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To this Dutchman, spelling as a school subject was a never-failing source of amusement. If you can speak Dutch, he explained to the kids, you can spell it; words are written just as they sound. Why English spelling should be so difficult seemed to him a strange perversity.
“Hundreds of thousands of copies have been printed unofficially by Christians in poor countries all over the world, then given away to encourage others.” Andrew glanced at us a bit guiltily. “I’m afraid I gave the permissions for them to do this. Was I acting illegally?” Yes, but we were glad he had done it. And we think God was glad, too.
wooden shoes—klompen
Their God-bless-you’s and Lord-willing’s
Religion was her life. We were poor, even by Witte standards; our house was the smallest in the village. But to our door came an unending stream of beggars, itinerant preachers, gypsies, who knew that they would be welcome at Mama’s table. The cheese that night would be sliced thinner, the soup stretched with water, but a guest would never be turned away.
Thriftiness
Of course Papa’s playing was rough and full of mistakes, not only because he could not hear the music, but also because the years of wielding a hammer on an anvil had left his fingers thick and stiff. Some nights he seemed to hit almost as many wrong notes as right ones.
He always fussed a little with the hymnal as he had seen Papa do, turning the pages and usually managing to get the whole book upside down. Then, squinting at the page like Papa, he began to play. From beginning to end he would play the songs Papa had played that night. But not as Papa played them—hesitantly, clumsily, full of discords. Bas played them perfectly, without a mistake, with such surpassing beauty that people would stop in the street outside to listen.
For when Bas played, it was as though an angel sat at the organ.
Our family was fiercely proud of its Protestant traditions. My father was glad, I think, that our house happened to be in the northern end of town, because this gave him the entire length of the village in which to demonstrate that we were headed in the right direction.
With a kind of instinct, I knew precisely when the church service would be over and would slip into a corner of the church vestibule just as the first sufferers emerged. I stood near the preacher—who never once missed my presence—and listened for the comments of the congregation about his sermon. Thus I picked up his text, his theme, sometimes even the gist of a story.
Three ingredients are always present. Coffee, cigar smoke, and a point-by-point discussion of the sermon.
To this day whenever I catch the smell of coffee and cigar smoke, my heart beats faster; it is an odor associated with fear and excitement: Could I once again fool my parents into thinking that I had been to church?
His suffering was more dreadful than that of a normal person, because he could not tell us how he felt.
and all we will have is our prayers.”
blitzkrieg,
Later, when the Dutch railroad struck, we would even squeeze railroad workers into that tiny hole, and of course there were always Jews to be hidden for a night on their way to the coast.
razzia.
making the oil ourselves from cabbage seeds.
For years our family of six lived on rations for two.
Her only consolation was that Bas had not lived to see this time. He never could have understood the ache in his stomach, the dark fireplace, the treeless street.
I wanted all right: to find somehow a life that broke out of the mold. To find adventure. To get away from Witte, from the mental set that was constantly looking backward.
“Yes, I see. So you’re off for adventure. I will pray for you, Andrew. I will pray that the adventure you find will satisfy.”
Each Sunday I would go to church—not because I was interested in the service but because afterward I could count on being invited to dinner.
Frankly, I didn’t like the taste of cigars, but the association with manhood was so strong that I could have smoked rope and enjoyed it.
If only I had known it was the last time I would see Mama. I would have been far less of the dashing soldier-going-off-to-war. But I didn’t know, and I took Mama’s embrace as my due.
Can you ever say no to your mother? You can do no—but you can’t say no.
I did not guess that within a few weeks I would be killing children and unarmed adults just like the people who crowded around me now.
For some reason the thought never penetrated that I was training to kill human beings.
“He asked me if I knew how to drive it, sergeant. He didn’t ask if I knew how to stop!”
What was I doing? How had I gotten here? I was more disgusted with myself than I had ever imagined possible.
We had been in combat daily for more than three weeks, and the nerves of everyone in our unit were on edge, when about halfway through this peaceful-looking village we stepped into a nest of mines. The company went berserk. Without orders, without reasoning, we simply started shooting. We shot everything in sight. When we came to ourselves, there was not a living thing in the village. We skirted the mined area and walked gingerly through the desolation we had created. At the edge of the village I saw the sight that was to send me nearly mad. A young Indonesian mother lay on the ground in a
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“Get smart—lose your mind.”
It occurred to me once that perhaps the chaplain might be able to help. They told me I could find him at the officers’ bar, and when I did, he was as tipsy and garrulous as anyone there.
I think I identified with him as strongly as he with me. I think I saw in the wire that had bound him a kind of parallel to the chain of guilt still so tight around myself—and in his release the thing I too longed for.
But he never recovered his confidence in people.
The hospital to which I had been assigned was run by Franciscan sisters. I soon fell in love with every one of them. From dawn until midnight they were busy in the wards, cleaning bedpans, swabbing wounds, writing letters for us, laughing, singing. I never once heard them complain.
“Why, Andrew, you ought to know the answer to that—a good Dutch boy like you. It’s the love of Christ.”
filled page after page with questions, and Thile went to her pastor and her library and the depths of her own heart to find the answers.
Do you know how natives catch monkeys out in the forest?”
“Well, you see, the natives know that a monkey will never let go of something he wants even if it means losing his freedom. So here’s what they do. They take a coconut and make a hole in one end just big enough for a monkey’s paw to slip through. Then they drop a pebble into the hole and wait in the bushes with a net. “Sooner or later a curious old fellow will come along. He’ll pick up that coconut shell and rattle it. He’ll peer inside. And then at last he’ll slip his paw into the hole and feel around until he gets hold of that pebble. But when he tries to bring it out, he finds that he
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“Are you holding on to something, Andrew? Something that’s keeping you from your freedom?”
wharf.
“And yet,” she said gently, “God hasn’t come to a standstill.” Suddenly she laughed. “I think you’re like one of your own lumps of clay, Andy. God has a plan for you, and He’s trying to get you into the center of it, and you keep dodging and slithering away.”
I, who never went to church, started now to attend with such regularity that the whole village noticed it: not only Sunday morning, but Sunday evening and Wednesday mid-week service as well.
On Mondays I went to a Salvation Army meeting in Alkmaar. On Tuesdays I pedaled all the way to Amsterdam to a Baptist service. I found a service somewhere every night in the week. At each one I took careful notes on what the preacher said, and then I spent the following morning looking up passages in the Bible to see if all the things he said were really there.
“You don’t want to burn yourself out, Andy,” she’d say. “Don’t you think you ought to pace yourself a bit? Read some different kind of books. Go to the movies now and then.”
sleet
I just said, “Lord, if You will show me the way, I will follow You. Amen.”
The Whetstras did not seem to think I had done anything strange or abnormal. They used words like “born again,” but in spite of the odd language, I got the idea that the step I had taken was along a well-traveled road.
