The Assault

by Harry Mulisch

  “Papiere, papers, vorzeigen!” he shouted. “Schnell, quick, all your papers, everything.”

  Steenwijk stood up and opened a drawer in the dresser, while his wife said: “We had nothing to do with all this.”

  “Schweigen Sie, silence!” snapped the man. He stood by the table and with the nail of his index finger flipped shut the book that Steenwijk had been reading. “Ethica,” he read on the cover, “More Geometrico Demonstrata. Benedictus de Spinoza. Ach so!” He looked up. “That’s what you people read here; Jew books.” And then to Mrs. Steenwijk, “Just take a few steps up and down.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Walk back and forth! Do you have shit in your ears?”

  Anton saw his mother trembling all over as she paced up and down with the puzzled expression of a child. The man aimed the flashlight, held by the soldier next to him, at her legs.

  “Das genugt, enough,” he said after a while. Not till much later when he was in college did Anton learn that the man thought he could tell by her walk whether she was Jewish.

  Steenwijk stood with the papers in his hand. “Ich …”

  “You might take off your hat when you talk to me.”

  Steenwijk took off his bowler hat and repeated, “I …”

  “Keep your mouth shut, you pig Jew-lover.” The man studied the identity papers and ration cards, then looked about him.

  “Where is the fourth?”

  Mrs. Steenwijk tried to say something, but it was her husband who spoke.

  “My oldest son,” he began with a trembling voice, “confused by this dreadful accident, has rushed out of the parental home without taking his leave, and he went in that direction.” With his hat he pointed in the direction of Hideaway, where the Beumers lived.

  “So,” said the German, shoving the papers into his pocket. “He rushed out, did he?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  The man made a gesture with the head. “Abführen. Take them away.”

  Then everything went at a terrible clip. They were pushed out of the house without being allowed to take anything with them, not even a coat. Vehicles stood all over the street, gray civilian cars and army trucks all mixed together, everywhere uniforms and shouting and the dancing beams of flashlights. There were soldiers leading dogs on leashes. The ambulance had gone; only Ploeg’s bicycle still lay there, and a large red stain on the snow. Again Anton heard shots from somewhere. He felt his mother’s hand reach for his. As he looked up he saw her face change into that of a statue, with a wide-eyed expression of horror. His father, who had once more put on his hat, kept his eyes on the ground, the way he always did when he walked. But Anton himself was filled with an ambiguous pleasure at all this busyness, all this activity after the deadly stillness of the last few months. Perhaps he was also partially hypnotized by the bright flashes of light that lit up his face again and again; but finally, finally something was happening.

  Lost in his dream, he felt the grasp of his mother’s hand suddenly tightening before they were torn apart.

  “Tonny!”

  She had already vanished somewhere behind the trucks; so had his father. A soldier dragged Anton by the arm to a car that was parked across the street, halfway up on the embankment. He made Anton get in and slammed the door behind him.

  For the first time in his life he was sitting in a car. Vaguely he made out the steering wheel and the control panels. In an airplane there would be many more panels. In a Lockheed Electra, for instance, there were at least fifteen, and two steering wheels. He looked out. Nowhere did he see his parents. Where could Peter be hiding? Soldiers with flashlights were walking in and out over at Korteweg’s too, but as far as he could tell, without Peter. No doubt he had managed to escape across the vacant lots. Did they know that Ploeg had first been lying in front of the Kortewegs’? There was no one in the Beumers’ garden. The car windows were fogging up and he could see less and less of the street. He wiped them off, so that his hand became wet from his own breath, but the outlines remained blurred and distorted.

  Suddenly the doors to the balcony in his parents’ room were thrown open. A moment later the curtains of the living room downstairs were pushed back and all the windows smashed with rifle butts from the inside. Dazed, he looked at the rain of shattering splinters. What bastards! Where would his parents get new panes? Surely no more glass could be found. Luckily they seemed to have caused enough damage, for one by one the soldiers came outside. They left the front door open.

  Nothing more happened, but they didn’t leave. Some of them lit cigarettes and chatted together, hands in their pockets, stamping their feet against the cold. Others aimed their flashlights at the house, as if they enjoyed the spectacle of what they had destroyed.

  Anton tried again to see his parents, but further away in the darkness, people were only shadows in the flashlights darting back and forth. Dogs were barking. His thoughts returned to before, in the room, how the man with the hat had yelled at his father … Thinking of it became unbearable. It was much more painful now than while it was happening. His father, who had had to take his hat off … he pushed the image away, wanted never to remember it again; it should never have been allowed to happen. Never in his life would he wear a bowler; after the War no one would ever be allowed to wear a hat.

  He looked out and wondered. It was growing quieter. Everyone stepped back to a safe distance; no one moved. An order was given, after which a soldier walked toward the house, threw something into the middle bay window, and came running back, bent in two. There was a resounding explosion. Briefly a blinding bouquet of fire lit up the drawing room. Anton ducked. When he looked again, a second grenade exploded in the bedroom. Right after this a soldier appeared with what looked like a fire hose in his hands and a cylinder on his back. He stepped forward and began to spray the windows with long, thundering streaks of fire.

  Anton couldn’t believe it. Was it believable, this thing happening there? Desperately he searched for his father and mother, but because of those bright lights he couldn’t see anything. One stream of smoking light after another flew into the front room, the vestibule, the bedroom, and finally onto the thatched roof. They were really doing it; this could no longer be stopped. The house was burning inside and out. All his possessions, his books by Karl May, his Nature Studies of the Open Field, his collection of airplane pictures, his father’s library whose shelves were lined with green baize, his mother’s clothes, the ball of yarn, the chairs and tables: nothing was spared.

  The soldier screwed his flamethrower shut and disappeared into the darkness. Laughing and talking, a few men of the Grüne Polizei with carbines slung over their shoulders came forward, tucked their gloves into their belts, held up their hands to the crackling flames as if they wanted to push them back.

  A little further on, another truck stopped. Standing in its open bed was a group of shivering men in civilian jackets, guarded by soldiers with machine guns. In the light of the flames he recognized them by their black helmets as SS troops. Shouts, commands. Two by two, handcuffed, the prisoners jumped down to the street and disappeared in the night. The house, dried out during the frost, was burning as greedily as an old newspaper. Anton himself began to feel the glow inside the car. The pointed flames danced through the overhanging dormer window on the left: so now his room went, but at least he felt a little warmer. Suddenly the flames broke through the roof and lit up the whole quay with a brilliant light, as in a scene at the theater.

  He imagined that further on, between the cars, he caught a glimpse of his mother, her hair hanging loose, and a man running toward her. Something was taking place over there; but hardly anything could touch him anymore. He was thinking: how can they do this in the blackout? Before you know it, the English will see this and then they’ll come; if only they would come … On the sign attached at an angle to the frame over the bay window, the name of the house, although singed, was still readable: Carefree. In the rooms where it had been cold for so long, hellfire n
ow reigned. Everywhere black soot fluttered down onto the snow.

  A few minutes later, something began to creak inside and the house collapsed under a fountain of sparks as high as a tower. The dogs barked; the soldiers who had been warming themselves jumped back, one of them tripping over Ploeg’s bicycle and landing full length on the street. The others doubled up with laughter, and at the same time a machine gun began to rattle at the end of the quay. Anton lay on his side and curled up, his wrists crossed under his chin.

  When the German with the long coat opened the door and saw him lying there, he caught his breath. Apparently he had forgotten Anton.

  “Scheisse,” he said. “Shit.”

  Anton had to creep into the narrow space behind the seats where he could hardly see a thing. The man in the long coat sat down next to the army driver and lit a cigarette. The motor began to sputter, the driver wiped the fog off the front window with his sleeve, and for the first time Anton rode in a car. The houses were all dark: there was not a soul to be seen in the streets except now and then small groups of Germans. The two men did not talk. They drove to Heemstede and after a few minutes stopped in front of the police station, which was guarded by two cops.

  The warm waiting room was filled with men, most of them in German or Dutch uniforms. Anton’s mouth immediately began to water at the smell of fried eggs, yet he saw no one eat. There were electric lights, and all the men were smoking cigarettes. He was made to sit down on a chair near the tall pot-bellied stove, where the heat embraced him. The German spoke with a Dutch Inspector of Police, occasionally motioning with his chin in Anton’s direction. For the first time Anton saw the man clearly. But what he saw then, in 1945, was different from what he would see now. The German was about forty years old and actually had that lean, hardened face with the horizontal scar beneath the left cheekbone—a type no longer used except by directors of comedies or grade B movies. Today only babyish Himmler faces are still artistically acceptable; but then it was not an artistic matter, then he really did look like a fanatical Nazi, and it wasn’t funny. A little later he left without glancing back at Anton.

  A police sergeant carrying a gray horse blanket over his arm came over and told Anton to follow him. In the hall a second policeman joined them. He carried a bunch of keys in his hand.

  “What do we have now?” he said when he saw Anton. “Are we locking up children too? Or is he a little Jew?”

  “Don’t ask so many questions,” said the sergeant. At the end of the hall they followed each other down the cellar stairs. Anton turned back to the sergeant and asked:

  “Are my father and mother coming too?” The sergeant did not look at him.

  “I know nothing. We had nothing to do with this incident.”

  Downstairs it was cold again. A short hall led, below all sorts of pipes and wires, to some iron doors painted with yellowish paint full of rust spots. A weak, bare light bulb burned on the ceiling.

  “Where do we have room?” asked the sergeant.

  “Nowhere. He’ll have to sleep on the floor.”

  The sergeant’s eyes swept around the hall, as if he could see what was behind each door.

  “How about there?” he said, and pointed to the farthest door on the left.

  “But that one should be solitary. The SD man said so.”

  “Do what I say.”

  The policeman unbolted the door, and the sergeant threw the horse blanket onto a cot standing against the wall.

  “It’s just for tonight,” he said to Anton. “Try to get some sleep.” Then, in the direction of the corner Anton could not see, “You’ll have company, but keep the boy out of it, will you? He’s had enough misery, thanks to you.”

  Anton felt a hand pushing him in the back and crossed over the doorstep into the dark cell. The door closed behind him, and he saw nothing more.

  3

  Groping, he reached for the cot. All about him he could feel the presence of the man who must be in there somewhere. He folded his hands in his lap and listened to the voices in the hall. A bit later he heard boots walking up the stairs, and all grew quiet. Now he heard the other one breathing.

  “Why are you here?”

  The gentle voice of a woman. Suddenly it was as if a great danger had been averted. He opened his eyes wide to see, but the darkness filled them like black water. Now in the other cells he could hear muffled voices.

  “They set our house on fire.”

  As he said it, he too could hardly believe there should be nothing left but a smouldering ruin between Hideway and Home at Last. It took a while before she answered.

  “Why did they? Did it happen just now?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Why?”

  “In revenge. A fellow had been shot, but we had nothing to do with it. We weren’t allowed to take anything along.”

  “Oh shit,” she said. Then, after a while, “Jesus. Were you maybe at home alone?”

  “No, with my father and mother and my brother.” He noticed that his eyes were closing all by themselves. He opened them wide, but it made little difference.

  “Where are they now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did the Germans take them away?”

  “Yes. At least, my father and mother.”

  “And your brother?”

  “He escaped. He wanted …” It was the first time that he had to cry just a little. “Now look at me …” He was ashamed but couldn’t help it.

  “Come and sit next to me.”

  He stood up and felt his way step by step in her direction.

  “Yes, here I am,” she said. “Put out your hand.” He touched her fingers; she took hold of his hand and pulled him close. On the cot she embraced him with one arm and with her other hand pressed his head against her breast. She smelled of sweat but also of something else, something sweetish that he couldn’t identify. Perhaps it was perfume. Within the darkness there was a second darkness in which he heard her heart pound, really much too hard for someone who was just comforting someone else.

  As he calmed down, he began to see a pale strip of light under the door and kept his eyes focused on it. She must have caught a glimpse of him when he entered. She draped her blanket around the two of them and held him firmly against her. She was not as warm as the stove upstairs, yet at the same time she was so much warmer. Once more tears welled in his eyes, but now in a different way. He would have liked to ask her why she was in prison, but didn’t dare. Perhaps she had been dealing on the black market. He heard her swallow.

  “I don’t know your name,” she whispered. “And I shouldn’t know it. You can’t know mine either, but will you never forget one thing for the rest of your life?”

  “What’s that?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Almost thirteen, ma’am.”

  “Oh, stop calling me ma’am. Listen. They’ll try and make you believe all kinds of things, but you must never forget that it was the Krauts who burned down your house. Whoever did it, did it, and not anyone else.”

  “Of course I know that,” said Anton, a little offended. “I saw it with my own eyes, after all.”

  “Yes, but they did it because that pig had been liquidated, and they’ll blame the Underground and say they were forced to do it. They’ll tell you that the Underground knew what would happen and therefore the Underground is responsible.”

  “Oh,” said Anton drawing himself up a little and trying to formulate what he thought about it. “But if that’s the case, then … then no one’s ever at fault. Then everyone can just do as they please.”

  He felt her fingers caressing his hair. “Do you happen to know, by the way …” she began hesitantly, “what that fellow’s name was?”

  “Ploeg,” he said. Quickly her hand covered his mouth.

  “Quiet.”

  “Fake Ploeg,” he whispered. “He was with the police. A dirty collaborator.”

  “Did you see him?” she asked softly. “Was he really
dead?”

  Anton nodded. He realized that she could not see him, could at most feel him, and said: “As a doornail.” Once more the bloodstains in the snow were there in front of his eyes. “I’m in his son’s class. He’s also called Fake.”

  He heard her take a deep breath.

  “You know,” she said after a while, “if those Underground people hadn’t done this, Ploeg would have murdered many more, and then …”

  She pulled her arm away and began to sob. It frightened Anton; he wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how. He sat up and carefully reached out till he felt her hair: thick, springy hair.

  “Why are you crying?”

  She took his hand and pressed it against her heart.

  “It’s all so horrible,” she said in a choking voice. “The world is hell, hell. I’m glad it’s almost over now, I can’t take it anymore …”

  Under the palm of his hand he felt her soft breast, a strange softness such as he had never felt before, but he didn’t dare remove his hand.

  “What’s almost over?”

  She took his hand in hers. From her voice he could tell that she had turned to face him.

  “The War, the War, of course. Just a few more weeks and it’ll all be over. The Americans are at the Rhine and the Russians at the Oder.”

  “For sure? How do you know?”

  She had said it with total conviction, whereas at home he had only heard vague rumors that seemed to promise one thing and then turned out to mean another. She didn’t answer. Though the strip of light under the door was very faint, now he could just see the outline of her head and body, her loose, somewhat wild mass of hair, the place where she sat, an arm approaching him.