* * *
—
On the way home, I said, “So you’re diarizing. I don’t know why I didn’t notice the ink on your hand, but I can’t say I’m surprised, given your mood lately.”
“I haven’t relapsed,” Rachel snapped. “A few pages here and there does not a relapse make.”
“When have you been doing it? Where? I haven’t seen you.”
“Sweetie, it doesn’t matter. It’s maybe a few pages at most.”
“A few more than I’ve written.”
“You know—”
“I know,” I said. “It’s just that, judging by what Bethany said, my being stuck at the starting line is the talk of your family. I don’t like to think of Bethany and Clive, Clive, exchanging smirks about me.”
Rachel took my hand. I raised hers to my mouth and kissed it.
From The Ballad of the Clan van Hout
HET PAROOL (1967)
(In which I tell the girls of pieces published
about me in Het Parool, the official paper of the
Dutch Resistance during and after the war.)
At Cape Town University,
I told them of my history.
I told those men of lesser rank
that I had almost saved Anne Frank.
Word somehow spread to Amsterdam,
where my undoing soon began.
My name appeared in Het Parool:
“ ‘The Case of Hans van Hout,’ the fool
who claims he would have saved Anne Frank
if not for men of lesser rank.
He persists in the travesty
of falsifying history,
dishonours those who gave their lives
or somehow managed to survive,
the heroes of the underground,
some of whom were never found,
but sent to camps and perished there—
no records say exactly where.
Comrades, witnesses testify
that they were brave and that they died.
Who would cheapen the sacrifice
of those who paid the greatest price
so that a man like Hans van Hout
could strut and boast and brag about
such feats as serving sauerkraut?
A craven clown of false renown
impersonates the Underground
and libels the defenceless dead:
‘It’s their fault that Anne Frank is dead.’ ”
I admit some of their facts were right—
I’d made them up—not out of spite—
to make my story seem more true.
Details do that, you know they do.
I told them that a German said,
“Tell us the truth or Mam is dead,”
and put a gun against her head
and said that, after he shot her,
he’d hang my brother in the square.
The next file Het Parool compiled
read, “Hans van Hout, the only child
of Jan and Cornelia van Hout…”
The profs asked why I lied about
“a younger brother, one named Dittmer,
who almost died defying Hitler.
Dittmer must have been very young
the day that he was almost hung.”
Another of their stupid jokes
that “proved” my story was a hoax.
“Tell us about Cornelia,
the imaginary character,
the one you said was almost shot
the day that Dittmer faced the Knot.
The mother that you haven’t got
was dead before the war began.
Het Parool learned this from the man
who told them that your father ran
after the fall of Amsterdam
and never came to light again.
You were alone by age fourteen
but never were a go-between—
the member of the Underground
of whom no evidence was found.”
I did serve with the Underground
but proof of this cannot be found.
I lost my mother, then my father,
who left me to an empty house—
he ran off like a frightened mouse.
No trace of him was ever found.
Fourteen, I joined the Underground—
the Germans thought me one of theirs,
the Underground knew this, my dears.
Het Parool had exposed only
the fraud your dad was thought to be.
The truth: to be or not to be
was always, always haunting me,
which ones should live, which ones should die—
none would have lived had I not lied,
agreed I would collaborate.
I had to be what I was not
or else more Jews would have been caught.
How could professors understand
the chaos of the Netherlands
when defeat seemed a certainty?
Years of lying from necessity
make habit of duplicity.
It did seem like a game sometimes:
we made up passwords and false names.
Some men were masters of disguise;
my specialty was telling lies.
Deception, misinformation,
codes with multiple translations
depending on the time of day:
you must not give yourself away,
you must not know who you work for
lest it come out under torture.
The lone wolves of the Underground
were written off if they were found.
By war’s end, few men knew for sure
which uniform their comrades wore.
If truth be told, most still don’t know
the traitors from the true heroes.
So much confusion and mistrust,
the worst mistaken for the best—
so, too, the other way around:
the maze we called the Underground.
Whichever way it all worked out
was never good for Hans van Hout:
Hans the deferential waiter,
Hans, inconsequential traitor.
I told them again and again
how close I came to saving Anne:
“They fouled it up, they failed Anne Frank,
those nameless men of lesser rank.
I did my job, they bungled theirs;
I almost saved her—no one cares.
My so-called comrades may have been
traitors, mercenaries, Germans
who duped me all throughout the war—
who knows who I was working for?
I knew the mission only once:
I tried to give the Franks a chance
to get away from Prinsengracht.
I wrote a note and left it where
I found my notes on Henke Square—
when I returned, it wasn’t there.
No one is willing to admit
the lie and what lies under it.
The possibilities are clear.
What might have been if not for their
incompetence or apathy,
their avarice or treachery,
will always be a mystery.
The famous bookcase that concealed
eight should, when opened, have revealed
nothing at all, some empty rooms
that would not be the sad heirloom
s
they are today. Anne Frank should be
a woman living happily,
untroubled in obscurity.”
The truth is I may not live down
the mockery from town to town:
“Henceforth, you’ll be the Almost Man,
the almost had a brother man,
a brother who was almost hung
when Hans van Hout was almost young;
a mother who was almost shot
when Dittmer almost faced the Knot:
a gun put to your mother’s head
long after she was good and dead.
The man who almost saved Anne Frank
is nothing but a mountebank.”
My girls, I don’t know what I’d do
without the Special Love that you
hold in your hearts for Hans van Hout—
the Love I could not live without.
I hope that you will always be
what you have so far been for me:
the loyal few, the loving four—
no man could ever ask for more.
It isn’t easy to push on
when you alone know right from wrong,
when you alone know truth from lies,
when evil lives and virtue dies,
when you alone know what you’ve done
but no one else beneath the sun
can see what you are truly worth
because some “secret” was unearthed.
To live in secret and exult—
is anything more difficult?
Anne Frank, Anne Frank won fame, no doubt—
through all the world her name rings out.
She dreamed that hers would one day be
among the names of History.
Hans van Hout, Hans van Hout,
all the world should know his name,
but he prefers to live without
the blandishments of fame.
WADE
A week later, on a Saturday afternoon, Rachel’s mother invited us to lunch. Afterward, we sat around the front room with Bethany, who’d stayed put for once while we were eating.
“It’s such a beautiful, hot day and so warm in this house,” Hans said. “We should go to Clifton.” He rubbed his hands together and raised his eyebrows as he looked at Myra, who opened her mouth in a silent laugh. “Yes,” he said. “The girls are far too old for Muizenberg. It’s not as if you and I have never been there, Myra. What red-blooded man doesn’t like to lie in the sun among half-naked girls and women.”
“And boys and men,” Myra said.
“What’s Clifton?” I said.
“Clifton is a topless beach,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “Bethany and I went there in 1975. We weren’t old enough, but I guess we looked old enough.”
“You looked old enough,” Bethany said. “As in two bra sizes bigger than your older scarecrow of a sister. I kept my T-shirt on.”
“Naughty, naughty, Rachel,” Myra said. “You didn’t tell us you went to Clifton. How did you get there?”
“We hitchhiked,” Bethany said. “We held up a cardboard sign that I made. I wrote ‘Clifton’ on it in big letters. We got a ride very quickly.”
“There you go,” Hans said. “The girls have already been. Besides, they won’t be baring anything the rest of us haven’t seen before.”
“I won’t be baring anything at all,” Myra said, “but I don’t mind going. One beach is as good as another as far as I’m concerned.”
“Well, I’m not going,” Bethany said.
“Sweetheart, you can always leave your top on if you want to,” Myra said. “So can Rachel, for that matter.”
“I’m sure Wade has never been to a topless beach,” Hans said. I was startled. He’d never said my name in front of me before. “We could broaden his horizons.”
Rachel looked dubious.
“I think Rachel doesn’t want Wade to see the sights of Clifton,” Hans said. “I think she’s worried about the competition.”
“Don’t be silly,” Myra said. “It’s just people sunbathing. It’s perfectly natural. Wade, don’t worry. Women my age and size don’t go topless there.”
“It’s decided, then,” Hans said, clapping his hands together. “We’re off to Clifton and Rachel can wear whatever she likes. She can wear a parka if she wants to.”
As we drove to Clifton in our car, Hans and Myra following in theirs, a clunky Ford Cortina, Rachel pointed out to sea. “That’s Robben Island out there. That’s where they keep Mandela and the others doing hard labour. Half the day pulling cables of kelp from the water and the other half on their hands and knees in some mine that’s making them go blind.”
“God. It isn’t very far out.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Why is he in prison? I mean, what did he supposedly do?”
“I should know,” Rachel said. “But I don’t. Protesting in the streets or something.”
“You’d think they’d put political prisoners someplace less conspicuous.”
“The point is to keep them conspicuous, as object lessons.”
* * *
—
Clifton Beach. I had never seen breasts outdoors before. Acres of topless women. It was as if nipples were a kind of berry and breasts the mounds of earth from which they grew—in all sizes, shapes and shades of tan. The sunbathers, male and female, either feigned nonchalance or were regulars, some of them gazing at the sea, propped up on their forearms, or lying on their backs, sunglasses reflecting the sky, others splayed face down, backs glistening with suntan oil.
Myra, her sandals removed but otherwise dressed in a straw sun hat, blouse and slacks as though the beach were her backyard, sat in a folding chair beneath an umbrella, contentedly, incessantly knitting, the needles clicking loudly. She looked up from time to time to stare out across the sea, at Robben Island, it might have been, hazy in the distance. That placid smile never left her face, and eventually, she’d turn back to her project, looping the wool over the ends of the needles as if she was caught up in the obsessive, mesmerizing repetition of a task that had no purpose. She was working on a golliwog—a rag doll with a black face, curly hair, black hands and black feet. The clothing consisted of a hat that could be any colour and a jumper that was always red and buttoned up the middle.
“It would be unthinkable to knit a golliwog in public in Canada,” she said, looking up at me as I stood beside her beach chair, “but now that I’m back home, I can knit all the golliwogs I want.” She laughed, turning her head from left to right as if addressing a large, sympathetic audience. “Such things are looked down upon in Canada by the same people who have black jockeys holding lanterns on their lawns. Canadians are very selective about what they disapprove of.”
Rachel unselfconsciously peeled off her T-shirt, unhooked her bikini top, spread two blankets on the sand, lay down on one and patted the other to indicate that I should join her. Hans, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat like Myra’s, took off his shirt, dabbed white suntan lotion on various parts of his face and shoulders, kicked off his sandals, angled his chair to face the sea, reached into Myra’s beach bag and drew out several Tupperware containers filled with food: hard-boiled eggs, cold fried chicken, sandwiches and pieces of watermelon, which he dispensed to us on small paper plates. After he poured us some ginger ale, he sat back to eat. Soon, he put his plate down, mumbled about having eaten too much at lunch, reached again into Myra’s bag, withdrew a folded newspaper tied in an elastic band and tapped the paper rapidly against his thigh as if to be thus used was the sole purpose of newspapers.
As I well remembered the Bare Area in the van Hout household, it didn’t surprise me that Rachel didn’t mind being topless in front of her father, let alone in
front of a beach full of strangers, who all seemed more intent on the incoming waves than on their fellow sunbathers. I again wondered if it was all a pretense, and the men especially were appraising the women on the sly. But everyone looked so matter of fact, I tried to look that way too.
I stripped to my trunks and, at Rachel’s urging, ran to the shore and dove straight in—and came up gasping for breath, whelping like a seal. The water was frigid. I looked around. There was no one in the water but me. To the amusement of the sunbathers, I waded back to shore and lay down beside Rachel. “It’s ice-cold,” I said, my hands in my armpits.
“What did you expect? It’s the Atlantic Ocean.”
“We’re in Africa.”
She nodded and smiled. “But it’s still the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Yes,” I said, “the south, the very south, Atlantic Ocean. You might have warned me.”
“What would be the fun in that? Did you know that Cape Town was the starting point for many South Pole expeditions?”
Myra chuckled. She said that there were often jackass penguins at Clifton, though it seemed there were none in evidence today.
“Only one jackass so far,” Hans said, and a few people nearby laughed.
Just a few miles away, Rachel said, around the tip of the cape, was the bathwater-warm Indian Ocean. “The water there is so salty, it buoys you up. You don’t really need to know how to swim.”
“So what are we doing here?” I said, looking at Hans, who pretended not to hear me, still tapping the paper against his thigh.
A slender, small-breasted young woman got up from her place on the beach, walked to the water, waded out a bit, then turned around and toppled backward, the waves washing over her as she held her nose. Then she stood and, nipples erect, waded out of the water, her long black hair hanging in a tail to her bikini bottom. She went back to lie on her towel beside her boyfriend.
“Not polite to stare,” Rachel said, playfully punching my arm, “unless you want to stare at me.”
Young, skinny black men, barefoot, shirtless, some wearing reversed baseball caps, went up and down the beach in pairs, lugging large orange coolers bearing pictures of their contents: soda pop, ice cream drumsticks and sandwiches, tricoloured Popsicles, Fudgesicles, Dixie cups and even beer. Sunbathers hailed the young men by raising a finger in the air, a gesture that sent pairs of vendors into a race through the sand, the young men glistening with sweat, their chests heaving. They looked as frantic as if they were paid according to how much they sold—a notion Rachel disabused me of. “They’re being watched,” she said, “supervised, whatever, by the people they work for. See the older guys strolling around with their hands in their pockets?”
The Mystery of Right and Wrong Page 23
