The two of us walked in the rain across town, back to my house. I watched the cracks and gouges in the road fill with water, eyeing each little one and realizing the whole world had such little fissures. When we got to my house, Ludo led me into the woods.
“I came here earlier this week but didn’t want to bother you or your parents.” He walked me back to our fort. Twenty meters past, in a small clearing in the center of a cropping of Dutch elm trees, Ludo pointed to a large stone that had been rolled onto the grass. The stone had been polished smooth by the rain. On the wide face of the rock there were letters chiseled into it.
“Because they never found him, I figured we could mark a place for him like this,” Ludo said.
The lettering on the stone read, Edwin Koopman, Charioteer.
This made my brother’s absence finite, marked some conclusion to him as a being in the world, and I couldn’t have that. I wasn’t ready. He was still adrift in my dreams and that, at least, was something; that was somehow infinite. My hands leaned against the rock and pushed it over and then over again until it rolled out of the clearing.
“Why?” Ludo asked.
“He’s not dead.” My words took shape around me and faded. “He’s not dead,” I said again, this time trying to believe it. Uncle Martin and my father hadn’t yet found a body. Uncle Martin sent daily wires updating us on finding nothing, so there couldn’t be any gravestones yet.
Ludo looked hurt. I pictured him holding a chisel with his weak arm, which must have been difficult for him. “Thank you, Ludo,” I said. “We’ll put it back if we know.”
On the morning of May 24, a troop of German soldiers spilled out of three carrier trucks in the center of Delfzijl. They formed two columns and marched over the main brick road. Their arms swung at their sides, their faces empty of any telling expressions as they passed without letting up on their march, without changing speed. Each wore a dark raincoat down to his knees and black jackboots. They were interchangeable in those outfits, with the iron cross on their hats like it was their sole eye, and their gloved hands showing no flesh.
“The only problem with Germany is that there are twenty million too many Germans,” I remembered Edward Fass, the assembly line worker with the red, angry scar on his forearm, saying; seeing jackbooted infantrymen in my small town made that statement ring true.
People came out to watch the soldiers fan out across the village. Several locals stood next to the road and raised their flat hands over their heads, the way we’d been taught at summer camp. That surprised me and I took note of everyone who raised their arms.
Ludo came with me as I followed the soldiers from a distance. We lurked behind buildings and hid behind trees. The soldiers were stationed across town by two men wearing charcoal gray coats. The men in charge were SS, and they had lists of buildings and roads they wanted the soldiers to guard. They took the schoolhouse as their new bunk barracks and commandeered the outdoor market street for what was said to be a new loading area for incoming German boats.
“What do you think they’re going to do here?” I asked Ludo.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, should we do something? Should we go introduce ourselves?” I was desperate for anything to break the terrible routine of mourning my brother, to shift my focus from the submerged flow of sadness cutting through me.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Tell them we’re the winners of last summer’s games.”
Ludo kept watching the soldiers. “I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do.”
When the soldiers spread out, I waved Ludo to follow me and we ran up to two soldiers broken off from the group.
“Hey, guys. Guys,” I called to them in German.
When they stopped and faced us with the full seriousness of their charge, something in me deflated, and I looked from one to the next so quick I think I made them nervous.
“What is it?” one said.
I just stood there. Ludo said nothing.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Never mind. I’m sorry,” I said, letting those pathetic little words dribble free again.
“Well, go spread the word that total blackouts at night are now mandatory.”
I still stood there. His jacket was held tight by a thick black belt worn high over the hips, a rectangular buckle pinching where his belly button was. What a big goddamned buckle, I thought.
“Got it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Get on then.”
“Okay,” I said and turned back into our town that made light but would now have to go dark.
We followed the soldiers from a distance for a few hours and then I ran home to tell my mother what happened. Tucked under the front door was a letter from Mr. Gunnelburg from Volkswagen. I walked into the house and placed it on top of the piano. My mother needed to wire my father in Rotterdam and let him know about the letter and the soldiers so he could figure out what it all meant for the factory.
When I turned around, I found her sleeping naked on the couch by the sliding glass windows. Her head rested on her folded arms, leaving her heavy breasts exposed. The last of the full light of the sun shone through the windows on her, on all her scars, highlighting how she’d aged without my ever having realized it. Then the true enormity and emptiness of our house settled on me, and I wanted to go curl on the floor at her feet, to participate in my family’s downfall.
I crossed the room and pulled her blue robe over her.
“Let me take you to bed.”
Her cheeks had begun to sag, and her features blunted. She pulled the bottom hem of her robe over her knees where she used tweezers to pluck at the fine hairs sprouting over her shins and calves where a road map of dark, forking, varicose veins leaned out against the skin.
When she sat up on the couch I helped her up, holding her elbows, and then led her up the steps.
“Thank you, Edwin,” she mumbled in her half-sleep. We stopped and both stood there dazed until she realized what she’d said. Her head dropped into her hands as she walked into her bedroom and slumped at her dressing table.
Her robe hung open as she reached for her case full of jewelry bought over the course of years on my father’s trips. She opened the sleek, felt case and picked up a necklace thin as a strand of hair. She sat back in the chair facing her bedroom dresser mirror and began to put all of her necklaces on. Then she took everything else out of the box. One by one, she put on every piece of jewelry. An ivory rose. Pearl brooch. Gemstone clasps. The necklaces touched one another on the back of her neck but hung at different lengths, the silver rubbing the gold, the gold rubbing the strings. She hung her loop earrings from her ear holes and then hooked every other glass earring she could into the loops until the clusters pulled her earlobes down toward her jawline.