by Monica Hesse
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone special to me.” She looks over my shoulder, and I follow her line of vision to where her eyes are fixed on a portrait of her family, hanging next to the pantry door.
“Mrs. Janssen.” I try to think of the right and polite way to respond. Your husband is gone, is what I should tell her. Your son is dead. Your other sons are not coming back. I cannot find ghosts. I don’t have any ration coupons for a replacement dead child.
“Mrs. Janssen, I don’t find people. I find things. Food. Clothing.”
“I need you to find—”
“A person. You said. But if you want to find a person, you need to call the police. Those are the kinds of finders you want.”
“You.” She leans over the table. “Not the police. I need you. I don’t know who else to ask.”
In the distance, the Westerkerk clock strikes; it’s half past eleven. Now is when I should leave. “I have to go.” I push my chair back from the table. “My mother will have cooked lunch. Did you want to pay now for the sausage, or have Mr. Kreuk add it to your account?”
She rises, too, but instead of seeing me to the door, she grabs my hand. “Just look, Hanneke. Please. Just look before you go.”
Because even I am not hardened enough to wrench my hand away from an old woman, I follow her toward the pantry and pause dutifully to look at the picture of her sons on the wall. They’re in a row, three abreast, matching big ears and knobby necks. But Mrs. Janssen doesn’t stop in front of the photograph. Instead, she swings open the pantry door. “This way.” She gestures for me to follow her.
Verdorie. Damn it, she’s crazier than I thought. We’re going to sit in the darkness now, together among her canned pickles, to commune with her dead son. She probably keeps his clothes in here, packed in mothballs.
Inside, it’s like any other pantry: a shallow room with a wall of spices and preserved goods, not as full as it would have been before the war.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Janssen, but I don’t know—”
“Wait.” She reaches to the edge of the spice shelf and unlatches a small hook I hadn’t noticed.
“What are you doing?”
“Just a minute.” She fiddles with the latch. Suddenly, the whole set of shelves swings out, revealing a dark space behind the pantry, long and narrow, big enough to walk into, too dark to see much.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“Hendrik built it for me,” she says. “When the children were small. This closet was inefficient—deep and sloping—so I asked if he would close off part of it for a pantry and have the other part for storage.”
My eyes adjust to the dimness. We’re standing in the space under the stairs. The ceiling grows lower, until, in the back, it’s no more than a few feet off the ground. Toward the front, there’s a shelf at eye level containing a half-burned candle, a comb, and a film magazine whose title I recognize. Most of the tiny room is taken up by Mrs. Janssen’s missing opklapbed, unfolded as if waiting for a guest. A star-patterned quilt lies on top of it, and a single pillow. There are no windows. When the secret door is closed, only a slim crack of brightness would appear underneath.
“Do you see?” She takes my hand again. “This is why I cannot call the police. The police cannot find someone who is not supposed to exist.”
“The missing person.”
“The missing girl is Jewish,” Mrs. Janssen says. “I need you to find her before the Nazis do.”
TWO
Mrs. Janssen is still waiting for me to respond, standing in the dark space, where the air is stale and smells faintly of old potatoes.
“Hanneke?”
“You were hiding someone?” I can barely get the words out as she re-latches the secret shelf, closes the pantry door, and leads me back to the table. I don’t know if I’m more shocked or scared. I know this happens, that some of the Jews who disappear are packed like winter linens in other people’s basements rather than relocated to work camps. But it’s too dangerous a thing to ever admit out loud.
Mrs. Janssen is nodding at my question. “I was.”
“In here? You were hiding someone in here? For how long?”
“Where should I begin?” She picks up her napkin, twisting it between her hands.
I don’t want her to begin at all. Ten minutes ago I was worried Mrs. Janssen might have called someone to arrest me; now I know she is the one who could be arrested. The punishment for hiding people is imprisonment, a cold, damp cell in Scheveningen, where I’ve heard of people disappearing for months without even getting hearings. The punishment for being a person in hiding—an onderduiker—is immediate deportation.
“Never mind,” I say quickly. “Never mind. I don’t need to hear anything. I’ll just go.”
“Why don’t you sit down again?” she pleads. “I’ve been waiting all morning for you.” She holds up the pitcher of coffee. “More? You can have as much as you like. Just sit. If you don’t help me, I’ll have to find someone else.”
Now I’m conflicted, standing in the middle of the kitchen. I don’t want her bribe of coffee. But I’m rooted to the spot. I shouldn’t leave, not without knowing more of the story. If Mrs. Janssen tries to find someone else, she could be putting herself in danger, and me, too.
“Tell me what happened,” I say finally.
“My husband’s business partner,” Mrs. Janssen begins, the words spilling out in a rush. “My husband’s business partner was a good man. Mr. Roodveldt. David. He worked with Hendrik for ten years. He had a wife, Rose, and she was so shy—she had a lisp and it made her self-conscious—but she could knit the most beautiful things. They had two daughters. Lea, who had just turned twelve and was the family pet. And the older daughter. Fifteen, independent, always off with her friends. Mirjam.” Her throat catches at the last name, and she swallows before continuing.
“The Roodveldts were Jewish. Not very observant, and in the beginning, it seemed that would make a difference. It didn’t, of course. David told Hendrik they would be fine. They knew a woman in the country who was going to take them in. That fell through when the woman got too scared, though, and in July, after the big razzia, when so many Jews were taken, David came to Hendrik and said he and his family needed help going into hiding.”
“And Hendrik brought them here?” I ask.
“No. He didn’t want to put me in danger. He brought them to the furniture shop. He built the Roodveldts a secret room behind a false wall in the wood shop. I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know?” I can’t imagine my own parents being able to keep such a secret from each other.
“I knew Hendrik was spending more time in the shop. I thought he was just working longer hours because David was no longer around to assist him. I thought the Roodveldts had gone to the safe house in the country. I didn’t know that all of them were right there, in hiding.”
“When did he tell you?”
“He never told me. Last month I was home alone when I heard knocking at my door. Frantic knocking; it was after curfew. I thought Hendrik had forgotten his key, but when I opened the door, there was this girl, this pale girl, wearing a blue coat. She’d grown so much. I hadn’t seen her in a few years, and I wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t introduced herself. She told me my husband had been hiding them, but now she needed a new safe space. She said everyone else was dead.”
“Mirjam Roodveldt.”
Mrs. Janssen nods. “She was shaking, she was so scared. She said the Nazis had come to the factory that night and gone straight to the wood shop. Someone betrayed Hendrik, an employee or customer. Hendrik wouldn’t show them the hiding space. He pretended he had no idea what they were talking about. Because he wouldn’t speak, the officers began threatening him. And David heard. And he tried to help. But the officers had guns.”
She gulps in a breath. “When the shooting was done, Hendrik was dead, and David, and Rose, and Lea. Only Mirjam managed to escape.”
It mus
t have been complete chaos. I’ve heard of people imprisoned, taken away and never returned. But four people, including a woman and a child, shot dead in cold blood?
“How did Mirjam escape?” I ask. “They shot everyone else. How would one young girl manage to escape from Nazis with guns?”
“The bathroom. The shop has a restroom in the front. The Roodveldts could use it once the sales floor was closed. Mirjam had just gone in to get ready for bed when the Nazis came, and she ran out the front door when she heard the gunshots, to the closest safe place she could think of. My house. That was three weeks ago. I was hiding her until last night.”
“What happened last night?”
Mrs. Janssen reaches into the pocket of her sweater and pulls out a folded slip of paper. “I wrote everything down so I would have the timeline exactly right for you.”
She traces the first line with her index finger. “She was here yesterday at noon, because I went in to bring her some bread and a copy of Het Parool. She liked to read the news of the underground, over and over again, memorizing even the classified advertisements.”
“Are you sure it was noon?”
“I’d just heard the Westerkerk strike, and people outside had left for their lunch hours.” She looks back down at the paper to find her place again. “She was here at a quarter past four, because I went in to warn her that Christoffel, my errand boy, was going to drop something off, and so she would need to be still. She was here at five thirty, because I asked her if she wanted some dinner; she told me she had a headache and was going to lie down. Right after, my neighbor Mrs. Veenstra asked me to come over. Her son, Koos, hadn’t been home, and she was scared for him. After I sat with her for an hour, Koos came up the street. His bicycle had lost a tire; he walked it twenty-five kilometers. I went home and called out to Mirjam to ask if she was feeling better. She didn’t answer. I assumed she’d fallen asleep. A while later, I opened the door to see if I could bring her anything.”
“She was gone?”
“Vanished. Her bed was empty. Her coat was gone. Her shoes were gone. She was gone.”
“What time was it by then?”
“Around ten. After curfew. Sometime between five thirty, when Mirjam said she was going to lie down, and ten, she disappeared, and there is no explanation.”
Finished with her story, she refolds the paper and starts to put it back in her pocket before handing it to me instead. There are matches near the burners on Mrs. Janssen’s stove. I fetch one now, strike it against the box, and let Mrs. Janssen’s penciled sleuthing burn into sulfur and ash.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“What are you doing, keeping written records of the girl you’ve been illegally hiding?”
She rubs her forehead. “I didn’t think of that. I don’t know these rules. It’s why I need your help, Hanneke.”
The Westerkerk chimes again in the background. Another quarter hour has passed. Before, I was using the time as an excuse to leave, but now it really is getting late. I fold my arms over my chest. “You were visiting with a neighbor for an hour. Couldn’t Mirjam have walked out then?”
“Mrs. Veenstra lives right across the street. We sat on her steps and faced my house; it wasn’t too cold yesterday. Mirjam couldn’t have left through the front door without me seeing her.”
“You have a back door?” I shouldn’t be getting her hopes up by asking questions like this, when I’m not planning to help her. But the situation she’s described is strange and unbelievable, and I keep feeling like she must be explaining it wrong.
“The rear door doesn’t close properly—it hasn’t for years. I used to get so mad at Hendrik; to think of a furniture maker not making the time to fix his own door. Finally last year I got fed up with asking and I installed a latch myself. When I noticed Mirjam was gone, I checked it. It was still closed. She couldn’t have left through the back entrance and closed a latch on the inside of the door.”
“A window?” It sounds unlikely even as I’m saying it. This neighborhood is wealthy, the kind of place people would notice unusual things like girls climbing out windows.
“Not a window. Don’t you see? She had no way to leave. And no reason to. This was the last safe place for her. But she can’t have been discovered, either. If the Nazis had come to take her, they would have taken me, too.”
There has to be a rational explanation. Mrs. Janssen must have turned away for a few minutes at Mrs. Veenstra’s and not seen the girl leave. Or maybe she has the timing wrong, and the girl disappeared while Mrs. Janssen was taking an afternoon nap.
The explanation doesn’t matter, really. I can’t help her, no matter how sad her story is. It’s too dangerous. Survival first. That’s my war motto. After Bas, it might be my life motto. Survival first, survival only. I used to be a careless person, and look where it got me. Now I transport black market goods, but only because it feeds me and my family. I flirt with German soldiers, but only because it saves me. Finding a missing girl does nothing for me at all.
From outside the kitchen, I hear the front door squeak open, and then a young male voice call out, “Hallo?” Farther away, the sound of a dog barking. Who is here? The Gestapo? The NSB? We hate the Gestapo, and the Green Police, but we hate the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging most of all. The Dutch Nazis, who have betrayed their own people.
Mrs. Janssen’s eyes widen until she places the voice. “Christoffel, I’m in the kitchen,” she calls out. “I forgot he was coming back today,” she whispers to me.
“Pick up your coffee. Behave normally.”
Christoffel the errand boy has curly blond hair and big blue eyes and the tender skin of someone who hasn’t been shaving long.
“Mrs. Janssen?” He fumbles with his hat in his hands, uncomfortable to have interrupted us. “I’m here for the opklapbed? This is the time you said?”
“Yes, of course.” She begins to rise, but Christoffel gestures for her to stay seated.
“I can manage on my own. I have a cart, and a friend waiting outside to help.” He nods toward the window, where a tall, stout boy waves from the street.
When he disappears for his cart and his friend, Mrs. Janssen sees my alarmed face and reassures me. “Not that bed. Not Mirjam’s. He’s taking the one in Hendrik’s office. I barely go in that room anymore. I asked Christoffel if he could find a buyer, and I was going to use the money to help support Mirjam.”
“Now?”
“Now I’ll use the money to pay you to help me.” I’m shaking my head in protest, but she cuts me off. “You have to find her, Hanneke. My older sons—I may never see them again. My youngest son is dead, my husband died trying to protect Mirjam’s family, and her family died trying to protect him. I have no one now, and neither does she. Mirjam and I must be each other’s family. Don’t let me lose her. Please.”
I’m saved from having to respond by the squeaking wheels of Christoffel’s pushcart, to which he and his friend have lashed Mrs. Janssen’s other opklapbed. It’s more ornate than the one in the pantry, the wood smooth and varnished and still smelling faintly of lemon furniture oil. “Mrs. Janssen? I’m leaving now,” he says.
“Wait,” I tell him. “Mrs. Janssen, maybe you don’t need to sell this bed now. Wait a day to think about it.” It’s my way of telling her I’m not going to be able to agree to this proposition.
“No. I’m selling it now,” she says definitively. “I have to. Christoffel, how much do I owe you for your trouble in picking it up?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Janssen. I’m happy to do it.”
“I insist.” She reaches for her pocketbook on the table and begins to count out money from a small coin purse. “Oh dear. I thought I had—”
“It’s not necessary,” Christoffel insists. He is blushing again and looks to me, stricken, for help.
“Mrs. Janssen,” I say softly. “Christoffel has other deliveries. Why don’t we let him go?”
She stops searching through her pocketbook and folds it clos
ed, embarrassed. Once Christoffel leaves, she sinks back to her chair. She looks tired and old. “Will you help me?” she asks.
I drain the rest of my cold coffee. What outcome does she think I can deliver? I wouldn’t know where to start. Even if Mirjam managed to escape, how far could a fifteen-year-old girl with a yellow Jodenster on her clothing get? I don’t need to take Mrs. Janssen’s money to know what will happen to a girl like Mirjam, if it hasn’t happened already: She’ll be captured, and she’ll be relocated to a labor camp in Germany or Poland, the type from which nobody has yet to return. But how did she get out in the first place?
There has to be a rational explanation, I tell myself again. People don’t disappear into thin air.
But that’s a lie, actually. People disappear into thin air every day during this occupation. Hundreds of people, taken from their homes.
How can she expect me to find just one?
THREE
Mama’s lips are a thin, tight line when I get home. “You’re late.” She accosts me at the door; she must have been watching through the window.
“It’s twelve fifteen.”
“It’s twelve nineteen.”
“Four minutes, Mama?”
Our apartment smells like frying parsnips and sausages, which I brought home yesterday. It’s a small space: just a front room, a kitchen, a toilet, and two tiny bedrooms, all on the second floor of a five-story building. Cozy.
Papa reads a book in his armchair, using the page holder he made to keep the book flat as he turns the pages with his good left arm. His shriveled right arm is tucked into his lap.
“Hannie.” He calls me by my pet name as I lean over to kiss him.
The injury happened before I was born, during the Great War. He lived on the Flanders side of the Dodendraad electric fence that had been built to separate occupied Belgium from Holland. My mother lived on the Dutch side. He wanted to vault over to impress her. He’d done it once before. I didn’t believe that part of the story when he first told it, but then he showed me a book: People had managed to cross the Wire of Death in all kinds of ingeniously idiotic ways, using tall ladders or padding their clothes with porcelain to deflect the shock. This time when he tried to cross, his shoe grazed the wire and he plummeted to the ground, and that was how my father immigrated to Holland.