Will

by Jeroen Olyslaegers

  I turn to go and hear his mother bellowing, ‘You lush!’

  The demon alcohol suddenly rushes to my head too.

  Everything starts to spin and I throw up all over my shoes.

  Stroll with us, son. It’s a Sunday afternoon, 22nd June 1941, according to the neat handwriting on the back of the photo I’m holding. Your future great-grandmother is walking down Keyser Lei between her brother Lode and me. She has hooked her arms through ours. We are a harmonious trio. It’s beautiful weather, not a cloud in the sky. Hook your arm into mine and we’ll be a quartet of delight. Do you see how the city’s residents are smiling and nodding to each other? Beautiful weather makes you forget everything. People even accept the totally insane food prices. On the black market you now pay six times as much for things you could buy in ordinary shops two years ago: butter, milk, eggs, meat. Last week my fellow officers and I picked up another black-marketeer. Without so much as a word, we took care of it the way we’ve been doing it since the winter: sharing the spoils between us and letting the offender go. What we used to see as the law has been replaced by unspoken agreements, rackets, with calculated risk on both sides. Everyone estimates what they can get out of it, weighing the pros and cons. Those who consider it dishonourable lose out. Those who pooh-pooh it learn better. You understand that it’s not without risk. The Germans want strict punishments and we too would be shown no mercy. The days follow one after the other and at the end of each day your future great-grandfather nods to himself in the mirror, that’s all. It’s every man for himself. We’re plundering at the gates of hell; these are dramatic times and we act like everything’s normal. And meanwhile, everyone wants to dance, dance, dance. Under the Farmers’ Tower, at the end of the Meir, is a jazz club you can hardly squeeze into on a Saturday night. Before the war they played swing there and they still do, even if the lyrics are sometimes in German and band leader Stan Brenders announces a song like Duke Ellington’s ‘Mood Indigo’ in Dutch as ‘In een Purperen Stemming’ to outsmart the Reich Chamber of Culture, the still fairly naive censorship body. Nobody minds as long as they get to dance. Today there’s a particularly cheerful atmosphere in the air, it’s all ‘Seize the day’ and ‘Let’s have another round’. This morning on Radio Brussels, in what we call ‘the spoken newspaper’, there was a bombastic announcement that the Germans had invaded Russia. ‘Finally,’ my father said. ‘Or did you think the Germans were going to stay friends with those Eastern barbarians? See? What did I tell you? Men like Hitler don’t rest on their laurels. He’s going to show his strength again! And it won’t take long. The Russians are already running head over heels. They’re going to hightail it all the way to Vladivostok!’ Yes, he’s happy, because he’s finally got a new job, working as a pen-pusher at the town hall. His pal there moved heaven and earth to get him there. The only thing my father had to do was establish that he was sufficiently Flemish, which meant: join the movement. According to him it was almost too late. We’d been teetering on the edge of the precipice. ‘If we’d had to keep living off the pittance you get from the police…’ All’s well that ends well, he says. He’s got money again, along with self-respect and Flemish credentials as a cover for running after the secretaries, and Mother’s relieved to be rid of his moaning. As for Hitler: there’s not a stronger person in the world. As far as my father’s concerned, he rocks us in his arms like a giant. My father is definitely not the only one enjoying the sensational offensive against the godless Bolsheviks. Do you hear the thrum on Keyser Lei? Everyone’s talking about it. But do you know how I feel? Classy. Because I have three tickets for a matinee at Café Atlantic. A singer they’re already calling ‘our Zarah Leander’ is performing there. Yvette’s arm in mine makes me realize that things are starting to pick up. I’m not going to tell you I’ve come to know love. It’s more that I’m starting to understand it better. Your future great-grandmother is a good-looking woman: men’s heads turn and women assess her taste in clothing—simple and elegant. I think she enjoys confusing people by walking arm in arm with both of us. Which one is her boyfriend? The fellow who vaguely resembles Errol Flynn and has worked so much pomade into his hair that Yvette is teasingly calling him ‘glue head’? Or is it the other one, me that is, with the dark carbuncle eyes, strutting in a second-hand suit, off-white, which makes my father think of waffle peddlers on a beach on the Côte d’Azur? In other words, son, it’s game on and I’m one of the players, without anything being spoken, as if I simply belong.

  Do you hear that? We’re inside. It’s busy. Sit down next to us. There’s a spare chair at the table. Have I already told you what Yvette’s wearing? A black skirt cut just above the knee and a blouse with orange flowers sewn onto it. She’s put up her hair again, with auburn clips. Her mouth? Painted reddish brown, as usual. Of course, she’s very happy. I’ve already told you how much she loves singing. Waiters are walking around everywhere with their noses in the air and white cloths over their right arms. We are the last to be served. It’s all German officers at the tables behind and in front of ours. Their girlfriends are in high spirits, drinking wine or crème de menthe. They speak a little German and giggle amongst themselves. The accordionist sits down. The pianist gives the audience a nod, then cracks his knuckles. Here comes the tenor José Corazon. He’s actually called Jos Malfait, the son of a famous opera singer who was a local lad but celebrated triumphs in Milan, Paris and New York. After his father’s death, ‘José’ attempted to pick up the baton. Before the invasion, during the civil war in Spain, he was briefly known for his song ‘Spanish Refugees’. At the time, everyone was singing along to his voice, which could suddenly shoot up as if somebody had grabbed him by the balls mid-song: ‘I wander down abandoned roads / A hell on earth, where I sing in misery / Life knows no mercy, I am all alone / Take pity on me, a Spanish refugee.’ And yes, he’s given up singing that particular song now that the audience is packed with officers who made such an exemplary contribution to that same civil war, taking the opportunity to test their planes so that just a few years later they could sweep over our country too with their bellies full of bombs. But the Spanish style is still his trademark. With his dyed, slicked-back hair, a little kohl around his eyes and a grin full of white teeth, he sings of bullfighters, señoritas and the sound of guitars echoing through the empty streets of Seville. Even if he now sings in German.

  ‘I should have brought my fan,’ Yvette whispers cheerfully.

  ‘A torero like that,’ her brother joins in. ‘Just your thing.’

  ‘He’s wearing make-up—that’s definitely not my thing.’

  She favours me with a glance as she says that.

  ‘All the artistes do it…’ I say.

  Watch now that almost everyone has started swaying to the music. José sings about the kiss of a Gypsy girl who has stolen his heart. In front of him one woman after another is being led out onto the dance floor.

  ‘I’m getting sick of this,’ Lode growls. Fruitlessly, he snaps his fingers at the waiters hurrying past. ‘Just a beer, that’s all I want.’

  Suddenly someone in a Waffen-SS uniform is standing at our table.

  ‘May I invite the young lady to join me on the dance floor?’

  We look up. It’s no German. He’s one of us, but clicking his heels and with his hair shaved up high on the sides, he seems almost like the real thing, as if his body and mind were steeled in Prussia and this city is only useful as a place to relieve himself. I recognize him. It’s flipping Karel, the blonde boy who used to be in my class at school. I already told you about him being such an exemplary pupil and the teachers not being able to stand him because his parents were pro-German. I don’t have the foggiest if he recognizes me. He doesn’t bat an eyelid if he does.

  ‘The young lady’s taken,’ Lode snaps. ‘Get lost.’

  ‘I’d rather hear it from the lady herself,’ says Karel, the ersatz Prussian, calmly.

  ‘Forget to clean your ears this morning?’

  ‘It’s all
right, Lode.’

  ‘Ah, the charming young lady can produce sound.’

  ‘If you’re not careful there’ll only be one sound coming out of your throat.’

  Lode gets up. He’s standing nose to nose with Karel.

  Yvette tugs on his wrist. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘You have your papers on you, I hope.’

  Lode shakes his head in disbelief, looks at me and says, ‘This feller’s asking me for my papers. Can you believe it?’ Lode pulls out his badge and holds it in the SS man’s face. ‘What do you think of this?’

  Behind our table the officers’ girlfriends are complaining about not being able to see any more.

  ‘Sit down!’ one of them hisses.

  Imagine you really are sitting at our table, as I’ve described it. You’re sitting with us in the lion’s den, surrounded by Germans and people who want to be German, and sooner rather than later. Would you stop Yvette from dancing with a member of the SS? I can already see you shaking your head. What difference does it make now? you think. Wasn’t everyone convinced by then that the Germans had already won and you were better off going along with it? Definitely, but all the same there were some people who didn’t entirely trust it, who thought it madness to assume that the facts as they were at that moment would remain the facts and that the whole thing couldn’t flip completely in no time at all, with black becoming white again and vice versa. I’m not saying everyone felt like that, far from it. There were some who kept waiting, weighing things up and watching, without ever taking a position one way or the other. Still sitting on the fence, as if they were back in the thirties, before the war had even started. Some of them, the ones who didn’t stop thinking, felt like they’d ended up in a lottery with all they have and hold, where every twist of fate could have dire consequences, maybe not right away, but later, definitely. Stand out from the crowd and who knows, maybe you’ll pay the price after the war. In that world some bastard might later, when the fortunes of war have taken a definitive turn, suddenly remember that a beautiful woman by the name of Yvette dared to cut the rug with an ersatz Prussian. Maybe that was why Lode jumped down Karel’s throat like that, which in the moment itself was far from cautious (and something I tried to warn him against). And as it turned out it was more trouble than it was worth, because naturally it was your future great-grandmother who overruled her brother, and the friend she had an eye on, by making her own decision, if only to put an end to all their nonsense.

  Yvette grabs Karel by the hand and whispers, ‘Come on.’

  Before Lode can say a word they’ve headed off to the dance floor, hand in hand.

  ‘Fool,’ I say.

  ‘Me, a fool? That’s rich. What about you, Will? You’re just letting it happen. When that bloke goes for a leak later, he’ll bump into me. And then he’ll be bleating for Mama.’

  ‘And what will that solve?’

  ‘It makes me want to puke. Friday for instance… unbelievable. I’m on patrol with André. A lady comes up to us beside herself with fright. Two blokes at the station. Not even in uniform. They’re asking everyone who comes out of the station for their papers to see if they’re Jewish. Can you believe it? We go there and ask them for their papers. No, they don’t have them on them. And they give us a look as if that’s completely normal and we’re fools for asking. “Sicherheitsdienst,” says one of them, “that’s who we’re working for. Official orders. Stay out of it.” But the thing is, they weren’t even German!’

  ‘Not so loud.’

  Lode looks around and carries on in a whisper. ‘André tells them that they can’t just go around behaving like that. You know what one of them said?’

  ‘You’re getting too wound up, Lode, you have to be careful of that.’

  ‘Kiss my arse.’

  But he still casts a quick glance around, before continuing angrily, ‘One of those bastards looks us over and asks calm as you please if we’re really in the police force. Don’t you get it? If we take that, we’ve all moved into the madhouse to stay, fancy dress every day with us as the resident clowns. Wanting to know if our uniforms were real… Anyway, we took ’em in. Big fuss at the station, of course.’

  ‘Meine Damen und Herren, ladies and gentlemen, liebes Publikum, it is my pleasure to introduce to you a young lady who will take to the stage of Café Atlantic to entertain you with the wonderful songs of Zarah Leander. Give her a big round of applause… La… Esterella!’

  People clap. Some even whistle.

  A young, fairly large and rather shy woman emerges. Her warm lips mumble thanks. She looks at the pianist, then launches into a nostalgic Gypsy song to more loud applause. Yvette and Karel dance again, while she keeps looking at the singer. ‘Sie singt wie eine Kanone,’ I hear a German officer behind us laughing.

  Yvette and Karel return as La Esterella is starting her third song. He nods as if there hasn’t been so much as an angry word between us and doesn’t hesitate to accept the chair Yvette offers him. Lode clenches his fists, but his sister glares at him so hard he has no choice but to bite back his anger.

  ‘So, Wilfried, are you in the force too?’

  ‘Probationary constable,’ I nod. Now, all of a sudden, Karel does know who I am and, more than that, is acting like we’re old friends. He tells Yvette we went to school together.

  ‘You didn’t make things easy for them, did you, Wilfried? You never wanted to buckle under. That’s how I remember it.’

  He snaps his fingers and a waiter appears immediately.

  ‘Beer?’

  Lode doesn’t say a word. I give another nod.

  ‘A sweet wine for me,’ Yvette laughs.

  ‘If you’ll dance with me again later…’ Karel wheedles.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘It has to be today. Next week I might not be here any more.’

  Then he tells us about his imminent ‘rendezvous with history’ as if it will make us swoon before him.

  ‘Sounds like a hot little missy,’ Lode sneers.

  ‘Fighting the Russians,’ Karel laughs. ‘Can’t get much hotter than that.’

  ‘It’s only just started over there…’ Yvette takes a mouthful of wine.

  ‘I signed up today straight away, even though it was still too early, so they said. I just want to be part of it. I hope they accept me soon, otherwise it will all be over without me ever drawing a bead on a Russian. I wasn’t the only one. Lots of my friends are going too. I’m glad. We have to let Germany know she’s not alone in this great struggle. It’s part of the rebirth of our nation.’

  Karel drains his glass and stands up. ‘Excuse me. I just have to pop out the back.’ He nods, looks around for a moment, then heads off in the direction of the toilets.

  Lode runs his fingers through his hair and says, ‘OK.’ He goes to get up, but I stop him.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Don’t—’ I say.

  ‘Don’t what?’ interjects Yvette.

  ‘Your brother wants to knock your new dance partner’s teeth down his throat in the gents.’

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Lode!’

  ‘Let go of my sleeve, Will.’

  ‘Don’t do it, Lode.’

  Lode looks at me and Yvette, gulps down his beer and says, ‘Do whatever you like if that’s how it is. I’m off. If you enjoy laughing along with that windbag like a spineless imbecile it’s up to you. It makes me feel sick to my stomach.’

  And he’s gone.

  ‘He’s had too much to drink,’ Yvette apologizes.

  ‘Nowhere near.’

  ‘No, you’re right. It’s just his character. You’re different, aren’t you? You’re… how can I put it?… more realistic.’ She looks at me and smiles.

  ‘I wouldn’t know what that’s supposed to mean.’

  ‘Have you got a light for me?’

  I flick my lighter open and hold the flame up to her cigarette. For a moment her hand touches mine and that’s no coincidence because the
touch is accompanied by a deep look.

  More realistic… It feels like a slap in the face. Inside of me Angelo swears contemptuously.

  She asks if she’s said something wrong.

  ‘What I mean is you come across as a survivor.’

  ‘Lode’s a survivor too. We all are. Until we aren’t, of course.’ I laugh a little nervously.

  ‘No, you’re different. I know that much. You’re not like any of us. You see through everyone. And there’s something hard inside you.’

  ‘Goodness.’

  ‘That’s something, isn’t it, me seeing that.’

  ‘It really is.’

  ‘Are you making fun of me now? Am I wrong?’

  I look her straight in the eye and for the first time in my life I let someone else see Angelo.

  Now I’m wondering if that really did happen then. But it’s not that important. Was it a reflex because she already had me under her spell, or did I do it to put her under my spell? Do you show your vulnerable side to girls? You might think you do, but I’m sceptical. You’re too young for it, if you ask me. There’s no need for it either, it’s not a prerequisite for a healthy life. It’s not even necessarily good for the soul, no matter what they try to tell you on that score. It’s exciting, true, but then you have to accept the kind of circumstances people describe as ‘romantic’. That’s why I remember showing her Angelo in that particular place, Café Atlantic. The circumstances couldn’t have been better. Her dancing with the ersatz Prussian first, the latter’s toilet break, Lode’s fury and what she said to me. Don’t forget the Gypsy-obsessed singer, the piano and accordion music, and me feeling classy about having acquired tickets for that matinee. In retrospect, a fellow can say it happened in such and such a way and pat himself on the back for having wanted it like that, but someone like me would do better to humbly admit that it was just as likely Angelo who decided to reveal himself and bent things to his will.