by Bart van Es
When Lien wants to write to her father for his birthday on December 10, Auntie has to tell her that there is no address to write to, their papers have been misplaced. That afternoon it is quiet in the kitchen and Lien sits herself down in a corner. On her finger, she has two little rings that were a gift from her parents, one silver and one gold. She takes them off and starts to roll them up and down along the floorboards, from one hand to the other and back. First one and then the second slips down through a gap near the wall into the darkness. Lien does not remember thinking at all about her parents for a very long time after that.
* * *
—
THE WINTER DAYS ARE DARKER and colder and Lien spends more time at home, playing with Marianne in the kitchen or chatting with a friend in the adjoining room. Auntie does not often give kisses or cuddles, or speak of love, but she does give a sense of assurance, and that, more than anything, allows Lien to be a child. There is a clean, dry heat from the stove and there is always a comfortable smell of washing, or ironing, or cooking in the air. When Lien comes home from school there is warm milk and a thick slice of bread with apple syrup on it. There are questions about how her day went and there is news about what little Marianne has done today together with Auntie.
Over time, more and more names of friends appear in Lien’s poesie album. One contribution, from her classmate Nelly Baks, is a special favorite because of its flowing calligraphy and its strange, rapturous language, an old style of Dutch that has fallen out of use:
Dearest Lieneke,
Say, what stand’st thou there among the flowers,
Sweet tender plants and sprightly herbs?
’Twixt clod and stone whence come thy powers?
Oh thou who so mine heart disturbs!
This verse is from a book that is kept in a glass cabinet in the front room of Nelly’s house. When no one is home Nelly sometimes creeps in there to look at it, and, even though she does not understand all the words, she has learnt it by heart.
Annie Mookhoek, Lien’s closest friend, is also an admirer of the poem and she wishes that hers, which is the first in the Dordt section of the album (dated September 1), had been as romantic as Nelly’s. Now that it is winter, Annie Mookhoek is often to be found in the kitchen in the Bilderdijkstraat, also drinking warm milk and eating bread with apple syrup. This wild-eyed girl with flowing hair loves nothing better than princesses and stories of knights and castles from the olden days. As she and Lien sit in the children’s bedroom next to the kitchen, the two of them talk of romantic adventures, of outlaws living a life on the run under an evil king, their girlish faces lit up with the excitement of it all. They imagine worlds together. Then, taken up by the moment, Lien whispers to Annie that she has a real secret, one that nobody is allowed to know. Annie offers her ear for her to whisper. “I am really a Jewess in hiding,” Lien breathes. “Jewess.” The word is intoxicating. Annie turns, her eyes wide in amazement, looking anew at her friend. “Is that really true?” she asks.
A few days later, Lien comes home to find Auntie strangely shivery, waiting for her in the kitchen, without either warm milk or bread with syrup. Lien feels a tight, painful grip on her arm and is led to the mooie kamer. Auntie shuts the door and then turns to put both her hands on Lien’s shoulders, pinching them with the same hard grip. She bends forward so close that the little girl sees the tiny, thin spiderweb of red lines on her cheeks. Annie has told her mother, who has passed this on.
“You must never, ever, tell that to anyone,” Auntie says slowly, stopping after each word.
Lien is sent to bed without any dinner, something that has never happened before. She lies there staring upward at the ceiling with dry eyes, hearing the scraping of chairs, the clink of cutlery on plates, and the hubbub of voices through the thin door. Beyond these sounds, nothing at all enters her consciousness at this moment—neither fear, nor regret, nor any memory of home. Outside, a dark entity presses upon her: some vast, hovering, invisible creature, perceptible only through the beating force of its wings.
* * *
—
THERE IS ONE OTHER PERSON to whom Lien has confided her secret, but Hansje—the sad-faced boy from the photo album—has not told anyone else. More often now the two of them spend time together, outside even in the January chill. They play a game called animal graveyard in a spot by the half-built wall in the scrublands, where they will take a dead mouse, a frozen bird, or a softly iridescent butterfly with wings that crumble to the touch. Hansje and Lien dig the cold, hard earth with a broken slate and build coffins and headstones—cutting the dates of burial into a piece of brick with a nail. Sometimes they cannot find any creatures that need burial, so they find live ones instead and help them on their way. They will crack the shell of a beetle or crush the pink-ribbed tube of a worm found hidden under a rock. The ceremonies are just the same for the “helped” as they are for the already dead—soft words mumbled as the body is lowered into the grave. Lien and Hansje, who is also “not a Jew anymore,” have something in common, although they never even whisper what it is.
The winter of 1942–43 is much milder than the one that preceded it, but there is still frost, icy rain, and the occasional flurry of snow. Lien suffers from what are called winter feet—red-bluish blisters and an itchy tingle around the toes. The cure for this is rather medieval: having to sit, each morning, with your feet in a bowl of your first urine, warm but rapidly cooling as the minutes pass. For the rest—while Polish Jews fight in the Warsaw Uprising against the final liquidation of the ghetto and while the German army faces defeat at Stalingrad—all is fairly quiet in Dordrecht. There is enough to eat, even if choice is more limited, and Lien has no thoughts at all about the progress of the war.
For her, life continues as normal. In fact, it becomes more normal over time. She is simply one of the family. As the thin ice cracks on ponds and ditches, she goes out to look for frog spawn with Kees and fills great jars full of the jelly with its little black spots. They go more often to Strien and watch the plowing and the sowing. The routine of life in the Bilderdijkstraat is uninterrupted: friends still come to dinner; the games out on the street continue; and Auntie oversees everything with her warm, self-confident care. Lien and Kees are like sister and brother—during the holidays they spend their days together, up to no good. It is easy learning at school and being friends with other children, and as the days grow longer, Lien spends more and more of her time playing out in the sun.
* * *
—
ONE AFTERNOON IN THE SPRING OF 1943 she is out in the backyard with Mariannetje, who is now quite steady on her feet. They are playing a chasing game, with Lien as the chaser. The closer she gets to escaping Marianne, the more frantic the little girl’s steps become, until finally they are almost paralyzed with delicious, giggling fear. Lien carries her with wobbly steps to the captive place, lets her run, then catches her again. Auntie is working in the kitchen with the door open, chopping onions that sizzle at the bottom of the big pan. The doorbell rings, which is unusual, and because Auntie is in the middle of something Lien is sent from the yard, through the kitchen, and along the corridor to the front of the house to see who it is. Behind her, the kitchen is all scent, noise, and light.
She sees a figure through the little glass window and pulls the front door toward her. There on the doorstep stand two men in police uniform—big and full of power—and before she can even look up to see their faces they charge past her into the house. Although she does not know it, these are Harry Evers and Arie den Breejen. Their heavy steps thump down the corridor, and then Lien hears the smash of the kitchen door.
She stands confused momentarily.
The next instant, Auntie is there beside her, down at her level.
On the floor, below the pegs for the coats, there is an old pair of boots, probably Uncle’s. Auntie pushes them toward her.
“Put these on, go to Mrs. de Bruyn
e’s, don’t come back.”
And all at once she is out on the street, her feet so loose in the boots that she almost trips. The Bilderdijkstraat feels like a different place now, or rather it is the same but with time slowed down. The walk across the road to Mrs. de Bruyne’s, just a few steps away, feels like a journey even though Lien is moving as quickly as she can. She rings the bell and stands there, only looking forward at the door handle, not turning her head. If she had the watch that Mamma had hoped to give her, its hands would be standing still.
After what seems like an age, Mrs. de Bruyne opens the door. One glance and just the first word of an unplanned sentence is enough for Lien to be pulled inward and for the door to slam shut. They stand for a moment in silence. There are some stairs at the end of the corridor and Mrs. de Bruyne is staring toward them, transfixed. Lien can tell that Fau Buyne, who is so familiar, does not know what to do, even though she is an adult and ought to be in charge. Fau Buyne looks suddenly old. But then she shakes herself from her shoulders, takes Lien by the hand very gently, and leads her into the front room, the mooie kamer.
“Stay in here, love.” She has a shake in her voice, like an old lady would have.
The door clicks shut and there is rapid movement behind it, steps that quickly fade. Lien stands on her own in the center of the room, which is cool and dark, the white curtains almost entirely closed. This side of the street is in shadow, but across the road number 10 is still bathed in sunlight—it is just visible through the window and Lien stands there in the shade looking at the house she has just left. One of the uniformed men steps out of the front door and puts his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun, briefly scanning the street. Lien does not move and, oddly, feels no fear. For a long time she just stands there, watching the men enter and exit, but in the end Lien sits down on the sofa, from where she studies the photographs on the wall that loom in the near darkness, and listens to the ticking of the clock.
A mooie kamer is a place of transition: Lien sat in a place like this half a year ago when she first came to Dordrecht with Mrs. Heroma. And eventually it is again Mrs. Heroma who will come to collect her and bring her to a different house. After that, Lien will go onward to new addresses and new people. But the house that she will always look back on as a refuge is 10 Bilderdijkstraat, the home of Jans and Henk van Es.
Eight
I had always known that my grandparents sheltered Jewish children during the German occupation of the Netherlands. For many years I had meant to look into this, but all the same, until December 2014 I knew almost no details about what actually happened at that time. There were no family stories about it. For me there was just the faint mental image of pale faces looking up from beneath the floorboards, too cartoonish to feel real.
My grandfather died when I was seven, and although my grandmother, Jans, was a significant figure for me until she died when I was in my early twenties, I had barely talked with her about the war. When I asked her about it she would say, “We were not brave, but you had no choice if somebody turned up at your door.” With that the conversation ended and so the past receded into the background, seemingly dead because there was no talk to keep it alive.
Then, in November 2014, my uncle Kees passed away. He was the senior figure in the family, my father’s loved and admired big brother. My most recent contact with him had been through his grandson, so Kees already felt to me in some ways like a figure from a bygone age. His death sparked something inside me. A generation and its stories were fading. If I was to do something before these people and their memories disappeared forever, it must be now.
There was no clear moment of decision, but still, while doing the washing-up one Sunday evening, I asked a question that would end up changing my life. My mother had come round for dinner, as she often does on a Sunday when Dad is away. I was pushing food from the plates into the recycling caddy, drinking my tea, when I asked about Lien.
Lien. I remembered the name from my childhood: a Jewish girl who had stayed with my grandparents during the war. And after the war she had continued to live with them. But I had no memory of having met her, just a vague sense of an argument in the distant past and of a letter sent by my grandmother many years ago, which had severed contact for good. She was now never mentioned by the family, but as far as I knew, she was still living and (in spite of my grandmother’s wishes) my mother had kept in touch.
“Yes, Lien is over eighty now and she lives in Amsterdam, but I don’t think she’ll want to see you. It is not a happy story and it is best left alone. Anyway, the historical details have already been recorded. They were put on that Steven Spielberg archive years ago.”
But I was insistent and my mother inquired, and after a bit I got an address. On December 7, 2014, I sent the following e-mail in Dutch:
Dear Lien,
I am the son of Henk and Dieuwke van Es and I have for many years wanted to make contact. I just received your e-mail address from Dieuwke and was very happy to hear that you would be willing to meet me. As it happens I will be in the Netherlands from 19 to 22 December. If it worked out for you I would very much like to come and see you on one of those days. Maybe for lunch, or to go and eat out somewhere, or coffee? I would like to get to know a family member. On top of this I would very much like to know about your experiences during the war and also after that with the Van Es family. As part of my job I write academic books and I would like to write something about your story (I understand of course that the story is not some straightforward fairy tale). Maybe we could explore that idea? If that did turn into something I could also come to the Netherlands on future occasions as well.
At the very least I hope to speak to you at some point soon. My apologies for my poor Dutch (I do speak it pretty well).
Many thanks and I hope to see you soon,
Bart van Es
Two hours later I received a reply.
* * *
—
AT 11:00 A.M. on Sunday, December 21, I parked my car outside Lien’s apartment in Amsterdam, walked to the entrance, and pressed the buzzer reading “de Jong,” which I recognized as my grandmother’s maiden name. By this stage, I had looked up Lien on the Shoah Foundation Web site, but as this only featured a still image of her taken in the 1990s plus a few basic facts, I still knew almost nothing about the sort of person I would find. The intercom buzzed and I was invited to climb to the second floor, where she stood waiting on the landing, surrounded by potted plants and posters of modern art.
“Let me look at you,” she said, standing back.
I was led, with mock formality, along an open walkway with a view of a planted courtyard.
“You look more like your mother,” Lien told me. I was struck by the thought that, when she last set eyes on him, my dad would have been close to the age I am now.
Our meeting that day ran on until long after darkness fell. At the end, it felt strange to break up our togetherness. In an odd way I felt older than she, given we’d spoken almost entirely about her life as a child. We see people at least as much by the stories they tell as by their outward appearance, and I had gotten to know Lien through the little and the big events in her life before she was nine. Part of her still felt vulnerable and inexperienced. I promised to return early in the New Year.
Traveling back, Holland’s motorways looked more modern than ever: the car showrooms lit up like spaceships floating in the blackness, Audis and BMWs stacked one above the other on great shelves behind glass, their headlights blazing, powered by hidden electric cables, to show their high-tech designs. As I drove on a road that was straight as a beam of light, the black-and-white pictures of Lien’s early life returned to me, such as the photo taken in 1938 that shows two girls sitting on an old school bench and, standing behind them, two boys wearing ties and short trousers. Lien wore a bow in her hair, as did her friend.
Even more than by the pictures, I was haunted by the
mental image of Lien’s mother planning to tell her daughter about the “secret.” There was such self-possession in her parents’ conduct, thinking through how best to help Lien onward with the minimum of fuss, to save her even if they could not save themselves. I could see before me that last, composed family meeting, with the aunts and uncles holding their niece for what would prove the final time. And last of all I was struck by her mother’s letter to my grandparents: its measured sacrifice in giving up not simply her daughter but, still more precious, all claim on her daughter’s love.
Later, having picked up my three children and with my eldest daughter, Josie, sitting beside me, I started to tell her about Lien’s story, but found my voice breaking and had to stop.
Lien’s mother had written to my grandparents to say that she hoped the eight-year-old girl would “think only of you as her mother and father and that, in the moments of sadness that will come to her, you will comfort her as such.” After the war my father grew up with her as a sister. Why, then, at my grandmother’s funeral, was Lien unmentioned and unseen? How could such a connection break? How could my grandmother have sent her that letter, breaking off contact, signed coldly, “Mrs. van Es”?
* * *
—
TWO WEEKS LATER I was back with Lien in her apartment and talking now of the time after the raid on my grandparents’ house in the Bilderdijkstraat. She was moved quickly between households, staying in one place for no more than a few days. “The crying became less, each time, in exact proportion to the moves I had made,” she said.