A "powerful tale of romantic regret" (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer), Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, and finalist for the French Prix Medicis, On the Water tells the poignant story of Anton and David, two oarsmen trained by a mysterious German coach in the golden Amsterdam summer of 1939. Anton stands on the banks of his beloved river years later, on the wintry eve of Holland's liberation, and mourns a lost world. David, his Jewish teammate and quiet obsession from that magical summer, has disappeared, and the boathouse is now derelict and deserted. Spare, lyrical, and nuanced, On the Water is quietly enormous, capturing a moment so precise and exact it is as if caught in amber -- a rowing club in Amsterdam and two of its competitors from very different backgrounds, set against the backdrop of the oncoming war. The menace of tragedy to come is subtly woven into the story of the two boys whose only concerns are practices, races, and themselves. In the end, all that is left for Anton is the memory of his supreme happiness that summer. "...beautiful, vivid writing...van den Brink describes the grace, ecstasy, and agony of rowing, the miracle of its teamwork harmony." -- Carmela Ciuraru, The Washington Post Book World "[A] small miracle of a book." -- Daniel Topolski, The Guardian

On the Water

By H. M. Van Den Brink

Grove Press

Copyright © 2002 H. M. Van Den Brink
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780802138958

Chapter One

I last heard the planes half an hour ago. They crossed theriver diagonally at high altitude and then their deep roarfaded away to the east. Now it is quiet again, except for thenoises that go with a winter's night by the water's edge.Restless wind. Waves lapping the posts of the jetty. Nobirds. No sudden cries anywhere. There is, though, somewherebehind me on the quay, the occasional rattle of a windowthat isn't properly closed. I'm standing alone on thefurthest jetty, its wood black with moisture and slippery asglass, and am looking intently at the water. On the far bankof the river lies the city, windows blacked out, aimless tramrails, treeless streets. I am looking at the far bank but canscarcely see it any longer.

    For a moment I imagined what it would be like to fly eastin the planes, towards Germany. I pictured what it was likein the confined space of the cockpit, with men in leatherjackets doing their work silently. A single gesture is enoughfor them to understand each other. There is only the light ofa couple of monitor lamps, green and blue. An illuminateddial. Perhaps the glow of a cigarette. Then I thought of thevast space below the belly of the plane, the keel seeking itsway through the thin air, with nothing to hang on to, nosupport, and I began to feel dizzy. I thought of the distancebetween the men and their target and of what slid beneaththem meanwhile, small and invisible: the polders, theheath and the woods, the farms with their steep roofs,groups of houses huddling together against the cold in thevillages, the towns with their factories and around themthe grey streets where at this moment people everywhereare sitting together with the same black paper over the windows.I thought of the lakes, the canals large and small, theditches and the rivers. I thought especially of the waterbecause water, silvery, is the first to wake when day breaksand life begins anew.

    Across the river lies the city. I can't see it, but it's as if I canfeel how heavily and anxiously it is breathing. Like somegreat animal that has been hibernating for too long, andstinking, far too thin, wonders if it will ever wake up. I canscarcely see even the bridge from here, the bridge with itselegant lamps that links the suburbs and the stately houseson the embankment behind me. I shiver in my raincoat. I sitdown. I close my eyes. Sleet strikes my face.

But when I lean back and stretch out I suddenly feel thewood warm down my spine and against the backs of mylegs once more, as if the warmth had been waiting there forme all those years. And then it is summer again and aboveme I see an almost cloudless, brilliant blue sky, a dome ofair stretched tautly across the river, the city and the country.All day long the sun has warmed the planks of the jettyuntil they are cooked through, light grey, almost white, andred hot. In a second the sun also dries my sweaty face, leavingonly salt, which feels grainy on my skin.

    The jetty is actually a raft that is attached by metal ringsto a number of posts alongside the boathouse, so that it canmove up and down as the level of the river rises and falls. Itslowly sways in time with the afternoon waves, almostimperceptibly, except when, like me, you lie back languidlyand float away on your exhaustion and no longer knowwhere your body ends and where the wood, the water andthe sky begin. In the distance I hear David calling.

    I don't answer.

    I close my eyes.

    When I open them, he has come up behind me. I look upalong his legs, which are powerful and covered in darkhair; I see that he has taken his shirt off and put it over hisshoulders.

    `Done in?'

    I can't see his face properly, but I know the kind of lookhe's giving me. Sarcastic. Friendly and sarcastic. That'show he always looks. He has the face and body of someonewho at birth was given not just a life, but the whole worldin his lap. That's why he approaches us, the others, socalmly, with his friendly irony.

    `Shattered? Too much for you?'

    I say nothing and do not accept the hand that is offeredto help me up. I'm not an invalid, far from it. I roll on to myside and in a rapid, supple movement stand up beside him.When I'm standing I'm as tall as he is. Not as powerfullybuilt. Not as calm. But just as tall.

    Now I can see that he is tired too. Sweat is still streamingfrom under his black curls, along his nose, into his mouth.He grimaces and wipes it away with his rolled-up shirt. Forthe first time I dare to think that he is not just my partner, butmore than that, perhaps a friend. We have trained hard.Under the fierce sun, under the clear sky, we have rowed asfast as we could along the river. A little way down the pontoonis the empty boat, its brass gates flashing, the oarscrossed. We lift the boat out of the water. We wipe the cedar-woodshell with a cloth to dry it, take it inside and fetch theoars. And then, as we walk together to the shed, each of uscarrying an oar, David puts his hand on my shoulder for amoment. Not just friendly, but like a real friend. Not sarcastic,but serious. I'm so tired. I squeeze the hard wood of theoar and feel my muscles flex one last time. A wave of deephappiness sweeps through my hands, my arms, my shoulders,my chest and my legs. I am tired and happy.

    Happiness? You shouldn't talk about it. One word toomany and it becomes ridiculous. Two words and it's vanished,gone. And yet it doesn't feel fragile, the happiness ofthis summer. You can take hold of it and lay your head onit. I hold it in my hand for hours and it doesn't go away.

    And now too I am holding on to that summer, not just inmy thoughts, but with my whole body, from my numb fingersdown to my toes. That summer when the river wasours, and so was the boathouse, the city, the meadows andthe reeds at the water's edge. Happiness only exists whenyou can touch it and I held it, I'm still holding it, that summerof 1939, now, here, tonight. I hear the soft chatter of thewater and deep in my bones I can still feel the warmth ofthe planks of the pontoon.

My first memory of the river consists mainly of light andspace. I see myself and my father walking through thestreets of our neighbourhood, along Topaz Street, past thesquare with the public baths and then into the wide EmeraldStreet, which did not lead to another street but issuedon to the wide avenue along the river and hence into a seaof sunlight where trees rustled and flags flapped andcrowds of people were abroad and where noise did not fillthe space but fanned out in all directions, over the waterand up into the sky.

    I must have been about two or three, not much older,because I was sitting on my father's shoulders and myfather is small and delicate and not strong. I think there wasa regatta or some other form of water festivity to which hehad taken me, because in my memory the river is a carpetof silver wavelets with countless boats of all shapes andsizes.

    Since then I have been to many of those festive days andalthough they sometimes say the first impression is alwaysthe strongest, I am not aware that my joy at such river festivitieshas diminished. It was more like love at first sight,which then grew ever deeper and more intense. Later, Iloved it when on holidays the river filled with pleasurecraft, cruisers, rowing boats, punts, scows and sailboats,flat-bottomed vegetable barges of wood and iron, elegantclinker-built wherries, tugs, and whatever else can floatand sail, all decked out and packed with cheerful peoplelaughing and shouting about nothing, just because the sunis shining and they can stand and sit without any firm baseunderfoot, for the sheer joy of a beautiful, useless day onthe river. I also got to know the river in empty moments,under scudding clouds, with waves that batter each otherand make even the sturdiest ship feel alone and vulnerable;in the winter, just before the water turns to ice; in theautumn; in the treacherous spring; in summer rain whenthe water is suddenly lashed out of its indolence and ispockmarked by an unexpected downpour at the end of theday — and I grew to love all those faces. The river taught methe meaning of movement and taught me that movement islife. Does that sound exaggerated? Perhaps it is. But that'swhat I feel, and I can't help it.

    On that first day when I consciously saw the water Imust already have felt some of its special power. Or perhapsI made that day into the first time because I now knowthe end of the story. Be that as it may, besides the coloursand the shimmering I remember one image in particularthat made an indelible impression on me.

    The afternoon was drawing to a close, it had already gotquieter on the river and in the surrounding streets. We hadwalked along the quayside and climbed up the steps of thebridge with the cast-iron lamps, the bridge which grandlyand elegantly links the mansions on the quiet bank of theriver with the city. We stopped half-way across the bridge.My father lifted me off his shoulders and let me lean over therailing and look down. Seen from as close up as this, thewater was not silver but greyish blue and green. At the verymoment that I leaned right over and my father tried to holdme back by my armpits, a pointed brass tip shot into viewfrom under the arch of the bridge, followed by an almostequally slender bow covered with silvery-white material.There was no time to recover from that first astonishment,because the canvas was followed by the first, second, third ofeight men in all who were drawn out from under the bridgelike a string of pearls, or rather who drew themselves out, ridingand gliding, jack-knifing and reaching forwards to the leftand right as they engaged the water with their long oars,pushing it away from them and letting go of it again, eightmen in white shirts in perfect rhythm, followed by a small coxin a blue jacket holding a brass megaphone, like the dot undera long exclamation mark. It was over in a few seconds, but foras long as I could I stared after the rowers, and not just therowers, but also the trail that they were pulling with themfrom under the bridge, a trail of lines and whirlpools, wherethe oars had hit the water hard, like footprints that themoment they were made immediately started erasing themselves,after first slowly merging into one another.

    I don't know what made the greatest impression on meat that moment, the supple way the men moved together orthe movement they caused in the river.

    I only know that I held my breath. Because when I recallit, I still do.

My father was small and delicate and not strong. It did nottake me long to recognize this. This realization, though,had nothing to do with muscular strength. Every child hasconfidence in its father's power as long as he is able tostand between it and the world. But even before I couldthink about such things, let alone talk about them, I musthave sensed that my father could only just about hold hisown in that world. I could see that from the timid way heleft the house every morning in the dark-grey uniform ofthe tram company — my father must have been the onlyman in the world who did not derive power and authorityfrom wearing a uniform, but instead projected even moreanxiety and helplessness, as if people could now see all themore clearly that he wore his clothes like a shield. And italso had something to do with the way in which he cameback home again every evening, like an animal that is gladto have reached its lair but still can scarcely believe it is safe.And that was how my mother treated him. Softly mumblingand moaning, she fluttered round the chair intowhich he had flopped. She poured him a cup of coffee orchicory, she loosened his collar, she lugged in a basin ofwater for his bunion-covered feet.

    I never despised my father for what he was, indeed I amcertain I loved him. First, because there was a time, a shorttime, when he really could lift me up and carry me aroundoutside on his shoulders, and later because I saw that hehad to summon up so much courage to keep going outsidethat there was really nothing left for his wife and child. Iunderstood from an early age that I was left to my owndevices. It made me a quiet, introverted boy who made uphis own games among the furniture and fabrics of the flatand whose only choice was to triumph over or be beaten byhimself. Later, a serious and dutiful schoolboy, whobecause of his inability to get in the last word was sometimesregarded by others as sneaky. The only child betweentwo parents who had their hands full with themselves in adark, narrow house.

For my parents, that house with its weird bays and its windowsscarcely bigger than shooting slits must have been adream come true. They were the first occupants, the cementwas not dry in the mortar courses when they followed theirsimple furniture up the stairs. It was not the new street thatwas important to them, not the neighbourhood and certainlynot the neighbours, who were all new and strangersto each other, but who from day one were busy saying hello,arranging meetings, paying visits, telling stories, doingmutual favours, organizing their lives to make them congenialand cheerful and worthwhile. As far as they could, myparents withdrew from all social intercourse. It wasn't people,it was the house itself from which they expected securityand happiness, the roof, the ceilings, the walls, bricksand mortar. I'm quite sure they entered it that first time withthe firm intention of becoming one with every cranny andskirting board, so that it would be not only socially, but biologicallyimpossible ever to tear them away. For them it wasan advantage that the house was dark and poky, because itsfunction was to be as little as possible like the rest of theworld.

    Our neighbourhood had been planned in the Depressionby the city's strong men, patriarchs with a social consciencewho saw it as their sacred duty to give the population fourwalls and a roof over their heads. But only in theory didthey recognize people's right to accommodation accordingto their own requirements and taste. Or else they wouldhave given us residents light, space and big windowsinstead of subjecting us to a geometrically pure street plan,a succession of squares, shops, bathhouses and doorwayswhich one could traverse in only one direction and a housedesign that was so compelling that not so much as a chair,let alone a table or a settee, could be placed in a spot whichthe powers-that-be considered socially irresponsible.

    The streets were distinguished solely by the housefronts. Some undulated and finished up in sharp rightangles, others started out straight but converged in series ofround towers, crowned with battlements, as if the MiddleAges had paid a flying visit. The bricks had been laid in thestrangest shapes to create a fascinating pattern of lines andshapes, not for the benefit of the individual houses or theirresidents, but as a constituent part and embellishment ofthe whole, the street, the neighbourhood aesthetics. Rooftiles, windowframes, gutters, staircases, even the housenumbers seemed intended in the first instance as ornaments.They were not ours and never would be; we weresimply allowed to live behind them.

    My parents were the ideal residents for this new neighbourhood.Citizens who were sincerely happy with whatlittle the authorities granted them. Faceless people, theextras on the architectural drawings that were admired athome and abroad. Obedient children of those well-intentionedpatriarchs, children who, once put in their place,would never utter a word of complaint and in gratitudewould not move any more than was absolutely necessaryand required.

    The countless times I heard my parents say that it was agreat blessing that my father had not only been able to finda house, but had found a house close to his job. He workedfor the municipal transport company, in the big tram depot,which exits by means of a wide row of doors on to the riverbank. The gleaming rails follow the course of the water fora moment then turn off in various directions, to the city centrewhere the big shopping streets are, the warehouses andthe Royal Palace, to the docks, to the station, to other suburbswhich did not stop at the waterfront like ours but gotbogged down in the meadows, with their gardens, animalsand water slurry. My father never saw any of those places,I suspect, and I'm sure he was never curious about them.His job was in the depot, he looked after the trams thatwere at a standstill, after the maintenance of pipes andwheels, after the cleaning of floors and seats. The depot isoften quiet and dark also. It was a home away from homefor him.

There is another memory from my childhood that concernsthe river. It was a hot, boiling-hot summer's day. I was fiveor six. Sand had been dumped for the construction of thenew bridge. The new bridge belonged to our neighbourhood:built in the style of our streets, and brazenlyequipped with tram rails, modern lamps and wiring, it wasto disrupt the quiet dignity of the other bank. I can still seethe floating cranes, the piles and the partitions in the water.And I can see the sand. There was so much that a temporarygolden-white beach was created in the middle of town,a beach that began a little below the shore and undulatedseductively towards the coolness of the river.

    It must have been the heat that drove my mother out ofthe house. She wasn't someone who would set out on awalk on a weekday for no good reason. And it must alsohave been the heat that made her walk to the little beach.But perhaps it was me too who, small as I was, and craftilymaking use of her awkwardness, followed my penchant forwater and directed her steps. She wore a dress of uncomfortablerayon-silk and a white pudding-basin hat with aribbon. The summer wardrobe. As I walked beside her Icould smell her sad, sweaty aroma, and the closer we got tothe river and the beach, the more I had the feeling that shewas losing her power over me, that she couldn't stop me,that now I really was deciding what was going to happen.She stopped on the bank as I ran down. I heard a final warningbut paid no attention to it and her voice was lost almostimmediately in the babble of voices around me. Scores ofchildren, some in swimming costumes but most in vestsand underpants, were splashing about in the water andteeming over the beach. Laughing faces, skinny legs, tummies,shoulders, white and pink and red and brown skin — andover all that a shower of water droplets and sunbeams,a bright fog of fun. I took a deep breath. Then I took myshoes off. And my socks. I left them behind on the sand,and in my short trousers and cotton shirt I walked slowlytowards the water. At that moment, in my memory, all thenoise stops for a moment. No screaming and howling children,no calling mother. A solemn moment. In a shaft ofsilence I entered the water. A little John the Baptist,although the Saviour was a long way off yet.

    When the waves reached my knees I stopped. Was itthen that I realized I was the only fully dressed child amongall those other, half-naked water creatures? I don't know.All I know is that I stared at my legs and saw how puny andwhite they were and felt how wonderful the dark waterwas that enclosed my shins like a vase.

    I stood there until the noise came back and then I unbuttonedmy shirt, took off my vest, and smacked the waterwith one hand. I looked around me at the other childrenand smiled cheerfully at them, although none of them werepaying any attention to me. A barge came past andlaunched a set of rollers towards the beach, to generalacclaim. The water splashed against my skinny chest and Ishivered with joy. With my hand I stroked my ribs, which Icould feel one by one. I felt my soft little belly and realizedI had goose pimples, but not from the cold. My clean shorttrousers were darkened by the waves. I turned round.

    On the bank my mother was gesticulating wildly, but nottoo wildly, because she didn't want to make a scene. Shewas only worried about me. I pretended not to see her for amoment. I threw my clothes down on dry land and ranalong the water's edge. I plunged my arms into the water,splashed at no one in particular, felt the sun and the watertogether. It was not the grandness of the river thatenchanted me this time, but precisely the tangibility, thecloseness of the water. You could touch it, it mixed withsand and turned into mud, with air and became rain, youcould feel it between your fingers and, although it wasgone again in an instant, you had at least made it move.

    I looked at the bank again and saw my mother still signallingfor me to come back. Why didn't she come to me?Why didn't she come and get me? The rayon dress woulddarken at the hem, the pudding-basin hat would float onthe waves. I knew it was impossible. I took a couple of wildsteps towards the middle of the river, then I went back likea good boy. Suddenly, a strange feeling in my right foot.

    I must have stepped on a nail. When I lifted up my foot and turned it over I sawa delta of bright red blood spreading very fast across the pale sole. It didn'thurt. I dipped my foot in the water again and watched in fascination as thescene repeated itself. Limping, shoes in hand and putting my clothes back on asI walked, I returned to the shore. My mother had got even hotter than justbefore. I could smell that. She pulled me to her, whimpering softly, and pushedme away again to look at the wound. I heard her gasping for breath and then shepulled me close again, with my nose in the artificial silk, and in that waytried to drag me along with her, still only half-dressed, across the road andhome as quickly as possible. In her panic she paid no attention to the traffic.I felt the rough heat of the cobbles on my bare feet and heard the furiousringing of the tram. The carriages grazed past us. My mother stood stock-still,sobbing and shivering, and then came to her senses. On the traffic island sheput my socks and shoes on. Probably she shot a worried look in the direction ofthe tram depot, an apologetic look, because that's where my father was. With herhand on the scruff of my neck, she pushed me towards our house, her shapelessbelly occasionally bumping into me. I couldn't imagine that I had ever come outof there and I knew that I had nothing more to do with it. She probably nevertold my father about our visit to the beach and of her panicky failure. Nor didwe go near there again that summer. I do remember that many months later therewas satisfied talk at home about the building work in the neighbourhood beingfinished. Everything was sealed. The last brick had been laid. Now there wouldbe peace for ever.

Continues...

Excerpted from On the Waterby H. M. Van Den Brink Copyright © 2002 by H. M. Van Den Brink. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.