The Longest Night

by Otto de Kat

  Anna will not manage it. She is beautiful, flushed, and a little tipsy.

  With his free hand, Bruno gently pushes the woman aside, toward the makeshift bar, afraid that she wants to start a meaningful conversation with Rob. Emma takes Rob by the arm and makes a move to take him upstairs, to their flat. Morning has already broken.

  “No, Emma, wait a moment, I’ll come up soon, but there’s something I’d like to say first. Could you turn off the music?”

  He claps his hands, someone calls for silence. From the space around the stairwell the last guests crowd into the room with the drink and the gramophone. Bruno sits on a large heating pipe. Emma clutches Rob’s arm, he rests his other arm on the bar.

  “Speech, speech!” the voices echo along the hallway. Packed in together, exhausted, eyes glassy but glad, the group looks at Rob, who has appeared like a ghost from their past.

  “Two weeks ago my mother was buried. I got here too late, you probably heard. I’ve arrived everywhere too late for fifteen years, and maybe I should never have left. But that thought has come too late as well. It’s not too late to thank all of you for this party, though—you coming here after all these years has made up for a lot. I’ve thought about you at times. The world where I was, it was deep underground, or close to the ground, or in the hold of a ship, or in a barracks. But yes, sometimes you came to mind, at unexpected moments, and in strange countries. All of you here in the Netherlands were an island that was beyond my reach, an island I had run away from. Only Bruno knows why, and his lips are sealed. My dear friends, what I wanted to say—um . . .”

  Rob hesitates, searching for words. Then he looks at Emma, as if she might know what he means to say.

  “What I wanted to say is: take care of Emma, a wonderful woman. And of my brother, a wonderful man. I’m going to miss you all.”

  That is it, he does not say anything else. It is enough. Emma leads Rob through the cellar, along the corridor, up the stairs. He hugs everyone, laughs, kisses the women, and then again. Footstep by footstep, slowly upward, to his bed, to Cape Town.

  Just as Bruno had fetched him, he also takes him back to the airport. The difference is that Rob now has a suitcase with him, filled with the silverware from their childhood home. He chose it when they divided up the inheritance. “Something that can fit inside just one suitcase,” was his guideline. The best silver, they had always eaten with it, bits of memory.

  “Rob can choose first,” Bruno had said. “And no silly knickknacks, it has to be something expensive.”

  Rob has enough difficulty lifting the suitcase, so walking with it is impossible. Bruno takes it, more or less pushes Rob along and hands him over to a stewardess, who will accompany him.

  “My pieces of silver,” Rob says, pointing at the suitcase.

  Bruno smiles, but it is not heartfelt.

  “Take care of yourself, little brother, and get something done about those ears of yours, the bandage doesn’t seem to be helping.”

  “I’ll try, Rob. Let us know when you get home. Take care.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Bruno, you’ll be the first to hear. Fine, nurse, let’s go.”

  The stewardess does not protest when he puts his arm around her shoulders. She gives him a look of cheerful concern.

  Rob turns around one more time before he goes through passport control.

  “Take care of Emma, Bruno!”

  And he is gone.

  When Bruno tells Emma about the scene at Schiphol, he asks her, with a pretense of envy, what she and Rob had been talking about.

  “You made quite the impression on him. His last words were about you!”

  13

  “Oh, Judith, I’d rather like to get up, it must be morning by now. I have to look halfway decent for Thomas, he’ll be here before we know it.”

  Emma had picked up the old cowbell that was always beside her bed. The ringing could be heard through the wall in the room where the nurse slept.

  “No, Mrs. Verweij, it’s only three o’clock, you should get a little more sleep, it’s still night time.”

  This time she had stayed in the chair beside Emma’s bed, so the bell woke her immediately and she answered straightaway.

  Sleep. Emma suddenly felt as if she had been sleeping all her life, as if she had slept through it, in fact. Close to death, she was seized by the conviction that she had barely lived. Ninety-six years old and she had only just woken up.

  They really should come up with some better method than sleeping for regaining one’s strength. So excessive, eight hours a day in bed, my goodness, what a waste of time. There was a pill for everything these days, but nothing you could take to avoid sleep. Nijhoff was right, it is death that awakens us. She had finally grasped that, but it was a little late in the day.

  Tomorrow morning Thomas would come, and then the “team,” a nice word for the beginning of the end. Welcome, East Rotterdam Sedation Team, welcome indeed.

  Emma pictured a brigade of injectors entering the house. Eager for the fray, fully armed, a radiant gleam in their eyes, trained in a gentle approach. East Rotterdam Sedation Team reporting for duty, always willing, always prepared, effective and at your service. Shadows on the wallpaper, ghosts emerging from the doctor’s bag.

  Her doctor was a woman. Thomas had managed to replace the old doctor with a female colleague just in time. The first doctor preferred not to make house calls, but if he did pay a visit, he was more interested in the paintings on the wall, which he stood looking at with his hands in his pockets, than he was in the old woman who wanted to discuss her ailment or illness or death. The “no-need-to-worry-your-head-about-that-my-dear-woman” type.

  Emma had put up with it for a long time and had found his appreciation of her art and her furniture amusing, but in the light of what was approaching, his avoidance strategy had begun to annoy her.

  The woman was a breath of fresh air. Weekly visits, no distracting chats about the contents of the flat, she did not look at anything else, focused solely on her patient’s condition. Because that was what Emma had become after her fall in the kitchen—a patient. That fall on the kitchen floor had shaken up her world, pieces of the puzzle had gone flying, the jigsaw in her head. Her life was unwinding, with strange clarity, but in a random order.

  Her cheek is close to his shoulder and sometimes brushes the soft fabric of his jacket. He holds the book loosely to one side, as if to make room for her. He is reading out something from a rather obscure treatise by Kierkegaard. A hundred years on, the Danish magician is once again in the spotlight, because of the work of new existentialists such as Heidegger and Sartre.

  The words do not do much for Emma, but the voice reading them does. Louis Terpstra, a pastor who occasionally comes to preach in the city and whom she listens to as if so much were at stake. An older man, attractive for what he knows and how he talks about it, dangerous for a woman whose children have almost left home and whose husband travels a lot. God and eroticism, a fine team. Terpstra knows that too, and for a long time he puts up a brave fight against his feelings.

  “One cannot engage with God ‘to some extent.’ For God is the absolute antithesis of all that is ‘to some extent,’” he reads.

  Louis repeats the Dane’s sentence. It is, of course, true, he says, although he has to confess that he himself has not progressed far beyond “to some extent.”

  “Well, you’ve made it all the way here to my sofa, Louis.”

  He laughs. The sofa they are sitting on is long enough to lie on. There are so many sublime and unfathomable thoughts in the pages they have just worked through that the amazement in Louis’ voice kept on rising. They understand the quote from the diary. But Emma is upset by the dogmatism in everything the philosopher wrote. Men and their absolute statements, engraved in bronze, carved in marble. Not to mention their ideas about women. Kierkegaard certainly had that tendency, woman this, woman that, frightened, neurotic, endlessly fascinated by the Woman.

  “Judith!”


  “Yes?”

  “Someone called out my name.”

  “No, they didn’t. There’s no one here but me.”

  “Someone laughed, Judith, and I heard a door slam. Has Louis left?”

  “You must have been dreaming, or maybe it was a memory. I’ve never heard you mention a Louis before. Is he family?”

  Emma lay with her eyes open, looking into the darkness. She realized that she had indeed been dreaming, but it was the truth. Dreaming the truth, a vague episode had come sailing past, part of everything she had so majestically suppressed.

  Louis was just passing through, someone she had once comforted and who had wanted to take her in his arms. “No, Louis, no.” He had slammed the door, Kierkegaard lay on the floor. Sweet dreams.

  14

  It is June 1966 and Bruno is going on a trip, his last with K.P., who is about to retire. D.B., “distinguished bullyboy,” as she and Bruno occasionally call him. For two weeks they will travel around a Germany that was rebuilt just as quickly as their own Rotterdam. Both razed to the ground, both bounced back and gleaming with prosperity. D.B. and Bruno had long since stopped feeling furtive as they passed through the cities on the Rhine, no longer felt embarrassed at German receptions. They had made friends and were on first-name terms with their hosts. The offering of first names was a serious business for the Germans, a ritual that involved tears, handshakes, arms around shoulders, and solemn wishes for no more wars.

  Back to Germany, time and again. Bruno barely thinks about it now, it has become second nature. Rotterdam is the revolving door to trade with Germany, the Chamber of Commerce is the doorman who ensures that the hinges stay oiled. But how does Emma feel about him spending so much time there? Every time he goes, it is as if he is penetrating the camouflaged hideaway of her past.

  For twenty-one years she has not been to that country; for twenty-one years she has not wanted to look in that direction. Occasionally Bruno asked her to come along on one of his trips, but she always found an excuse not to go. Until this time. Hiding behind the children will no longer work, they have left home. So she goes with him.

  Emma, with nurse Judith sleepy beside her, awoke in confusion. Louis had appeared in her dream, Bruno was going on a trip, and suddenly she was in Germany, away from Louis’ arms, she went with Bruno! But of course, he was her husband. Her second one.

  To Germany with Bruno, straight across the landscape that once protected her. Is that her first sensation now that she has passed the border and reads the German words on signs, now that she can hear the language on the streets again? How peculiar. They are old reflexes, unexpressed emotions, concealed, suppressed.

  June in Germany is terribly beautiful. The hills they pass through are yellow with rapeseed. They are on their way to Hamburg and Lübeck, the Chamber has had an active presence there for years and Bruno has friends in the two cities. Emma does not know northern Germany, and as long as Berlin remains out of the picture and the Black Forest is not mentioned, she will manage this Hansestadt trip. She thinks.

  How old would Carl be if . . . ? Fifty-six, in the prime of his life, an age like a rock that can still easily withstand the waves. Her graveless husband.

  Emma has systematically quashed every thought about his fate, living with her back to the neighboring country and never looking over her shoulder. It always worked well. A life filled with children and Bruno, the street, the city, the discovery of Louis Terpstra’s God and all the fuss that entailed. Put a lid on the well of the past, and everything’s fine, excellent, could not be better.

  She remembers the promise she made to herself when she crossed the border into Limburg, the solemn vow never to return to the dark bunker of her past. She had sworn that for the rest of her life she would silently accept and love everything and everyone. Happiness as a task, as a duty, as an attainable objective, a longstanding agreement.

  “Are you still there, Judith?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Verweij, I’m not going anywhere, I’m perfectly comfortable and I . . .”

  Emma had already stopped listening.

  Suddenly Carl is back. Not because Emma has finally returned to his fatherland. No, he comes from a direction she would never have expected or imagined.

  It is early evening. The guests for the reception of the Dutch delegation are arriving in droves. A boat is going to take the entire party around the harbors of Hamburg and, everywhere on deck, in all the rooms and even on the bridge, immaculately laid tables have been set out for dinner. Seagulls and crows perch on neighboring boats, waiting for scraps. Glasses and knives sparkle in the late light. A sailing dinner-dance makes a change from the usual receptions in drab hotels. Emma and Bruno walk around the tables with a few other Rotterdammers. They point out the name cards beside the plates and try to spot their own.

  The boat pulls away from the quay, everyone is on board, they are gathering on the foredeck. The sun is still shining, and there is no wind. Most of the women are wearing hats, the men are in their finest suits.

  They are still working on the wharf, cranes lifting their loads, lorries driving back and forth, like a demonstration of faith in the future. The port of Hamburg is just a little brother to Rotterdam, but the cities are carefully eyeing each other. K.P. has already issued a warning: watch out for Hamburg. Watch out. In other words, do not let them catch up with you. But tonight they are celebrating twenty years of friendship between the two ports. With glorious abundance.

  “Clarita?”

  Emma can hardly believe it, it really is her, she is facing the woman she has not seen since that devastating week in ’44, the woman who went with her down into the abyss, down into the deepest hole. Clarita von Trott, Adam’s wife. For a moment Emma hesitates, maybe there is still a way out, maybe Clarita will not recognize her. But at that same instant Clarita looks at her with a question on her face, and then her expression changes. She removes her hat, her hair flies free, emotion takes hold, within seconds the years disappear.

  Their embrace is a magic circle of grief and expectation that nothing and no one can break through. Clarita. Emma. And that means Adam too. And Carl. The song of death.

  Carl, where are you, what were your last thoughts before they murdered you? And Adam, a dark absence in a life that just goes on as if nothing has happened.

  The boat sways, musicians take their places, a gong rings out and everyone looks for their tables. Bruno watches their encounter from a distance. He has never heard Emma speak German before. Melodious, a forgotten language, it sounds as if she is comforting the other woman, and the words spoken to Emma sound just the same.

  He approaches cautiously, briefly lays a hand on Emma’s shoulder.

  “I’m going over to sit with D.B., and you two can continue your conversation here. I’ll take my place card with me.”

  Emma simply nods and lets him go, this kind, attentive ghost from another world.

  Clarita and Emma sit at the table until the night and the cold draw in over the ship. They barely eat, hold each other tight, smile at the other guests, pluck up courage and, interspersed with silences, relive old memories.

  For two hours, three, four.

  “I wandered around near Plötzensee prison for days. Adriaan Wapenaar—you knew him too, didn’t you?—had forbidden me to leave the house, I was in hiding there. But I didn’t care about being arrested, I took the risk, I went out onto the streets.

  “I could see the buildings from a distance and I knew Carl was locked up inside one of them. Anyone who went in as a prisoner came out dead. We all knew that, Clarita. How could the men who hanged Carl—and later Adam—go home as normal at the end of every day? Where did they hide their dirty hands, how could they hug their wives, pick up their children? It must have been like living in a big, black hole.

  “There was nothing I could do, of course not, they turned me away five times. The last time someone warned me that my actions would only harm my husband. They certainly wouldn’t release him, but he might be mov
ed to a camp. It all came down to little things. And, specifically, they were not to be annoyed by some Dutch woman who wanted to see her husband.

  “‘This is not helping him, just go away. You need to wait, maybe your husband will be pardoned.’

  “Pardoned? That was when I knew it was over. No one was ever pardoned, it was a notion from a bygone world. The storm did not blow over, the insanity increased, the hunting and the murdering.

  “At some point a prison pastor appeared, I can still remember his name: Harald Poelchau. He told me that Carl was no longer alive, and that he had been brave. I stood there, I waited.

  “I was still standing opposite the prison gates when the bodies were loaded onto trucks. I heard the commands, the engines firing up, that determined departure with the enemies of the Reich in the back, and one of them was Carl. I didn’t want to go on without him, but I had to. I stood there until the evening, until the Tommies came and the sirens were wailing all over the city. I wasn’t scared, I wanted to stay there, right across from the prison, in full sight of all those criminals. I hoped a bomb was going to flatten the place.”

  Clarita nods. She had hoped for a bomb too, and if it landed on the court where Adam was being tried, so be it. Anything was better than Plötzensee.

  “Who was it that betrayed Adam, Clarita? Carl was certain nothing could happen to him. He said Adam had erased all traces, he knew the enemy’s tricks and traps better than anyone. His friends could be trusted, he had sent no letters containing anything suspicious. So where did it go wrong?”

  The raucous sound of the ship’s horn immediately follows the question that Emma has been carrying around for so long. Clarita waits for the captain to finish his little concert and then she answers.

  “I didn’t find out until years after the war. He had managed to shield all of his connections to the Resistance, Carl was right about that. No one could prove anything, even though he was suspected. But those last few weeks before the assassination attempt, Claus von Stauffenberg regularly came to visit him. Not at the Ministry, but at home. Adam believed only Von Stauffenberg could carry out the attack that he and his friends had been talking about for months, for years. Claus and he sometimes saw each other twice a day. No one knew about it, even the Gestapo had no idea. Until they found the logbook that Stauffenberg’s chauffeur kept. The man had noted down every trip, every visit and how long it lasted. Betrayed by the bookkeeping of a driver who wrote down everything, as he had been instructed to. Without that book, Adam might have survived. I’ve never got over the fact that a stupid little notebook was the only real evidence. It took me a long time to forgive that driver.”