Kees
The bones knocked against the belly of the pot as he poked them, pushing them into a solution of hot water, bleach, and Lux soap. When he decided the water was about to boil, he tapped the wheel of the petroleum burner with his index finger until the flames sputtered and objected. He slid the metal cap over them, depriving the wick of oxygen. Smoke spiralled towards the cobwebs dangling from the ceiling. The smell reached its long arm down his throat. He turned to the broken window, breathing deeply, sucking clean air into his lungs.
His anatomy book was open and ready, with the pages turned to the illustrations of human skulls from all sides and angles. He had prepared his worktop as an operating table, arranging his instruments on a grimy old sheet. At least now, his tools would come in useful – three scalpels, four pairs of scissors, and even his tissue forceps and clamps of all shapes and sizes, instruments he needed no more now medical school was out of the question. So much had changed since Hitler had invaded Holland. But Hitler wasn’t the cause of his academic failure.
He took the wooden tongs from the nail in the beam above the window and picked out the bones from the pot to dry them on the windowsill. Then, he dug his favourite tool from his pocket – his sculpting knife – folding his fingers around its handle. The smooth wood on his skin fitted so comfortably in the palm of his hand. He raised the steel blade upwards towards his puckered lips as if to kiss it and felt its coolness press on his mouth; the metal smelled of blood.
He turned to what he had been working on – three tiny skulls, perfect miniature replicas of human skulls the size of the distal phalanx of his thumb, and admired his work. The intricate detail of the jaw, the hollows he had carved for eye sockets, and the fine zigzagging cranial sutures running across the tiny scalps. He smiled, picked up a fresh piece of bone, a femur segment, and started to carve a ribcage.
The door behind him creaked, and fresh air whipped around his neck.
‘Corrie said you’d be here,’ Ab said.
Kees turned on the wooden stool to face his friend and smiled.
‘Hello stranger,’ he said.
‘If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must come to the mountain…’ His voice trailed off as his eyes caught the bones in Kees’s hand. ‘What are you working on?’
Kees glanced at his finished project as if through Ab’s eyes. He picked up a box from his worktop. ‘I think this is the best one yet,’ Kees said, holding up the walnut box and showing it to Ab. He had arranged several skeletons at various stages of development – an infant, a child, and a teenager with wings between the arms and the ribcages. The bones of the arms were adjusted with tiny pins on the backing.
‘Don’t you ever tire of making these things?’ Ab said. ‘I thought you wanted to be a doctor above everything else.’ He turned and glanced around the garden shed – ‘So this is the new surgery?’
Kees scratched his neck. ‘Moeke banned me from working in the house… because of the smell.’ Kees stood up, ‘Anyway, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be back in Amsterdam studying the real thing?’
‘Don’t you read the newspapers anymore?’
Kees squeezed his lips together in a false smile. Ab was right. Kees had stopped reading newspapers since the Nazis ruled the country. The news made him sad.
Kees and Ab had always been friends, ever since junior infants. They both studied medicine in Amsterdam and would have been going on to the second year in the new semester if Kees hadn’t returned home in the spring because of finances and Ab a few months later because of the Nazis.
‘Banning Jews can’t go on forever,’ Kees said. ‘You’ll resume your studies soon enough.’
‘We’ll see,’ Ab said. ‘At least you have a hobby.’
Kees returned the box to his workbench. ‘They’re not ordinary puppets. They’re special. The souls of the deceased animals transfer into them.’
‘Do animals have souls?’ Ab picked up the box and peered at Kees’s sculptures. ‘Wouldn’t it be something if it were true?’
‘Corrie says they come to life when no one is watching.’
‘As do her dolls and teddy bears, I’m sure.’
‘Children have a sixth sense, you know.’
Ab stared into the box as if trying to see what was happening in those hollow skulls.
‘Consider using human bones,’ he said. ‘See what happens?’
‘Human bones?’ Kees asked. ‘Where would I find human bones?’ Kees sank into thought. He saw the bins after autopsies at the university in his mind’s eye. Hands and fingers. All he needed was one digit. It would be small, but he could carve a skull from that.
Ab cleared his throat and punched Kees’s shoulder. ‘Have I started those wheels of your mind turning?’ Ab asked, smiling. ‘Anyway,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t mind a chance at immortality. When I’m dead, you may cut off, say, my little finger.’ Ab raised his pinkie. ‘Sculpt something from this, a skull, or I don’t know… you decide. You’re the bone sculptor. As long as I turn out pretty and I can fly.’
Kees shuddered. He glanced into the sky through the opened door behind Ab. The sun was shining in a faultless blue sky.
‘It could be the last day of summer,’ Kees said. ‘Want to go for a swim?’
He walked around Ab, out of the shed, and loped across the lawn. The trees rustled, and leaves were falling. A faint smell of decay lingered on the warm breeze that swept in from the Nether-Rhine. Kees entered the French windows of the breakfast room and returned a couple of minutes later with a red and yellow checkered blanket and two swimsuits. He tossed them to Ab and spread the blanket on the lawn by the pool.
Ab chose the dark blue swim suit and changed while holding a towel around his waist. He walked to the pool and dived in. Kees followed. He took off his shirt and tie, flipped off his shoes, and, not bothering to change into swimming trunks, he plunged into the pool expecting the water to be warm. But it was freezing. He clenched his jaw as he swam, slicing through the glistering surface towards the steps. Ab was the first to climb out of the water.
‘When did that pool turn so cold?’ Ab said. He noticed Kees was still wearing his trousers. He looked away, glancing up at one of the bedroom windows on the first floor.
Kees followed his friend’s eyes to his sister, Punica, who was looking down at them, her face veiled in the lace curtains. Ab waved for her to join them. She pulled back.
‘Don’t encourage her,’ Kees said, finally changing into his dry swimming trunks.
Ab sat on the blanket and smiled, taking a cigarette from his trouser pocket. Kees watched him as he tried to hide his delight at hearing Punica liked him.
Not five minutes later, Punica came prancing through the open French windows of the breakfast room and scudded down the few stone terrace steps, taking the last one with a hop, landing on the lawn with both feet.
‘Why does she always do that?’ Ab whispered, obviously enchanted by Punica’s entrance.
‘Do what?’ Kees said. ‘Follow us?’
‘No, I meant never taking the last step of anything, whether it’s the rung of a ladder or the last step of the stairs. She always hops down with both feet.’
Punica took off her bathrobe and dropped it onto the blanket by the boys’ feet. She wore a white bathing suit with a bow under her breasts and looked like a fashion model; she trampled over the blanket, hurrying towards the pool. She paused on the tiles, and as she curled her toes over the edge, she pulled a white bathing cap with rubber floppy flowers over her blonde curls.
‘Should we warn her?’ Ab whispered, smiling.
‘Why are you whispering?’ Punica asked.
She spoke confidently and sounded older than her age.
‘Yes, why are you whispering, Ab?’ Kees asked, mimicking her low, hoarse voice. She had a cyst nestling on her vocal cords since she was twelve.
‘What did you want to tell me?’ she asked.
Kees threw a towel into Ab’s face to shut him up.
She bent forward and dived into the pool. Her flowery bathing cap popped above the glistening surface a few seconds later. She let out a loud, hoarse screech.
‘We tried to warn you,’ Kees said, laughing.
‘Oh,’ she shrieked, tiptoeing towards the steps, keeping her arms above the water. She pulled herself up quickly, almost falling on the silvery, slippery steps. Then, hugging herself, she ran towards them. She tried to wipe the cold water from her skin and pulled at her bathrobe, but Kees was sitting on it. He heaved himself up a bit, leaning on one hand, but she could not pull it free from under him.
‘It’s freezing,’ she gasped, shuddering.
Ab yanked the bathrobe from under Kees and wrapped it around her. He rubbed her back to warm her up. Kees looked away – she was only fourteen, for God’s sake. He bit his tongue to keep himself from commenting.
Ab sat down beside Kees and nudged him. ‘Tell her what I said about using human bones for your sculptures,’ he said.
‘Human bones?’ Punica asked, eyebrows arched. She peered at Kees, anxious for him to tell her.
The hair on Kees’s neck rose, and his cheeks started to glow. Punica glanced at Ab, who looked away.
‘Okay,’ she said, turning towards the house, ‘I’ll leave you two to it.’
‘No… no, come, sit down,’ Ab shoved over, making room for her on the blanket.
‘So, Kees, how have you been sleeping recently?’ Ab asked him.
Ab was trying to get a conversation going; Kees knew that. Usually, he would have loved to talk about his dreams. At university, they kept discussing what they could mean. But after having returned home, everything about them felt off. And he felt weird for dreaming such nonsense. His stepmother had told him all the Russian fairy tales as bedtime stories when he was still a child. However, owning up to still dreaming about children’s fairy tales in front of his younger sister embarrassed him. He turned crimson.
‘Are you still hoping to travel to Russia someday?’ Ab asked.
Kees helped himself to one of Ab’s cigarettes, thinking hard about how he could change the subject. Ab automatically handed him a lighter.
‘Kees has told me all about the snow maiden at university,’ Ab said to Punica.
‘His nocturnal adventures.’ Punica sighed. ‘Do you have one for me too?’ she asked Ab, pretending to hold a cigarette between her index and middle finger. He reached her one, and she slipped it between her lips. She leaned in as he flicked the spark wheel of his lighter.
‘Last night, I dreamed I was a stag,’ Kees said, pretending coolness.
‘I’m going back in.’ Punica bent down, picked up her bathrobe from the grass, and started towards the house.
Ab stopped her, taking her arm.
‘They’re just dreams. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just his head. His mind is always so full of thoughts—’
‘I know. But—,’ she whispered and glanced at Kees, who pretended to be busy, wringing out his trousers as he listened closely. ‘He is so sensitive,’ she said, sighing. ‘He hasn’t been the same since my father had him come home from university. Carving those weird skeletons at all hours, unable to sleep, and when he finally falls asleep, he has crazy dreams. I think he’s losing his mind.’
The gate screeched open, and Ab and Punica jumped in fright. Kees and Punica’s father entered the garden. He was wearing a black uniform they hadn’t seen him wear before, a collaborator’s uniform of the National Socialists – the Dutch Nazi movement known as the NSB.
Ab’s face turned white; he avoided Mr Mandemaker’s eyes as he gathered his clothes. Punica stared at her father, her mouth hanging open.
‘I have to go,’ Ab said, putting on his trousers.
‘Hello, Ab,’ Mr Mandemaker said. ‘It’s been a while since we saw you here.’
Punica laid her hand on Ab’s sleeve, holding his arm. ‘Please… don’t be offended,’ she said softly. ‘The uniform can’t be serious—’
‘I better get back,’ Ab said to her. He pulled the jacket over his shirt, rolled up his tie, and put it in his pocket.
‘Stay for dinner,’ Kees said. ‘My mother would love that. You know how fond she is of you, and you haven’t even been in to say hello to her.’
‘I can’t,’ Ab muttered, crouching while sliding his bare feet into his leather shoes. Straightening his back, he rolled his socks into a ball and slid them into his other pocket. Ab shook his head, pinching his lips together. He touched Punica’s arm lightly before he hurried away, leaving the gate open behind him. He disappeared behind the garden wall. A steel screech of a whistle; a German voice shouting, ‘Halt!’
Punica gasped and sprinted towards the gates.
Two men in an SS uniform were holding an old gentleman at gunpoint. The man, dressed in a black overcoat and a high black hat, sank to his knees. Ab passed the Jewish man and disappeared around the corner into Arke Noach Street. The SS men pushed the old gentleman to the ground, and one of them raised his army boot above the old man’s head. He lowered it onto the man’s neck, where it froze, pinning the man onto the cobbled street like an animal.
‘Oh my god,’ Punica said.
Kees had followed her to the gate and would not let her go out onto the street.
‘Punica, come inside!’ their father shouted.
‘Pap wants you inside,’ Kees said.
‘Kees, please? We can’t ignore what is happening around us.’
‘Come with me, Pun.’ Kees held out his hand to her.
He hadn’t called her Pun for a long time, not since returning home from university.
‘I never thought I’d see Father wearing… a Nazi uniform,’ Punica whispered, biting back tears.
‘He’s been out of work for ages. People do what they need to do.’
‘So, you’re making excuses for him now?’
Kees squeezed his lips together, lost for words.
Her hand slipped into his. ‘Are you his puppet?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘His puppet? Always doing what he wants you to do, pulling your strings whichever way he wants? You should be in college. You always wanted to be a doctor. Wasn’t that what those bones were about? But all you do these days is make puppets and now maybe you are becoming a puppet yourself, doing exactly what Pap wants you to do. I know about you…’
The chill of the approaching winter swept over the garden. Kees placed his arm around her shoulder and steered her towards their father. Kees stopped by the red chequered blanket on the lawn and picked it up. He wrapped it around Punica’s shoulders. ‘Your lips have turned blue,’ he said.
‘Kees, you need to stand up for what you believe. Even to him,’ she said, gesturing to her father. ‘Even him. Do you understand? Or you’ll lose everything.’
Kees nodded. ‘Go inside. Ab should be safely home by now.’
Their father waited for them by the French windows. Punica stared at Kees.
A lorry came to a rumbling stop, the brakes puffing and gasping, and men roaring in that awful language of theirs. Machine-gun fire rattled for never-ending seconds. Punica pressed her hands on her ears and screamed from the pit of her stomach. Kees raised his hands to her face, but she pushed them away. She ran past him over the lawn, onto the gravel path, and past her father, who still awaited her on the stone steps to the breakfast room and disappeared into the house.
