6. The File

The man in the fancy room was not alone at first. An officer sat next to him, a high-ranking one, from all appearances, but he soon left. The soldier, however, had taken up his post at the door.

First he had to stand and wait while the man remained seated behind the desk. The man took his time, studying the reports and papers and taking notes. He pretended not to notice that someone stood before his desk.

At last he put his pencil down and looked up.

He said: “I got too carried away this morning. I’ve been too busy and that gives me a short fuse. But you weren’t being very sensible, either. Now I’ve read your whole file, and I also got a report on what happened at the lake early this morning. I have a better perspective now.”

He put his hand on the papers inside the brown cover.

“I’ve already told you that I understand your kind of people. My father was also a laborer. Wait, let’s sit down.”

He had to sit in that low chair again in which he preferred not to sit, and the man took his seat across from him.

“Please tell me the story of those fourteen months now. Of course, I have the official reports. I know the facts and according to the record, you had it coming. It’s an airtight case. But the reports don’t tell everything, sometimes not even the truth. The reality is different; the reports lie.”

The man crossed his legs. His shoes were still just as shiny as this morning. He straightened the crease in his pants and took a cigarette out of a wooden box.

“Tell me how things really went.”

He hesitated. “It’s so long ago, and if you already know about it …”

“No, you don’t understand. I want to hear it from you.”

He thought for a moment. “It must have been during that severe winter of ’22. I remember it because I was just married then.”

“In ’22, that’s right. You were born in 1894, so you were twenty-eight then. You were not exactly in a hurry.”

The man picked up the brown folder and paged through it.

“I didn’t have a steady job, and I didn’t want to get married all that bad either.”

“Often unemployed, of course.”

“Yes, that’s the way it often was at that time, and employers weren’t all that crazy about us either.”

“On account of your political activities.”

“We didn’t care about politics, we just cared about getting a few cents more per hour.”

“But when a strike was called, you’d be in the front row.”

“Not me so much, Dad and my brothers were more fanatical.”

“Your son was born in ’22, I notice. Let me see, that wasn’t a voluntary wedding, I’d say.”

“No, we had to get married, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. I had no money and I was often in Germany.”

“Yes, I want to come back to that pretty soon. But first your story about those fourteen months.”

“That was in Duurswoude. We poached a lot to make ends meet. We would get two quarters in Gorredijk for a wild rabbit and a guilder for a full-grown hare. For a deer we’d get more than a week’s pay. But it wasn’t easy to catch a deer, and then you’d have to take it to a game shop at night, otherwise it wasn’t safe. In Duurswoude I got a game warden after me, and so I took a shot at him.”

“That was at least attempted homicide. You got off easy with fourteen months for that. I assume you know that as well. Poaching is a violation, but to shoot at an innocent game warden is a serious offense. And yet you did it. Why did you shoot at that man?”

“We were in a bind. My wife became bedridden with the pregnancy and things didn’t look good. I couldn’t leave. Otherwise I would’ve let myself get caught, because as a bachelor I’d been jailed more often and I didn’t mind that so much. Especially not in wintertime, because then they would have one less to feed at home.”

“But they caught you anyway.”

“He started bellowing like a bull, and he didn’t get up. That hadn’t been my intention. I just wanted to nick him so he wouldn’t pursue me anymore. But I had an old gun, it wasn’t too accurate, and you’d never know exactly where the buckshot would hit. I was scared that I had hit him in the face, and when he didn’t get up and started to holler, I was afraid he might freeze to death. Because it was freezing hard that night.”

His mouth was dry from all the talking.

“And then?”

“I took him to his home, and we came to a firm understanding that nothing would be said about this. But he didn’t keep his end of the deal.”

“Right, he reported you anyway.”

“Maybe they forced it out of him. He was laid up with it for quite a while, and they must’ve asked him about all those puncture wounds. Because his body was full of buckshot. He had to see a doctor about that, of course. And that could not be kept quiet.”

“He could have made up some kind of explanation.”

“I told them that he snuck up on me and that I mistook him for a deer, and he told them that he wasn’t sure exactly what happened. So he covered up, but I think he did that because he was scared of us.”

“And you went in the slammer for fourteen months.”

“That’s right.”

“Who took care of things at home?”

“My own family took them in. They didn’t have anything either, but they could at least keep the stove heated. And Hindrik helped himself to some baskets of potatoes from a farm in Koartsweagen, and that’s how they struggled through the winter.”

“Stealing potatoes, you said?”

“Yes, the truck farmers had the potatoes in mounds, covered with a bunch of straw and a good layer of dirt. Then they wouldn’t freeze so easily. We’d often open up a mound like that and help ourselves to some potatoes. It was quite a job sometimes when the frost was very deep. Then you’d need a hatchet and that would make a lot of racket. And the farmers would be on the alert, of course.”

“And there wasn’t any one in authority who gave your sick wife a second thought?”

“Of course not.”

“Exactly; and now those seven months.”

“How I got those? That was earlier, much earlier. I don’t think I was twenty yet then. They were striking everywhere. In Beets we called it bullchasing, and every morning we had roll call on the corner by the tavern. That’s where the Royal Police would come, too. They would surround us on horseback, and if things went too far for them, they would let the horses advance a few steps. After a while we would practically stand on top of each other, and that way they could keep us under control. But that time something went wrong, I’m not sure how anymore. I still remember that they knocked Strampel, the guy in charge of roll call, off the horse-feeders with a flat saber. In the horse-feeders you’d stand above the crowd for a better view.”

“What was the roll call?”

“Well, we’d talk about what should be done, to hang in there and continue the strike or to give up. It depended on what the employers would pay.”

“Everybody was fighting, you say, for when the Royal Police started to flail away, then you would start too.”

“We defended ourselves. What else could we do? But we couldn’t get anywhere close to overpowering them, of course. We took a lot of beatings.”

“But that isn’t what got you those seven months.”

“There were four of us, and we all got the same. I can still remember that Hindrik grabbed the horse’s mouth.”

“Who is Hindrik?”

“The second oldest. There were six of us kids, five boys and a girl. There was another but she died young. I never knew her, and Jantsje is no longer living either. Germ and Bareld went to America, Germ first and Bareld a few years later. We’ve never heard anything from Bareld since.”

“That Hindrik, is he still alive?”

“Yes, and Thomas too; at least I’ve had no news that something happened.”

“What line of work are those men in?”

“What they’re doing at the moment, I don’t know. Hindrik always did manual labor, and Thomas is supposed to live in Houtigehage. He did some dealing and he kept a lot of chickens.”

“You don’t go there much?”

“No, we don’t run each other’s doors down. It’s years since I’ve been in Beets.”

“You had trouble or something?”

“We’ve never had trouble, but they live too far out of the way and we all have our own life.”

“All right, you were talking about Hindrik.”

“Hindrik grabbed the horse by the mouth, I know that. As long as you had hold of the horse’s bit, they weren’t able to hit you so easily. You could duck under the horse’s neck and at the same time kick the horse in its belly. The horse would then throw his rear end up in the air, and if you were lucky, the rider would come flying off. And otherwise he’d have all he could do to stay in the saddle instead of giving you a beating. But this one was able to hit us because there was a foal in that horse and Hindrik was an animal lover, and so he didn’t want to kick the horse in the belly. I was hit on my shoulder with the dull side of the saber and that hurt like hell. The others were furious too, and together we tore him off that horse and gave him a good drumming. The whole ruckus wasn’t necessary, really, because we had already agreed to go back to work.”

“It wasn’t necessary, you say, but the judge couldn’t care less about that.”

“I think we did tell him that. The police just plowed right in and started flailing away. But I don’t think they wanted to listen to us.”

“Exactly, that’s what I want you to see. Pretty soon I won’t have to explain anything anymore. Let’s go a little further now. How did you get … let’s see, those four weeks. I’m just picking one of them.”

He didn’t remember; he had served so many of those short sentences. And the man made him suspicious. He was too decent.

“It must have been for poaching. The district judge in Beets had it in for poachers because we spent a lot of time in his woods.”

The man’s smile grew bigger all the time. It seemed he was having a good time. Dad had a saying that you rarely say too little when you face your interrogator. Remember, everything you tell them can be used against you. But that was about other things, of course. This was a discussion about the past and he didn’t have to hide anything. Besides, it was all in that file anyway.

“And why did you poach?”

“Well, as I said, to make a living. We didn’t eat the catch ourselves. We took it to the game shop dealer and with the money we’d buy American bacon and lard.”

“You were so hard up that you had to poach.”

“That’s about the way it was, but we sorta enjoyed it too.”

“Did you ever come across a judge who took into account that this was your only means of making a living? Did the judge who gave you those fourteen months have any idea that your family could not get along without you? Of course not, they never gave that a thought. A common laborer was of no account, a common laborer had no right. And now my question: Do you want those people back in power, must we have those conditions again in the future, must the time come again when the workers have no rights? What’s your answer to that?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

“That’s what I would say, too. Never again, of course. That time will never come back, we’ll make sure of that. But the people need to understand that it’s going to take some doing. They should help us, and you too. You know what the world is like.”

The man stood up and went to his desk. “Think about that for a while. If you use your good sense, ultimately you’ll have to agree with me.”

He began to understand that they were not yet finished. He waited for more and looked outside. The sun came from the side and lit the windows on the other side. The sky was still slate-blue. It must be hot at home, especially behind the shed.

“What do you say about that?”

The man started pacing back and forth.

“What can I say. The police who wanted to get me in the past are still after me, and I believe the mayors are still exactly the same.”

“This has little to do with a few policemen and a mayor, of course. If you have any complaints about the treatment, though, then you have to say so, because that will be investigated. That has changed a great deal. But that isn’t what’s at stake here. This is something much bigger.”

“I don’t know much about it; I spend very little time with people and I have nothing to do with anybody in particular. And that’s the way I like it.”

“You feel let down. You had ideals but nothing turned out. Isn’t that true?”

“We just wanted to get ahead a little, that’s all.”

“You wanted to improve your lot in life, that was your ideal.”

“If you want to call it that.…”

“And now you think everything is futile.”

“We’re already doing better. The fish bring a good price.”

The man stopped and looked down on him. “Why did you leave Beets really?”

“I just happened to fall into this fishing business. I didn’t have a job at the time, so it was easy to give this a try.”

“But you had steady work just before then.”

They were well informed. They even knew about that polder incident that he preferred not to talk about.

“That was just for a little while, and it wasn’t my kind of work.”

The man did not pursue it and he was glad of that.

“Let us accept that you have nothing to do with people and that you really don’t care so much what’s going on in the world today. Let us further accept that you were home during the night and that you noticed nothing about what was happening on the lake.…”

“That’s the absolute truth. I already said that this morning. If it happened on the other side of the lake, that could easily be because with this wind the noise drifts in the opposite direction. And I also said that we sleep in cupboard beds and you don’t hear much in those.”

“Good, I believe that. But you live out in the country, an ideal place for those who prefer not to associate much with other people, isn’t that so?”

“That’s possible, but I can’t help that I happen to live there.”

“You’re playing dumb. I will accept that you have little to do with anything anymore. I can understand that, considering your past. But I cannot believe that nobody has ever come to you with certain requests. Or am I wrong.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You understand me all right, but I’ll say it in so many words. If I needed a place to hide, I’d come to you.”

“I want nothing to do with that.”

“Agreed, but did no one ever come to ask?”

“They know me. They know how I feel about that. And they’re all a bunch of pious fanatics around there who don’t even trust me.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“Like I said, they know what kind of person I am. They don’t come to me. It wouldn’t work, either. We have a small house with only one room. Where would we put them.”

The man held up a report. “It says here that they counted four beds this morning in that small house of yours. Isn’t that excessive?”

“I already explained that this morning when policeman Bolhuis asked about it. In the summertime I often sleep in the back of the house because it’s not as stuffy there as in the cupboard bed, and the bed in the attic is the boy’s.”

He said that intentionally, and he waited to see if the man would start talking about Germ.

“You’ve also been to Germany, right? We were going to get back to that. Was that for a long stay?”

“Never longer than six, seven months at a time, and a whole bunch of us would go”

“You made good money there, isn’t that so?”

“We were able to save some money there.”

“Did you work for a farmer?”

“No, we didn’t care for farmwork. And I didn’t know how to milk. I spent some time in the mines, but most of the time we worked on the railroad and road building. They were putting in a lot of new tracks and roads at that time.”

“What did you think of Germany?”

“There was more work there and the people were better off there than we were here, at least at that time. But there was also a time that the Germans came here to help with the mowing and the haying and so on, you must know that too.”

“Sure, but that was a different time. When you were there, national-socialism was on the rise and that helped you get work. You had Hitler to thank for being able to save some money there.”

“It’s true that something was going on there, but we didn’t have much to do with that. We had our own group and we were there to work.”

“Did you never think about staying in Germany?”

“We had our home in Beets and that’s where we wanted to be. I’m not sure why.”

“Some did stay there, though.”

“Not from our area, but I did hear about some. That was later; I haven’t been back there since 1937.”

“Those people were a lot better off. I talked to a lot of Frisians in Recklinghaus who were happy to be there. They know the difference between old and new times, and that’s why they also know now which side to be on. Right now much is demanded from those people. The men are on the front line, the women in the factories. Here we hardly do anything. Germany is doing everything for us. I’m not asking you to do anything either. All I need from you is some information. It makes no difference to us if you say nothing, we’ll find out everything anyway. It’s only a small detail to arrest several hundred people. There are always some among them who start talking right away. But we’d rather not do that. The innocent often become the victims and it creates a lot of commotion. I believe that you’re a good man. And I know very well how the common people think about this; they’re willing, but they don’t dare. They’re being terrorized by a small group of people who realize that their time is past, but they want to resist to the end because they have everything to lose. I had thought that you had more courage. And I still believe that. You are no coward; these reports make that clear enough. You have always dared to stand up for your convictions.”

He lay the brown folder on his desk. He took a cigarette and lit it. He waited, but there was no response. Then he said with a sigh: “Well, we’ll just leave it at this, then.”

The German soldier got the signal and came forward.

He pulled himself up out of his chair and hesitated for a moment. He said: “This is a mistake. I have nothing to say. I have no part in it and I want to have nothing to do with it. That’s not forbidden, is it? I have my fishing and right now I’m making a pretty good living with that. I don’t need to get involved in anything else. Why do I have to be implicated in this? I don’t even want to know about it, it’s none of my business. Why should I give a damn what they’re up to on the lake during the night. Just so they leave my fish traps alone.”

He took a step toward the man. “And if you want to tell me that nowadays they no longer deliver a common worker into the hands of the big shots, then tell me how it’s possible for me to be picked up just like that? They used to tell me right away what they wanted me for, but you don’t even do that. You treat people whichever way you want. I have nothing to do with the whole rotten business and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stay here any longer.”

The soldier grabbed his shoulder.

When he walked through the corridor, his shaking stopped. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants and let himself be locked up.