The Assault

It is early June 1966. Saskia, Anton, and their 4-year-old daughter, Sandra, attend the funeral of one of Saskia’s father’s friends: “an important journalist and poet” (100) named Sjoerd. Saskia also knew Sjoerd during the war. Saskia initially does not want to bring Sandra, as she believes that death is not for children. Anton sharply tells her that this “platitude” (100) is ridiculous, and then apologizes for his harshness.

Saskia’s father, whose real name is Godfried Leopold Jerome De Graaf, is “as old as the century” (100) and has retired in Gelderland. Saskia suggests that he come and pick them up in his car, but he refuses—saying that he wouldn’t be caught dead in Amsterdam and asking Saskia if they thought that “he wanted to be attacked by a gang of hippie Provos” (101).

The funeral is in a village north of Amsterdam. In the village square, a group of older men and women who seem to be well-acquainted greet each other with laughter and exuberance, rather than somber mournfulness. There are many photographers, as well as a cabinet minister who is greeted with camaraderie. Anton tells his daughter that all of the gathered people fought against the Germans in the war. When the coffin is brought in, Sandra asks her father if the man is inside of it. She also calls out to her grandfather when she sees him. He returns her call with a wink. The mayor of Amsterdam is also there, and the funeral address is given by a famous clergyman who spent years in a concentration camp. Anton is struck by the profile of a woman across the aisle and a few rows ahead of him: “For some reason [her profile makes] him think of a sword, with its sharp tip planted straight in the ground” (102). She is “about forty-five; her dark hair, thick and bushy, was graying in places” (102).

During the procession, which is more of a reunion, the people become absorbed in deep conversation. Saskia remarks that they all feel at home once again. When Anton says that he hopes the Germans don’t find out that they are all gathered here, Saskia tells him not to be “silly” (102).

When Sandra asks Anton what a war is, Anton replies that it is “a big quarrel. Two bunches of people who want to chop each other’s heads off” (102). Saskia tells him not to overdo it.

After the funeral, Anton and his family join the mourners at a crowded café. There, the cabinet minister talks to the burgomaster. Famous writers are present, as well as a notorious Provo. Saskia suggests that she and her family go somewhere else, but, at that exact moment, her father arrives and beckons to them. At his table, De Graaf is involved in a conversation in which he is “on the defensive without losing his good humor, [and] evidently quite aware that he [is] in control” (103-104).

For much of the ensuing conversation, De Graaf is referred to as “Gerrit” by his friends, as that was his Underground Resistance pseudonym. De Graaf initially speaks to a blonde man whose pseudonym is “Jaap.” Jaap asks De Graaf how he could possibly “compare the Vietnamese Liberation Front to the Nazis” (104). Jaap also asserts that while “the Russians have been de-Stalinized […] the Americans have become mass murderers” (104). He also claims that De Graaf has forgotten that the Russians truly “came to [the] rescue […] defeated the German army […] [and remained] on the right side”(104) of history in their stance on Vietnam. A mustachioed man next to De Graaf suggests that this topic of conversation be left alone, although he tacitly signals that he agrees with Jaap, while simultaneously believing that Jaap has started a pointless quarrel.

Jaap also tells De Graaf that from 1944 on, De Graaf and his military government “were no longer so much against the Germans as against the first-class fellows” (105). De Graaf replies that by then, the Germans had been defeated. As his smile fades, he asks Jaap: “Were we supposed to exchange one tyranny for another?” (105).Jaap tells him to “go to hell” (105). De Graaf tells Jaap that Jaap “ought to be grateful” and that if Jaap had his way in 1945, he wouldn’t have been expelled from the Party—as he presently is—he’d have “faced the firing squad” (105). He continues: “Certainly in your ambiguous position you wouldn’t have had a chance with the Stalinists. No more than Slansky, in Czechoslovakia. I was posted in Prague at the time of his execution. You owe your life to the military government” (105).

Although Jaap says that De Graaf can win the argument, he recites lines from Sjoerd’s poetry: “When to the will of tyrants / A nation’s head is bowed, / It loses more than life and goods— / Its very light goes out” (106). The mustachioed man, named Henk, asserts that the Indonesian police actions cost Sjoerd a few years of his life and that Holland has never “had it so good” (106) since it got rid of its Indonesian colonies. De Graaf retorts: “Thanks to the help of the Marshall Plan, dear Henk. […] Financed by the Americans, remember?” (106). To this, Jaap replies that the Americans merely owed their financial support to Holland, as Amsterdam financed the American Revolution. He also asserts that he is no Communist, but rather, an “anti-Fascist” (106)—although, since Communism is the greatest enemy to Fascism, he is an “anti-anti-Communist” (106).

Jaap also derisively tells the group that De Graaf was only in the Resistance in order to defend the Dutch monarchy—and therefore calls him “an ordinary House of Orange Fascist” (107). De Graaf accepts this moniker with self-satisfaction, while Saskia stands up to leave, saying that she doesn’t need this. When Anton also stands up, the crowd parts to give him a brief glimpse of the woman he had been staring at in the church. In the meantime, De Graaf, obviously in his element, laughs loudly. He pontificates exaggeratedly about the beauty of the Palace of Soestdijk and its royal pomp and circumstance. The man next to De Graaf, a poet, tells De Graaf that he actually thinks De Graaf is sincere in his adoration: “Jesus Christ, if I were as much of a bastard as you, I wouldn’t ever get a single word printed again” (107). De Graaf’s rejoinder is that such an occurrence, according to some more distinguished scholars, would be a blessing for the nation’s literature. The poet becomes furious. Jaap, too, has to laugh.

Henk then says that “the grim populace” (108) has, of late, been bombarding De Graaff’s “beloved royal family with stink bombs” (108). Henk remarks, to someone standing behind Anton: “And that will cost you your head” (108). Anton realizes that “the heat he had felt on his neck all this time came from the powerful Calvinist rump of the cabinet minister” (108). The minister brushes Henk’s comment off, exchanges a glance of complicity with De Graaff, and then walks away. Silence falls at the table, although Anton catches the following sentence from a conversation that two men sitting on his left quietly carry on: “I shot him first in the back, then in the shoulder, and then in the stomach as I bicycled past him” (108).

Anton remotely hears the six shots from his past in his mind. In his mind’s eye, “his mother looks at his father, his father [looks] at the sliding doors, [and] Peter lifts the lid of the carbide lamp” (108).

Anton turns to the man who spoke, next to whom he had been sitting all along. Almost in spite of himself, he asks: “Wasn’t there a fourth and a fifth shot? And then one more, a sixth?” (108-09). When the man asks him how he knows, Anton asks whether he was speaking about Fake Ploeg. The man asks Anton what his name is and how old he is. Anton explains to him that he was living there and that the shooting happened in front of his house. The man understands the significance of Anton’s words at once: “Only on the operating table had Anton seen anyone lose all color so rapidly” (109). Everyone at the table notices that something is wrong. De Graaff tries to intervene, but the man quickly invites Anton outside, as if he wishes to fight. He then pulls Anton through the crowd, as if Anton is a child.

Out on the silent street, the man leads Anton back into the cemetery. He introduces himself as Cor Takes, with the pseudonym of “Gijs,” and Anton gives him his own name. Anton, having said what he said in spite of himself, reflexively feels that he does not need a conversation with Takes. He tells Takes that they should leave, insisting that “what happened happened” (110). Anton further explains that he has his own family, a child, and a job—and that “everything is fine” (110). Anton says that he “should have kept [his] mouth shut” (110). Takes refuses to swallow Anton’s words, saying that Anton did not keep his mouth shut.

Takes asks Anton how old he was. Anton answers that he was twelve. Takes asks Anton if he knew Ploeg, while referring to Ploeg as a “pig” (111). Anton says that he only knew Ploeg by sight, although he was in the same class as Ploeg’s son. In that moment, Anton does not remember the Fake Jr. as a child, but as the large man who broke the mirror in his apartment ten years ago. Takes informs Anton that Ploeg also had two daughters, the younger of whom was four years old at the time of the assault. Anton notes that she was the same age as his own daughter. Anton feels that he is in the presence of “a nameless violence such as he had never known in anyone, except possibly in that man with the scar under his cheekbone”(111)—the man who had questioned and arrested his parents that night. He says nothing about this though, as he doesn’t want to give the impression that he is attacking Takes.

Takes asks Anton if he would like him to tell Anton what kind of man Ploeg was, and Anton answers: “Not for my sake” (111). Takes then tells Anton about Ploeg:

He had a whip with barbed wire braided into it that ripped the skin off your bare ass, which he then shoved against the blazing stove. He put a garden hose up your ass and let it run till you vomited your own shit. He killed God knows how many people, and sent many more to their deaths in Germany and Poland(111).

He asks Anton whether he agrees that Ploeg had to be gotten rid of: “Yes or yes?” (111). Takes then acknowledges that he and his cohort knew that reprisals would follow Ploeg’s murder. Anton asks Takes if Takes is justifying himself to him—and adds that he is not criticizing Takes, after all. Takes, who tells Anton to call him “Gijs,” responds that he is not justifying himself to Anton—nor is he justifying himself to anyone else, or to God, whom he believes does not exist. Takes does assert, however, that the dead exist—his own friends who have died.

As if to announce that someone is, indeed, in charge, “a small cloud crept over the sun, making the flowers on the new grave look bleached” (112). And then, a moment later, everything is bathed in light anew.

Anton wonders whether the sympathy he feels for Takes has an ambiguous source. “Through [Takes], Anton was no longer simply a victim; now he was vicariously taking part in the violence of the assault” (112). While Anton feels that he is a victim, he simultaneously feels that all of the occurrences of that night happened to someone else.

Takes asks Anton whether the fact that there would be reprisals should have been a reason not to carry out the assassination. Anton states that he cannot answer that question. Takes then says that “the answer is no” (113). He continues:

The only truth that’s useful is that everyone gets killed by whoever kills them, and by no one else. Ploeg by us, your family by the Germans. If you believe we shouldn’t have done it, then you also believe that, in the light of history, the human race shouldn’t have existed. Because then all the love and happiness and goodness in this world can’t outweigh the life of a single child. Yours, for instance. Is that what you believe? (113).

Anton feels confused and looks at the ground. He has never thought of these things, although he muses that “perhaps Takes never thought about anything else” (113).

Anton asks Takes if he would have gone through with the assassination if Takes’s own family had lived on that street. Takes answers that he wouldn’t have. However, he reveals that he knew that his youngest brother was among the hostages that night. He says that his mother also knew but still agreed with the morality of the assassination. He offers to give Anton his mother’s address so that he may verify that fact. Anton tells Takes that Takes is carrying on as if the assault were Anton’s fault: “I was twelve years old and reading a book when it happened, for goodness’ sake” (114).

Takes tells Anton that it was a stupid coincidence that it happened in front of Anton’s house. Anton then reveals that Ploeg was not killed in front of his house, but in front of the Kortewegs’. He tells Takes that Korteweg was a widowed seaman who lived with his daughter. He asks Takes whether the Kortewegs’ actions that night were morally justifiable, and Takes only equivocates as a reply. Anton then tells Takes that Peter tried to move the body up one house further or to put it back where it fell—but that the police arrived before Peter could do either. Takes, fitting the pieces of the puzzle together, exclaims that he now understands. He asks Anton how Peter ended up with the gun. Anton asks Takes how he knows about the gun, and Takes explains that he looked it up after the war. Anton explains that it was Ploeg’s gun. Takes asks who was living next door, and Anton answers that the Beumers, who lived next door, were an old couple.

Takes asserts that if Peter would have put the body back, a fight would have ensued: “A bunch of fools, all of you, traipsing up and down with that body” (115). When Anton asks what else they should have done, Takes replies that they should have taken the body inside. He says that the watchmen would have assumed that the shots came from the militia and asks whether Anton’s former neighbors were collaborators who would have given them away. Anton answers that they weren’t, and Takes says that they then should have hidden the body, buried it in the garden, or (better yet) cooked it and ate it—it was a “winter of starvation” (116), after all: “War criminals don’t count, as far as cannibalism is concerned”(116).

Now, laughter shakes Anton as he thinks of his father, a “clerk baking a police inspector and eating him for dinner” (116). Takes tells Anton that such things happened and weirder things still. Anton tells him that it is easy for Takes to think of such things, as he does nothing but think of such things, but that Anton and his family didn’t as they sat around the dinner table. Takes insists that he still would have thought of his solution at once. Anton insists that Take only would have thought of that because he was a member of a gang, while his father was “a clerk who never took action; he just wrote down the actions of others” (116). However, he dimly remembers that there had been a quarrel immediately following the assault—he remembers something about a key and Peter stumbling around in the darkness.

Takes draws a rough sketch of Anton’s old street and its four houses in the dirt, saying that “heroes always return to the scene” (117). He has Anton point out which house Ploeg was shot in front of (the second house from the right), and which one was Anton’s (the second house from the left). Takes looks at the diagram and asks why the body was not instead deposited in front of the Beumers’. Anton replies that he has no idea why and that he has never wondered about it. Takes asserts that there must be a reason and asks whether Korteweg disliked Anton. Anton answers that Korteweg didn’t dislike him, as far as he knew. Takes, surprised, asks Anton why he never tried to find out why and whether he cared at all. Anton replies:

Care, care…I told you, I don’t feel any need to go over all that again. What happened happened, and that’s all there is to it. It can’t be changed now, even if I understood it. It was wartime, one big disaster, my family was murdered, and I stayed alive. I was adopted by my aunt and uncle and everything turned out all right for me. You were right to kill the bastard, really; I have no complaints about that. You just convince his son! With me that’s not necessary, but why in God’s name do you want to make it all logical? That’s impossible, and who cares? It’s history, ancient history (117-18).

He then goes on to state that a similar thing may be happening as they speak—"in Vietnam, for instance” (118).

Anton tells Takes that Takes is more upset than he is and asks Takes whether he regrets what he did. Something tells Anton that he must be careful and that he must exercise self- control in order to prevent himself from hitting Takes.

Takes replies that he would do it again tomorrow, if it were necessary, but asks Anton to hypothetically entertain the notion that he did wish he hadn’t gone through with the assassination. Anton asks him whether he wants to entertain that hypothetical because Anton’s parents were killed. Takes answers “no”—saying that Anton’s parents were probably murdered because Peter was found with the gun or for an unknown reason. Anton says that it probably happened because his “mother flew at the leader of those Germans” (119). Takes tells Anton that he is “not torturing [Anton]just to satisfy [his] nostalgia for the War” (119). He insists that there is a mystery regarding the occurrences of that night and that someone, whom he calls his girlfriend, was also killed that night. She had aided in the assassination. Anton immediately knows that Takes is talking about the woman with whom he shared a cell that night. Although he cannot verify what she looked like because he never saw her face nor learned her name, Anton is certain that she is the woman of whom Takes speaks. Takes tells Anton: “They shot her in the dunes, three weeks before Liberation. She’s buried there in the memorial cemetery” (119). Anton expresses that he believes he met this woman, and Takes begins to weep as he tells Anton her name: Truus Coster. Anton also begins to weep.

At that moment, Anton’s mother-in-law finds them. Saskia and Sandra follow closely behind her. Sandra drops her doll, calls her father, and runs into Anton’s arms. Saskia regards Anton with wide eyes, as she is worried about him. He nods reassuringly to her. Saskia’s mother brushes off the two men’s’ tears as a frivolous absurdity. She shoos everyone out of the graveyard, points to Sandra’s doll on the ground, and acts as if she will be unquestioningly obeyed—and she is. Takes says that she is amazing and calls her “Queen Wilhelmina” (121).

Sandra tells Anton that she had been taken to the dead man’s house and given two glasses of orangeade. Saskia tells Anton that Sandra must eat and that she has planned for their party to lunch together somewhere in the country. Anton blinks instantaneously, as a gesture of reassurance, at Saskia, who is giving him a worried look. Takes tears a sheet out of his diary after scribbling something onto it, folds it, and places it in Anton’s pocket. They shake hands in silence.

On the sidewalk, Jaap starts up his scooter just as the minister and De Graaff emerge from the café. The minister shakes Jaap’s hand and tells him that he will see him soon. Jaap replies: “Until next time, I guess” (122).

Anton, Saskia, Sandra, and Saskia’s parents go to a restaurant. Sandra rides in the car with her grandparents, leaving Anton and Saskia alone in their own car. While this ostensibly gives Anton the space to fill Saskia in on the details of his conversation with Takes, he does not do so. Saskia, trained to not ask too many questions of people involved in the war, does not press him. Still though, she observes that Anton does not throw away the piece of paper that Takes has given him—which bears a “scribbled address and telephone number” (122).

When Sandra asks for French fries on the way into the restaurant, her grandmother chastises her, saying that she finds the term “vulgar” (123). She asks Saskia to teach Sandra to “call them pommes frites” (123). De Graaff teases her for her snobbishness. At the restaurant, De Graaff sits at the head of the table and orders for the whole table after refusing to look at the menu. Then, when he looks into Anton’s eyes, he takes Anton out onto the street for a talk.

De Graaff asks Anton how he is, and Anton says the he will be all right. De Graaff then calls Gijs a “damned fool” (124)—saying that when he was tortured during the war he never said a word, and yet “now he is shooting his mouth off all over the place” (124). Anton replies with vagaries regarding his exchange with Gijs that De Graaff scarcely understands. He tells Anton that the important thing is that he keeps his feelings and memories under control: “We’ve been suppressing it all these years—and now come the problems. I hear it from all sides. Twenty years seems to be a kind of incubation period for our disease; all that unrest in Amsterdam must have something to do with it”(124). The two men then re-enter the restaurant at Anton’s suggestion.

After lunch, the family heads to the beach. Alone in the water, Anton finds himself in the cold water beneath a sandbar: “Though he is less than two hundred meters offshore, he no longer felt as if he belonged to the land” (125). All of his surroundings feel foreign to a world which he presently occupies. His teeth begin to chatter, and he swims back as fast as he can, feeling pursued by a terrible danger that lurks just beyond the horizon. When he comes back to his family, he says, simply: “It’s cold farther out” (125).

Later, Saskia asks Anton how he feels. He says that he feels “fine” (126). She then asks: “Can’t you forget it?”(126), and Anton replies: “I have forgotten” (126). He then dozes off while Saskia oils him.

When he awakes, he sees Saskia oiling Sandra and observes children filling holes in the sand with water. He watches Sandra and Saskia enter the water. Moments later, however, Sandra returns to him in tears because a group of boys is hacking a purple jellyfish to death, and the jellyfish can do nothing to defend itself.

Saskia quickly gathers Sandra and her things. She tells Anton that she is going shopping with Sandra in the village and that they will go home afterwards: “First the church, then the burial, and then the visit to the widow’s house” (126). She hurries away with Sandra, not turning around to wave at Anton once they definitively leave the beach.

Anton is then swallowed into a sumptuous dream. In the dream, he feels that he is a dot at the center of a bowl as wide as heaven, while an underground pulse emanates through all that surrounds him. He finds himself in front of a giant, rose-colored crystal door which emanates a strong light. Above the door are two crystal angels. The door has been locked in built-in or melted-in iron bars which are painted pink. He thinks to himself that nothing has changed in all these years—he is home again in Carefree. He enters, yet everything is transformed: there are multitudes of sculptures, statues, and ornaments. He comes upon his father’s study in the back of the house. But its slanting wall has been replaced with a glass addition that is like a large hothouse or winter garden. Inside this addition is a small fountain and “the elegant, chalk-white facade of a Greek temple” (128).

Later, Anton lays on the sofa in his underwear, while Saskia and Sandra are fast asleep. He thinks of Takes and “how everything comes to light sooner or later, and is dealt with and then laid aside” (128). He muses that Mr. and Mrs. Beumer are surely dead, while Fake is perhaps running the business in Den Helder by now. He reflects that his interaction with Takes had been “different: they had wept together” (128). However, he had not wept about his family, but “because a girl had died” (129). He finds himself unable to remember Truus’s last name and imagines her blood on the dune.

He closes his eyes to recall the darkness of the cell he was once held in and remembers the woman’s fingers softly caressing his face. Although he feels that entertaining such memories is dangerous, he does it anyway. He thinks that he should go to Takes and see a photograph of the woman. He ruminates that doing so would replace the vague aspect that he has of her—which is comparable to the awareness that “children have of their guardian angel” (129)—with a definitive image. He also feels that Takes deserves to know the words she spoke to him that night, as she was clearly Takes’s great love. However, he can remember nothing that she said to him that night—only that she had talked a lot and touched his face.

Then, he confronts the photograph he has been staring at all along without realizing it. It is a photograph of Saskia wearing “a black dress down to her ankles, her belly big with Sandra” (129). The narrator continues: “It was true that he had never imagined what the woman whose name seemed to be Truus looked like. From the very beginning he had imagined her looking like this and not otherwise—like Saskia” (130). He realizes that this is what must have clicked for him when he encountered Saskia at the Stone of Scone—that she was “the embodiment of an image that he must have been carrying about in his head, without knowing it, since he was twelve. Her appearance revealed it to him—not as something remembered, but as immediate love, immediate certainty that she must remain with him and carry his child” (130).

He is vexed by this thought, as it feels like an unjust denial of Saskia’s distinct personhood: “She would never have a chance, for she couldn’t be someone else. In a sense, he was involved in murdering her” (130). On the other hand, however, he muses that he wouldn’t be married to Saskia now if he had never met Truus. He senses that his imagination had been busy combining the two women all along. Because he had no idea what Truus looked like, Saskia only looked like the image which Truus aroused in Anton’s imagination. He muses that perhaps this image was rooted, in a Freudian manner, in the image he had of his mother while he was still in the cradle.

He realizes that it is habitual to conjure an image of a patient after learning his or her name. His imagined image, which never matches with the patient’s actual appearance, is immediately forgotten upon his first meeting with the patient. He also harbors imaginary images of author’s names and is sometimes put off or further intrigued by the author once he sees an actual photograph. This ultimately assures him that there is nothing wrong with Saskia’s looking like his idea of Truus:

Truus had, under those circumstances, aroused an image in his mind to which Saskia seemed to respond, and that was fine, for it was not Truus’s image, but his own, and where it came from was unimportant. Besides, maybe the whole thing really worked in reverse. Saskia had touched his heart at first glance, and perhaps this was why he had decided that Truus must have looked the same way (131).

Anton realizes that he is being unfair to Truus, and he decides that it is therefore his duty to know not only her name, but what she looked like.

The heat is receding, and police sirens sound in the distance. Something is happening in the city, “as things had been happening for almost a year” (131). Anton goes upstairs and looks at Saskia and Sandra as they sleep. He has the feeling that he has just skirted “something fatal, something that now seemed to him a dangerous confusion, dizzying cobwebs caused by sunstroke” (131). He goes against his judgment that he must go to sleep and grabs his jacket instead. With a “vague sense that he was still courting danger, he used two fingers to fish the slip of paper out of his breast pocket (132).

Anton has made an appointment with Takes for the next day, at 4:30, following his shift at the hospital. He does not tell Saskia about his appointment. On the Spui, an urban interchange, a group of police cars has gathered. Tension in the city has become routine.

Takes lives behind the Royal Palace on the Dam, “in a shabby, narrow house that he could reach only by slipping between delivery trucks” (132). When Anton arrives, he can see that Takes has been drinking. The two men discuss the recent early release, due to illness, of Willy Lages, who had been the head of the Gestapo in the Netherlands “and as such responsible for thousands of executions and the deportation of one hundred thousand Jews” (133). After the war, he had been sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to imprisonment a few years later. This change had been greeted with mass protests, which Anton had steered completely clear of. Although, as Takes reminds him, Lages had presided over the territory in which Anton lived. Takes sharply criticizes the state apparatus which has orchestrated Lages’s early release, mocking the sympathy and humanity that Lages has been afforded. He muses that he would gladly slit Lages’s throat—"with a pocketknife, if necessary” (134).

Takes then tells Anton that he has called Anton’s father-in-law to learn some information about Anton because “a man should know who he’s dealing with” (134). Anton, not having adopted a war-like mentality, has done no such prior research on Takes. Takes then tells Anton that he was a mathematician, but now survives “thanks to a pension from the Foundation Nineteen Forty-Five, [which] was founded by Mr. A Hitler, who rescued [him] from mathematics” (135). He then tells Anton that he used to work in the medical line—in what he calls an “anatomical institute, somewhere in Holland” (135). He reveals that at this institute, “people were tried there, death penalties were pronounced” (135), and executions—of traitors and infiltrators among the Resistance—ensued. Downstairs, in the basement, these condemned people were given phenol injections straight to the heart, then cut into slices “by other white-clad heroes” (136). Severed organs and body parts “floated in a large basin filled with formaldehyde” (136). Before calling himself “a worthless son of a bitch” (136), Takes declares:“All for the benefit of science, you understand!”(136).

Takes then brings Anton into a stuffy, dark room at the end of a hall in the basement. There is a torn, yellowed map, labeled “Topography of Germany” (137) taped to the wall. Anton sees a faint, pale-pink outline of a lipstick kiss mark planted on the map over the North Sea, and he understands that the mark must have been made by Truus. He wonders whether this basement room is actually a memorial to her. He ruminates about all of the romance that Truus and Takes must have shared.

Then, he sees the photograph. It is shaped like a postcard and stuck behind an electric cable not far from the map:

Saskia. It was Saskia looking at him. Of course, it wasn’t Saskia, it didn’t even look like her, but the expression in the eyes was Saskia’s, just as it had struck him that first time in Westminster Abbey. […] Finally [Truus] had risen out of the darkness—with Saskia’s eyes. He remembered his worries of the night before, but was too excited to realize what this likeness meant(138).

Takes begins to shake Anton, demanding that Anton tell him what Truus said the night they shared a cell. Anton maintains that he cannot remember a thing. When he tells Takes that they were held under a police station in Heemstede, Takes desperately says that he and his comrades could have broken her out.

Anton recalls that experiments with LSD are being conducted at the university for which he works and that these experiments might be able to unlock the memories that lay hidden inside of his brain. He realizes that if Takes knew this, he might be crazy enough to force Anton to volunteer for the experiments. However, Anton feels that the experiments may not awaken the correct memories and that “unexpected ones” (140), which he would not be able to control, might come to the surface instead.

He tells Takes that all he can remember is that Truus told him a long story. Takes reveals that he was married with children to a different woman at the time of the assault, but that Truus was the one he truly loved—although she did not love him back. He recalls that they would have hours-long conversations about morality. He then recounts a story about a time that she got disoriented in the dark on her way back to her home—the exact story that she told to Anton on that fateful night: “Anton [leans] his head back as if he could hear a sound remembered from somewhere, a faint signal that instantly died” (141).

Takes also reveals that he was not above kidnapping the children of Nazis in order to use them as bargaining chips and that he also would have killed those children if a deal could not be made. He again tells Anton that he is “a worthless son of a bitch” who believes in “fight[ing] Fascists with Fascism […] because they don’t understand any other language” (142). He also states that Truus told him to watch out not to become like the Nazis because they would get the better of him if he were to do so. This also echoes statements that she made to Anton on that night, although Anton does not realize it.

Takes then takes an antique gun out of a drawer and sets it down on a table. He tells Anton that it is Truus’s gun. Takes tells Anton the details of the assassination. Truus and Takes were riding next to each other, holding hands like lovers, when Ploeg rode past them. They greeted him cheerfully and let him overtake them. Then, with one hand on the handlebar and the other pulling out the shotgun, Takes had skidded on the snow while shooting Ploeg in the back, and then the stomach. He knew right away that Ploeg was not yet dead. He tried again, but misfired. Then, he cleared the way for Truus, who shot Ploeg twice. Apparently convinced that he was dead, she put the gun back in her pocket and rode past him. That’s when Ploeg raised himself up and Takes screamed at Truus to watch out—and Ploeg shot her—somewhere low in her back.

For Anton, it feels “as if the gun on the table were a weight that dragged[him] along with it into the depths of the past” (144). He now clearly remembers the shots and realizes that the scream he heard, which he could have sworn emanated from a dying man, was Takes’s scream at Truus. Anton notices that “in the ashtray next to the gun, something began to smoulder” (144). He implores Takes to tell him the rest of the story and, ignoring the smoke, asks: “And then?” (144.)

Takes tells Anton that he tried to hoist Truus onto his baggage rack, and then to hide in the bushes with her. However, when the Germans appeared, a woman called from a window and told them where he and Truus were. “Truus [then] gave [him] her gun and a kiss, and that was that, a bit more shooting, and [Takes] was off” (144). Takes reveals that he tried to track down the woman who snitched on them after the war, who is, in his words, “still around somewhere, pretending to be a dear little old grandmother” (144), and that he would have dearly loved to have shown up at her door and murdered her.

Takes then recounts a movie that he watched—about a man who swears that he will shoot his daughter’s rapist and murderer upon the murderer’s release from prison. In the movie, the father ends up not shooting the man because he realizes that the man is merely a victim of his own circumstances. However, its last shot is that of the murderer’s back with a pinprick of light that appears on his back, before engulfing the entire frame. This, for Takes, represents the fact that the father should, indeed, have shot his daughter’s murderer “because his daughter had not been killed on account of circumstances, but by that particular man. And if you don’t follow through, then what you’re saying is that all those who have lived under unfortunate conditions are potential rapists and murderers” (145). Takes then leaves the room.

Anton looks again at the mouth print above the North Sea on the map: “He would have pressed his mouth to [it], but didn’t dare” (146). Wherever he is in the room, Truus’s eyes follow him from the photograph. He puts his hands where she had touched him and closes his eyes. He feels that the world is irredeemably hell and that “life on the planet was a failure” (146)—better to have never happened: “Not until [life] ended, and with it every single memory of all those death throes, would the world return to order” (146).

Anton’s attention is disrupted by “a terrible stench” (146) as something has caught fire inside of the ashtray. Anton dumps leftover whisky on it, “which only ma[kes] it worse” (146). Then he pours water on it, which puts it out. He goes upstairs and joins Takes, who stands by a window from which the sound of sirens and a crowd filters in.

Takes tells him that the man sitting on the opposite side of him at the café on the previous day has committed suicide. The man had predicted that Lage would be released early from prison when his sentence was commuted in 1952 and had sworn that he would blow his own brains out on the day that Lages was released. This sentiment had been laughed off by his friends, but the man had clearly gone through with it. Anton leaves the room as, behind the door, “a smoldering voice on the radio [sings]: ‘Red roses for a blue lady…’” (147).