The master appears in the door and glowers into the classroom. His eyes are dull and disapproving. T can see three new faces,’ he says. ‘From the city, from Amsterdam. Perhaps you are all used to something else at school there, but here there is no talking during my absence. If you don’t understand something, you put up your hand. And I think…’ he seizes my collar and marches me to a desk at the very front, ‘I think it is better if you don’t sit too close together.’
His footsteps echo emphatically through the classroom. He draws the curtains to dim the sunlight which is streaming through the open window. ‘I take it you come from a Christian school?’
I make a movement with my head that I hope can mean ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
‘Where did we get to two days ago, Jochum?’
A boy with very short blond hair and dressed in blue overalls stands up. ‘Deutonomy, master.’
‘Good try, my boy. The Book of Deuteronomy. Moses’ last sermon.’ He reads out a piece from the book, keeps silent for a moment while he looks around the class, and says, ‘Moses is the Old Testament, Jesus the New. Which one of you can tell me the names of the Apostles? I ask because I would like to make willing apostles out of all of you, propagators of the Holy Word and of Our Lord’s Gospel.’
It is quiet in the classroom. I think of Jan, I want to turn around and look at his familiar face. The teacher’s finger points in my direction. ‘You over there, the new boy. What’s your name?’
‘Jeroen, sir.’
‘I’m no sir, we don’t have any sirs around here. I’m called master, so call me that in future, if you don’t mind.’ He looks for the paper on which I have written my name. ‘Oh, with the Vissers, in Laaxum,’ he reads out. ‘Lucky for you, boy, a fine family. Not so, Meint?’
Meint goes red in the face, his answer is hoarse.
‘Well, Jeroen, so you’ve been to a Christian school. Can you tell me the names of the Lord Jesus’ disciples then?’
In Amsterdam I went to Sunday school a few times round about Christmas time, because they used to give you some sweets and a small present. Sometimes I came home with a small coloured print that had a text written on the back. I had always stored such treasures away in a metal box for safekeeping. ‘Holy cards,’ Mummy had laughed, ‘we were given those too, once upon a time.’ I look around the classroom. The children are staring at me curiously, except for Jan who sits at his desk with a vacant smile, legs spread wide, his hands tightly gripping his bare knees.
I take a leap in the dark, as one might jump into the sea, nostrils pinched tightly together. ‘Joseph,’ I begin, for that is a name I remember clearly, ‘David, Moses, and Paul, uh…’ But that makes just four. Ought I to have added Jesus as well? I hear nervous sniggers and can see Meint looking down at the floor in embarrassment.
The master walks to the communicating door and says to the other class with a triumphant ring to his voice, ‘Jantsje, that new member of your family doesn’t seem to know very much. Can you tell him the names of the twelve apostles?’
From the other room, sounding hollow and as far away as the bottom of an echoing well, I can hear Jantsje’s light little voice smoothly reel off a list of names. ‘And who betrayed Jesus?’
‘Judas, master.’ A chorus of voices.
I hope that Jantsje and Meint won’t tell on me at home. I am terribly ashamed, my ears are burning. Judas, I ought to have known that name. And curse my luck, right in front of the class. Now I’ll always be picked on first, you wait and see.
The master stands in the doorway between the two classes. ‘Let us pray.’ Uncertainly I fold my hands under the desk. I can feel the master watching me closely. It’s as if I were telling a lie just by folding my hands.
‘Oh Lord Our God,’ I hear, ‘we thank You for this morning, in which You have once again allowed us to be together. We beseech You, oh Lord, to bless us, and our new classmates also. And we beseech You, Lord, to bless the families of these children, families who are suffering hunger and want, who are sick and dying for lack of food, lack of succour and lack of hope. Grant this, oh Lord.’
Behind me, I can hear stifled sobs and I become aware of an achingly desolate feeling breaking loose inside me.
‘And who are suffering the blackest and most bitter circumstances. Remember them, Lord, and lend them Your infinite, never-ceasing strength and succour.’
It is beating up inside me in waves, slamming through me with deafening booms. It will not be held back. In jolting heaves the despair erupts from my mouth, my eyes, my nose, retching waves of dribbling, snivelling sorrow. I am like some alien invalid, someone who no longer has control over his body and is in the throes of grotesque and humiliating convulsions. I can hear my sorrow raging through the astonished silence of the classroom.
‘You two stay right where you are.’ I can tell that the master is speaking in my direction. ‘The rest of you may go.’
Now the master will give me a friendly and understanding talk, he will console me and tell me that it won’t be as bad as all that, that Amsterdam will be spared sickness, hunger and death. And he’ll forgive me for the apostles as well. The master stands right in front of me. In vain I wipe my nose on my sleeve but the snot keeps on coming.
‘You have just proved that you lack faith in the Lord,’ he says brusquely. He looks at the girl and at me as if there is something repugnant about us. ‘That was wicked of you, a bad example to your classmates. And it is also most ungrateful to the people here who have taken you into their homes so lovingly. If anything like this should ever happen again,’ he sticks his hands into his brown dustcoat and nods curtly, ‘then I shall feel obliged to talk to your foster parents about it.’ He gives an angry cough. ‘That’s all for now. But don’t you forget it.’
We slide out of our desks and disappear from the room. The girl’s reproachful gaze is red and tear-stained now. We say nothing to each other and walk across the playground and up the road without a word. I look for Jan.
Warmth seeps down between the branches of the trees, and I breathe in the strong summer smells: grass, dung and fat, well-fed cattle. The light is dazzling. Meint is standing at a corner waiting patiently for me. I run up to him with relief: the first sign of brotherhood!
Chapter 5
Dear Mummy and Daddy,
Best wishes from Friesland. We got here all right and it was a nice journey. I’m fine, and being well looked after.
I am with a family with seven children.
Five of them are at home. The oldest daughter works on a farm near here. She lives there too, but sometimes she comes round here. She is very nice.
They have a little brother but he doesn’t live at home either. He had to be boarded out with another family when one of the girls here got polio. After that the family refused to let him come back home because they’d grown too fond of him. Isn’t that strange?
I eat a lot, plenty of everything. They want me to grow big and fat. Tonight we’re having a duck that got caught in Hait’s nets. Oh, I forgot, the father here is a fisherman. He goes out to sea every day in his boat.
I call the father and mother here Hait and Mem, that’s Frisian. Luckily I knew that from Afke’s Ten and other books I got out of the library. Frisian is a very difficult language. When they talk to each other I can’t understand a thing.
Jan Hogerforst lives around here too. There is a large farm and that’s where he works. I can see his farm from here, far away in the distance. We are good friends and often play together. I’m glad he lives close to me, because now I can visit him a lot. We talk about home. Jan says that Amsterdam is a long way from here, but that isn’t true because I looked it up in the atlas at school. If I got into the sea at Laaxum, all I’d need to do would be to swim across at an angle, and I’d be back home with you.