Postcards From No Man's Land (27 page)

So, with my mind made up, I gave myself to Jacob.

POSTCARD

Growing up is, after all,

only the understanding that one’s

unique and incredible experience

is what everyone shares.

Doris Lessing,
THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK

‘
HAVE A
PANNENKOEK
,’ Hille said.

‘What’s that?’ Jacob asked.

‘A pancake.’

‘Eggs and flour and stuff beaten into a batter and cooked in a frying pan?’

‘I think so. I’m not great on cooking. The French call them
crêpes
? We love them in Holland.’ She smiled across the menu and shrugged. ‘You can have things in it.
Spek
, for instance, which is, er, bacon. Or apple and—
kaneel
?’

‘Sorry, no idea.’

‘Taking you out is hard work.’

‘Sorry again.’

‘No, it’s okay. I like practising my English.’

‘Are you?’

‘I’m talking English, aren’t I?’

‘Taking me out.’

‘I invited you.’

‘Didn’t Wilfred want to come?’

‘Had to finish packing his things.’

‘The bacon will do, thanks.’

‘I’ll have the apple and
kaneel
. Then you can try it and tell me what
kaneel
is. What to drink?’

‘White wine?’ Daan had given him a liking for it.

‘Okay.’

‘We could go Dutch, if you like.’

‘What?’

‘Go Dutch. Don’t you know that expression?’

‘No.’

‘Means we’ll each pay for own meal rather than one of us paying for both.’

‘Why is that Dutch?’

Jacob laughed. ‘No idea. Why ask me?’

‘It’s your language.’

‘So? Can you explain all the expressions you use in Dutch?’

‘No. But I wish I could.’

‘We have lots of Dutch sayings.’

‘Like?’

‘Dutch uncle. A man who isn’t really your uncle but treats you like he is. Dutch courage. The kind of courage people get from drinking a lot of booze to help them do something they don’t want to do … What else? Let’s see … Dutch oven, which means your mouth. Lots of hot air, I suppose.’

‘Charming.’

‘Dutch auction. An auction where the price starts high and comes down step by step till someone buys, instead of starting low and going up.’

‘I know that one. And double Dutch.’

‘Talking nonsense.’

‘But why?’

‘Probably because to us Dutch sounds very difficult to understand, so something double it must be gibberish.’

‘Thanks a lot! It’s no more difficult than Swedish. And what about Chinese? Why not double Chinese? Are there more?’

‘A few, but I don’t know all of them.’

‘Are they all rude about us?’

‘Rude? I suppose mostly they are. Wonder why?’

‘I’d guess history, wouldn’t you?’

‘You mean the time when we fought each other.’

‘Like the Danes are rude about the Swedes.’

‘Yes?’

‘People always make up jokes and say nasty things about people they’ve fought, don’t they? Like we do about the Germans. Or my grandparents do anyway.’

‘Hate has a long memory.’

‘Is that an English expression as well?’

‘It is now. I just made it up. Or at least as far as I remember.’

That Hille laughed out loud made him feel good. He was liking her more and more. Couldn’t take his eyes off her. Especially her wide mouth with its lilting curl-over lower lip. And the pearly lustre of her skin that stirred in him a longing to caress it.

The waitress came and they ordered.

When she had gone, Hille said, ‘You know where you are? This restaurant, I mean.’

The place (to his English eyes, a cross between a pub, a café and a restaurant, all three at once) was full of old soldiers (red berets or blue berets still on their heads, medals still lining their chests) packed round the tables, eating and drinking with their friends and talking English ten to the dozen. Jacob and Hille had taken the last two seats at a little table squashed into a corner. Apart from the waitresses, they were the youngest people there by many years. Jacob had been so occupied by Hille that he hadn’t noticed anything else. Now he looked around and saw there were pictures (real paintings or reproductions, he couldn’t see from where he sat) high up on the walls, which depicted scenes from the battle. He’d seen some of the same pictures in books.

‘I don’t know much about the battle,’ Hille said, ‘battles not being, like you say, my cup of tea. But this place is quite famous.’

‘What’s it called? I didn’t notice.’

‘The Hotel Schoonoord.’

‘Rings a bell. Wasn’t it used as a hospital?’

‘This isn’t the same building. What was left of that one was pulled down because it was so badly damaged. This one was put up on the same place after the war. I know about it because the daughter of the owner wrote a diary of what happened during the battle and it was published. Hendrika van der Vlist. She was twenty-two or -three at the time. It’s really good. Not as great as Anne’s. But you’d like it. And I know you can get it in English because I’ve seen it at the museum about the battle, just along the road from here. We could buy it for you.’

‘Sure.’

‘The museum was the English headquarters, so you might want to see it anyway.’

‘Oh, you mean, the hotel, the Heart something—?’

‘Hartenstein. They show you a film about the battle, and in the cellars they’ve made kind of scenes of how the place was during the battle using real things from those days. And with wax models for the people, you know? Like Madame Tussaud’s. It’s
spookachtig
, I think. But interesting. There’s a nice park behind it with lots of trees. We could have a walk if you want to, it’s really nice.’

‘Great. But listen, we could go Dutch, you know. You really don’t have to pay for me.’

Hille said as the waitress arrived with their food, ‘You’ve told me about your grandfather. You can pay for your meal by telling about you.’

‘Thought there’d be a catch somewhere.’

‘Of course! I’m Dutch, after all. From us, you get nothing for nothing.’

‘Okay, okay!
Pax
!’

With sudden seriousness, lifting her glass in a toast, and looking Jacob square in the eyes, Hille said, ‘
Vrede
forever.’

Just as she did this one of those unaccountable silences
fell of the kind that sometimes occur in a crowd of people, a simultaneous gap in all the conversations. The two words of Hille’s toast filled the silence, as if addressed to the entire room. There was only a second’s hesitation while the words sank in before everybody raised a glass, as if it had been rehearsed, and called out, ‘
Vrede
forever!’ The following silence while the toast hung in the air was broken by one of the old soldiers shouting out, ‘It was for you we did it!’ At which glasses were set down and everybody laughed and clapped or banged the table and cheered.

Hille pulled a what-have-I-done face at Jacob and they both had to suppress giggles of embarrassment.

When it was over Hille said, ‘Give me your plate. There’s something I want to show you. You have mine and taste the
kaneel
and tell me what it is. Do you like
stroop
? A sort of … syrup, I think you call it.’

‘Expect so,’ Jacob said, handing over his plate and taking Hille’s from her. ‘Not something I’ve had.’

‘Lovely and sweet, but not sugary, you know? We have it on our
pannenkoeken
.’

Jacob was sniffing at Hille’s. ‘I can tell you what
kaneel
is just from the smell. Cinnamon.’

‘That’s it, yes. Cinnamon. Try it.’

He cut a sliver. ‘Very tasty.’

‘Would you like it? We can order another.’

‘No, they’re huge. One will do for me.’

Hille had taken a dispenser, turned it upside down and quickly poured a stream of thin treaclish syrup from its nozzle on to Jacob’s pancake, moving the dispenser about as if she were writing with a fat pen. Which, Jacob saw when she held up his plate to show him, she had been. On his pancake in syrup letters expertly shaped, no dribbles or blotches, was his name, but spelt: JAKOB.

‘Smart,’ he said, ‘and clever.’

‘You try on mine.’

She handed him the dispenser. Jacob tried using it as
Hille had. But of course the gummy liquid poured out much faster than he expected. What he achieved was a hardly readable squiggle, a wobbly approximation of his attempt at HILLA.

‘All you need is practice,’ Hille said, as they swapped plates again. ‘I prescribe a
pannenkoek
every day. And if this is an
a
, it should be an
e
.’

‘Well, if it comes to that,’ Jacob said, echoing her mock-tetchy tone, ‘this
k
you’ve given me should be a
c
.’

‘I know, but I liked
k
better. If you don’t, then eat it and it’ll be gone.’

‘I will. Ditto you with your
a
. I’ll start with the offending
k
right here in the middle of this giant flapjack and work my way out.’

‘Good idea … Flapjack?’

‘American for pancake.’

Hille said, chopping out the
a
with a circular swirl of her knife, ‘Maybe we should always start everything from the inside and work to the outside, and not from the outside to the inside. Maybe life would be better that way. What d’you think?’

‘Don’t tell me you’re a philosopher as well as a pancake fanatic.’

‘But I am. I like to think about the meaning of things. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do. And this is really good pancake.’

‘I think everything has a meaning. Especially things that doesn’t seem to have.’

‘Don’t seem to have.’

‘Don’t, don’t. Yes, sorry. Jakob Todd is a good name for a philosopher. A bit—
ouderwets
. What’s that in English? … Sort of ancient—?’

‘Old-fashioned?’

‘Right. Old-fashioned.’

‘Am I old-fashioned? Maybe I am.’

Hille looked up from devouring her pancake, which was
disappearing at about three times the rate of Jacob’s, and considered him with only half-mocking seriousness. ‘Yes, I think that’s true. I agree, you are
ouderwets
. Not out of date or anything. I don’t mean that. Just old-fashioned.’

Jacob put his head down because he wasn’t quite sure what game was in play now. Was she only joking, or actually telling him something she wanted him to know?

‘Is that bad news?’ he asked.

‘Good news,’ Hille said, tucking into her pancake again. ‘I’m getting very pissed off with the way everything has to be new-fashioned. How everything has to be the latest thing. Like, what you’re supposed to wear, and music. All that stuff? I used to think it mattered. Now I think it sucks.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

He laughed with relief.

‘I mean it!’ Hille said with vehemence.

‘I know. Me too!’

‘Then why,’ said Hille starting to laugh with him, ‘why are you laughing?’

‘Because! . .Why are you laughing?’

‘I don’t know! … Because you’re laughing!’

‘So we’re laughing because we’re laughing!’

Their laughter subsided into smiles.

Jacob shrugged.

All at once there was nothing he could say because there was too much to say. And because there were disturbing feelings milling inside him that he had never had before. He didn’t dare put a name to what they meant.

Hille finished her pancake and sat, elbows on the table, chin on her knuckles, staring at him.

After a while she said, ‘I don’t know anything about you really. But it’s like I’ve always known you.’

Jacob was glad he still had some food to finish, though he didn’t want it any longer, as an excuse to avoid her gaze.

When it was obvious he wasn’t going to say anything
Hille said, ‘Have you ever felt like that about anybody?’

There was a different tone in her voice, the edge had gone, the self-assurance.

He waited for a moment while he worked out what he wanted to say, sensing he could either keep things going between them as they had been so far or make something else happen. But he also sensed this something else he didn’t dare name would open his most secret self to another person in a way he had never risked before. Nor had ever wanted to. All those parts of him that his shyness had kept locked up; parts he had never really examined carefully even for himself. As his intuition told him this, for he could not say he thought it in words, he was aware that his heart rate had increased and his temperature had risen with it.

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.’