Postcards From No Man's Land

  Keeping a grip on himself, he decided that whatever he said, he wanted it to be true. Or at least, as true as words could be for an experience he hardly understood.

  Having forced himself to take his time finishing his pancake, putting his knife and fork down, lifting his head and at last looking Hille straight in the eyes, he spoke quietly and with deliberate care.

  ‘No, I haven’t felt like that about anybody. But today I have felt … I don’t know quite how to put this … That I’ve met someone who I’ve been waiting to meet for … Well, forever is a big word, so let’s say … For a long time.’

  Hille didn’t blink. But her pale face blushed as he was sure his own had as well.

  ‘Dunno why I feel like that,’ he added. ‘Dunno how it can happen so suddenly. Dunno what to say about it.’

  Hille nodded.

  And just when the intensity of the moment was about to become unbearable Hille unfolded her fingers and with a movement that could not be mistaken for accident laid her right hand, palm up, on the edge of the table half way between them. As if it were a magnet to his metal, Jacob laid his left hand, fingers to palm, on hers.

  Another silence while they gave all their attention to the flow of current. Cheerful noise from another world went on around them.

  ‘Where to begin?’ Jacob said at last. ‘There’s so much.’

  ‘Inside out?’ Hille said.

  ‘I feel like I’m inside out already!’

  She chuckled. ‘Me too!’

  ‘Outside in? For a breather.’

  ‘The park? Behind the museum.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some nice places.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Among the trees.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the sun. Beautiful today.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  After looking round the Hartenstein Museum, where they bought an English copy of Hendrika van der Vlist’s diary, Oosterbeek 1944, and a Parachute Regiment T-shirt as a souvenir for Sarah, they wandered in to the park and found a hide-away spot under some trees.

  ‘Remember Anne’s first kiss from Peter van Daan?’ Jacob said.

  ‘Through her hair,’ Hille said, ‘half on her ear and half on her cheek.’

  ‘She was nearly fifteen.’

  ‘Made me laugh the first time I read it. I must have been about thirteen then, and already knew I liked kissing a lot!’

  ‘How old were you when you had your first serious kiss?’

  ‘Eleven. A boy called Karel Rood. He was fourteen. Everybody wanted him for a boyfriend. We thought he was very beautiful. Now he’s a domkop and as attractive to kiss as a slak. And don’t ask me the English for it because I don’t know. Slides along the ground, sticky and wet?’

  ‘A slug?’

  ‘Anyway, not nice to kiss. He was good at it then, though. What about you?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of girlfriends. But I’m not as good at it as you are, I think. Expect you’ve had more practice, like writing with syrup.’

  ‘You’re not so bad. You have very kissable lips as well. We can have some more practice now if you like.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘After Anne has her first kiss,’ Jacob said, ‘she goes on and on about whether she should tell her father what she and Peter are getting up to. Remember?’

  ‘Sitting in the attic with their arms round each other,’ Hille said. ‘And taking turns to lay their heads on each other’s shoulders.’

  ‘And that’s before they have a real mouth-to-mouth smacker. Which doesn’t happen for eleven more days. Imagine waiting all that long! No wonder she’s trembling when it happens.’

  ‘Thought I knew the Diary but I don’t know it as well as you do.’

  ‘I remember about her first kiss because I was kind of fixated on Peter for a while. You know I told you how I used to highlight passages in orange. Well, when I had this thing about Peter I highlighted all the passages that had anything to do with him in green. Then I read them at one go, all the green passages, so that I could concentrate only on what Anne did with him, what she thought about him, and all that.’

  ‘Why? Why do that?’

  ‘Because I kept thinking what I’d have done if I’d been him, and how I would have behaved. The two longest green passages are about her first and second kisses. I kept thinking: Why is Peter hanging about? Why doesn’t he get on with it? I know I would have.’

  ‘I wonder if you would have done, if you really had been him. Well, not him, but yourself, like you are now, but then. Because you can only ever be yourself, can’t you? Poor Peter. In nineteen forty-four, when life was different from the way it is now, sex especially, locked up in a few rooms for two years with all those adults watching him all the time. Would you have done any better?’

  ‘I know. You’re right. But I was only fourteen, fifteen, when I was thinking like that.’

  ‘I’ll forgive you, then.’

  ‘I’m relieved! And will you tell your father what you’ve been up to with an Englishman in the park, like Anne tells her father about what she was up to with Peter?’

  ‘Might. Might not. Does it matter?’

  ‘What would he say if you did?’

  ‘Hope you enjoyed yourself.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ll need to try some more to find out.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Do you have a kissing boyfriend at the moment?’ Jacob said.

  ‘No,’ Hille said. ‘I had one till about three weeks ago. But at the moment I’m boyfriendless.’

  ‘Why did you split up?’

  ‘Oh dear! Well, he was handsome and everything like that, you know. Good at sex. And funny. And always very nice to me. Gave me flowers. Brought me presents when he didn’t have to. Wrote me love letters. Many of them. Which I liked very much … More than I liked him, I think now. Anyway, I really had it bad for him, for six months, about. He was, let’s say, my first real boyfriend.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘This will sound awful, but honestly, I started to feel teleurgesteld … What’s that in English? … Disappointed.’

  ‘Disappointed?’

  ‘Difficult to put into words. Especially for me English words … It was like for Anne with Peter. She says the same. I remember exactly her words, because she doesn’t use ordinary Dutch and I liked it so much the first time I read it that I said it over and over. She says: dat hij geen vriend voor mijn begrip kon zijn. Which means something like … he was not a friend for my understanding.’

  ‘You mean: Not a friend who understands me.’

  ‘No, not only that. Not really that at all. More like: Not one who is of my same mental and spiritual level … Not a friend of what I am … who I am … It’s difficult!’

  ‘Not a soul mate.’

  ‘Perhaps that. It’s kind of poetic how she puts it.’

  ‘Not someone you’ve been waiting to meet all your life.’

  ‘Ha! No! And besides, he—Willem, I mean—was getting very serious. Very serious. Even talking about marriage. I mean! I know he was three years older than me, but marriage! At my age? Not me, thanks. So I said goodbye.’

  ‘And there’s no one else?’

  ‘Oh, poor me! How will I get along! No, no one.’

  ‘Can I apply for the vacancy?’

  ‘Are you available?’

  ‘Entirely unemployed.’

  ‘You’ll have to pass a big test.’

  ‘To check my qualifications?’

  ‘And if you pass the test, there’ll be a long trial period before you’re offered a contract.’

  ‘I could say the same to you.’

  ‘Sure. Okay. I’d expect that. It’s a two-way contract.’

  ‘Let’s start right now with more of the practical exam in kissing and cuddling. Just to find out if the job is worth applying for.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Don’t you think life is very iffy?’ Jacob s
aid.

  ‘What does that mean? Iffy,’ Hille said.

  ‘Well, look: If I hadn’t fallen out with my father, and if my mother hadn’t got ill when she did, and if she hadn’t been kept in hospital as long as she was, and if my sister wasn’t such a—what did you call that boy who gave you your first kiss? Dom something?’

  ‘Domkop.’

  ‘Sounds just right for my sister, whatever it means. So, to continue: If my mother hadn’t had to stay in hospital, and if my sister wasn’t such a domkop, I wouldn’t have gone to stay with my grandmother. And if my grandmother hadn’t given me The Diary of Anne Frank, and if I hadn’t fallen in love with Anne, and if my grandmother hadn’t broken her thigh, which kept her from coming to Holland, and if she hadn’t sent me instead to visit the woman who took care of my grandfather, and if my grandfather hadn’t been in the Paras, and if he hadn’t fought in the Battle of Arnhem, and if he hadn’t been wounded, and if he hadn’t been rescued by the Dutch family, and if he hadn’t died while they were looking after him—if none of all that had happened I wouldn’t have met you and we wouldn’t be sitting here engaging in a bit of wanton nooky—’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Billing and cooing.’

  ‘Again!’

  ‘Amorous philandering.’

  ‘Talk English, domkop!’

  ‘I am talking English. You mean, talk Dutch, I think.’

  ‘Well, why not? Why should I do all the hard work?’

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, if all these ifs hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here with you. And I would be very very sorry about that.’

  ‘How could you be sorry about it, if it hadn’t happened? If it hadn’t happened you wouldn’t know about it. So you couldn’t be sorry about it not happening.’

  ‘Ah, clever clogs, but it will have happened in one of my alternative lives. You know—the lives hot-shot scientists tell us we are living at the same time as this one we know about. Which being so, how do you know that what happens in one of your alternative lives doesn’t sometimes leak through into your consciousness in this life, and make you sad that you aren’t living that particular alternative life instead of this one? Don’t you sometimes feel depressed for no reason you can think of? I do. And maybe that’s why. We’ve had a leak from an alternative life and want that life now. Like wanting an ice cream when you were little, which you knew was in the freezer, but your mum wouldn’t let you have it.’

  ‘You do talk a lot when you get going.’

  ‘Only to the right person. With the right person I do like talking, I admit. D’you mind? Should I shut up?’

  ‘No, I like it. Usually, I’m the one who talks a lot. And I like watching the funny way this thing, your Adamsappel, goes up and down when you talk.’

  ‘Only, the point I was making—if you don’t mind taking your finger off my Adam’s apple because it’s nearly making me gag up my pannenkoeken—is how iffy life is. Makes you wonder what life would be like if there weren’t any ifs at all.’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dead. Life would be dead. If there weren’t any ifs we wouldn’t be here. Nobody would be. We would not be. So we’d be the same as dead.’

  ‘You mean, all life is just one big if?’

  ‘Isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘It is now, thanks. And, now you come to mention it, have you noticed that life has an if in it? I mean the word. L, i, f, e. So the iffyness of life was there all the time. I just hadn’t noticed. What a domkop!’

  ‘Not in Dutch it isn’t.’

  ‘Why? What’s life in Dutch?’

  ‘Leven.’

  ‘Spelt like how?’

  ‘I get the English letters wrong sometimes. I’ll write it on your hand with my finger.’

  ‘L … e … v … e … n.’

  ‘Yes. Leven.’

  ‘Okay. Hm, that felt nice. And it really gives the game away, doesn’t it. E, v, e in the middle. You Dutch don’t have an if in your life, you have an Eve. The English are all ifs and the Dutch are all Adam and Eve.’

  ‘And don’t you like the Dutch kind of life more than the Engels? So let’s get rid of your domkop English ifs and get back to the nice Dutch Adam and Eve stuff.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Talking of dead,’ Jacob said.

  ‘At the moment I like the kissing best,’ Hille said.

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘I am serious.’

  ‘But seriously serious. There’s something I want to ask you.’

  ‘Okay, ask.’

  ‘I told you about the old lady, Geertrui, and seeing her in hospital yesterday.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What I didn’t tell you is she’s going to have an assisted death in a few days.’

  ‘Ja … So?’

  ‘Well … I wondered what you think about it. About assisted death itself, I mean, not just hers in particular.’

  ‘There’s been so much talk about it here, I’m almost tired of hearing about it. A friend of mine at school, Thea, a relative of hers, an aunt, had an assisted death. Her aunt was in bad pain, and couldn’t do anything for herself any more. All she wanted was to die. And everybody agreed that would be best. The right thing to do. Thea as well, who loved her aunt very much. Afterwards, Thea had a really bad time. I mean so bad she was ill, away from school for days. She felt so guilty and so sorry. She kept thinking there must have been more they could have done. Or that they’d been selfish, wanting her aunt dead so that they wouldn’t have to suffer her pain with her and look after her. But still, even when Thea was ill, she said she knew they really had done the best thing. But that didn’t stop the bad feelings. She still has them sometimes, when she’s feeling low. But Thea herself also says she knows that people often do feel bad when someone they love has died. Doesn’t matter how the person died, they still feel guilty. And that’s true. I know myself. When my grandmother died last year, I felt bad, even though she died all of a sudden of a heart attack. I felt guilty, as if I’d killed her. Or I hadn’t done all I could to make her happier. Or tell her how much I loved her. So maybe it’s always going to be bad for the friends and the family, however a person dies. My opinion is that we should be allowed to die … fatsoenlijk … What’s that in English? Properly? … No … decently …?’

  ‘With dignity?’

  ‘That’s it. With dignity. But more. With integriteit.’

  ‘With integrity.’

  ‘Yes, with dignity and integrity. I think everyone should have such a right. People who are against it say evil people, like Hitler, would use a euthanasia law to kill people they don’t like or want removed. But it seems to me that evil people don’t need a law to do it, they do it anyway. Hitler did, and Stalin as well. And, you know—serial killers. That’s why they’re evil. And I also think that if there aren’t proper euthanasia laws and proper rules and, what do you call them?—safety guards—’

  ‘Safe guards.’

  ‘—about how it can be done and when, and such things, assisted deaths will still happen, because people want them. But without laws people have to do it in awful ways and against the law, making everybody who knows the person feel like a criminal. And it shouldn’t be like that. Here in the Netherlands the doctors and the government made an agreement about it, but there isn’t a proper law yet, but I hope there will be soon.’

  ‘The thing is, though, it seems to me, people should take part in making the decision about their death, and some people can’t because they aren’t capable any longer. Like very sick people, or people with serious head injuries.’

  ‘That’s why we should make up our minds about what we want while we’re still young and capable. And we should sign a proper legal document that’s a record of what we’ve decided. I have one.’

  ‘You mean, you’ve already decided when you want to die?’

  ‘Not when. More like when I don’t want to be kept alive. If I’m knocked down in the street, for instance, and
never become conscious again, or get ill from some disease that makes me not able to think, or something like that. I have a Euthanasiepas, which I carry around with me. And my family and our doctor and our lawyer all know what’s on it and have a copy of what I want.’

  ‘You’ve got it with you?’

  ‘Of course. In case anything would happen and the police or hospital doctors need to know.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘Sure.’ …

  ‘It’s just like a passport. With your photo like a passport photo.’

  ‘Don’t look at it. It makes me look stupid.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I won’t. What’s all this?’

  ‘Addresses. Naaste relatie, my nearest relative. Huisarts, our family doctor. Gevolmachtigde, our attorney. So that the police or whoever can contact them quickly.’

  ‘And this here?’

  ‘The list of my conditions.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh—that I’m not to be kept alive by artificial methods if my brain is too damaged to repair. Or if I will never be able to feed myself again or look after myself. Things like that.’

  ‘And your parents let you do this?’

  ‘Why not? Aren’t I old enough to make up my own mind about my life and my future? We talked about it, naturally, because it’s important. At first they weren’t very positive. But I persuaded them. Now they agree completely, and each of them, my mother and father, has their own Euthanasiepas. I’m really proud of them for that, because they were against it at first, for themselves, even though they wouldn’t have stopped me doing it. It was harder for them. They belong to an older generation, you know? They were born after the war, but not so long after, and my grandparents were still very prejudiced by it, the occupation and Hitler and the death camps and what happened in the Winter of the Hunger. My father’s family hid a Jew, like many Dutch families did. They remembered all that and any talk of putting people to death upset them very much. And this influenced my parents. I understand all that. But we don’t have to be held back because of it, do we? Yes, it’s a difficult problem to solve, but that doesn’t mean we should refuse to try, does it? In my opinion it’s one of the most important problems our generation will have to face, because of how many people are living longer and science can keep us alive so long, even when we aren’t functioning properly. So I think we have to give people the right to decide about their death. And I’m proud of my parents because they faced it, and listened to me, and changed their minds. I think that was brave of them.’