At the greengrocer’s, a woman asked whether a possible nuclear bomb in Ukraine would affect the prices of fruit and vegetables. It was the first time I heard anyone in Wormer philosophize out loud about the possible escalation of the war in the East. We both looked at the greengrocer’s assistant, who imperturbably raked through the container with a large plastic ladle.
“Ukraine is more grain and stuff,” she said. “I can’t name vegetables from that area for one-two-three.”
She looked over her glasses into the store.
“Carrots, potatoes, kale, sauerkraut…” I said.
The woman who had asked the question seemed reassured.
“Are you worried?” I asked.
“About the prices,” she said.
Another customer, they knew each other from korfball, started talking about the health insurance premium.
“Everything is getting more expensive. Everything.”
I continued to philosophize about the nuclear threat, and about a possible nuclear war. Nobody really expected this.
I thought about my father. He was fifteen when the war broke out, I had often asked him if they sensed the threat coming. He remembered the mobilization, a brother on a lookout near the Afsluitdijk and that his parents in Middelbeers were mainly concerned about the increased butter price until just before the German invasion.
“The butter was so expensive at the time that they sent ‘our Frans’ to Belgium for butter.” (“Our Frans” was an older, slightly autistic brother who would later become a shoemaker’s assistant, and Middelbeers is a half-day walk from Belgium.) “And when he came back with butter, it was party time. We smeared that everywhere. Yes, that butter would be gone in no time.”
During the occupation, the lack of tobacco weighed on the family. My father’s father was not only a head teacher, but also mainly a chain smoker.
Small domestic distress beats everything. The reports of the horrors that filtered through to Middelbeers during the occupation often dwarfed the obligatory affixing of coupons for shopping.
Even now, current events are losing out to economic reality.
If it all goes wrong in terms of escalation and we survive, then I will tell posterity about how life went on. That everyone was mainly concerned with themselves and that we found each other in the fear that everything would become even more expensive.
Marcel van Roosmalen writes an exchange column with Ellen Deckwitz here.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 28, 2022