The Assault (11 page)

“It’s the latest fashion, you know. Come on, sit here.” They changed places. Fake stared at him as if he could see him better now.

“Do you know you haven’t changed at all?”

“So I’m told.”

“I recognized you right away.”

“It took me a moment,” said Anton. “I didn’t see your father that often.”

Fake pulled a pack of tobacco out of his inside pocket and began to roll a cigarette. When Anton offered him a pack of Yellow Dry, he declined. Maybe Anton shouldn’t have said it, but it was true: Fake was the image of his father, only younger and thinner and a bit puffier. Besides, he didn’t think it was up to him to be careful of Fake’s feelings. He wished the telephone would ring, so he could say to whoever it was that he would come to the hospital at once. It was cold and damp in the room.

“I’ll light the stove,” he said.

He got up and opened the kerosene valve. Fake rolled his cigarette, picked the extra tobacco out of both ends, and stuffed it back into the package, which he held firmly between his ring and little finger.

“What are you studying?”

“Medicine.”

“I work for a household appliance store,” said Fake before Anton got a chance to ask him. “Repairs, you know.”

Anton waited till enough oil had dripped into the stove.

“In Haarlem?”

Fake looked at him as if he were crazy. “Did you really think we could go on living in Haarlem?”

“How should I know?”

“Can’t you imagine that we had to get out of there in a hurry, after the War?”

“Yes, I guess so,” said Anton. He lifted the lid off the stove and dropped the burning match into it. “Where are you living now?”

“In Den Helder.”

The match went out and he lit a second one. He dropped it and faced his visitor.

“Did you come to Amsterdam just to throw stones?”

“Yes,” said Fake and looked at him. “Strange, isn’t it?”

Anton put the lid back on the stove and sat down. If he simply suggested that they put an end to this meeting, Fake would probably get up and go at once. But suddenly he felt stubborn, as if he didn’t want Fake to think that he could get rid of him that easily.

“Is your mother still alive?”

Fake nodded. “Yes,” he said after a silence. He made it sound like a kind of admission, as if Anton had asked, is
your
mother still alive? He hadn’t meant it that way—but even as he said it he realized that perhaps it was what he had meant, after all.

“How come you’re working in one of those appliance stores?” he asked. “You went to high school, after all.”

“Only one semester.”

“Why didn’t you stay on?”

“Do you really care?” asked Fake, poking a bit of tobacco back into his cigarette with the end of his match.

“Why would I ask if I didn’t?”

“After the War they arrested my mother and put her in a camp. I ended up in a Catholic boarding school, which was connected to the Episcopal industrial school. So I had to go there, even though I wasn’t a Catholic.”

“What was your mother accused of?”

“Ask the gentlemen of the Special Judiciary. They probably suspected her of being married to my father.” From his tone Anton could tell that Fake had said this before, and it didn’t sound as if he had thought it up himself, either.

“And then?”

“After nine months they let her go, but by that time other people were living in our house. We were offered a place in Den Helder where nobody knew us. So I went to trade school there.”

“And why didn’t you go back to high school?”

“You really don’t understand anything, do you?” Fake screwed up his face as if he smelled something rotten. “What do you think? My mother had to become a cleaning woman to support me and my sisters. You know—one of those women with a rag around their heads and a shopping bag, like you see on the streets at six-thirty in the morning. The bag was to carry her brushes and mops and soaps. She had to buy those herself. When she came home at night, she walked slower and slower. And now she’s in the hospital, if you really want to know, with water running out of her right leg. That one is all yellow with brown spots. The left leg was amputated two weeks ago. Now are you satisfied, Doctor?” He emptied his glass, slammed it down on the table, and leaned back. “So that’s the difference, right? We’re in the same class, your parents are shot, but you’re doing medical studies all the same, whereas my father was shot and I repair water heaters.”

“But your mother is alive,” said Anton promptly, “and your sisters too.” Now he weighed his words carefully. They were on dangerous ground. “Besides, isn’t there some difference between your father’s and my parents’ deaths?”

“What difference?” Fake asked aggressively.

“My parents were innocent.”

“My father too,” he said without a moment’s hesitation, his eyes on Anton. Anton, amazed, kept silent. Perhaps Fake
actually meant it. Perhaps he was really convinced of it.

“All right,” Anton said, at last, with a conciliatory gesture. “All right. I only know what I heard, but …”

“Exactly.”

“…  but if it really is your opinion that social injustice caused this difference between us, then I don’t understand that stone.” With his head he motioned to the ugly stone that was still lying like an insult on his grand piano. “Then you should have been a Communist instead.”

Before Fake answered, he took his glass and poured the last drops down his throat. “Communism,” he said calmly, but with an undertone of rage, “is the worst. Just look at Budapest, where an entire people’s drive for freedom is being drowned in blood.”

“Fake,” said Anton, irritated, “I’m no Communist either, but that doesn’t mean I find it necessary to learn those headlines by heart.”

“Sure, of course Doctor Steenwijk is clever enough to say it better in his own words. Excuse me if I’m not that smart. People are killing each other over there. Is that any better? What do you suppose the political commissars are doing over there? There’s mass murder going on over there, didn’t you know? Did you read
Het Parool
? About the atrocities being committed by Mongol soldiers?”

“Mongol soldiers!” Anton said. “What do you mean, Fake? Has the time come now to send Mongols to the gas chamber?”

“No, you bastard!” said Fake with a threatening look. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but I can tell you one thing: at least my father was absolutely right about the Communists. He used to predict everything that’s going on now. It’s no coincidence that it was the same damned Communists who killed him. The same bunch that you see now running over the rooftops with helmets on their lousy heads. Why are you defending them anyway? Remember, they knew very well that there would be reprisals, yet they shot
him down in front of your house. They couldn’t have cared less, otherwise they’d have taken the trouble to hide the body. Besides, it didn’t end the War one second sooner.”

He stood up and took his glass over to the table where Anton had left the open beer bottle. Anton noticed that the stove still wasn’t burning. He too stood up, tore a strip from a newspaper, lit it, and dropped it onto the black, shiny layer of oil.

He poured himself another glass of wine. And because Fake remained standing, Anton did too. Outside there was more shouting and the sound of sirens.

“My family,” Anton said, massaging his neck with his empty hand, “was not executed by the Communists but by your father’s friends.”

“But those Communists knew what would happen.”

“Therefore they were to blame?”

“Right. Who else?”

“Fake,” said Anton. “I understand that you’d want to defend your father. He was, after all, your father. But if your father had been my father, if everything had been turned around, would you then be defending Fake Ploeg? Let’s not kid each other. Your father was killed by the Communists with premeditation because they had decided that it was essential, but my family was senselessly slaughtered by Fascists, of whom your father was one. Isn’t that right?”

Fake turned his back to Anton and remained motionless, bent slightly forward, as he asked, “Are you implying it was my father’s fault that your family was murdered?”

Now, Anton realized, every word mattered. Above the mantelpiece hung a tall mirror with an intricately carved frame, bought for a song at the flea market to make his room look bigger. In the weathered glass he saw that Fake had closed his eyes.

“Why can’t you love your father without trying to whitewash him?” asked Anton. “After all, it doesn’t take much to love a saint. That’s like loving animals. Why don’t you
simply say: my father was definitely a collaborator, but he was my father and I love him.”

“But dammit, he was not a collaborator, at least, not in the way you’re implying.”

“But suppose you knew for certain,” Anton said to his back, “that he had done terrible things … God knows … just name something … wouldn’t you still love him?”

Fake turned around, looked at him briefly, and began to pace up and down through the room. “Collaborator … collaborating …” he said after a while. “That’s what they call it, and yet now they all think the way he did about Communism. Listen to what’s going on out there. What’s the difference between that and the Eastern Front? And all that stuff about the Jews; he didn’t know a thing about that. He was ignorant of all that. You can’t blame him for it, what the Germans did to them. He was with the police and simply did his duty, what he was told. Even before the War he had to arrest people, and he didn’t know what would happen to them then, either. Of course he was a Fascist, but a good one, out of conviction. Things would have to change in Holland; it shouldn’t ever go back to the way it was under Minister Colijn, when my father had to fire on workers. At least he didn’t just follow the crowd, like most Hollanders. If Hitler had won the War, how many people in Holland would still be against him now, do you suppose? Don’t make me laugh, man. Not till they saw that Hitler was losing did they all suddenly belong to the Resistance, those yellow bastards.”

The stove, in which he had put too much oil, began to sputter in dull, rhythmic spurts. Fake gave it a professional glance and said, “That’s never going to work.” But he would not be distracted. With his glass in both hands he sat down on the window seat and asked, “Do you know when my father became a member of the National Socialist Party? In September, nineteen forty-four, after Mad Tuesday, when the whole thing was as good as lost and all those phony
Fascists fled to Germany, or suddenly had always belonged to the Resistance. That’s when he thought it was time to take a stand. My mother often told us this. And because of his conviction they shot him—for nothing else—and that’s what cost your family their lives. If the Communists hadn’t done that, your father and mother would be here today. Possibly my father would have spent a couple of years in prison, and by now he would be back simply working for the police.”

He straightened up and walked to the piano, on which he played a few notes in the middle register. The sound, mixed with the sputtering of the stove, reminded Anton of Stravinsky. Each word of Fake’s made his head ache worse. How could anyone embroil himself in such a web of lies? Love was what caused it all—love, through thick and thin.

“To hear you tell it,” he said, “your father’s name belongs on that monument too.”

“What monument?”

“The one back there on our quay.”

“Is there a monument?”

“I didn’t find out till much later myself. It has my parents’ names and those of the twenty-nine hostages. Should Fake Ploeg be on it too?”

Fake looked at him and wanted to say something, then suddenly began to sob. The sobs rose out of him as if they belonged to someone else who was inhabiting his body.

“Shit …” he said, but it was unclear whether he was replying to Anton’s question or angry with himself for crying “As your house went up in flames, we got the news that our father was dead. Did you ever think of that? I’ve thought of what you went through; did you ever do the same for me?”

He turned toward him, then away, passed his hand over his eyes in despair, and suddenly grabbed the stone. He looked about, looked at Anton, who raised his arms to his head in self-defense and cried, “Fake!”

Fake took aim and threw it straight at the mirror. Anton
ducked. With averted face he saw the glass break into large pieces that landed in splinters on the iron lid of the stove, which was now sputtering feebly. The stone bounced onto the mantelpiece and remained lying there. Surveying the damage with pounding heart, he heard Fake’s footsteps run down the stairs.

A final fragment slipped out of the frame and shattered into pieces. Immediately afterwards the lid of the stove blew off with a dull thud, five centimeters up in the air, and let out a cloud of soot. Anton crossed his hands behind his neck, cracked his fingers, and took a deep breath. He felt on the verge of hysterical laughter. The shattered mirror, the exploding stove, the screaming in the street—with his headache he couldn’t stand it. How senseless, all this! The soot spread through the room, and he knew it would take hours to clean it up.

He heard Fake come back up the stairs; only then did he realize that the street door had never closed. Instinctively he looked around for something to defend himself with. He seized his tennis racket.

Fake appeared in the doorway and glanced briefly at the disorder in the room.

“I wanted to tell you,” Fake said, “that I’ll never forget that time in the classroom.”

“What time in the classroom?”

“That time you came in, when I was sitting there in my monkey suit.”

“Oh God, yes,” said Anton. “That happened too.”

Fake hesitated. Perhaps he wanted to shake hands, but he just raised one briefly and went downstairs again. A minute later the door slammed in its lock.

Anton looked about. All his things were covered with a veil of grease. The books and the sextants were the worst. Fortunately the piano had been closed. First he had to clean up, headache or no headache. He drew the curtains and opened the windows wide. As the noise invaded the room,
he looked at the shards. On the reverse side they were a dull black. Only a few sharp splinters were still stuck in the frame, which encircled nothing but dark brown wood that had once been papered over with newspapers, now mostly torn off. The two gilt putti, with their fruit platter and tails made of curled leaves, looked down at him with unchanged angelic expressions.