The Assault (3 page)

Anton stood in the front of the crowd and, under Bos’s arm, stared at the back of the boy in the empty room. Then, slowly, Fake turned around and looked him straight in the eyes. All at once Anton was overcome by a pity for him such as he had never felt for anyone. How could Fake possibly go home, with that father of his? Before he knew what he was doing, Anton dove under Mr. Bos’s arm and sat down at his desk. This broke down the general resistance of the others. After school the principal stood waiting for him in the hall, caught him briefly by the arm, and whispered that he had probably saved Mr. Bos’s life. Anton didn’t quite know what to do with this compliment. He never told anyone at home about it, and the incident was never mentioned again.

The body in the gutter. The wheel had stopped turning. Above, the amazing starry sky. His eyes were used to the darkness now, and he could see ten times better than before. Orion lifting his sword, the Milky Way, one brilliant, shiny planet, probably Jupiter—not in centuries had Holland’s
skies been this clear. On the horizon two slowly moving searchlights crossed each other and fanned out, but no plane could be heard. He noticed that he was still holding one of the dice in his hand and put it in his pocket.

As he was about to move away from the window, he saw Mr. Korteweg come out of his house, followed by Karin. Korteweg picked Ploeg up by the shoulders, Karin by the boots, and together they began dragging him through the snow, Karin walking backwards.

“Look at that,” said Anton.

His mother and Peter were just in time to see them deposit the body in front of Carefree. Karin and Korteweg ran back. Karin threw Ploeg’s cap, which had fallen off, onto his body. Her father moved the bicycle to the road in front of Carefree. The next moment they had disappeared into Home at Last.

Everyone was speechless in the bay window at the Steenwijks’. The quay was once more deserted, everything was as quiet as it had been, yet everything had changed. The dead man now lay with his arms above his head, the right hand clasping a gun, the long coat gathered at the waist, as if Ploeg had fallen from a great height. Now Anton clearly recognized the large face, its hair slicked down and brushed back, practically undisturbed.

“God dammit!” screamed Peter suddenly, his voice breaking.

“Hey, hey, watch it,” came Steenwijk’s voice from the darkness of the back room. He was still sitting at the table.

“They put him down in front of our house, the bastards!” Peter cried. “Jesus Christ! We’ve got to get him out of here before the Krauts come.”

“Don’t get involved,” said Mrs. Steenwijk. “We had nothing to do with it.”

“No, except that now he’s lying in front of our door! Why do you suppose they did that? Because the Krauts are going to retaliate, of course. Just like before, at the Leidse Canal.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong, Peter.”

“As if they care! You’re dealing with Krauts.” He left the room. “Come on Anton, hurry; you and I can do it.”

“Are you crazy?” Mrs. Steenwijk cried. She choked, cleared her throat, and spat out the clove. “What do you want to do?”

“Put him back—or at Mrs. Beumer’s.”

“At Mrs. Beumer’s? How can you think of such a thing?”

“Why not at Mrs. Beumer’s? Mrs. Beumer had nothing to do with it either! If only the river weren’t frozen … We’ll see what we can do.”

“No you don’t!”

Mrs. Steenwijk rushed out of the room. In the dim light that fell through the transom into the front hall, Anton saw that his mother had posted herself in front of the door; Peter was trying to push her aside. He heard her turn the key as she called, “Willem, why don’t you say something?”

“Yes … yes …” Anton heard his father’s voice, still in the back room. “I …”

In the distance, shots rang out again.

“If he’d been hit a few seconds later, he’d be lying at Mrs. Beumer’s now,” called Peter.

“Yes …” said Steenwijk softly, his voice breaking in an odd way, “But that is not the case.”

“Not the case! It wasn’t the case that he was lying here, either, but now it
is
the case!” Peter said suddenly, “In fact, I’m going to take him back. I’ll just do it alone.”

He turned to run toward the kitchen door, but with a cry of pain tripped over the pile of logs and branches from the last trees his mother had chopped down in the empty lots.

“Peter, for God’s sake!” cried Mrs. Steenwijk. “You’re playing with your life!”

“That’s exactly what
you’re
doing, dammit.”

Before Peter could pick himself up, Anton turned the key in the kitchen door and threw it into the hall, where it clattered
and became invisible; then he ran to the front door and did the same with the house key.

“God dammit,” cried Peter, almost in tears. “You’re stupid, stupid, all of you.”

He went to the back room, tore aside the curtains, and with his good foot pushed against the french doors. They burst open with a crash, sending strips of paper insulation flying, and suddenly Anton saw his father’s silhouette outlined against the snow. He was still sitting at the table.

As Peter disappeared into the garden, Anton ran back to the bay window. He saw his brother appear limping around the house, climb over the fence, and grip Ploeg by the boots. At that moment he seemed to hesitate, perhaps because of all the blood, perhaps because he couldn’t decide which direction to take. But before he could do anything, shouts echoed at the end of the quay.

“Halt! Stand still! Hands up!”

Three men approached, bicycling hard. They threw their bikes down on the street and began running. Peter dropped Ploeg’s legs, pulled the gun out of Ploeg’s hand, ran without limping to the Kortewegs’ fence, and disappeared behind their house. The men screamed at each other. One of them, wearing a cap and an overcoat, took a shot at Peter and chased after him.

Anton felt his mother’s warmth beside him.

“What was that? Are they shooting at Peter? Where is he?”

“Out in back.”

With wide eyes Anton watched everything. The second man, who wore a Military Police uniform, ran back to his bicycle, jumped on, and rode away at full speed. The third, who was in civilian clothes, slid down the other side of the embankment and crouched on the towpath, holding a gun with both hands.

Anton dove below the windowsill and turned around. His
mother had disappeared. At the table the silhouette of his father was a little more bent than before, as if he were praying. Then Anton heard his mother, in the backyard, whisper Peter’s name into the night. It was as if the cold which now streamed into the house emanated from her back. There was no further sound. Anton saw and heard everything, but somehow he was no longer quite there. One part of him was already somewhere else, or nowhere at all. He was undernourished, and stiff now with cold, but that wasn’t all. This moment—his father cut out in black against the snow, his mother outside on the terrace under the starlight—became eternal, detached itself from all that had come before and all that would follow. It became part of him and began its journey through the rest of his life, until finally it would explode like a soap bubble, after which it might as well never have happened.

His mother came in.

“Tonny? Where are you? Do you see him?”

“No.”

“What should we do? Perhaps he’s hiding somewhere.” Agitated, she walked outside again and then came back. Suddenly she went to her husband and pulled at his shoulders.

“Will you ever wake up? They’re shooting at Peter! Perhaps he’s been hit already.”

Slowly Steenwijk stood up. Without a word, tall and thin, he left the room. A moment later he returned wearing a scarf and his black bowler hat. As he was about to enter the garden from the terrace, he drew back. Anton could hear that he was trying to call Peter’s name, but only a hoarse sound came out. Defeated, he turned back. He came in and went to sit, trembling, on the chair next to the stove. After a few moments he said, “Please forgive me, Thea … forgive me …” Mrs. Steenwijk’s hands wrestled with each other.

“Everything has gone so well until now, and now, at the
end … Anton, put on your coat. Oh God, where can that boy be?”

“Perhaps he went into the Kortewegs’,” said Anton. “He took Ploeg’s gun.”

From the silence which followed his words he understood that this was something terrible.

“Did you really see that?”

“Just as those men came … Like this … as he ran away …”

In the soft, powdery light which now hung about the rooms, he acted out a short sprint and, leaning over, pulled an imaginary pistol out of an imaginary hand.

“You don’t suppose he …” Mrs. Steenwijk caught her breath. “I’m going to Korteweg’s right now.”

She started to run into the garden, but Anton followed and said, “Watch out! There’s another man out there somewhere.”

As her husband had done before her, she drew back from the freezing silence. Nothing stirred. There was the garden, and beyond it the barren, snow-covered lots. Anton too stood motionless. Everything was still—and yet time went by. It was as if everything grew radiant with the passage of time, like pebbles at the bottom of a brook. Peter had disappeared, a corpse lay in front of the door, and all about them the armed men remained motionless. Anton had the feeling that by doing something which was within his power but which he could not quite think of, he could undo everything and return to the way they had been before, sitting around the table playing a game. It was as if he had forgotten a name remembered a hundred times before and now on the tip of his tongue, but the harder he tried to recall it, the more elusive it became. Or it was like the time when he had suddenly realized that he was breathing in and out continuously and must make sure to keep doing it or else suffocate—and at that moment he almost did suffocate.

Motorcycles sounded in the distance; also, he heard the noise of a car.

“Come in, Mama,” said Anton.

“Yes … I’ll close the doors.”

He could tell from her voice that she stood on the edge of something she could not master. It seemed as if he was the only one who kept his wits, and that, of course, was as it should be, for a future aviator. In the Air Force difficult situations might also arise: at the eye of a cyclone, for instance, the wind is calm and the sun shines, but the pilot must fly out into the turmoil of weather, or else he’ll run out of fuel and be lost.

Now the motorcycles and the car could be heard out front on the quay, while more cars—heavier ones—seemed to be approaching in the distance. So far, everything was still all right; nothing had changed, really—except of course that Peter had disappeared. How could anything really change?

Then there it was. Squeaking tires, shouting in German, the iron clatter of boots jumping onto the street. Now and then a bright light flashed through the split between the curtains. Anton tiptoed to the bay window. Everywhere soldiers with rifles and machine guns, motorcycles coming and going, trucks with still more soldiers; a military ambulance out of which a stretcher was being pulled. Suddenly he yanked the curtains closed and turned around.

“Here they are,” he said into the darkness. At that moment there was a banging on the door, so unnecessarily loud, with the butt of a rifle, that he knew something terrible was about to happen.

“
Aufmachen
! Open at once!”

Involuntarily he fled to the back room. His mother went into the hall and called out with a trembling voice that the key was lost. But already the door was being broken down and slammed against the wall. Anton heard the mirror shatter, the one with the two carved elephants over the little side
table with the twisted legs. Suddenly the hall and rooms were filled with armed men in helmets, wrapped in ice-cold air, all much too large for his mother and father’s house. Already it was no longer theirs. Blinded by a lantern, Anton lifted one arm to his eyes. From beneath it he could see the shiny badge of the Field Police, and hanging from a belt, the elongated container of a gas mask, and boots caked with snow. A man in civilian dress entered the room. He wore a long black leather coat down to his ankles and on his head a hat with a lowered brim.

“
Papiere
, papers,
vorzeigen
!” he shouted. “
Schnell
, quick, all your papers, everything.”

Steenwijk stood up and opened a drawer in the dresser, while his wife said: “We had nothing to do with all this.”

“
Schweigen Sie
, silence!” snapped the man. He stood by the table and with the nail of his index finger flipped shut the book that Steenwijk had been reading. “
Ethica,
” he read on the cover, “
More Geometrico Demonstrata. Benedictus de Spinoza
. Ach so!” He looked up. “That’s what you people read here; Jew books.” And then to Mrs. Steenwijk, “Just take a few steps up and down.”

“What should I do?”

“Walk back and forth! Do you have shit in your ears?”

Anton saw his mother trembling all over as she paced up and down with the puzzled expression of a child. The man aimed the flashlight, held by the soldier next to him, at her legs.

“
Das genugt
, enough,” he said after a while. Not till much later when he was in college did Anton learn that the man thought he could tell by her walk whether she was Jewish.

Steenwijk stood with the papers in his hand. “
Ich …
”

“You might take off your hat when you talk to me.”

Steenwijk took off his bowler hat and repeated, “I …”

“Keep your mouth shut, you pig Jew-lover.” The man studied the identity papers and ration cards, then looked about him.

“Where is the fourth?”

Mrs. Steenwijk tried to say something, but it was her husband who spoke.

“My oldest son,” he began with a trembling voice, “confused by this dreadful accident, has rushed out of the parental home without taking his leave, and he went in that direction.” With his hat he pointed in the direction of Hideaway, where the Beumers lived.

“So,” said the German, shoving the papers into his pocket. “He rushed out, did he?”

“Yes indeed.”

The man made a gesture with the head. “
Abführen
. Take them away.”