Fall, Bomb, Fall, page 6
He cycled straight to the local station, which was completely deserted. An advertising poster on the main concourse – COLOGNE, PEARL OF THE RHINE – had been half ripped from the wall. The torn-off scraps lay on the tiled floor. Karel walked right over them. Only one ticket office was open. The employee was reading an illustrated magazine. ‘The next train isn’t until six o’clock,’ he said. ‘And there’s supposed to be another tomorrow morning at five, but anything could happen of course.’
The station clock read exactly one o’clock. It was five hours until the next train left. ‘If it leaves,’ the employee added. And the boat was leaving in three hours. I could go on my bike, he thought. But it’s forty kilometres at least. He cycled around the yellow housing blocks indecisively. Would Ria really be standing by the viaduct? What do I care, he thought. But he cycled to the viaduct all the same. She was nowhere to be seen. She was already on her way to the boat, of course. She’ll be in England before bedtime, and so what? Why should they have taken me with them? Why would anyone take along a person they met less than three days ago? Everything carries on as usual, even the war. I’ll deliver the letter. This whole dreadful business started with that letter. I’ll forget the Rias. I’ll take the letter to Uncle Robert, who asked me, ‘Can I count on you, whatever happens?’ In the meantime, an awful lot has happened, but he can count on me. I can’t go home yet, anyway, they’ll be sitting there fretting away. Oh well, they’ll get over it. They’ll give me a tongue lashing when I arrive home tomorrow but they won’t murder me. I don’t give a damn about any of it any more.
He cycled around aimlessly, Little Ria on his mind. Crying doesn’t help and neither does swearing. Shouting Fire fire! doesn’t help. Shouting dirty words doesn’t help. Nothing helps. Because there’s no future. The earth continues to turn. The German tanks advance. Vorwärts across the Moerdijk bridge in Dordrecht, and backwards and vorwärts.
He realised he was starting to feel hungry so he bought a strip of nougat and two sweet buns from a confectionery stall, for which he had to break into Uncle Robert’s ten-guilder note. He decided to go to the pictures. He looked at the women and girls he passed as he cycled into town, but without exception none of them compared to Ria and her mother.
The newly dried wool of his jacket began to give off a camphoric smell. He pictured his mother kneeling beside the big green chest in which she kept their summer or winter clothes free of moths. The chest always gave off a thick, unhealthy odour. Everything would stay the same. Tomorrow: the reconciliation scene. And after that? He carried on pedalling determinedly.
All of the cinemas were closed, it turned out. Karel leaned on his bike and studied the stills. Survival of the Fittest, the film was called. Pictures of cowboys on horseback or in a saloon, leaning against the counter, and a blond woman in fishnet stockings with remarkably close-set eyes. In front of the UFA picture house, two civilian guards stood on either side of the entrance, which was closed with a barred gate. They stood there, motionless and solemn, as though guarding a royal palace. From time to time, Karel touched the chain beneath his shirt. At least he’d got something out of it.
He bought himself a pack of cigarettes from a vending machine and then an illustrated French magazine, which he sat on a park bench to look through. He smoked one cigarette after another. ‘Charles Trenet, the world-famous Singing Fool, visited the Maginot Line to sing for our boys.’ It pleased him that he could understand the text. There were also photographs of the hostilities along the Rhine, the war manoeuvres from a week ago. A group of smiling infantrymen clustered around some German landmines; a sign reading DANGER DE MORT. A village hall bombed during an air raid, three women and four children had died; the men were out working the fields; what a homecoming! A sad day! The shows at the Casino de Paris had been adapted to the wartime situation; accompanied by a picture of a lady, naked but for a helmet and a gas mask; Nous continuons written across her buttocks.
The world continued to turn. Millions of people lived without any idea of Karel Ruis and his misfortunes. They led pleasant lives or died one sorry day. The park still existed. The park was filled with people in summery clothing. They walked past him without so much as a glance. Some were carrying linen bags or metal canisters, hung around their necks like cameras but containing gas masks. The ducks quacked at the children who had come to feed them bread. The swans were just as haughty as the day before. The warm sun kept on shining as though it took pleasure in the earth. There wasn’t a single shot fired. Half past two. A blind person passed in a cart, pushed by a girl with springy hair. Three o’clock. The first blackout paper magnate has been identified in France. He is fifty-three years old and, until a year ago, was just a provincial manufacturer of wrapping paper. His son is an officer in the air force. Half past three. The Rias are in their cabin. Little Ria is combing her hair with a steel brush and reapplying her lipstick. The boat was ready to steam away. Every square inch is packed with refugees, a ship of émigrés. There’s no room for even a mouse, and not for Karel Ruis either. He sits in the park, where he can hear three different clocks striking the hour, sometimes he even imagines he can hear them ticking. The clocks strike four. The boat is leaving. But wasn’t there a single place left then? In a lifeboat, in the toilet, in the nook where they kept the coal? Too late, too late! The boat sails out of the harbour. Ria stands on deck waving, but she’s waving to nobody. Why didn’t I say to her mother, take me with you in God’s name!? Why didn’t I beg her to take me with them? Why didn’t I cry, go down on my knees, wring my hands, and kiss her shoes – which she’d designed herself?
Why not? I did nothing, I got under the shower, fully dressed, like an idiot. Saying goodbye like that was so moving: I will never forget you; I’ll come back soon… Yes, but I didn’t even say goodbye to her mother, I ran off like a child. It’s my own fault. They must have thought I didn’t even want to go with them! I’ve been left behind, backed into a corner behind the New Dutch Waterline.
He began to long for someone to share his pain and confusion with. He began to long for his Uncle Robert. Uncle Robert had a secret too, and he was afraid that his happiness was endangered. Hadn’t they both lost their beloved? Weren’t they companions in adversity? Karel Ruis jumped to his feet and threw the illustrated magazine into the bushes. Mrs Mexocos’s keys jangled in his pocket. He was overcome by a great feeling of joy. I’ll go to their house, he thought, I’ll go and live in their house. I’ll stay there for days. I’ll sleep in the big bed, under her covers, between her sheets, in her pyjamas. I’ll tinkle on the grand piano. The horsemen will ride through the snowdrifts. I’ll look at the patchwork collage of Uncle Robert. The room is white. I drink sherry. I smell eau de Cologne. I take a shower, wash with her soap. I open the windows and let the evening come so that the viaduct sinks away into the darkness. I won’t turn on the lights but I’ll sit at the window surrounded by her possessions.
Going against the flow of the crowd, he hurriedly wheeled his bike along the footpath to the exit of the park. A voice shouted out, ‘Karel! Come here!’ He jumped out of his skin and wanted to get on his bike but he couldn’t because there were people behind him and people in front of him and he stood there like a trapped hare.
His father walked calmly towards him. He held his hands behind his back, he was carrying a walking stick. He was wearing a green hat but was jacketless. He was walking through the park, strolling pensively in the spring sunshine, looking at the beds of tulips, thinking about the war, a quiet fellow out on Whit Monday, but internally conflicted. And suddenly he saw his lost son and cried, ‘Karel, Come here!’ He stopped in front of Karel and said, ‘Now then, lad.’ The lad said nothing. ‘Come along!’ said his father. ‘Let’s walk on.’ He took his son amicably by the arm and led him back into the park.
They walked along in silence, father and son. When they reached the little café, Karel’s father said, ‘Come, let’s have a sit-down.’ They sat down on the terrace. Karel leaned his bike against a tree. He sat facing his father on the quiet café terrace.
‘Two beers!’ Mr Ruis called. The waiter brought two beers. ‘Cheers!’ said Mr Ruis. ‘Cheers!’ said his son. They drank their chilled beers and licked their lips. Beer was more bitter than sherry. ‘Cigarette?’ asked the father. ‘Yes, please,’ said his son. They smoked. The clocks struck five. Mr Ruis tapped the paving stones with his walking stick. ‘Difficult times, the war,’ he commented.
‘Yes,’ said Karel.
‘No one’s their usual self,’ said his father.
‘No,’ said Karel.
‘We should try to be kinder to each other at times like these,’ his father said.
‘Yes,’ said Karel.
‘During these times,’ his father began, ‘we really need to understand that we belong together.’
‘Yes,’ said Karel.
They said nothing for a while after this. They drank their beers and they smoked.
Then Mr Ruis said, ‘If all the people in the world understood each other better, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
‘There have always been wars,’ said Karel.
‘Yes,’ said his father.
‘People have never understood each other,’ said Karel.
‘No, they haven’t,’ said his father.
They fell into silence again. They drank their beers and smoked cigarettes. Once their glasses were empty, they set off again, the father a little bent-backed, Karel pushing his bike. They walked past a stretch of meadowland in the middle of the park where cows were grazing. The sun glittered through the trees, and the farmer, a regular farmer in blue overalls and clogs, drove up in a cart to milk his cows. They stood and watched as milk splashed into the buckets. They were right in the middle of the city. If it hadn’t been wartime, they would have heard the sound of trams, but the trams had stopped running, to save on coal.
‘Come on,’ said Mr Ruis, ‘let’s find out what tasty treats Mother has cooked up for us.’
They walked home. The clock struck six as they went in through the front door.
11
It was half past five before the train chugged into the station. The platform had been packed for more than an hour already. The sun had only just risen. Everything was bathed in grey. Karel had expected to find a man selling sandwiches and coffee somewhere, but he saw nothing of the sort. He paced back and forth and thought: all hell will break loose when they discover my empty bed, but if everything goes smoothly, I’ll be back home by lunchtime. He decided not to think about it too much. He wondered where all these people were going. There was a woman next to him with a headscarf, she said she was off to visit her son. Her son was a soldier and she hadn’t heard from him for an entire week. She held a bag containing some cake and a new pipe. The woman spoke in excited tones. She showed everyone around her the pipe, ‘a genuine Gouda doorroker with a ceramic bowl,’ and she cracked jokes about the Germans. But nobody listened to her. The train arrived and the crowd began to jostle. It was a steam train that glided regally along the platform.
Suddenly a chorus of voices rose up and echoed in the station’s high roof, like a choir in a church. Loud German voices singing an army marching song. A commotion began among the travellers. In one of the goods wagons at the end of the train there was a group of prisoners of war, paratroopers captured behind Dutch lines. Karel went to have a look at them. The Germans were dressed in grey uniforms and some of them were wearing leather jackets. Now they sang a song about kissing blond girls on their red lips: Blonde Mädel, die küßt man auf den Mund, ja auf den roten rosenroten Mund. When the guards ordered them to shut up, they stopped obediently, but kept on laughing. They hung out of the open wagon, shouting out to girls who walked past. Nobody seemed to know where the men were being taken.
It was an old-fashioned train with high footboards. Karel couldn’t find a seat anywhere and ended up entering a compartment he didn’t think was overfull. It was just after six when the train set off. No one felt like talking. The travellers stared ahead sleepily and let their cigarettes smoulder between their fingers. Some of them snoozed with closed grey faces, sitting upright on the uncomfortable benches.
Karel began to warm up. The harbour was tinged red by the sun. The cranes pointed idly up into the air and there wasn’t a single ship to be seen. The train moved very slowly, you could easily have kept up with it on foot. Half an hour later they were still passing houses. The train suddenly halted. They were on the viaduct you could see from Mrs Mexocos’s window. Soldiers walked along the gravel by the tracks shouting to each other. Their voices were intermittently audible, crackly and impersonal like voices in the cinema. It was quiet otherwise. The locomotive jolted slightly but it was more something you felt than heard. The people in the compartment yawned, cleared their throats and shifted in their seats. Karel elbowed his way to the small window. The city didn’t seem to be able to wake up. The yellow housing blocks squatted, bulky and alien, on Mother Earth. He scanned the windows of one of the largest blocks, at the end of the street.
‘Anything to see?’ a man behind him asked.
‘No, nothing,’ Karel replied. He watched the smoke from the locomotive slowly drift down the railway embankment and blow along the street with the loose sand. He turned his back on the view.
‘I can’t think what to do,’ the man said listlessly. He was a tall, bony office clerk. ‘We’re being slowly but surely swallowed up. They’ve already crossed the Moerdijk bridge and taken all the eastern provinces. It’s going wrong, horribly wrong.’ He shook his head. ‘Swallowed up,’ he repeated. No one contradicted him.
‘It will be alright,’ Karel said, ‘as long as the English get here first.’
‘Yes, the English,’ the man said before falling silent.
Karel felt the fatigue in his knees. Once I’ve delivered the letter and returned home, he thought, once that’s behind me… After that I don’t give a damn what happens. I won’t have to run off again and I won’t have to lie any more. I can just sit indoors and listen to the radio for days… His desire to pour his heart out to his uncle evaporated.
A nagging pain rose up in his loins, making him feel sick. He sat down on the dirty floor, his back resting against the door. When we set off again, it’ll swing open, he thought, and I’ll tumble backwards into the depths, under the wheels. He let his head drop onto his pulled-up knees.
He was jolted out of his slumber by the train’s slow clatter over the rails. He propped himself up and saw that they were passing through deliberately flooded farmland. He asked what time it was. It was around ten. Good heavens, he thought, how long have I been asleep? How long did the train stop for? How long have we been underway again? He couldn’t summon the courage to ask anyone, he just sat there and, after some deliberation, lit a cigarette. Ten o’clock – he’d expected to have arrived at Uncle Robert’s ages ago. He’d already figured out a plan. He wouldn’t visit him at home out of consideration for Aunt Lise. He would call Uncle Robert from the station and suggest they meet in the station restaurant. He could take the same train back, because this was the furthest it could go, given the situation.
They were still moving very slowly but a little faster than before. The polder was flooded on either side of the tracks. The water rippled gently but there were no boats on it, it was too shallow for that. I’ve done my duty, in any case, he thought. Uncle Robert and Mrs Mexocos won’t be able to complain about me. No one will be able to complain about me. Well, maybe my parents. But that makes it mutual, so everything’s fair and square.
When the train stopped at a station, he bought coffee in a paper cup and a couple of sandwiches. Someone had got off so that now at least he could sit down. It was eleven o’clock. If the train just kept going he could be there within half an hour. But it was well past one o’clock when he finally got off at the leafy little station in the town where Uncle Robert lived. It felt like he had travelled for hundreds of kilometres. He inhaled the peppery smell of the nearby forest and took in the friendly flowers in the stationmaster’s garden. The place was teeming with soldiers, the station’s waiting room had been set up as an emergency field hospital. There was a great hustle and bustle, only the prisoners of war did nothing. They hung out of the sliding doors of their wagon and observed the goings on with smiles on their well-nourished faces.
It was an absurd thought that he’d be able to make a phone call here. Nothing was going the way he’d imagined. Up to now, everything had gone differently. Making plans was pointless, something always got in the way and then he had to start from scratch.
He walked into the village, in the shade of towering beech trees that cast a dappled half-light over the buildings. In the shadow of the church, enormous unmanned cannons pointed up at the foliage. Soldiers lay sleeping in trucks that had been painted green, pocket handkerchiefs over their faces, helmets on their bellies. They also lay criss-cross on the grassy slope of the churchyard. Other soldiers on guard duty, soldiers with bayonets on their rifles, patrolled in a wide arc around them. A field kitchen had been set up on the clipped lawn of a house; soldiers with tea towels around their necks stirred large pans.
Karel experienced for the first time the bittersweet taste of war. Everything he saw would make a perfect shot for a war photographer: scenes behind the frontline. His mind stopped churning, he simply looked. He drank it all in like a draught of lemonade after a long walk, fizzy lemonade.
