Will, стр. 82

‘Say something, Will! Tell him it’s the only way.’

‘Alles oder nichts, Herr Lizke. Es gibt keine andere Möglichkeit. Verstehen Sie? Wir sind verraten.’

During Lode’s explanation, Lizke didn’t look at him once. Me, he stares at, as if a mystery is hidden in my eyes. Then he meekly takes his coat off the rack.

Lode raises his eyebrows. ‘Blimey, he’s scared of you.’

‘A good thing too,’ I say.

It was Lode’s idea to escort the Jew to the railway station in uniform, but now we’re walking past the Geuzen Gardens on our way to Keyser Lei, my discomfort with the plan increases, as if we’re about to be unmasked at a costume ball. It’s Saturday and the sun is shining. There’s a serious amount of people out on the streets. Trams jingle past and there are masses of people sitting at the café tables and staring out at passers-by, and therefore at us. In Van Maerlant Straat the crowd isn’t too bad, but now we’re getting closer to the station, Lizke has started mumbling anxiously, and when he sees two German officers on the other side of the zebra crossing he stops abruptly.

‘Nicht stehen, walk…’ Lode snaps, but Lizke is transfixed. Without a word to each other and almost synchronized, we grab him by the elbows and cross the road with him between us. The officers are satisfied with nods and vague salutes in their direction.

‘Bloody hell,’ I sigh. ‘What we going to do at the station?’

‘Just buy a ticket and put him on the train to Brussels,’ Lode whispers back, as if talking about a reluctant child.

‘Entschuldigung?’ Lizke squeaks.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Lode says with a contrived wink.

But we’re amateurs. We’re bunglers. We’re clowns. Our pigeon breasts are decorated with a row of silver buttons and our heads are crowned with white pisspots. We’re the start of a joke: ‘Two fools in fancy dress were walking down Keyser Lei with a Jew when…’ We’re done for, our uniforms are in danger of becoming transparent and the Jew seems to be marked with a star sewn onto the front of his coat and a target painted on the back.

At the corner of Van Ertborn Straat and Keyser Lei, close to the Rex Cinema, we stop. We can’t cross because of a demonstration. Dozens of men in the uniform of the Black Brigade are marching towards the railway station. Flags everywhere, banners everywhere. ‘One Leader, one Movement, one People’ we read on one and ‘Victory to National Socialism’ on another. They’re beating out a rhythm on drums and tambourines, singing and keeping step. But the crowd on the street aren’t cheering like they were a few years ago. Almost nobody raises their hat in the air or calls out ‘Flanders forever’. Hardly anyone even stops to watch, unless it’s the odd bumpkin in from the country, plodding around the big city for the first time and taking off his cap while staring at the ground, as if to show respect for a funeral procession. A few SS soldiers salute, that’s all. Between us we feel Lizke shudder. We’re holding him tightly but discreetly by the wrists. Finally the procession is past and we can cross over.

The Jew keeps mumbling, ‘Wir folgen den Toten.’

Following the dead, as if ghosts can dance in daylight.

We’ve almost reached the station.

It’s crawling with uniforms: SS, Wehrmacht, Field Gendarmerie, here and there one of ours. We keep saluting and stubbornly walking on at the same time. The Black Brigade turns left towards the zoo, probably for a recruitment speech full of hot air and blather, after which they’ll all salute the flag with their paws stuck up in the air. As the last of them go round the corner, I peer through the confusion—people rushing to catch a train, travellers standing at hotel entrances with their baggage, women kissing each other hello or goodbye and men patting each other on the shoulder—and see Omer and Meanbeard at an outdoor café. Like two vaudeville characters, they’re sitting there to soak up the sun. Omer raises a hand to order another. I pick up the pace, manoeuvring us away from the road and closer to the buildings, and immediately doubts rise. Did I see them sitting there or not? But I’m too scared to look back to check. I feel tainted, trapped, observed.

‘What is it?’

‘Let’s take the Pelikaan Straat entrance.’

‘Was ist los?’

‘Kein Problem,’ I bark at Lizke. ‘Calm bleiben.’

We cross the road. Lizke tries to wriggle loose.

‘Stop it…’ Lode snaps.

Trying to keep someone under control like that while hauling him to the side entrance with his feet dragging is a complete spectacle but no one in the crowd looks up. People have got used to it. They don’t want to know. Hardly anything even registers any more. Everything stays normal and will stay normal forever. I look back over my shoulder, half expecting to see Omer or Meanbeard trailing along behind, ready to collar us at the last moment.

‘Fuck!’ shouts Lode.

Lizke has taken advantage of that one movement of mine, that brief instant of inattention, to break free and is now running away from us like a madman, zigzagging between the travellers with his hat in one hand and a modest suitcase in the other. It takes a moment before Lode and I, totally stunned, have set off in pursuit. We follow him into the station and see him striding to the central hall. We push people out of the way. I reach for my whistle, but Lode shakes his head just in time and rushes to the Astrid Plein exit. I run up the wide staircase to get a better view. Sweat is trickling down my forehead. Nothing. No Lizke. Then I see Lode coming back by himself.

We’ve lost him.

*

‘Just tell us what it is…’

Mother can’t bear another second of her sister’s hand wringing. Father has taken cover behind a newspaper. I’m sitting numbly at the kitchen table, weighed down by deep