“It wasn’t about weapons this time, but about people. Important people who at all costs were not supposed to fall into our hands. But you know nothing about that, right?”
“No, I know nothing about that. What do you mean, about people?”
“You never noticed that yesterday a group of people in a big scow were drifting around on your side of the lake? They spent the whole day there, you know.”
“There are plenty of places to hide, so if those people didn’t want to be seen, it would be very simple to just pull into the reeds a while when they saw me coming.”
“You didn’t know either, of course, that day before yesterday three of those persons were in town several times. Everybody saw them and talked about it, but you didn’t know it.”
“I already told you that I seldom go to town. I’m always home. I don’t need other people. What did those people want in town and on the lake?”
“You’re doing the questioning again, but go ahead. Those people were supposed to be picked up by an airplane during the night and taken to England. A group of people from around here were supposed to help them with that.”
“And you’re telling me that Germ was with them?”
“He was with them. And now it’s time to do business.”
“I’ve got to talk to him first.”
“That’s impossible, and now I’m going to tell you exactly how things stand. I want you to make a confession right now, otherwise we’ll have to take care of your boy. That means that you likely will not see him again. Are you listening carefully? Then you will not see him again.”
“Why won’t I see him again?”
“For this sort of thing you get the death penalty, everybody knows that.”
“And he won’t get that if I tell you a thing or two?”
“That is to say, we can then take his age into account. Officially he deserves the death penalty because he was caught with the weapons on him, but you can save him. We’re allowed to do that in exceptional cases. We are more interested in the ringleaders, who while safe behind the scenes incite the people to terrorist activity, than in the fools who have to do the dirty work.”
He tried to maintain his composure and let the man’s words sink in. It was possible that Germ participated in such adventures.
He said: “I don’t know the people. If Germ was with them, he should know more about it. That’s why I have to talk to him first.”
At that moment he became unsure again. The boy’s tobacco case lay there, and his pocketknife and the lighter.
“I’ve gotta talk to him first, I wanta see him.”
The man did not answer. He took a cigarette and searched for a light. When he felt his pockets in vain, he took Germ’s lighter and tried to use it. The thing wouldn’t work, as usual. The man flicked it several times and inspected it. When he put it down, he took his handkerchief and wiped his hands.
He took a step forward and looked at the spot where the cigarette lighter had lain. A few drops of water had spattered on the desk. He took another step forward and took the tobacco case. He opened it; the tobacco was soaked.
The man said: “Leave it alone,” and got up.
He looked at the man. He looked him right in the eye, and then he understood.
He put the case down and at the same time grabbed the man by the chest with his free hand and jerked him halfway across the desk. Then with his other hand he grabbed him by the throat and squeezed hard.
When the soldier jumped him, he staggered backward. He now had both hands around the man’s throat and squeezed still harder. He still held the man in his grip when the soldier hit him over the head with the butt of his rifle.
10. This Is Enough
Later it was hard for him to place the events in the right sequence.
First they dragged him through the corridor. He came to when they were halfway up the stairs, and began to scream. He kicked and flailed away so that they had to release him momentarily. A soldier rammed him in the stomach with the butt of his gun, and he fell forward on the stone floor. They bent his arms back and two men stepped on his legs. Then they had him under control.
“A hard head,” a soldier panted. “I really thought I had beat his brains out.”
The other said: “There’s something wrong with his brain all right. It’s all scrambled.”
Later on he remembered this, but after he heard the soldier say there was something wrong with his brain, he lost consciousness again. He came to on top of a table on which they had laid him. Both of his legs were tied down, and they had also tied a rope across his stomach, but he was able to move his upper torso.
He said aloud to himself: “I hope I strangled him.”
People came to see him and one of them said: “It looks to me like he’s calmed down pretty well.”
A man bent over him and said: “Still a little lightheaded, I suppose? That will last a while yet. But you carried on like a madman.”
It wasn’t the same man as the one in the fancy room, but this one was dressed as a civilian too, and spoke Frisian.
Maybe it was the suit that brought everything back. The truth of the situation hit him with such a bewildering force that he couldn’t stand it and began to scream again. He yelled that it wasn’t possible, or something like that. At least that’s what the other one told him later. He had heard him right through all the walls.
Then there was nothing for a while. Sometimes there was the shadow of a soldier who stuffed a rag in his mouth and thereby muffled his screams.
“It must’ve been an awful mess,” the man in the cell said later. “The whole place was jumping. I think they almost panicked. I could hear what sounded like at least five soldiers running through the hallway. And all that, I think, was because of you.”
The world came back to him piece by piece. First he heard voices. The ordinary voices of people talking together. In between was the ticking of the typewriters just like that morning in the city hall. The voices and the ticking came from the room next to where he lay on the table. The door was open.
He lay on the table and sensed that he was tied down. He didn’t open his eyes to see how things were. He didn’t move either, because he was afraid that would alert attention.
At first that was all. He knew he was alive and that there were people nearby. He had to get used to it, but before he managed, other things came between. It was a strange vision: He saw the other man in the cell who said that he didn’t have a stomachache anymore.
Right afterward he suddenly felt a great sorrow that overwhelmed him. He moaned, and someone came immediately to his side. He became afraid and he lay motionless, with his eyes closed. Fortunately, the man left again.
I won’t be able to hold myself together, he thought. It’s going to hit me in a moment, and then I’ll go crazy.
“You were gone for only a few hours,” the other man in the cell said later.
He had the feeling that it had been days, but the man must be right, for soon after the soldier came with supper—two slices of dark bread and a mug of water for each.
When he lay on the bunk with his jacket under his head, just like that morning, he said aloud: “He’s all through now and he didn’t suffer much.”
He had asked the man about it who stood by the table.
“Shot in flight,” said the man. “Your son jumped out of the scow and swam toward the reeds. He shouldn’t have done that.”
He knew that this man spoke the truth. Germ wouldn’t have let himself get caught easily and he could swim like a water rat. He wanted to reach the marshes, where no one could have caught up with him. Except the bullet.
“It didn’t have to happen,” added the man. “If he had let himself get caught, we likely would’ve sent him to Germany. But he tried to escape and that is the dumbest thing you can do in a situation like that.”
The man seemed sensible. He talked about a heavy blow, especially when it’s an only child.
“But you have to go
on,” said the man. “You still have a wife and you have your work.”
The man also told him that he was going to put him back in the cell with the other prisoner in order to recover.
He would have much preferred to be alone. He had to keep telling himself that the boy was finished now and that he hadn’t suffered. Shot in the back and killed instantly. He hadn’t suffered. That last realization gave him a bit of relief.
“Germ is finished,” he said. “It’s all over, and I don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
The man below him said something, but he wasn’t listening.
“I’m through with everything,” he said again.
He reflected on that and found it was exactly so: He was through with everything.
“I’ve had so much work with him, and Gryt has too. I feel sorry for her, because she had to go through just as much for him as I did, a lot more even. It started before he was born.”
He thought it over.
“And then just like that it’s all over. I’ve always been afraid of it. I always expected it, really, but not like this. I always sorta figured that he might get into an accident some day. During the first few years I thought that one day he would just die because he was such a weak little kid. But that went better than expected. Those two sheep pulled him through, because without bananas he would’ve never made it. Gryt and I said to each other: If we can only get him in good health first.”
His head was hurting. There were clots of blood in his hair.
“They sure worked you over,” the other man said after they brought him back to the cell.
When he told him that the boy had been shot and killed, the man grew pale.
“Shot dead, damn.… Do they do that here?”
“Last night on the lake, they shot him just like that because he tried to get away. And now it’s over. He’s finished and I’m finished. And he didn’t suffer, that’s a good thing. One time I hauled a boy out from underneath the ice. He must’ve struggled quite a while to get out. He had foam on his mouth. That’s terrible. Many a night I saw that awful twisted face before me. A bullet makes a quick end. He probably never even knew what hit him.”
He lay there reflecting.
“We all have to go sometime, the one sooner than the other. But what difference does it really make. I remember exactly how that first hit me. I must’ve been seven or eight when I discovered that life is terminal, that we are mortal. Up to then I had no idea of that. I was much too busy fishing for bass in the Bonne pools. But then Brant Hoen died, our neighbor. How was that possible? Well, Mom said, everybody has to die sometime. Me too, Mom? You too. That did it. I didn’t feel like doing anything anymore. I didn’t even care to go fishing for bass anymore. If you were going to die anyway, why bother with anything. Of course you get over that, but not all the way. I’ve always known that life doesn’t have much purpose.”
The man below said: “I don’t know what you’re rambling on about, but it’s pretty awful. I’m gonna give up, come what may.”
He didn’t touch his food. The other man ate his too.
Right after suppertime, the man in civilian clothes entered, accompanied by two soldiers.
He did not rise but gave them a sideways look from his bunk. The men stood next to him, but he turned his face away and looked at the wall.
“Are you able to be questioned? Yes, I’m sorry, but we have our work to do. I should tell you first, though, that your son’s body reposes in the village police station. He can’t stay there, of course. They can take the remains to your home and then there will still be all kinds of opportunity for you to make the necessary arrangements. They released the corpse already, and if you’re in a condition to make a statement, we’ll release you immediately and then you can go ahead and do the things that in such circumstances have to be done.”
He said: “I’m sure they’ll take care of things.”
“Yes, of course, but maybe you belong to a burial society, you would know that better than I.”
“Let’s leave it at that, then,” he said.
“What do you mean, don’t you want to be there yourself?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
The man paused a moment. “What did you say?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Well, yes, of course. I’m just trying to be helpful. But it’s up to you. Why don’t you get up and come along with me, then.”
“Do I have to be interrogated again?”
“Yes, I’m afraid that can’t be helped.”
He didn’t move. He said: “I don’t want to see that man again, that man in the fancy room.”
“You won’t see him again. This is another department.”
“I’ll kill that man.”
“You almost killed him already. That wasn’t so smart, though I can understand your reaction. It wasn’t our intent to give you that information. We wanted to spare you.”
He rose, and the shaking started again; he felt it coming.
“I had to find that out for myself. First you murder my boy and then you use him to pump information out of me.”
He lashed out, but his arms were heavy and instead of grabbing the man by the throat, he dropped his arms and started to weep. His crying was brief, but it stopped the shaking.
He said with emphasis on each word: “What beasts you are. I thought I knew your kind. The Royal Police have often manhandled me, and the cops too. And I always thought that nobody was meaner than judges and other big wheels, but you’re it. Worse bastards than you don’t exist. You go in cahoots with the Germans and you do their dirty work for them.”
The man said abruptly: “Along to the office.”
The Germans grabbed him by his shoulders and pulled him off the bunk. He was no longer tempted to resist. He said only: “You’ll not get a word out of me.”
“We will see about that,” said the man.
He felt very sure of himself. When they put him on his feet next to the bunk, he straightened his back in spite of the pain and walked ahead of the soldiers with great dignity. They took him to a bare room that had nothing but a chair in it. The man sat down on the chair, and the soldiers placed him right in front of it. They stood on either side of him and placed their hands on his shoulders.
The man said: “It seems to me you’ve experienced enough today. I’ll give you a good half hour to get a hold of yourself. No longer than that, because the people we’re after have had too much time already to make their getaway. We intend to make another raid tonight to try to capture the ringleaders. And before we do that we need the names. From you and from no one else. You have fifteen minutes to write down the names and addresses. Here’s paper and pencil.”
He did not accept it.
“Fine. In fifteen minutes you come back here and then I’ll write them down.”
They took him back to his cell. The other man stood doubled up by the barrel and asked: “Do you really intend to say nothing? You really know nothing about it?”
“I know a little, but I won’t tell ’em a thing,” he said.
“You won’t have to tell ’em much, maybe one name will be enough.”
“I could give them one name, but the man never did anything to me. He’s a real dud, with an orange ribbon under his lapel. And he’s a coward to boot, otherwise he wouldn’t be hiding that ribbon.”
“What’s he doing in the underground!”
“He looks after people who need a place to hide and Jews and so on, and when airplanes come with weapons, he goes into action then too.”
“So that guy is responsible for sending your son to his death. What in the world holds you back, man?”
That he was responsible for sending Germ to his death was not true. The boy did not let himself be told. He had never told Germ anything. The girl had egged him on, maybe, but he could take it from her. And he was already involved with those men before he had met her. He had nothing against the girl, and he had always liked her. A
nervous wreck, said Gryt. A hot number, Willem said later. She’d like to crawl right into Germ’s pants sometimes. According to Gryt the girl had no shame, and she looked with disapproval at the way the girl would run in her panties to the water pump in the morning. He looked at her often, but in a different way. And when he slept in the back of the house in summertime, he’d wait for Germ and the girl to go to the attic.
“Are you sleeping again?”
The man stood next to him. He opened his eyes and shook his head.
“I’ve not had to bury a child yet,” said the man. “I don’t know what that’s like, but it seems terrible to me. I want to get outta here so bad. If it makes no difference to you, aren’t you willing to help me?”
“Then maybe I’ll help you get out, but somebody else get in,” he said. “I can’t help you.”
“You mean I’m worse than that man? You said yourself that he was a dud. Maybe you don’t like me either, but I’m standing before you.”
“I have nothing against you. I don’t know you, and I really don’t know the other man either, so that’s about the same. But he’s about the same age as you, and I think he still has some young kids, just like you.”
“But if it makes no difference, then …”
The man kept on whining about it, but he gave no answer. After a good quarter of an hour the soldiers returned. They took him back to the bare room, but now they placed him on the chair and the men stood around him. They looked down on him and told him he couldn’t get up.
“You’ve already lost your son,” said the man. “If you want to risk your own life as well …”
“That’s exactly why,” he said calmly.
“Sure, you blame us for the death of your son, and now out of revenge you refuse to speak. But don’t you want to go back to your wife and your fishing?”
“This is enough,” he said.
The man didn’t understand that. “I don’t believe you realize that it’s going to turn out bad for you.”
“But I said that this is enough.”
“Don’t you want your freedom back?”
The Trap Page 9