Will, стр. 3

behind them. ‘Another work dodger, I suppose,’ I whisper. Lode doesn’t say a word. He stamps his feet against the cold. Tough luck for him that he can’t afford the sturdy boots I’m wearing. You have to know that in those days the provision of uniforms was a complete shambles. Those who had enough money for textile coupons were better dressed than the rest. That was another thing that drove the Germans crazy. A couple of years later we all had to buy new uniforms they’d designed for us. But that rule only made things worse. By then only a few inspectors had the means to get one. Everybody tried to wear something that looked good from a distance if nothing else, hoping to avoid a bollocking from somebody or other. Meanwhile there’s a racket inside the house. People shouting and crying. We hear children screeching. A cupboard falls over. Somebody comes crashing down the stairs. More screeching. But the orders bellowed in German are far louder than anything else. The door swings open again and there they are: the Lizke family. Five half-dressed children aged four to twelve, a weeping woman with a cloth draped skew-whiff over her hair and the father of the house keeping his eyes on the ground while blood drips from his swelling ear. ‘The pride of Israel,’ Meanbeard would have sneered. He’s someone you’ll encounter later in the story. I’ll tell it like it was: I don’t have a clue what those people had been cooking up for themselves, but the consequences were far from salubrious. They were rank.

To be fair, I have to add, I could also feel pretty woozy sometimes when I got too close to Lode. That lad could stink to high heaven of blood and guts. I’m sensitive to smells, always have been. My father used to say I have the olfactory capacity of a pregnant female. Hilarious, of course, but I felt like smashing his head in every time he casually let it slip, preferably at a party with lots of drunk people around.

One of the field gendarmes waves us over and points a gloved finger at a sheet of paper, using it to underline an address in Van Diepenbeek Straat. That’s where we have to go, and apparently they don’t know how to get there. Lode avoids my gaze as if he’s not even here. It’s not too far from my place. Follow the railway, then cross back under on Van de Nest Lei? I give the Germans a nod. The address is not in our division; it’s in the seventh, but I’m not crazy enough to tell them that. And off we go. Us in front with one of the Germans beside us, behind us the foreigners with the other field arsehole. The woman won’t stop crying. Her husband whispers quietly, trying to keep her spirits up. In Polish, I think, but it could be Hebrew or God knows what. The field gendarme hisses something and we hear him give the man a whack. Right away the children start sobbing again. I would have gone about it differently. Lode too, I suspect, but who are we? Tourist guides in the dead of night. It’s got slippery. The snow has lost its crunch, turning the streets into a skating rink. The Germans are trying to force a pace that a family with small children can’t match. One after the other goes arse over. Another stop, more bawling, more blows, even more crying. Lode still hasn’t said a word. I see his face tensing. Looking back on it, I have to think of the seaside. At that stage I’d never been there, but when I went later and was lying on the beach nibbling a waffle and pretending it was worth all the bother, I saw a large family in full retreat with their bags and chairs and parasols and all their children with faces as red as tomatoes and completely overexcited. The father exploded: he dragged one of the youngest roughly over the sand while carrying one of his daughters in his other arm, and his mortified wife had to undergo the furious glares of the bystanders while pulling a child along with each hand too. I swear I saw it snowing then too in the scorching heat. And I can assure you just as firmly that I also heard someone bellowing in German. ‘Nicht far jetzt,’ I told one of the field gendarmes. Broken German, I know, but by now I’m so sick of the ridiculous situation I’ve resorted to their language for the very first time, if only to temper the rising fury a little, because that’s not going to get us anywhere. It’s hardly going to scare the Jews into suddenly skating along like lunatics. It’s true, too: it’s not far now. We just turned into Van Diepenbeek Straat. ‘This lady and her children are work-shy too, are they?’ Lode whispers, his voice trembling. ‘Fuck this bullshit. Is this any way to behave?’ I don’t say a word. What am I supposed to say? He hasn’t told me anything that’s not already obvious. But we’re a part of it, we’re walking along, we’re being obedient and respectable and accompanying the stinking gang to an address on a scrap of paper. The moon comes out and the ice on the streets starts gleaming like silverwork. And then it happens. One of the children, a boy of about twelve, lets go of his father’s hand and shoots off ahead, rushing past us. I don’t know why. We hear the father yell. For a moment or two the field gendarme in front with us doesn’t do anything. He’s as surprised as we are by the little fellow racing over the ice with his skinny legs wobbling like a newborn foal’s. It only takes about five seconds until he slips over again. Before he can get back up onto his feet the field gendarme has caught