The Assault

by Harry Mulisch

  “This will interest you too,” he said, and Anton saw a headline:

  WILLY LAGES

  —seriously ill—

  RELEASED!

  He knew this much, that Lages had been the head of the Gestapo in the Netherlands, and as such was responsible for thousands of executions and the deportation of one hundred thousand Jews. After the War he was condemned to death, but the sentence had been commuted to imprisonment a few years later. There had been mass demonstrations, in which Anton had not taken part.

  “What do you think of that?” asked Takes. “Because he’s sick, our dear little Willy. You’ll see how soon he recovers back in Germany. And yet he made a lot of other people really sick—but that’s not so important. All those humane do-gooders with their respect for human life at our expense. The war criminal is sick, oh dear, the poor lamb. Free the Fascist quickly, for we’re no Fascists, our hands are clean. Does this make his victims ill? What a hateful lot, those anti-Fascists—they’re no better themselves! That’s what they’ll say next, you’ll see. And who’ll be the first to approve of this release? All those who kept their hands clean during the War—Catholics in the lead, of course. It’s not for nothing that he converted to Catholicism the minute he went to prison. But if he gets to heaven, then I prefer hell …” Takes looked at Anton and took the paper out of his hands. “You’re just resigned to it, aren’t you? I’ll assume that you’re blushing with shame. Your parents and your brother also came under the jurisdiction of that gentleman.”

  “Not the wreck he is now.”

  “The wreck!” Takes took his cigarette out of his mouth, and leaving it open, slowly exhaled the smoke. “Just hand him to me and I’ll slit his throat. With a pocketknife, if necessary. The wreck … As if it were a question of his physique!” He threw the newspaper on the desk, kicked an empty bottle under the bed, and looked up with a forced laugh. “But you, your profession is to rescue ailing mankind, right?”

  “How did you know?” Anton asked, surprised.

  “Because I called up your scoundrel of a father-in-law. A man should know who he’s dealing with, don’t you agree?”

  Anton nodded, keeping an eye on him, and a smile crept over his face. “The War is still on; right, Takes?”

  “Sure,” said Takes and did not evade his eyes. “Sure.”

  Anton felt ill at ease under the scrutiny of that left eye. Were they playing a game, waiting to see who would be the first to blink? He lowered his eyes. “And you?” he asked, looking about. “I’ve been foolish enough not to call anyone. How do you earn a living?”

  “In me you see a distinguished mathematician.”

  Anton burst out laughing. “You’ve got a pretty messy office for a mathematician.”

  “That mess came with the War. Since then I survive thanks to a pension from the Foundation Nineteen Forty—Forty-five. It was founded by Mr. A. Hitler, who rescued me from mathematics. Without him I’d still be facing the classroom every day.” He took a bottle of whisky from the windowsill and poured some for Anton. “Let’s drink to compassion for the pitiless,” he said and raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  Anton knew the lukewarm whisky would not agree with him, but refusing it was out of the question. Takes was more cynical than yesterday, perhaps because of the newspaper article or the drinking, or maybe he had simply decided to get into this mood. He didn’t offer a seat, and for some reason this pleased Anton. Why should people always have to sit? After all, Clemenceau had even had himself buried on his feet. They stood facing each other in the small room, glasses in hand, as at a cocktail party.

  “As a matter of fact, I too worked in the medical line,” said Takes.

  “Really? So we’re colleagues?”

  “You might call it that.”

  “Tell me,” said Anton, apprehensive.

  “Let’s just say it was sort of an anatomical institute, somewhere in Holland. The director had put it at our disposal to further the good cause. People were tried there, death penalties were pronounced, and so on. They were executed, too.”

  “That’s little known.”

  “Shouldn’t be. You never know when you’ll need it again. It was mostly for people within the Resistance—traitors in our ranks, infiltrators, that sort. Downstairs in the cellar they were given a phenol injection straight into the heart, with a long needle. Afterwards they were cut into slices on a granite counter by other white-clad heroes. Ears, hands, noses, penises, and intestines floated in a large basin filled with formaldehyde. It would be very hard to piece them together again. All for the benefit of science, you understand!” He faced Anton defiantly. “You see, I’m a worthless son of a bitch.”

  “So long as it’s for a good cause …” said Anton.

  “The Krauts were scared of that institute, they did their best to avoid it … They thought it was pretty spooky.”

  “But not you.”

  “Downstairs there were rows of steel cabinets with drawers, about five drawers each, and in every one a corpse. I spent a night in there once, when I had to disappear for a while.”

  “And? Did you sleep well?”

  “Like a log.”

  “May I ask you something, Takes?”

  “Go ahead, laddie,” said Takes, smiling sweetly.

  “What exactly are you doing this for? Do you think I have to be initiated, or something? That’s not really necessary. I’ve had my share, and no one knows it better than you.”

  Takes kept his eyes on him as he took another sip.

  “I want you to be aware of the man you’re dealing with, too.” His eyes still on Anton, he took the bottle. “Come, leave the door open for the telephone.” Anton followed him to the basement, where there was another hall. With a key Takes unlocked a door that opened into a low room whose function was unclear. It was stuffy. The dim light entering through the basement windows was supplemented by the cold glare of fluorescent tubes that flickered feebly with purplish flashes. The chipped white tiles against the wall suggested that this used to be the kitchen of a private home. Along the low ceiling ran all kinds of pipes and heating ducts. A low table with another well-filled ashtray stood in the middle of the room, and against the long wall, a worn-out red velvet sofa. There was also an old-fashioned linen closet with a mirror on its door, and a wreck of a bicycle.

  The whole had the air of a bunker, an underground headquarters, especially with the torn, yellowed map taped to the wall across from the sofa. Glass in hand, Anton went toward it. “Topography of Germany” was written on the lower right-hand corner. The map was covered with red and blue lines like tidal waves, showing offensives advancing from Russia and France toward Berlin, where they met. The only uncolored areas were north and central Germany and the western part of the Netherlands. His attention was caught by something floating over the faded blue of the sea: a faint, pale-pink outline of a mouth, a kiss printed on the paper with lipstick. He turned around. Takes, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, was watching him.

  “So that’s how it is,” Takes said.

  Was this the reason why the map was hanging here? Not because of an insidious nostalgia for the War, but because her mouth was imprinted on it? Was the basement a memorial? But perhaps she and the War had become one for Takes. Perhaps the War had become his beloved, and for that reason he could not be unfaithful to her. Perhaps even as he was talking about its atrocities, he was really trying to remember Truus Coster and those days when he had been happy.

  Involuntarily, though there was room enough to stand upright, Anton lowered his head. He sat down next to Takes and looked again at the mouth rising from the North Sea. It was as if the rest of her face were under water. (As a boy he used to imagine that if he looked at the map of Holland under a microscope, he would be able to see the people of Haarlem walking around in the street, and even to see himself leaning over the microscope, if he were doing it outside in the garden.) The fair Ophelia … Her lips had touched that spot on the map, perhaps while she and Takes were fi
lling in the lines showing the fronts with the help of news from Radio London, and while they were making plans about what they would do after the Liberation … He heard Takes clearing his throat. But Takes poured himself another drink, a cigarette hanging from his lips, and remained silent. Anton had never felt so involved with another man, and maybe the same was true of Takes. From outside came the gentle tune of a carillon. Anton looked at the bicycle, a man’s model with a crossbar and the kind of seat you don’t see nowadays. It used to be called a Terrysaddle.

  Then he saw the photograph.

  It was shaped like a postcard and stuck behind an electric cable not far from the map. His heart began to pound. Motionless he stared at the face looking at him across a span of twenty years. After a while he glanced at Takes, who was watching the smoke rising from his mouth. Then he stood up and walked toward it.

  Saskia. It was Saskia looking at him. Of course, it wasn’t Saskia, it didn’t even look like her, but the expression in the eyes was Saskia’s, just as it had struck him that first time in Westminster Abbey. A not unusual, friendly girl of twenty-three. The smile drew her mouth a bit to the right side of her face, giving it a certain sophistication. It contrasted with her prim, high-collared dress that had a little embroidered detail in front and the hint of a puffed sleeve. She had thick, wavy hair down to her shoulders; probably light-brown hair, but one couldn’t tell from the black-and-white print. The edges were overexposed, so that rebellious streaks of light curled and flashed around her head against the dark background.

  Now Takes was standing next to him.

  “Is it her?”

  “It must be, it must be …” said Anton without taking his eyes off it.

  Finally she had risen out of the darkness—with Saskia’s eyes. He remembered his worries of the night before, but was too excited to realize what this likeness meant. Besides, Takes didn’t let him. As if he had controlled himself desperately till now, he seized Anton by the shoulders and shook him the way a teacher might do to the child who has fallen asleep.

  “Tell me, what else did she say?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Did she mention me?”

  “I don’t remember, Takes.”

  “Well, try to, for Chrissake!”

  Shouting gave Takes a coughing fit that sent him to the corner of the room. Bent over, almost throwing up, he stood supporting himself with his hands on his knees. When he straightened up breathless, Anton said, “It’s all gone, Takes. I wish I could tell you, but the only thing I remember is that she touched my face. Later there was blood on it, and that’s how I knew that she’d been wounded. Don’t forget that I was only twelve. I can’t even remember my own father’s voice. Our house had just been set on fire; my parents, my brother had disappeared. I was in shock. I was hungry, sitting in a dark cell under a police station.”

  “A police station?” Takes stared at him open-mouthed. “Which police station?”

  “In Heemstede.”

  Takes made a desperate move with his arm. “So that’s where she was. Jesus, we could have gotten her out of there. I thought it was in Haarlem.”

  At that very moment, Anton could tell, a plan was forming in Takes’s head to infiltrate police headquarters in Heemstede. He turned away and paced angrily up and down. The memory of the conversation had disappeared, permanently vanished from the world. He knew that experiments with LSD were going on at the University. It was stored somewhere in his brain, of course. Serious candidates for the experiment were welcome, and the drug might make it come back. If Takes knew, he might be crazy enough to insist that Anton go through with the experiment. But Anton had no desire to; he did not want his past chemically resurrected. Besides, there was the risk that none of these memories would be revealed—that totally different, unexpected ones would emerge instead, and that he would not be able to control them.

  “All I remember,” he said, “is that she told a long story about something.”

  “About what?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Takes emptied his glass and slid it across the table like a bartender in a Western movie. “I can’t remember, I can’t remember!”

  Anton remained standing. “What you’d like best,” he said, “would be to tie me to a chair, aim a lamp at my face, and then try to pull it out of me, right?”

  Takes looked down at his feet. “Okay,” he said.

  There was no need for Anton to gaze at the photograph any longer to know what Truus Coster had looked like. Her face was indelibly printed in his memory.

  “Were you married?” he asked.

  Takes poured himself another and handed the bottle to Anton.

  “I was married, all right, but not to her. I had a wife and two children, about the same age you were, a bit younger, maybe. But she was the one I loved, though she didn’t love me. I would have left my family just like that for her, but she only laughed when I suggested it. Whenever I said I loved her, she thought I was just being silly, that it was only because we’d gone through so much together. Anyway, I’m divorced now.”

  He began to pace the floor. The seat of his pants hung way below his crotch; the backs of the legs were frayed. Anton thought, here’s all that’s left of the Resistance, a sloppy, unhappy drunk in a basement that he probably never leaves except to bury his friends, while war criminals are being freed and history ignores him.

  “A long story,” said Takes. “She was good at that, long stories. All the talk … We’d sit chewing the fat for hours, always about morality. Also, sometimes about what it would be like after the War, but then she wouldn’t say much. Once she told me that when she thought about after the War, it seemed as if she were looking into a deep hole. But whenever we discussed morality, she was in her element. Once I asked her, ‘If a Nazi says that he’ll shoot either your mother or your father, that you have to choose which one, or else he’ll shoot both, what do you do?’

  “I had heard of such a case,” Takes said, and threw his butt in the ashtray. “She asked me what I would do. I said I’d count the buttons on his uniform: father, mother, father, mother … The only way to counter inhumanity is with idiocy. But she said she wouldn’t tell him anything. Anyone suggesting such a compromise wouldn’t keep his word anyway, she thought. Then possibly he might not shoot them. But if you said, ‘My father,’ maybe he would shoot your father and then tell you that it had been your choice. And according to her, that would be true, in a way. It was clever of her. It was first-rate, first-rate. Nights on end, we’d sit and talk about our work. Just imagine us sitting there, both of us condemned to death …”

  “Had you been condemned to death?” asked Anton.

  Takes laughed. “Of course; aren’t you? Once,” he continued, “she had to go home in the middle of the night, long after curfew. She got lost in the dark and sat down on the street somewhere till dawn.”

  Anton leaned his head back as if he could hear a sound remembered from somewhere, a faint signal that instantly died.

  “Till dawn? Somewhere on the street? It’s as if I dreamed something like that once.”

  “She was completely disoriented. Even you must remember how dark it got in those days.”

  “Yes,” said Anton. “It made me want to become an astronomer.”

  Takes nodded but hardly seemed to hear.

  “She thought about things. She was ten years younger than me, but she thought much more than I did. Compared to her I was just a peasant, a kind of mathematical idiot. One day I suggested that we kidnap the children of our dear Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart, so we could exchange them for several hundred of our own people. But she asked what on earth made me think such a thing? Was I crazy? What did those children have to do with it? True, what did they have to do with it? Nothing at all, of course, not a thing. Just about as much as the Jewish kids that were being mass-murdered. Which means, nothing at all. But that’s just the point: you had to attack your enemy where he was most vulnerable, and
if that meant his children—and naturally that’s what it meant—then you had to get him through his children. And what if the deal didn’t go through? Then, of course, the children would have to be sacrificed. Painlessly, in the anatomical institute.” He threw a glance at Anton out of the corners of his eyes. “Yes, I’m sorry. I’m a worthless son of a bitch.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve said so.”

  “Ach, is that right?” Takes said, acting surprised. “Did I really? Well then, let’s say I’m not even worthy of a bitch, shall we? So we didn’t go through with it. Fight Fascists with Fascism is my idea, because they don’t understand any other language. I’d like to use that as my motto, but in Latin. I’m sure you could translate it perfectly, you intellectual!”

  “Fascists with Fascism,” Anton said. “You can’t put it into Latin. Fasces means a bundle of twigs. ‘A bundle of twigs against bundles of twigs’—it doesn’t work.”

  “There you have it,” said Takes. “Truus didn’t think it did either. According to her, I had to watch out not to become like them, because that would be their way to get the better of me. Yes, she was a philosopher, Steenwijk; but still, a philosopher with a gun.”

  He walked past the linen closet, leaned over, opened a drawer, put a big revolver on the table, and walked on as if nothing had happened.

  Frightened, Anton gazed at the grayish object that had suddenly appeared. It was so menacing that it seemed likely to singe the table. He looked up.

  “Is that her gun?”

  “That’s her gun.”

  Motionless, the thing lay there like a relic from a different civilization unearthed by archeologists.

  “Did she shoot Ploeg with it?”

  “And hit her target,” Takes said, pointing his finger at Anton. Takes stared at the gun for a while; clearly it brought something else to his mind. “I was stupidly preoccupied that night,” he said, half to himself. “We were riding next to each other on that quay of yours, hand in hand, very slowly, looking as best we could like a pair of lovers. That is … as far as I was concerned, we really were. We let him overtake us, and he looked at us for a minute. ‘Good morning to you,’ Truus called out cheerfully, and he smiled back at us. Then I rode ahead. I had decided to do him in at once, but it was slippery. I had to let go of the handlebar with one hand to pull the gun out of my pocket, and then I skidded. I shot him in the back, and a bit later in the stomach, but I saw right away that it was no good. As he fell to the ground I wanted to try once more, but I misfired. I went on fast, to make way for Truus. When I looked back, I saw her carefully steadying herself with the tip of her shoe on the sidewalk and aiming precisely between his shoulder blades. He lay completely rolled into a ball, his head hidden between his arms. She shot twice, stuck the gun back in her pocket, and quickly rode on. Apparently she was sure that he was dead, but I saw him raise himself up. I screamed at her to watch out, she accelerated, and then he took a shot at her—and by some idiotic accident hit her, somewhere low in her back.”