rains down to the sound of muffled explosions and cheers from the crowd, the sky trembling with the shattering of triumphal arches.

I look at the luminous sign in the sky as if it is a mirage.

‘Daddy, that letter, what’s it for? Why is it there?’ Why did t have to ask, why didn’t I just add my own letters, fulfil my own wishful thinking?

‘That W? You know what that’s for. The W, the W’s for Queen Wilhelmina

I can hear a scornful note in his voice as if he is mocking me.

‘Willy here, Willy there,’ he says, ‘but the whole crew took off to England and left us properly in the lurch.’

I’m not listening, I don’t want to hear what he has to say.

W isn’t Wilhelmina: it stands for Walt! It’s a sign specially for me…

The army has arranged a dance for the neighbourhood. The playground is brightly lit up with floodlights and is chock-full of people, pressed close together up against the fence and listening to a small band seated on the steps of the gym.

I hear the fast rhythm, the seductive, slithering tones, the trumpet raising its strident voice, sounds you cannot escape.

‘Off you go,’ says my father. ‘Liberation happens just once in a lifetime. Mummy and I will be coming to have a look too.’

There is frenzied dancing on an open piece of ground ringed by curious spectators. Most of the men are soldiers.

They hold the women and girls tight, then suddenly thrust them away fast, turn round, catch them on one arm and bend over them with practised ease.

The girls move about on agile, eager legs, turning flashily in time with the music and moulding themselves compliantly to the masterful bodies of their partners.

The few older residents who are dancing do so sedately, moving around carefully with dainty, measured steps, smiling about them politely.

‘Swing’s great, hey?’ Jan is leaning over my shoulder, his mouth close to my ear. ‘See how tight a grip they’ve got on those bits of skirt?’

His body moves in time with the music, and he hums along with delight.

We look at the couples clamped together, the quick bare legs under the short skirts, the firm grip of the soldiers’ arms, the heavy boots moving effortlessly like black, hot-blooded beasts. The heat given off by the dancers transmits itself to us, rousing us.

‘Christ, take a look at that, will you? That sort of thing oughtn’t to be allowed. Look, quick!’ I feel a push and am propelled forward. ‘See her? You keep your eye on her, it won’t be long before she’s walking around with a big belly.’

I admire them, I think they’re exciting; I want to go on looking at them for a long time, the way the two of them dance, the way he puts his arm around her and looks at her.

‘Come on,’ says Jan, ‘let’s go and have a smoke, I know somebody with a packet of Players.’

The soldier spins around like greased lightning, kicking his heels so high that they tap his bottom. He presses the girl hard up against him, his hands on her buttocks as she hangs meekly on to him. They whirl about between the other dancers, disappearing from view and turning up suddenly somewhere else. Whenever he finds enough space the soldier throws the girl up in the air, swings her between his legs as she comes down, sleekly rotates his quick hips and then takes a few long steps, one of his legs thrust out between hers.

In a corner of the playground some boys are sitting on their haunches against the fence, and when Jan joins them I squat down as well. They are smoking with self-important expressions and an appearance of doubtful enjoyment. When the military band strikes up a new tune they snigger and sing along softly so that the bystanders cannot hear them:

They fall about laughing and one of the boys holds the burning cigarette high up between his legs. I look sideways at Jan. Don’t you start laughing now, I plead with him silently, don’t leave me in the lurch, please don’t laugh.

He gives me a broad grin and holds out the cigarette to irye with a friendly gesture. I grin back weakly.

Slowly I climb up our dark stairs. Players, nookie do, the shocking dancing, what a strange world these soldiers live in. None of it has any connection with Walt, even though he held me between his bare legs and pushed his thing into my mouth.

Above me a door is being opened and my mother, who has heard me coming, calls out, ‘You don’t have to walk up in the dark any longer, the electricity’s on again!’

With a click the little light on the stairs comes on.

My mother is singing, and at the word ‘you’ she points Bobbie’s little arm in my direction.

A small present is lying beside my plate, wrapped in thick brown paper. When I open it, I find four exercise books, a pencil sharpener and a small rubber in two colours.

‘The black bit is for rubbing out ink,’ my father explains, ‘the red side is for pencil.’

‘We bought you the exercise books for school, make sure you keep them away from Bobbie. Do you like them?’

I nod. I feel no excitement at all about the present, only vague disappointment and indifference.

The rubber has already disappeared into my brother’s mouth. He is chewing on it and dribbling long threads on to the tray of his high-chair.

‘Tut, tut, tut,’ says my mother, ‘you little piggy, that isn’t a toy for little boys like you. Any moment now, he’ll swallow it.’ She puts the small wet object back on the exercise books. ‘That’s your big brother’s, he’s growing into a smart young man.’

‘Twelve years old today, your first birthday for five years without a war going on! That’s just about the best present of all, isn’t it? Everything’s going to change for the better now.’

My father gives me a serious look. ‘You’re going to have a lovely time from now on, son.’

The sun is slanting into the room and falls across one end of the check tablecloth. I catch the light on the blade of my knife and bounce it back on to the wall. A speck of light jumps across the wallpaper with every movement I make.

‘Twelve is quite an age, you’ll have to do your very best at school now that you’re a big boy.’

I bend the little rubber between my fingers until the ends touch. Why do I have to get bigger? I’d rather stay as I am, if I change Walt won’t recognise me.

‘Ask some friends up to play this afternoon, why don’t you,’ my mother says, ‘I’ll get them something nice to eat.’

The rubber snaps at the join of the two colours. Before they can see anything I hide the two halves in my pocket.

I continue my expeditions. One day I walk through Haarlemmerweg to Central Station, the next day over the Weteringschans to Plantage Middenlaan, and the morning after that across the sands to the Ring Dyke. But I break off that last expedition quickly because everywhere I go in that long overgrown stretch of land with its weeds and tall grasses I come across people lying in the hollows along the dyke, alone or in pairs. There is an inevitable exchange of silent looks, or signs of a rapid change of position, so that, despite the rumours that there is an army camp somewhere along the dyke, I turn around and return to the busy streets.

The morning I pick up the piece of paper with the letters V.B.S. – C.B. on it, I hear my father, who is listening to the radio, suddenly curse softly ‘God help us all…’ I try to catch the announcer’s words. He is saying something about ‘Japan’, ‘American air force’, ‘an unknown number of victims’, but the meaning of it all escapes me. My father is listening attentively. I ask him no questions.

The expeditions into town have begun to exhaust me and I continue them without any real faith. My conviction that I shall find Walt again has worn thin; sometimes I have to jolt my memory to remind myself why I am in the part of town where I happen to be and for what purpose. I walk, I trudge along, I sit on benches, stare at passers-by, look into shops, long to be back home, anything so as not to think about him.

On the Ceintuurbaan I recognise the cinema I went to with my mother a few years back, when the war was still going on.

Dearest children in this hall, Let us sing then, one and all: Tom Puss and Ollie B. Bommel!

I had sung along obediently but my illusions had been shattered. Ollie B. Bommel, I told my mother, was much too thin, his brown suit hanging like a loose skin about his body. And Tom Puss (Tom Puss, Tom Puss, what a darling you are’ – but by then I had stopped singing along) had turned out to be a little creature with a woman’s voice prancing coquettishly about the stage.

I stop on a bridge to watch the fully-laden boats moving towards me down the broad channel and then disappearing beneath me. A boy comes and stands near me and spits into the water. He keeps edging closer to me. When he is right next to me, he says, ‘Want to come and get something to drink with me? There’s nothing much doing round here.’

I am afraid to say no, follow him towards an ice-cream parlour on the other side of the bridge and answer his questions: don’t I have to go to school yet, do I live around here and when do I have to be back home? He is wearing threadbare gym shoes and his hair has been clipped like a soldier’s, short and bristly.

I am flattered that an older boy is bothering with me and paying me so much attention, but the sound of his voice and also the way he keeps scratching the back of his neck as he asks me questions put me off. When I realise that his arm is touching my shoulder I quickly move a bit further away from him.

‘What do you want, an ice-cream or something to drink?’ he asks when we are inside the small ice-cream parlour. ‘I can ask if they have lemonade.’ He looks at my legs which I have stuck awkwardly under my chair, smiles at me conspiratorially and whistles softly through his teeth.

When he is standing at the counter I race out of the shop and run on to the next bridge. A tram labouring up the incline just misses me, clusters of people hanging from the footboards. When the second carriage draws level I run beside it and grab a held-out hand. I balance on the extreme edge of the footboard and clutch the handle, dizzy with fear; I am going to fall, I’ll be lying in the street, Mummy won’t know where I am… My hands hurt and I am afraid they will slip off. Houses pass by at breakneck speed, the man next to me leans more and more heavily against me, but after a little while it begins to get exciting, there is a friendly atmosphere among that tangle of bodies, people joke with each other, shove up obligingly and call out to passers-by. When I finally dare to look out sideways I can see where we are: Kinkerstraat, that was quick, and it didn’t cost anything either!

They have organised a childrens’ party by the canal near our house. I can hear the singing in the distance already. My little neighbours are lined up in long rows at the edge of the pavement, dancing and cheering at the command of a determined young woman. I go and sit on a low wall until a girl runs up to me and puts out her hand.

At first, surly and shamefaced, I refuse to take it, but the woman beckons. ‘Everyone has to join in, this is a party for everyone, no exceptions allowed!’

I join the big circle and see Jan and the boy with the cigarette holding hands with the milkman’s daughter. We hop about singing, changing places, passing from hand to sweaty hand, skip, bow deeply and clap in time with the music.

Mothers are standing on the balconies, looking down on their singing children, mine too, in her yellow dress, my brother on her arm. I wave.

We are twirling about, inside, outside, first to the left, then to the right. I feel the touch of hands, sweep past hot, happy faces, catch girls and boys around their waists and skip about in a circle with them.

In the evening my father sits at the table with a grim expression reading the paper. When he unfolds it I can see the front page: The Truth, it says, and a little further down: ‘Atom Bomb on Hiroshima. Catastrophic Results of U.S. Air Force Raid on Japan.’ I walk into the kitchen. ‘What’s that, Mum, an atom bomb?’

‘Ah, darling,’ she says, ‘I don’t rightly know myself. But it’s nothing for children to bother themselves with. Best not think about it, you’re too small for things like that.’

I have tied my arm to the edge of the bed with a piece of ribbon so that I can’t get up and sleep-walk around the house any more. A gentle breeze billows the curtain, wafting in scents from the garden. I can hear a monotone voice on the radio in another house sending news through the still summer night: ‘According to the latest reports the entire city has been laid waste. Estimates put the number of dead at tens of thousands. A second raid by the U.S. Air Force

What if he is over there, what if he is having to fight in Japan? Where is that, how would I get there? He is lying in his tent with bombs exploding all round him…

The voice on the radio is still reading the news, but I have stopped trying to make out the words.

He is washing at the basin. His strong, supple body, the water running down his legs to the floor. He pulls me towards him and reassures me.

The expedition to the Ceintuubaan is my last.

Chapter 4

‘Your new school is near the centre, quite a long way from home,’ says my father. ‘If it’s too far I can give you the tram fare now and then.’

He is shaving in the kitchen, his head held stiffly backwards and his eyes fixed on his image in the mirror. His arm moves steadily, surely and unhesitatingly as he strokes the finely-honed cut-throat razor up and down. If he had any idea how much walking I had done this summer, my criss-crossing of the city, my certainty that sooner or later I would rediscover those eyes, that smell, that breath. The razor scrapes across his face collecting thick blobs of soap as the naked skin over his jaw is laid bare strip by strip.

‘It won’t be too bad,’ I tell him, ‘the school in Friesland was a long way, too, probably a bit further.’

It’s still early. I eat my sandwich and listen to the rustling of the trees in the garden. My little brother starts to bawl in the living-room, his screams disturbing our relaxed mood. A moment later my mother comes into the kitchen looking harassed, holding out a plate with a sandwich cut into four cubes.

‘He’s driving me mad, he won’t eat a bite. I can’t get anything down him.’ I look at her desperate and tired face. She runs her hands nervously over her temples and puts a kettle on the gas stove.

‘Don’t always let it get you down so.’ My father’s voice is distorted by the strange way he has to twist his head round. ‘He’ll eat soon enough when he gets hungry. Just leave him be.’

I take a deep breath and think of my new school. The smell of the shaving-soap is clean and pleasant. The small voice in the living-room continues to scream furiously and I think of my mother when she sat in the meadow, hidden deep among the buttercups and plumes of grass, relishing the peace and quiet.

I leave home half an hour after my father, my satchel heavy with all the new books: First Year Algebra, New Dutch Writing and English for Beginners.

I am wearing shoes that have been polished so thoroughly that they look brand-new, but they are too small for me and hurt. The plus-fours have been brought out again and my mother has knotted a shiny tie over the shirt with the little pocket.

‘Just for the first day,’ she had said, ‘so you can make a good impression.’

When I had seen myself in the mirror I had looked away quickly. Was that me? The sheltered days of the White School were gone for good. For a moment it seemed that the heavy satchel and the uncomfortable shoes were going to make me lose my balance on the stairs. I had clutched the banister and carried on downwards, stepping cautiously.

Now, at the corner of the street, I glance back. My mother waves to me with a girlish gesture from behind bright red geraniums. I can see how proud she is of me, her son who is now going to attend Class 6A, and after that presumably the High School. When I have rounded the corner I am tempted to go back to see if she is still standing there, to etch the sight indelibly on my memory.

Everywhere there are cyclists going to work and small groups of children sporting satchels and walking in various directions through the streets. It feels chilly, and on Admiraal de Ruyterweg I take the sunny side of the street, changing the satchel constantly from one hand to the other. As I cross the bridge in De Clerqstraat I see a car, an army car, coming slowly in my direction along the embankment. It stops at every side street as if the driver isn’t quite sure where he is going. I stand still.

Have I got time? Can I hang on here?

Quickly I cross the bridge and, leaning far out over the water, stare intently at the car as it creeps closer like a whirring beetle. The sun is dazzling on the windscreen so that I can hardly make out the man behind the wheel clearly, but the elbow hanging out of the window looks familiar and it seems to me that the moving smudge that is his head is sandy-blond and close-cropped.

Blood rushes to my head: it’s him, it’s Walt! I can see everything clearly now: the white tee-shirt with a strong, sun-burnt arm in the short sleeve, the watch, and the car too, they are all the same. I am paralysed; what now? The car stops and some children come scampering past. What time is it? The car is moving again. He’ll be here any second…

I look at my shoes sticking through the bars of the bridge, stiff and shiny. And at the plus-fours. I remember my image in the mirror and feel ashamed, Walt will find the knickerbockers odd – he has only ever seen me in old clogs and a threadbare pair of shorts. I quickly pull off the tie, crumple it into my pocket and undo the top buttons of my shirt. I would dearly love to run back home and put on my shorts, so as to look the way I used to. I walk off the bridge and go and stand on the edge of the pavement. The car is just a block away now, what should I do, run towards it? I start to run but quickly turn round again: he might easily drive past me, I had better stay where I am on the corner. People bump into me and a cyclist swears in my direction.

He’s coming, really close, there, he’s coming. I swallow, put my satchel down and pick it up again. Thank You, God, for helping me. All that praying in bed was not for nothing.

The sound of the horn, for me? Has he seen me already? What shall I do if he asks me to get in, say yes?

I can hear the purr of the engine close to me, and a dark shape edges into my field of vision. Of course I’ll go along with him, miss the first day of school, I’ll think later about what to tell them at home.

A soldier with a small moustache looks vacantly at me out of the window for a moment, a match wiggling between his teeth. He casts a bored look down De Clerqstraat, then shrugs a shoulder. The engine speeds up audibly, there is a penetrating stench of exhaust fumes and I am left standing in the bright light again. The tram rails shine in the sun, a twisting ribbon up the road.

I run all the way to school.

In front of the school there is a large sandpit surrounded by a high fence made up of metal spikes and scrolls. Inside, some children are playing with buckets and spades and little wheelbarrows under the watchful eyes of their patiently seated mothers.

Between the fence and the canal a narrow path beside the sandpit leads to the school. I run down it as fast as I can so as to get there before they shut the doors. My shadow speeds along next to me, deformed by the hills and holes dug in the sand and bisected by the iron bars of the fence.

I join up with the assembled group of children, allow myself to be borne inside along with the neatly ironed dresses and freshly laundered shirts, listen to the headmaster’s address, give my name, am assigned to a class, attach myself to a group, walk up a wide flight of stone stairs, go into a classroom and sit where shown at a desk next to another boy.

‘Hullo.’

‘Hello.’

‘Good morning, boys and girls… books on the desk… by tomorrow they must all be neatly covered… preparation for playing your part in society… discipline… hard work

I listen to the flood of words, then obediently bring out a book, open it and look at the figures, signs and formulas. I feel dizzy and slow-witted and bend feebly over the letters: A is to C as B is to A.

‘That boy over there, yes, you.’ I quickly put on a knowing, intelligent expression, but blush hopelessly. ‘You look as if you’d seen a cow in a pair of knickers flying over the chimney. Didn’t they teach you to count beyond ten at your last school, you ninny?’

The class sniggers politely.

The words and the tone in which they are said cut right through me, I have never been rebuked with such scorn before. My throat tightens and I start to splutter and cough. The boy beside me snatches his books away. Will I have to put up with this sort of thing for a whole year? I remain in a state of confusion until an older lady comes in to relieve the first teacher.

‘The English language, boys and girls,’ she says, ‘is one all of us can of course use to good effect these days. I take it that some of you are familiar with quite a few English expressions. Is there anybody, for instance, who hasn’t yet spoken to one of our liberators?’ A few arms go up, all of them girls’. Before I know what I am doing I have raised my hand as well.

She starts reading out sentences from English for Beginners and tells us to say them aloud as she writes the words up on the blackboard. I look at her face, the curly grey hair, the calm grey eyes above the dark blue jumper.

‘My name is Mister Brown. This is my house and that is my wife.’

She pronounces the words with exaggerated emphasis, pausing between each one. With droning, sing-song voices we repeat them after her, sentence after sentence. The sounds I make become lost in the general chorus.

‘My name is Mister Brown. This is my house and that is my wife… Say it: Walt… I work in the city… Is okay, no problem… She works in the kitchen… Hold it, yes, move. Goon… Time is going fast. In the evening I come home… Faster, don’t stop, come on… My wife holds my hat… We sit at the table… Oh, is good, is good… We drink tea with a biscuit… Baby, I love you. Come on, smile.’

They all rushed out in front of me and I let them pass. I waited until the corridor was empty and only then did I leave.

I walk past the iron fence. The spikes stab the air and mark out the path. The shadows over the sand have gone and most of the playing children are back home.

The sky is overcast, suddenly the city looks drab and inaccessible. I stop for a moment at the De Clerqstraat crossroads. In the distance I can see my classmates disappearing, all hurrying home as fast as they can.

I hesitate. What am I going to do?

A tram goes by, boys from my class are hanging on and leaning out from the footboard, yelling and swinging their satchels daringly. I watch the tram undulating over the humps of the bridge and on down the empty street.

My name is Mister Brown. This is my house… I feel a few drops of rain and button up my shirt. Carry on walking, now.

…and that is my wife…

Modern Day

I put all the papers scattered over the table to one side, and push the plate I have filled in the kitchen into the space I have made. Mustn’t make a mess.

Leaning on one elbow I read some more in the book I happened to pick up yesterday. But I am disappointed, I cannot recapture the impression it made on me years ago. Even so, I read on in the hope that the sense of excitement and admiration I felt at the time might return.

I pour out a little stale wine and swallow my food mechanically. ‘Don’t eat with your chin in your hands all the time,’ I can still hear her say. Time after time I had bent over a book in the middle of lunch, cramming bread into my mouth absent-mindedly. When my mother finally snatched the book away I would rebelliously turn the jampot or the box of sugared caraway seeds round and round to read and re-read the labels.

After five minutes, or a quarter of an hour – how much time has gone by? – I notice that I have read two pages without taking in anything at all, just a blur of isolated words without meaning or connection. I push my plate away. Almost six o’clock. There is to be a talk on the local radio to which I want to listen. I turn the small set on and re-read a few pages of the book. The announcer says that tomorrow it will be thirty-five years since the Allies liberated the Netherlands.

‘At the invitation of Amsterdam City Council a group of Canadian veterans are visiting the capital. A few hours ago they were welcomed by a small but enthusiastic reception committee at Schiphol airport. Tonight they will be attending a dinner in the Royal Palace on the Dam, where tomorrow there will be a wreath-laying ceremony in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix.’

I close the book, turn the radio off and go to the window. Across the street I can see a mountain of refuse bags. A woman is neurotically washing every speck from her car parked outside my door. Every so often she inspects the result from a distance and then flings herself back tight-lipped at the same spot.

A flag is hanging outside the hotel. I try to remember if it is there all the time or has been put out specially for the occasion.

Canadians, liberators, Her Majesty, the Royal Palace on the Dam, how often have I heard these words before without the slightest reaction? It is like the book, I read it and nothing in it gets through to me.

For the first two years after the war I commemorated the liberation frenziedly, every single day. Obsessed, like a maniac. Prayer sesions, offerings, supplications, solemn promises – all in the privacy of my small room. For two years I tried to remember features, smells, excitement, fear. Then it all faded away, a slow erosion that went hand in hand with bouts of self-reproach and dejected, silent withdrawal into myself.

‘It’s puberty, all boys that age act like that,’ I heard a relative say to my parents.

I went to school and learnt thing, by rote, then found my vocation and became completely immersed in it. Or had I deliberately buried myself in it?

I made my choice and set to with a vengeance, I tell myself testily.

Until eight o’clock I carry on reading the book that leaves me so cold, then I switch on the television: I want to see those Canadians.

A bus crash, a summit conference. Then: Schiphol, a small group of people crowded in front of a glass partition. The mayor. I get up because the telephone rings.

‘Hello, Govert. No, give me a ring a bit later, I’m busy with something right now.’

By the time I am back sitting down the Canadians are driving through the city on a tank. I see a group of greying men in uniform riding over the Rokin, smiling broadly. The heroes of yesterday. Their ungainly stoutness is emphasised by their uniforms. They have pinned decorations to their jackets. I catch myself looking at them compassionately. They have friendly, blank expressions, ordinary men of the kind you might see on a tram, or in a doctor’s waiting room. Ageing men in their sixties.

Extracts from old newsreels are shown. Pictures I have often seen: soldiers ploughing through the surf, crawling up beaches. The tumult of the sea and the explosions. Boats that are only just under control. I see trenches filled with maimed or dismembered bodies, the black fury of young, driven faces. Then the endless field of white crosses. The madness to which we fall prey time after time after time. What is wrong with us?

When I think back to those days I see myself sitting beside a lean, young soldier in an army car, accepting chewing-gum from a firm hand and inhaling the metallic smell of uncertainty during embraces and contacts I did not want and yet longed for like one possessed. The screen is showing the reception outside the Palace. I kneel on the floor and go and sit right in front of the set to get a closer view of the soldiers. The wrinkles, the bags under their eyes, the folds bulging over the collars of their stiff uniforms.

They aren’t completely bald yet, I think. Why am I dissecting them so mercilessly? Why do I feel so detached from something that swept me off my feet years ago into a state of such excitement?

The army band strikes up some patriotic songs. There they stand, the lost soldiers. A few final flamboyant chords and it is all over. The small crowd disperses, and the veterans disappear into a waiting bus.

A pigeon is cooing outside and picking buds off the hawthorn. Whenever I think of the soldier I still see him as a boy and myself as a child. We have remained as we were, the time in between does not exist. He has nothing to do with the group of men I have just seen leave on the bus.

I sit beside my mother in the boat and watch Friesland disappear and Amsterdam come into view on the other side. I hang over the railing with Jan and look at the eddying water. A warm, carefree day it was, with blue skies and mothers in summer dresses. We had a calm and trouble-free crossing from Friesland to Amsterdam. A detached moment in my life.

I go upstairs and lie down on my bed. The ceiling is a large, pale smudge. Outside, a tram stops with a clang and pulls away again. Summer evening noises, the curtain gently billowing in front of the open window. The soldier leans across me and tucks a letter away in the side pocket of the tent. The naked underside of his body curving upwards, the voluptuous shape, the triumphal arch, has been etched into my memory. For good, ineradicably.

The telephone.

Naked I walk down the stairs and look at my body: the soldier stepping hastily off the rocks and into the sea, caught out.

‘Yes, Govert,’ I say, ‘sorry, but better not come round tonight. I think I’m going to turn in early for once, I’m dead beat.’

Back in bed I make myself come, the soldier is doing drill with a boy, enervating exercises to develop their endurance.

The Canadians are sitting down to dinner now in the Palace. What do they remember, what are they thinking of? And of whom? Or have they stopped thinking, have all the details become blurred?

Are events that were highlights for us trifles for them in a gigantic, heroic whole?

Are you alive, do you still exist?

The idea that you might have died strikes me suddenly as absurd, unthinkable. You can’t possibly have disappeared for good before we have looked each other in the eye just one more time, wondering together or perhaps smiling together as we reconsider our strange encounter.

When I was small – yes, that time, during the war – it was simple: I saw all of you sitting there, the minister’s wife, my mother and you, on a large grey bench. Like statues, staring fixedly into the void. I could read eternity in your eyes.

How simple it was then to walk up to you, to watch you move up and make room for me on that bench and to wait for the moment – and I felt sure that moment would come -when you would silently place your hand on my knee.

I rub my body dry as I used to dry my tears.