by Arthur Japin
Van Moock made it quite clear that we were doing very well in all subjects. As he kept repeating this I was inclined to believe him. Still, I was constantly aware of the danger of a sudden hiatus that could strike at any time during a conversation; there would be a faltering of the voice followed by a complete blank, and all eyes would be fixed on me. For a long time I was plagued by this fear, and it made me shy. Later on in life I overcame my timidity, but the fear of exposure never went away. It is still with me. Day in day out.
We did not get on quite as well outside the classroom. The boys seldom addressed us in a casual, friendly manner. They tended to club together, forming a silent, forbidding front. Time and again we had no choice but to stand up for ourselves. During dinner, for instance. Each day we would find our plates laid a little further down the long wooden table, until one afternoon we were obliged to sit at the very end, where there was a permanent draught. We took our plates, squared our shoulders, and made for the head of the table where we squeezed in among the other boys. They made room for us grudgingly and pretended not to notice our presence. The next day we arrived in the dining room to find our pewter plates arranged on an old chest by the door. Everyone stared at us. I sat down, but Kwame pulled me to my feet again. He swept his plate from the chest. I did not dare follow suit, and motioned for him to put it back. There was some stifled giggling. I prayed desperately for them all to start eating, but no one did. I did not dare look, but in the end I heard someone getting to his feet. It was Cornelius. He took up his plate from the table, strode to the chest and sank down on the floor beside it. Two other boys followed his example, and then a third, until the six of us were sitting in a small circle by the door. From that day on we were at liberty to sit wherever we liked.
One hundred B.C.: arrival of the Batavian tribe.
Each day started with drill in the courtyard at six-thirty, unless van Moock took us for a walk or swim. Now and then, when he was angling for a financial grant or other privilege from the local council, he would order us to sweep the market square, or else the street in front of some dignitary’s house. There was a strict pecking order among the band of pupils during these exertions. The older, bigger boys, Cornelius, Verheeck, van Woensel and Termeeren, shirked their duties whenever they could. They had no qualms about letting the others do their work for them, and would even make the youngest boys like Mus, van Wersch and Tonnie Voorst take their places three times out of four. Sometimes, when we were exercising in the open air, the older boys would vanish altogether, without van Moock flying into a rage. I used to think he did not notice. Now I can see that their absence came as a relief to him after the constant exertion of discipline.
To be honest, the unfairness did not bother me at first as much as Kwame. We were both afraid of the leaders, but I could not help admiring their boldness, in which I was sorely lacking. And though I would have died rather than disobey van Moock, I fantasized secretly that I was one of them, that they would suffer me to swim in the lake in their company, after which we would all clamber, dripping, on to the bank together, and that we would run off into the fields with our bare bottoms, scaring the daylights out of the farm girls.
Of course the leader is just as separate from the group as the outcast, each being on the fringe, albeit at opposite ends. They are two sides of the same coin, and this lonely recognition draws them to each other as much as it keeps them apart. It enables them to see the masses for what they are, to put a face to the crowd. In that respect I have always recognized a hint of myself in Cornelius.
Even though I am only a boy,
Holland is my greatest joy,
My kind masters give me food and drink
They teach me to cipher and to think.
I vow that once I am a man,
I will serve my land as best I can.
The other boys were allowed to leave the premises every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, and sometimes also on Sunday morning after church and Bible reading. We were allowed to accompany them on these unsupervised outings, but we had no wish to. The first months we watched the others go, but the idea of following them did not occur to us. We had begun to feel at home in the school building, and the world we saw from the windows looked bleak, angular and stony. We simply did not see the town with its streets and squares as a place where games could be played the way we used to play in the forest at home. So we saw no reason to venture outside the grounds, until Mrs. van Moock turned up in the classroom one day when Kwame and I were having an extra lesson while the other boys had the afternoon off. She addressed her husband sternly, saying: “Simon, here is some money and I declare there is more to learning than books, and so, and so”—she rushed forward and pressed some coins into our palms—“and so, what I mean is I want you boys to buy me two loaves, and a bag of sweets as well—and don’t you try to stop them, sir, for my mind is made up.”
Van Moock slammed shut his copy of the Metamorphoses, from which he had been reading to us. “Now boys, you heard Mrs. van Moock: two loaves and a bag of sweets. Off you go.” Mrs. van Moock held the door open for us. As we went past she handed us our caps and scarves, then lingered on the doorstep until her husband bundled her inside. “My dear Mrs. van Moock, that was a very good deed you just did,” he said, whereupon he shut the front door.
The autumn of 1837 had given way, without any warning, to a cold spell such as we had never experienced before. You would have thought the Dutch were weaklings the way everyone complained bitterly about the sudden change in the weather. I myself quite liked the cold. It made the skin on my face tingle and feel taut. In Holland even the wind reminds you of the nature of your skin.
People preferred to stay indoors during winter. They peered out from behind their curtains. An inquisitive face appeared at the window of a house across the canal. Further down, a sweeper brushed some rubbish into the water to join the rest of the market debris on its way to the sluice. We were standing by the front door, and would have been quite happy to stay there for some time had not a carriage come thundering past, making us jump out of the way. The coachman swore at us. This did not upset me, because he would have sworn at anyone under the circumstances. I took Kwame’s hand.
It made no difference whether people pointed and stared or made an effort to dissemble their surprise—the one reaction was no less noticeable than the other. A lady and a gentleman whose path we crossed stopped in their tracks, nudged each other and stared at us open-mouthed until we had passed by. Then they turned round and followed us, at a little distance so as not to attract attention. If we took five steps they took five steps too, if we paused, so did they. Kwame and I exchanged a look of complicity: we would lead the couple a dance. We crossed the street quickly and recrossed it several times, dawdled a little way, then raced ahead again, until we ducked into an alley to spy on our shadows as they came hurrying past, pretending they were taking a perfectly normal everyday stroll.
At the other end of the alley we found ourselves in a neighbourhood with dwellings made of wattle and daub and with straw roofs. There were children running about on the unpaved sandy ground, and they were barefoot in spite of the cold. A knot of women huddled around a fire, on which they were boiling a pot of cabbage leaves. They offered us a taste. Kwame declined, but I took a sip from the ladle and when I raised my eyes I saw that Kwame had taken off his shoes and stockings and was racing around in the sand. I tried to calm him down, but he was so excited he did not even hear me.
I walked away, leaving him behind. He soon caught up with me, but when we turned into a street paved with cobbles his shoes were still dangling from his hand, and I hissed that he should put them on at once. It was not the cold that I was worried about.
We went into a small bakery. Our presence was attracting rather a lot of attention from passers-by, who followed us inside and made a purchase simply to get a closer look. The baker was pleased with the extra custom, and gave us each some goodies with the request to stay around for a while. Kwame was unw
illing, but I was glad to do the man a favour . . . Well, at any rate I did not want to offend him. I sent Kwame home with the loaves for Mrs. van Moock.
When I finally went out into the street again with a gift of two steaming apple fritters, I was loath to surrender my new-found freedom, and instead of going straight home I clambered up the old rampart behind the bakery and decided to take a stroll around the town. From my elevated position I had a view of the layout of the streets and also of the countryside on the other side.
The first thing people tend to do when they claim a piece of land is mark it off with straight lines, as if to cross out the work of nature itself. The flat grassland of Holland offers no such solace.
I recognized the road our carriage must have taken when we arrived in Delft. I could see several roads converging on the town from different directions, and I wondered which one we would take when we left again. All those roads, where did they go? I shut my eyes and spun round a few times until I felt dizzy. Then I opened them wide, taking my time to let the entire panorama sink in. I spotted a windmill, which I knew from an engraving in the school corridor. There was a scattering of farms, with workers in the fields and low dunes in the distance. Close by I could see the rectangular meadows and the little boathouse in the bend of the River Schie, where van Moock had taken us swimming in the summer . . .
A violent thud on my back left me gasping for breath. When I came to, the first thing I noticed was the freezing cold air pouring into my lungs. It smelled of grass. I prolonged this moment, as if I knew that from now on nothing would ever be the same. I stared ahead, insensible to the danger threatening from behind. Verheeck jumped on to my back and held me fast. He had two accomplices, Gerrit Toorenaar and Kobus Mus, the smallest and dullest boys in the school. They twisted my arms on to my back. Verheeck stood in front of me, legs apart and hands clasped behind him, a pose no doubt inspired by the framed print in our classroom showing the defeat of Vercingetorix. He was playing Julius Caesar, rising on his toes and throwing his head back so as to observe the loser from a suitable height.
“From now on,” growled Verheeck, “from now on, every time I ask: What are you? you must say: I’m a dirty nigger! Got it?” He gave me a taste of what would happen if I disobeyed by kicking me in the groin before I had a chance to say a word.
“So tell me now, what are you?” His tone was icy and unhurried. He waited patiently for me to get my breath back.
“A nig-ger,” I said, bewildered. Next I was punched on the chin.
“Wrong!” Verheeck said. “So you’re dumb too. All right then: a dumb dirty nigger. Tell me: what are you?”
“A dirty nigger.”
He struck me.
“And dumb too, dumb too!”
“I am a dumb dirty nigger.”
“Sir!”
“Sir,” I echoed, whereupon Verheeck’s minions let me go at last. I expected them to fall about laughing after my humiliation, the way they did when someone made a fool of himself in class, but they were silent. They wore stern, adult expressions. This was not a game. The incident was just as momentous to them as it was to me. They had accomplished their mission and were satisfied that everyone had acted according to plan. I, too, felt strangely calm as I walked home. I went up the stairs to my room and sat down on my bed. Only then did I feel the leaden weight of what had happened. I trembled with exhaustion. I felt more tired than ever before, and could not bring myself even to lie down. I sat like that, transfixed, for an hour, perhaps longer. I said the words over and over again under my breath, so that Verheeck would never have cause to attack me again: “I’m a dumb dirty nigger. I’m a dumb dirty nigger.”
Mon chou, mon bijou, mettez vos joujoux sur mes genoux et prenez des cailloux pour chasser les hiboux.
I awoke to find that the spirit of rebellion within me had collapsed under its own weight. Taming an animal means that it learns to hide its anger. It slows down, its step becomes heavier. I could feel my resistance trickling down through my pores into my inner being, where I could keep it and nourish it without running undue risks. I got out of bed and went down to breakfast as I did every day, conscious of a new threat to be dealt with. The rest of the day I did my best to look unmoved. Still, there must have been something unusual about my expression, for van Moock forgave me a stupid mistake in a division sum, and afterwards his wife insisted on reciting a little poem to me. Even Bertha the maid slipped me two toffees after supper, so I feared they all knew how I had been humiliated, although that was not likely.
That evening I went straight upstairs after supper. When Kwame came up a little later I pretended to be asleep. He was not taken in and demanded to know why I was acting so strangely. At first I refused to talk, and when he pressed me I told him I was missing my mother. He believed me. He sat on the bed and put his arm around me. We listened to the noises of the school as it settled down for the night, the church clock striking the hours and the dying sounds of drunken revellers crossing the bridge. It was quiet for a while. Then Kwame began to sing, and I do not know whether he was doing it for my benefit or whether he thought I was already asleep. Perhaps he was singing just for the sake of memory. In a low hoarse voice he sang of Spider Anansi’s web, but lost track of the words in the second verse. It was some time before he got under the covers and curled himself around me.
I was wearing one of the nightshirts that had lain unused in the wardrobe since our first night in Delft. Kwame held his breath. He ran his fingertips over the fabric briefly, then rolled over on to his back with an angry sigh. I had fastened the drawstrings tightly around my neck and my wrists, in a desperate attempt to cover up my shame and so keep it to myself.
The next time Verheeck set eyes on me he knew he had been successful in asserting his superiority. It only made him more cruel. I recited the magic words dutifully, after which he left me alone, and I even felt grateful for having been told the words that would set me free. I thought long and hard about what they meant. Having been surrounded by white faces for the past year, I was well aware that I was different and a Negro. But why dumb? and why dirty? I was neither. I knew that for a fact. And yet I repeated the words in my head all day long, over and over until I was sure I had them on the tip of my tongue in case of an emergency. And there were emergencies three or four times a week. You would think the boys would grow bored soon enough, but the taunts became such a routine occurrence that they must have been addictive. Saying the magic words was usually enough, but not always. Sometimes my tormentors decided I had not been quick enough to respond, or that I did not look solemn enough, or spoke too softly, or showed too little respect. As they were not sure whether bruises showed up on my skin, they would aim their blows on the small of my back and thighs to be on the safe side, for they could rely on my keeping that part of my body clothed in front of van Moock.
People adapt themselves to circumstances. That is the trump card prized by despots and oppressors. Their victims bend so as not to break. Adjustment is a matter of survival. The minority toes the line drawn by the majority. And while your view of the world hardens, you discover that your pride is soft and malleable, like the skull of a newborn baby. You can actually divide yourself up into separate beings: one part of you lives in fear and shame, while the other half functions as if nothing is the matter. As simple as that.
In spite of everything I was determined to continue my exploration of the town. At first I tried to persuade Kwame to come with me, but he was not interested. So I set out on my long walks alone, along the canals and past all the workshops and stores. People were friendly. They shook hands with me and asked me to step into their shops. They offered me sweetmeats so as to prolong my stay until word got about and customers poured in. I knew their motives were mercenary, but I did not mind for it gave me the opportunity to talk with all sorts of people. I learned a lot of new words, found out about prices and profit-making, how to keep accounts in a ledger, and observed the craftsmen and their tools. I watched the people at work an
d seized every opportunity to discover more details of the Dutch way of life and the character of the Hollanders. My curiosity knew no bounds. I was obsessed by the desire to understand exactly what it was that made us so different from the townspeople of Delft that there was always someone staring at us in wonder. I wanted to remove the sense of wonder, and for that I would have to become a familiar face in every street in the town. Verheeck could not stop me. The ever-present fear of meeting him made my excursions all the more adventurous, I thought, and the fact that I could always say the magic words if the need arose gave me a feeling, however misplaced, of power. I imagined that this strange land offered a range of different magic formulas, which enabled me both to extricate myself from awkward situations and to win affection. I was interested in the whole range.
can, will, may, must, shall, might
Such was the mood of the autumn and early winter months. Whenever I crossed Verheeck and his cronies I did what was demanded of me and left it at that.
I became resigned to the boys’ behaviour and would not have thought of making a fuss if Bertha had not taken it into her head one day that the boys could do with an extra strong broth in winter. She went to market and bought a sackful of fish heads, for which she drove a hard bargain, as well as a pound of sole for the van Moocks, who refused to eat all but the very best quality fish. Thanks to a generous sprinkling of bread crusts, condiments and parsley the brew did not taste bad at all. That same night, however, the school was in an uproar. I stumbled down the stairs pressing my fists against my belly only to find that there was already a queue of boys in the courtyard waiting to use the privy. Panic-stricken, I tried to control my bowels by sitting down on the frozen ground, but this did not help at all. I cringed and squirmed and was about to sink to my haunches there and then to alleviate myself in full view of everyone—which would not have embarrassed me in the least in the old days—but my dread of being tormented for my lack of control stopped me. A stab of pain made me do the thing that was as obvious as it was unthinkable: I made for the van Moock’s private closet, slammed the door behind me and sank down in relief. But that was not the end of it. My bowels were in a dreadful turmoil, and I could not run out again as quickly as I had anticipated, so I sat there doubled up with pain, giddily picturing Mrs. van Moock in nightcap and curlers and how she would shriek when she discovered my lifeless body in the morning. Then the door flew open and I found myself staring at a face so horribly contorted that the end of the world seemed nigh. Then I saw that it was Cornelius.