God's Callgirl (7 page)

When we told our mama about the nun with biscuits and cakes in the chapel, she said it wasn’t right for us to go there because it was the nuns’ chapel and not meant for anybody else. The nun who gave us cookies must have liked children and was therefore a great enigma to us—not a bit like the nuns who taught us at school. Mama guessed she might have been a contemplative nun. She didn’t want us disturbing her or the other sisters in the order. We were forbidden to go there again, and I am sad to say that we obeyed her command.

AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS
of Allied fighting in the area, the liberators’ tanks rolled in on 5 May 1945. They made the most fearsome rumbling racket over our cobblestones. The
crowds waved to the victorious American soldiers, who threw cigarettes from their awesome metal towers. People scrambled to gather the precious booty before they were crushed by many feet. A little boy lost his small fistful when an old man ripped the cigarettes out of his hands without even a thank you. The little chap stood there, looking at his empty fist.

The whole neighbourhood went for a walk to see what the countryside looked like after the war had ended. A bridge over the canal had been destroyed, temporarily replaced by a span of ropes and planks. I was pushing a pram and brought up the rear. People chatted animatedly as they ambled; no one seemed anxious about crossing the canal on the swaying make-believe bridge, so I set foot on it bravely, but was overcome by a fear so great that I froze with my mouth wide open, unable to call out for help. A woman who had made it to the other side happened to look back, and ran back to guide me and the pram across.

All sorts of bullets and bombshells were salvaged from the war by our papa. Eventually, my mama put the large polished brass shells of bombs on the mantelpiece, to hold dried flower arrangements. But she was never quite sure of them; they were a constant reminder of the horror that bombs brought to people. On Sunday afternoons, my papa would sometimes make a show for us by burning the acrid powder from the bullets he had brought home. My mama didn’t agree, it was dangerous, she said, and would also put bad ideas into our heads, but he loved to make us wonder at his cleverness.

A WEED GROWS UP

IT WAS ADVENT
, the four weeks of penance and prayer before our first Christmas after the liberation, and we knelt to pray in front of the nativity crib set up in the living room. It was freezing cold in the room because the fire was lit only on Sundays, but the heavenly smell of the pine tree and the fresh straw near the crib made me feel ecstatic. Even the small candles that lit up the oxen, the donkey and the sheep, the three kings, the adoring Mary and the stunned Joseph released a cosy enticing smell.

We knelt on the seats of dining chairs and leaned against their backs, each with a rosary in our hands. I was seven, the eldest, and was expected to lead the prayers by reciting the first part of the Hail Mary. The rest of the family would come in with the second half. With each Hail Mary our fingers slipped to the next bead, and this did the counting for us. It should have been easy, but with my papa kneeling behind me, leaning heavily over the back of his chair and breathing impatiently, I just couldn’t get it right. I would rather have been in the stable with the statues, lying in the straw and bathed by the soft light of the candles, than droning out Hail Marys.

I had intoned far too many Hail Marys, when my papa
burst irreverently into my pious fantasy. ‘What do you think you’re doing, Carla?!’

There was a sudden panic in my heart, in anticipation of being shaken by the hands behind me. Thankfully, my mama took over, heading off a confrontation. We rose from our chairs and my papa scoffed at his somnambulant daughter, hissing disapproval coming from between his teeth: ‘Tch, how can you be so stupid?!’

I turned down my eyes to ward off the crushing weight of his derision. Tears gathered inside; lately my insides had become a catchment of silent grief. The pain of not being respected by my papa seeped into my stomach and right down into my shoes.

The fear of making a mistake cowed me at every turn. But even greater than the fear of doing things wrong was the dread of being discovered for the evil girl I was. The terror was made worse by the feeling that everyone could see through me.

My seven-year-old mind burned. Sex obsessed me relentlessly; it seemed to surround me everywhere. I drew a surreptitious stick figure in the dust of a window pane, furtively adding a thing hanging between his legs (without knowing what it was, just that it was wicked—I had seen other naughty children do it), then hastily wiped it out, looking around to check whether anyone had noticed me. Worse, I felt like abducting little children and doing them terrible harm.

Walking to my aunt’s house one day, along the familiar cobbled and tree-lined streets, I spotted a naked little girl in her front garden. The gardens were all very small in our area, barely three metres from the street to the front door. I was struck dumb by the sight of her genitals, so clearly visible on her tiny body. The feeling rushed through me that I wanted
to shake that girl child, maul her viciously with my hands, throw her to the ground and stab her with a knife, hit her with a stick, a brick—anything. Kill her, but firstly maim her sexual parts. The compelling desire grew and grew in me. I was entranced, a force inside pushing me ever closer to the point of taking action. Suddenly, I became aware of the way my chest was heaving, and that my face was red and distorted, and I hurried off in case anyone saw me. The guilt I felt then was hot, sticky and terrible.
Never talk to anyone about it!

When my papa touched me with his hands, or with his penis, or his mouth, he was telling me I was nice, that he liked me, and also that I was the worst, most sordid girl in the world. He told me this by his furtive actions, his compelling body. No words were ever spoken during our night-time encounters. Understanding all this was beyond me; there was no way I could work it out. My solution was to hide, and pretend that I did not have bad feelings.
Become invisible, Carla, hide who you really are.
This was difficult, because I felt as if I did not have a private self.

And so, at the end of term in grade three, when it was time to sing solo in class in front of thirty classmates, I fell into a serious panic. Everyone was going to receive a mark for singing and we all had to come up and sing a song of our own choice. For most of the children this was a bit of a treat: it was a rare thing to get out of your seat at any time and the general feeling was that this was an opportunity to show off. I merely felt huge distress at the thought of the eyes of others aimed at me. I heaved and squirmed, blushed and turned pale, hot and cold, and felt sick to my heart and stomach.

At last I was the only one left and there was no escape. The teacher motioned for me to come to the front. Inexorably, I found myself leaving my desk to face the silent group of expectant children. I opened my mouth and out
came what I thought sounded like a suppressed scream, but it was the first bar of the banal song I’d chosen: ‘
Daar bij die molen
’ (‘Over by the windmill’). My performance held a total lack of finesse; I wasn’t trying to be entertaining, just trying to get through the ordeal. Most of my vocal cords were out of action and a raw, scraping sound filled the attentive room. The teacher was kind. ‘You have a voice like a bell,’ she said, and gave me a 6 out of 10.

THE SOLDIERS WERE
returning home after the war. They filled the trains that criss-crossed the countryside, including the carriage that brought me, my sister and aunt home from a stay in Amsterdam. While we were gone, our mama had been brought another baby by the stork. It was a boy, her fifth gift from God. We could see the storks up on the rooftops, standing on large untidy legs, looking out over the neighbourhood. Plenty of room for babies in their nests. Storks delivered babies hanging in nappies from their beaks.

The soldiers looked tired, but were filled with the excitement of going home. They were surely dreaming of the welcome that awaited them. The carriage was crammed full and the smell of woollen khaki uniforms was not unpleasant. I was enjoying sitting in the middle of this welter of male energy. It was when one of the soldiers caught my eye that I began to falter. He gave me an affectionate look, no doubt thinking that here was a Dutch child for whom he had fought the war; in seeing me he found a reason to justify the awfulness he had been through. I could feel his friendliness and good intentions, but I couldn’t stop the blush, as livid as the shame that lived in my innermost being, from spreading across my cheeks and face. I was wretched. I couldn’t bear to look around and longed to get off the train.

I HAD A
Jekyll-and-Hyde father, but my mother had several sides to her also and her moods generally set the feeling of the house. What especially redeemed her in our eyes was her sporadic sense of humour, dispelling darkness as suddenly as the sun lights up the countryside. Then, her quirky, unexpected way of putting things sent us into fits of laughter. The house seemed transformed and evil an impossible reality.

Her wittiness attracted visitors to our house. Even when she was in her eighties and considered senile, she could suddenly throw off forty years and quip about life in the nursing home as if she were out on a picnic. Even though she was mostly sedated to relieve the pain of severe rheumatoid arthritis and the effects of syphilis, visitors were often delighted by her unexpected and funny remarks.

Mama loved music and often switched the wireless on. Classical music made her happy, and when I was little I watched her laugh as she worked, making the most of her day when her husband was away at work and she had the house to herself. She sang children’s songs, war ditties, arias even, and at those times her brightness lifted our spirits.

A very special treat was to go shopping with my mama when I grew tall enough to walk arm in arm with her, as was the custom for women in Holland. It was a delicious closeness for both of us, and she would talk animatedly and cheerfully as we walked and shopped. Life became light again for me too, when I experienced the temporary happiness of forgetting myself.

Mother consulted the priest because she didn’t want so many pregnancies. The priest told her that she had no right to refuse the husband she had promised to honour and obey in holy matrimony. So my mother had to cave in to my father’s sexual demands; but she, the clever vixen, knew how
to get back at him, the uneducated one. She had the ability to taunt him with words. He had only brute muscle against the power of her cutting derisive intellect.

My mama rarely approved of anything my papa did. She taunted him so much about playing his beloved violin that in the end he threw it against the wall and broke it. It could only be fixed at great cost, so he sold it to the repair man for a paltry twenty-five guilders—the violin that had been his personal Stradivarius. Did he gnash his teeth then, and weep when no one saw him, for letting his woman get the better of him? Or did revenge find its way through violence?

One day, during a more serious spat than usual, they both forgot that the neighbours would be listening through the walls. My mother mocked him in a loud jeering voice and dared him to kill her. This was something new. The insults had been flying for some time, and now the two of them were spinning in a vortex of bitter reprisal. We six children were crying out loud, sitting forlornly in a row on the kitchen table. Our parents were in full view through the kitchen door into the living room. Papa had the large carving knife in his hands and Mama was saying breathlessly, ‘Go on then, do it! Kill me!’ while she dared him with her eyes. She said it so many times that the only way he could save face was to actually stab her. She let go a scream and we children wailed the more loudly. The tribal bond with our parents was temporarily broken; we were abandoned, floating loose, drifting like flotsam on a churning murky ocean.

The blood brought my papa to his senses. He grabbed a towel and stemmed the flow from her neck. In time, the scar mended very well and was forgotten. I only noticed it again years later, in a photo of her lying in a nursing home bed,
looking affectionately at my father, who was holding her hand. That’s how it was between my parents—they truly loved each other and would never part. And yet they could not stand each other. When the stuff of passion can’t be positive, let it be there anyway.

WHEN LIFE WAS
not light but heavy, I escaped into daydreams. I had friends who lived with me from day to day—my dolls. I had several and they became alive for me. I talked to them, made clothes for them, put them to bed, gave them flowers and showered affection on them. My clever papa had made me a wooden doll’s house painted a beautiful red. Even though the soft little carpets were the remnants of my pet rabbit, I kept them to decorate the floor. They gave me an eerie feeling of pure clean softness.

Only my dolls saw anything like the real me. I related to them as I would have preferred to relate to the people around me, if I had dared. With my dolls I was an untiringly tender mother, a sister, a child asking for help, a nurse, and a creative problem-solver. The dolls were alive for me until I was ten. When I was eleven, they were sometimes alive and sometimes not—curiously, it depended on how I chose to look at them.

I kept my doll’s house in an open flat space halfway up the staircase, close to the ceiling. The area was big enough for a mattress and one day I persuaded my parents to let me sleep there with my family of dolls. However, a nocturnal visit from my papa, or maybe the nightmare of it happening again, made me wet the bed. I never mentioned it, and nothing was ever said to me about it. This was both a relief and a disturbance, because it must have been noticed by my mama, who washed my sheet and put a clean one on the bed. Why didn’t she say something? Was she suffering from
having to square things in her own confused mind? Didn’t she know what was happening? Did she choose not to know? Instead of protecting me, she grew bitter and as I grew older began to regard me as a rival, calling me degrading names like
vuile dweil
, filthy rag.