The Trap

by Rink van der Velde

  The man dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Of course, I understand. If I had lived in that time, I likely would have done the same. So much injustice demands resistance. I can’t stand injustice, I’ve always been that way.”

  He didn’t quite know what to make of it.

  “Are you a church member?”

  He read in the dossier again. “I believe not, right? Of course not.”

  “I am nothing,” he said.

  “You come from a fairly anarchistic background.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I often heard my dad talk about Domela, that’s true.”

  “The great Domela Nieuwenhuis, of course. Did you know him?”

  “No, but when I was a little boy he would often come to Beets and Terwispel, and he is supposed to have been in our home too. They were proud of Domela in Beets.”

  “Did your family always live in that area?”

  “I think so. They would move sometimes, from Terwispel to Beets, when all the peat had been dug up there. But Grampa came from Giethoorn, I’ve heard; a lot of folk in Beets came from there, you could tell that from their dialect. When the peat was gone in Overijsel, they came this way. They knew only how to make turf, so they had to go where the work was.”

  “And all of them Domela followers, of course.”

  “I suppose so, at least in my time. But I believe that quite a few of them first belonged to the Mennonite Church.”

  He said what he knew and that wasn’t much. They rarely talked about it at home. Besides, he wanted to be cautious, for he didn’t yet know what the man was up to. It was probably just a warm-up.

  The man questioned him more closely, and then he told the story he had often heard his dad tell. That Grampa one day walked away from the meal table because he refused to read from the Bible.

  “Did he have to be the one to read?”

  “He was the only one who could read a little. A schoolteacher who took an interest in him must have taught him. But I think that teacher must have taught him something else as well.”

  The old man liked to talk big. He didn’t believe that it had actually happened this way, but according to Dad, Grampa must have said: The hell with it, and if that book appears on this table one more time, I will leave.

  “His folks didn’t want to give it up, of course.”

  “No, so he never came home again.”

  The telephone rang again and the man talked for quite a while.

  He looked at the slate-blue sky. He was getting warm and he loosened the top button of his shirt. It was uncomfortable sitting in that low chair. He sank too deeply into it and he didn’t know what to do with his legs.

  “Give me a quarter of an hour and I’ll be through with him,” said the man, and hung up. He stayed behind the desk, picked up a pencil, and softly tapped the desk with it.

  He said: “I’m trying to figure out what kind of a man you are. You are not a terrorist; you are too sensible for that. You have seen too much and experienced too much to let yourself be egged on by that clique in London, the so-called government in exile that never moved a finger on your behalf. Now they need you, but you know better. Am I right?”

  “I have nothing to do with anything.”

  “I’d like to believe that. But it’s possible that you don’t do anything to obstruct the underground either, do you?”

  The man came from behind his desk and continued: “When you are on the lake fishing and airplanes fly over and drop weapons, then you look the other way.”

  He noticed that the man’s tone had changed and that he was looking at his watch.

  “It never caught my attention.”

  “No, I suppose not, but if you should happen to see it, what would you do?”

  He would rather have sat on a higher chair. He felt himself powerless with his legs folded almost double.

  “Well, what do you say?”

  “I’ve never witnessed that, so it is hard for me to say what I would do.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.” He looked at his watch again. “I don’t have much time. You’re not as innocent as I first thought. I regret that, for your sake. It doesn’t make any difference to me, of course; it’s a small trick to get people to confess. If we chose, you would tell us everything within an hour. But I prefer not to take that route, and I thought that with you it wouldn’t be necessary either.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to confess,” he answered. “I already told the mayor this morning. I was home the whole night.”

  The man bounced up. “How do you know that it was this past night?”

  “I gathered that. The mayor said it himself, and there were more in attendance: the water police and an officer and a regular policeman.

  “I warn you that this won’t do you any good. Wait, let me make it easy for you. I will tell you how it went, and you need to do nothing else but confirm the story. Shall we do it that way?”

  An answer was expected of him. He said: “I didn’t notice anything, so I can’t say yes or no.”

  “Your son told us.”

  It came as a shock. He was going to get up, but he couldn’t manage from that low chair. He managed to control himself, but uneasiness followed. He looked at the man, who kept a close eye on him, and then at the desk. He said nothing. He knew that the interrogation would now go the way he was used to, and that he would have to watch his words. It was worse now than before, because now the boy was involved. He felt himself begin to tremble inside when he thought about the boy. It started with a shiver that ran across his skin. He was scared.

  “He told us everything,” said the man after a short silence. “He’s a lot like you. He reacted the same way. I told him the same thing. I wanted to help him because I don’t believe he’s bad. He was talked into it, of course, we see that happen more often. I am prepared to go easy on him. But he refused at first, so I had to send him on. I felt sorry for him when he came back in here again and confessed everything. I warned him too, just like I’m warning you now. He …”

  “What did you do with him?”

  It was the first time he had interrupted the man.

  “We made him confess; just how that’s done you will find out yourself if you refuse to cooperate. No one ever came away from here who ultimately didn’t tell us the truth. There’s nobody too tough for us to break.”

  He began to remember now the stories he had heard from the people in hiding. Cor, the one from Amsterdam, knew all about it, he said. And the girl knew the same kind of stories. But all of them had it secondhand. There were so many stories floating around about the Germans. He felt the rise of dread and uncertainty, and he saw the demons that had tormented him when the boy was still small. He heard him squeak and gasp in the cupboard bed next to them when the boy suffered from chest congestion, and he saw the boy’s fear on his first day of school.

  For fifteen years he had worried about the boy; then he turned the corner and was able to take care of himself pretty well. But at this moment the anxiety returned and slashed through his chest.

  The man must be able to tell by looking at him. He said, “I want to help both of you, and there’s a lot I can do for you, but then you have to help us. We’ve got to take care of that underground business in your area. I want the names of the leaders and then you have my word that you will be home again tonight.”

  “My boy too?”

  “Your son too.”

  There was a knock on the door and the man looked at his watch. He hurried to the door and talked with somebody in the hall. When he closed the door behind him again, he said: “I don’t have any more time. There are other people I can probably still help.”

  He sat down behind the desk and picked up a pencil. “Shall we?”

  “What did you want to know?”

  “I want to know everything.”

  “But you already know everything.”

  He said it innocently and he had wanted to add something, but the man didn’t give him
the chance. He jumped up and shouted: “This has gone on long enough. I’m not going to waste any more time on you. Confess, and at once.”

  But he was not that far yet. He felt himself grow more composed and then his irritability returned, too.

  The man banged the table with his fist and screamed: “I’ll get it out of you all right and then the whole lot of you will be lined up against the wall. And we’re going to burn down that terrorist nest of yours with everything in it. We’ve cleaned up more of those resistance dens.”

  He began to breathe easier when he saw the man raging that way. He should have known; they always tried and it had never affected him. The reason that he had gotten off the track a bit this time was only because of the boy. But they didn’t have him; he was certain that they hadn’t caught Germ. He said: “Did he confess everything, about those resistance dens and all that?”

  He felt the impulse to laugh, which had always infuriated the police.

  The man was going to come at him, but he restrained himself. With large strides he rushed to the door and tore it open.

  “Get this one out of here,” he hollered.

  A German soldier took him through the corridor in the opposite direction of the entrance, down a small concrete stairway and then through a narrow hallway with small barred ceiling lights. The soldier opened a door and gestured for him to enter. He stood in a cell and saw that he was not alone.

  “Well, I’m getting company. That’s nice. I’ve been here all by myself for days already.”

  It was a man in a brown corduroy suit. The elbows and the knees of the suit were shiny and the area around the fly was greasy. The man’s face was wrinkled and his hair was short and gray.

  He asked: “Do they keep them long here?”

  Then he heard what he had been afraid of all along. The man said: “Whoever gets in here may never get out.”

  4. Braaksma

  If that pious schoolteacher, Braaksma, the man with the orange ribbon under the lapel, had his way, then the man in the fancy room would be on the right track now. The teacher used different words, but it amounted to the same thing. He had appeared in their yard in the fall of the first year of the war.

  “A nice place,” he said after he had snooped around a bit.

  He was after a meal of fish, of course, but there was a fisherman in the village too, one of his own kind even.

  But he knew what the man was after. A few weeks later the teacher was back again.

  “Really ideal. No one is able to sneak up on you here.”

  But he made another trip before he came with the request: Would he be willing to give a hand now and then on behalf of the cause? He refused on the spot, and Gryt, who was there with them, said that they didn’t want to get into hot water again. That irritated him, and he walked to the boat. The schoolteacher tried it out on Gryt first, and when she went inside, he came to him. He had gotten into the boat and was clawing around in the fish traps.

  “But if we get somebody now and again who has to lie low for a while?”

  “How do you mean that?”

  “Well, there are people whose lives are in danger. If they’re caught, they’ll be shot.”

  “Anybody in trouble like that can come, but nobody else,” he said.

  That was good enough for the schoolteacher. Gryt was angry and she tried to talk him out of it. When that didn’t work, there followed the same accusations he had listened to for years, and then came the silent treatment, which he had also become hardened to.

  The first one came fairly quickly, and when he told Gryt that the man should have his food and drink on time, Gryt did not protest. They never had more than four at one time, and when the teacher tried to get him involved in other things as well, he made it very clear that he wanted no part of it. He had never had a weapon in his yard. He didn’t even have his own shotgun, his father’s muzzle-loader, at home.

  The man in the fancy room had revealed his hand. All they had was his criminal record, and that wasn’t enough to hold him. They suspected, of course, that he was involved in resistance, but they had no proof. They were just bluffing.

  People in danger—he took only those. He never asked them why they needed to hide. That made absolutely no difference to him.

  That had been true in ’40 also, when two young men had made their home in his shed for a couple of weeks. He wasn’t even sure whether one of them was Thomas’ son. One evening in the first part of May they had suddenly stood in the yard, two young men in military uniform. The smaller one called him uncle and told him that he was one of Thomas’s boys, and they said they’d be damned if they’d fight for queen and fatherland. He agreed with them.

  Gryt was of course opposed to sheltering the boys, but he said what he would say again later: Anybody in trouble can come.

  The Germans were well in control when the two boys took off again. He never heard from them again, and that was fine as far as he was concerned. He dug up the uniforms that they had buried under the shed, and Gryt made clothes for Germ out of them. He himself had gotten a lot of use from a long, green coat when he went poaching. Among the young reeds he could hardly be spotted in that coat, and, besides, the thing was almost waterproof.

  “This is the first time we got something out of it,” he said in jest.

  But Gryt maintained that he should have sent them away.

  “You should have sent them to Hindrik, he’s always had a big mouth.”

  But Hindrik lived in a populated area, and it wouldn’t have been safe there. He wanted Gryt to understand that, but it made no impression on her.

  It had been different with the girl. It didn’t exactly please him either that Germ had come home with her, just like that. Gryt objected even more strenuously than usual. It was the first time he felt sorry for her. She couldn’t help it; that was simply the way she was.

  “That girl is going to be the death of us,” she said, “or of Germ.”

  And days later she was still complaining. This was the limit, a woman in the house who’s a total stranger and then one of that kind to boot.

  The straitlaced schoolteacher said: “I don’t know, I don’t know.… The Jews must be helped, of course, but whether this is the right place for such a girl …”

  “Germ and her get along fine,” he said, and then added intentionally: “They sleep together, so we don’t even need an extra bed, and that helps with Gryt’s washload too.”

  He pursued the topic, and Gryt said later: “You’re just like Hindrik, he always talks dirty too.”

  That’s where he got it, all right. Hindrik would always push it too far and turn people off.

  Later the schoolteacher discussed the subject with the girl herself. It wasn’t a proper thing for her to do. When he heard that, he told the teacher that he didn’t want to see him in the yard again. He’d better get his fish somewhere else in the future. The schoolteacher did not come again. When he had a message, he sent someone in his place.

  Maybe they were keeping his place under close surveillance today. It made no difference. Willem and Cor would take care of the girl. Willem, especially, was very much at home on the lake. Right at this moment they might be sitting in the shelter by Lolke. And Germ he didn’t have to worry about at all. He must’ve known for some time already that something was amiss. He did hope, though, that the boy hadn’t gotten too deeply involved in resistance work.

  He sat on the bunk and listened with half an ear to the man, who was talking a blue streak.

  The cell was cleaner than the one in Crackstate, the house of correction in Heerenveen, and the barrel didn’t stink so badly either. But there were no windows. There was a ventilation shaft in the ceiling with a bit of light shining through. And a weak lightbulb shone above the door, but it was half-dark in the corners of the cell.

  He sat down on the bench by the wall, right by the door. They had let him keep everything, even his chewing tobacco. He took off his jacket and hung it on the hook of his bunk. He was goin
g to go to the barrel to take a leak when the other man suddenly jumped up.

  “Just a minute, let’s do it together. That lid has to stay on as much as possible, otherwise the stink is gonna kill us. I had the runs a few days ago from the watery chow here.

  “They usually empty the barrel every three days. I think they forgot me the last time, so now it stinks like the plague.”

  They each stood on a side, so that the lid didn’t have to be off too long.

  “Isn’t this obscene,” said the man. “But the funny thing is that for days now I haven’t been able to go. From one extreme to the other. My stomach is killing me. And I can’t stand this smell.”

  He thought that it wasn’t too bad.

  He sat down on the bench again and took a wad of tobacco.

  “Damn, you have tobacco?”

  He offered the man his pouch.

  “If I only had some paper now.”

  He got up and in his jacket found some paper from Boonstra, the eel buyer. “Will this do?”

  “Anything will do, just so it smokes. Do you have matches too?”

  “That I can’t help you with.”

  “Too bad.”

  The man sniffed the pouch and pulled out a pinch of tobacco. “It smells well-seasoned; this isn’t homegrown. Are you in here for black market dealing too? That’s what they picked me up for, see. Just some small-time stuff. You’ve got to make ends meet somehow, ain’t that right? Everybody’s got to take care of himself. It’s just a case of bad luck. They could just as well have picked up the whole population.”

  He sniffed the pouch again and licked the tobacco he held between thumb and index finger. “I never chewed. Does it taste good?”

  He put a couple of strands in his mouth and started sucking. “Kinda strong, but I can’t say it tastes bad.”

  He took the small wad out of his mouth and scrutinized it carefully. “Kinda dirty business, really.”

  “Start out easy,” he said, “and don’t chew too hard.”

  “This is real tobacco, I’d say. You can’t buy this anymore.”