The Assault

by Harry Mulisch

  “I don’t know yet. Pilot, perhaps.”

  The Ortskommandant smiled, but his smile vanished almost at once.

  “So,” he said, and unscrewed his thick orange fountain pen. “Now let’s get down to business. Do you have family in Haarlem?”

  “No sir.”

  The Ortskommandant looked up. “No family at all?”

  “Only in Amsterdam. My uncle and aunt.”

  “You think can you stay da awhile?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “What’s this uncle’s name?”

  “Van Liempt.”

  “First name?”

  “Eh … Peter.”

  “Profession?”

  “Doctor.”

  He was pleased at the idea of staying with his aunt and uncle for a while. He often thought of their beautiful house on the Apollolaan; it had an air of mystery for him, perhaps because of the big city all around it.

  While the Ortskommandant took down the address, he said in a solemn voice, “Phoebus Apollo, the god of light and beauty.” Suddenly he looked at his watch, put down his pen, and stood up. “Just a moment,” he said and left the room in a hurry. In the hall he called out something to a soldier, who thundered off. “In a while a small convoy is leaving for Amsterdam,” he said as he returned. “You can go right along. Schulz!” he called. This was apparently the sergeant’s name. He was to accompany Anton to Amsterdam.

  The Ortskommandant himself would quickly write a Notiz to those in charge over there; in the meantime the boy should be dressed warmly. He went to Anton, shook his hand, and laid the other hand on his shoulder. “Have a safe trip, Herr Fliegergeneral. And be very brave.”

  “Yes sir. Good day, sir.”

  “At your service, little one.”

  Anton was pinched on the cheek by index and middle finger; then the sergeant led him out of the office. Talking all the while in a dialect Anton couldn’t understand a word of, Schulz took him to a dank storeroom. There were long rows of soldiers’ coats and boots, and on the shelves, rows of new helmets. Schulz pulled out two thick gray sweaters and made Anton wear one on top of the other. He tied a scarf around Anton’s head and put the heavy helmet on top. When it sank wobbling over his ears, Schulz stuffed paper behind the leather lining and pulled the straps tight, after which it fit somewhat better. The sergeant stood back, looked him over, and shook his head, dissatisfied. Pulling a coat from the left end of the row, he held it up to Anton, then took a huge pair of scissors out of a drawer and laid the coat on the floor. Anton watched wide-eyed as Schulz simply cut the garment down to size, slashing wide strips off the bottom and the sleeves. Anton slipped his arms into them, and Schulz tied a raveling piece of rope around his middle to keep everything in place. Finally Schulz gave him a big pair of lined gloves, after which he burst out laughing, said something unintelligible, and laughed still louder.

  If only his schoolmates could see him now! But they were probably all at home, bored stiff, with no idea of what was happening to him. Upstairs Schulz put on a helmet himself. After he had picked up the letter at the Ortskommandant’s and stuffed it in his pocket, they left the building.

  Thin needles of glistening ice fell out of the dark sky. The small convoy stood waiting at the garage across from the fenced-off area, four high transport trucks covered with gray canvas, and in the lead a long, open car. On the front seat next to the driver sat an officer impatiently waiting for them. On the two seats behind were four soldiers muffled in heavy clothes, machine guns in their laps. Anton had to climb into the cabin of the first truck and sit between Schulz and a gruff soldier at the wheel. Such a lot was happening! For Anton, who was still too young to absorb the past, each new event erased the preceding one from awareness and buried it in his subconscious.

  They left Haarlem, driving through the suburbs, and came to the long, straight, two-lane highway that ran along the old ship canal to Amsterdam. There was no other traffic. On the left the overhead wiring of the electric train and the trolley hung to the ground in graceful curves. Here and there the rails stood upright like the horns of a snail. Sometimes even the poles were lying down. On all sides, the hard frozen ground. They drove slowly. It was impossible to hold a conversation because of the racket inside the cabin. Everything was made of dirty, rattling steel, which somehow told him more about the War than he had ever understood before. Fire and this steel—that was the War.

  Without meeting anyone they drove through Halfweg, along the abandoned sugar factory, and came to the final stretch of the twenty kilometers to Amsterdam. He could already see the city at the horizon, behind the sandy embankment laid out, as his father had explained to him, for a projected ring highway. They were driving along snowed-in peat diggings, when the front car suddenly swerved sharply into the embankment. The soldiers waved their arms, shouted, and jumped out of the trucks. At that moment Anton too saw the plane. No larger than a fly, it flew at a right angle across the road. The driver of his truck stepped on the brakes, crying, “Get out!” and jumped down himself without turning off the motor. Schulz did the same on the other side. All about him Anton heard shouting. The men in front crouched behind their car clutching their machine guns, ready to shoot. Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone calling him, waving. It was Schulz, but Anton could not take his eyes off the small thing that circled over the road and then came straight at him, growing fast. It was a Spitfire; no, a Mosquito; no, a Spitfire. Mesmerized, he stared at the shaky steel that approached as if it loved him. It could not harm him. He was, after all, on their side, they knew that, of course—even yesterday. From below the wings he saw some flashes crackle, minor incidents, hardly worth noticing. On the ground too, fire broke loose. It whistled and popped and rattled on all sides. He felt the blows of the impact, and because he thought the plane would ram into him, he dove below the dashboard while the motor bellowed above him like a steam roller.

  A second later he was pulled out from his hiding place under the steering wheel and dragged to the ditch. To the left and right of the road he saw at least a hundred soldiers rising. Farther on, near the last truck, he heard the wounded moaning. When the plane disappeared into the clouds and it became evident that it would not return, Anton, his heart still pounding, crossed the road to join the sergeant. Ice splinters as large as gramophone needles blew into his face. On the other side of the truck, right near the running board, two soldiers carefully turned a body over. It was Schulz. The side of his chest had become a dark pool of blood and tatters. Blood was also coming out of his nose and mouth. He was still alive, but his face was contorted with such pain that Anton felt the need to do something at once to relieve it. Suddenly he turned away, nauseated and in a cold sweat, less from the sight of all the blood than from the frustration. He pushed the helmet off his head, loosened the scarf, and groped for the shaking hood of the truck as the vomit spouted out of his wide-open throat. At almost that instant the last truck in the column burst into flame.

  He hardly noticed what happened next. The helmet was being shoved back onto his head and someone took him to the open car. The officer shouted commands; Schulz and the other wounded, and probably dead, were laid out in the third truck. All the other soldiers had to pile into the first two. A few minutes later the convoy was back on the road, leaving the burning truck behind.

  As Amsterdam approached, the officer kept shouting past him at the driver. Suddenly he asked Anton who the hell he was anyway, verfluchtnochmal, and where was he supposed to be going? Anton understood, but he was breathing so convulsively that he couldn’t answer. The officer gestured as if to throw something away and said he didn’t give a shit, scheissegal. Anton kept seeing Schulz’s face. He had been lying right next to the truck; he had wanted to pull Anton out to safety. It was all Anton’s fault, and now Schulz would surely die.

  They drove into the city through a gap in the embankment. A bit farther on, the officer stood up at a street corner and waved the drivers of the first two trucks straight ahead (briefl
y Anton caught a glimpse of his own vomit on the hood of the first one), after which he motioned to the third to follow him. For a while they drove along a wide canal that was practically deserted. Now and then they crossed a street where groups of women and children in rags poked around for something between the rusty trolley rails where the stones had been removed. Through narrow, silent streets with dilapidated houses they reached the gate of the Western Hospital. Inside, the hospital was a city in itself, with its own streets and large buildings. They came to a halt near an emergency shed with an arrow saying Lazarett. Immediately several nurses ran out. They dressed quite differently from Karin Korteweg, for they wore dark coats down to their ankles and much smaller white caps that enclosed their hair like snoods. The officer and the men on the back seat stepped out of the car. But when Anton wanted to follow, the driver held him back.

  The two of them drove alone into the city. Anton looked about with a leaden weight in his head. After a few minutes they passed behind the Rijksmuseum, which he had visited with his father, and came into a wide square with its center fenced off. Here stood two huge, rectangular bunkers. At the opposite side of the square, right across from the Rijksmuseum, was a building shaped like a Greek temple, with a lyre on the roof. Concertgebouw was written in big letters under the tympanum. In front of this building was a low structure bearing the sign Wehrmachtheim Erika. Several of the large, free-standing villas to the right and left clearly had been taken over by the Germans. The car stopped at one of these. A sentinel with a gun over his shoulder looked at Anton and asked the driver if this was the latest recruit.

  In the hall too they laughed at him, the little boy with his helmet and oversized coat, but soon an officer who was about to climb the stairs put an end to their teasing. He wore shiny high boots and all kinds of braid and badges and ribbons, and around his neck hung the Iron Cross. Perhaps he was actually a general. He came to a stop, four younger officers remaining a few steps behind him, and asked what was going on. Anton could not understand what the driver, who had snapped to attention, answered, but clearly it was about the plane attack. As he listened, the general took a flat Egyptian cigarette out of a package and tapped it on the lid, where Anton read Stanbul. One of the young officers instantly offered a match. He tipped his head back briefly, blew the smoke straight up in the air, and dismissed the driver with a wave of the hand. Anton had to follow him up the stairs with the four young officers, who laughed and whispered among themselves. The general’s back, straight as a ramrod, leaned forward in at least a twenty-degree angle, Anton guessed.

  They came to a large room. With an irritated gesture he ordered Anton to remove those ridiculous garments. Anton looked like a ragamuffin from the ghetto of Bialystok, he said, at which the officers smiled. Anton did what he was told, and the general opened a door and snarled something into a side room. The younger officers remained in the background; one sat down elegantly in the window seat and lit a cigarette.

  As Anton took a chair in front of the desk, a pretty, slender girl in a black dress entered. Her blond hair was pinned up on the sides but hung down in the back. She set a cup of coffee with milk in front of him; on the saucer lay a piece of milk chocolate.

  “Here you are,” she said in Dutch. “I bet you like that.”

  Chocolate! Only by hearsay did he know that it still existed. This was very like paradise. But he wasn’t given a chance to taste it, for the general wanted to hear what had happened from beginning to end. The girl functioned as interpreter. The first part of his story, about the assault and the fire, made Anton cry a little (but it was so long ago by now). The general listened unmoved, however, now carefully stroking his smoothly brushed hair with the palm of his hand, now caressing his smooth, shiny jaw with the back of his fingers. But as the story proceeded, he seemed unable to believe his ears. “Na, so was!” he exclaimed when he heard that Anton had been locked in a cell below a police station. “This is incredible!” Anton kept it a secret that someone else had been in there too. That he should have been brought to the Ortskommandantur afterwards the general said was unheard-of. “Unerhört!” Weren’t there any homes for children in Haarlem? The Ortskommandantur! That was really the limit. And the Ortskommandant had sent him to Amsterdam with a military convoy? When he knew perfectly well there were strafers everywhere? Had they all gone crazy in Haarlem? It boggled the mind. “It has all been a series of appalling mistakes!” He raised his arms and let them fall flat-handed onto the desk. The officer in the window seat burst out laughing at his colorful indignation, and the general then said, “You may laugh all you like.” Had the gentlemen in Haarlem had the courtesy to give Anton any messages? His paper, for instance, just to name an example?

  “Yes,” said Anton. But in a flash he saw the sergeant stuff the letter into his inside pocket, the very spot where the dreadful wound had opened half an hour later.

  When he began to cry again, the general stood up, annoyed. Take him away and calm him down and call Haarlem at once. Or not, after all. Let them stew in their own juice. Call the uncle and have him pick up the boy.

  The girl put a hand on his shoulder and led him out.

  When his uncle appeared an hour later, he was still sobbing in a waiting room. The corners of his mouth were brown with chocolate, and on his lap a copy of Signal lay open at a dramatic drawing of air combat. His uncle threw it to the ground, knelt in front of him, and silently held him close. Then he stood up and said, “Come, Anton, let’s get out of here.” Anton looked up at him and saw his mother’s eyes.

  “Did you hear what happened, Uncle Peter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a coat somewhere …”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Holding onto his uncle’s hand, without a coat but wearing the two sweaters, he walked out into the winter day. He was sobbing but hardly knew why, as if his tears had washed away his memories. His other hand felt cold. He stuck it into his pocket, where he touched something he could not place. He looked: it was one of the dice.

  1

  All the rest is a postscript—the cloud of ash that rises into the stratosphere from the volcano, circles around the earth, and continues to rain down on all its continents for years.

  In May, a few days after the Liberation, having received no news yet of Anton’s parents and Peter, Van Liempt left early in the morning for Haarlem to try and find out what had happened. Apparently they had been kept under arrest, though this was not customary during such reprisals. But even if they had been taken to a concentration camp in Vught or Amersfoort, they should have been freed by now. Only the survivors of the German camps had not yet returned home.

  That afternoon Anton went into town with his aunt. Amsterdam looked like a dying man who suddenly flushes, opens his eyes, and miraculously comes back to life. Everywhere flags at windowsills in need of paint, everywhere music and dancing and crowds rejoicing in the streets where grass and thistles grew between the pavement. Pale, starved people laughingly crowded about fat Canadians wearing berets instead of caps, dressed not in gray, black, or green, but in beige or light-brown uniforms that did not encase them tightly like armor, but hung loose and easy, like peacetime clothes, showing hardly any difference between soldiers and officers. Jeeps and armored cars were being patted like holy objects. Whoever could speak English not only became part of the heavenly kingdom that had come down to earth, but perhaps even received a cigarette. Boys his own age sat triumphantly on top of car radiators marked with white stars surrounded by circles. Yet he himself did not take part. Not because he was worried about his parents or Peter, for he never thought about that, but more because none of this was really a part of him or ever would be. His entire universe had become that other one which now fortunately had come to an end, and about which he never wanted to think again. Nevertheless it was part of him, so that all in all, he didn’t have much left.

  At dinner time they returned home and he went to his room, where he was quite comfortable by now. His uncle and aunt wer
e childless and treated him as if he were their own son—or really with more consideration and less friction than if he actually had been their real child. At times he wondered what it would be like to go back to live with his parents in Haarlem, and this thought confused him so much that he quickly put it aside. He liked being at his aunt and uncle’s house on the Apollolaan precisely because he did not feel like their son.

  His uncle had the habit of always knocking before he entered. When Anton looked at his face, he saw at once the news he had brought. The steel clamp that had protected his uncle’s pants leg on the bicycle was still around his right ankle. He sat on the desk chair and told Anton to be prepared for very sad news. His father and mother had never gone to prison. They had been shot that night, along with the twenty-nine hostages. Nobody knew what had become of Peter, so there was still hope for him. His uncle had been to the police, but they didn’t know about anyone except the hostages. Then he had gone to the neighbors on the quay. No one was home at the Aartses’ in Bide-a-Wee. The Kortewegs were home but refused to receive him. Finally it was the Beumers who told him the news. Mr. Beumer had seen it. Van Liempt did not go into details: Anton did not ask for any. He sat on his bed with the wall on the left, and stared down at the flamelike shapes in the gray linoleum.

  He had the feeling that he had known it all along. His uncle told him that the Beumers were very glad to hear he was still alive. Van Liempt pulled the clamp off his ankle and held it in his hand. It had the shape of a horseshoe. Of course, he said, Anton would continue to live here.

  Not till June did they learn that Peter too had been shot on that same evening. By then it seemed like a message from prehistoric times, hard to imagine. For Anton that distance of five months between January and June, 1945, was incomparably longer than the distance between June of 1945 and the present day. It was on this distortion of time that he later blamed his inability to explain to his children what the War had been like. His family had escaped from his memory, had retreated to a forgotten region of which he had only brief and random glimpses—as when he looked out of the window in school, or out of the rear platform on the trolley car—a dark region of cold and hunger and shooting, blood, flames, shouts, prison cells, hermetically sealed somewhere deep inside him. At such moments it was if he remembered a dream, but not so much what the dream had been about, as simply the fact that it had been a nightmare. Yet at the core of that hermetic darkness now and then flashed a single source of blinding light: the fingertips of the girl caressing his face. Whether she had had anything to do with the assault, and what had happened to her, he did not know. He had no desire to know.