Margriet de Moor - The Storm

“Look, Uncle Leo’s in this one, nice.”

“Yes, and here he is again with Betsy.”

“If you ask me, the two of them really hit it off!”

Armanda felt her thoughts wander off, as often happened, even as she was talking. With some people you can have really interesting conversations, she’d noticed, but they stop your thoughts. Others, and her mother was one of them, leave your private self in peace and yet always manage to latch onto wherever your mind has landed up.

“Everyone was in a good mood, absolutely everyone,” said her mother at a certain point.

Armanda had been quiet for a while.

“Yes,” she murmured, stretching out her hand, and drank her now lukewarm tea at one go. The sun was now shining straight into the room. She stood up to partway close the curtain. “But Mother …”

Armanda saw her mother look up with an expression that can only be described as “knowing.” Knowing that her daughter’s high spirits had left her, and also knowing why.

“… but something about the day was, was … dreadful!”

The answer came at once. Fully formed, as if she’d already heard this remark before and had thought it through.

“Child, please don’t say that.” Her mother frowned for a moment. Then she glanced at her watch. In a moment, at four o’clock, she would collect Nadja from play school, as they had arranged, and take her to number 77, and only bring her back at bedtime. “And please don’t think it either.”

“Can I tell you something?” Armanda looked at her mother defiantly, and let her wait for a moment. “All day long what I was secretly thinking was: This isn’t my wedding!”

But her mother immediately shook her head. Oh no, don’t talk like that, you’re just imagining things!

And she was right. In reality, the entire day had run its course for Armanda in a kind of haze. The slight sense of strain to begin with, then the emotion, and then finally the happiness all around her had created a ringing in her ears like a confused blur of voices. Almost like an anesthetic. Now, by contrast, it broke up into clearly identifiable individual voices: this wonderful celebration is really a continuation of that other wonderful celebration, a little course correction between then and now. The bride is wearing a mask. By chance it’s her own face.

“Don’t spoil it for yourself in hindsight.”

Like a hand being stroked over her hair. An exercise of maternal influence that Armanda was glad to heed. She reached out and began to push the photographs together, but there was one thought she couldn’t suppress: Will I ever be able to remember who or what I was back then? One of the photos wouldn’t align itself and slipped out of the stack. Her mother set her finger on it.

“Ah!”

Armanda looked too. Her mother’s favorite brother.

“Uncle Bart,” she said briskly. And then, “My God, Mother!”

The crumpled-looking man with the gray buzz cut and spectacles perched on the end of his small nose had made a long speech at the end of the wedding feast. Deep in his cups, breaking out repeatedly in tears, he had spoken to the guests about Lidy, whom they must never, never forget. Shortly before his voice broke, he had even managed to ask the company for a minute of silence.

“I spent the whole time staring at the napkin next to his plate,” said Armanda. “I could still draw you every little fold in it.”

Her mother nodded, as if to say, yes, maybe he shouldn’t have done it, but Bart is a good man, through and through.

The minute of silence was not entirely silent, naturally enough. Nonetheless each of them, a little dazed, a little painfully, had thought of Lidy, whose name today had been entered for exactly the past three weeks in the official Register of Deaths at the local government offices. The date and place of death were made up.

Died in the environs of Zierikzee on Schouwen-Duiveland on February 1, 1953.

Finally. Finally there had been someone — the minister of justice, in fact — with the legal authority to pronounce the death of Lidy Blaauw-Brouwer, along with more than eight hundred other victims of drowning. According to the rules of the state courts it had been a fairly quick process, completed already in July 1954, to expand the law originally written to cover only those deemed missing from the Second World War to those missing in the storm flood. Three months after January 13, 1955, the day when, following an enormous amount of work in the files, the mass listing had been officially published in the Nederlandse Staatscourant , the survivors were allowed to make applications to the various town halls. On April 13, at two thirty in the afternoon, Sjoerd drove in the first car he had ever owned, a used Skoda, to the town hall on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal. He was shown to a small office and handed a copy of the certificate, a rather unusual document even for the official who had prepared it.

“Please would you check to see that everything’s correct?” the man had asked.

“Yes, thank you,” said Sjoerd, cleared his throat and began to read: “Article Two of the Law …” and then, after he’d read to the end, said, “Thank you” again.

The official looked at him with reddened eyes, as if he’d had a sleepless night.

“My deepest condolences, Mr. Blaauw.”

That was a Wednesday. On Friday, Armanda and Sjoerd posted the notice of their intended marriage.

A painful moment! While the bridal couple had intended to slip away quietly at this point, here was this uncle insisting on making a speech! The wedding guests had made faces like a group of miscreants who are perfectly aware of what they’re doing and aren’t really sorry about it.

And one of them naturally pulled himself together sufficiently to say, “To the bride!”

Silence. Mother and daughter were each thinking their own thoughts. The sun meantime had moved on around until it was shining into the room through the curtain again. Now it was Armanda who checked the time. It was time to pick Nadja up from play school.

“Oh,” said her mother, getting to her feet and looking for her purse. “Bart is a sweetheart. He meant well.”

Armanda went downstairs ahead of her mother. The stairwell was dark except for a bright ceiling light that shone down onto the middle of the first step. At the very moment she was suddenly struck by the conviction that she and her mother had just been conducting a conversation that was totally mad on both their parts, Armanda saw two huge shadows swaying across the wall.

They said good-bye in the sun-flooded front doorway. Intending to finally tidy herself up and change her clothes, as Sjoerd would be home in an hour, Armanda was about to close the door behind her when she heard, “Wait! Wait! Armanda!”

Oh, please, she thought, no!

And, before she knew what was happening, she was back in the living room next to a panting Betsy, who had called out, “Only a moment, just to say hello,” but had now discovered the photos on the table and was bent over them, stirring them to life again.

Armanda followed. Still barefoot, she followed the glance of her friend, who quickly pulled out a photo of the adorable Nadja. The child had been a bridesmaid.

“Do you remember?” asked Betsy, glancing sideways surreptitiously, with a curious expression.

Of course. Armanda nodded in a slightly sleepy way, but she remembered everything. She relived the whole incident, seeing it more precisely now than she had the first time around. After the ceremony in the church there had been no reception, better not to, but a formal banquet in an old house on the Geldersekade, a property that could be rented with its own staff for private parties. After the main course, when everyone was swapping places or running around a little, and she, Armanda, was sitting under a palm tree adjusting something on her dress, Nadja came up to her newly married mother. Somewhere in the background an accordionist and two violinists were playing.