An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans & David Colmer & Cees Nooteboom

Author:Willem Frederik Hermans & David Colmer & Cees Nooteboom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2018-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

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AND WHEN THE PARTISANS were pulling out and I made it back to the lawn in front of the house, I saw what had happened to the old man. They had hung him from the plane tree with the instructions I had written out for him pinned to his belly: Deutschland kaputt. Jetzt kommen die Sovjets. Nie mehr Heil Hitler sagen. Sonst machen die Russen Sie tot und fressen sie Ihre Fische auf.

Dangling from another polled branch was the colonel, with the woman’s naked corpse tied to his body. They had lynched him with a piano string that had cut through to his spinal column.

I turned and stared at the house. It still looked perfectly intact, although here and there the lace curtains had been torn from the windows. I ran back up the steps and hurled a hand grenade into the hall.

We were marching through the gate when the explosion sounded. The partisans saw this as the final joke and crowning glory. They started to tug on me and jostle me, asking if I was willing to swap the cameras for anything. I felt that I was going to become very popular.

I looked back at the house for the last time. All of the windowpanes had been blown out of their frames. I saw bundles of dead raggedy reeds hanging down from the broken ceilings that had depicted heaven. I looked deep into the house’s diseased and dying maw.

It was like it had been putting on an act the whole time and was only now showing itself as it, in reality, had always been: a hollow, drafty cavern, rancid and rotting at its core.

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