“That’s my thinking,” said the mayor.”
“But it’s a big lake, and if the wind is from the south-east and the noise was on the west side, it’s possible that I missed it.”
He really wanted to be helpful; that wasn’t it. Maybe he had heard something, the noise of an engine, but not the one of the police boat. On the other hand, he had been in his first sleep, and it was hard to hear well in the cupboard bed. But he didn’t have to say all that, it wouldn’t make any difference. He wasn’t able to say what he had heard anyway.
“What do you have to say, adjutant?”
“I’ve often observed people in your yard,” said the adjutant. “To me it looks like an ideal place for hiding people and things like that.”
“That could be.”
“I can easily tell when it’s you or your wife. But these were others.”
“You can’t reach our place with your police boat. You must be able to see far.”
On the east side the water was so shallow that the police rarely ventured outside the channel, and that was quite a distance. But he knew they had powerful binoculars.
“Are you hiding anybody, and what are they up to?” the mayor wanted to know.
“Not many people come in our yard. The bakery man, every two days, once in a while the grocer, but my wife usually does the shopping herself. And the eel merchant comes often, especially when it’s hot. But that’s about it.”
“I see,” said the mayor, “you’re not going to cooperate. That’s up to you, but I’ve warned you. I’m going to ask you one more time: Who are the men of the underground who are responsible for this? You can’t make me believe that you are not involved in this, as secluded as that place of yours is.”
“I’ve nothing to do with it.”
He would like to know what had happened in the night on the lake. He didn’t think that the boy had been involved. He never told them much, but if there had been a weapons drop he would have let them know. But he had left no message that he wouldn’t come home to sleep. He had just stayed out for the night, which he often did. He might have gone to Echten, maybe to play cards with the men in hiding there on Klaas van Houten’s place. If it got too late, he’d crawl in the hay with the men. It was also possible that he was on a weapons mission. Gryt had wanted him to forbid the boy. She blamed the girl for it. She egged him on, she said. He knew it was true. She became wild as soon as she heard the word “German.” And he understood why after she told him what they had done to her dad.
“All right, it’s up to you,” concluded the mayor after a short silence. He gave a signal to Bolhuis, who was standing in the door. The policeman took his arm.
He still wanted to say something to the mayor. He said: “This comes at a bad time. I can’t just walk out, I have …”
“That’s none of my business,” said the mayor.
He opened a drawer and started looking for something. Bolhuis pulled him by the arm.
“This messing around of yours is none of my business either.”
“Now, that’s enough.”
The mayor pointed irritably to the door and the adjutant was up at once.
It exploded inside him, but he controlled his rage. He didn’t want to give them that satisfaction. They would love to work him over, that adjutant and Bolhuis. Just like before, when he was going to attack that district judge in Beets. Three men jumped him then, and they were still beating him when he was flat on the floor with his hands behind his back.
Before he walked through the door, he broke wind so loud that it reverberated through the hall. The mayor jumped up.
“I’ll be damned, you …”
Bolhuis gave him a shove and quickly pulled the door shut.
“You damn peasant,” said the policeman.
He stood still and said: “If you touch me again, you son of a bitch, I’ll kill you.”
Then they rushed through the corridor and up the stairs.
Inside the office Bolhuis flared up. “If you make one more wrong move, I’ll take care of you personally.”
He said nothing in return. He wanted to get out of here, as soon as possible. He sat down on the bench. A day of fishing with the trammel net didn’t tire him out as much as this did.
The young policeman roared when Bolhuis told him what had happened in the mayor’s office.
“How do you manage that, I mean, just at the right moment when you want it. Special technique, I suppose? We used to have a guy in our unit who could fart on command too.”
Bolhuis wanted to use the telephone, but the adjutant came in. Bolhuis asked: “What is the intent?” and he pointed to him.
“The mayor said they’d better take him along.”
He grabbed some papers off the desk and left; Bolhuis followed him out.
“That’s going to turn into an expensive fart, man,” said the young policeman with a wink.
He had thought about the telephone a while ago but didn’t want to ask then. Now that it looked like they had other plans for him, he’d better go ahead.
He asked: “Would you call Boonstra, the eel merchant, for me? He’s got to stop by, he’ll know what to do. I’ve got a bunch of eel waiting and they won’t last in this weather.”
“Does that Boonstra live here?”
“Yes, and he has a telephone. I’ve called him before.”
The young policeman searched in the telephone book and dialed the number. He gave the message. “Who is he? I don’t know, but he can sure crank out the farts.”
He beckoned for him to come, and he took the telephone. He told Boonstra to come and pick up the whole bunch. The line eel too, he wouldn’t get around to smoking them today anyway. And Boonstra must not forget the salt.
“That’s bad timing,” said Boonstra, “because I’m out of salt. But I can give you a good salt block. You’ll have to cut it up yourself. If you can get by with that for a little while, I’ll get the salt to you later.”
It was contrary to their agreement, but he said: “All right then.”
The policeman took the telephone out of his hand. “I believe my colleagues are coming.”
An office clerk looked around the corner and took off again.
The young policeman laughed. “That story is going to spread through the whole building and everybody will want to know who the guy is that can let them like that. But what I wanted to ask, do you suppose I can get some of that fish of yours pretty soon?”
“Go ahead, he said. “Go to Boonstra and tell him that I sent you and to give you a couple of pounds. I’ll take care of it with him later.”
The policeman rubbed his hands. “Then this is going to turn into a good day for me after all,” he said. “By golly, fried fish, I don’t even know how it tastes anymore. I live in the city, you see, and you can’t get a thing there. And we have to be so careful as police, right?”
He had another sandwich in his pocket and he ate it now. It was getting uncomfortable in the police bureau. The sun was shining on the windows, and it must be about coffee time. But the village remained quiet. The only sounds they heard were the occasional footsteps of a clerk and the opening and closing of a door. Outside, a couple of Germans were stomping around on the stoop.
Ideal weather for pike fishing, he thought. He could’ve gone near that old cemetery because there was almost no wind.
The adjutant entered and Bolhuis was with him. The adjutant stood in front of him and looked long at him.
He asked: “Is something up?”
“Yes, something is up. Just follow Bolhuis.”
They went outside. A motorcycle with sidecar stood ready. He had to sit in the sidecar and a soldier started the motor. Another soldier took the backseat. Then they rode out of town.
3. Interrogation
He had taken the road to Heerenveen only a few times before; to be precise, three times. The first time was when he had gone there to make an arrangement with Poepjes, the commercial fisherman. He had taken the tram to Heere
nveen and had walked the rest of the way. Poepjes hadn’t asked much money for the business, so they had come to an agreement quickly. He’d paid only three hundred guilders for the old shack on the edge of the lake. Two weeks later they had been on the road to the new place with horse and wagon. Their handful of personal belongings, along with Gryt and the boy, fit easily on one wagon.
The third time he had traveled this road had been for the funeral of his father. They had lived by the lake hardly three months then. They had never been worse off because he had to learn everything from scratch and he caught but little. Besides, eel didn’t bring much money in those days.
They had not let him know that the old man was sick. He only received a postcard from Hindrik that his dad would be buried on Saturday. He had attended, though he knew what they thought of him in Beets. When they emptied out the house and divided the stuff, Thomas asked about Dad’s muzzle-loader.
He wanted it.
“What do you want with that,” said Thomas, “you have a hunter’s permit.”
They meant his fishing license. He wasn’t a poacher anymore, so he wouldn’t dare use the muzzle-loader anyway. But in the end, he did get to take it home with him.
Before he took that job by the polder, he had tried talking it over with his dad. The old man had lost much of his wildness and was easier to get along with now. Sometimes he could even have a decent conversation.
He said to the old man: “It’s easy enough for Hindrik and Thomas to talk. They have healthy kids and they’ll roll through it easy enough, but for us it’s always tough going. I’ve gotta have a steady job, otherwise we’re not gonna make it.”
Dad said: “If you’re gonna become a slave driver in the polder, then I’m all through with you.”
He also said that it didn’t make sense to him at all. “Hindrik’s wife Geeske is nothing but a scurvy skeleton. There’s hardly any flesh on her and she’s as flat as a pancake. But healthy as a spring chicken and every year another baby. You married yourself a hulk of a woman and you have only one child, and that one is always sick.”
Hindrik often said that Gryt was a whiner. “You have to be firm with her. And that boy of yours, he’s not gonna amount to anything either.”
They had been wrong about the boy. No one could tell now that as a baby he had been sickly.
The German on the back of the motorcycle sat with his head down deep in the collar of his overcoat and sought shelter behind the back of his mate. They paid no attention to him. They had pulled the tarp tightly around him. He couldn’t move an inch.
The vehicle hobbled over the rough cobblestone road. They crossed the tracks and then followed the canal in the direction of Leeuwarden. That disappointed him. He had thought they were heading for Crackstate.
He felt at home there. He knew about the place already as a boy, from his father’s stories. Later Hindrik and Thomas added their tall tales. Dad said that he couldn’t count the times he’d been there to sit out his punishment.
He knew nothing about Leeuwarden and it scared him a little. The big jail was there, but if you ended up there it would be for a couple of years and not for a couple of weeks or months, as in Crackstate.
He was also getting cold, though it was nice sunny weather. The people they saw along the way in the fields had taken off their coats, but the motorcycle rode fast and the wind blew so hard in his face that the tears were running down his cheeks.
On the other side of Irnsum—he saw the name on a sign—the soldier who drove shouted something to his mate and the cycle slowed. The soldier drove onto the shoulder of the road and they got off. They lit cigarettes and took a leak by a tree. He’d like to get out too; his legs were stiff and his stomach hurt from all the bumping.
He asked: “Can I get out too?”
They didn’t understand him at first and he made the gestures for relieving himself. When that didn’t help, he said it in German. They untied the tarp and told him not to try to escape. One soldier took his rifle off his back and put it under his arm. He walked around a bit on stiff legs and then relieved himself behind a tree. Then the soldiers snuffed their cigarettes and told him to get back in.
Twice in his life he had been to Leeuwarden. He best remembered his trip there as a boy, with Dad and Thomas and a whole bunch of people from Beets and Terwispel. It must have been a Sunday, because they didn’t have to work and there was no strike either. He could still clearly recall the large meadow surrounded by a hedge of police and soldiers. He must have been about eleven then and was already working with the other boys inside the big mudscoop.
He remembered nothing of the speeches, but the scene of the police and the soldiers standing silent in a circle was vividly etched in his memory. He remembered the trip home as well, because Dad had to keep prodding him. He could hardly keep up with the group that walked along the road, in serious discussion about the meeting they had attended. Now and then they’d break out into singing their fight song, the “Marianne.” And around Akkrum, Dad and the others ran into a gang from Terwispel. Dad wanted to stop for a drink, but one guy from Terwispel blocked his way and screamed: “Workers who drink don’t think, and workers who think don’t drink.” That made Dad angry and he knocked the man out of his way.
The motorcycle crossed a pair of bridges and turned into a wide street. They stopped, but there was no prison. It looked more like a manor house with a high iron fence and a large garden with beautiful flowers and footpaths winding through it. Such mansions one might see only in Beetsterzwaag.
The door looked like a gateway, so wide and high, with steps leading up to it. A soldier stood on guard duty by the gate, and another one by the door. Behind the door was a long corridor just as in the town hall, but much wider and higher and with brown doors on both sides as far down as one could see.
One soldier stayed with him, the other disappeared behind a door. He soon returned and took him down the corridor into a bare room with a couple of benches. One soldier seated himself by the door, the other left.
He was there for maybe less than fifteen minutes. He unbuttoned his jacket, because it was a bit stuffy in the room.
Then the soldier took him to the end of the corridor and around the corner. He was led into a room where there was only one man sitting behind a huge desk. He was half hidden from view behind a palm. The room had large windows with awnings. He had never seen such an impressive room; there were no such rooms in Crackstate and in the Hall of Justice and the City Hall in Beetsterzwaag. The ceiling was white and decorated with figurines. Chandeliers with more than twenty bulbs and adorned with beads and copper hung from the ceiling. In the corner stood a statue of a nude, also in white, one knee slightly raised and one hand behind her neck.
The wallpaper was dark red with gold flowers and there were many large paintings on the wall. The carpet on the floor was so thick that he could feel his feet sink into it.
He stood in the middle of the room, in his boots, and the door closed behind him. The man behind the desk was not in uniform and he did not speak German.
He said: “So, there you are.”
He came around the desk and pointed to a couple of empty chairs.
“Sit down. Maybe you want to take your coat off. It’s a bit warm.” The sun was right on the windows and the awnings didn’t nearly keep all the heat out.
He was a good-looking man with a nice gray suit and shoes that shone like a mirror.
He let himself down in the low, leather chair and the man sat down on the other side of the low coffee table. There were cigarettes in a wooden container, and the man took one himself and then held the box out to him. “Go ahead, take one.”
“I would like some chewing tobacco.”
“That’s fine, but I have no chewing tobacco and I can’t offer you a spittoon, either.”
He said it smiling. “My grandfather chewed also. It’s going out of style a bit, though, isn’t it. My father did it now and again, but my mother hated it. He was a common laborer too
, just like you. He worked for a farmer for forty-five years. He had a hard life, just like all the workmen of his time. He didn’t get old; the poor man never experienced the better times.”
He got up and took some papers off his desk.
He could swear that the brown-covered folder was the same one the mayor had in front of him this morning.
The man sat down and lay the open dossier on his lap. He said: “And do you know what grieves me the most about my father? That he never understood it. Till his last day he gave all he had for the SDLP. He was a fanatical party member. He believed everything the party leaders told him. He never knew how he got screwed.”
He got up to reach for the telephone on the desk, which had already rung twice, and listened. He said: “Let me check.”
He paged through other papers lying on the desk. Then he said: “No, just send those on to Mayer.”
He sat down again and took the folder from the table.
“Where were we?”
He crossed his legs and started looking through the file.
“Oh yes, my father, a fanatical socialist. Were you brought up like that too?”
He considered how he should respond. He was thrown off a little because he was used to different treatment. They would usually start right in on him. Once in a while there would be one who would start with a friendly conversation, but they would never allow him to sit down.
He said: “I never belonged to a party.”
“That’s sensible, but you’ve been pretty active nevertheless, though it may not be in politics. I didn’t read the reports all that carefully, to be honest, but when I look at …”
He began to scan the pages. “For example, you don’t get fourteen months for nothing. That’s not for riding your bike without lights. And then there’s one for three months, one for four weeks, and a whole row of shorter sentences.”
He should have known. At every opportunity he was reminded of his sins, and the longer the list, the heavier the punishment. That criminal record would haunt him his whole life.
“That was in another time,” he said, “but for the last five years I’ve stayed out of trouble, as you can tell from those papers.”
The Trap Page 3