The Cut Out Girl

by Bart van Es

  In Bennekom, life continues in its old regular pattern and it is already early summer when Lien hears the sound of a motorbike out in the street. Working up in her room, she does not even think about it, but she does notice a moment later when the bell rings and Mother van Laar answers the door.

  “Lientje,” she calls, “it’s for you.” Her voice is neutral and Mother van Laar has already retreated to the kitchen, with the door shut behind her, by the time that Lien comes out of her room.

  It is only when Lien reaches the lower stairs that she sees who it is from the shoes and the trousers. Her heart stops, because it is Evert van Laar. There is no one to call on, even supposing she dared, and her whole body feels suddenly frozen and passive. Stepping forward, Uncle Evert looks up at her, eyes aglitter, and he gestures, through the open door, at the road and at the bike.

  If you close your eyes then maybe it is not happening. She grips her fingers on the steel of the handlebars and feels the heat radiating from the engine against her bare legs. Once they reach the woods the ground is uneven and the seat hammers against her, the motor whining as he drives at speed. She strives to make herself numb to it, but the numbness that she felt a moment earlier will not come.

  Deep in the undergrowth there is an old jeep, wedged into bushes, overhung with a canopy of trees. He drives straight to it. He has planned this, she can tell. He pushes the motorbike up against a stack of abandoned tires. She, still seated, squeezing her eyes closed, picks up the tang of engine oil that has mixed with wet fungus and leaves. When her eyes flick open for a moment she sees the jeep’s windscreen, which is slicked with a mossy sheen. There is a step just behind the wheel arch and Uncle Evert speaks slowly. He says to her, “You wanted this yourself.”

  Again there are no questions asked or answered, and after this his visits on the motorbike turn into a regular fixture, like school or like church. Uncle Evert and Lien have a “special friendship,” according to Mother and Father van Laar. They don’t seem to find it odd that he comes to collect her, or if they do, then it is an oddness that they attribute to Lien herself.

  The season runs from summer to autumn and she turns twelve. Without their thick green cover the woods are brighter. It is cold and wet underfoot. The old jeep, which they always visit, begins to rust like the leaves that surround it. Its headlamps are now milky gray with fog. Lien’s sense of herself grows smaller with the fading seasonal light. Ever more silent, she is fearful, like an animal that has been hurt.

  * * *

  —

  AND THEN, IN MID-SEPTEMBER, there is suddenly a very different caller for her. From the top of the stairs Lien looks down, almost unbelieving. Mrs. Heroma has come back!

  The moment Took Heroma sees her, she steps forward unprompted, past Mother van Laar, into the house. From the foot of the stairs she stretches out to touch the girl’s shoulders.

  “Lientje, I am so happy to see you!” she says.

  An hour later the two of them sit on a bench in the watery sunshine, looking out over the heath. They are going to do some serious talking and Lien should say what she herself thinks is best.

  First, there are questions about her health and her school studies. Each time she answers there is a pause as Mrs. Heroma writes things down in her book. Sometimes she sits still for a moment, thinking, pen in hand. Then, after all the questions have finished, Mrs. Heroma places the notebook beside her, looks out at the tree line, and turns with a thoughtful expression to Lien.

  The Van Laars, Mrs. Heroma says, have looked after Lien for a long while now. It is not a big family and there is a spare bedroom and Jaap must be almost like a brother by now. Of course brothers can be annoying and we all have arguments sometimes, but Bennekom is a nice village and the Van Laars would like her to stay. She could earn her keep as a maid doing chores for the household. She could carry on with her schooling, which seems to be going well. What does Lien think about that?

  The girl stares down through the slats of the bench at the ground beneath them.

  What does Lien think?

  She is not used to being asked this. Lien keeps her eyes fixed on the thin strip of soil and yellow grass.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” she says, almost to herself.

  “Then what would you like instead?”

  The answer comes to her only at this instant.

  “I want to go to the Van Esses,” Lien answers with firmness and looks up, her eyes squinting against the low afternoon sun.

  Now that the words have been spoken Lien can see it: the house in the Bilderdijkstraat with Kees, who is her friend, and Ali and Marianne and Auntie’s kitchen. It is the only place that she can imagine where she could once again be a child.

  These things cannot, of course, be sorted out quickly. Mrs. Heroma must go back to Dordrecht to see how matters can be arranged. There is a long week of waiting during which the Bilderdijkstraat grows in her mind. She thinks of going swimming with Annie Mookhoek as she used to, or of seeing Fau Buyne, the neighbor across the street. As the days pass, the presence of that world grows more and more urgent. She fears the arrival of Uncle Evert in a way that she has not feared it for a very long time.

  And then at last it is Saturday and Mrs. Heroma is coming. Lien cannot eat her breakfast, and when the bell rings it sends a current to her heart. Mrs. Heroma stands there on the doorstep, locked in conversation with Mother van Laar. She smiles and waves at Lien but she does not talk to her, and after this she moves to the front room to speak in private with the adults while Lien must go back upstairs. Up in her bedroom, her stomach burns with waiting, but at last she is called down. “Right, now Lientje and I will go for a walk,” says Mrs. Heroma briskly, and she takes her hand.

  Then they are walking down the street and Mrs. Heroma is talking. It takes Lien a little while to connect with her words. The Van Esses are well and they send Lien their warmest wishes. Things are very busy for them at the moment because Auntie is having a new baby and the family have just moved to a new house. Uncle Henk has a different job now. He is in charge of housing for the whole city. This is a very important job and lots of people need his help. Also, he is still not very well because of what happened to him in prison, where he was sent for fighting the Germans during the war. Also Dordrecht is not a good place to be right now because of the damage from the bombing. There are no bridges and the people are still hungry and there is often no heating. Quite often the electricity does not work. And all of this means that it is not possible for Lien to come to live with the Van Esses right now.

  This makes no sense to her, and as Lien tries to understand it her breathing stops. Took Heroma shoots out a hand in comfort but it is already too late. In Lien’s mind a chasm has opened and she stares out blankly in panic, her mouth contorted. It is as if she is falling to the center of the earth.

  Took Heroma is truly frightened.

  “Lientje, I will ask again,” she says, but Lien for a long time can hear nothing, so overwhelmed is she by shock and grief.

  * * *

  —

  BACK IN THE APARTMENT in Amsterdam it is now just after seven. On the recording, Lien stumbles a little as she speaks of this moment, but her struggle comes not so much from emotion as from a desire to get things right.

  “The news came that they did not want me. . . . She came back and she told me it couldn’t happen, that it wasn’t allowed. . . . And I was dazed by it.”

  There is a very long pause.

  “I could not believe it. I had so totally counted on it, had set all my will upon it, I had seen it as the only way out.”

  In the silence I ask myself what could have made my grandparents give their answer. After Lien left, the family had sheltered two other Jewish children and they had gone back to their families. Perhaps my grandparents felt that something like this should be done for Lien? They were themselves under enormous pressure and they had alr
eady done so much. It is also true that at this distance I cannot know what exactly was asked of them or what exact answer was given. When Took asked for a second time they said yes and they did so with grace.

  All the same, that first answer damaged something precious. It damaged the confident sense of belonging that had been, perhaps, my grandparents’ greatest gift to Lien.

  * * *

  —

  NOT LONG AFTERWARD Lien stands for the last time on the doorstep of number 33 Algemeer. Out on the road a spluttering car awaits her, with Dr. and Mrs. Heroma inside. It is an awkward farewell.

  When she has said her quiet thank-you and begins moving, the girl is handed something, a unsealed white envelope that has four photographs inside.

  “To remember us by,” says Mother van Laar.

  While the car idles, Lien looks briefly through the uneven little stack.

  The first is of herself. It is a studio photograph taken in Ede a few months earlier and it shows a pretty young woman with a beautiful curving staircase spiraling upward behind her. In white kneesocks and a dark sailor-suit dress, Lien looks straight at the camera, a half smile on her lips and a girlish checked bow in her hair. The image on the picture is not real, though.

  If you look down at the floor you can see the edge of the photographer’s backcloth. The marble and wrought-iron stairway is just an illusion that can be replaced by something different simply by pulling a cord.

  The second photograph is the one of her with the Van Laars in front of the house, which was taken almost two years ago, when she first came to Bennekom. She looks much younger in the photograph than she does now.

  And then there are two passport snaps, one of Father and one of Mother van Laar. They both gaze over the photographer’s left shoulder.

  With his high Brylcreemed hair and five-o’clock shadow, Father van Laar appears uncomfortable in his tight, formal clothing. His wife, looking plain, rests her teeth on her lower lip.

  They do not seem happy.

  Now that Lien is leaving there is almost something pitiful about these people, averting their eyes as instructed and doing their best to conform.

  * * *

  —

  FOR LIEN THE BACKDROP is about to change from country to city and from old-style religion to new socialist ideals. It is a long journey, but Dr. Heroma, who is driving, makes an adventure of it. Each misleading road sign or broken ferry is a challenge. On the map he shows her the route they are taking and he includes her in the discussion when the way is suddenly blocked. Sheltered in the little car with rain spotting the windscreen she and the Heromas stop in a lay-by at lunchtime to eat corned beef sandwiches. Then they are on the road again. There is little traffic as they cross the country, mainly just struggling cyclists. Outside, through the mist, Lien sees the stumps of bridges, which, Dr. Heroma tells her, were cut up for steel and transported to Germany in the final months of the war.

  It is dusk by the time they get to Dordrecht. Her first glimpse of the Van Esses’ new house in the Frederikstraat will always stay fixed in her mind. There are so many people crowded around the door. They either want help with their housing or they are journalists asking for comments from Uncle Henk. Mrs. Heroma, with her usual self-assurance, cuts right through the crowd. Then, there in the hallway, in the warm light, stands Auntie, round and ruddy, looking tired but well. As Lien steps through the front door into the trusted smell of cooking, laundry, cigarette smoke, and people, Auntie surrounds her with softness. “Lientje,” she says, “you are home!”

  Then the whole house pours out its embrace to her. She is petted and praised. “Lien!” “Lienepien!” “Lien is here!” Kees stands a head taller, embarrassed and wide-eyed, while Marianne crumples with momentary shyness into her big sister, Ali, before turning quite boldly to ask, “Where are you going to sleep?” Even Uncle comes toward her, lean and intense with rolled-up sleeves and a loosened tie. “We are all so pleased to have you,” he says, fixing her with his gaze.

  The house, though only a little bigger than the Van Laars’, is more than twice the size of the one in the Bilderdijkstraat. There is a sunporch, closed off with heavy curtains; a steep, curling staircase; and a balcony on the first floor that looks out into the street. Auntie works away in the galley kitchen while Uncle Henk returns at once to his discussion, surrounded by men and papers, in the high-ceilinged front room. It is all so different and yet familiar. Neighbors drop round to gossip while children of all ages run about.

  At dinner Ali ladles out pea soup as Auntie follows after, holding a chopping board with sliced sausage on it. Using her knife, she flicks a few pieces into each bowl. It is obvious that there is still not much food to go around, but on reaching Lien, Auntie asks if she would like some sausage and when Lien nods she is given twice as much as anyone else. Then there is pudding, a rarity, provided specially with Lien in mind.

  After dinner Lien goes outside into the sharp-aired darkness where there are children playing. She does not join them. Instead, she only walks a little, keeping the house in her sight. The Bilderdijkstraat, the street where she first arrived in Dordrecht over three years ago, is less than ten minutes’ walk away but it already lies beyond her imagination. She will not see her old best friend Annie Mookhoek again.

  Tomorrow there will be a new school and new neighbors. It is strange, this half connection with Dordrecht, part familiar and part new. She feels a little dizzy with it, just as if she were very tired.

  Back inside, the house is winding down for the evening. The electricity has stopped working, which happens often in Dordrecht at the moment, and there are only a few points of light. In the halo of an oil lamp Uncle is bent over a pile of papers. From Auntie, who sits knitting beside him, there is the old word for good night, “Trusten,” which was once so strange to Lien but is comforting now.

  Ali goes upstairs ahead of her, shielding a candle, and steps into the room that they now share. It looks cozy in the weak yellow of the flame. Double doors lead out to the balcony and three beds stand close together.

  “That’s yours,” says Ali, pointing to the farthest, “though we can swap if you like.”

  But Lien is quite happy. Placed on her blanket there is a small pile of the things that she left behind two and a half years ago: some books, pens and pencils, a cuddly toy. Long forgotten, they feel like new gifts to her now. All the same, each item sparks a memory when she touches it, like a brief fire. And then she sees it: her poesie album, with the forget-me-nots of its cover blue-gray in the faint light. Lien stands and holds it for a moment and then places the little book, unopened, on her bedside shelf.

  * * *

  —

  IN AMSTERDAM IN 2015 the digital recorder has run uninterrupted for nearly two hours.

  “Shall we eat something?” asks Lien.

  I nod and shift from my seat. It is already quite late.

  In the kitchen steam soon rises in the light of the oven hood as Lien sets to work, and twenty minutes later we are seated at the table again, this time with plates of food. There is a pitcher of water with slices of lemon in it, coated in silver bubbles of air, and as we sit under the lamplight I feel just as I do with my parents or with my aunts and uncles, comfortable and entirely at home. It is strange, though, because our talk at this moment is not of family connection but of its opposite, of the break between Lien and the Van Esses that came in the early 1980s.

  After we have cleared the dishes, Lien proposes that we watch the recording of her testimony to the Shoah Foundation. We watch on her computer, sitting at her desk. Lien clicks the icon and a second later we see her twenty years ago in her house in Eindhoven, seated in the red chair that now stands in her front room.

  Although younger, the woman on the screen looks less vibrant than Lien as I know her. There is a heaviness about her and a tired look in her eyes. She addresses the camera in a flat, cautious, matter-of-fact tone
. Starting with her name and then the names of her parents, she answers the interviewer’s questions and in this way the narrative plays out over the course of an hour. But there are no stories, there is no family, there is no life.

  Lien, as she sits beside me, quarrels a little with her former self. She interrupts with small adjustments and even laughs at what she feels are moments of excessive grandness. She is like a child making comments from the back of the class.

  The DVD stops and we are left looking at the frozen image of the last frame of the interview. It is past midnight and the room and the city outside it are quiet.

  “I had better get going,” I say. “Tomorrow I want to go to Dordrecht again.”

  * * *

  —

  IN THE DARKNESS a few minutes later I feel an intense clarity of vision. Never before, it seems to me, have I understood someone so completely, from their earliest memories, through the small, intimate details of an inner life. Lien, as she returned, aged twelve, to my grandparents in the Frederikstraat, is real to me. I feel I know her better than I know myself.

  But then I also know that this is an illusion, the kind of illusion that only a story can bring. How could I, brought up as I was in a world of privilege and stability, understand the experience of a young girl during World War II? How could I understand what it feels like to live as a child in utter isolation, to lose all sense of myself? How deep can any sense of another person’s experience really go?