by Otto de Kat
She did notice, though, that her memory was becoming overloaded. Emma wandered through her recollections along a complex network of corridors, the crumpled map of her life.
She was ninety-six years old, she had witnessed a century, and understood nothing at all.
10
It really does take months. Bruno catches the train from Rotterdam to Gouda—as often as is wise, he does not want to scare her off—because he does not own a car. Chris does, though, and Emma is allowed to borrow it whenever she wants. Sometimes she surprises him. She waits in Bruno’s street until he comes home from work, and watches as he gracefully takes the corner from Oudedijk and cycles toward her.
Summer 1946, a year after liberation, a year after Emma came stumbling into the country. The slow but sure transition to a normal life, the kind of life she knew about but had entirely lost, or at least pushed into the background.
The world of her childhood, of her grandparents, and of her parents when they were still a family and lived in Ireland, Belgium, America and Brazil. As a child she had played in all those countries, she had been to school there, and had always found it easy enough to move to yet another new city and yet another new schoolteacher. With her parents there, nothing bad could happen to her. Until, that is, she was left behind in Leeuwarden, at her grandparents’ house. That ice-cold moment when her father and mother went away, “for her own good.”
More than twenty years later, her voice still trembles as she tells Bruno about this. Telling stories is not really her strong point. Every story comes from a long way off, is slow to get going, conceals more than it reveals, but that does not bother them, they are in no hurry. They are sitting on the balcony, looking out at the sailing boats on the lake.
The summer months of ’46 are warmer than ever before, they stay out on the balcony until late, the lights off inside, Bruno brings first tea, then port and red wine. Advances on tiptoe, as if they have to sound out everything all over again: their pasts, their memories, their bodies, their desire. A strange dance with motionless feet, a standing shuffle like their first encounter at De Reünie. On the dance floor by the billiards table, his hand on her hip, the beginning of the change, the chaos over, out and away from Carl’s love.
“There’s something I’d like to show you, but I’m afraid you’ll have to climb the ladder.”
Bruno’s face in the setting sun looks weathered, bothered. The ladder to the hatch in the flat roof. He opens it, climbs through, and holds out his hand to help Emma up the last part, an awkward approach to a panoramic view. The roof is covered with rough gravel. In the middle, at fixed distances, square chimneys, beacons marking cozy homes with open fireplaces.
Bruno does not let go of Emma’s hand and walks a few feet from the edge. It is easy to feel giddy with all that empty space around you, he says, it has happened to him several times up on that roof. They stop by one of the chimneys, and he points at the city, at the world of others.
The most intimate light of all falls in September, at its softest around six or seven in the evening. A neighbor across the way calls his pigeons home. As if on a lasso, the birds glide in loops above his head, before descending, one by one, into their loft. A pigeon fancier’s circus trick. Emma and Bruno watch as the last pigeon exits the stage. The outstretched arms of cranes, a church tower, the chimney of a gasworks sticking up in the distance. Rotterdam is still flat, the Witte Huis is the tallest building in the country, and with binoculars you can look out over half the city.
“What do you think of our street down there?” he says.
Our street?
“Would you like to stay here with me?”
Bruno looks at Emma, and she looks at him. She sees the bandage on his ear, she has never seen him without it, feels the grip of his hand, notices how he wants to keep them both in balance.
She lays her other hand on his cheek.
11
“Mr. B. Verweij, Deputy Secretary, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Rotterdam” it says on his card. Freshly printed, an admission ticket to adulthood. Chamber of Commerce, it sounded like a society from the Golden Age. And a Golden Age will come again, and this time the victory will begin here, in Rotterdam.
Bruno travels with his boss, K.P. van der Mandele, to Germany. Goes with K.P. to Hamburg and Lübeck, Krefeld and Cologne, Düsseldorf, along the Rhine, down the Elbe. K.P., the initials of an ace, a professional, in the war it was also the abbreviation used for the knokploegen, the armed Resistance squads. And it suits him, K.P.’s a tough guy: K.P. fights his way along the German rivers, with Rotterdam behind him, and Bruno Verweij at his side.
Bruno’s apprenticeship. Forgotten are the dark days at the Peterson Shipping Company, at a time when the port was barely functioning, was a war zone, a waypoint for the enemy and for neutrals: Swiss, Portuguese, Swedes and South Americans.
Van der Mandele and Bruno have become unwitting pioneers of reconciliation. From those crushed German towns and cities, trade is once again slowly moving out onto the water, Rotterdam is becoming a synonym for prosperity, for the supply of everything they no longer have.
The German businessmen scarcely dare to hope that anyone will want to talk to them. K.P. and Bruno do so, but more for the sake of the Rotterdammers than for the Germans. The Chamber is the most civilized way to get business back on track.
Bruno does not always know quite what to think about traveling around that despised country and being welcomed so warmly. Is it alright simply to shake hands there, to have meetings, to go to receptions and dinners? For now, the Americans are paying for it all, there is nothing in place yet, but everything smells of the future. Germany has to be helped back onto its feet, that is how they will keep the Russians at bay. Battlefield Europe needs to be cleaned up as quickly as possible: the desert shall blossom as the rose.
Emma and Bruno blossom, too. Their two sons, Michael and Thomas, born a year apart, play with the other children out on the street. It is the 1950s. Half the world is in scaffolding, there is a sound of hammering and sawing wherever you go.
But in the middle of this period of blossoming, Bruno’s mother dies, on a July day in 1950. She made it through the war so well, and her death is unexpected.
As a four-, five-, six-year-old, Bruno had often lain under the piano like a dog while his mother played Chopin, or Liszt’s “Liebestraum,” the most beautiful music he knew—it had become the theme of his life. But the ridicule of his brothers, their comments about the baby hiding beneath his mother’s baby grand, eventually drove him from his favorite spot, and he had sat beside her on the piano stool instead.
They set out for Zeeland straightaway, making it to her bedside just in time. Bruno, his brother Hendrik, along with his wife, their little girl, Maud, who had been bombed into a wheelchair by a British attack, and Emma.
“When is Rob coming?” their mother asks just before she dies.
“He’s on his way, Mother, he should be here any minute.” Bruno looks at Hendrik, they both know he is lying. Their brother Rob, conspicuous by his absence, left the continent even before the war, in search of something that does not exist. Juggler of his own fate, the boy for whom their mother has been waiting fifteen years. They found him eventually, he had moved house several times, and they sent him money to pay for his journey from Cape Town, where he was apparently based at that point.
He is not going to make it, they realize. He will be too late, will not see their mother again. Their brother, their neglected shadow, their guilty conscience.
He still comes though, confounding everyone’s expectations. Too late, admittedly. As if he wanted to protect his mother from himself. Bruno waits for him in the arrivals hall at Schiphol. He spent hours out on the huge viewing platform overlooking the runways, the K.L.M. airplane from South Africa is endlessly delayed. Bruno is the one who still receives the occasional sign of life from Rob, a few letters about how he had “rolled through” the war. They were the letters of a showman, although full of horror
s. Tales about the Burma railway line he had worked on, and the torpedoing of the transport ship that was to have taken him and two thousand others to Nagasaki. About the atomic bomb that had fallen close to his camp. About Manila, Batavia and Cairo, about his return to South Africa. Rob had described everything with the casual good cheer of a survivor. But under every line Bruno had sensed the sadness, and the defeat.
In his last letter, which came a few weeks before their mother’s death, there had been nothing but a photograph: Rob with two strangers in front of a life-sized poster at a cinema in some unknown city. Rob in the middle, in a white dinner jacket, pointing at the title of the film: “’Til We Meet Again.” Someone next to Rob was pointing at the picture of the leading lady.
Bruno had given the photograph to his mother. She had said nothing, but after she died they found it in her diary, fastened with a paperclip to the date of her death.
“’Til We Meet Again”—the story of a man who searches for his beloved in the underworld, the song of a woman who must not look back, but who does so anyway.
When the large glass doors have closed behind him, Rob looks aimlessly around, his face white from the lack of sleep. Bruno approaches him tentatively, scarcely believing it is his brother standing there. He has not seen him for fifteen years, since he waved him off at Hook of Holland. In 1935, a world war ago.
“Little brother?”
The incredulity is mutual. The awkward, almost shamefaced reunion of two brothers who have disappeared from each other’s lives, sons of a mother who has just departed.
Fellow passengers stop a porter to take their luggage, one slaps Rob on the shoulder as he walks by, says “cheers.” Rob laughs, calls something after him in Afrikaans, takes Bruno’s arm and starts walking. Or something that approximates walking.
Bruno leads him outside as best he can, but it is a risky undertaking. Rob’s legs more or less refuse to work, something inside is blocked.
Bruno later tells Emma how shocked he was by that first sight of his brother, those first steps. And he repeats, word for word, the conversations they had had. Bruno’s story would never leave Emma and, though his end was tragic, the light of those few days remained and that last evening with Rob, her long-lost brother-in-law, her newfound ally.
“A body that’s all dead weight, Emma.”
“He needs to see a doctor, Bruno. I’ll ask Dr. Milders to take a look at him.”
Rob had just stared at them as though he had long been aware that it was too late for a doctor. The bomb had done a thorough job. A body carrying five years of nuclear fallout, a degree in medicine is not needed to arrive at the correct diagnosis. Cancer, from head to toe. Although Dr. Milders had not expressed himself in those terms after receiving the test results. He had merely inquired again about his patient’s symptoms, intent, concerned.
“Of a transitory nature, doctor. I’m referring to myself, of course. How long have I got?”
Milders had stood up.
“Not long. Six months, maybe a year.”
Rob shook him by the hand: “You’re an optimist! Thank you for your time, please send the bill to my brother—he insists. That lad needs to take better care of himself, by the way. I’m rather worried about his health. Have you seen those ears of his?”
12
The evening before his flight leaves, Rob’s old Dutch friends all meet up in Bruno and Emma’s street. Most of them are female.
One last evening without a body and without a war, he must have thought. He does not mention what the doctor has said, he does not say anything, not even to Emma and Bruno. Three months later, when he is found dead in Cape Town, Milders tells them about the result of his examination, and about Rob’s reaction.
They come from Gouda and Gorkum and Amsterdam and Deventer, young, married, mothers, and Bruno and Emma, of course. Their brother Hendrik is not there, too busy, he sent his apologies. Rob and Bruno know what their brother’s “too busy” means—with Rob there, his old envy has reared its head again, the adventurer’s magnetism annoys Hendrik, always has done.
Rob has done up the basement as a bar. Lanterns in the dark hallway cast just enough light for them to see one another. A steep staircase leads down to the concrete rooms with the bicycles and the rubbish bags, and there is a narrow corridor connecting the residents’ storage spaces. It could have served as an air-raid shelter.
Rob has borrowed a gramophone and bought drinks, or rather, Emma has. There are records from the 1930s—German, Viennese, British, American. And liberation music, tunes from the Great American Songbook, Cole Porter, Tommy Dorsey’s band, Bing Crosby.
Rob knows every note of every song, and he sings along. And he tells his life story, his years in the Indies and the Far East and South Africa. The magic he once possessed in the company of women now comes back. They are as enchanted as ever by his tales and by his voice. In everything he says they sense his wild sophistication, his dislike of the mundane, his disturbing charm. And his loneliness. It is an alluring cocktail—for those who dare.
That night, everyone dares. It is summer and warm. Neighbors come from all around to join the gathering, they bring bottles and glasses, and it turns into a party for the whole street. What began with twenty people ends with sixty. A woman takes off her blouse and dances, calm and carefree, in her brightly colored bodice above a white skirt. Rob holds her by one hand, stands motionless as she spins around him. His eyes sparkle when the others applaud.
An hour underground counts for two, the lanterns go out one by one, drawing the darkness inside, but the morning is not far away and there is also a moon. Rob is the center, and yet he is on his way out. None of the women would ever forget this night with Rob, and the same was true of the men. The woman who removed her blouse was not trying to seduce him. She was acknowledging who he is, or who he was. A tribute to the man who was once her lover, the lover of her dreams. Truly a dream, as Rob never stayed, not with anyone.
Someone puts new candles in the lanterns, small points of light return. A gleaming disc spins on the gramophone, they can scarcely hear the music in the crowded corridor. Bruno comes to sit beside Rob.
“You left without a suitcase, and you came back with nothing. Why was that, Rob? I never understood why you left so suddenly, I never had the chance to ask. There were times when I missed you terribly.”
His words take Rob away from the party. He turns his head, tries to reply, caught unawares by the sound of Bruno’s voice and the emotion in it.
“Father thought I was no good, Hendrik was jealous, you were studying, and Mother . . .” Rob pauses. “The way you stood there waving on the quay at Hook of Holland, Bruno. You were all there. Do you remember me holding up the letters of recommendation that Father had written for me, tearing them in two, as if I didn’t care, and throwing them into the harbor while you were all watching? I never forgave myself for that. It was such a mean, aggressive thing to do and I was nothing but a bumptious brat. If I’d had a pistol, I’d have been waving it around. Don’t touch me, leave me alone. I needed to start from scratch, I was going to show the world. My God, it was such a lousy act of rebellion against Father.”
Bruno shakes his head, filled with disbelief and impatience. He is struggling to keep his temper.
“We had it good, but you took that great big motorcycle of yours, the one that impressed the girls so much, the same women who are here tonight, and you drove it straight through our family. After you left, I never really saw Father and Mother take pleasure in anything ever again. You didn’t get in touch, didn’t write, you weren’t there when Father died, I had the feeling you’d archived us away for good.”
“I couldn’t breathe when Father was around. I looked up to him so much, the way I loved him though, it was completely un-realistic. I imitated him, and slowly but surely I began to drift away from him. It was self-preservation, Bruno. But less than eight years later I was crawling through Thailand, along the Burma railway, in a cloud of poisonous flies. So much f
or self-preservation.”
Bruno is furious, Rob sounds bitter, and the plane is leaving for Cape Town that day. As if summoned, Emma appears.
“Emma, your husband’s angry with me, please come and join us!”
“But Rob, that’s impossible. He’s only ever said nice things about you, he shows off about you, in fact. There’s no one he’s more proud of.”
“Doesn’t seem like it, Emma. He just gave me a real tongue-lashing.”
Rob puts his hands up.
Bruno laughs at his brother’s gesture of helplessness, his anger is over.
Rob’s night is almost at an end. People are leaning wearily against walls and parked bicycles. Bruno and Emma see what no one else could know: the final hours of a life that never came to fruition, Rob’s life. There is no trace of bitterness, only a strange acceptance of his death, which is now not so far off. The three of them neither mention nor deny it. The approaching end does not come between them, but unites them.
For Emma, Rob is new, she knows him only from the stories that Bruno and the others have passed on. Excited stories about a boy who would not be told. A restless man, an adventurer, a fortune-seeker, a prodigal son. A prodigal brother.
Rob, Bruno and Emma stand with glasses in their hands, the men smoke cigarettes, they are fully equipped to survive the party.
The warmth lingers in the basement, it has barely cooled down this evening. The blouseless woman walks up to Rob, puts her arm around his neck.
“You going to take me with you to Cape Town?” she asks, in a surprisingly serious tone. It is more of a command than a question.
“Of course I’ll take you, Anna. But I’m leaving tomorrow, will you manage that?”