their coats. In the second week of June I saw a long queue outside the school building in Grote Hond Straat, the very building where I did my democratic duty for years by lining up every now and then with my ID and my polling card to spin the wheel called ‘elections’ until I was sick to death of it, until I no longer felt like making a fool of myself in the eyes of the powers that be, who, because of their bureaucratic zeal can never be trusted and have always been occupiers, and always ready to lie flat on their backs as soon as some other power takes over. That same school building was where the Jews had to buy their stars of David (three stars for one franc), get a battery of stamps on their identity cards and sign neatly for receipt. Spit on the grave of Napoleon, who apparently introduced the scourge of bureaucracy to these parts, ‘for the greater good’ as they say, but in reality for the benefit of a civil service that one and a half centuries later was easily seduced into cannibalism. Our leaders are lackeys, son. That’s the tragicomedy: inside every ruler there’s an underling trembling in terror. Meanwhile the streets were full of people wearing stars. Some of them seemed ashamed, as if they’d contracted a foul illness for all to see. Others held their noses in the air proudly, prouder than ever of what we may as well call their origins. And we, non-Jewish residents of this city that prides itself on its roll-out-the-barrel and pull-the-other-one sense of humour, thought at first that it was a joke on the part of those ridiculously thorough Germans. But no, the whole city became a vile playground where bullying was encouraged instead of penalized. It was utterly disgraceful and it all happened in broad daylight. Of course, there were also those who casually let slip that only now could we really see how much filth there was out on the streets. Others thought they were being neutral by saying that the badges had the advantage of clarifying things. But once it was obvious that the stars were on people’s coats to stay, they were seen as normal and another effect came into play. The Jews’ timidity gradually increased because they knew that their stars had turned even more people into assistant tormentors, as nothing invites blows as much as vulnerability. Yes, mein Freund Gregor, war turns us all into policemen. Of course, so-called reasonable people never even mentioned this schizophrenia. Those kinds of feelings had to be hidden away. In circumstances like that, people inevitably think: ‘It’s them or us.’ Either become a possible target, or be a possible sniper. The last covering people pull over themselves is the white sheet of their own vulnerability, their being a victim too, no star on their coat of course, but threatened all the same, falling asleep under that sheet in the hope that when they wake up it will all be over. No, it’s not right to look down on something like that. A little recognition of that eternal ambiguity would be more honest. Listen to me blathering on, son, cackling like a chicken on its way to the chopping block. Back then, though, I just went along with your father about the filthiness of war, which meant I might just as well have said nothing at all. How do you explain what defencelessness is and what people can be capable of, if the person you’re talking to has never felt what it’s like to be a potential bastard himself? How do you tell him that to have never felt that way is both a blessing and a curse, and that armchair indignation is nothing more than blind hypocrisy? Sometimes people say you have to stand in someone else’s shoes to really understand their situation. But that’s hypocritical too, because when they talk about those other shoes, they always mean the victim’s. They never say a word about the shoes of those who might have felt stirred to join the persecutors. Before you denounce the bloodthirstiness of someone else, someone you don’t even know, who you’ve only seen on the telly or read about, you should be obliged to experience what it means to have a secret bloodthirst yourself, one that’s encouraged by the string-pullers, whose game you’re playing whether you want to or not—the bloodthirst, in other words, that is inside everyone. Your world, son, is full of screens, all they’ve offered your generation, your father’s and even your late grandfather’s is indignation on command, whimpering along at a safe distance in sympathy with the oppressed and the mangled bodies they describe in such sombre tones. None of you know what it means to be in the midst of violence, to really feel it, and most of the time I think it’s a blessing to have never experienced war at first hand. But when I hear yet another epistle from some self-proclaimed expert, I start to doubt that so-called blessing and see myself as a hypocrite, a traitor who has chewed over his heritage until there’s nothing left but a bland mush. Denying things, like how they started to say at our station: ‘If it’s a Jew, what’s it to you?’ But now I’m sorry. I never told your father all this because I just assumed he wouldn’t understand. His sister was burdened by the same questions. But I’m telling you now and now that’s all that matters. You.
In this city, Mother’s Day is on 15th August, the day the Virgin Mary was taken up to heaven. War or no war, it’s a time of celebration and people prepare whatever they can conjure up with their ration coupons. Do you still honour your mother on that day, son? I hope so, even though your parents are long since divorced and you live, so I hear, sometimes with the one
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