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When I tired of reading, I visited galleries, walked along the beach on the cold Atlantic, saw the abandoned bunkers in Scheveningen. Thirty-three hundred troops had lived in them during the last war, alien underground conquerors who controlled the city from below. Large signs forbidding entry, Verboden toegang, were loosely nailed on the bunkers’ doors and I easily stepped into the dank, abandoned place. Stretched ahead of me was a long, empty hall with stone walls, graffiti, the smell of dried urine and excrement and stale blood. I moved deeper into the tunnels, exploring rooms that were once offices and sleeping quarters for the young German men who had brought the country to its knees in a few days and forced the Dutch to build these bunkers with stone and shovels. The Dutch had to think of their conquerors eating and sleeping below them, as if they were enslaved by a city of ants. I entered a large room with a long, broken table and a cupboard that had once been a kitchen storage area. I looked for a cistern or some other way to collect water and then I saw a door, ajar, that opened into a high-ceilinged room. I pushed it open and saw hundreds of bats hanging from the ceiling, the floor deep in stinking guano, and I pulled back, startled. Was there a crack in the caves through which they escaped into the night air each dusk? Did they fly with their little human faces and hands outstretched through the tunnels I had just walked through? I examined the numbers and dates and caricatures young soldiers had scratched into the walls. And then I became aware of an odour and a movement behind me. A very old woman with tangled hair and dark eyes was staring at me. She wore a torn, filthy brown skirt and a purple sweatshirt. Her decayed teeth were brown under cracked lips but her eyes were oddly gentle. I said, Hello, excuseer mij, I do not speak Dutch.

I stepped back to show I meant no harm and then I said, Can you show me the way out?

She turned her back to me and began to walk away. I followed her through tunnels I did not recall and finally I smelled fresh air. In a few more moments I saw a slash of sunlight cutting across a corner and I realized she had led me to a different point of entry.

Why are you here? I asked.

She said, My daughter die. Here.

I am sorry. Can I see another’s woe, And not be in sorrow too?

Long time, she said.

When?

In war, she said.

I am sorry, I said again.

Soldiers, she said.

I walked into the salt air. There are memories people cannot recover from. I longed for Biddy, for Mam. I thought, I will find a way to go home during the breaks. Take on extra work. I will find a way to be in two places at the same time.