The Assault by Harry Mulisch (De Aanslag, 1982) translated from the Dutch by Claire Nicolas White (1985) Pantheon (1986) 285 pp
When Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize earlier this year, M.A. Orthofor at The Complete Review’s Literary Saloon said that, while he can see a strong case for Vargas Llosa, he thought Amos Oz or Harry Mulisch were the more deserving. I hadn’t read either and, a few days later, hoping to get a jump on next year’s Nobel winner, I went and bought Harry Mulisch’s The Assault. Sadly, when I returned from the book store, I found out that Mulisch had died that day and will never be a Nobel laureate. I still haven’t read any Vargas Llosa (have a few in hand, though), but I can certainly see why Mulisch would be a strong candidate based on this book alone, and it is not even considered his masterpiece.
The book starts out softly, almost with a comforting air of nostalgia, by describing a row of four houses, all with homey names. Twelve-year-old Anton Steenwijk has grown up on this street, getting to know the neighbors, some of whom are more friendly than others. It obviously hard living, but in this prologue we feel there is friendship. However, the year is 1945. Any warmth or coziness we feel from the scene is subverted by our growing knowledge of the true state of these homes.
It was January, nineteen forty-five. Almost all of Europe had been liberated and was once more rejoicing, eating, drinking, making love, and beginning to forget the War. But every day in Haarlem looked more like one of those spent gray clinkers that they used to take out of the stove, when there had still been coal to burn.
It is frigid outside, and everyone is starving. Peter, Anton’s seventeen-year-old brother hasn’t been out of the house for months, not even for school, because they are afraid he will be conscripted.
On that January night, Anton, Peter and their mother and father move to the back of the house to play a game as it gets dark outside. It’s a wonderfully rendered scene, and there’s some hope in the air due to the simple fact that the family is together engaging in a pastime. Suddenly they hear gunshots outside. Peter, to the horror of his parents, runs to the window and discovers that there is a body lying in the street in front of their neighbor’s home, neighbors the Steenwijks are quite friendly with. The Steenwijks, still contemplating the tragedy that an assassination could bring to the street, are shocked when their neighbors run outside and move the body from their part of the street to the front of the Steenwijk’s home.
The German soldiers have been known to retaliate quickly and fiercely, and the fact that the body is in front of the Steenwijk’s home is probably going to be excuse enough for them to burn the home to the ground. Petrified, the Steenwijk parents watch as their oldest son Peter runs into the street to try to drag the body again. It turns out that the dead man is Chief Inspector Fake Ploeg, known as a violent Nazi collaborator. Unfortunately, before Peter can do anything, the Germans arrive. Peter runs through a fence. Anton looks on in shock as the Germans bully his parents. In the confusion, Anton is ushered outside and into a police car, where, eventually, he watches his house burn down, leaving a gap in that line of four homes.
The police send Anton to stay with his uncle and aunt while they figure out what to do. No one knows what has happened to Peter or Anton’s parents, but the war doesn’t last much longer. A few months later, when the war has ended, Anton finds out that his entire family was killed that January night.
The book jumps to 1952, and says:
All the rest is a postscript — the cloud of ash that rises into the stratosphere from the volcano, circles around the earth, and continues to rain down on all its continents for years.
It may be postscript, but we still have quite a large chunk of the book left. Through it Anton attempts to forget that night and the war and just move on. He goes to a middling school and becomes a middling doctor, specializing in anesthesiology. Through the years (the book moves from 1952 to 1956, 1966, and finally 1981), Anton grows older, that night becomes more and more unbelievable but is always vivid, despite his best wishes:
Boundaries have to be continuously sealed off, but it’s a hopeless job, for everything touches everything else in this world. A beginning never disappears, not even with the ending.
The book doesn’t just track Anton’s life, though. Through chance encounters with others involved in that fateful night, Anton learns some of the motives behind the actions, but this, strangely, only makes issues of guilt and innocence murkier. This is a fantastic book about chance and fate, about guilt and innocence, all against the backdrop of the twentieth century as the big issues range from World War II to Budapest to nuclear weapon talks in the 1980s. For all its scope, it remains intimate, just like that opening section when we looked on the four homes lined up in a row.
Another one added to my BD wishlist!
As a Dutch girl, I am ashamed to say that I have never read this book. It is a popular pick to read for your “literature list” in high school. I think that is what made me rebel and choose The Discovery of Heaven instead. I loved that one. I remember talking about it for months. Since Mulisch’s death, I have this plan of rereading it next year. I own The Assault and Siegfried as well, guess it is time to pick them up too. I have to admit that since high school I had never felt any longing to read The Assault, your review changed that, so thank you!
I have read The Discovery Of Heaven, completely wonderful, and like yourself I was sad to hear of his passing. I’m certainly glad there are many more Mulisch books out there, such as this one.
I’ve been trying to find a copy of The Discovery of Heaven, but the rare ones in the bookstores have all been a bit out of shape (large book, bend around). Soon!
Oh boy – a treat in store when you get around to it, Trevor! Be interesting to see what you make of it!
Trevor think it is Michael not mark that runs complete review ,I ve only read one mulisch and from what I remember loved it have see couple in my library on line that I ll order on line after cleart current backlog of books ,all the best stu
[…] Mookse and the Gripes reviews a book from the 1980′s that I have never heard of – The Assault by Harry Mulisch and it looks quite interesting. Set in Germany in 1945, an act of violence occurs on a street that has devastating effects on the innocent bystanders. From this one event, a survivor spends the rest of his life reflecting on this incident, its ramifications and struggles with the desire to know more. Sounds absolutely fascinating. […]
Although, the plot was somewhat interesting, I felt this book was lacking a greater emotional depth and I was carried along too quickly to feel any sort of meaningful connection to the characters or the history. I think the topic has been more artfully handled by writers like Cynthia Ozick, Bernard Malamud, and Elie Wiesel.
Hmmm, I can’t say that I agree with you, Thomas (which, I guess, is obvious from my review). I felt the character had tremendous emotional depth, perhaps mainly because he himself wanted to hide from his emotions and cover them up, something I thought Mulisch showed very well. As for the history, it certainly does move from big event to big event fairly quickly, though when reading about that evening when it all began I felt as cold as if I were to go out into the cold evening outside my window tonight.
You bring up superb authors, of course, though I’m curious why you chose them in particular. Mulisch, after all, lived through the War in Haarlem, whereas Ozick and Malamud were in the United States (Ozick says she feels quilty because those were the best years of her life, years of books and learning in high school). Also, all three of the writers you mention are Jewish and write about, for the most part, Jews, but the main character in this novel is not a Jew. I’m not sure they could have carried out this particular story, though certainly they can write about history and loss.
I’m not, I should be clear, someone who thinks an author’s biography is any limitation to what he or she can write about (as Ozick and Malamud have shown), but I am curious what topic you think they have handled better since I’m not connecting the dots (or, perhaps I am, but I’m interested in the discussion).
[…] can see what I mean from the screen dump above. Trevor wrote an intriguing review of The Assault at The Mookse and the Gripes, and the book went onto my wishlist, labelled RecMookseAndGripes. When I buy the book, the […]
[…] discovered Harry Mulisch through The Mookse and Gripes. I was immediately captivated when Trevor mentioned that Mulisch was a worthy candidate for the […]
There are dots in this book that very very very few people ever connect. But I maintain that they are dots that can be legitimately connected. And when these dots are properly connected provide extremely though provoking ideas to think about.
At the end of the book a secret from the war that provides the motive for why they behaved the way that they did during a specific event is explicitly revealed.
But an even more shocking secret than that was not explicitly revealed only implicitly revealed by linking the information that was provided in the final scene back to information that was revealed many years earlier in a basement appartment by a bitter older man. Anton had met this man at funeral. Anton later went to visit the older man where he lived at the time. The old man gave a disription of where he and his partner had hid after she had been wounded by gunfire. He also speaks of being betrayed by an old woman.
Now in the final scene we find out why the neighbors of Anton did what they did and not something else.
When you link those two events together which normal people are not likely to do because they to scenes occur so far apart in the book and the author does not do anything to explicitly link these scenes, you will say, Holy shit!!, this information provided by the neighbor in the final scene not only provides the motive for their behavior it provides the motive for the behavior of the nieghbors on the other side of them, at the end of the street. Holy shit what a horrible delima that this third family on the stree was faced with. But the bitter old man who wanted to kill the woman of the house for collaborating with the Germans never knew what was really at stake!
And if that is not enough there is even a more horrible thing to consider conserning the assassination of Fake Ploeg.
There are three dots to connect in understanding this profound part of the story. The dots to connect are when Anton is reading about the time capsul and what he father tells him about using the past to understand the present. The second dot is the information about Ploeg revealed in the prison cell to Anton by Johanna Schaft before she was murdered in the sand dunes. The third dot is that by the time of the event (De Anschlag) the war was almost over and everyone knew it. The activity that the deceased was involved in at the time adds weight to this understanding. After all the Gestapo agent that was investigatng the case mocked the deceased for APPARENTLY being so lax concerning his personal safety.
When a person properly understands the why on the timing and place of the event again you say Holy shit!! That was not an event that could have occured elsewhere, nor would have it occured earlier than late December 1944 due to the Battle of the Bulge creating uncertianity as to how fast the allies on the western front would advance. Nor would the event have occured after February of 1945 due to the risk that Anton would be come a prisoner of the western allies.
Oh I just remembered that there is another decisive clue as to what I am driving at. You have to forgive me because it has been decades since I have read the book. Who did the son of the deceased eventually go in to the plumbing business with?
Holy shit!! Is it possible that Ploeg was not a Nazi after all?! But if he was not a true believing Nazi who would shove a hose up your ass and turn on the water until you threw up your own shit then who was he, and why was he working as a colaborator torturing people for the Nazis?!
Was there any connection between Ploeg and Dorbeck? That is a crucial question.