Will

by Jeroen Olyslaegers

  In this city, Mother’s Day is on 15th August, the day the Virgin Mary was taken up to heaven. War or no war, it’s a time of celebration and people prepare whatever they can conjure up with their ration coupons. Do you still honour your mother on that day, son? I hope so, even though your parents are long since divorced and you live, so I hear, sometimes with the one and sometimes with the other. To me, that doesn’t sound like such a bad arrangement. I found it exhausting having to put up with both my parents in one room at the same time and, if anything, the attempt at staging a family feast on Mother’s Day, combined with the icy silence because of Father’s latest lapse, made it even worse.

  It’s with a reasonably full stomach that I find myself standing on the corner of Oosten Straat in a throng of policemen later that evening, not far from the synagogue and only a couple of streets away from home. There are a lot of us, a great many. Fellow officers have been brought in from Deurne, Borgerhout and Hoboken. A few tell us they’re from Mortsel or Ekeren. We received the order to gather there on the day itself, or the day before, I can’t remember which. Nobody knows what we’re there for. The Germans come driving up with masses of equipment. Our inspectors have their mouths clamped shut. Some of us are in a foul mood at having been called in on a holiday. I’ve already told you that most of my colleagues only speak to me when strictly necessary because of what happened to poor Jean. Suddenly Lode pops up next to me and says he doesn’t like the look of it.

  ‘Things are coming to a head, Will.’ He’d already been called out earlier that evening to distribute Arbeitseinsatzbefehlen, good German for forced labour orders. They’d rounded up dozens of men and handed them over to the Germans. After an hour or two, they’d thought their job was done. Then instructions for them to proceed to Oosten Straat arrived.

  They put up barriers on Plantin en Moretus Lei. Looking along the continuation of Oosten Straat towards the station, I see they’ve also closed off part of the Kievit district. A few Germans are setting up large spotlights on the corners. Field gendarmes and Sicherheitspolizei jump out of trucks. One requisitioned removals truck after the other comes driving up Van den Nest Lei. ‘Requisitioned’ is possibly a misleading term here; later I hear that the local removals companies were reimbursed for the use of their vehicles. I have no idea if that’s really true. The drivers lean on the bonnets and light cigarettes. We are split up into different groups and instructed to ‘accompany’ the operation. We cross Plantin en Moretus Lei, enter Provincie Straat and turn right into Bleekhof Straat. Doors are kicked in. Men from the SD drag a father and a mother out onto the street. Followed by crying children and an ancient couple who can hardly walk. The grandfather tears at his hair; his face is an icy mask. His wife is only wearing a nightie and a dressing gown. Her thick eyebrows show under a brightly coloured nightcap. Of course, all of Bleekhof Straat is in an uproar in no time. People yelling and sobbing. Children’s screams cutting through it all. Some of them are being dragged down the street by the hair. Meanwhile we’re all acting as if we’re still just cops. We close off the streets and guard the barriers as if it’s a sporting event. The effect is grotesque. I hear myself telling a weeping boy of about sixteen that he needs to calm down and proceed quietly to the vehicle. Other officers help women who have been kicked to the ground by SD men back up onto their feet. ‘If you could just come this way…’ ‘Hold on tight to the little one, ma’am.’ And so on, and so forth. Some of them let themselves be carted off like sleepwalkers, vacant and unresisting in their pyjamas, acting out their own nightmare. Nothing is fast enough; everything has to go ‘schneller’ and ‘schneller’. The street is now brightly lit; long shadows walk down the pavements. Someone vomits over his shirt front while being dragged along on his heels by two field gendarmes. A woman clasping an extra coat runs after a mother with two sobbing children. The Germans jeer at her and punch her twice in the face when she raises loud objections. When she still refuses to back off they drag her to a truck along with the Jews. Her glance in our direction says enough.

  ‘In whose name are we actually standing here?’ I whisper to Lode.

  ‘You’re still asking the question. Later you’ll hear this never happened.’

  He’s right. The attorney general, or maybe the mayor, who is now snoring in his bed, will wake up tomorrow morning craving normality, like he does every morning. The late-night operation involved picking up work dodgers, that’s how they will probably describe it. But how do you write this down honestly in a police report? ‘This evening we provided assistance during an arrest for reasons unknown to us. The number of apprehended individuals, women and children amongst them, is also unknown to us.’ The unknown is factored into our pay, along with the feeling of being completely alone here, in this uniform, abandoned to our fate, but you can’t possibly entrust that to a police report. Some of us have gone pale or can’t bear to watch, but there are plenty who are unmoved. Our task is to make sure none of them escape and we carry out that task. No, you’re not allowed past, no matter how desperate you are. You have to get on that truck as the master race demands. But if every one of us is standing here all alone to do a job that doesn’t even need to be justified because it will be forgotten again tomorrow, who or what does that make us? It’s even more ridiculous because that ‘us’ no longer exists either. Who am I, surrounded by fellow officers who can no longer stand me? Less than no one, a ghost in a helmet? Mad Meg in that painting, striding through hell with her eyes wide and her sword pointing straight ahead? Has she caused this or is she just a part of it, driven mad by what she’s seen? Have we helped to make this possible or are we just witnesses who will never testify about what we are forced to see while on duty?

  ‘If this can happen…’ runs through my head like a taunting refrain. ‘If all this can happen, if men in uniform can stomp on children, punch women in the face, almost cripple civilians as they beat them into removals trucks marked with one of our names, a Flemish name… If all this can happen… With us standing here as what?… As relief workers in an inverted world where white is black, during a night that has been lit up as hellish day, like nurses assisting uniformed German-speaking doctors who are combating some kind of human virus with kicks and blows, bellowing and roaring threats at the weeping, the howling and the soiled pants of so many, with blood and puke and shit on the street… If all this can happen, can’t anything? Can’t anything?’

  The Germans are keeping a section of Plantin en Moretus Lei shut off. Lode and I have been ordered to report off duty and go the other way, following Provincie Straat, then turning left behind the zoo to get back to the station.

  ‘What I don’t get,’ I say, ‘is that they are all so…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you remember that time in the snow?’

  ‘Which time?’

  ‘When we had to march that Jewish family to Van Diepenbeek Straat. We just passed their house. It looks like it’s still empty.’

  Lode looks back and stops abruptly. ‘What are you bringing that up for?’

  ‘Because it’s so—’

  ‘Give me a cigarette.’

  I reach for my pack, shake out two and light them both. We smoke in silence for a while.

  ‘I never told you this, Will, but—’

  ‘You knew that fellow, didn’t you?’

  Lode shakes his head. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I saw it on your face.’

  ‘Chaim Lizke is in the diamond trade. A cutter. He’s a strange bird, a real fixer. Our dad got to know some of those blokes a couple of years before the war, when a lot of them fled here. He used to go to Pelikaan Straat sometimes for a coffee on his days off, close to the diamond bourse. Everybody there knew Lizke. So did I. He even came to ours sometimes. Understand? This has to stay between us. You know what it’s like at a butcher’s. Our dad had lots of cash, war was coming… A man like my father always looks ahead. Do you follow me?’

  Now I shake my head.

  ‘We bo
ught diamonds. Lizke had contacts. Our dad gave him a percentage.’

  ‘And we helped pick him and his family up…’

  ‘I almost had a heart attack, believe you me.’

  *

  After we’ve reported off duty at the Vesting Straat station and nodded goodbye to each other, I start walking home. It’s getting light. In Oosten Straat I see two constables from the seventh division, which has been keeping a permanent watch over the synagogue since last year’s riots to protect it from damage. They undoubtedly recognize me, but give no sign of it. Just to be contrary, I wave. No reaction. The building remains unharmed on the mayor’s orders; sleep tight.

  The dawning day is a Sunday. Normally I would see Yvette, but I have no desire to bump into Lode, who also has the day off, and I presume he feels the same way. The streets are quiet—too quiet—even for a Sunday. I walk to the Jewish bakery in Provincie Straat. As if a vengeful god is trying to prove a point, it’s open and serving a long queue. Across the road and just half a block away, Bleekhof Straat looks like a shut-down flea market, with items of clothing and broken glass everywhere. Some of the front doors are still wide open. In the queue, people hardly speak as they shuffle forward. Someone says he didn’t sleep a wink with all the racket, but he’s looking at the toes of his shoes. A bony woman thinks someone’s pushed in front of her. She raises a finger. ‘I’m next!’ The baker’s wife looks up in fright. What everyone knows remains unspoken, even as a whispered question between the brave. How much longer will these two be baking our bread? Not long, if I remember rightly. A week or two, I think, at most. Someone is gently tugging on my coat. I turn around. It’s my Aunty Emma, who works as a maid for a Jewish family on Van den Nest Lei.

  ‘It was quite something…’ she whispers.

  ‘And?’

  She shakes her head. ‘They took them away. The children too. So sad.’

  I start to ask how she’s coping, but she squeezes my arm. ‘Not here, lad, not here.’

  Gaston doesn’t want to make a fuss about it, but he’s heard that I’ve been seen in the White Raven.

  ‘Whoever saw me was there too.’

  ‘That’s another way of looking at it.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘People are saying you’re a quisling. But I—’

  ‘Don’t want to make a fuss about it.’

  ‘In any shape or form.’

  ‘Who’s not a quisling round here!’ I shout down the corridor. A couple of fellow officers look around.

  ‘If you want to keep me as your partner, take it easy,’ Gaston hisses. Even before I’ve had time to answer Gus Skew appears out of nowhere, reeking of stout as always, and grabs me by the neck. With one hand he lifts me up against the wall. My feet are dangling just above the ground.

  ‘Gus, let him go…’ I see other policemen holding Gaston back. Gus’s grip tightens. Helplessly I claw at his face. Gus’s knee shoots up between my legs. The intense pain has stars exploding in my head. ‘Don’t piss yourself,’ I think. ‘Don’t piss yourself.’ Just behind Gus, closer to the door, I see the Finger’s ant-eater snout. He’s laughing, teeth bared, something he probably doesn’t do very often. Helpless and furious, I clench my fists. Angelo shows me him begging for mercy with shit in his pants and snot running out of that enormous nose, but the image doesn’t calm me.

  ‘So, Wils, you think you can do whatever you like. You think we don’t know. But we know enough, matey. You hear me? Every man here knows you reported Jean. Everyone knows you’re a bastard, understand? Let that soak in. Think about it for a few seconds. You’re a bastard, a dirty scab. I couldn’t give a shit whether you think this or that, if you’re for the Brits or the Germans. But you need to be more careful. Because if you ever have the gall to pull a stunt like—’

  ‘Gus!’ someone shouts.

  ‘Behind you!’

  ‘Gus! Over here, now!’

  He lets go and I collapse. The chief doesn’t give me a second glance as he shoves the now docile Gus towards his office.

  Gus is suspended for two days. Rather than being upbraided for assaulting a fellow policeman, he is censured for breaching a recent provision enacted by the chief superintendent. Talking about politics while on duty is strictly prohibited.

  I’m lying on my bed with my trousers and underpants peeled down. Against my better judgement, I’ve nicked Mum’s hand mirror from the bathroom to study my genitals. My scrotum looks terrible: blue and purple and seriously swollen. My penis is flaccid and lifeless, with a bruise shaped like a pig’s head at its base. There’s a knock on the door. I sit up immediately and call out in agony, ‘Occupied!’

  My mother’s voice informs me that I have a visitor. Hurriedly I pull up my trousers, slide the mirror under the pillow and scramble back to an upright position. Has Yvette dared to show up here unannounced?

  ‘I’m coming downstairs!’ I call.

  Then I hear Lode’s voice. ‘I’m at the door.’

  I try to adopt a relaxed sitting position, albeit without crossing my legs.

  My eyes slide around the room. Is there anything to betray me, showing Lode who I really am or revealing him who is called Angelo? The only thing that occurs to me is to quickly tear down a poem from the wall over my bed. It’s called ‘Vigilance’ and I have written it in my own blood. O, my poet’s heart, my grotesque poet’s heart.

  ‘Come on in, mate,’ I cackle cheerfully.

  Lode looks shy.

  ‘Sorry… but I was thinking of you. I heard what happened.’

  I offer him the only chair. He sits down.

  There are two dusty glasses in the bedside cabinet. I get them out, wipe them clean with the bedspread and offer him a shot of some kind of liqueur Meanbeard recently gave me.

  ‘Cheers!’

  We clink glasses and sip. It goes straight to my head. I spread my legs a little wider and tell myself the pain in my balls is fading slightly from the alcohol.

  ‘I feel like I’m to blame, Will. I should have told you they’ve got it in for you at work.’

  ‘As if I didn’t know…’

  ‘I hear that Gus kicked you in the balls.’

  ‘He missed. They don’t call him “Gus Skew” for nothing.’

  Lode laughs. I do too, but it takes more effort.

  Silence falls. I top us up.

  ‘To your health.’

  ‘And yours!’

  Lode coughs and looks at the threadbare rug under my bed. ‘You can bet your life there are a few real traitors among us. As long as there’s money in it… And then sometimes people can’t resist picking someone out, someone like you, and loading them with the sins of Israel.’

  ‘Someone has to be the Jew, you mean?’