THE MEETING

Excerpt 16: Meindert is picked up by the Americans, treated as survivor of a German forced labor camp, and sent on his way back to Friesland after an extraordinary meeting.

When he comes to and opens his eyes, he sees only the wheel of a car, then a pair of soldier shoes.

   “Hey you!”  It sounds threatening.  …  An officer comes on the scene, at least an important dude, who grabs him vigorously by the sore shoulder. … behind him he hears the officer who searches him from top to bottom.

   “As thin as a stick!”  There’s laughter.

   The officer gives his victim half a turn so that he can look at him from very close up.  Then he waves for his driver, who pops from behind the wheel, lifts him up as if he were a toddler of four, and plops him in the jeep on the seat next to his.

   Fifteen minutes later he’s dropped off in front of a huge factory building with tall open sliding doors.

… [He is checked thoroughly.  They wash and disinfect him.  They give him clean clothes and conclude that he must’ve been a forced laborer for the Germans. All this time his injured shoulder gives him unbearable pain.]

…

He’s on a bunk bed in a large dormitory and appears to be a part of a bunch of skinny forced laborers whom the Americans have raked together.  Apparently to help them recuperate.  … By the sound of it, some of them are Dutch; one of the men introduces himself as Jan Terhorst from Dordrecht.  And there’s a Harm, from Winschoten.  “Did you work in the Messerschmitt factories too?”

   “I believe so, but they’ve beaten me, I can’t remember anything anymore.”

…

Later … he sits on a wooden bench in a walled-in garden.  A bright new spring day?  A mild summer evening?  The plover whistle!  Yes, he’s still wearing it on his chest.  He notices the smell of green soap, it brings him back to his childhood years when his mom let him use the tub.

…

   A tall American in a sharply creased khaki uniform appears in the garden.  An imposing figure.  A couple of stripes on his upper arm, no stars on the collar.  …

   “Yes,” he shouts.  A slumbering soldier pretends to be startled, then takes his seat on the chair next to the small table.  The corporal in khaki opens a small container and begins to lather the soldier with the shaving brush, and after that to shave and cut hair.  When he’s finished, the khaki man looks for the first time in Meindert’s direction and says: “Your turn, poor devil!”

… Apparently it’s his turn to get a shave and a haircut.  When he sits and points to his sore shoulder, the barber nods with understanding and begins to cut.  It feels like not much hair is left on his noggin.  Only when he’s shaving, talk resumes.

   “Where are you from!”

   It takes a while before Meindert has his answer ready.  “The Netherlands.”

   “The Netherlands!”  The American keeps on shaving and wants to know just where he’s from in the Netherlands.

   “Friesland.”

   The man in khaki puts the razor on the table with the foam still on.  “Well, then just talk Frisian to me, I speak and understand the language of my folks a little.”  Meindert hears Frisian the American way.  “Dad and Mom came over in 1911 from a town with a stubby tower, and the name of the town is Hichtum.”

   “My folks are from there too!”

   “Your folks and my folks both from Hichtum?  Let me tell you that my grandma was very high on that town, because such amazing people lived there.  Like the man who wanted to be free as a bird, but even though he could at last sing just as beautiful as a bird, he never became a free bird.”

   “That was Meindert Boorsma, my grandpa, I’m named after him.”

It’s a day later.  For both men, talking Frisian is the song of the lark which tries to serenade the last turf of its lost land; they exchange stories in the language both of them haven’t heard or spoken in a long time.  The ghost of a stuffed water curlew flies through the garden, like the comfort bird which after its death lived on for years on the mantelpiece of Nanno’s Grandpa Hizkia and Grandma Ytsje.  There’s the sound of a church hymn running through the walled-in garden, a psalm that a Grandma sang to her grandson.

…. They talk about that singular Grandpa Meindert, who as a boy with the girl Ytsje conceived of the idea that there was such a thing as a comfort bird.  It was needed in a country where the children could be happy with a couple of manure-smeared tufts of sheep’s wool.

… at last, the plover whistle is hauled out and there in the walled-in garden the sound is heard of the bird’s wistful song for the land where it was hatched but lost along the way.

[Meindert is recruited to accompany troop transports to the Antwerp harbor as translator and guide to help them stay within the road markers.  From Antwerp he will find his way back to Friesland.]

….

Nanno says: “Go home, give my greetings to my people, the people of Friesland, and tell them that I’m fine…. They’ll be happy to know.”

   Time to shake hands.  Nanno adds:  “Meindert, whistle for me one more time the song of the comfort bird.”

   He tries to, for a moment there’s a sound, then it’s only tears.