The Assault

Five shots ring out on Anton’s silent street, followed by a scream, and then a final shot. Anton, about to throw his dice for the board game, freezes. Then, suddenly, all is dark. Peter opens the sliding doors to the front room, looks out the front window, and announces that someone has been shot. Anton follows his brother into the room. Although the room has not been used in months, Anton knows how to navigate it from memory. In the middle of the street, in front of Mr. Korteweg’s house, Anton sees “a bicycle with its upended front wheel still turning—a dramatic effect later much used in close-ups in every movie about the Resistance” (16-17). A man lies motionless in the gutter near the bicycle. Peter, limping due to a boil on his toe that would not heal, runs to the man. Anton sees the shimmer of the man’s black boots and the iron plates on the boot heels.

Mrs. Steenwijk whispers, surprisingly loudly, for Peter to come back. When he does, he announces that the dead man is Fake Ploeg, Chief Inspector of Police and “the greatest murderer and traitor in Haarlem” who “radiated violence, hate, and fear” (17). His son, also named Fake, is in Anton’s class. Anton recalls that every time Fake and his father arrived at school, everyone fell silent. The elder Fake would “look about with a mocking glance” while his shy and withdrawn son was left to “manage as best he could” (17).

On the second day of school, when no one knew who he was yet, Fake had arrived in “the pale-blue uniform and black-and-orange cap of the Nazi youth organization” (18). That day also happened to be Mad Tuesday, when everyone believed that the liberators would arrive shortly, and most of the National Socialists and Nazi collaborators had fled into Germany or beyond it. Mr. Bos, the math teacher, had barred the other students from entering the classroom in which Fake sat. He announced to Fake that he refused to teach students in the Nazi youth uniform and that the boy must go home and change. Fake ignored Mr. Bos, and while the principal arrived to sort through the commotion, Anton edged his way to the front of the crowd and met eyes with Fake. Overcome with pity and sympathy for the boy, Anton almost instinctually dove under Mr. Bos’s arm and sat down at his desk. This broke down the general resistance of everyone. After school, the principal informed Anton that he had probably saved Mr. Bos’s life. Anton didn’t quite know what to do with the compliment and never mentioned the incident to anyone, including his family.

Back on Anton’s street, the body still lays in the gutter. Mr. Korteweg and Karin suddenly emerge from their home, pick up Ploeg, dump him in front of Anton’s house, and then immediately disappear back into their home. The dead man now lays with his hands above his head, the right one clasping a gun, with his coat gathered at the waist—as if he had fallen from a great height. Anton now clearly recognizes Ploeg’s large face and the man’s slicked-back hair.

Peter—outraged and fearing retaliation—exclaims that they must move the body before “the Krauts” (19) arrive. After squabbling with Mrs. Steenwijk, who believes that the fact that the family is innocent will protect them, Peter, convinced that their innocence will not matter to the Germans, asks Anton to help him move the body. He plans to move the body in front of Mrs. Beumer’s house. Although Mrs. Steenwijk’s rejoinder is that Mrs. Beumer is, too, innocent, Anton’s rationale is that, if the man had been shot a second earlier, he’d be in front of Mrs. Beumer’s. Mrs. Steenwijk demands to know why Mr. Steenwijk has remained silent throughout the ordeal. Mr. Steenwijk only stutters and falters in reply.

Peter then strikes out onto the street alone. Anton turns the key in the kitchen door and throws the key into the hall’s deep darkness. Peter, on the verge of tears, exclaims that his whole family is stupid. He then crashes through the door’s back door. Anton sees his father sitting at the table, unmoving. Anton then runs back to the bay window and watches his brother grip Ploeg by his feet. Then, shouts echo at the end of the quay as men command Peter to halt and stand still, with his hands up. Three men on bicycles then approach before throwing their bikes down on the ground to pursue Anton on foot. Peter grabs Ploeg’s gun, runs to the Korteweg’s fence, and disappears behind their house. One man takes a shot at Peter and pursues him. The second man, wearing a Military Police uniform, jumps on his bicycle and bikes away rapidly. The third, who is in civilian clothes, slides down the other side of the embankment and crouches on the towpath, holding a gun with both hands.

Anton dives below the windowsill and turns around. His mother has gone out to the garden to whisper Peter’s name, while his father, still at the table, has assumed a more hunched position. Anton feels profoundly dissociated from his body, and the image before him becomes etched permanently in his mind:

This moment—his father’s silhouette cut out in black against the snow, his mother outside on the terrace under the starlight—became eternal, detached itself from all that had come before and all that would follow. It became part of him and began its journey through the rest of his life, until finally it would explode like a soap bubble, after which it might as well never have happened (22).

Mrs. Steenwijk begs her husband to revive himself. Slowly, Mr. Steenwijk rises and puts on his scarf and black bowler hat. He moves to enter the garden at the terrace, then draws back. He tries to call Peter’s name, but only a hoarse sound comes out. Defeated and trembling, he takes a seat next to the stove and asks Mrs. Steenwijk, whom he calls by her first name, Thea, to forgive him. He says: “Everything has gone so well until now, and now, at the end…Anton, put on your coat. Oh God, where can that boy be?” (22-23). Anton ventures the guess that Peter went behind the Kortewegs’ and tells his father that Peter took Ploeg’s gun. From the silence that follows his words, Anton understands that this is something terrible. Mrs. Steenwijk begins to run in the garden, but when Anton warns her that another main is lying in wait somewhere outside, she retreats. The entire family sits, motionless. Anton has an inexorable feeling that “by doing something which was within his power but which he could not quite think of, he could undo everything and return to the way they had been before, sitting around the table playing a game” (23).

Anton summons his mother from the threshold of the back door. It seems to him that he is the only one who has kept his wits. He muses that this is an important quality for a future Air Force aviator. He hears squealing tires and shouting in German as the street clatters with heavily armed soldiers, motorcycles, and a military ambulance. A bright light flashes through the curtains. A man bangs loudly on Carefree’s front door with the butt of a rifle. Anton involuntarily flees to the back room. A man commands them to open the door, then promptly breaks the door down. The house is quickly swarming with men in helmets. Anton can see the shiny badge of the Field Police hanging from the belt of one of the men, as well as the elongated container of a gas mask.

A man in civilian dress—"a long black leather coat down to his ankles […] [and]a hat with a lowered brim” (25)—enters the house. The man has a long scar that runs across his cheek. He demands the family’s papers. Mrs. Steenwijk tells the man that they had nothing to do with Ploeg’s murder. The man demands silence. He flips shut the book Mr. Steenwijk had been reading—Spinoza’s More Geometrico Demonstrata—and declares that the family is reading “Jew books” (25). He then demands that Mrs. Steenwijk walk back and forth in front of him. She does so, trembling and with the “puzzled expression of a child” (25). Anton will later learn that the man thought he could tell, by her walk, whether she was Jewish. When Mr. Steenwijk takes off his bowler hat and tries to speak, the man tells him to keep his mouth shut and calls him a “pig Jew-lover” (25). The man studies the identity papers and ration cards, then demands to know where the fourth member of the family is. Mr. Steenwijk says that Peter, confused by the dreadful accident, has run in the direction of the Beumer’s.

The man then commands the officers to take every member of the family away. The Steenwijks are then pushed out of the house without being allowed to take anything with them or to put any additional clothes on. A mixture of civilian and army trucks awaits them on the street. There are also soldiers leading dogs on leashes. Ploeg’s bicycle remains, as well as a large red stain on the snow. Anton hears shots from an indeterminate location. He feels his mother’s hand reach for his and sees the expression on her face, which his that “of a statue, with a wide-eyed expression of horror” (26). His father walks with his eyes on the ground, as he always does. Anton himself is “filled with an ambiguous pleasure at all the busyness, all this activity after the deadly stillness of the last few months” (26). His mother tightens her grip on his hand before she is wrenched away from him. She and his father vanish somewhere behind the trucks, while a soldier drags Anton by the arm into a car that is parked across the street and slams the door.

Anton finds himself sitting in a car for the first time in his life. He vaguely makes out the car’s features and muses that an airplane would have many more panels. He looks out the window, trying in vain to locate his parents and brother. He tells himself that Peter has undoubtedly managed to escape across the vacant lots and wonders whether the soldiers know that Ploeg had first been lying in front of the Korteweg house. The windows fog up and obscure his vision.

Suddenly, the doors to the balcony in his parents’ room are thrown open. Then, the soldiers smash all of the home’s windows with their rifles from the inside. He desperately wonders how his parents will replace them. A soldier emerges from the front of the house and leaves the door open. All is still for a moment as some soldiers light cigarettes and chat to each other, while others point their flashlights at the house, seemingly enjoying the spectacle. Through the haze of darkness punctuated by the glare of flashlights and the barking of dogs, Anton again searches for his parents. He thinks about how the man with the scar yelled at his father and how his father had to take his hat off. The thought becomes unbearably painful. He pushes the image away, believing it should never have happened.

An order is given, and a soldier throws something into the home’s middle bay window and comes running back. There is a resounding explosion. A second grenade explodes in the bedroom. Then, a soldier sprays the home with a flamethrower. Anton cannot believe his eyes, and he again searches for his parents, though he cannot see anything through the blinding light:“Laughing and talking, a few men of the Grilne Polizei with carbines slung over their shoulders[come] forward, [tuck] their gloves into their belts, [and hold] their hands to the crackling flames” (28).His home is completely engulfed in the conflagration as he thinks about all of the possessions inside, incinerating.

Another truck stops and “a group of shivering men in civilian jackets, guarded by [SS] soldiers with machine guns,”(28) stands on the truck’s open bed. On command, the handcuffed prisoners jump down into the street two by two and disappear into the night. Anton’s home burns “as greedily as an old newspaper” (29). He imagines that he sees his mother, further on and between cars. Her hair falls loose as a man runs toward her. He is dimly aware of something happening over there, but “hardly anything [can] touch him anymore” (29). He feels indignity at everything that has occurred and tells himself that the English will see this and then come. The home’s sign, bearing the name “Carefree,” still hangs. Then, the house wholly collapses in a haze of sparks. A machine gun rattles at the end of the quay. Anton lays on his side and curls up in a ball. When the German with the long coat opens the door and sees him lying there, the German catches his breath, as he had apparently forgotten Anton was there. The man climbs into the passenger seat and the army driver gives Anton his first car ride—to the police station.

Anton is made to sit down next to a pot-bellied stove, while the German speaks with a Dutch Inspector of Police, gesturing with his chin toward Anton occasionally. Anton, seeing the German man’s face, realizes that “he really [does] look like a fanatical Nazi, and it [isn’t] funny” (30). The man leaves without glancing at Anton.

A police sergeant tells Anton to follow him. A second policeman joins him, who asks: “What do we have now? [...] Are we locking up children too? Or is he a little Jew?” (30). The sergeant tells the officer not to ask so many questions. Anton asks the sergeant if his mother and father are coming too, and the sergeant, not looking at Anton, tells Anton that he knows nothing and has nothing to do with the incident.

The officer throws a horse blanket onto a cot in the hallway’s furthest cell. Then, in the direction of a corner Anton cannot see, the officer says: “You’ll have company, but keep the boy out of it, will you? He’s had enough misery, thanks to you” (31). He closes Anton into the darkness of the cell.

Anton fumbles in the darkness of the cell while listening to voices and footsteps in the hall, which quickly fade away. A woman shares the cell with him. When she asks him why he is there, he recounts the events of the night to her. Full of sympathy and warmth, she invites Anton to sit next to her and encloses him in an embrace with one arm, while pressing his head against her breast with the other. Anton’s eyes well with tears.

The woman tells her that he should not tell her his name. She warns him that “the Krauts” will try to indoctrinate him, but that he must never forget that it was “the Krauts who burned down [his] house” (33). She also states that “[the Krauts will]blame the Underground” (33).

When Anton tells her that it was Fake Ploeg who was murdered, the woman asserts that, if the Underground people hadn’t carried out the assassination, Ploeg would have murdered many more. Then, she begins to sob. She also states that the war is bound to be over in a few weeks: “The [Americans] are at the Rhine and the Russians are at the Oder” (34). The woman then asks permission to touch Anton’s face so that she can make out what he looks like, and he grants her permission. Then, she abruptly pulls her hand back and moans. She assures Anton that it is nothing when he asks her what is wrong.

The woman states that a few weeks ago, she was in an even darker place than the present one. When Anton asks the woman if she lives in Heemstede, she tells him that it is best if he knows nothing about her and that he will know the reason for this later.

She then tells the story of when she returned to her home in the middle of a cloudy night—"long after curfew” (35). That night, it was so dark that no one would be able to see her. Since she knew her neighborhood by heart, she expertly navigated her walk. While seeing absolutely nothing, she simultaneously knew exactly where she was—or so she thought. Suddenly, nothing was where it was supposed to be. She feared that she would fall into the moat, so she scrambled around on her hands and knees. Without any light source, she finally sat down and waited for dawn. She describes feeling more disturbed by the utter silence of the dozens of people she knew to be near her than by the utter darkness. It was as if the “world stopped” (36) at the edges of her skin. When the sun came up, she realized that she was sitting on the street right in front of her own house. Five steps and she was inside.

Anton, who has forgotten where he is, excitedly tells the woman that a similar thing happened to him once—when he was staying with his uncle in Amsterdam. The woman asks him if his stay in Amsterdam was some time ago, and Anton tells her that it was last summer when the trains were still running. He describes becoming disoriented by the darkness of the hallway while on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He recounts the panic that seized him, and the fact that when he began crying, his uncle came and turned on the light for him.

Suddenly, there are voices in the hall. Then, he hears one person cursing in a cell while the other is dragged into the hallway and beaten. The man being beaten screams. There are more boots in the hall and more screaming and the sound of the man being dragged upstairs. Silence falls, and then someone laughs.

The woman does not know who the condemned man is. She thanks God that “[the Krauts will]all end up on the gallows”(37) soon, while the Americans and Russians “make short shrift of them” (37). She coaxes Anton into thinking about light and its associations: the beach, summertime, the sun. She then gets lost in her own thoughts, remembering that she once wanted to write a poem comparing love to light. Although she now realizes that comparing light to love is an even more beautiful endeavor “for light is older than love” (38). She continues: “Christians say it’s not so, but then, they’re Christians” (38). She then asks Anton if he is a Christian, and he responds: “I don’t really think so” (38).

She also states that “hate is the darkness, [which is]“no good” (38).Although, in her estimation, hatred for the Fascists is perfectly all right and downright required. She states that this is possible because hatred of Fascists is borne of the light. She remarks:“We hate hate itself, and for this reason our hate is better than theirs” (38).

She then maintains that in order to defeat the Fascists, their opponents must give up a part of themselves and become like the Fascists in a small way—whereas the Fascists can simply be themselves. She states that the Fascists will lose in the end “because they have no light in them”(39). She also asserts that the opponents of the Fascists must take care not to become too much like the Fascists—otherwise the Fascists will ultimately win. Anton does not understand a word of what the woman is saying, although he feels flattered to be addressed like an adult.

The woman continues musing about love. She states that whenever someone is in love with another person, they always say that the person they love is very beautiful—either physically, mentally, or both: “When people are in love they’re always beautiful, for in loving they are lit up by the light” (39). She tells Anton that she is in love with a man who has a wife and two children who are about Anton’s age. She says that the man thinks that she doesn’t love him, when in fact, she does, but the man’s family needs him, just as Anton needs his father and mother. She reassures Anton that his parents are likely locked up somewhere and that Anton will surely see them the next day. She expresses that she is more concerned about Anton’s brother—who took Ploeg’s gun—and Anton can tell by the woman’s reaction to that information that Peter had made a fatal mistake. Anton slumps against the woman and succumbs to exhaustion by falling asleep.

Anton is awakened half an hour later “by the shouting that had echoed throughout Europe for years” (40). He is blinded by a flashlight before being dragged from the cell so summarily that he never catches a glimpse of his cellmate. Germans and policemen stand all over the place, while a high-ranking SS officer “with a skull on his cap and silver stars and stripes on his collar slam[s] the cell door shut” (40). The man is “handsome, [..] of about thirty-five” years old, and has “the kind of regular, noble features that Anton had often seen in boys’ book illustrations” (40).

The SS officer expresses disgust and indignation that Anton, a young boy, has been locked up with a “terrorist” (40) Communist. He guesses that someone from the Security Service, “probably another one of those two-faced operators getting into position for the next time around, making himself out to be Santa Claus, the great ally of the Resistance” (40), is responsible for the “pigsty” (40) of the jail. He states that these goings-on will be of enormous interest to the Gestapo. He then states that Anton is lucky to be alive and inquires about how Anton got blood on his face.

Anton touches his cheeks and stands “on tiptoe” to see the “bloody, dried traces of [the woman’s] fingers on his white face and in his hair” (41). He states that it is not his blood. The officer then commands the others to summon a doctor for the woman at once and to take Anton to Ortskommandantur, the Regional Command, so that he can be reunited with his family the next day. He unkindly tells the men to hurry the process up and calls Ploeg an “idiot” for taking “a little bike ride in the dark” (41).

Anton, “wrapped in a horse blanket, [is] taken outside by a helmeted German” (41). A luxurious Mercedes belonging to the officer stands outside in the “crystalclear” (41) night. The German has a carbine on his back. He tells Anton to sit behind him on the motorcycle and to hold on tight. Anton clings as best as he can to the man’s gun-strapped back. The narrator also remarks that this is the boy’s first motorcycle ride.

Anton, in a kind of delirium, recollects an incident that happened a year ago. At an indoor swimming pool, which was supposed to be cleared out for the Wehrmacht, Anton was lingering in a cubicle and missed the evacuation. Inside, alone, he listened to a group of soldiers thunder into the pool, strip out of their uniforms, and jump into the pool: “Inexplicably, they had suddenly changed into human beings, just ordinary men, all naked, white bodies with brown faces and necks, arms that were brown up to the elbows” (42). Anton seized an opportunity to run out, and he saw the men’s’ abandoned uniforms hanging in the dressing room normally only used by poor people: “Such menace there, all that violence at rest” (42). Anton, presumably having fallen asleep on the motorcycle, then dreams of “the uniforms [detaching] themselves from their hooks and float[ing] toward a burning pile of firewood, tall flames licking the porch of a white country house—but luckily everything is underwater, in a canal or a swimming pool; the flames hiss as they go out” (42).

Anton awakes abruptly. They have come to a standstill in the Hout, at the entrance to the trench that had been built around the Ortskommandantur. There is barb wire everywhere, and a sentry lets them pass. In the unlit courtyard, trucks and cars with darkened windows come and go.

The soldier brings Anton inside, where there is much administrative hustle and bustle. Anton is made to wait in a small room, from which he spies a long hall as well as Mr. Korteweg. Korteweg “[comes] out of one door, cross[es] the hall, and disappear[s] through the opposite door” (43). He is accompanied by “a hatless soldier” (43) who carries paperwork. Anton feels that the soldiers must now know what Korteweg had done the night before. He thinks to himself that his parents must also be nearby, then slumps into sleep.

When Anton awakes again, he is in another room, under a woolen blanket. He awakes looking “into the eyes of a rather elderly sergeant in a sloppy uniform and calf-length boots that [are] too wide, who [gives] him a friendly nod” (43). The sergeant gives Anton a cup of warm milk and a plate of sandwiches that are “spread with something the color of frosted glass” (43). The narrator intimates that, years later, as Anton will travel through Germany to his house in Tuscany, he will learn that the substance with which the sandwiches are spread is “goose fat: Schmaltz” (43). Throughout Anton’s life of access to various luxurious and expensive foods, nothing would ever taste as good as the warm milk and sandwiches that he was given that day: “A man who has never been hungry may possess a more refined palate, but he has no idea what it means to eat” (43). The sergeant watches Anton eat with amusement.

At a faucet in the bathroom, Anton washes the blood, which has turned rust-brown, off his face. He hesitates while removing these last traces of the woman. Then, he is ushered into the Ortskommandant’s room and seated at the armchair facing his desk. The Ortskommandant is the military governor of the city. He is “a short, fat man with short-cropped gray hair” (44), who wears the uniform of the Wehrmacht. A portrait of Hitler hangs in his office. He nods kindly to Anton before hanging up the telephone.

The Ortskommandant speaks Dutch, which comes out clearly, despite his heavy accent. He tells Anton that the previous night’s occurrences are dreadful and that his own house in Linz was also bombed. Anton, carefully not mentioning Peter in order to avoid tipping the Ortskommandant off, asks if his parents are in the building. The Ortskommandant shuffles his papers and informs Anton that matters are presently mixed up and that he thinks his parents may be somewhere near them. He states that they must wait and see, as the war will soon be over.

He then asks Anton if he will stay with them and be a soldier. Anton smiles and does not know what to say. Reading his full name, Anton Emanuel Willem Steenwijk, off of Anton’s gray identity card, the Ortskommandant asks him what he would like to be when he grows up. Anton answers that he might like to be a pilot. The man inquires about Anton’s additional family, and Anton informs him that he only has an uncle, Peter Van Liempt, who is a doctor, as well as an aunt in Amsterdam. Anton feels pleased about the prospect of staying with his aunt and uncle for a time—their house on the Apollolaan has an appealing “air of mystery for him” (45). The Ortskommandant abruptly moves to the hall to give a soldier a command, and then informs Anton that Schulz, the sergeant, will accompany Anton to Amsterdam with a small convoy headed that way. He tells Anton that he will “write a Notizto those in charge [in Amsterdam]” (46). He bids Anton farewell with a pinch on the cheek and tells him to be very brave.

Schulz bundles Anton up in two wool jackets, a scarf, a helmet stuffed with newspaper to make it stay on Anton’s head, and a jacket that Schulz literally cuts to size. Schulz brings Anton out into the icy cold, and they enter a transport check full of soldiers armed with machine guns.

The convoy is ambushed by an airplane during the final twenty-mile stretch to Amsterdam. Everyone is ordered to evacuate the truck, but Anton finds himself cowering beneath the truck’s dashboard after he identifies the attacking plane as “a Spitfire” (48)–seemingly while in the throes of an almost-disembodied reverie borne of shock and trauma. Schulz runs back to the truck and pulls Anton out of it and into a ditch. Anton sees several fires breaking loose around him. He reasons that, surely, the pilot of the airplane knows that he is not their enemy and that his fire can therefore not hurt him. The plane disappears into the clouds, and Anton crosses the road to join the sergeant. Schulz, turned over by two other soldiers, has a serious open wound in his profusely bleeding chest, and blood also spills from his nostrils and mouth. Anton vomits onto a truck’s hood, and he is then abruptly whisked into an open car as the last truck in the convoy bursts into flame.

As the soldiers struggle to understand who Anton is and what he is doing with the convoy, Anton feels consumed by guilt about Schulz’s death.

Their truck arrives at Western Hospital in Amsterdam. The truck is emptied, and Anton also tries to get out, but the driver holds him in place. He drives Anton deeper into the city and past the Rijksmuseum, which Anton once visited with his father in the past. The free-standing villas in the front of the museum have been taken over by the Germans, and the driver brings Anton into one of them. The armed sentinel at the entrance asks the driver if Anton is the latest recruit, and the officers in the hall similarly laugh at Anton—"a little boy” (50) wearing an adult’s helmet and an oversized coat. However, the arrival of general wearing shiny high boots, an elaborate array of braids, badges, and ribbons, and a necklace bearing the iron cross puts a stop to the laughter. The driver reports to the general about the plane attack, although Anton cannot understand their conversation.

Anton then follows the general up a flight of stairs, as four young officers, who laugh and whisper among themselves, join them. The general, with an irritated gesture, commands Anton to remove his ridiculous clothing, and Anton obeys. A pretty, thin woman with blonde hair brings a cup of coffee with milk with a piece of milk chocolate on its saucer to Anton, and tells him, in Dutch, that he is sure to like the treat. Anton is amazed by the chocolate, whose existence he only presently knows as hearsay. He isn’t allowed to try it, however, as the general demands to know Anton’s account of the plane attack from beginning to end. The woman serves as translator. Although the assault and the fire now seem so long ago, Anton cries while recounting the first parts of his story, omitting the presence of his cellmate. The general reacts with outrage and disbelief to many details of Anton’s story, including that Anton was held beneath a police station, that Anton was brought to the Ortskommandantur, and that the Ortskommandantur sent Anton along with a convoy while there were “strafers” (51), or combat pilots, everywhere. He pronounces each of these elements as appalling mistakes. The general asks for documentation, and Anton realizes that the Notiz was in Schulz’s chest pocket and begins to cry anew. The general, annoyed, commands the woman to minister to Anton and to arrange for Anton’s uncle to come pick him up.

When his uncle arrives, Anton is sobbing, and “on his lap a copy of Signal[lays] open at a dramatic drawing of air combat” (52). His uncle, Peter Van Liempt, wraps Anton in a silent embrace, and when Anton looks into his eyes, he sees the eyes of his mother. Van Liempt, privy to what has happened to Anton and his family, rushes Anton out of the encampment. Anton is sobbing without truly knowing why. When he sticks his hand into his pocket, he finds a dice from the board game still nestled there.