Will
Часть 2 из 95 Информация о книге
exists. Each banner emblazoned with two lightning-bolt runes. I’m standing in front of the headquarters of the Flemish SS. Those uniforms used to drive us cops crazy. A mate got the book thrown at him for not saluting some cocky little bastard in black. He wasn’t even German, though he obviously wished he’d popped out into the light of day somewhere more Teutonic. Bullyboys. So many different uniforms… they made your head spin. When to salute and when not to salute? Many’s the time I had to grit my teeth. Some of those posers had absolutely no respect. For people like that I might just have well been standing there in my birthday suit. At the end of the street I turn right. It must be about four in the morning. Still absolute silence, snow falling and not a soul in sight. OK, apart from a junkie who asks me for a euro. ‘Get stuffed,’ I say. ‘Come on, grandad,’ he drivels. I look deep into his red-ringed eyes as if I’m already sinking my fangs into his soul like a wormy hellhound and tell him he’d better piss off before there’s nothing left of him. Did you know your great-grandfather eats blokes like that for breakfast? You don’t believe me? Later you will, maybe: unfortunately. Bearings. On my right, at the end of Keyser Lei, I see the railway cathedral officially called Middenstatie, a name nobody uses. On my left, on the corner of Keyser Lei and Frankrijk Lei, is Café Atlantic, with Hotel Weber above it, headquarters of German Field Command. The men in field grey swarmed around it, triumphant at first, dragging themselves from one fancy dinner to the next, where they would invariably be entertained with all due respect, their boss for instance bending over a folder full of old ink drawings of our city, offered to him as a gift by our mayor, who was blinking like an owl on tranquillizers… All this trouble so that they could later, after just a few years, be reduced to a parody of their own triumph, knowing very well that by then their so-called thousand-year Reich was already in injury time. Now I turn right, towards the station and, a dozen paces later, right again, into Vesting Straat. It’s cold. I’m twenty or thereabouts. Someone behind me calls out ‘Wilfried!’ That’s not my real name, but more about that later. The person behind me—Metdepenningen, Lode by name—catches up and slaps me on the shoulder. Does that name ring any bells? It may very well. But I’m not going to lay all my cards on the table at once. Read on and all will be revealed. ‘I’m freezing my balls off.’ Lode slips, almost twisting his ankle—I manage to grab him by the elbow—and swears. We’ve just finished training together. Three months of listening to people talk bollocks at us and then we were probationary constables. What it came down to was that we had to keep our uniforms clean and always obey anyone who had an extra stripe. All through those three months I watched Lode sucking furiously on his pencil and staring intently at the blackboard. Whenever the instructor asked a question he put up his hand. A show-off, definitely, and handsome to boot. Pitch-black hair, roguish smile, son of a butcher who had a shop the other side of Astrid Plein. He was the one who got our friendship rolling. The kind of bloke who declares after just a week that you’re mates for life. ‘You teach me something new every day…’ I can still hear him saying it. Just when we’re about to go up the two steps to the station, two field gendarmes come out the door. They look at us and one of them roars at us to follow them: ‘Sofort mitkommen!’ Some clichés just happen to be true. All Germans in uniform talked like that. So we went with them, immediately, because we already knew we didn’t have a choice. Normally we had to check in to get our orders, but when one of those field arseholes roared, you followed. We carry on south to Pelikaan Straat, Lode and me tagging along behind the two uniformed supermen in complete silence like a couple of schoolboys being punished for something. The Germans have only been here six or seven months and it’s like the whole place has been theirs for years. The city lay down for them and spread her legs wide. Everything is organized. Pedestrians going from the railway station to the Meir have to walk on the right-hand pavement, with people headed the other way on the opposite side, and woe betide you if go against the flow by accident. If someone had predicted something like that in the years before the war, everyone would have been rolling on the floor, spluttering out beer froth while they roared with laughter. But one squeak from the master race and everyone’s following orders. And what’s more: they like it. Discipline at last. We cross the road and go under the railway viaduct to the Kievit district. Two streets further we stop in front of a house with a flaking facade. One of the field gendarmes shakes the powdery snow off his shoulders and pounds on the door. The other one looks at us with an expression that says ‘watch and learn’. But nothing happens. The knocking only seems to have made the house quieter. He hammers on the door again with his fist. Now we hear some noise inside. Someone comes downstairs wailing in a language I don’t understand. The door creaks open. Through the chink we see a sinister face with big eyes. He immediately gets a whack on the head with the front door as the two Germans shove it all the way open. ‘Chaim Lizke?’ one of them yells. We hear some mumbling. They go straight in, gesturing for us to wait outside, and shut the door