Postcards from No Man's Land (The Dance Sequence)

by Chambers, Aidan

  I had not bathed for some days. This was not unusual. We did not take baths so much then as we do now. And showers, at least where I lived, were unheard of. People were less fastidious about their bodies. But our house in Oosterbeek had a bathroom, whereas the farm still did not. So I noticed the difference. The inconvenience, if nothing else. On the farm there was all the trouble of boiling up enough water, preparing a portable bath, which was always placed in front of the kitchen range, both for the warmth and to make it as easy as possible to transfer water from the boiler to the bathtub. Afterwards there was the trouble of emptying the bath and clearing up. And there was the question of propriety and modesty. While the women were bathing the men would keep out of the way and vice versa. In the Wesseling household, the men bathed on Friday nights, the women on Saturdays. Any change in this ritual was remarkable. After an illness, perhaps, or for some special occasion—a birthday, for example, or before a journey away from home. But never simply on a whim. Never just because you felt like having a bath.

  This was a Thursday. What reason could I find that would satisfy Mr Wesseling’s surprise at my taking a bath that evening? I could think of only one that he would not question, for I knew even mention of it would so embarrass him that he would not want to discuss it. It would also quite genuinely embarrass me, for women were not given to discussing womanly conditions with men in those days, even if the men had heard of them, which it is almost unbelievable now to say that many, even married men, had not. The particular functions of the female body were treated between men and women as if they did not exist. Open talk of them, at least in respectable religious families, was regarded as at best bad manners and at worst as a social sin worthy of severe punishment. My excuse also had the advantage of being a fact. My period had finished the day before. The only untruth I would have to tell would be the smallest hint that my period had been in some unspecified way unpleasant, and Mr Wesseling would leave the house without a second question. Which he did, saying he would go and listen to the news, then call on Jacob, and be back in an hour or so, if that would be long enough. Yes yes, I said, and away he went.

  *

  It was while I was bathing that the thought finally surfaced that I was doing this not for myself but for Jacob. In preparation for receiving him into myself, like a bride.

  ‘I mean to go to him,’ I said out loud, ‘because I want him inside me.’

  The shock of my shamelessness made me gasp. I would never have believed myself so forward! Yet at once with almost cold rationality, I began to plan how I would do it. I would finish my bath, clear up, dry my hair in front of the fire, then go to my room. There I would pare my nails, oil my hands and legs, inspect and tend to every nook and cranny of my body, scent myself with lavender, arrange my hair, and dress as becomingly as my few spare clothes kept for ‘best’ would allow. I would take my time, enjoy myself, wash from my mind the strain and stress of the last weeks, fill it only with thoughts of Jacob. I would wait until Mr Wesseling had retired to bed and I heard his volcanic snores (a regular feature of his sleep). Then I would steal away to Jacob.

  Not until I was in my room, the warmth from my bath quickly chilled by the cold damp air of the autumn night, did it occur to me with as cold a chill that the romantic encounter for which I was so eager might produce unwanted consequences.

  About the practicalities of sex (need I tell you?) I knew next to nothing. Even about what went where and how it got there I knew only the rudiments, and these from the uncertain authority of friends, not from parents or teachers or books. Among the things I had been told about under the desk, so to speak, at school, was the so-called ‘safe period’ method of contraception. It was all right to have sex seven days before your period started, for the three or four days of the flow, and for six or seven days following. Otherwise you had better make sure that the man left the church before the last hymn was sung. (How we giggled, we girls, as we uttered that ridiculous code we thought so secret for coitus interruptus. And how confident and proud we were of our possession of these adult ‘facts’.)

  Well, as I told you, the flow of my period had finished the day before. But, I thought now, how could I be sure my school friends were any more accurately informed about the ‘safe period’? And even if they were, how safe was ‘safe’? One hundred per cent? Doubt invaded my romantic amotopian fantasy and kept me brooding for some time after Mr Wesseling’s volcanic eruptions commenced. Long enough for me to decide in calmness of mind that love cannot be love without risk. It seemed obvious to me, though I do not know how or when I had learned it, that love that is real is always dangerous. And more dangerous to the one who gives it than to the one who receives it.

  Even then I had few illusions about the behaviour of the human body, just as by then the war had left me with few illusions about human behaviour. The body, I was sure, could be just as errant as human behaviour, just as untrustworthy, just as prone to fluctuations from some supposed norm. Any rule, any law, whether enshrined in nature or made by human beings, implied exceptions and provoked deviation. I knew I was about to break several human laws—religious (fornication, connivance in adultery, coveting another woman’s husband), legal (having sex before the age of consent), and social (betraying the trust of my parents and of people who had taken me in at risk of their own lives and cared for me at their own cost). Why should my body not be just as vagrant and break the natural law? If I were caught, there were heavy punishments for all these transgressions. Was I prepared to accept the consequences, I asked myself as I examined my body in the mirror in the candle-lit coldness of the night. And replied to myself aloud, with the brave arrogance of untried youth, ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  So, with my mind made up, I gave myself to Jacob.

  POSTCARD

  Growing up is, after all,

  only the understanding that one’s

  unique and incredible experience

  is what everyone shares.

  Doris Lessing, THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK

  ‘HAVE A PANNENKOEK,’ Hille said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘A pancake.’

  ‘Eggs and flour and stuff beaten into a batter and cooked in a frying pan?’

  ‘I think so. I’m not great on cooking. The French call them crêpes? We love them in Holland.’ She smiled across the menu and shrugged. ‘You can have things in it. Spek, for instance, which is, er, bacon. Or apple and—kaneel?’

  ‘Sorry, no idea.’

  ‘Taking you out is hard work.’

  ‘Sorry again.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. I like practising my English.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I’m talking English, aren’t I?’

  ‘Taking me out.’

  ‘I invited you.’

  ‘Didn’t Wilfred want to come?’

  ‘Had to finish packing his things.’

  ‘The bacon will do, thanks.’

  ‘I’ll have the apple and kaneel. Then you can try it and tell me what kaneel is. What to drink?’

  ‘White wine?’ Daan had given him a liking for it.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We could go Dutch, if you like.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go Dutch. Don’t you know that expression?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Means we’ll each pay for own meal rather than one of us paying for both.’

  ‘Why is that Dutch?’

  Jacob laughed. ‘No idea. Why ask me?’

  ‘It’s your language.’

  ‘So? Can you explain all the expressions you use in Dutch?’

  ‘No. But I wish I could.’

  ‘We have lots of Dutch sayings.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Dutch uncle. A man who isn’t really your uncle but treats you like he is. Dutch courage. The kind of courage people get from drinking a lot of booze to help them do something they don’t want to do … What else? Let’s see … Dutch oven, which means your mouth. Lots of hot air, I suppose.’<
br />
  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Dutch auction. An auction where the price starts high and comes down step by step till someone buys, instead of starting low and going up.’

  ‘I know that one. And double Dutch.’

  ‘Talking nonsense.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Probably because to us Dutch sounds very difficult to understand, so something double it must be gibberish.’

  ‘Thanks a lot! It’s no more difficult than Swedish. And what about Chinese? Why not double Chinese? Are there more?’

  ‘A few, but I don’t know all of them.’

  ‘Are they all rude about us?’

  ‘Rude? I suppose mostly they are. Wonder why?’

  ‘I’d guess history, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You mean the time when we fought each other.’

  ‘Like the Danes are rude about the Swedes.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘People always make up jokes and say nasty things about people they’ve fought, don’t they? Like we do about the Germans. Or my grandparents do anyway.’

  ‘Hate has a long memory.’

  ‘Is that an English expression as well?’

  ‘It is now. I just made it up. Or at least as far as I remember.’

  That Hille laughed out loud made him feel good. He was liking her more and more. Couldn’t take his eyes off her. Especially her wide mouth with its lilting curl-over lower lip. And the pearly lustre of her skin that stirred in him a longing to caress it.

  The waitress came and they ordered.

  When she had gone, Hille said, ‘You know where you are? This restaurant, I mean.’

  The place (to his English eyes, a cross between a pub, a café and a restaurant, all three at once) was full of old soldiers (red berets or blue berets still on their heads, medals still lining their chests) packed round the tables, eating and drinking with their friends and talking English ten to the dozen. Jacob and Hille had taken the last two seats at a little table squashed into a corner. Apart from the waitresses, they were the youngest people there by many years. Jacob had been so occupied by Hille that he hadn’t noticed anything else. Now he looked around and saw there were pictures (real paintings or reproductions, he couldn’t see from where he sat) high up on the walls, which depicted scenes from the battle. He’d seen some of the same pictures in books.

  ‘I don’t know much about the battle,’ Hille said, ‘battles not being, like you say, my cup of tea. But this place is quite famous.’

  ‘What’s it called? I didn’t notice.’

  ‘The Hotel Schoonoord.’

  ‘Rings a bell. Wasn’t it used as a hospital?’

  ‘This isn’t the same building. What was left of that one was pulled down because it was so badly damaged. This one was put up on the same place after the war. I know about it because the daughter of the owner wrote a diary of what happened during the battle and it was published. Hendrika van der Vlist. She was twenty-two or -three at the time. It’s really good. Not as great as Anne’s. But you’d like it. And I know you can get it in English because I’ve seen it at the museum about the battle, just along the road from here. We could buy it for you.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘The museum was the English headquarters, so you might want to see it anyway.’

  ‘Oh, you mean, the hotel, the Heart something—?’

  ‘Hartenstein. They show you a film about the battle, and in the cellars they’ve made kind of scenes of how the place was during the battle using real things from those days. And with wax models for the people, you know? Like Madame Tussaud’s. It’s spookachtig, I think. But interesting. There’s a nice park behind it with lots of trees. We could have a walk if you want to, it’s really nice.’

  ‘Great. But listen, we could go Dutch, you know. You really don’t have to pay for me.’

  Hille said as the waitress arrived with their food, ‘You’ve told me about your grandfather. You can pay for your meal by telling about you.’

  ‘Thought there’d be a catch somewhere.’

  ‘Of course! I’m Dutch, after all. From us, you get nothing for nothing.’

  ‘Okay, okay! Pax!’

  With sudden seriousness, lifting her glass in a toast, and looking Jacob square in the eyes, Hille said, ‘Vrede forever.’

  Just as she did this one of those unaccountable silences fell of the kind that sometimes occur in a crowd of people, a simultaneous gap in all the conversations. The two words of Hille’s toast filled the silence, as if addressed to the entire room. There was only a second’s hesitation while the words sank in before everybody raised a glass, as if it had been rehearsed, and called out, ‘Vrede forever!’ The following silence while the toast hung in the air was broken by one of the old soldiers shouting out, ‘It was for you we did it!’ At which glasses were set down and everybody laughed and clapped or banged the table and cheered.

  Hille pulled a what-have-I-done face at Jacob and they both had to suppress giggles of embarrassment.

  When it was over Hille said, ‘Give me your plate. There’s something I want to show you. You have mine and taste the kaneel and tell me what it is. Do you like stroop? A sort of … syrup, I think you call it.’

  ‘Expect so,’ Jacob said, handing over his plate and taking Hille’s from her. ‘Not something I’ve had.’

  ‘Lovely and sweet, but not sugary, you know? We have it on our pannenkoeken.’

  Jacob was sniffing at Hille’s. ‘I can tell you what kaneel is just from the smell. Cinnamon.’

  ‘That’s it, yes. Cinnamon. Try it.’

  He cut a sliver. ‘Very tasty.’

  ‘Would you like it? We can order another.’

  ‘No, they’re huge. One will do for me.’

  Hille had taken a dispenser, turned it upside down and quickly poured a stream of thin treaclish syrup from its nozzle on to Jacob’s pancake, moving the dispenser about as if she were writing with a fat pen. Which, Jacob saw when she held up his plate to show him, she had been. On his pancake in syrup letters expertly shaped, no dribbles or blotches, was his name, but spelt: JAKOB.

  ‘Smart,’ he said, ‘and clever.’

  ‘You try on mine.’

  She handed him the dispenser. Jacob tried using it as Hille had. But of course the gummy liquid poured out much faster than he expected. What he achieved was a hardly readable squiggle, a wobbly approximation of his attempt at HILLA.

  ‘All you need is practice,’ Hille said, as they swapped plates again. ‘I prescribe a pannenkoek every day. And if this is an a, it should be an e.’

  ‘Well, if it comes to that,’ Jacob said, echoing her mock-tetchy tone, ‘this k you’ve given me should be a c.’

  ‘I know, but I liked k better. If you don’t, then eat it and it’ll be gone.’

  ‘I will. Ditto you with your a. I’ll start with the offending k right here in the middle of this giant flapjack and work my way out.’

  ‘Good idea … Flapjack?’

  ‘American for pancake.’

  Hille said, chopping out the a with a circular swirl of her knife, ‘Maybe we should always start everything from the inside and work to the outside, and not from the outside to the inside. Maybe life would be better that way. What d’you think?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re a philosopher as well as a pancake fanatic.’

  ‘But I am. I like to think about the meaning of things. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. And this is really good pancake.’

  ‘I think everything has a meaning. Especially things that doesn’t seem to have.’

  ‘Don’t seem to have.’

  ‘Don’t, don’t. Yes, sorry. Jakob Todd is a good name for a philosopher. A bit—ouderwets. What’s that in English? … Sort of ancient—?’

  ‘Old-fashioned?’

  ‘Right. Old-fashioned.’

  ‘Am I old-fashioned? Maybe I am.’

  Hille looked up from devouring her pancake, which was disappearing at about three times the rate
of Jacob’s, and considered him with only half-mocking seriousness. ‘Yes, I think that’s true. I agree, you are ouderwets. Not out of date or anything. I don’t mean that. Just old-fashioned.’

  Jacob put his head down because he wasn’t quite sure what game was in play now. Was she only joking, or actually telling him something she wanted him to know?

  ‘Is that bad news?’ he asked.

  ‘Good news,’ Hille said, tucking into her pancake again. ‘I’m getting very pissed off with the way everything has to be new-fashioned. How everything has to be the latest thing. Like, what you’re supposed to wear, and music. All that stuff? I used to think it mattered. Now I think it sucks.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

  He laughed with relief.

  ‘I mean it!’ Hille said with vehemence.

  ‘I know. Me too!’

  ‘Then why,’ said Hille starting to laugh with him, ‘why are you laughing?’

  ‘Because! . .Why are you laughing?’

  ‘I don’t know! … Because you’re laughing!’

  ‘So we’re laughing because we’re laughing!’

  Their laughter subsided into smiles.

  Jacob shrugged.

  All at once there was nothing he could say because there was too much to say. And because there were disturbing feelings milling inside him that he had never had before. He didn’t dare put a name to what they meant.

  Hille finished her pancake and sat, elbows on the table, chin on her knuckles, staring at him.

  After a while she said, ‘I don’t know anything about you really. But it’s like I’ve always known you.’

  Jacob was glad he still had some food to finish, though he didn’t want it any longer, as an excuse to avoid her gaze.

  When it was obvious he wasn’t going to say anything Hille said, ‘Have you ever felt like that about anybody?’

  There was a different tone in her voice, the edge had gone, the self-assurance.

  He waited for a moment while he worked out what he wanted to say, sensing he could either keep things going between them as they had been so far or make something else happen. But he also sensed this something else he didn’t dare name would open his most secret self to another person in a way he had never risked before. Nor had ever wanted to. All those parts of him that his shyness had kept locked up; parts he had never really examined carefully even for himself. As his intuition told him this, for he could not say he thought it in words, he was aware that his heart rate had increased and his temperature had risen with it.