Postcards From No Man's Land (35 page)

It was Daan’s suggestion that I make my confession to you. You cannot tell Sarah, he said, so tell it to her grandson. Visit the sins of the fathers on him, it’s his inheritance, as yours is mine. Let him do what he wants with it. He’ll manage, just as I have. (You will know by now about Daan’s kind of jokes.)

And that at first is what I planned to do. I began writing what I wanted to say only to help me get it right in my English, which was a little rusty at first, for though I have gone on reading much, I have not written much in English these later years. But as I went on the telling became the tale. And I began to think that you would like to have your grandfather’s story written properly, as a document you can keep and perhaps one day give to your own children in their turn, so that they can read from the horse’s mouth this part of their history. (Of course to them, it will seem very ancient history!)

So here it is.

And along with it, three things I want to give you.

One is the paratroopers’ insignia I took from your grandfather’s tattered uniform those first of our days in the cellar and kept for myself when I sent his other belongings to Sarah after the war. A memory of him and of the day I saw the parachutes descending from the bottomless blue sky.

The second is the book of poetry which poor Sam gave me, the only English-language book we had, from which your grandfather and I read to each other every day in our time together.

The third is the keepsake which I said I would tell you about. When Jacob and I declared our love, we wanted to exchange tokens, as people do at such a time. Jacob wanted
us to exchange rings. But I would not allow it. However we regarded ourselves, we were not married. Jacob’s solution was to make two exactly similar little talismans. He got the idea from an old decoration used on the farms, a kind of magic charm made of wood or straw or perhaps metal which is fixed to the gable ends of barns or the peaks of haystacks to ward off evil and encourage good. Jacob cut ours with his soldier’s pocket knife out of a little piece of tin he found in the hay loft. He smoothed the edges with my nail file and polished them with the cream we used to clean the household silver. And when he cut them he made sure there was a little ring at the top so that we could thread the charms on to necklaces and wear them under our clothes.

These
geveltekens
, facade-signs, are in many shapes, each having its own meaning. The design Jacob chose for our love token includes signs meaning it is a broom to brush away thunder, a tree of life, a sun-wheel, and a chalice or cup. ‘Let this sign of my love for you and yours for me,’ he said in a little ceremony when we exchanged our tokens, ‘ward off the thunderous wrath to come for loving me, feed you from the glorious tree of life, ever cause the golden sun to shine upon you, and always fill you to the brim with pleasure in being my beloved Geertrui.’ (And by this time, he could almost say my name correctly.)

The charm Jacob gave to me I have given to Daan. The charm I gave to Jacob I now give to you.

So here they are. Your grandfather’s war. The words we spoke to each other. And the charm of his love for me. They are more precious to me than I can ever find words to say, whether in your language or my own.

They come to you from

Your Dutch grandmother

Geertrui

POSTCARD

That which hath been is now,

and that which is to be hath already been,

and God requireth that which is past.

The Book of Ecclesiastes

‘
HAS DAAN EXPLAINED
you why I wanted to see you today?’ Geertrui said.

Sitting in the same hospital seat as before, feeling just as awkward and uncomfortable, with Geertrui propped up in the crisp bed, her startling eyes fixed on the ceiling just as before, Jacob said, ‘No. Nothing.’

Silence. The air would twang if you fingered it.

‘I have something to give you.’ Geertrui snatched at her breath. Waited another moment. Turned her eyes on him. ‘Then we must say goodbye.’

Jacob’s throat was cracked, he couldn’t speak.

‘The drawer of my cabinet.’

He managed to open it, though his joints were locked and his muscles fused.

‘The package.’

A parcel the size of a laptop wrapped in shiny blood-red paper tied length-and-width with a sky-blue ribbon.

‘Take it.’

He laid it on the bed at Geertrui’s side.

‘For you.’

He could still say nothing.

‘Open it at the apartment. Not before. You promise?’

He nodded.

‘All I can say to you is there.’

He stared at the parcel as if it might begin to talk.

Another silence. The air would splinter.

Geertrui said, ‘Let us not prolong the pain.’

There was a movement on the bed.

Jacob looked up.

Geertrui was holding out her mouse’s hand.

He stood.

Her fingers were so frail he feared he would snap them, so brought his other hand to cup hers between both of his.

‘
Vaarwel
,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

He tried to speak but nothing came.

Instead, obeying his instinct, he bent to her, and with deliberate care lest his body betray him, kissed Geertrui on the cheek, one to the right, a second to the left, and a third, most gentle, on her narrow lips.

Her hand fluttered in his.

It fell from him as he straightened.

Unable to look at her, he took the parcel from the bed, held it tightly to his chest, and somehow made his way to the door.

As he reached it he only just heard her say, ‘Jacob.’

Her eyes were glazed with tears, and she was smiling.

He looked back at her, wishing to say something.

But all he could do was nod and return her smile.

POSTCARD

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‘
YES,’ DAAN SAID
. ‘I helped her with it.’

They were sitting in Geertrui’s apartment, the usual seats, Daan on the sofa, Jacob in the armchair, his back to the window overlooking the canal. Geertrui’s story, 125 A 4 pages bound in an orange ring file, lay on the coffee table between them.

‘Helped her?’

‘Typed it in for her. You’d never have read her writing. And anyway, she was often too ill to write, so she dictated it. She’s always studied English, reads it all the time. Watches BBC a lot. So she’s good at it. But still, sometimes she needed help. Finding phrases. Looking words up in the dictionary. And there were some passages, well … the medication.’ He shrugged. ‘I was her editor, I guess you could say.’

‘But it’s all hers? I mean it all really happened?’

‘Did you think she made it up?’

‘Just seems so amazing. Your grandmother and my grandfather.’

‘One part I did write for her. It upset her too much. She couldn’t even dictate it.’

‘Which?’

‘After Jacob died.’

‘So you made it up?’

‘No no. Geertrui told me what happened in Dutch. I
don’t know why, but it’s always easier to talk about very upsetting things in your own language.’

‘So she told you—?’

‘Yes. And then I wrote it in English, as much like hers as I could. Then I read it to her. And she changed some things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Let’s see … Like the clock. The clock ticking. And stopping it at midnight. She hadn’t mentioned it. Only remembered when I read her what I’d written. As if she was seeing it again while she listened. You wouldn’t think it possible, but she’s still grieving for him after all these years.’

As soon as he got back from seeing Geertrui, Jacob had gone to his room, opened her parcel, examined the contents, and at once read her story all through. Three hours later he surfaced, gasping for air. Unable to sit still, confused in his feelings and not knowing what to think, he needed to talk.

Jacob said, ‘She makes a joke about you being my Dutch brother. But your mother really is my aunt. Which makes us first cousins.’

‘You mind?’

‘No. I like it.’

‘Me too.’

Jacob’s stomach cramped.

‘Oh God!’

‘What?’

‘Sarah.’

‘Yes?’

‘She doesn’t know.’

‘No one knows, except you and me and my parents.’

‘But—’

‘Forget it.’

‘She idolises him.’

‘
Idolises?
’

‘Well, almost. He’s everything to her. Her whole life. She even made my parents give me his name, for God’s sake! I’m supposed to be him reincarnate.’

‘Then you’ve got trouble.’

‘You talk about Geertrui still grieving. Well, Sarah never married again. No other man matched up. She believes she and Grandfather had a perfect marriage.’

‘There is no such thing.’

‘Sarah thinks there is.’

‘Okay. All right. Perhaps she did for—how long were they together?’

‘Three years.’

‘But then our
grootvader
comes here to slay the German dragon and the first Dutch girl he sees falls for him so hard that she still has the hots for him fifty years later. Some
Mensch
this
mens
must have been, our grandfather, eh? Let’s hope we pack his genes.’

‘And maybe his genes include a heart attack in our twenties.’

Daan shrugged. ‘When you go you go.’

‘Don’t joke about it.’

‘I’m joking?’

‘I’m serious.’

‘I can see, I can see! You’re serious, cousin-brother, you’re serious! Lighten up.’

‘Don’t tell me to lighten up. I hate that phrase, it’s so gormless. I don’t know what it will do to Sarah when she hears what happened.’

‘Hey hey! Wait, wait! You’re not going to tell her?’

‘But I have to.’

‘No no. It would be wrong.’

‘Wrong! Wrong not to tell her, you mean.’

‘You can’t be serious. What good would it do? Would it change anything for the better? No, only for the worse. She’s an old woman. Leave her alone.’

‘Geertrui was going to tell her. She thought it was the right thing to do.’

‘Geertrui is also an old woman. And it’s time you learned to say her name properly. She’s also a very ill old woman who is going to die soon. Half the time she hardly knows where she is or what she’s saying.’

‘But when she did know what she was saying, she wanted Sarah to know.’

‘Right. But she wanted to tell her herself. Face to face. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Look, all that is their business. Hers and Sarah’s. Old women’s business. The business of people who are equals. People from another time. Another age, even. Another generation anyway. Things have changed. It isn’t our business. Yours and mine. And it isn’t our business to make their old age worse for them than it is. Old age is bad enough even at the best, in my opinion.’

‘Well, what about what Geertrui says about lies poisoning the soul? Even just by hiding the truth. D’you want your soul to be poisoned?’

‘Souls! Who knows about souls? And she was talking about when the lie is your own, not when it’s someone else’s. We’d all be poisoned from birth if that were the case. For her the lie is inside her. She has lived it. It’s part of her life. So yes, if you want to say so, it could poison her. But for you and me, it’s outside. We’ve only heard about it. For us, it’s only information. It can’t harm us. Not unless we allow it to.’

‘It can. If I worry about it.’

‘That’s exactly what I mean! So don’t let it worry you.’

‘I can’t help it. I’m a worrier by nature.’

There were loud boy shouts and girl screams from the canal. Jacob got up and went to the window. A gang of tourists, twenty-somethings, in joky hats and rabid holiday clothes were playing silly fools with pedal boats. As he
watched their hair-down mayhem a heron flew by at his eye level, following the line of the canal towards the railway station and the river, lazy beat of wings, legs like streamers, long neck doubled up, Concorde beak spearing the air. How lovely it must be, he thought, to see this old new everything-to-everybody city from a bird’s-eye three-storey height, as it had been to see it from a fish’s-eye boat level yesterday. Which reminded him of Ton. He wondered what Ton would say about Geertrui and Sarah. And what Hille too would say. He wished they were here now. But no, not both together. Too much to handle.

The
domkoppen
had started a race, pedalling like naughty children towards the sex district beyond the next bridge. Crying seagulls circled. In the old days there would have been sailing ships moored outside, their masts taller than the building. A two-engined KLM jet flew over on the approach to Schiphol. He would be flying back to England on Thursday. Two more days.

And suddenly he thought for the first time, surprising himself: I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here. There’s more for me here than there. And I can be more me here than I can be there.

He turned and glanced at Daan lounging on the sofa.

‘Meneer Smartass,’ he said.

Daan laughed. ‘
Ja ja!
But listen to your big brother, my worrier English cousin.’