Dantzig Rudi van - For a Lost Soldier

They have organised a childrens’ party by the canal near our house. I can hear the singing in the distance already. My little neighbours are lined up in long rows at the edge of the pavement, dancing and cheering at the command of a determined young woman. I go and sit on a low wall until a girl runs up to me and puts out her hand.

At first, surly and shamefaced, I refuse to take it, but the woman beckons. ‘Everyone has to join in, this is a party for everyone, no exceptions allowed!’

I join the big circle and see Jan and the boy with the cigarette holding hands with the milkman’s daughter. We hop about singing, changing places, passing from hand to sweaty hand, skip, bow deeply and clap in time with the music.

Mothers are standing on the balconies, looking down on their singing children, mine too, in her yellow dress, my brother on her arm. I wave.

We are twirling about, inside, outside, first to the left, then to the right. I feel the touch of hands, sweep past hot, happy faces, catch girls and boys around their waists and skip about in a circle with them.

In the evening my father sits at the table with a grim expression reading the paper. When he unfolds it I can see the front page: The Truth, it says, and a little further down: ‘Atom Bomb on Hiroshima. Catastrophic Results of U.S. Air Force Raid on Japan.’ I walk into the kitchen. ‘What’s that, Mum, an atom bomb?’

‘Ah, darling,’ she says, ‘I don’t rightly know myself. But it’s nothing for children to bother themselves with. Best not think about it, you’re too small for things like that.’

I have tied my arm to the edge of the bed with a piece of ribbon so that I can’t get up and sleep-walk around the house any more. A gentle breeze billows the curtain, wafting in scents from the garden. I can hear a monotone voice on the radio in another house sending news through the still summer night: ‘According to the latest reports the entire city has been laid waste. Estimates put the number of dead at tens of thousands. A second raid by the U.S. Air Force

What if he is over there, what if he is having to fight in Japan? Where is that, how would I get there? He is lying in his tent with bombs exploding all round him…

The voice on the radio is still reading the news, but I have stopped trying to make out the words.

He is washing at the basin. His strong, supple body, the water running down his legs to the floor. He pulls me towards him and reassures me.

The expedition to the Ceintuubaan is my last.

‘Your new school is near the centre, quite a long way from home,’ says my father. ‘If it’s too far I can give you the tram fare now and then.’

He is shaving in the kitchen, his head held stiffly backwards and his eyes fixed on his image in the mirror. His arm moves steadily, surely and unhesitatingly as he strokes the finely-honed cut-throat razor up and down. If he had any idea how much walking I had done this summer, my criss-crossing of the city, my certainty that sooner or later I would rediscover those eyes, that smell, that breath. The razor scrapes across his face collecting thick blobs of soap as the naked skin over his jaw is laid bare strip by strip.

‘It won’t be too bad,’ I tell him, ‘the school in Friesland was a long way, too, probably a bit further.’

It’s still early. I eat my sandwich and listen to the rustling of the trees in the garden. My little brother starts to bawl in the living-room, his screams disturbing our relaxed mood. A moment later my mother comes into the kitchen looking harassed, holding out a plate with a sandwich cut into four cubes.

‘He’s driving me mad, he won’t eat a bite. I can’t get anything down him.’ I look at her desperate and tired face. She runs her hands nervously over her temples and puts a kettle on the gas stove.

‘Don’t always let it get you down so.’ My father’s voice is distorted by the strange way he has to twist his head round. ‘He’ll eat soon enough when he gets hungry. Just leave him be.’

I take a deep breath and think of my new school. The smell of the shaving-soap is clean and pleasant. The small voice in the living-room continues to scream furiously and I think of my mother when she sat in the meadow, hidden deep among the buttercups and plumes of grass, relishing the peace and quiet.

I leave home half an hour after my father, my satchel heavy with all the new books: First Year Algebra, New Dutch Writing and English for Beginners.

I am wearing shoes that have been polished so thoroughly that they look brand-new, but they are too small for me and hurt. The plus-fours have been brought out again and my mother has knotted a shiny tie over the shirt with the little pocket.

‘Just for the first day,’ she had said, ‘so you can make a good impression.’

When I had seen myself in the mirror I had looked away quickly. Was that me? The sheltered days of the White School were gone for good. For a moment it seemed that the heavy satchel and the uncomfortable shoes were going to make me lose my balance on the stairs. I had clutched the banister and carried on downwards, stepping cautiously.

Now, at the corner of the street, I glance back. My mother waves to me with a girlish gesture from behind bright red geraniums. I can see how proud she is of me, her son who is now going to attend Class 6A, and after that presumably the High School. When I have rounded the corner I am tempted to go back to see if she is still standing there, to etch the sight indelibly on my memory.

Everywhere there are cyclists going to work and small groups of children sporting satchels and walking in various directions through the streets. It feels chilly, and on Admiraal de Ruyterweg I take the sunny side of the street, changing the satchel constantly from one hand to the other. As I cross the bridge in De Clerqstraat I see a car, an army car, coming slowly in my direction along the embankment. It stops at every side street as if the driver isn’t quite sure where he is going. I stand still.

Have I got time? Can I hang on here?

Quickly I cross the bridge and, leaning far out over the water, stare intently at the car as it creeps closer like a whirring beetle. The sun is dazzling on the windscreen so that I can hardly make out the man behind the wheel clearly, but the elbow hanging out of the window looks familiar and it seems to me that the moving smudge that is his head is sandy-blond and close-cropped.

Blood rushes to my head: it’s him, it’s Walt! I can see everything clearly now: the white tee-shirt with a strong, sun-burnt arm in the short sleeve, the watch, and the car too, they are all the same. I am paralysed; what now? The car stops and some children come scampering past. What time is it? The car is moving again. He’ll be here any second…

I look at my shoes sticking through the bars of the bridge, stiff and shiny. And at the plus-fours. I remember my image in the mirror and feel ashamed, Walt will find the knickerbockers odd – he has only ever seen me in old clogs and a threadbare pair of shorts. I quickly pull off the tie, crumple it into my pocket and undo the top buttons of my shirt. I would dearly love to run back home and put on my shorts, so as to look the way I used to. I walk off the bridge and go and stand on the edge of the pavement. The car is just a block away now, what should I do, run towards it? I start to run but quickly turn round again: he might easily drive past me, I had better stay where I am on the corner. People bump into me and a cyclist swears in my direction.

He’s coming, really close, there, he’s coming. I swallow, put my satchel down and pick it up again. Thank You, God, for helping me. All that praying in bed was not for nothing.

The sound of the horn, for me? Has he seen me already? What shall I do if he asks me to get in, say yes?

I can hear the purr of the engine close to me, and a dark shape edges into my field of vision. Of course I’ll go along with him, miss the first day of school, I’ll think later about what to tell them at home.

A soldier with a small moustache looks vacantly at me out of the window for a moment, a match wiggling between his teeth. He casts a bored look down De Clerqstraat, then shrugs a shoulder. The engine speeds up audibly, there is a penetrating stench of exhaust fumes and I am left standing in the bright light again. The tram rails shine in the sun, a twisting ribbon up the road.

I run all the way to school.

In front of the school there is a large sandpit surrounded by a high fence made up of metal spikes and scrolls. Inside, some children are playing with buckets and spades and little wheelbarrows under the watchful eyes of their patiently seated mothers.

Between the fence and the canal a narrow path beside the sandpit leads to the school. I run down it as fast as I can so as to get there before they shut the doors. My shadow speeds along next to me, deformed by the hills and holes dug in the sand and bisected by the iron bars of the fence.

I join up with the assembled group of children, allow myself to be borne inside along with the neatly ironed dresses and freshly laundered shirts, listen to the headmaster’s address, give my name, am assigned to a class, attach myself to a group, walk up a wide flight of stone stairs, go into a classroom and sit where shown at a desk next to another boy.