Frits-Jan regains consciousness in the dirt field, his thighs trembling, hands bleeding. His lungs suck for air. When his eardrums stop throbbing, he sits up. Fire is dancing through a low-lying village far ahead. The ochre-colored flames poke at  the chiaroscuro sky, tease the yellow-orange harvest moon. Frits-Jan, an art student, is  mesmerized.  
     Rembrandt kleur, he thinks, dazed.  
But his country’s famous painter couldn’t have depicted the savage war that was now, centuries later, recoloring his homeland and pushing his countryman, Frits-Jan, to breaking  point.  
     Light-headed, he looks around and hisses softly, “Hei, Gerrit, Gerrit!” 
     The Germans who ambushed them are close. Moonlight plays on a rumpled shape to his left. He crawls toward it then freezes in horror. Gerrit, his childhood friend, is now chunks of  flesh. Frits-Jan retches.  
     He breathes deeply to collect himself and mutters, Gij zult niet doden. Thou shalt not kill. Lingering briefly to pray, he painfully scrabbles backwards, grabs his rifle, and slips into the vliet near where he’d fallen.  
     He ignores the canal’s chilly September waters; this is his stealth route back to his Resistance group. They are passing intelligence to the Canadian Army which is securing the Port  of Antwerp to the south. It’s urgent they learn the Germans are moving closer. 
     Over the following weeks, warfare continues to strip color from Frits-Jan’s land, reducing the forests and fields to shades of grey, the earth itself to a sepia wash. The azure sky taunts. 
     Two months later, the conflicts climax across Europe – then World War II is declared  over. When the Canadians officially enter Holland from the south, they are deluged by ecstatic citizens.  
     Alone, beside the shattered altar of a bombed kerk, Frits-Jan kneels and thanks Gerrit. He still feels his tousle-haired, courageous maatje by his side.

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*

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Ah, haring for dinner. Frits-Jan is looking forward to a meal of soft raw herring with onions. Food is plentiful now, nearly two years after the war ended. He still can’t believe the mass executions, the depravity, the awful hunger are behind him. His belly is always full.  
     In the first year of peacetime, he had struggled to hold himself together. Then he met Jeanne at the village kerk. Her vivacity was a powerful restorative. She was also enthralled by the world of art and they had long, intense discussions. About how Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ viscerally captured their own experience, if Juan Miro’s dream imagery was just a ruse for the eye, whether Gauguin’s primary colors were naïve. 
     Jeanne was finishing a nursing degree when war broke out, and her skilled hands dealt with every imaginable abuse against the human body. After marrying Frits-Jan, she devoted herself to helping him to release his own night terrors.  
     In the last year, they’ve unconsciously switched roles. She is studying art. He is busy at  the foundry, working with his hands to reshape twisted railway track into struts for new bridges, clearing his head.  
     On weekends he investigates the techniques of Seurat and other masters in the Kröller Müeller Museum nearby. Camouflaged within the woodlands of a national park, the museum’s collection of masters survived the war’s bombings. It’s a visual wonderland for Frits-Jan.
     This evening, heading home, his bicycle is taking him past neat fields of yellow and white tulips, through air scented with hyacinth. When he sees Jeanne, she waves at him from the lush vegetable garden that fronts their small house. The boxcar-size structure badly cramps Frits Jan’s 195-centimeter tall body, but they treasure it. 
     He takes the hoe from her hands and rests it against the fence, stoops to pluck lingering weeds. A light breeze lifts Jeanne’s fair, wavy hair and she smooths it with suntanned fingers, and watches him.  
     He is so big, and so little, too, she thinks. Scarred like an old man, but open like a child. Kalm worden, Godzijdank. Getting calmer, thank God. 
     Her lips set. I will make sure he remains calm. He will never learn about my war  heartaches: toddlers pitted by shrapnel, pregnant women with limbs blown-off. She and her sister nurses had sobbed in each others’ arms. One of them, Heike, who had died from starvation, was haunted by the cries of some Resistance heroes. She told Jeanne that she’d never forget the anguish of one young man who cried out for Gerrit before dawn every day.  
     Jeanne shakes off the harrowing images. Her husband turns and enfolds her with his long  arms. She looks up at his striking indigo-colored eyes, ruffles his thick chestnut brown hair. ‘Lieveling, this work must be hard on your back,’ he says. Stepping back, he places his large hands on her curved stomach. Through her thin housedress his scarred palms feel rough on her taut skin.  
     ‘Nee, schatje, I have five more months before we are momma and poppa. Then we will have a kleine kool from our garden!’ Her big lips break into a wide smile. It’s the first time she’s used the Dutch endearment ‘little cabbage’ for a baby.
     Holding hands, they step into the tiny kitchen. On the countertop, olive-brown haring are  piled on a white plate beside a blue Delftware bowl of chopped onions. It looks like a still life painting.  
     “Mooi stilleven, Jeanne!” Frits-Jan laughs with delight. 
     There’s a mild nutty aroma of linseed oil in the air and he sees her latest painting drying on the windowsill. It’s a multi-toned composition of smears and streaks.  
     “Jeanne, vat is dit?” He frowns at the canvas dramatically, knowing full well that she’s trying her hand at a new style called abstract expressionism. Jeanne pouts and rolls her light brown eyes. 
     A pot of magenta tulips squats beside the canvas. His stomach clenches. Jeanne doesn’t  know that in the war’s last winter, the Hongerwinter, he sometimes ate tulip bulbs. The Germans had blocked all supply lines. Once the Dutch had depleted their meagre  stores of potatoes, swede, and sugar beets, they had to scavenge for food. Thousands starved to death. The golf ball-sized flower bulbs that he unearthed in the fields near Hulst had soured Frits-Jan’s stomach. But they helped him and some comrades to survive. 
     Jeanne doesn’t know about many things I did with the Resistance, he thinks. She would call some of them unforgiveable acts, run from me in horror if she found out. Geen spijt. I have no regrets. Nietzsche’s philosophy is true: Even the best man is evil. 
     Pointing to the food dishes, Jeanne pushes a chair toward the table and commands, “Eet ze!” with a broad smile. Then she turns to rummage in the tiny sink of soapy water. Instead, eyeing her shapely hips and long, bare legs, Frits-Jan presses himself behind her. He squeezes her breast with one hand and reaches under her flowery dress with the other to caress her crotch. They have furious sex, leaning over the table. 
     Afterward, Jeanne straightens her dress and dishes the food. He grins at her flushed cheeks. She swipes her upper lip with the back of her hand and makes kissing sounds by his ear. Then she faces the sink, the insides of her thighs sticky. 
His haring is delicious. 

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*

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Over the years, their family expands. Jeanne cultivates stunning gardens of lavender, rose, peach, and amber-colored flowers. Inspired by the works of Grinling Gibbons, Frits-Jan designs and creates delicate wood carvings using limewood, rosewood, and elm.  
     Their creative worlds consume them. But each year, on May 5, the spell breaks when they honor their country’s liberation from the world war. 

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*

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Today, Frits-Jan’s hip hurts after the long veterans’ parade down city streets. His first celebration was six decades ago. The sea of vermillion, white, and cobalt blue Dutch flags, and  the crowds’ tears and cheers, soothe the ache that rises in his heart. His lips move in silent prayer to Geert. Behind him, Jeanne marches with the nurses’ corps, thinking of Heike.

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*

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I squint in the bright afternoon light as I walk along my street in the Statenkwartier district of The Hague. The morning’s sombre military tattoos are over. Behind me wafts music from the jam-packed outdoor festival in the Centrum.  
     Along Scheveningen Beach, near my apartment, boozy revelers cram the outdoor cafes. Fireworks will cap the raucous festivities across the country this evening. 
     As a Canadian, I feel humble knowing we helped to liberate the Dutch from a crushing  conflict that had brought the nation to its knees. Last year, I wore a decorative pin of our entwined flags. Strangers who saw it hugged and kissed me. I hope that is as close to war as I ever get. 
     I’m heading to the lovely Art Deco Kuntsmuseum to see a display of abstract paintings and found-object artworks by Amsterdam artist, Karel Appel. His wartime pieces were  controversial to the normally open-minded Dutch and I’m keen to learn why.  
     I’ll top my day with a typical Dutch treat: cappuccino and appeltaart at Brasserie Berlage. Turning onto Frederik Hendriklaan, I see an elderly couple ahead of me. The woman’s puffed white hair tops a willowy body. The taller, stooped man limps a bit. He holds a beautifully carved walking stick in his left hand, clasps her hand with his right. Their quiet intimacy reminds me of Rodin’s ‘Two Hands’ sculpture. 
     The music has faded now. There are no car sounds, no bird calls. The couple doesn’t speak; their footsteps are hushed. Eyeing them is like watching a silent film. As we converge at the corner of Stadhouderslaan, they smile at me. I wish them a happy Liberation Day. His long face softens and her doe eyes sparkle.  
     I wonder about their wartime experience and how they survived.  
     And I wish I’d worn my pin.