Fall, Bomb, Fall, page 3
Karel Ruis stood on the balcony without moving; bags under his eyes and an unwashed face, a boy of seventeen, who had got overexcited and hadn’t slept enough. He pictured a map of the country. The map of my fatherland, he thought, a grassy green map. Germany, our eastern neighbour, is pale pink. How does that work, crossing a border? What does it look like? There’s a border crossing with two barriers, one red-and-white one, the other red and black, I think, and a strip of no-man’s-land between them and on either side, two sentry posts. There are two soldiers in those little watchhouses, they’re wearing long coats and have rifles balanced upright at their feet. One of them has bound his lower legs in green strips of cloth, the other is wearing ankle-high boots. One Dutch soldier, one German soldier. They can see each other standing there. But now the Germans cross our border. Do they take that same route then? Do they drive right through the red-and-white barrier in an armoured car, after shooting the Dutch soldier? Is he suddenly shot down by his fellow from fifty feet away, whom he regularly ran into on his patrol and maybe said Guten Abend to sometimes? Alright, so they cross the border in one of those armoured cars and after that the soldiers get into that infantryman position where they’re leaning forward, fingers on triggers. So they do all this quietly or do they make a lot of noise? Those armoured cars chug quite loudly, of course. This is likely to alert the Dutch soldiers lying in position a little further along. Others are asleep in their beds in requisitioned houses. Suddenly the sirens go off. The Germans are at the door, and then you have to calmly bind those strips around your legs. Some buttons are pressed and bombs fall on the roads and a couple of bridges explode into the air. They carry out their assigned task. And this happens in other places, too, of course. Everywhere Germans are crossing that red dotted line between pale pink and grassy green, not just on the roads, but often in the woods or fields. They creep through the cornfields, their helmets pulled down over their eyes like sun visors.
‘Only to the east of Arnhem, around fifteen kilometres from the Dutch–German border, have the Germans advanced as far as the IJssel…’
‘To all intents and appearances, my wish has come true,’ Karel slowly told himself. Slowly, as though he had trouble formulating this absurd observation that had been reverberating at the back of his mind for some time, trouble formulating it in reasonable language without doing himself harm. War has come, he thought. The dictator is standing on his balcony, resting his fists on the balustrade. Yesterday afternoon, two steps behind him at his desk, he issued a series of death sentences, without defence or witnesses, solely on the grounds of moral certainty. Today the executions will begin.
He stared nervously at the planes which were still flying over in orderly constellations, paying no heed to the sparse puffs of smoke that tried in vain to sow confusion in their more advanced mathematics.
What was he going to do with Uncle Robert’s letter now? he thought, but this was immediately subsumed by a new thought: It’s good to have a fatherland. And then, apparently as a musical accompaniment to the news on the radio, somebody began to hammer out the national anthem on the piano, the music reverberating with copious pedal work and baroque embellishments. The notes leaped into the houses like saluting soldiers. The people on the street and the balconies stood up straight. Some men tipped their hats.
Their ironic neighbour had also appeared on his balcony.
‘Guten Morgen,’ he joked to Karel. ‘It has come to this – esist so weit.’ He smiled grimly. He was a small, crumpled man. ‘The English will be here soon,’ he said. ‘It will be alright. Where is your father though?’
‘He’s asleep,’ said Karel.
‘Good lord,’ said the neighbour, ‘Mr Ruis is asleep.’ He began to sing a German lullaby in a mocking tone, ‘Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein…’
5
The sitting room was still filled with the ridiculous air of peacetime. Karel’s parents appeared unusually early, at half past seven that morning. They roamed around the room uneasily. His father’s brick-red jaw was clean-shaven. He took an atlas from the bookshelf and searched for place names, which his sons read out loud in turn, like passwords. ‘Only a hundred kilometres from here,’ he sniffed and started pacing back and forth. Mrs Ruis sat down on the sofa, her hands idle on her knees, a duster on her lap. Her thin hair fell in waves onto her forehead. She gazed around in astonishment. Her husband sat down next to her and now the two parents sat side by side on the sofa, reading the morning newspaper with dejected expressions on their faces.
‘All educational establishments will be closed until further notice,’ Mrs Ruis said. ‘Parents are requested to keep their children at home.’
Breakfast was something of an event, since it was rare for the whole family to sit down to it together. It might happen on a very special occasion like a birthday or before they set off on holiday.
This was a meal that should be preceded by a prayer, thought Karel, or at any rate some words of encouragement. He looked at his father. His father said, ‘The Germans are strong. They’re incredibly strong.’ In his absent-mindedness he didn’t put slivers of cheese on his bread but extra-thick slices. He got up to leave for the office and kissed his wife on her pale ears, first a cautious kiss on the left one, then a cautious kiss on the right. Their children watched in silence. He said, ‘I’ll be home soon, Cora. You all must be brave.’ After that he shook his children by the hand, one by one. Karel was last.
You all must be brave, the boy repeated to himself. The room was perfectly quiet. He looked at the breakfast table laid with cheese, jam, spiced bread, the teacups. The balcony doors were still open. Outside spring was steaming, the milkman was serving his customers and a flower-seller was loudly extolling his potted ferns.
Karel’s brother said, ‘I’m off to join the home guard. There was an appeal for volunteers in the paper. I want to do something. I want to do something at least, otherwise I’ll go mad.’
He wants to do something, thought Karel, but last year he didn’t eat or sleep for almost a whole week so that he’d be turned down for military service. And he managed it, but now he wants to do something otherwise he’ll go mad. Karel saw his father disappearing into the distance, a man with long sticks for legs and an attaché case.
Not long afterwards, Karel left the house too. ‘I’m going to see whether anything’s happening at school,’ he told his mother. But once outdoors, he headed towards the city centre. In his pocket he had the ten-guilder note as well as Uncle Robert’s note for Mrs Mexocos. He didn’t take the tram but ambled through the busy shopping streets. He divided his immediate attention between all the alluring girls he came across and himself. But the thought that war had come was constantly on his mind. He searched for clues but his gaze repeatedly wandered back to his own reflection in the shop windows. He had put on the trousers of his dark-blue suit (his first and only pair of long trousers), a lightweight summer coat, a brightly coloured checked shirt and a plain grey tie. The shirt was actually part of his camping outfit, but with this particular combination he felt it lent him a modern, artistic air.
Men in overalls were busy piling sandbags in front of the ground-floor windows of some of the buildings. The police were wearing blue soldier’s helmets and everywhere he looked there were civilian patrols dressed in ochre-coloured uniforms and bearing long, old-fashioned rifles. Karel didn’t see any real soldiers anywhere. No planes had flown over for several hours and the shooting had stopped too. Karel was sorely disappointed that very little of note was happening. There were cars on the roads, the shops were open and the people didn’t look any sadder or happier than usual. It seemed slightly busier on the streets, that was all.
In the newspaper district, hundreds of people were standing in front of the bulletin boards reading the latest news. The murmur of their voices hung like a low storm cloud over their heads; it was interspersed with the nervous lightning energy of the mounted police who barked that gatherings were forbidden. But the people didn’t listen to the mounted officers and mutteringly took in the latest news.
‘French and British tanks and motorised troops have crossed the Belgian border. They were met by grateful Belgians bearing flowers and beer,’ Karel read. He drifted onwards.
The outdoor cafés were packed. Charming ladies wearing sunglasses lounged in their chairs, enjoying the sun. Karel wished he dared take a seat too. The clock struck half past nine. He bought an ice cream from a cart. ‘Some Brits have already arrived at the train station,’ the ice-cream vendor said. Karel walked onto the square in front of the station, licking his ice cream. His attention was drawn by a jeering crowd. A small man was being escorted by two civilian guards. The man was unshaven, wore a beret and no shirt collar. He stared at the ground as they walked him along and put up no resistance. The guards gripped his upper arms tightly, causing them to stick out to the side like broken wings. The collar of his jacket was pulled up to his ears. A whole line of people followed him, shouting, ‘Traitor! Filthy traitor!’ The same words again and again in a whiny, almost impassive tone. Karel walked along with them for a short distance, thinking that some shocking wartime action would follow now, but he didn’t join in with the chorus of voices. In the end he stopped and watched the group go, until a man, not in uniform but with a band around his arm, commanded him to move on.
He circumnavigated the station, keeping his eyes peeled for any soldiers in khaki, but there was nothing special to see. Trains puffed in and out of the station and rail workers in blue smocks walked around with copper klaxons. An ocean liner headed out to sea over the wide river, pulled by two yapping tugboats. A Dutch flag hung from its mast.
Karel sat down on a bollard on the quayside and looked out across the gleaming water. He began to reflect. I’m looking out across the harbour, he thought. It’s the first morning of the war and I’m looking out across the harbour. Where is the war? It’s a beautiful, clear spring day. The river smells salty. The view is genuinely stunning: a typically Dutch riverscape. Plumes of smoke from the factories on the facing bank. But the fascists have crossed our border. This lovely weather is useless. It’s inappropriate. It’s misleading for everyone, it should be raining. There should be rain falling over this riverscape. It should really be cold and gloomy.
He felt a little disappointed, almost cheated. Boats and shunting trains, as though nothing had happened. And as he turned into one of the lanes by the harbour, a thought wouldn’t let him be: it’s as though nothing has happened. When I get home later everyone will be sitting at the table like normal. It’s the school holidays. Nothing has happened at all. My mother will say, ‘Why are you so late? Your fried egg is cold.’ I’ll reply, ‘I went for a walk.’ ‘Did something happen?’ Mum will ask. And I’ll reply, ‘No, nothing happened.’ And I’ll be jealous of my father because he gets two fried eggs and I only get one. He gets two fried eggs because he’s a father. First he cuts away the whites, then he downs the yolks in a single gulp. That’s how my father eats fried eggs. Afterwards there are little yellow crusty bits at the corners of his mouth. And my mother will say, ‘Wipe your mouth, Father!’
Karel Ruis walked along the narrow lane. Bars were clustered side by side, their doors stood wide open and green curtains billowed out, casting foul breath across the tarmac. Girls with puffed-out blond hair and shiny black skirts were beating carpets.
Karel knew this neighbourhood reasonably well. Not infrequently he’d cycle here of an evening with a group of classmates to giggle and shudder at the painted ladies in the red-lit windows. It was an incredibly exciting neighbourhood which offered lots of things to dream about in bed. The water in the canal was feculent and dead. The footsteps of slinking gentlemen scuffed across the rickety bridges. Cigarettes glowed at the street corners and there was a strange, medicinal, peppery smell.
But now it was quiet and sunny. The daylight disarmed Karel Ruis. The women sat peacefully on their doorsteps, needlework on their laps. The church bells issued a rousing patriotic anthem, ‘Merck toch hoe sterck’. See how strong and valiant we are! The women barely glanced at Karel as he passed and didn’t call out to him. Only one of them gave him a quiet wink and lifted her skirt above her knee. Die, he thought. She was a pale chubby woman in a petticoat. He hurried past intently and heard her lisping behind his back. I’m a seventeen-year-old boy, he thought. In Germany you have to become a soldier at that age, but that woman is fifty at least. That woman must be just as old as Aunt Lise, only fatter.
A steady buzzing began to fill his ears. The buzzing quickly got louder. He jerked to a halt and looked up. As his gaze swept upward, he saw the woman smiling at him and then suddenly she threw her head back and looked up too. Two planes flew over the city, two silver planes. They swooped so smoothly, so quickly and gently that Karel forgot the noise. They were right above him now. Karel saw two dots falling, he saw the bombs falling and heard a high-pitched wail. He lowered his head and suffered the prostitute’s gurgling screams. She opened her fleshy arms, her fingers spread, her belly was fat and round. Karel Ruis didn’t think of dying. He listened, astonished, to the bombs falling. Afterwards there was only dust and the stately wail of the sirens. The bomb has fallen, he thought, the bomb has fallen, the bomb has fallen – as though he were memorising a key phrase for an exam.
He stood among dozens of warm bodies in an air-raid shelter, thinking: you can’t cry about this any more, crying is pointless. The sirens stopped and there was a hush outside as though it had snowed. The huddle of people said nothing and trembled collectively. Most of them were women, some were still clutching their knitting. The chubby woman stood gasping for breath, her face pale and puffy, gasping for breath through a clown’s mouth, nothing else. She was still alive. A spindly blond woman muttered with closed eyes, she was probably praying to God. A man from the air-raid defence entered, dusty, his helmet tilted back on his head. He said something and everyone started whispering. They whispered two names: Annie and Neel, Annie and Neel.
A while later the all clear was sounded and everyone was allowed to go back into the sunlight and continue with their daily business. Karel saw that two houses which he’d walked past on his way had been blown up. The other bomb had apparently landed in the canal, and the fronts of at least ten houses were covered in a thick layer of sludge. The stench was suffocating. In the middle of the street there was a bed, practically intact. You could go and lie down in it, pull the covers over your head and think: let them get on with it, let them get on with it, I’m not here, I’m asleep.
6
Karel ruis walked through the park. His eyes took in flowerbeds, swans and children, but his mind said: this is only the start. I didn’t even see the dead people; I saw the living people, the survivors. I’m a survivor myself, but nobody knows, nobody can see it on me.
He gazed around. He was walking through the park. He’d hidden from the park keeper along this little path, he’d skated on this pond, in this park he’d collected chestnuts, on this bench he’d had to keep his hands to himself. His mother had pushed him around this park in his pram and had him photographed wearing a ludicrous hat and holding a letter.
That was all in the past now, this park and everything he’d experienced there, was in the past. It no longer existed, it had become a memory. The only thing that still existed were the bombed houses.
He looked at his dust-covered shoes and began to wipe them with a handful of grass. He’d already walked halfway around the park, almost at a trot, as though he had to be somewhere punctually and he was already running late. It wasn’t even midday, though, and school had broken up. He repeatedly filled his mouth at an isolated drinking fountain, but the claggy taste of sleep refused to be spat out. The fresh greenery looked dull to him, as though he were viewing it through tinted spectacles and it was covered in a sad blue haze.
He slowly began to head homewards. Some people had stuck strips of gummed paper over their windows. A little further along, painters were busy doing up a row of houses. An older painter with a beard was applying a name to a newly varnished door with contrived flourishes: R.P. KRAMARSK.
Two negatives are being superimposed, he thought, two clock mechanisms are marking different times. All kinds of things are happening and nothing is happening. The bomb has fallen and I’m the only one who knows. I wanted to stare at those women and a bomb fell. Yesterday I said, ‘Fall, bomb, fall!’, and today it fell. And trees fell, people fell, houses fell. Dear Lord, he thought, they’re having their names put on their doors in curly letters. They’re having their front walls daubed in cream-coloured paint to make them look fancy and stop them decaying. But other housefronts are covered in sludge, thick stinking sludge. Every second I spend loitering here, Dutch soldiers are falling, and falling means dying, dying like that run-over girl, they’re falling for their fatherland (why else would you?), for our fatherland, my fatherland, father- and motherland, my father and mother. My cousin who is a medical officer is cutting bullets from living flesh now. Dutch bullets and German bullets, Dutch flesh and German flesh. He’s amputating legs non-stop, legs of two nationalities. And I’m just walking around. I stroll around the harbour and I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach. I listen to the national anthem and I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Karel Ruis felt lonely. The loneliness crept over him like cold mist. He thought back to the wonderful shiver that had tickled his spine and spread a pleasant warmth through his intestines that morning when he’d heard the national anthem. Who’d felt lonely then? The birds cheeped and the national anthem was played and it was all satisfying and good and fair, it had felt physically satisfying and good and fair. A justified war, we are in the right. My nation is in the right.
He touched his face furtively. A rudimentary moustache. He touched his eyes, his ears, his nose. I’m seventeen years old, he thought. Sweet seventeen, and I wanted to see those ruddy stupid women sitting at those windows and heaven sent a bomb to warn me of sin.
