Flood in the Night

I

TJERK did not know what ha awakened him; it all seemed like a dream which would soon vanish. But the dreary, heavy tolling of the old tower bell and the strange quivering motions of the old house continued to make him uneasy.

From the pitch-dark bedstead he looked through the bed-door, which stood ajar, into the gray blackness of the room beyond, in which only the oil lamp suspended from the beams was recognizable by the faint gleams upon it. He realized then that the lamp hung still, but outside the bell tolled on, thudding the alarm, and suddenly a high woman’s voice shrieked near the window: ‘Come, come, Pier! Why, oh why . . . He could n’t hear the rest, but he heard the gurgling again, and the footsteps creaking up the attic stairs, and voices inside the house, muffled as if they were wrapped tightly by the darkness.

He leaned over his older brother, Maarten, who lay asleep beside him, and pressed his face close to Maarten’s face, so that he felt Maarten’s warm breath against his cheek. Then he shook him, pulled the bedcovers away, and tugged at his shoulders. ‘Maarten, the bell!’ he cried. ‘The bell, and there is water!’

He felt Maarten stir out of sleep, shrug fretfully, and sit up. Together they sat in the dark bedstead, listening to the monotonous bell. ‘It’s nothing,’ Maarten said drowsily, ‘nothing.’

He slumped down again, took a deep breath, and slept. Tjerk said no more, but crept close to his brother and laid his face against Maarten’s shoulder, again trying to convince himself that the bell was a dream. Only for a moment. Then reality came again, more starkly, persistently, not at all a dream. The voices outside were more distant, but all the old house soughed and creaked. He heard the goats bleat from the big barn. He recognized his grandfather’s voice in the left wing of the house, where the rest of the family slept. He heard his sister Jantje, and she was crying.

Voices came closer, and a gleam of yellow light wavered into the room. He listened to the strange sound of feet wading through water. Then he was sitting straight up in bed, peering over Maarten, when the bed-door opened wide, and his father stood there, holding a lantern aloft. Behind him Grandfather was fumbling with a match, trying to light the kerosene lamp overhead.

His father started shaking Maarten, but when Tjerk cried, ‘Father, the bell!’ he said soothingly, ‘Now, now, Tjerk, don’t be afraid. It’s the dike. The water’s coming over it, and you boys will have to put on your clothes and get out of here.’ Maarten sat up, blinking against the sharp light. Father repeated, ‘You must put your clothes on and get out of here.’

Grandfather had finally lighted the lamp; he turned and, glaring at Tjerk, barked out: ‘Don’t sit there like a scared bird. This is no time to sit still. Get up.’ Then Tjerk knew fully that this was no dream. He saw that the floor was covered with water, on which the straw mats were floating. He tried to struggle over Maarten, but his father restrained him. ‘Give the boys their clothes,’ he said to Grandfather. ‘They can’t dress on the floor. And this is no time to scare them,’ he added sternly. He turned to Tjerk and continued more quietly: ‘There’s no great danger yet, but we may as well get out as soon as possible.’ They walked into the faint halo of yellow light which fell from the windows, along the gray buttresses of the church. Now they could see the front gates of the graveyard, where lanterns swung and were reflected in water. People were mounting the slope there, carrying bundles and children. Dogs barked and sheep bleated. Most of the people who were huddled around the buttresses were women and children, Tjerk saw, and most of them were silent. Only in front of the church the voices were high and frantic.

Unreality seemed to return then. Tjerk and Maarten struggled into their clothes. Father waded out of the room, and where he waded in his heavy boots the water gurgled. Grandfather commanded: ‘Hurry, hurry! It’s coming over the dike now, and if the dike should break, who knows . . .’

Then Father came back carrying their wooden shoes, and put the shoes on their feet. Grandfather lifted Maarten on his back and waited, standing grotesque in the room, which now seemed to be drifting. Maarten was protesting that he was n’t a baby — that he was ten, and could walk. But Father said: ‘Be still. You’ll walk as soon as you’re on dry land.’ Then he lifted Tjerk on his back and they waded out of the room, in the ghoulish light of the lantern Father carried.

The doors along the passage stood ajar upon darkness and more water. Nowhere did Tjerk see or hear his mother, his sister Jantje, or his grandmother. Not even beyond the livingroom door, which stood wide open, showing the blue-tiled fireplace that seemed to be kneeling in the water.

‘Where’s Mother and Jantje, and —’

‘They are safe,’ Father said.

This was n’t like a flood, Tjerk kept thinking confusedly. There were no great sounds, apart from the bell, no great waves, no churning wild water — only this silent water rising almost peacefully to the sound of the bell and the distant voices. Then they were outside, among the black blocks of houses in the black night, where the yellow lights reflected on water where water should not be. Lanterns moved; voices called. ‘Is the dike breaking?’ Tjerk asked his father. ‘If it breaks, what shall we do?’

‘Only if it’s God’s will will it break,’ his grandfather answered, wading ahead.

Suddenly Tjerk realized that they were not going down the street, but around the front gable toward the graveyard, which flanked Grandfather’s house. The wall loomed in front of them, and Maarten was scrambling to its top. Father lifted Tjerk up, and then he sat beside Maarten on the wall. ‘Now jump down on the other side,’ Father told them. ‘The graveyard is high, and the water can’t be there yet. Go to the church and stay there with the other people.’

Father and Grandfather waded back toward the house. Suddenly they were gone in the lantern light. Tjerk and Maarten sat alone, amazed at this thing which had come in the night, silently. The bleating of the goats brought Tjerk to his senses again. Maarten was descending the wall on the graveyard side. Maarten said, ‘Come,’ and Tjerk landed on the soft sward; then they climbed the slope together toward the high windowless back wall of the church, above which the heavy bell was clamoring. They felt their way between the white gravestones, and when they turned the corner they saw the people clustered blackly beneath the lit windows.

‘But Mother and Jantje!’ Tjerk said.

‘Father said they were safe, did n’t he?’ Maarten said impatiently.

When Maarten took his hand Tjerk felt more at ease, but when he wanted to linger to hear what the people were saying Maarten would tug him away. He heard only women’s voices, except an occasional crackling voice of an old man. One old man was croaking: ‘The sea has always been our enemy. We Dutch have no man for enemy — only this sea, which God sends. It has always been our scourge.’

‘Come,’ Maarten said, tugging. They pushed through a group of women who were clustered at the church door and went inside. In the vestibule old people sat among their bundles, and small children slept. They stood uncertain in the aisle, looking at the people huddled in the pews, at household goods piled beneath the pulpit, and three goats comically solemn behind the railing where the consistory sat on Sundays. In one of the pews Tjerk saw old Hinke from the Court of the Widows. ‘Hinke,’ he asked, ‘have you seen my mother?’

‘God bless you, boy,’ she said, shaking her head gravely. ‘And God have mercy on your mother who is having her baby this night.’

‘Come, Tjerk,’ Maarten said, pulling him away.

They were outside again among strident voices. But Tjerk looked back at the graveyard wall above which loomed Grandfather’s house. Then he saw the light behind the loft windows. ‘Look, Maarten,’ he cried. ‘There are lights in the attic. That is where they are.’

‘Yes, I think so,’ Maarten said. ‘But come.’

Men’s voices bellowed from the front gates. ‘All men, anybody who can, go to the dike, to the dike! All men to the dike and to Herring Court! All men!’ Lanterns swayed from rowboats in the square. Tjerk followed Maarten mechanically. ‘But why are they in the attic? If the dike breaks, they . . .’

‘Be still,’ Maarten said.

Near them a woman’s voice cried, ‘And when the dike breaks, God have mercy! God have mercy!’

From the rowboats at the foot of the graveyard mound, men shouted again. ‘All who can, help! All lanterns!’ Tjerk peered at the people near him in the glimmering dark. Unexpectedly Maarten let go of his hand and shouted: ‘I’m going! I’m going!’ Tjerk ran after him down the flat sandstone steps, but Maarten was far ahead and was soon swallowed up among the men crowding toward the rowboats. Tjerk saw him again in one of the rowboats, momentarily sharp in the gleam of a lantern. The boat moved off over the square. ‘Maarten!’ he cried futilely.

II

He was alone. With a group of people who had also come to the water’s edge, he walked back toward the church. He listened to the voices, a confusion of voices, explaining, protesting. One woman’s voice went on insistently, more shrill than the others. He walked close to her, listening: ‘And the fishwives that were on the dike said they saw the water come up like a big hand, like the leviathan. There was no wind, no . . .’ Someone interrupted her, crying, ‘God have pity!’ The woman continued again: ‘And it crawled up the dike, and they ran. And the water went over and fell on Herring Court and all the poor souls asleep there and nobody to warn them. And it washed the entire court into the canal. And they saw Minne’s Doetje run, but the water swept her into the canal, and sheep washed from the dike, and . . .’

With the group Tjerk reached the church again. He walked away from them, afraid and lonesome. Maarten should n’t have left him. ‘The dike won’t break,’ voices argued. The heavy bell clanged on above him. Lanterns flickered. But the Herring Court was swept away. ‘The tide ought to go out soon,’ somebody said. Someone answered: ‘But this is n’t a thing of tides. This is God’s hand.’ He nodded. He stood in a long row of old men waiting at the water’s edge. As the water receded they stepped automatically forward. The old men chattered among themselves, and did not seem to notice him. People started wading through the water toward the dike and running along it toward Herring Court. Water sheened in the square, and gulls swooped and cried over it. The old men muttered about other times and other floods. Tjerk saw his father step out of the water and climb the dike steps, and then walk hurriedly toward Herring Court. Gradually he recognized the strange wreckage on the dike — dead sheep, broken boats, strange things he could not identify.

Miserably he wandered into the church again and sat for a little while in a pew, remembering Herring Court, where only fisherfolk lived, the court wedged between the dike and the deep canal.

He rose and walked dismally to the vestry rooms, where old people sat beneath the oil lamps and an old man was reading in a plaintive voice from the Bible. Tjerk went on toward the tower, where he saw two old men pulling the ropes, tediously, their shadows jerking fitfully up and down the gray musty walls. They did n’t speak; they only looked at him in silence. People were climbing up the tower steps toward the belfry. Then someone came down the steps and said, ‘Well, dawn is coming.’

Tjerk realized that all this while he had n’t known what time it was. He pushed through the women at the door. ‘The water is no longer coming over the dike,’ an old seaman said. ‘Dawn is coming,’ voices repeated. When he was outside he saw a vague grayness in the east. Then the bell stopped tolling. There was a great silence, and when voices sounded again they seemed to have become subdued. The light was increasing. Tjerk could see the outline of the dike now, a long black wall against the gray sky. Dim figures were walking over it. No sheep, he saw. People came out of the church and looked at the dike. A woman touched Tjerk’s sleeve and asked, ‘Did your mother have her baby yet?’

He stared and shook his head. Then he was afraid he was going to cry. He ran away from the people and huddled alone against one of the dark buttresses, shivering in the cold wind which came blowing from the sea. But he did n’t cry. He saw the sky grow lighter over Grandfather’s house. The gravestones grew gradually starkly white. He huddled closer to the buttress, and saw far over the graveyard wall, beyond the town, the gray sheet of water.

Suddenly he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. ‘Tjerk, boy, I could n’t find you,’ his father’s voice said.

‘Father!’ he said, and suddenly he started crying.

‘Now, now, now,’ his father said, ‘a big boy of eight does n’t cry.’

‘No, Father,’ he said obediently, rubbing at his tears.

‘And, Tjerk,’ his father continued, ‘you have a baby brother. And all is well. In this night, in the attic, but all is well.’

‘Yes, Father,’ he answered, not knowing what else to say.

‘But where is Maarten?’ his father demanded.

He explained. ‘You should n’t have let him go,’ his father interrupted. ‘No,’ he answered, but he wondered how he could have prevented it. Maarten was two years older than he. But his father bent over him and said, ‘Now, Tjerk, stay here till the water is gone. It’s receding fast. The canals are carrying it away. Then you can go home.’

‘Yes, Father,’ he answered dully.

‘Because I must go to the dike and Herring Court. Things are terrible there, Tjerk. Terrible. But why don’t you go into the church, boy? It’s so cold here.’

With his hand in his father’s, Tjerk walked toward the front of the church. People shouted things to his father about the baby and about his mother. But he walked silently along, waiting when his father stopped to answer them. At the foot of the graveyard steps his father waded with his hipboots into the water. He turned and said, ‘It’ll be gone soon; then you can go home.’

People were taking off their wooden shoes and woolen socks and wading into the square toward their own homes. But he waited obediently, aware of the gnawing hunger in his stomach, very much alone.

III

At last there was a rim of dry land along the outer edge of the square. Carefully, gingerly, he walked along it, but even so the water and silt oozed over his wooden shoes. At the inn, women were scouring the steps and shouting at each other. The tower clock boomed six when he entered the court in which Grandfather’s house was.

When he came to the house he saw that his grandmother and Jantje were also sweeping and mopping. They seemed hardly aware of him. Nowhere did he see his grandfather. But he, too, would be at Herring Court. He stood behind his grandmother. A strange woman looked out over the underdoor of the house, smiled distantly at him, and then disappeared — the woman who helped when babies were born, he knew. ‘Beppe,’ he cried, ‘I want to see Mother.’

His grandmother turned, frowning a little. ‘Not now, boy. Can’t you see, the house has to be cleaned. Later. Ach, this has been such a night.’ She stooped over the tiles, mumbling, ‘This has been an evil night, and many will rue it. But there is no time for big boys now.’

‘No, Beppe,’ he said.

For a little while he stared dejectedly at his sister Jantje, who looked important now that she was doing older people’s work. ‘You’d better go away,’ she scolded importantly, as busy older women did.

‘But I’m hungry,’ he complained.

‘You’re always hungry. We’re very busy.’

Disconsolately he walked away. He felt tired and alone, and it was so early. On other days, days without floods and drownings and babies, he’d be still asleep. And now — there seemed no one to speak to even. Everybody was frantically busy. He sauntered back to the square again, and watched people scurrying along the dike; people stopped and pointed at dead sheep, and then hurried on toward Herring Court. The village dogs barked at them, because most of them were strangers.

He pushed through the crowd on the steps of the dike. Behind it the sea lay flat and gray, already sunk many feet below the top. People walked around piles of débris, and the dike guards shouted at them. But the sea lay distant and aloof and innocent. He stared at it. Even the past night was no longer real. It might never have been.

But when he looked down the land side of the dike he saw the wide stretches of white water, and no outlines where the canals had been, and the roads ribboning from other towns ending in water, on the edges of which black huddles of people stood. Only along the dike was the town approachable. A stranger near him said, ‘And it happened only here in Meersum. Only here! I tell you, it was a seaquake.’

‘It was God’s hand,’ an old gray man protested truculently.

Tjerk ran, hurrying toward Herring Court.

For a long time he stood tense in a row of people on the land slope of the dike. Herring Court lay in ruins, the houses fallen in, and some of the fisherfolk who had lived there stood aimlessly about, while strangers in rich clothes pressed money in their palms. Where the canal was supposed to be, there was only wide muddy water, into which men kept prodding with poles. The canal boats were crowded with people dragging the water with grappling hooks. Then suddenly there came a hush, and people crowded forward. From between a canal boat and the edge of the canal, where men stood waist-deep in water, something black emerged at the end of the poles. The men strained, and gradually they lifted the black thing out of the water. They ran along the top of the dike, almost scudding with the stiff west wind behind them. ‘Oh boy, sugar rusks, and everything!’ Maarten shouted, nearly out of breath.

Then Tjerk swallowed hard and shuddered. It was a woman’s body — the eyes wide, the mouth open, filled with silt and seashells. He could stand it no longer. He stumbled blindly against a stranger, who picked him up and said, ‘Now, now, be careful.’

And then he was running. Momentarily he recognized his father and his grandfather among the people prodding with poles. For a second he stopped and stared, terrified. Then he ran again, on top of the dike, toward the open country.

When he was beyond town he looked up and saw a familiar red stocking cap in the distance on the dike. It was Maarten. He ran toward his brother. He passed a group of sheep, dead and bloated, bobbing against the basalt stones of the dike which were just emerging from the water. He ran on, slipping and stumbling on the wet dike.

Maarten had gone down the sea side of the dike and was trying to drag a large plank out of the water. He looked up unconcernedly at the sound of Tjerk’s footsteps. ‘Come on down here and help me,’ he commanded.

Tjerk was glad there was something to do to make him forget all the dead that he had seen. He helped Maarten lift the heavy plank from the water. ‘It’s a good plank,’ Maarten said proudly. ‘Help me carry it over the dike. That makes seven I found.’

Behind Maarten he struggled up the slippery dike, holding one end of the heavy water-soaked plank. Suddenly he remembered. ‘Maarten,’ he said, ‘do you know that we have a little brother?’

Maarten walked on, over the top of the dike, down the other side, and not until they had dropped the plank did he say: ‘Yes, an old woman on the dike told me. I hope it is n’t a crybaby. I hate crybabies,’ he said good-naturedly, pushing his red cap back.

There was little concern in his bright blue eyes, only preoccupied pleasure as he looked at his pile of salvaged boards. ‘Look at all the dandy boards. Boy, Tjerk, I’m not going to give them to the dike warden. You know what? Tonight, when it’s dark, you and I will get a rowboat and we’ll carry them away. Everybody’ll be so busy out there in Herring Court, they won’t notice. Look at the beautiful boards.’

‘Yes,’ Tjerk said. Disinterestedly he stared at the wet boards piled between last year’s old browned reeds. ‘I just came from Herring Court and they dragged a woman from the canal and her mouth was open and — ’ He stopped and shuddered.

‘Oh, lots of people were drowned,’ Maarten said complacently. ‘Come on, help me pile these up there where nobody can see them.’

Silently Tjerk helped him, wondering how people could forget so easily about the dead. Maybe only when you looked at the dead; because Maarten . . . He dropped his end of the heavy board.

When they were through Maarten pulled his red cap off his head and wiped his face with it. He said, ‘I’m hungry. I have n’t had anything to eat.’

Suddenly he flung his cap in the air and grabbed Tjerk. ‘But, don’t you know? There’ll be sugar rusks and hot chocolate and everything! We’ve got a little brother! There’s going to be lots to eat. Come on.’ He grabbed Tjerk’s wrist and pulled him along.

They ran so fast, Tjerk hardly saw the dead sheep. They did n’t even stop near the crowds at Herring Court, but hustled past them, and ran even faster when Grandfather’s house was in sight. ‘Why did n’t I think of it before?’ Maarten panted.

They were out of breath when they reached the house. For a moment they stopped in amazement, looking at the new mats spread over the scoured stoop and the women who stood at the door and smiled at them. Then they rushed inside and stood in the wide kitchen, among other women, all smiling, their voices high. Laughter sounded among them, and they were surrounded by auras of eau de Cologne. Women kept mounting the stairs to the attic; others came down, laughing, saying bright things. This was because of the baby, Tjerk thought.

He followed Maarten to the table near the fireplace. The table was piled high with sugar rusks, figs, and oranges; hot chocolate steamed in a big pot near by. Women smiled at them and pushed them on the bench behind the table, and said things Tjerk could n’t remember later. He felt confused, but suddenly happy. Many women gave them rusks and oranges and poured chocolate. Grandmother came for a moment, and, planting her hands on her hips, she said, ‘Now, that’s better, is n’t it, Tjerk? Jantje flitted importantly past, carrying things. The women chattered, and Maarten was already crunching a rusk.

‘Oh yes, Beppe,’ Tjerk said hurriedly. Then he too ate, looking across the table at all the women. They did n’t speak of death at all, nor of the flood — only of the new child. The night was a dream after all, perhaps. He could imagine it a dream, a bad dream. But this . . . Happily he nudged Maarten, and smiled at him, his checks smeared with the sugar rusk.

‘Look at those boys,’ a red-cheeked woman shouted, and started a gale of laughter.

Tjerk laughed. This was good.