An Untouched House

by Willem Frederik Hermans

  “Answer!” I seized his wet hand. “Answer!” Only then did he climb down and raise the lamp between our faces. He didn’t wear a beard but his cheeks were covered with the stubble of many days. I had never seen anyone as old.

  “I have many fish,” he said suddenly in a questioning tone, “many, many fish, Herr Hauptmann. They are hungry, but they are not yet dead.”

  He held his lamp up to an aquarium and gestured for me to come closer.

  “Don’t pretend to be deaf!” I cried. “How long have you been in the house? You heard everything: the shooting, the screaming!”

  He pointed at the glass where I could see nothing but the reflection of his lamp. “With this pair I have bred twenty-six other pairs. No one else in Europe has managed that. You only find them in Mexico at an altitude of almost 15,000 feet. Above the snowline. But the water isn’t frozen because it comes from a volcanic spring. Then I discovered that our St. Catharine spring here is exactly the same temperature. Thirty years ago we didn’t have electric thermostats. I installed a pipe to run the spring water –”

  “I shoot madmen on the spot!” I shouted, with my hands cupped around his ear like a funnel.

  ‘Oh, it was a big job.” He continued his account. And then I heard hundreds of bombers. The pounding of anti-aircraft guns came closer.

  “Herr Hauptmann! I only bored you with my stories to let you know that this house concealed something of unique cultural significance. You respected it!”

  His hand was growing so tired the lantern began to swing. “I would like to express my esteem for the way you protect culture.”

  “She’s dead in the bedroom,” I said, grabbing him by the arms, “and he’s behind the summer house! You know all about it. But you’re scared of me! You think I’m going to beat you to death and chop up your body!”

  “Let me stay here, Herr Hauptmann! I need my fish and my fish need me. Without me here, this unique collection will die. I’ve worked on it for eighty years. I started in my sixteenth year.”

  The whole time I had been staying in the town, the fire had never been as heavy as now. How could I tell if he could hear it?

  “Herr Hauptmann, it took me a whole fortnight to get here. I didn’t eat, but I had feed for the fish with me. Here in this bag!” He picked up a cotton bag on the floor and rummaged through it with one hand.

  “Fourteen different kinds! You don’t know how difficult it is to get that these days. My son and daughter-in-law were hit by a shell on the road.”

  “You’re lying!” I took the lamp from him and held it close to my own mouth. If he couldn’t hear, he could at least lip read. “Du lügst” – I whispered it very slowly.

  “I am ninety-six years old and alone in the world. Herr Hauptmann…”

  He was pulling out all the stops: his fish, a unique collection, culture, alone in the world, daughter-in-law. It was like an octopus playing a theater organ.

  “Herr Hauptmann! Germany is winning on all fronts. The secret weapon. The war will…”

  He was still talking when a bomb landed close by. He kept going while I put the lamp back in his hands and pulled his bunch of keys out of my pocket. I pursed my lips, tapped them with my index finger, picked up the cat, and backed out of the room. I locked him in. He would just have to stay there. Maybe he would start to yell and pound on the door. If the Germans heard him, I would come up with some way of saving myself. I could tell them he was mad: my poor mad grandfather who no longer recognized me and insisted he’d never seen me before. That was what I’d say. The bombs were falling closer now. I could hear them whistling. Everything that was thin, everything loose was shaking. Maybe one would soon hit the house. I was convinced I wouldn’t be dissatisfied at all.

  In the bedroom I slid the curtains open. The entire surroundings seemed to be on fire. The anti-aircraft batteries had fallen silent.

  I could clearly see the dead woman. I sat down next to her on the bed and felt her face with my fingertips. It was now cold. I stuck my hand under her coat, under her skirt, and laid it on her thigh. Cold, a thing, water and proteins, something chemists have studied, nothing more. I tried to see if I could bend her leg. Carry her in my arms. No, put her over one shoulder and keep a hand free to open doors and hold on to the bannister. And then walk through the garden; lay her down behind the summer house next to her husband. It wouldn’t be dark in the garden. I stood up, thinking about how to get her up over my shoulder.

  Then I heard steps on the stairs. The Germans bellowed at each other, heavy objects bumped. I ran to the door and grabbed the knob, suddenly thinking that they were going to come into my room. I stood there like that until they went away again. Then I lay down on the bed next to the woman. I closed my eyes and put my hand on different parts of her body, expecting it to have remained alive locally, moving minimally, shuddering, or imperceptibly expanding and shrinking.

  In the middle of extended salvoes of machine-gun fire, I woke. But that wasn’t the sound that had interrupted my sleep, someone was knocking on the door. I thought, the old man has raised the alarm. The Germans have released him. They’re coming to demand an explanation. I got out of bed. What would I gain by not opening the door?

  Yes, I was right, it was the colonel.

  “Entschuldigen Sie,” he said.

  I couldn’t see the old man in the hallway.

  The colonel kept grabbing his left thumb with his right hand and then releasing it again.

  “I will quickly bring you up to date. The Bolshevists have encircled the town. I am here to warn you. The other gentlemen are all dead. We are surrounded, surrounded.”

  “Thank you.”

  I took a step back, intent on closing the door the first chance I got.

  “No, wait a second. Maybe we can do something together. Maybe we can escape.”

  “Yes, that is a wonderful idea! Just wait here! One moment! I will be at your command shortly!”

  I slammed the door and ran to the wardrobe, pulled out the uniform I had bundled up like a ball and kicked into the corner, and put it on. Pulling my belt tight, I got down on my knees by the bed and grabbed my rifle. I attached the bayonet. I buckled my helmet strap under my chin.

  I came out into the hallway fully dressed. The colonel raised his hands. I forced him down the stairs with the bayonet at his back. When we were in the hall, near the garden doors, he turned to face me and, arms still in the air, said, “Would you be so kind as to allow me to shave first.” He had lowered his left arm slightly to check his watch. I could clearly see his half-shot-off finger.

  “It is seven o’clock exactly. I have my shaving implements in my breast pocket. It will only take a moment.” The tone in which he spoke added: I know it’s over. This is my last request.

  He must have been counting on my planning to simply shoot him dead somewhere in the garden.

  “No,” I said, “I decide what happens.”

  I pushed him away from the garden doors. With my left hand I opened the cellar door.

  While hanging my rifle over my shoulder and putting the cellar key in my pocket, I thought things through. There I was, exactly as I had begun, a filthy soldier between marble walls, standing on the rugs of a strange house. The slope had proved too steep and time had rolled back down.

  When I went into the locked room, the old man was sitting on his stepladder next to the window, from which he had removed the blackout paper, and moving a finger to and fro across the glass of an aquarium. Two paradise fish on the other side were pressing their mouths against it as if trying to kiss his fingers. He was talking to them in Hungarian.

  I pressed a pot of cold coffee and a piece of bread into his hands.

  “Good morning, Herr Hauptmann.”

  He didn’t show the least bit of surprise; he couldn’t tell the uniforms of the two sides apart.

  “You are taking excellent
care of an old man. Your hospitality is a credit to the German army.”

  The sky was red from the rising sun. The window too turned red. Bullets were whistling through the garden. Brief eruptions were blossoming on a background of vague hubbub. I looked at the aquariums, in which the fish were floating through their green water as if on another star.

  “Herr Hauptmann, I have enough to keep them alive for three months!”

  I went over to him, took him by the hand and gripped him by the chin with my other hand. I brought my face close to his. “Now you need to pay attention!” I shouted.

  He grinned.

  “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann. The glorious German army! The defenders of our culture!”

  He said it as if repeating after someone. They had drilled these phrases into him so he could win over the Germans, like catching birds by tipping salt on their tails. Culture was the only thing on his mind.

  I burst out laughing, but had to struggle not to hit him.

  “Pay attention now! Germans gone! All gone! Never come back!”

  “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann. War over soon. Secret weapon. Heil Hitler.” He held his hand up at an angle.

  I kneaded his shoulders as if I could convey what I meant through my fingers.

  “No! Germans lost! Germans dead. Chop off head!”

  I moved my hand left and right across my throat. “Of course!” he said. “The chief culprits must be executed!”

  I screamed so hard my vocal cords almost tore.

  “No. Russians here now! Never say Heil Hitler again!” I pointed at him and again mimed cutting my own throat.

  He raised his hand in fear.

  “Oh, no! I love Germany so much!”

  “No! Germany lost. Germany kaput! Hitler –” (I stuck my hand in the air.) “Hitler kaput! Head chopped off!”

  He laughed and shook his head, opened the bag of fish feed and stuck his hand into it.

  I heard heavy columns driving through the streets. The shooting had stopped. I had to get moving. If he didn’t understand by now, there really wasn’t anything else I could do. I walked out of the room and fetched a pencil and a sheet of paper from the library. On it I wrote in German in large block letters:

  Germany kaput. Now the Soviets are coming. Never say Heil Hitler again. Otherwise the Russians will kill you and eat your fish.

  I pressed the piece of paper into his hands. I also returned his keys. When I closed the door behind me he was chuckling away while trying to work out at what distance he could most easily decipher my letters.

  I walked down the front steps, across the lawn and through the gate to join the partisans, who were singing as they marched behind covered wagons drawn by small horses.

  Most of the town’s houses were on fire. Thick clouds of steam were escaping between the flames because the springs on the corners were still running.

  At the market square I looked around to see if they hadn’t begun to set up a headquarters somewhere I could report to. I knew exactly what to say when they asked me where I had been all these months. And then they would give me another order I wouldn’t understand at all. It made no difference. – As long as they understood me!

  I was standing in the same spot, the place where I had last seen the sergeant, in front of the bar that was now a ruin. Yes, definitely, exactly the same spot.

  Who was that approaching me? The Spaniard who spoke French, the yesero! He recognized me immediately.

  “Ah, amigo mi…mon ami! How are you? Where you been?”

  I rattled off the same story as before.

  “Captured by Germans. Here! Germans flee!”

  “Good! Beautiful!”

  “But they couldn’t hold me! I escape! Now capture German myself! Come!”

  “Everything same,” he said. “First them, then you! Are you still thirsty?” He pulled a large bottle of plum brandy out of his bag. I drank and thought, how can I shake him off again? What am I supposed to do with him? I took a deep breath and another long slug.

  He stayed close. I walked a distance; he followed along behind. And a whole troop of others followed us, thronging around us, passing round bottles.

  “Women,” said the Spaniard, “Hollander, you know any women?”

  “Yes, in the same house there is one. For you and me. Beautiful woman. Send the others away.”

  He stopped and gave a short speech. I don’t know what he said but it was greeted with roars of laughter. It didn’t have the least effect. They kept walking along with us.

  “Hey, Spaniard, comrade! Send them away! Une jolie femme! Just for you!”

  But he gave me the bottle, from which I took one swig after the other.

  The group of us went into the garden together. On the steps I turned and raised one hand. I opened my mouth wide and yelled. In French, Spanish, German, Dutch: I made so many different noises that there may well have been some Montenegrin, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Romanian in there too. I looked down over the sloping lawn full of partisans. They jostled forward, shoving me back and forth. I explained that my captive wasn’t here at all. I told them I’d never even taken anyone prisoner! He was gone, vanished! But behind my back I heard them smashing the glass in the door and forcing the lock. They knocked me over in the rush. They stood around me begging in broken German.

  “Where is prisoner, Hollander?”

  I slumped down on the sofa, gave them the key to the cellar and stayed where I was.

  It was pandemonium. Footsteps on the stairs and upper landings. More and more soldiers pushing into the hallway.

  Then the Spaniard came back with an opened and bloody razor in his hand. Two others were holding the colonel, now hardly able to walk, by the collar. He had shaved first. After that he had tried to cut his own throat, but had just missed the artery. He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. I held out my hankie, which the Spaniard took and used to bind his neck. The two others dragged him off to the drawing room and the yesero came and sat next to me.

  “Hollander, where is your woman?” He wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “You have everything…house…German colonel…wine…food, everything. Where is woman? Me, three months, no woman! Spaniard no can, no. Spaniard cannot do that, Hollander.” He smashed the neck off a bottle and poured the drink over my face.

  Other partisans were coming back from the cellar as well. They had filled empty boxes with bottles of wine. They were scooping food out of preserving jars with their fingers and smashing the half-emptied jars underfoot. Acrid blue smoke was reaching us through the hallway because they had attempted to light the stove, but the ones who were playing the cook were only making a mess.

  What had the old man done? Was he still upstairs? Had he fled? Was he in the garden? I wanted to go and see if he might be in the garden. But just at that moment a fight broke out on the stairs. At the same time someone started shooting at the stag’s heads on the wall with a revolver. The gilded bannister creaked, gave way and crashed down. The cupids on the ceiling broke free of their heaven and flew for the first time in their existence. Half a company of partisans lay brawling on the floor in a cloud of dust. Two who were no longer capable of moving stayed there; the others took off. I walked around without doing anything.

  It grew relatively calm in the house. The victors had withdrawn in little groups, destroying and despoiling everything they could get their hands on in whichever way appealed the most. I’d lost track of the Spaniard. But on my way to the stairs, I bumped into him again. He grabbed hold of me.

  “Come on,” I said, “beautiful woman. Upstairs.”

  “No, not upstairs.”

  I pulled him towards the staircase. We staggered around each other, stumbling over the uprights of the bannister, slipping in the mess of trampled food and curved shards.

  “No, not upstairs.” He dragged me back.

  “Fi
ne,” I said. “I’ll go alone.”

  But he was so strong I couldn’t break free. I didn’t have a revolver, I didn’t have anything, I’d even lost my helmet. He twisted my wrists and pulled me away from the stairs to the drawing room, hurling me down on a divan between two other partisans who had cut faces out of paintings and tied them on as masks. The antique sideboards had been broken open and someone was busy systematically stamping cups, plates and saucers into fine dust one after the other.

  Others were playing a peculiar game. They were pulling the wallpaper off the wall and comparing pieces to see who had the longest. What was the winner’s reward going to be? The colonel was lying bound on the floor, against the wainscoting. They’d smashed his head through a painting; the frame was resting on his shoulders. The winner went over and kicked him. Then he shouted something to three more who were busy relieving themselves in vases in the sunroom and now came to join him, hiking up their trousers. Together they tilted the grand piano. The lid and sounding board had already been kicked out of it. The piano kept falling back, crushing a chair and a few side tables, but finally they managed to stand it upright, its legs against the wall and the keyboard on the floor. One after the other they prized the strings out of the frame; they either curled back or snapped with short clangs.

  Using the thickest strings, they strung the German up inside the gilded frame, stretching him like the skin of an animal. He wasn’t even unconscious, though he kept his eyes shut. But every now and then he opened them to look around, trying to blow away a corner of my hankie, which was tickling him. He pursed his lips as if tasting something, the way some people do when they’ve said something they find particularly striking. But he wasn’t saying anything. He gave no sign of having noticed me.

  Then two soldiers came into the room holding large wineglasses. They were wearing a number of dresses on top of each other. Their faces were made up. They had pulled puckered silk stockings with lots of holes in them on over their bare legs. I looked at the antique rummers in their hands. They were stuffed with suffocating tropical fish. From everywhere soldiers came towards them. The two who had been holding me down on the divan released their grip.