On the Water

Set in the run-up to the Second World War, On the Water (1998), a novel by the Dutch author Hans Maarten van den Brink translated into English by Paul Vincent, follows working-class Amsterdam teenager Anton as he joins a rowing club, where he is paired with well-to-do David under enigmatic German coach Doktor Schneiderhahn. On the Water has been hailed by critics as a “terse, haunting novel” (Kirkus Reviews).

As the novel opens, Anton is scurrying through war-torn Amsterdam. The War is nearly over, but there is little sense of optimism about the city’s future. The streets are bleak, dark, and unpeopled. Even the water of the city’s rivers and canals, which has always been a source of life and hope for Anton, is black and motionless. Planes pass overhead, and Anton wonders what it would be like to escape in one of them—but his thoughts turn again to the past, and to the water: It is the summer of 1938. Anton is a teenager from a working-class neighborhood in Amsterdam. His father, who works for the tram company, “must have been the only man in the world who did not derive power and authority from wearing a uniform, but instead projected even more anxiety and helplessness.” They live in a small, poorly built home: “The roof that the housing corporation had given us…also shut out light and air.”

Fascinated by the river and the rowing crews that glide along it since he was a small child, this summer Anton musters the courage to join a rowing club. Rowing is a sport for the wealthy, and Anton’s father discourages him: No one from their neighborhood has ever dreamed of such a thing. Nevertheless, Anton won’t be dissuaded.



From the start, Anton encounters snobbery and casual prejudice from the other members of the rowing club. Despite his best efforts, he does not distinguish himself as a rower in the novice boat.

One day a German coach, Dr. Alfred Schneiderhahn, arrives at the club. He is a foreigner who lives between Amsterdam and his native country, but he commands the respect of the local coaches. Dr. Schneiderhahn has a specific project in mind. He selects two of the novice rowers to a form a coxless pair, to be trained solely by him. First, he chooses the golden boy David, an effortlessly confident teenager from a wealthy family. The second rower he chooses—to Anton’s surprise—is Anton.

Delighted to be chosen, Anton is also delighted to share a boat with David, who seems to embody everything Anton isn’t, and wants to be: ironic, accomplished, detached, cultured, and wealthy. Anton throws himself into Schneiderhahn’s arduous training regime, in an effort to grow closer to his crewmate. David is the de facto captain of their crew, with Anton striving to prove himself worthy of his teammate. Meanwhile, Anton’s parents cannot understand or support their son’s commitment to the sport.



Under Schneiderhahn, the two boys gradually gel into a functional team and begin to compete in races. Anton’s infatuation with the water deepens—"every day that passes is irreplaceable. That was the message the river gave to me”—and so does his infatuation with David. Schneiderhahn, though he remains mysterious, also becomes important to Anton, who strikes him as “someone who had lost his way like me.”

David and Anton win race after race. Anton is still not accepted in the rowing club, but, nevertheless, rowing makes him feel at home in his city and in his life: “The city gradually became mine and I became part of the whole city.”

At the fringes of the story are hints of the storm brewing in Europe, but they hardly touch Anton, whose only concern is where the 1940 Olympics are going to be held. David—who is Jewish—is more concerned. “Don’t you read the papers?” he asks Anton. However, when confronted with troubling information, Anton prefers not to think about it: "We rowed forwards, but with our backs to the direction in which we were going. I tried not to think of about the future at all, but I wasn't very good at it yet.”



As they approach the championship race, Anton and David are unbeaten. When they are on the water together, “there was no difference between alone and together.”

The events of the War will destroy Anton’s idyll, but the novel never tells us precisely what happened to David or Schneiderhahn. Instead, we follow the older Anton as he revisits the rowing club’s boathouse, a shattered wreck. Like the club, David is gone. His wealth, ease, and confidence failed to protect him. And without his crewmate, Anton can only yearn for “the strange life on the water that we shared.”