His hand lies lightly on the steering-wheel, now and then making a few routine movements with it. That too is a celebration, this fast and trouble-free progress. I surrender to pleasant thoughts: he is my friend, this soldier, he will see to it that I get back to Amsterdam soon. Walt, what a strange name, just like Popke or Meint. Foreign. It’s a wonder he picked on me of all people, that’s surely something to do with God, the reason why so many sudden changes should be happening to me…

His hand, one finger having slipped inside the collar of my shirt, is kneading my neck, casually but deliberately. The landscape has become hilly and for a long time we speed along a forest road. I have never been so far from Laaxum. We stop at a clearing where a few other cars are parked, all looking like ours, green and with canvas roofs. A small group of soldiers is hanging about, some on their knees looking under one of the cars while another is holding a coat over their heads to keep the rain off.

‘Wait,’ says my companion, ‘just a moment.’ He winds down the window and calls out to the other men, then jumps out of the car and winks at me as if we are sharing a secret.

His boots grate across the quiet road and a moment later he is leaning against one of the cars talking with the others. I hear their voices and see them gesticulating vehemently and pointing to our car. The patter of the rain on the roof is lessening and a bright band of sunlight drifts across the road and the encircling trees. I look around the cab and put the coloured pencils in a groove between the seat and the backrest, clearly visible so that I shan’t forget them. Beside the wheel, under the buttons and the little dials, some strange words are written. They’re bound to be in American: I must try to remember them.

A small chain hangs down from the little mirror above my head, a silver cross and a few coins dangling from it, and next to it someone has jammed a shiny coloured print of a lady with bright yellow curly hair, smiling with a tight-set, red mouth. Her neck is long and bare, the yellow curls fall in gentle waves onto her shoulders. Do such women really exist, so sleek and brightly coloured? My eyes keep returning to that shimmering face with its carefree come-hither look.

A chill sun breaks through every so often. The talking on the road that had seemed endless to me fizzles out, the soldiers climb into their various cars. At last! My soldier jumps cheerfully behind the wheel and holds a chilly hand against my cheek. ‘Cold!’ He presses on the horn, making a loud noise, and the other cars sound their replies promptly through the still air. As they pass us one of the men whistles shrilly through his fingers and bangs on the roof of our car, giving me a fright. ‘So long!’

Then silence descends between the trees. We are alone again. The soldier opens a packet of cigarettes and holds it out to me. Me, smoke?

He chuckles and lights one for himself. The smell of wet clothes and cigarette smoke fills the cab, making me drowsy: it’s high time I went back home.

‘Tomorrow?’ he asks then. Seeing my look of incomprehension, he points to his watch and makes a circling movement on it. ‘Tomorrow,’ that same gesture again, ‘you’, a finger in my direction, ‘me’, a finger towards himself and then he makes steering movements.

Tomorrow, I think, another ride, and I hesitate. Nice though it is, I don’t really want any more.

‘Tomorrow-tomorrow,’ two little turns around the watch, ‘Jerome, Walt, yes?’

When I act as if I don’t understand, he points in answer to his mouth and makes a gesture of despair. He tries again, but I am suddenly tired and feel limp and listless. All I want right now is to go back.

He takes a map from a small compartment and studies it, then lays it open on my knees. We are again driving along stretches of road that seem to have no end, houses, woods, a patch of water. Is this the right way back to Warns? As we take a narrow side-turning, the soldier gives a whistle. Between the trees a small building comes into view that bears a slight resemblance to our Sunday school. He drives the car to one side of the house, jumps out and helps me down.

‘Come,’ he says when I hesitate, and lifts me to the ground like a little child, carries me to the side of the house where it is dry under a protruding eave, and gestures ‘wait’. From the back of the car he fetches a few tins and disappears with them round the corner. The car makes ticking noises, hard and dry, an accompaniment to the leaves that are rustling in the falling rain. I wish I knew what time it was…

A moment later loud voices come from the upper floor, interrupted by short bursts of laughter. I recognise Walt’s voice. There is no one to be seen anywhere. A twig snaps and every so often the smell of damp moss, earth and mushrooms drift across to me. I listen in surprise to the bursts of jollity in the house: has the soldier forgotten all this time that I am waiting for him and want to get back home?

I walk to the back of the house. The rain has stopped, but water continues to drip from the edge of the roof and there are puddles in the drive. A bright patch of sunlight appears on the wall and at that very moment someone flings open a window upstairs, casting a glaring reflection of light over the rain-soaked treetops. Is he still up there, how long is he going to be?

Behind the house a few neglected shrubs are growing and in a dark corner a lone hyacinth adds a shimmer of blue.

There is a wooden barn and a bit further away sits another car coloured the same green. A railway track runs behind the barn, looking as if it has not been used for a long time, grass and tall weeds growing between the sleepers. Beyond that, trees and silence. Carefully, so as not to make too much noise, I move back across the crunching gravel and go and sit down on the running-board. Should I just run away by myself?

The sounds upstairs have ceased. All I can hear now is a rhythmical, slight knocking noise, mingled with the sound of a tinkling bell.

‘Jerome?’ The soldier is standing at the back of the house and beckons to me. We walk around to the back of the barn. It is raining again. I press up against the wooden wall while the soldier steps onto the rails and smokes a cigarette, balancing on one leg. Swaying, he keeps his body poised, looking straight at me while he does so. What are we hanging about for, what is the point of this childish game? I feel a mixture of impatience and boredom.

Suddenly he sets his cigarette flying into the bushes in a wide arc and squats down in front of me. I can’t avoid his gaze, try to smile, but can only feel a nervous, uncertain tug around my mouth. What is he up to, is he teasing me? Then, moving fast, he stands up, looks around the side of the barn and with a quick grab pulls me to him. Paralysing fear shoots through me, my fingers tingle and a blindingly bright white veil is drawn over everything. My body is clenched as if a scream were about to burst out, but nothing happens. I feel the hard fabric of the uniform jacket against my forehead and smell a bitter tang of rain and metal. Awkwardly and tensely I stand there in his harsh embrace. He could kill me, here, behind the barn, he could throttle me or rip me apart without my uttering a sound, breathless and paralysed as I am. I’ll just let it happen.

From far, far away, I hear his hoarse voice: ‘Jerome, you okay?’ and feel something warm on my hair and then against the side of my face. He is kissing me. I do not move a muscle, hoping I might disappear and dissolve into nothing.

When he lifts my head I can see his eyes close to mine, a fierce, haunted look. His breath is coming fast, as if he is anxious. Then I am aware of real fear, a panic that pierces straight through me: I should never have gone with him. I ought to have known that something would happen. Unspoken and formless, it had been present from the very start, it had been lying in wait all along and now it had pounced…

His mouth moves over my face. I begin to tremble, uncontrollably and convulsively, and lose my balance so that he has to push me against the barn to keep me on my feet. Did I fight back without realising? There is brute force in any case, my body bangs several times against the clapboard and my elbows and shoulder-blades hurt. My head is bent backwards and I can feel rain on my face and then his face which seems to melt into mine. I seem to be drowning slowly, his suffocating weight enveloping me and pulling me down. I claw my fingers into the wood of the barn until my nails tear and I try vainly to push myself high up against the clapboard wall as my clogs slip away in the soft mud.

His hand gropes in my clothes. Restlessly and feverishly, he tugs at my coat and pushes his fingers up my trouser leg. Like an empty, helpless object I am glued to his mouth, an empty balloon, a trickle of slime. The grating surface of his jaw rasps across my skin, crushing my eyes and tearing my mouth. I try to jerk away and to make a noise, but all I can produce is a furious gasping.

The tip of his tongue moves between my lips, which he keeps parting stubbornly every time I press them tight together, slipping like a fish into my mouth. Then, when I relax my jaw a little, he suddenly pushes his tongue between my teeth and fills my mouth. We melt and fuse together, he turns liquid and streams into me. I look into strange, wild eyes right up close to my own, searching me. I am being turned inside out, shaken empty.

He breathes words against my face and when he lifts me out of my clogs I hear them clatter against each other with a dry, no bright sound. ‘Listen,’ he hisses and twists me awkwardly against him, ‘listen. Is good, is…’