Nelly chuckles.
“Wouldn’t you know it, I had a great big pimple on my nose that day. I wore a secondhand dress with a coffee stain on it, and we hadn’t any rings.”
So Frans slid his own ring onto her middle finger—my ring, the ring I got from my grandmother. Nelly touches the stone with a long, sinewy finger.
“I wore it until the day I left him for good, in the spring of ’58; I remember ripping it off and throwing it at his head.”
She looks silently at the blue stone for a moment, and I feel myself becoming uneasy. What if she wants it back? Should I give it to her?
Fortunately, she resumes her story.
“He had a hard time of it in prison. When I came to visit, he complained that he had to fight off the other men, and he detested the conscientious objectors he had to share a cell with. He thought pacifists were dangerous fools. A man is meant to fight for his country, was his motto. He was afraid that every generation after the war would become progressively softer. He was angry about so many things. In fact, he was always angry.” She gingerly places a hand on the half-frozen cream puff, as though to protect it from the cold summer.
I ask if she still bears a grudge against him. She shakes her head. “Life with Frans was a ball. When he wasn’t angry, he sang, all day long. We would sit till all hours in cafés with the Canadians. Sometimes we spent the whole weekend in bed. Those were bleak years for me, and Frans cheered them up. The only thing I couldn’t take was that cheating of his. And also, during and after the war, his obsessive, pathological planning for the next battle.”
One day, when she snapped at him that the war was really and truly over, Frans asked: How long does a war last, then?
Until peace comes, Nelly replied. He just laughed at her.
“It’s funny,” she says, “but some things just stick in your mind your whole life long. That one night in De Goudfazant—that was worth everything. It was pure happiness. From beginning to end. It was—” She cuts herself short.
I feel it’s indiscreet to ask more about that night. A long, awkward silence follows. I thumb through my notebook, as though consulting my notes on how this conversation is supposed to continue. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Nelly wolf down her cream puff.
I ask if she regrets having left Frans.
“It seemed like the right decision at the time.”
When we say goodbye, Nelly takes one last look at the ring. “It would never fit me now,” she says.
Her eyes glisten, and suddenly I see how beautiful she is, with her long Indonesian face, and realize how attractive she must have been as a young woman. We say goodbye at the elevator. The doors slide shut with a sound that resembles a sigh, and I imagine her being teletransported to another era. Back to the past, whence she materialized.
In the lobby of the apartment building my telephone rings. It’s D, asking if we could reschedule tomorrow’s appointment with the obstetrician. I ask him why he doesn’t just call her himself.
“You’ve got the number.”
“It’s online.”
“But you’ve got it on your phone.”
“I’ll text it to you.”
“Why do you always have to make things so complicated?”
“It’s easy. I send you the number, and you call.”
“That’s so roundabout.”
He’s right, it is roundabout. I don’t send him the number. Just like I did not send him the numbers of the ultrasound clinic and the postnatal care. I wonder where exactly our paths diverged; how I ended up along the route of all the practical baby matters, while somewhere off in the distance, he meanders through his days.
I send him a text.
I miss you.
I get it. Hang in there, in a couple of hours I’m all yours.
I respond with a smiley. Closeness won’t make me miss him any less, probably only more. In the train from Vlissingen to Amsterdam I examine my face in the reflection of the window. My head looks swollen, not just because of that bug bite. I’ve gained more than four pounds in the past week; the obstetrician says it’s mostly fluids. My ankles and wrists are thicker than ever, water reservoirs are forming around my joints, sometimes I imagine I hear myself sloshing. I look at the notes I took during my conversation with Nelly. They don’t even fill a full page. A few sentences, a couple of keywords. In the middle of the page I’ve written Brussels! At least now I know why Bommenneef went there. Not for a liquidation, but for love. A new pushpin on the map. Only thing is, it doesn’t exactly bring me closer to heroism. While Peterse lay in bed crying next to his wife and Haastrecht was injured and on the run, Frans spent the night in a swanky hotel with his sweetheart. Maybe she was his alibi that evening. Maybe his bomb also went off too early, although Nelly said he looked spruce. I take a pen from my bag and change the exclamation mark after Brussels to a question mark.
The baby kicks. For the first time, I yearn to see him and to touch him. It is a large, all-encompassing yearning.
I look around; the compartment is empty.
I lay my chin on my chest, direct my voice at my belly, and start to talk. Ridiculous, but it feels good. “I don’t know who you are or who you’ll become, what you expect, what I should say to you when you’re here. I don’t even know how to hold you. But I’m working on a story. Your first story. I promise you it’ll be a good one, the best first story a boy can have. It’s got war in it, and peace, a hero and a villain; it works, just like a song you can sing along with after hearing it just once. You can come out once it’s finished.” Another kick. Deal.
I enter all the new information I got from Nelly into the search field on the computer. Boer + Informer + Engelandvaarders.
As the page slowly loads, I watch the Zeeland landscape pass. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to get lost. Flat fields, low trees. The connection keeps getting broken. Hopeless.
Only after the town of Goes does the internet reconnect. There is just one hit that contains all three keywords: a website with historical information about Ockenburgh Estate, situated between Loosduinen and Kijkduin, near the dunes in The Hague. The extensive historical overview includes two paragraphs about the occupation. The beach and vicinity were heavily patrolled by the German coast guard, and it was off limits between nine at night and dawn. Twice, boats tried to leave Ockenburgh for England. They were intercepted both times.
And then, there he is, in the last paragraph. Boer. The informer.
In 1942, Mr. Boer is said to have lured twelve Engelandvaarders to his bird-trapping grounds at Ockenburgh Estate. The area was then cordoned off by German forces, and the next day it was announced that the Engelandvaarders had been betrayed and subsequently arrested. One of the German officers was said to have been decorated for his role in the arrests and had supposedly recommended Boer for a distinction as well for exposing the Engelandvaarders. It was said that after the war, Boer also had contact with SS officers who had gone into hiding. After liberation, the Political Investigations Unit in The Hague had begun an inquiry into Boer’s activities, but there was insufficient evidence to pursue it. On 5 December 1946, a parcel bomb disguised as a Sinterklaas gift was delivered to Boer’s residence in The Hague. When the package was opened, a violent explosion followed, instantly killing François Guillaume Jacques Boer. Two other persons present in the house later died of their injuries. The explosion caused a fire in the house, injuring three persons, including Boer’s daughter-in-law. The attack appears to have been carried out in retaliation for the betrayal of the Ockenburgh Engelandvaarders.
As I read the article, I feel childishly triumphant: a man who betrayed twelve innocent people must not be allowed to get away with it. Boontje komt om zijn loontje.
But when I reread the article, I am struck by that recurring “is said to.” The German is said to have recommended Boer for a distinction. Boer is said to have had contact with ex–SS officers. Rumors. Likelihoods, but without proof.
And then there are the other two pe
rsons present, who later died of their injuries. “Persons present”: that doesn’t sound like Blackshirts or die-hard traitors, more like blameless bystanders. Family members, perhaps, like the daughter-in-law who, according to the article, was injured in the bombing.
The keywords “François Boer + Ockenburgh” bring up a magazine article about the dunes in North Holland. There’s a photograph of two men in a small wooden structure. Two Bird-Catchers on the Trapping Grounds, reads the caption, with their names underneath. One of them is François Boer. It goes on to say that the grounds—a large, empty field behind the structure—were the property of the other man in the picture, Dirk Hoos. The article says that Ockenburgh was well situated for catching finches, siskins, and starlings. Originally this was done for consumption, and, starting in 1936, “in the interest of migration studies.” So Dirk and François caught birds, banded them, and set them free. The photograph is black-and-white and of poor quality; it is so pixilated that Dirk Hoos resembles the cartoonish Captain Haddock. He is wearing a dark Alpine hat, has a pipe in his mouth, and gazes off into the distance. Boer’s appearance clashes with his adventurous-looking partner. He is dressed more like an office clerk than an outdoorsman. Trilby hat, starched collar, wool sweater, scarf, and snug-fitting jacket. He’s holding a bundle of rope, perhaps a net. He, too, looks off into the distance, but it’s a less distant distance than Dirk’s. It is as though he’s not quite sure where he’s supposed to look. Alongside the seasoned outdoorsman with the cap and the pipe, he looks like the lackey who’s allowed to hold the net and is just there to take up space in the photo. But maybe my opinion is colored by what I know, or what I want to know. Boer was indeed a dedicated birder: the article describes how they persevered in their bird banding “in the midst of the minefields.” This article, too, ends with a reference to the bombing. “Mr. Boer died tragically in a liquidation on 5 December 1946, which is said to have been connected to collaboration during the war.”
Said to.
18 WEEKS LEFT
FINDING INFORMATION ABOUT François Boer is easier than I thought. I follow D’s friend Stefan’s advice and consult the National Archive website. There is apparently a section called “Extraordinary Jurisdiction,” which has a dossier on anyone who was subject to an investigation after the war under suspicion of collaboration. I send an email with François Boer’s name and date of death, asking if there might be any information about him, and receive an answer within the hour. The dossier will be available for perusal in two days. I’m taken aback at the ease with which I—his killer’s niece—am given access to François’s dossier.
Two days later I go through the revolving door into the large main hall of “the nation’s memory.” I had expected a building packed with filing cabinets and ring binders; rooms full of diaries, photographs, testimonies, birth and death announcements: a stockpile of everything that is worth remembering. But here in the bare foyer, my overriding impression is that much has been forgotten. No binders, no bookshelves. A coffee bar off to the side, like a forgotten island in a sea of floor tiles. A small sign points to the Children’s Book Museum, which shares the premises with the National Archive; one wrong turn and you’re in the realm of fairy tales. The receptionist directs me to another counter, where I am given a pass and a pencil and sent to a third counter. The attendant there is a small man with sharp features, two deep, animalish eyes and a snout like an Afghan hound. I tell him my dossier number and he takes a cardboard box from the shelf behind him and slides it across the counter. I am to sit at the white table in the center of the reading room, he instructs me, which is reserved for those with dossiers from the Extraordinary Jurisdiction archives. I’m allowed to read everything, type it over if I want, but pictures and photocopies are strictly forbidden.
The white table is the only busy place in the otherwise quiet hall. I head for the last free seat. The box is lighter than I had expected, a paltry chronicle. I sit down, take out my laptop, and look at the brown cardboard. This could be the side path that leads me completely astray. Maybe I should focus on the heroes, and leave the victims be. But I can’t get the words “said to” out of my head, and if I want to understand the loontje better, shouldn’t I find out more about the boontje?
Across the table from me, a man of around seventy sits shaking his head above the papers spread out in front of him. Next to him, two thin women—twins, I’m guessing—whisper quietly. Their faces are identical, as are their tidy white blouses; only the length of their stiff gray hair is different.
It looks like I’m the only under-fifty here. I figure most of them were born after the war and are now delving for stories about their parents, for whatever it was that was not talked about during all those dull postwar evenings of their youth.
A security man at the head of the table monitors us to make sure we stick to the rules and don’t sneak any pictures. He walks over to me with two bright-pink Post-its: one for over the webcam on my laptop, one for my mobile phone. I never knew the privacy of dead people was so well guarded.
I place my hand on the box. There’s something unbecoming about it, as though I’m about to open a grave. When I’ve removed the lid, I have to look twice before I see the dossier lying at the bottom. A thin folder the same color as the cardboard. It contains just a few loose sheets of paper.
“Military Authority, Political Investigative Unit’s Gravenhage,” it says on the first page. And then: “François Boer. Suspected of abetting the enemy.” It is the report of the court case against François Boer. Three witnesses testified. The first, Leendert Vols, is also the man who made the initial accusation. He tells the judge that François worked at the Ockenburgh bird-trapping grounds during the war, and that shortly after the Dutch capitulation in 1940 he went into the city to catch pigeons for the Wehrmacht. Additionally, Vos had seen him fishing with a German and witnessed the catch being turned over at the end of the day to German officers billeted on the Laan van Nieuw Oost-Indië. “He brought the enemy fish and fowl.”
Another witness stated that during the war, François had access to places “where no decent person was allowed.” The third witness tells that François had permission to go to Rozenburg Island because his birds were kept there.
François’s defense in the subsequent paragraph calls all these things “misunderstandings.” The German fishing friend was a civilian resident and not a Nazi; nor was the fish ever delivered to officers. The police had instructed him to catch the pigeons—first with seeds soaked in genever, and when that did not work, with nets. He caught approximately two hundred. Not out of political motives, he says, but “because the police asked me to.”
I reread the report. Then I inspect the pieces of evidence. Flimsy, creased bits of paper. Snippets that in those days could mean the difference between walking free or a life sentence. A Sperrlinieausweis, a Sonderausweis; I’ve no idea what the difference is, or in fact what they mean in the first place. D is right, I’m an amateur.
All those people seated at the table, hunched over their confidential dossiers with professional poise, their pencils at the ready, they nod knowingly above their folders, while I don’t have the faintest idea where Rozenburg is, or what it means that a birder was allowed there during the war. The man across from me is still shaking his head, as though he is engaged in a permanent quarrel with history; the twins carry on with their whispered consultation. I look at the box and feel like a fool. I had expected to find a membership card of the Dutch fascists, hard evidence of collaboration, testimonials by surviving Engelandvaarders—not a memo about pigeons.
At the bottom of the report is a brief addendum: the suspect has died as the result of a bomb attack. Attached to this I find a second document from the political investigative unit dated May 2, 1947, in scrawled handwriting: “In my opinion, abetting the enemy, catching pigeons in the binnenhof, is not of a sufficiently serious nature (if proven) to justify posthumous charges.”
No Engelandvaarders. No smoking gun. Irritate
d, I shuffle the papers back together; the security man gives me a cautionary look and I secretly dare him to say something, just so I can snap back that this box is incomplete, the archive is incomplete, that they’re not doing history much of a favor with this measly stash of scrap paper. But he has already turned his gaze elsewhere.
With a jerk I shove back my chair, pick up my bag, and walk over to the Afghan hound’s counter. My irritation grows with every step. Why didn’t anyone take the trouble just to write down what happened? Why must I now make do with a couple of barely legible Ausweises and a pile of junk from a desk drawer? A bomb exploded, people were killed and men were sent to jail, lives were compromised, and all that’s left is this two-bit legend full of holes and cracks.
When I reach the counter, the Afghan hound gives me a questioning look.
“The box is incomplete.”
“Not possible.”
“Half the story is missing.”
“There are no stories in these boxes, only papers.”
“But what I read isn’t right.”
He smiles pityingly.
“We hear that a lot.”
I turn and look at the man who was sitting across from me just now. He is still shaking his head. My belly rumbles. The size of a papaya, the weight of a soccer ball, I read this morning. Nine weeks have gone by and still no overall picture. I leave the reading room, go through the hallway and into the foyer. I hesitate at the revolving door. Will I get fined for not clearing up? When I turn to walk back, out of the corner of my eye I spot the head-shaker seated at one of the tables at the deserted coffee bar. He waves, gestures invitingly at the empty table next to him. I look around; we are the only two in this huge echo chamber.
Why not. Take a break, consider my next move. The tables are clustered absurdly close together, as though they are huddling for cover from the vast emptiness around them.
When I put down my bag, the man leans over and extends his hand.
In Search of a Name Page 5