Kouwenaar Fall, Bomb, Fall

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-339-5
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Seventeen-year-old Karel has been dreaming for something, anything, to shake up his humdrum existence. Soon his wish will be granted?.? ??? When Hitler launches an invasion of the Netherlands,?? Karel ?is almost killed in an air raid and falls in love for the first time, with a Jewish girl. But the bliss this passion brings is short lived, as his new love and her mother are forced to flee for their lives before the Nazi advance... Inspired partly by Kouwenaar's own experiences under occupation, this rediscovered literary gem tells a heart-breaking, witty and deeply empathetic story of a teenager's coming-of-age at the outbreak of war.

GERRIT KOUWENAAR (1923-2014) was one of the giants of Dutch post-war literature. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands he wrote his first poetry collections and worked for the illegal literary magazine Parade der Profeten. He was arrested for his writing in 1944 and spent six months in prison, after which he went into hiding. Fall, Bomb, Fall, published in 1950 when Kouwenaar was just 23, was his first novel and is partly based on his experiences under Nazi occupation. After the war he first received widespread acclaim as a poet. His work won all the major literature prizes in the Netherlands, including the Dutch Literature Prize for his entire oeuvre. MICHELE HUTCHISON is a British translator from Dutch and French, editor and writer based in the Netherlands. She has translated more than 50 books of various genres. She won the 2019 Vondel Translation Prize for Stage Four by Sander Kollaard and shared both the 2020 International Booker Prize and the 2025 James Tait Black Memorial Prize with Lucas Rijneveld for The Discomfort of Evening and My Heavenly Favouriterespectively. Her translation of The Philosopher, the Dog and the Wedding by Barbara Stok won the inaugural Sophie Castille Award in 2023.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kouwenaar, Gerrit

Weitere Mitwirkende

Hutchison, Michele

Leseproben

2

Karel had installed himself at his desk in his bedroom. He opened his school diary. The motto of the day was: ‘Today is what you make of it.’ Yawning, he closed the diary and started to leaf through his history book. He paused on a photo for a while, captivated. ‘Hitler in Vienna (1938)’ was its caption. To the right a row of helmeted uniforms, one of whom was holding a raised banner. The dictator’s right hand was raised to shoulder height. A few officers looked on warily. In the background there was a monumental building that looked quite a lot like the local municipal theatre.

Karel took a pack of cigarettes from the desk drawer. He opened the window and blew out little puffs of smoke. The bell rang in the hall. The boy leaned out of the window. Uncle Robert was standing on the doorstep: a round, protruding belly topped off by a grey hat. Uncle Robert was carrying his overcoat over his arm, he raised his hat and dabbed his wonderfully bald head with a folded white handkerchief. Then Uncle Robert shuffled inside. Karel went to his bedroom door and opened it a chink. He heard his mother welcoming Robert.

‘Has Lise been held up?’ she asked. His mother had a husky voice which always sounded slightly accusing. The other voice was jovial and chuckled a lot. Uncle Robert had a musical voice.

‘Lise sends her apologies,’ he replied. ‘She’ll be here in a minute. She’s still shopping. Oof, it’s warm for the time of year, Cora,’ he said, puffing exaggeratedly.

‘If you want to freshen up, feel free to use the bathroom. The green towel is for guests,’ Karel’s mother said. ‘I must get back to the kitchen, but Philip will be home shortly.’

Karel heard Uncle Robert climbing the stairs and quickly shut his door, thinking: Cora and Philip, yes, that’s what my parents are called. Nice names. Names that don’t actually suit them at all. Mother never calls Father Philip and Father never calls Mother Cora. Getting married rendered them nameless. They passed their names on to their children. My brother is called Philip Lodewijk Robert and my sister Cora Alide, but I was the third child, so there wasn’t much left for me. They’d exhausted their imagination. They just called me Karel, Karel and no second names, after some senile great uncle. If there’d been a fourth child, he probably wouldn’t have been given a name at all. My mother always says, ‘When I was a young girl I detested boys who were called Karel; boys called Karel were always louts. Louts they were,’ my mother says. ‘And now,’ she says emphatically, ‘my own son is called that. Barmy, isn’t it?’

Yes, totally barmy. And she doesn’t say anything else, no additional explanation, nothing in mitigation, no gentle ruffling of her youngest son’s hair – nothing! She abandons her youngest son for him to fall prey to a great feeling of despair. ‘Despair!’ Karel repeated loudly. ‘World, I’m an unwelcome third child,’ he said, his nose in the air, ‘and today is going to be what I make it. But tomorrow the holidays start. Tomorrow the government has decided for me.’

He heard the soft splashing of water in the bathroom. Uncle Robert is cooling his hairy wrists, he thought. And now he’s rinsing his mouth. Now he’s spitting the water out. He’s drying his blubber-neck with the green guest towel and panting away. Uncle Robert is a very different man from my father. He doesn’t wear woollen Jaeger underwear but pale blue Interlock. He wears red silk pyjamas and he powders and perfumes himself after shaving; he keeps his shaving kit in a leather pouch with a zip. Vanity case: special scissors for trimming hair from nostrils, nailfile, iodine ointment, cotton wool, skin cream, alum block. Uncle Robert is a very different man from my father. Uncle Robert is a proper dandy, my mother says. And when he gets hot, he says oof in a terribly old-fashioned way!

A knock on the door. Karel quickly opened a couple of books. It was Uncle Robert. The heavy man rubbed his hands together. The scent of eau de Cologne filled the small bedroom.

‘Hello Karel, how are you my boy?’ Uncle Robert cried, stepping toward him with an outstretched hand.

‘Hello Uncle,’ the boy said, shaking the clean fat hand.

‘Working hard?’ asked Uncle Robert.

‘Yes, homework,’ Karel explained, as though his uncle could mean any other kind of work.

‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ Uncle Robert said, chuckling. He continued to laugh with a deep, reverberating ‘haha’, his face cheerful. He had entered the room now, which made it seem even smaller.

‘A snug little place to study,’ Uncle Robert said, nodding vigorously. He sat down on the divan bed and cast a quick look around. He arranged himself very carefully, shoulders hunched as though he was in a tent.

‘What kind of homework are you doing?’ he asked.

‘History,’ said Karel.

‘Ah, history,’ replied Uncle Robert as he lay down on the divan bed and undid some of his waistcoat buttons. ‘Have you already got to Le Roi Soleil?’

‘We had him ages ago,’ said Karel. ‘We’re in the middle of the French Revolution now.’

‘Ooh,’ said Uncle Robert, ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité. That’s an important period, boy! Pay good attention to those lessons. It’s the start of our culture. Our liberal society. An exciting era! Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres!’ Uncle Robert cried. He got out a silver cigar case and intently fingered a dark-brown Havana. ‘You don’t smoke cigars, do you?’ he asked.

‘No, not yet,’ said Karel. If only he’d leave, he thought.

‘But I do have some cigarettes,’ said Uncle Robert, ‘ladies’ cigarettes. Would you like a ladies’ cigarette, Karel?’

‘Yes please, Uncle,’ the boy said, before slotting the slender stick loosely into the corner of his mouth. Uncle Robert clamped the cigar between his teeth as he patted the fat rolls of his neck with the flat of his hand.

‘Well, well,’ said Uncle Robert. ‘Are you learning French too? Of course you’re learning French,’ he said, scratching his chest. ‘Are you good at French? French is a very important language. In fact French is the most important language. Pay good attention during your French lessons, Karel!’

Uncle Robert squeezed his eyes half shut, saying, ‘Tell me what l’encre means!’

‘Ash,’ said Karel.

‘No,’ said Uncle Robert, ‘that’s wrong. The first question I ask and you get it wrong. L’encre means ink. Ash is la cendre. La cendre de ma cigarette, see?’

‘Yes, the ash of my cigarette,’ said the boy.

‘Good,’ said Uncle Robert, staring at the ceiling. ‘Let’s continue our lesson. What does… l’enfant mean?’

‘The child,’ replied Karel.

‘Correct,’ said Uncle Robert, ‘and le sable?’

‘Sand,’ said Karel.

‘Excellent, excellent,’ said Uncle Robert. ‘And la tuile?’

‘The roof,’ said Karel.

‘Wrong,’ said Uncle Robert, ‘a common mistake. Roofing tile. Un toit en tuiles is a tiled roof.’

‘Un toit en tuiles,’ repeated Karel.

Uncle Robert looked at his nephew as though he wanted to tell him something very important. His bottom lip sagged and his small nicotine-stained lower teeth came into view. He sighed deeply. ‘Well then,’ he said before getting up and brushing the ash from his waistcoat. ‘You knuckle down to your work, boy. I’m off to keep your mother company for a while.’ He gave Karel’s upper arm a whack and left the room.

The boy stretched out on his warm bed and patted his neck with the flat of his hand. ‘You knuckle down to your work, boy,’ he muttered. He looked at the dark-blue wisps of smoke that floated uneasily through his room. It must be nice to have a man like that as a father. A man who instils awe in you without you being afraid of him or despising him. A man who gives you a cigarette when you are seventeen years old, and who wears pale-blue underwear. A modern gent. An enlightened spirit who lies down on your bed like a classmate.

Karel’s mother didn’t like Uncle Robert. Uncle Robert had had a son who’d died when he was about twenty. Uncle Robert had made the...