The Assault (6 page)

He woke up with a start. They had come to a standstill in the Hout, at the entrance to the trench that had been dug around the Ortskommandantur. Everywhere he saw barbed wire. A sentry let them pass. In the dark courtyard there was a coming and going of trucks and cars. Their headlights were shielded with little visors, and the glass was blacked out except for narrow horizontal strips. The racket of motors and horns made a strange contrast to this careful control of lights.

The soldier set the motorcycle on its kickstand and took Anton inside. Here too there was unbroken activity: the back-and-forth traffic of military men, telephones ringing, typewriters clattering. He had to wait on a wooden bench in a small, heated room. Through the open door he could look into a long hall—and there he suddenly saw Mr. Korteweg. He came out of one door, crossed the hall, and disappeared through the opposite door, accompanied by a hatless soldier carrying papers under one arm. No doubt they already knew what he had done. At the thought that his parents too were probably here somewhere, Anton yawned, keeled over sideways, and fell asleep.

When he woke up, he was looking into the eyes of a rather elderly sergeant in a sloppy uniform and calf-length boots that were too wide, who gave him a friendly nod. Anton was lying in another room under a woolen blanket on a red sofa. Outside it was daylight. Anton smiled back. Awareness that his house no longer existed came briefly but vanished at once. The sergeant pulled up a chair. On its seat he set down a tin cup of warm milk and a plate with three large, oblong, dark-brown sandwiches spread with something the color of frosted glass. Years later, as he traveled through Germany to his house in Tuscany, Anton learned that this was goose fat:
Schmaltz
. Never again would anything taste as good. Not even the most expensive dinners in the best restaurants in the world, at Bocuse’s in Lyon, or Lasserre in Paris, where he would stop on the way back from Italy. Nor could the most expensive Lafite Rothschild or Chambertin ever compare to that warm milk back then. A man who has never been hungry may possess a more refined palate, but he has no idea what it means to eat.

“Tastes good?
Schmeckt
?” said the sergeant. After he had fetched another cup of milk and watched, amused, as this
one too was gulped down, Anton had to wash up at a faucet in the toilet. In the mirror he could see that the blood smears on his face had become rust-brown. Hesitantly, bit by bit, he removed the only trace left of her. After that he was ushered into the Ortskommandant’s room, an arm encircling his shoulders. He hesitated at the threshold, but the sergeant pointed him to the armchair facing the desk.

The Ortskommandant, the military governor of the city, was on the telephone and looked at him briefly, without actually seeing him, but with a reassuring, fatherly nod. A short, fat man with short-cropped gray hair, he wore the gray uniform of the Wehrmacht. His holster with the pistol in it lay next to his hat on the desk, near four framed photographs, of which Anton could only see the backs, resting on little triangular holders. On the opposite wall hung a portrait of Hitler. Anton looked out the window at the bare, ice-coated, impassive trees that were totally unaware of what wartime was all about. The Ortskommandant hung the receiver on the hook, made a note, searched for something among his papers, then folded his hands on the blotter and asked if Anton had slept well. He spoke Dutch with a heavy accent, but quite clearly.

“Yes sir,” said Anton.

“It is dreadful what all happened yesterday.” The Ortskommandant shook his head for a while. “The world is a
Jammertal
, a valley of tears. Everywhere it is the same. My house in Linz was bombed also. Everything kaput.
Kinder
dead.” Nodding, he kept looking at Anton. “You want to say something, don’t you? Go ahead.”

“Are my father and mother here, maybe? They were also taken away yesterday.” He knew that he mustn’t mention Peter, because that might set them on his trail.

The Ortskommandant once more began to shuffle papers. “That was another assignment. Sorry, I can do nothing about it. Everything is momentarily mixed up. I think they are somewhere near here.
Dat
we must wait and see. The
War can
ja überhaupt
, not last much longer. Then this
alles
will have been a bad dream.
Na
,” he said with a sudden laugh and reached out with both arms toward Anton. “What we do now
mit
you? You stay by us? Will you be a soldier?”

Anton smiled too and did not know what to say.

“What you want to be when you grow up …” He glanced briefly at a small gray card, his identity card, Anton realized. “Anton Emanuel Willem Steenwijk?”

“I don’t know yet. Pilot, perhaps.”

The Ortskommandant smiled, but his smile vanished almost at once.

“So,” he said, and unscrewed his thick orange fountain pen. “Now let’s get down to business. Do you have family in Haarlem?”

“No sir.”

The Ortskommandant looked up. “No family at all?”

“Only in Amsterdam. My uncle and aunt.”

“You think can you stay
da
awhile?”

“Oh yes.”

“What’s this uncle’s name?”

“Van Liempt.”

“First name?”

“Eh … Peter.”

“Profession?”

“Doctor.”

He was pleased at the idea of staying with his aunt and uncle for a while. He often thought of their beautiful house on the Apollolaan; it had an air of mystery for him, perhaps because of the big city all around it.

While the Ortskommandant took down the address, he said in a solemn voice, “Phoebus Apollo, the god of light and beauty.” Suddenly he looked at his watch, put down his pen, and stood up. “Just a moment,” he said and left the room in a hurry. In the hall he called out something to a soldier, who thundered off. “In a while a small convoy is leaving for Amsterdam,” he said as he returned. “You can
go right along. Schulz!” he called. This was apparently the sergeant’s name. He was to accompany Anton to Amsterdam.

The Ortskommandant himself would quickly write a
Notiz
to those in charge over there; in the meantime the boy should be dressed warmly. He went to Anton, shook his hand, and laid the other hand on his shoulder. “Have a safe trip,
Herr Fliegergeneral
. And be very brave.”

“Yes sir. Good day, sir.”

“At your service, little one.”

Anton was pinched on the cheek by index and middle finger; then the sergeant led him out of the office. Talking all the while in a dialect Anton couldn’t understand a word of, Schulz took him to a dank storeroom. There were long rows of soldiers’ coats and boots, and on the shelves, rows of new helmets. Schulz pulled out two thick gray sweaters and made Anton wear one on top of the other. He tied a scarf around Anton’s head and put the heavy helmet on top. When it sank wobbling over his ears, Schulz stuffed paper behind the leather lining and pulled the straps tight, after which it fit somewhat better. The sergeant stood back, looked him over, and shook his head, dissatisfied. Pulling a coat from the left end of the row, he held it up to Anton, then took a huge pair of scissors out of a drawer and laid the coat on the floor. Anton watched wide-eyed as Schulz simply cut the garment down to size, slashing wide strips off the bottom and the sleeves. Anton slipped his arms into them, and Schulz tied a raveling piece of rope around his middle to keep everything in place. Finally Schulz gave him a big pair of lined gloves, after which he burst out laughing, said something unintelligible, and laughed still louder.

If only his schoolmates could see him now! But they were probably all at home, bored stiff, with no idea of what was happening to him. Upstairs Schulz put on a helmet himself. After he had picked up the letter at the Ortskommandant’s and stuffed it in his pocket, they left the building.

Thin needles of glistening ice fell out of the dark sky. The small convoy stood waiting at the garage across from the fenced-off area, four high transport trucks covered with gray canvas, and in the lead a long, open car. On the front seat next to the driver sat an officer impatiently waiting for them. On the two seats behind were four soldiers muffled in heavy clothes, machine guns in their laps. Anton had to climb into the cabin of the first truck and sit between Schulz and a gruff soldier at the wheel. Such a lot was happening! For Anton, who was still too young to absorb the past, each new event erased the preceding one from awareness and buried it in his subconscious.

They left Haarlem, driving through the suburbs, and came to the long, straight, two-lane highway that ran along the old ship canal to Amsterdam. There was no other traffic. On the left the overhead wiring of the electric train and the trolley hung to the ground in graceful curves. Here and there the rails stood upright like the horns of a snail. Sometimes even the poles were lying down. On all sides, the hard frozen ground. They drove slowly. It was impossible to hold a conversation because of the racket inside the cabin. Everything was made of dirty, rattling steel, which somehow told him more about the War than he had ever understood before. Fire and this steel—that was the War.

Without meeting anyone they drove through Halfweg, along the abandoned sugar factory, and came to the final stretch of the twenty kilometers to Amsterdam. He could already see the city at the horizon, behind the sandy embankment laid out, as his father had explained to him, for a projected ring highway. They were driving along snowed-in peat diggings, when the front car suddenly swerved sharply into the embankment. The soldiers waved their arms, shouted, and jumped out of the trucks. At that moment Anton too saw the plane. No larger than a fly, it flew at a right angle across the road. The driver of his truck stepped on the brakes, crying, “Get out!” and jumped down
himself without turning off the motor. Schulz did the same on the other side. All about him Anton heard shouting. The men in front crouched behind their car clutching their machine guns, ready to shoot. Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone calling him, waving. It was Schulz, but Anton could not take his eyes off the small thing that circled over the road and then came straight at him, growing fast. It was a Spitfire; no, a Mosquito; no, a Spitfire. Mesmerized, he stared at the shaky steel that approached as if it loved him. It could not harm him. He was, after all, on their side, they knew that, of course—even yesterday. From below the wings he saw some flashes crackle, minor incidents, hardly worth noticing. On the ground too, fire broke loose. It whistled and popped and rattled on all sides. He felt the blows of the impact, and because he thought the plane would ram into him, he dove below the dashboard while the motor bellowed above him like a steam roller.

A second later he was pulled out from his hiding place under the steering wheel and dragged to the ditch. To the left and right of the road he saw at least a hundred soldiers rising. Farther on, near the last truck, he heard the wounded moaning. When the plane disappeared into the clouds and it became evident that it would not return, Anton, his heart still pounding, crossed the road to join the sergeant. Ice splinters as large as gramophone needles blew into his face. On the other side of the truck, right near the running board, two soldiers carefully turned a body over. It was Schulz. The side of his chest had become a dark pool of blood and tatters. Blood was also coming out of his nose and mouth. He was still alive, but his face was contorted with such pain that Anton felt the need to do something at once to relieve it. Suddenly he turned away, nauseated and in a cold sweat, less from the sight of all the blood than from the frustration. He pushed the helmet off his head, loosened the scarf, and groped for the shaking hood of the truck as the vomit
spouted out of his wide-open throat. At almost that instant the last truck in the column burst into flame.

He hardly noticed what happened next. The helmet was being shoved back onto his head and someone took him to the open car. The officer shouted commands; Schulz and the other wounded, and probably dead, were laid out in the third truck. All the other soldiers had to pile into the first two. A few minutes later the convoy was back on the road, leaving the burning truck behind.

As Amsterdam approached, the officer kept shouting past him at the driver. Suddenly he asked Anton who the hell he was anyway,
verfluchtnochmal
, and where was he supposed to be going? Anton understood, but he was breathing so convulsively that he couldn’t answer. The officer gestured as if to throw something away and said he didn’t give a shit,
scheissegal
. Anton kept seeing Schulz’s face. He had been lying right next to the truck; he had wanted to pull Anton out to safety. It was all Anton’s fault, and now Schulz would surely die.

They drove into the city through a gap in the embankment. A bit farther on, the officer stood up at a street corner and waved the drivers of the first two trucks straight ahead (briefly Anton caught a glimpse of his own vomit on the hood of the first one), after which he motioned to the third to follow him. For a while they drove along a wide canal that was practically deserted. Now and then they crossed a street where groups of women and children in rags poked around for something between the rusty trolley rails where the stones had been removed. Through narrow, silent streets with dilapidated houses they reached the gate of the Western Hospital. Inside, the hospital was a city in itself, with its own streets and large buildings. They came to a halt near an emergency shed with an arrow saying
Lazarett
. Immediately several nurses ran out. They dressed quite differently from Karin Korteweg, for they wore dark coats down to their
ankles and much smaller white caps that enclosed their hair like snoods. The officer and the men on the back seat stepped out of the car. But when Anton wanted to follow, the driver held him back.

The two of them drove alone into the city. Anton looked about with a leaden weight in his head. After a few minutes they passed behind the Rijksmuseum, which he had visited with his father, and came into a wide square with its center fenced off. Here stood two huge, rectangular bunkers. At the opposite side of the square, right across from the Rijksmuseum, was a building shaped like a Greek temple, with a lyre on the roof.
Concertgebouw
was written in big letters under the tympanum. In front of this building was a low structure bearing the sign
Wehrmachtheim Erika
. Several of the large, free-standing villas to the right and left clearly had been taken over by the Germans. The car stopped at one of these. A sentinel with a gun over his shoulder looked at Anton and asked the driver if this was the latest recruit.