glimpses—as when he looked out of the window in school, or out of the rear platform on the trolley car—a dark region of cold and hunger and shooting, blood, flames, shouts, prison cells, hermetically sealed somewhere deep inside him. At such moments it was if he remembered a dream, but not so much what the dream had been about, as simply the fact that it had been a nightmare. Yet at the core of that hermetic darkness now and then flashed a single source of blinding light: the fingertips of the girl caressing his face. Whether she had had anything to do with the assault, and what had happened to her, he did not know. He had no desire to know.
He finished the gymnasium as a fair to middling student and went on to medical school. By then a lot had been published about the Occupation, but he didn’t bother to read any of it, or any of the novels and stories about those days. Nor did he go to the State Institute for War Information, where he might have found out all that was known about the death of Fake Ploeg, and exactly how Peter had met his death. The family of which he had been a member had been exterminated once and for all; it was enough to be aware of this. All he knew was that the assault had never been brought to trial, for in that case he would have been questioned.
And the German man with the scar in the long coat had never been tracked down. (But perhaps he had already been removed by the Gestapo. Never mind; he is the least importantcharacter in this drama.) He must have acted more or less on his own initiative. To set houses on fire in places where Nazis had been shot was not unusual, but to execute the inhabitants as well—that kind of terror had been practiced only in Poland and Russia. In those countries, however, Anton would have been killed too, even if he had still been in the cradle.
2
But things don’t vanish all that easily. In September, 1952, while he was in his second year of medical school, a fellow student invited him to a birthday party in Haarlem. He had not been back since he left seven years before with the German convoy. At first he didn’t plan to go, yet all day he kept thinking about it. Suddenly after lunch he grabbed a novel by a young Haarlem writer that would do for a present, though he had actually meant to read it himself, and took the trolley to the station. He felt like someone going to a whorehouse for the first time.
Beyond the sandy embankment, the train passed under a huge steel pipe that was vomiting a thick, steel-gray mud onto the former peat diggings on the other side of the street. The burned-out truck had been removed. He watched the traffic on the street, his chin resting in the palm of his hand. The trolley too was running again. As he passed Halfweg he saw the silhouette of Haarlem, still very much the way Ruysdael painted it—although in those days there were woods and fields where laundry lay bleaching, where Anton’s house later stood. But the sky was the same: massive Alps of clouds with beams of light leaning against them. What he saw was not just any city like so many others in the world. It was as different as he himself was from other people.
Anyone watching him sitting on the pale wooden bench in third class, peering out of the compartment window of a train confiscated from the Reichsbahn, would see a twenty-year-old with sleek, dark hair that kept falling over his forehead, which he would toss back with a brief movement of the head. For some reason this gesture was attractive, perhaps because it was repeated so often that it implied a certain amount of patience. He had dark eyebrows and a smooth, nut-colored complexion, somewhat darker around the eyes. He wore gray slacks, a heavy blue blazer, a club tie, and a shirt whose pointed collar tips turned upward. The smoke that he blew with pursed lips at the windowpane clung to the glass in a thin mist for a moment.
He took the trolley to his friend’s house. The friend too lived in Haarlem South, but
He finished the gymnasium as a fair to middling student and went on to medical school. By then a lot had been published about the Occupation, but he didn’t bother to read any of it, or any of the novels and stories about those days. Nor did he go to the State Institute for War Information, where he might have found out all that was known about the death of Fake Ploeg, and exactly how Peter had met his death. The family of which he had been a member had been exterminated once and for all; it was enough to be aware of this. All he knew was that the assault had never been brought to trial, for in that case he would have been questioned.
And the German man with the scar in the long coat had never been tracked down. (But perhaps he had already been removed by the Gestapo. Never mind; he is the least importantcharacter in this drama.) He must have acted more or less on his own initiative. To set houses on fire in places where Nazis had been shot was not unusual, but to execute the inhabitants as well—that kind of terror had been practiced only in Poland and Russia. In those countries, however, Anton would have been killed too, even if he had still been in the cradle.
2
But things don’t vanish all that easily. In September, 1952, while he was in his second year of medical school, a fellow student invited him to a birthday party in Haarlem. He had not been back since he left seven years before with the German convoy. At first he didn’t plan to go, yet all day he kept thinking about it. Suddenly after lunch he grabbed a novel by a young Haarlem writer that would do for a present, though he had actually meant to read it himself, and took the trolley to the station. He felt like someone going to a whorehouse for the first time.
Beyond the sandy embankment, the train passed under a huge steel pipe that was vomiting a thick, steel-gray mud onto the former peat diggings on the other side of the street. The burned-out truck had been removed. He watched the traffic on the street, his chin resting in the palm of his hand. The trolley too was running again. As he passed Halfweg he saw the silhouette of Haarlem, still very much the way Ruysdael painted it—although in those days there were woods and fields where laundry lay bleaching, where Anton’s house later stood. But the sky was the same: massive Alps of clouds with beams of light leaning against them. What he saw was not just any city like so many others in the world. It was as different as he himself was from other people.
Anyone watching him sitting on the pale wooden bench in third class, peering out of the compartment window of a train confiscated from the Reichsbahn, would see a twenty-year-old with sleek, dark hair that kept falling over his forehead, which he would toss back with a brief movement of the head. For some reason this gesture was attractive, perhaps because it was repeated so often that it implied a certain amount of patience. He had dark eyebrows and a smooth, nut-colored complexion, somewhat darker around the eyes. He wore gray slacks, a heavy blue blazer, a club tie, and a shirt whose pointed collar tips turned upward. The smoke that he blew with pursed lips at the windowpane clung to the glass in a thin mist for a moment.
He took the trolley to his friend’s house. The friend too lived in Haarlem South, but
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