The Boy Between Worlds: A Biography

by Annejet van Der Zijl

  A few years later, Waldemar mourned with his family from a distance when the river that he loved so dearly took the life of one of his cousins. The seventeen-year-old boy and his friends had been swept up in a treacherous current that overturned their boat, and Waldemar’s cousin had disappeared into the deep without a trace. But his family also sent him good news as well. His country was finally rising out of the economic depression that had plagued the colony for decades. It turned out that Suriname was rich in bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, which was essential to the booming aviation industry. Foreign investment groups were gathering on the docks at the Waterfront, and opportunities abounded for young European-educated men like Waldemar Nods.

  But even though Waldemar was the son of an adventurer and born into a culture where men’s fidelity was traditionally not of great importance, he still didn’t leave Rika. He responded stoically to the advances of girls on the beach who watched with pleasure as he emerged from the waves after a swim. Perhaps his Riek wasn’t so young anymore or as beautiful as she had once been, but her arms were as warm as ever, and even in the face of all the misery around them, she was still quick to smile. She was his anchor in a cold world that never had been and never would be his own. In return, he was the silent force behind her bold attempts to fight back as a favorite daughter, mother, and respectable wife. They had both paid a high price for their love; maybe that’s why they were so careful with it.

  In the fall of 1936, little Waldy celebrated his seventh birthday. He was now in second grade at The Hague’s first Montessori school. Before that, he had attended a preschool in Scheveningen, but the color of his skin and his illegitimate status had provoked so many comments that Rika had pulled him out of the school indignantly. The progressive, elite school in the south of The Hague was a far better fit for Waldy. There were many children with artistic parents, and the atmosphere was as free and playful as he was used to at home. Waldy had, as Rika once wrote, “a beautiful life with his father and mother.”

  Waldy was an exceptionally sunny little boy. For all he knew, life would always be as happy as it was then. His mother was always cheerful. She sang songs with him and turned every activity, from making beds to shopping in The Hague, into a fun, exciting adventure. He would ride in the tram with his nose pressed to the window, watching the wondrous world outside—the gas factory puffing out steam clouds, the giant mountains of coal piled up next to it, the crowds of people, and the cars honking in the street. And even though his mother was busy with her guests in the summer, one way or the other she always found time for him and held him in her arms any chance she’d get.

  Waldy’s father was his hero, and much more interesting than the other fathers. Not only did he look different and regularly receive exotic-smelling packages covered in colorful postage stamps from the mysterious world he came from, he also spent a lot more time with his son than other fathers did. Every spring, the two of them anxiously awaited the moment when they’d raise the flags on the public beach, signaling the opening of the season. From then on, they would spend every free moment together on the beach and in the water. When the weather was calm, they would swim out far from the coast, all the way to the lifeguard’s raft where Waldy’s father taught him how to dive with an elegant arch. Waldy always swam with his eyes wide open under water so he could see the fish and jellyfish.

  When the fall came, and the flags were lowered, and the beach clubs dismantled for the winter, father and son would go for long walks through The Hague or to the movies. And in the early spring, as the sun was just regaining its strength and streaming into the windows in wide ribbons, the two of them would curl up like cats in the sun, and Waldemar would tell stories about Suriname, that faraway land where palm trees grew, and it was so warm you could swim every day. Waldy slowly began to understand that Scheveningen would never be his father’s real home, no matter how good the three of them had it there. His home was on the other side of the vast ocean. On warm evenings, he would sometimes sit for hours and stare out at the sea with his dark green eyes, his homesickness almost palpable around him.

  As Waldy got older, there were all kinds of uncles and aunts popping up in his life, all of whom found him interesting and wanted to take a photo with him. The same went for their houseguests, some of whom lived with them for years or kept coming back until they were almost like family. They pampered and spoiled him so much that even his mother complained. Waldy’s favorite friend was the captain of the two Polish fishing vessels that docked in the Scheveningen Harbor. Sometimes he would pick Waldy up, hold him against his colossal belly, and buckle the belt of his uniform around him as if he were going to take him with him for the day. Waldy would roar with laughter, and the two would keep on tussling until his mother would have to come in, chuckling, to save him.

  And then there were Waldy’s older brothers and sister still living in Groningen. Once a week, a letter from his sister arrived, and his mother would rip it open with trembling fingers and flushed cheeks. She told the most wonderful stories about her other children, particularly Wim and Jan, his big brothers who couldn’t come to visit him at the moment, she’d say, but someday they certainly would. His mother always beamed when she talked about “someday.” And never had he seen her so nervous as she was once a year when they went with Bertha and Henk for tea at the café by The Hague zoo. His sister was just as nervous as his mother, but she always looked sweetly at him and stroked his curls. And even though his mother always encouraged him and Henk to play together, his brother never seemed to be in the mood and usually just sat there looking unhappy. To be honest, Waldy liked his brothers best in his mother’s stories—they were like characters in a fairy tale, and as far as he was concerned, they could stay that way.

  In December 1936, at the start of one of the coldest winters on record, Waldy went with his father to the movies in The Hague. That night he came down with a high fever. At first, his parents thought he was just a bit overexcited from the film, but the next morning, the little boy was unconscious and had to be rushed to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed an inflammation of the kidneys and lungs, and he spent the next several days on the brink of death. His parents kept watch at his bedside, their eyes filled with fear. Rika prayed for hours on end, promising over and over again to live a better life if Waldy pulled through. She was convinced that the vindictive God of her youth was punishing her for her pride and sins by threatening to take her youngest child from her too.

  Waldy did pull through, and while he was recovering with months of bed rest and bowls of cream of endive soup, Rika set to work on her latest task: righting herself in the eyes of God. This was no easy feat. Her marriage to a Protestant had been followed by a divorce, and by living together out of wedlock with her non-churchgoing lover. In the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, this was triple damnation at the very least. She hung crucifixes all over the house and set a giant statue of Mary on the fireplace mantel. From then on, Waldy spent his Sunday mornings with his mother at the Saint Anthony Abbot Church instead of playing outside like he had done before. He even had to have a first communion. He wasn’t very impressed by the whole thing: the wafer nauseated him, and he was always getting reprimanded for not knowing his catechism.

  It was on one of those Sunday mornings that his sunny view of the world first started to crack. He was sitting next to his mother on the hard church pew, wiggling his feet and hoping it would be over soon, when he suddenly heard a strange sound beside him. His mother was crying, and she couldn’t stop.

  On March 17, 1937, Rika and Waldemar married in The Hague city hall. The ceremony was exceptionally sober. It was so cold outside that the pier in Scheveningen was whitewashed in a layer of snow, and Waldy, who was still weak, had to stay home by the fire. There was hardly any family present, and the bride and groom were dressed in everyday clothes, though Rika couldn’t resist sticking a few flowers from her bouquet in her hat. A few weeks later, Rika’s letter arrived on the Wagenwegstraat in Pa
ramaribo announcing their recent nuptials to her new Surinamese family. When they opened it, dried rose petals fluttered out of the envelope.

  To his great disappointment, Waldy didn’t return to the Montessori school that fall. From then on, he attended the Catholic school in Oud Scheveningen. He missed his friends and had a hard time getting used to the working-class atmosphere and the church’s strict approach to education. His classmates treated him like an ugly duckling, and one time, when he innocently told them about the summer he spent with his father on vacation in Lugano, Switzerland, because the doctor thought it would be good for his lungs, he was scolded for bragging. Who did he think he was, some kind of world traveler? For the first time in his life, he heard people comment on the color of his skin, calling him things like “nikker,” “dirty brownie,” or “ugly brown Chinaman.” Waldy didn’t understand—surely, he wasn’t Chinese? And they certainly weren’t dirty. In fact, he didn’t know any man as clean as his father. Waldemar carefully rubbed his skin and hair with oil after every bath, ironed his shirts until there wasn’t a wrinkle to be found, and constantly impressed on his son the importance of having a tidy appearance and perfect behavior, because “They’re already watching us,” he would say.

  On his eighth birthday, Waldy was sent out to look in the shed behind their house, and inside a vegetable box he found a white fur ball staring back at him with deep black eyes. He had finally gotten the dog he had wanted for years—granted, “dog” was a rather generous word for the little Maltese pup his mother had been so thrilled about. The three of them decided to name the puppy Topsy, after a popular song that year, and because, as his mother declared, it went so well with Sonny Boy.

  A few months later, on a bleak February day, there was another surprise for Waldy. His mother bundled him up in his warmest clothes, and he headed out with his father. The wind was blowing so hard that Waldemar had to hang on to him to keep him from being blown over. The wet streets around the boulevard were deserted, the sea was raging, and even the seagulls had taken shelter. The party hall at the end of the pier was nearly invisible behind the spurting clouds of foam. Wave after wave was crashing on the beach, and on the horizon, ships were fighting their way to safety in the Scheveningen Harbor.

  Father and son plowed into the wind, passing by the chic hotels along the Seafront until they reached a beautiful villa, number 56. Waldy’s father pulled a cluster of keys out of his pocket and said: “Look, this is our new house!” The long marble hallways seemed strangely quiet compared to the storm raging outside, and inside, the house was ice cold, having been vacant for nearly a year. Nevertheless, every detail attested to its prominence and grandeur. The house was very deep, and in the middle was a grand staircase that rose up to more than thirteen spacious guestrooms. In the back was a sheltered garden, and in the front was a large terrace on the first floor with a splendid view of the North Sea. To the left was the old village and harbor, and to the right the Kurhaus and the pier. It was an ideal location for the future home of Pension Walda.

  There was a basalt slope directly in front of the house leading down to a parking lot where Waldy and his friends would later roller-skate between all the expensive cars. And on the other side of the parking lot was the beach, which was completely desolate at the moment, but in the summer would be teeming with beachgoers. “Just imagine, we’ll be able to step out the door and into the sea!” his father said. Waldy saw the glimmer in his eyes and felt proud that they were going to live in such a beautiful house.

  5

  On the Seafront

  The summer of 1938 was unprecedentedly hot. While the rest of the country was sweating under a massive heat wave, at the seaside it was glorious. The cool waves rolled peacefully onto the shore, and day after day, the sun climbed high in the sheer blue sky. In the evening, the sunbathers would lumber through the loose sand back to their temporary quarters with a feeling of deep satisfaction. At night, faint music and laughter drifted from the party hall across the smooth sea, and people sat out on the boulevard until the wee hours of the morning to enjoy the starry sky. For one last time, the seaside resort dazzled in all its nineteenth-century glory and grandeur.

  Waldy spent the first weeks of his summer vacation in Goeree, where he stayed with his sister at one of her friend’s places. Then—all dressed up like a little gentleman—he went to Switzerland with his father. His mother stayed home. She didn’t like the mountains, she said, they obstructed her view. And what’s more, in its first year at its new location at Seafront 56, Pension Walda was having the best season in its history. Rika combated her relentless longing for her oldest children and her remorse toward God in the only way she knew how: by staying busy. There was even a time when she slept in the bathroom because she had guests lodged in every nook and cranny of the house.

  She wasn’t the only one for whom 1938 was an excellent year. Germany’s strongman, Adolf Hitler, was in his prime. As historian Sebastian Haffner would later write, if Hitler had died at the beginning of 1938, he would have surely gone down in history as a brilliant politician. The Germans could once again take pride in their country. Everything about Germany in the late 1930s was grand: the architecture, the masses cheering for their leader, and most of all, Hitler’s ideas about the future—not just of Germany, but of the world. Inspired by his own misconception of Darwinism, he believed that people of the so-called Aryan race ought to fight each other until the strongest among them emerged and eventually took over the world. In Hitler’s eyes, the German Herrenvolk under his leadership would undoubtedly come out on top.

  Without a country of their own to call home, the Jewish people had spread out around the world and some assumed prominent positions. Hitler was convinced that they would sabotage the healthy competition he had envisioned. He claimed that they were responsible not only for Germany’s humiliating loss in the Great War, but also for the economic crisis that had brought the country and the rest of the world to the brink of disaster. If Germany aimed to grow into the empire of Hitler’s vision, it had to be completely cleansed of all Jewish stains. Although there was relatively little public violence against Jewish citizens in these years, a much more dangerous form of anti-Semitism was creeping into German society like a worm through an apple: on the outside everything looked shiny and healthy, but there was something much more sinister eating away at the core. Scores of legislative decisions made it virtually impossible for Jews to carry on with normal life, and those who could afford to do so sought refuge abroad, even if it meant handing over nearly everything they had to the German government.

  Many wealthy German Jews immigrated to Holland, and by the end of the 1930s, there were seventeen thousand Jewish people living in The Hague, the second largest Jewish community in the country. A considerable majority settled in Scheveningen, which had been a haven for Jewish refugees for as long as anyone could remember. Rika was happy to support the businesses of the enterprising Jewish shopkeepers: she could relate to their resilience and flair for business. Waldemar, too, felt more at home with them than with the stiff Dutch, having grown up in Suriname, with its large population of Jews. In 1938, the Dutch National Socialist leader Anton Mussert even proposed deporting all European Jews to the colonies. Like much of the Surinamese Creole population, Waldemar probably had Jewish blood himself. When his grandmother Mietje got her freedom from Salomon Soesman in 1857 at the age of nineteen, she made use of the only capital she had: herself. No matter how black her son Koos’s skin was, his features bore a striking resemblance to those of his mother’s former master.

  Having grown up on the Waterfront, Waldemar now lived on the Seafront. He and his family settled into the giant guesthouse suite in the fall of 1938, just as Scheveningen was preparing for its winter hibernation. He swam in the sea almost every day, its waters still warm from the summer sun, and Rika took countless happy photos of him in his bathrobe as he clambered down the basalt slope to the water. The two of them had had to fight for their love, but finally, it see
med as if their remarkable story, which had begun ten years earlier in the upstairs apartment on the Azaleastraat, was finally getting its happy ending.

  But while Rika and Waldemar were busy writing their own story, world history was going rogue. Europe was in crisis, not just economically, but politically as well. In Spain, Franco and his Fascists were fighting a bloody civil war against the Left; in Italy, the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had seized power; and even in Greece, the cradle of democracy, an Extreme-Right leader was at the helm. And Adolf Hitler, the most extreme of them all, was becoming increasingly outspoken about the fact that a powerful and prosperous Germany was not enough; what he was really after was Lebensraum, or “living space” for his chosen people, a euphemism that justified the removal of anyone deemed racially inferior. From the moment he came to power, he began building a military force that was unparalleled in the world in scope and modernity. In early 1938, he pushed aside his generals, who, although loyal, were still too freethinking for his taste, and took the reins himself. That March, the German troops invaded Austria, making his own homeland officially part of the Greater Germanic Reich.

  That fall, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Munich to put a stop to the power-hungry German dictator’s lust for war. “I believe it is peace in our time!” he announced triumphantly from the first floor of his official Downing Street residence, and even in the Netherlands, flags were raised in celebration of the fact that a second world war had been averted. But in the meantime, the British prime minister had given in to almost all of Hitler’s demands, which had left Czechoslovakia virtually defenseless. On October 1, the German troops marched across the Czech border and took control.