The Assault Read Free Page A

Peter had been talking nonsense, but now he too saw it through the left side of the bay window.
    In the middle of the deserted street, in front of Mr. Korteweg’shouse, lay a bicycle with its upended front wheel still turning—a dramatic effect later much used in close-ups in every movie about the Resistance. Limping, Peter ran along the garden path into the street. The last few weeks he’d had a boil on his toe that would not heal, and his mother had cut a piece out of his shoe to ease the pain. He knelt beside a man lying motionless in the gutter not far from the bicycle. The man’s right hand was resting on the edge of the sidewalk, as if he had made himself comfortable. Anton saw the shimmer of black boots and the iron plates on the heels.
    In a whisper that was surprisingly loud, his mother called Peter from the doorstep to come in at once. He stood up, looked to right and left along the quay and then back at the man, and limped home.
    “It’s Ploeg!” Anton heard him say a minute later in the hall, a tone of triumph in his voice. “Dead as a doornail, if you ask me.”
    Anton too knew Fake Ploeg, Chief Inspector of Police, the greatest murderer and traitor in Haarlem. He passed by regularly on his way between his office and his house in Heemstede. A big, square-shouldered man with a rough face, he was usually dressed in a hat, a brown sports jacket, and a shirt with a tie. But he wore black riding pants and high boots, and he radiated violence, hate, and fear. His son, also named Fake, was in Anton’s class. From the bay window Anton stared at the boots. He knew those, all right, because Fake had been brought to school a couple of times by his father on the back of that very bicycle. Each time they arrived at the school entrance, everyone fell silent. The father looked about with a mocking glance, but after he left, the son went in with downcast eyes and had to manage as best he could.
    “Tonny!” His mother called. “Get away from that window!”
    On the second day of school when nobody knew who he was yet, Fake had appeared in the pale-blue uniform and black-and-orange cap of the Nazi youth organization. That was in September, shortly after Mad Tuesday, when everyone thought the liberators were on their way and most National Socialists and collaborators had fled to the German border or beyond. Fake sat all alone at his desk in the classroom and pulled out his books. Mr. Bos, the math teacher, stood in the doorway, his arm against the doorjamb to keep out the other students; he had called back those who had already entered. He announced to Fake that there would be no teaching students in uniform, it hadn’t gotten that far and would never get that far, and he should go home and change. Fake said nothing, did not look back at the doorway but remained motionless. After a while the principal edged through the students and began to whisper excitedly to the teacher, who wouldn’t give in.
    Anton stood in the front of the crowd and, under Bos’s arm, stared at the back of the boy in the empty room. Then, slowly, Fake turned around and looked him straight in the eyes. All at once Anton was overcome by a pity for him such as he had never felt for anyone. How could Fake possibly go home, with that father of his? Before he knew what he was doing, Anton dove under Mr. Bos’s arm and sat down at his desk. This broke down the general resistance of the others. After school the principal stood waiting for him in the hall, caught him briefly by the arm, and whispered that he had probably saved Mr. Bos’s life. Anton didn’t quite know what to do with this compliment. He never told anyone at home about it, and the incident was never mentioned again.
    The body in the gutter. The wheel had stopped turning. Above, the amazing starry sky. His eyes were used to the darkness now, and he could see ten times better than before. Orion lifting his sword, the Milky Way, one brilliant, shiny planet, probably Jupiter—not in