“It’s just how families work.” He shrugs. “Like that game of telephone. Stories get whispered from generation to generation, and what comes out at the other end is always different than what went in.” I suppose so, but it’s not a game I want to play with my son. I want to tell him the whole, true story, loud and clear.
I call B and ask her where on earth she came up with just one person getting killed that evening.
“That’s what I was told,” she says.
I tell her what was in the newspapers.
It’s quiet on the other end of the line.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“So were there three collaborators in that one house?”
“I only know what I was told: that one Blackshirt got killed.”
“Did Frans tell you that?”
“Frans never talked about it. The story circulated.”
“Always the same story?”
“Always the same.”
“And now?” It’s more a question for myself than for her.
“Now it’s another story,” she replies dryly.
The newspapers offer no information about the fatalities. No names or ages, no interviews with witnesses or next of kin. The reporting stops at the front door of number 266. I make a separate Casualties document in the Facts folder on my desktop. For now it contains only one word: “three.” I go through the various possibilities. The most logical one seems that there had been a get-together of a group of former Blackshirts that night on the Prinsengracht. That the bomb killed not just one turncoat, but a whole gang of them. I prefer to leave the other possibilities—innocent victims, bad timing—out of the equation.
D shouts from the bedroom. When I get upstairs, I see him standing on the bed, waving a folded-up newspaper. The place is swarming with mosquitoes. I look around the room, see them dancing in the light of the bedside lamp. They’re on the cupboards, the walls, the window sash—it’s as though our bedroom has been hit by a Biblical plague. There are two large blood smears on the expensive palm-print wallpaper. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” D says. He winds up again, swings, and splat!—a bloodstain on the white ceiling.
“Must be the combination of the rain and the heat,” I say.
“This means war,” D says as he hands me half the newspaper.
I stand next to him on the bed and swat at a fat, dark one next to the window. I miss.
I ask him who he thinks the three fatalities were.
He scowls, then shrugs his shoulders.
“One traitor plus collateral damage.”
“Don’t be so cynical.”
“It happens to the best of them.”
“I can’t imagine Bommenneef sacrificing two innocent people for the sake of one collaborator.”
“How many innocent lives do you think those drones of our hero Obama have cost? How many people have been sacrificed to catch one terrorist?”
I shake my head. “It must have been three collaborators.”
“Does it matter?” D whacks the ceiling with the newspaper.
I look at the blood spatters. In primary school I had a friend who came from Den Helder, way up north, and she told me that they used to refer to the mosquitoes as “cousins,” because after they bit you, they were blood relatives. I swat at two dancing cousins near my shoulder. I miss again.
“Of course it matters!”
“If you’re so dead set on him being the perfect hero, then maybe you should stop looking.” D swats again, with success, but two new cousins alight in the bloodbath. For every dead mosquito, ten living ones seem to take its place.
“How can I, if I know the story’s not true?”
“There are so many stories that aren’t entirely true. But if they’re good stories, ones we want to pass down, then what’s the problem?”
A mosquito zooms past my ear, bites me in the neck, I swat, but only hit myself.
Another one bites me, this time in the leg. I flail wildly with the newspaper.
D laughs at me. “You’re supposed to kill them, not dance for them.”
I search for an answer to D’s question—whether a story has to be exactly true—but my thoughts run aground in the dark muck of hormones, fatigue, buzzing.
Perhaps the stories we tell ourselves don’t need to be perfect, as long as they assist us in some way, if they make us happier, give us confidence in ourselves and in mankind. Why nitpick about the details? A bit from a book I read recently—Coetzee, I think—comes to mind; it says that we put so much stock in the complete truth, no matter how ugly it is, because we’re convinced that life proceeds according to a dramaturgic plan. We see it as an arc from A to B, with some obligatory demon-wrestling along the way. The logic of drama, of the novel, demands that we not banish the truth, but come to terms with it. It requires conflict and an internal struggle, and then a “good” ending. That is the arc we are meant to, or want to, traverse. We seek out drama in order to vanquish it.
But life is not a novel, writes Coetzee (yes, it was Coetzee, I looked it up, The Good Story); thousands of things are suppressed, tidied up, or forgotten without anybody losing even a second of sleep over it. Coetzee would say that D is right, that there’s no earthly reason to rake up every last detail of this story, to map out the entire truth. Unless you want to turn it into a novel.
20 WEEKS LEFT
WHAT I NOW know for sure: on December 5, 1946, a parcel bomb disguised as a Sinterklaas gift was delivered to Prinsengracht 266 in The Hague. Three people were killed. Three other bombs never reached their destination. Bommenneef drove to Brussels that evening, possibly with a fourth explosive, heading for an as-yet-unknown target. These are my known coordinates. In between them is a maze of slippery paths—the possibilities—and a few slightly more navigable routes—the probabilities. Surrounding all this: large, blank, white patches.
I think of the cartographer of that empty map of Antarctica. Did someone else determine how much emptiness should be shown? Did they discuss whether this or that uncharted region should be included? How do you map the unknown? The starting point, the cartographer’s first question, is of course what scale to use. 1:whatever.
If I had the time, if the cells in my womb were not multiplying like crazy, then I’d want to find and spend some more time with those passersby in The Hague. I would revisit number 266 with them, listen to the statement they gave at the police station, follow them home through the darkened city, back along the street they sauntered unsuspectingly along just a few hours earlier. I tried to imagine how it felt when they got home, what they told their families, how they untied the ribbons on their own Sinterklaas gifts, the explosion of a few hours prior still reverberating in their ears. Could they simply join in with the songs and the treats, or were their thoughts dominated all evening by vexing questions and nagging suppositions? What if they had said no? What if the bomb had gone off too soon? What if, what if …
If I had the time, I would follow all the side paths the newspaper articles take. I’d climb aboard the fire truck that put out the blaze, mingle with the shocked neighbors crowding the sidewalk after the explosion, sit at the bedside of the injured hitchhiker during his monthslong recuperation. I would find out who else was on the hit list, and why.
But I don’t have time for detours—the avocado is quickly becoming “as long as a toothbrush.” It has fingernails, it can distinguish between light and dark, and who knows what all else.
I must stick to Bommenneef. Questions aplenty. Who was his potential target in Brussels? And why didn’t the bomb go off?
The newspapers offer no answers. But surely Frans took someone into his confidence at the time. I google the surnames Peterse and Haastrecht, but the online phone book alone contains hundreds of them. It will take more than the next twenty weeks to call them all. And De Boer: forget it.
I think of “reckless” Nelly Schulp, Bommenneef’s second wife, who was his partner after the war. Perhaps there is still some family l
eft who might know something, children from a later marriage, perhaps, with whom she shared things about her time with Frans. The surname Schulp is less common than Peterse or De Boer. Within an hour I’ve called all the Schulps in the phone book, and have spoken to about half of them, with no luck. As for the others, I leave voice mail messages, I write emails and search Facebook profiles. Two days later I’ve spoken to twenty-eight Schulps, from Friesland to Limburg. But no one remembers Nelly.
We’re halfway there. According to 24baby.nl, our son is now the size of a winter carrot and weighs as much as a pair of flip-flops—a strange combination of seasons that corresponds to my disoriented state of mind. I finish assignments, see friends, visit family, go to the theater, but I feel disconnected. It’s as though I’m out of sync with everyday life, with the day that becomes night, the performance that comes to a close, the deadline that is met. Mine is a different time zone; here is only exponential growth. A big bang in slow motion.
In the waiting room of the ultrasound clinic, D and I get into a tiff when he finds out that the scan we’re here for today has nothing to do with Down syndrome screening, that this possibility is seven weeks behind us already, and that I decided on my own not to have it done. It wasn’t actually even a conscious decision; I just let the moment pass and didn’t mention it, knowing he would never think of it himself.
I don’t have a strong opinion about prenatal screenings, I just didn’t feel like yet more fussing around my abdomen. The appointment before ours is running late. The couple after us is already here. The woman has a pointy belly and a flushed complexion. Her eyes glisten as though she’s got a fever. She smiles at me the way pregnant women smile at each other. Conspiratorial. Just look at all these fools here, obsessed with the present, while we waddlers, filled with the future, are worth twice as much as these singletons.
D is furious. “If things go wrong, it’s your fault,” he snaps at me. “You knew and should have told me.”
“I knew and I didn’t want it. It was my decision.”
“And so you decided for me.”
“You decided for yourself, by not being on top of things.”
But D doesn’t buy it. According to him, everything that has to do with the baby is my responsibility. It’s my job to keep him posted, ask for help if it gets too much for me, remind him of appointments and tests.
Ever since the results of the pregnancy test came in, I have been the designated project manager of this enterprise. D is at most an enthusiastic employee who clocks in and out at will.
Ten minutes later, when the technician says that everything looks fine, D’s anger has subsided. The blotches from a few weeks ago have grown into something that is starting to look like a person. In the semidarkness of my belly floats another belly with two arms, two legs, a neck, and a disproportionately large head that jerks along the edge of the ultrasound image. He’s got hiccups, the obstetrician says.
Hiccups, D repeats, his voice full of admiration. I look at him as he looks at the image, proud of his son’s hiccups. The jerky movements make me uneasy, it’s as though the baby wants to get out, away from me, into the world.
* * *
On the way home I see I’ve got one missed call from an unknown number. There’s a Schulp on my voice mail: the son of Maurice, the car racer, Frans’s best friend, Nelly’s brother. I return the call as soon as we get home.
“Nelly is my aunt,” he confirms. “I don’t know much about her, we’re not what you’d call a close family, but I seem to remember she had a son in Zeeland.”
I go over to my desk and glance through the list of Schulps. The only phone number in Zeeland was for a car mechanic, and there was no answer. As soon as Maurice’s son has hung up, I redial the Zeeland number.
It rings four times, and then a woman’s voice answers. I rattle off the story that I’ve rattled off for dozens of Schulps over the last few days. About Bommenneef, the ring, the attack, that I’m trying to trace the Nelly who married Frans van Heemstra in 1950.
“Family of the captain?” the woman asks. She’s got a faint Rotterdam accent and an upbeat voice. “I think she might have mentioned it before.”
My heart skips a beat. This could be the source I’ve been looking for.
“Are you her daughter?”
“Daughter-in-law.”
“And she told you about the captain?”
The woman is quiet. “It was a long time ago,” she says hesitantly.
My enthusiasm sags. “Might your husband know more about it?”
“Maybe if you dropped by …”
I’m of two minds. I don’t feel like traveling all the way to Zeeland for nothing.
“Is there a diary, maybe?” I ask. “Or letters?”
“Nelly would know that better than I.”
“Nelly’s alive?” I do my best not to scream the question.
19 WEEKS LEFT
NELLY IS STILL alive.
A few days after this discovery, I sit facing her on the veranda of a service apartment in Vlissingen. It’s a cold summer day. The coffee is lukewarm, the cream puffs we bought in the commissary seem to have come straight from the freezer. I’m exhausted; the mosquito invasion has gotten worse by the day. D has bought an electric insect killer in the form of a tennis racket. I lie there at night, swatting with it for hours on end. Hit one and a small flash of light shoots through the wire mesh. The bigger the mosquito, the bigger the flash. Sometimes it leaves behind the stench of burned flesh. I got a fright the first time I smelled it. I remembered learning in biology class that only female mosquitoes bite, and then only if they are ovulating. I wonder if it’s the eggs I smell burning, and how many generations of mosquitoes I’ve annihilated with that one swipe. But once I got over the squeamishness, it became addictive: retribution for all those sleepless hours. Roasted mosquito became the smell of vengeance.
There is a large red welt under my left eye that makes my face looked lopsided, but I don’t think Nelly sees it. In fact, I don’t think Nelly sees much at all. Her eyes are buried under a thick agglomeration of baggy skin. She seems to feel her way around.
Nelly still has a stately posture even though she no longer walks completely erect. She is wearing a colorful batik blouse, and her cheeks are dark and smooth, like polished wood. Her voice is so raspy that I have to hold my ear right up close to her lips in order to catch her words before they vanish into the chilly summer air. It must be a strange sight, as though I’m offering her my cheek, waiting for a kiss.
Nelly’s memories of Frans are similar to B’s: women, cars, disdain for anything leftist. “Frans was a hunter. Not the kind of man a person should be married to.”
They never had children because he had contracted the mumps just before the war, which rendered him sterile. “But he could never accept that it was because of him. Maybe that’s why he was always on the prowl, hoping that there was some woman out there who it would succeed with after all.”
I ask her about the bombing, whether she knew anything about the preparations.
She shakes her head. “Frans wasn’t a talker, and that suited me.”
“But surely you questioned him after he’d been arrested?”
“He said he was innocent.”
“And that was enough for you?”
She nods. After that, she dismisses all my questions about the bombing.
“I hardly know anything about it.”
What she does know is who the target was at Prinsengracht 266: a Mr. Boer.
I assume she’s confusing him with corporal De Boer, the one who made the bombs, but Nelly shakes her head when I bring him up.
“No, no, that was De Boer,” she insists. “This was Boer. Just Boer. He had to be killed.”
“Why?”
“Something to do with Engelandvaarders, I think.” She looks at me questioningly, not entirely certain of her answer. “He had betrayed someone to the authorities. Or maybe more people.”
“And the others who we
re killed?”
“Were there others?”
A chilly wind blows across the otherwise empty veranda. I shiver, zip up my coat. Nelly is oblivious to it all. She picks crumbs from her plate with her long, dark fingers. A tropical bird under the pale Zeeland sky.
“Do you have any idea who the target was in Brussels?”
Nelly springs to life, smiles broadly.
“He was on his way to see me that night. We had quarreled—for the umpteenth time—there was another woman. Frans took these things … rather lightly. I said to him: now it’s really over. And I left for Brussels. I went to work as an au pair for this awful family. I regretted it terribly, but I was too proud to go back. I wanted him to miss me, to come looking for me. And that evening, out of the blue, he appeared at the door.”
She laughs. A low, dusty sound.
“Pack your bags, he said, and I did. We slept in the Hotel De Goudfazant, downtown. It was wonderful.”
“Could you tell if he had any explosives with him?”
“He had a valise with pajamas and cigarettes. No more than that.”
“Was he nervous that evening? Depressed?”
She shakes her head. “He was relaxed,” she says. “Dressed to the nines and in good humor.” She hadn’t noticed anything unusual about him. But, she adds, nothing could rattle Frans. Not even the morning after their romantic tryst, when Nelly’s brother Maurice appeared downstairs in the hotel lobby. He had dropped in to visit his sister and was told that Frans had taken her away the previous night.
Maurice looked from his younger sister to his friend, and then said threateningly, “So, Frans, what’re we going to do?” And Frans, perfectly cool, answered, “Get married.”
Nelly and Frans drove back to Amsterdam, their hands intertwined around the gear shift. When they arrived, the police were waiting for them, and a day later Frans was taken into custody. They were only able to wed two years after his conviction—in the Leeuwarden prison chapel.
In Search of a Name Page 4