Free The Assault by Harry Mulisch Page B

about him in surprise, as if he heard something unexpected.
    “Why didn’t you come sooner, Tonny?” Mrs. Beumer called from the kitchen.
    He got up and went to her. From the hall he could see that their bed stood in the back room, probably because Mr. Beumer could no longer climb the stairs. From a whistling kettle, she poured a thin trickle of water over the coffee.
    “This is the first time I’ve returned to Haarlem.”
    “He hasn’t been well at all lately,” Mrs. Beumer said softly. “Just pretend you don’t notice.”
    Of course. What else? Should I burst out laughing and exclaim, “Don’t talk nonsense!” But actually that would probably have been better, he realized.
    “Obviously,” he said.
    “Do you know that you haven’t changed at all? You’re even taller than your father, but I recognized you at once. Are you still living in Amsterdam?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Beumer.”
    “I knew that, because your uncle came right after the Liberation. My husband saw you being driven off in that German car, and we had no idea whether you were still alive. No one knew about anything in those dreadful times. You can’t imagine how often we talked about you. Come.”
    They returned to the living room. When Mr. Beumer saw Anton he once more held out his hand, and Anton shook it in silence. Mrs. Beumer laid the Persian cloth, whose pattern he still remembered, back on the table. She poured the coffee.
    “Do you take sugar and milk?”
    “Just milk, please.”
    She poured some hot milk out of the small saucepan into the wide, low cup.
    “To think that you should never have wanted to see this place again …” she said as she handed him the cup. “Butactually I can understand it. It was just too awful, all that. Someone else has been here several times and stood looking at us from across the street.”
    “Who was it?”
    “No idea. A man.” She handed him the cookie tin. “A biscuit?”
    “Please.”
    “Are you sure you’re comfortable there? Why don’t you sit at the table?”
    “But this is my usual place.” He laughed. “Don’t you remember? When your husband read to me out of
The Three Musketeers
?”
    Mrs. Beumer turned off the radio and sat sideways at the table. She laughed along with him, but a minute later her laughter died and her face turned red. Anton looked away. With thumb and finger he took the skin off his milk exactly in the middle, and lifted it slowly. It folded up like an umbrella, and he draped it over the edge of his saucer. He took a sip of the weak brew. Now something was expected of him, a question about long ago. His should be the opening move, no doubt, but he had no desire to begin. They probably thought that he was terribly disturbed by the past, dreamed about it every night, but the fact was that he almost never thought about it. As he sat before these two old people in this room, at least one of them must imagine him to be quite different from what he was. He looked at Mrs. Beumer. Once more there were tears in her eyes.
    “Does Mr. Korteweg still live here?” he asked.
    “He moved away a few weeks after the Liberation, no one knows where. He never came to say goodbye; neither did Karin. That was very odd. Right, Bert?”
    It was as if she wanted to try once more to involve him in the conversation, and Mr. Beumer’s nodding head seemed to be a sign of agreement, an assertive nodding that would not end till he died—how strange. He hadn’t been offeredany coffee, no doubt because the cup would be empty before it reached his mouth. She must be feeding him when there was no company.
    “Nine years we were neighbors,” said Mrs. Beumer. “We went through the whole War together, and then suddenly they disappear without a word. I’ll never quite understand people. For days there was a pile of aquariums left standing on the doorstep, to be cleared out by the garbage collector.”
    “Those were terrariums,” said Anton.
    “Those glass things. Ach, he was a very unhappy