Rudi van Dantzig: For a Lost Soldier

She pushes two bags to one side and crosses something out on the list. ‘You are very lucky that these kind people are willing to take you in, so be on your best behaviour. They speak Frisian here, it’s hard to understand.’

She makes an attempt at a roguish laugh and pulls a childish face. ‘At first you’ll find you can’t make head or tail of it, I can’t understand half of it myself. But in a month’s time you’ll be speaking it really fluently, just you wait and see.’

We stare at her blankly, as if her words aren’t getting through to us. Why is she laughing, why are we having to sit here all this time?

I can see my suitcase, somewhere at the back, so it’s still there. But really I couldn’t care less, what does a suitcase matter?

Jan has already been given his food and is holding a mug of milk between his knees. He hasn’t spoken one word and looks straight through me, as if we had never known each other or even lived in the same street together. But I couldn’t care less about that any more.

A few men are standing round a table by the door. As they talk, they look at us and point or nod in our direction. Then one of them buries his nose in a writing-pad, as if he is doing a complicated multiplication sum.

One man points his finger at the paper while looking at us out of the corner of his eyes. Then he lifts the fingers of his other hand up, counting: one, two, three… When it won’t work out, he starts all over again: one, two…

We eat our bread and butter in silence, peering over our mugs as we drink our milk.

The driver sits a bit further back on a chair. He has a small pile of bread in front of him and chews steadily, looking peevish and disgruntled.

I have a plan. I’ll go straight up to him and ask him if the lorry is going back again, and if I may go along too. No one will notice if I disappear. I’ll save my bread and butter and if I give it to him he’ll be sure to let me. I look around: what am I doing here in this stuffy; dark room? Why did I ever allow myself to be taken to the lorry? I should have run away while we were still in Amsterdam. I am filled with regrets.

I picture the driver suddenly, giving me a friendly smile as he takes me along with him to the lorry. Unnoticed, we’ll start it up and drive away. Escape!

But I know that I shall go on dutifully sitting here waiting to lee what they will do with me. The driver stands up, talks to I the men by the table and unexpectedly walks out. Too late. I’ll have to think up another plan…

The lady takes the first two children by the hand and leads them out like animals to the slaughter. Everyone left behind stares after them.

They have no luggage with them: so it must have been their suitcases which fell out of the lorry last night. Outside the door we can suddenly hear loud crying and the furiously scolding voice of the lady. I can feel all the children in the hall growing smaller, terrified at the sound.

The silence that follows has something threatening about it and there is a strange tension between the adults and the children. The men stand close together. They seem to be uniting against us. Are they likely to hurt us, can we trust them? They talk in hushed voices and not one of them has a smile. They look at each other worriedly and then at us, as if we are an insoluble problem.

Greetje from Bloedstraat is part of the next group to go. She smiles at me with the corners of her mouth turned down, lop-sided like the limp bow in her tangled hair. She makes an almost imperceptible movement with her hand: bye.

Next it’s Jan’s turn. When the lady calls out ‘Hogervorst’, he picks his case up firmly and walks to the door. I follow him with my eyes. ‘If we just stay together,’ Jan had said. Now he is leaving the hall without even sparing me a glance.

Slowly but steadily all the children disappear. I am the only one left behind, just like what always happens during games at school when the boys pick who is going to play in which eleven.

It doesn’t surprise me, I never get picked, it’s all part of the same misery. The men look at me from behind the table; the papers come out again; there is a brief discussion. The lady shrugs her shoulders and looks at her watch. ‘According to the list you should have been a girl,’ she says impatiently, walking over to me. ‘They’ve made a blunder somewhere as usual. Nothing we can do about it now…’

I pretend to understand, smiling vaguely.

When I am suddenly told to stand up I feel a blinding fear. Stiff-legged I go over to my suitcase and walk out of the door. All their eyes are on me and I have the feeling that everyone is breathing a sigh of relief.

Before I know what exactly is happening, I am sitting on the back of a man’s bicycle, too scared to hold on to his coat.

In my terror I have failed to take a last look at the lady and the driver, the last people known to me. All at once I feel I can’t do without them, now that I am being left alone with this silent man who is pedalling away with his back bent against the wind. We leave a village street behind and then bicycle along a road that curves through sloping pasture-land and past quiet farmhouses. Here and there cows or sheep huddle sullenly together, their shapes reflected in still ditches.

I am sure that even the cows know that I am a stranger here, because sometimes one of them lifts her head and stares after me with round, moist eyes.

Without warning, the man suddenly stops in the middle of the meadows and gets off.

‘It’s a fair stretch,’ he says. I can hear he is doing his best to speak distinctly so that I can understand. ‘We’re making for Laaxum, by the sea. You’ll be lodging with fisherfolk, good people. But I’ve got to go back first, we’ve left your suitcase at the Sunday school.’ I stand all alone on the road, feeling as if I’ve been dropped from the moon. Fields of grass all around me and not a soul in sight.

This is a trap, of course, the man will never come back. I’ve been left here to starve to death, they meant me to all along. And my father was in it as well, that’s for sure. They want to get rid of me.

The man had said, ‘You’ll be lodging with fisherfolk.’ That was wrong for a start. My father had told me over and over again that we would be boarding with farmers, farmers with sheep and stables, haystacks, goats and horses. Like in the hooks I’d read at school. Fisherfolk? I have a nightmare vision of a ramshackle wooden hut on a wide, wind-blown shore with two old people sitting silently, continually mending nets. I can’t stand fish. I can’t get it down my throat, I’d sooner starve or choke to death! What am I doing here, why am I having to put up with all this? Where is my mother, where is our safe little home? And where have they taken Jan? If I knew where he was we might at least try to escape together. Shall I run back and try to find the driver? If I hurry, the lorry may still be in the village.

A spark of hope. I start racing back down the road like one possessed. The silence roars in my ears with every step I take. I have the taste of blood in my throat.

A cow lifts her head and lows loudly and plaintively. In the distance the man is coming back on the bicycle, my suitcase dangling from the handlebars. When, panting, I stop running, he looks at me in surprise, but asks no questions. I’ve been caught out and feel a little ridiculous. Shamefaced, I get back onto the luggage carrier.

We bicycle on, a road without end.

‘See that dyke at the end of the road? That’s where we’re going.’

I poke my head out from behind the man, but quickly pull back when I get the wind full in my face. I’ll be seeing it soon enough.

‘Off you get. This is Laaxum. We’re there.’

I take a look around and see empty, wind-swept countryside with little houses dotted about. Is this a village, this handful of tiny, scattered dwellings? The loneliness grips me and clamps my chest.