by Monica Hesse
“Where did Mirjam go to school?”
“The Jewish Lyceum, since Jewish students were segregated. I don’t know where it is.”
I do. It’s right along the Amstel River in a redbrick building with tall windows. I pass by it all the time and now add it to my mental file on Mirjam. I have a location in which I can place the girl I’ve created in my head.
“What happens next?” Mrs. Janssen asks. “Are you going to speak with your friends about this?”
“Friends?”
“Who are going to help you? Who know about these things?”
Now I’m beginning to understand why Mrs. Janssen came to me. Because she has no idea how illicit activities work. The resistance, the black market—she thinks we’re all one network, sharing information, plotting against the Germans. But what I do for Mr. Kreuk works only because my link in the chain is so small. If I were to be caught and questioned about Mr. Kreuk’s operation, I could say that I didn’t know if he’d involved anyone else, and that would be telling the truth.
I don’t have a resistance network. My profiteering shopkeepers will be useless for this task. I don’t have anything, really, except an imaginary picture of a girl I’ve never seen, who I still haven’t fully promised Mrs. Janssen I’ll find.
“I need to see the hiding space again,” I tell Mrs. Janssen.
She lets me in by unlatching the hidden hook, and then calls after me. “I already looked in here. Before you came, I went through everything yesterday.”
I wait for my eyes to adjust. The space is maybe four feet wide. All but a few inches are taken up by the unfolded opklapbed. I pull back the quilt, examining the sheet below, doing the same for the mattress and pillow. On the narrow shelf, the magazine I’d noticed earlier, an old issue, from before the war. Mrs. Janssen probably had it among Jan’s old things and gave it to Mirjam as something to read.
None of the magazine’s pages have notes or markings on them, but tucked underneath is the latest issue of Het Parool, the paper Mrs. Janssen mentioned giving Mirjam yesterday. People read the resistance papers voraciously, then passed them along. Mrs. Janssen’s neighbor or delivery boy must have given this one to her.
I fold up the opklapbed to look at the floor underneath, peeling back the thin rug.
Nothing. Nothing anywhere.
But what did I expect to find? A letter from Mirjam explaining where she went? A trapdoor, where a Nazi could have sneaked in and carried Mirjam away? When I emerge into the kitchen, rubbing my eyes against the brightness, Mrs. Janssen starts to set out coffee again.
“Is your neighbor across the street home?” I ask her. “Mrs. Veenstra? The one whose son got waylaid?”
“I don’t think so.” She frowns. “Did you want to interview her? She doesn’t know about Mirjam.”
I shake my head. “Stay at your door. And sometime in the next five minutes, open it and come out. Anytime in the next five minutes. Just don’t give me warning when.”
Wrapping my arms around my waist against the cold, I cross the street to the house belonging to Mrs. Veenstra and stand on the steps, my back facing Mrs. Janssen’s home. After a minute it comes: an audible click, followed immediately by a yapping dog. When I turn around, Mrs. Janssen stares at me, confused.
“I don’t understand,” she says when we’re back in the house. “What were you doing?”
“I noticed it earlier when Christoffel left with the opklapbed. Your door is so old and heavy; it can’t be opened without making a sound. And as soon as that dog next door—”
“Fritzi,” Mrs. Janssen supplies. “The neighbor boy’s schnauzer.”
“As soon as that dog hears the door, it starts barking. Even if you were looking in completely the other direction, you would have heard the dog and noticed Mirjam leaving through the front door.”
“That’s what I said.” She’s cross at my conclusion. “I already told you that. She couldn’t have left through that door. And I already looked through Mirjam’s hiding place. You’re wasting time doing things I already did.”
“Did you already find her?” My voice is sharper than it needs to be; I’m covering my inexperience with false confidence. “You keep telling me I’m doing things you already tried, but unless you already found her, I need to see everything with my own eyes. Now, take me to the back door.”
She opens her mouth, probably to tell me again that Mirjam couldn’t have escaped through there because of the inside latch, but then thinks better.
The rear door is a heavy oak, and it’s immediately apparent what she meant by it not closing. Age and the settling of the house have warped the door completely, so that the top half of the door bulges away from the jamb. That’s why Mrs. Janssen has added the latch. It’s heavy, made of iron, and when engaged, it holds the door properly shut. When it’s not engaged, a thin stream of air seeps in through the top.
She’s right. I can’t think of any way that a person could leave through this door and lock the latch behind herself.
Mrs. Janssen is staring at me. I haven’t told her that I’ll help, not officially. And yet I haven’t walked away. It’s so immensely dangerous, much more than anything I’ve allowed myself to do.
But Mrs. Janssen came to me, the way Mr. Kreuk had come to me, and I’m very good at finding things.
I can feel myself getting sucked into this mystery. Maybe because Bas would. Maybe because it’s another way to flout the rules. But maybe because, in a country that has come to make no sense, in a world I cannot solve, this is a small piece that I can. I need to get to Mirjam’s school, the place that might have a picture, the place that might explain who this girl is. Because assuming that Mrs. Janssen is correct in her timeline, assuming the dog always barks when someone leaves, assuming Mirjam couldn’t have gone through the back door, assuming all that is true, it seems this girl is a ghost.
FIVE
I’ve been gone from my daily tasks for nearly an hour. If I don’t get back to my deliveries, Mrs. de Vries will complain.
The line at the butcher’s is almost out the door with tired housewives trading tips on where they’ve managed to locate which hard-to-find item. I don’t wait in the line. I never do. As soon as the butcher sees me come in, he waves me toward the counter while he disappears into the back. It took me at least a dozen visits to build this relationship. The first time, I listened while he told another customer that his daughter loved to draw. The second time, I brought some colored pencils and told him they were old ones I’d found in the back of my closet. They were obviously brand-new, though, and I watched his reaction to this: Would he allow himself to believe a white lie, if it meant he got something he wanted? Later, I talked about a sick grandmother, and her sick, wealthy friends who were willing to pay extra money for extra meat.
When the butcher returns, he’s carrying a white paper parcel.
“That’s not fair,” a woman behind me calls after she sees the exchange. She’s right; it’s not fair. The other customers never like me much. They might like me better if I were hungry like them, but I’d rather not starve.
“Her grandmother is sick,” the butcher explains. “She’s caring for a whole family at home.”
“We’re all caring for people at home,” the woman presses on. She’s tired. Everyone is tired of standing in so many lines for so many days. “It’s just because she’s a pretty girl. Would you let a boy skip the line?”
“Not a boy who looks like your son.” The other people in line laugh, either because they think it’s funny or they just want to remain in the good graces of the man who supplies their food. He turns to me and smiles, whispering that he’s tucked a little something extra into my packet for me to take to my family.
It started to rain while I was in the butcher’s shop, fat, slushy drops mixed with ice. The roads are dark and slick. I put the meat in my basket, covering the package with a newspaper, which soaks through in minutes. At the door of Mrs. de Vries’s apartment, my teeth chatter and water slide
s off my skirt and pools into my shoes, which would matter more if my feet hadn’t already gotten soaked in the rain. The soles of my shoes are worn through and growing useless in wet weather. I knock on the de Vrieses’ door, and inside I hear the clinking of china. “Hallo?” I call. “Hallo?”
Finally, Mrs. de Vries answers, overdressed as usual in a blue silk dress and straight-seamed stockings. She’s in her thirties, with regal features, two irritating twins, and a husband who publishes a ladies’ magazine and spends so much time at work that I’ve met him only once.
“Hanneke, come in.” Mrs. de Vries waves me vaguely into her apartment but doesn’t bother to take her packages, or to thank me for coming out in a monsoon just to bring her some beef. “My neighbor and I were having tea. You don’t have anywhere to be, do you? You can wait in the kitchen until we’re finished.” She nods toward the older woman sitting on the sofa but makes no introductions. It’s clear she doesn’t mean to interrupt their conversation to tend to me. Mrs. de Vries is one of those people who behave as if the war is a nuisance happening in the periphery around her. Today I ignore her suggestion to wait in the kitchen, even though she obviously considered it an order. I don’t want to make it easy for her to forget that I’m here, so I set her packages on a table, stand in her foyer, and drip.
The neighbor in question, a gray-haired woman, arches one eyebrow at me and clears her throat before turning back to Mrs. de Vries. “As I was saying. Gone. I heard about it only this morning.”
“I don’t believe it,” Mrs. de Vries says. “Does anybody know where they went?”
“How would we? They stole off in the middle of the night.”
“Hanneke, would you get us some more biscuits from the kitchen?” Mrs. de Vries calls, picking up a crumb-filled plate and holding it aloft until I walk over and get it.
In the kitchen, a half-empty tin of store-bought buttery cookies sits on the table. I cram two of them in my mouth as I refill the plate. A pair of solemn eyes stare at me from around the corner. One of the twins. I can never remember their names or tell them apart; they’re equally spoiled. I could give him a cookie, but instead, I shove another one deliberately in my mouth and lick the crumbs off my lips.
“So you think they went into hiding, then?” Mrs. de Vries asks her neighbor. “They weren’t rounded up?”
“Certainly not rounded up. I should know. I have friends in the NSB. I’ve told them before, several times, that there was a Jewish family living in my building. If they’d been taken, I would know. The Cohens sneaked away like thieves in the middle of the night.”
I bring the cookies back into the sitting room, making as much rattling as I can to catch Mrs. de Vries’s attention. She sips her coffee. “I can’t believe nobody saw them! You’re sure?”
“I was hoping to at least get a look in their apartment. My son and his wife have been looking for a larger place—she’s expecting, you know—and it would be so nice to have them in the building.”
The neighbor is vile. They both are, with their oily, refined support of the Nazis. But also rich. I don’t think Mr. Kreuk considers morals when he chooses who to sell to. If they can pay, they can buy.
“Mrs. de Vries,” I finally break in, gesturing toward the window, where outside the sky is cloudy but not raining. “I’m sorry, but I really should go soon. It was pouring earlier, but it looks like there’s a break in the weather now. May I leave your things?”
If the nosy neighbor weren’t here, Mrs. de Vries would insist on inspecting the contents of the parcel. As it is, she just raises one eyebrow. “I didn’t realize your schedule was so important, Hanneke. Fetch my handbag from the hallway closet.”
She hands me a few bills, and I don’t even bother to count out her payment before putting it in my pocket and leaving, traipsing wet footprints over her parquet floors.
The Jewish Lyceum. Should I go there now? It’s a little after 3:00 PM, on a day that began with me delivering lipstick to a woman at her grandparents’ house and has become something very different, and all at once I am exhausted. I am exhausted by the enormity of the day. I am exhausted by the things I’m always exhausted by: the soldiers, the signs, the secrets and strategies and effort. I’m exhausted enough to know that I probably shouldn’t go to the Lyceum right now, because being exhausted means I won’t be thinking as quickly on my feet. I’ve learned that through working the black market.
On the other hand, now is the perfect time to sneak into a school. Classes will likely be dismissing for the day, with enough commotion that nobody would notice an out-of-place person walking the halls. The Lyceum is only a few blocks away; I’d practically have to ride past it on my way home. And when you’re trying to find things, it’s better to find them as quickly as possible, before someone else takes what you’re looking for. I’ve learned that through the black market, too.
I roll my bicycle to a stop in front of the Lyceum. The school’s architecture reminds me of the school I attended.
Three years ago: My friends and I would all have been sitting on the steps outside right now, arguing about where to go before our parents expected us home. Elsbeth would announce that she didn’t have enough money to go anywhere, then sit back while two or three boys fought over who would get to pay for her coffee or pastries, and then she would wink at me to show she really did have enough money—she just liked the dramatics. A few others would try to protest that they couldn’t come because they had to study. Finally, Bas would announce that we were all going to Koco’s, and that he would personally fail the test to help the grading curve for the people who were so concerned with studying.
Now Elsbeth is gone, in the way I don’t like to think about.
And Koco’s had Jewish owners. Nine months after the invasion, a fight broke out in the shop, which led to the earliest major roundup and hundreds dead.
And Bas will never have to study again.
My whole life has been demolished, brick by brick. It happened two and a half years ago, but standing in front of this school makes me feel like it happened two weeks ago. Or like it’s still happening, again and again, every day.
In the school, it’s quiet. Eerily. No students in the halls, no sounds from the classrooms. At first I think I’ve misjudged the time and the day is already over, but when I peek into one classroom, there are students; they’re just so few in number. Only five pupils are left in this room. The rest must be gone, taken by the Germans or in hiding or worse. A whole school, torn apart. This was Mirjam’s world. Until she went into hiding, this was where she went every day, leaving traces of herself behind, I hope.
Two students, girls of twelve or thirteen, look up when I walk past their classroom. I wave to show them I mean no harm, but their faces fill with fear and they watch me until I pass.
In the next room, a thin man in spectacles lectures in front of a chalkboard while a girl in one corner studiously takes notes. That was where I used to sit, in the front right corner, and Bas would try to get my attention through the window when he passed, pressing his nose against the glass or mouthing Booor-ring as he pointed at the teacher. In the other corner, one of the boys catches my eye. And he winks at me. He winks and then laughs, and the instructor whirls around, barking at him to be quiet. The boy is dark and moon-faced and looks nothing like Bas, but the gesture is so much like him that immediately I step away from the window, trying to stop memories from flooding back.
It wasn’t a good idea for me to come here. I don’t know why I didn’t listen to my instincts. It was unsafe and poorly planned. Anyone could see me, and I don’t have a good story to tell if they do. I need to come back later for the photograph. I’ll come with real coffee; I’ll come with bribes.
Booor-ring, he used to say through the classroom windows.
This school feels like a maze. I can’t remember the turns I took when I came in the building. There’s an exit straight ahead of me, and even though it’s not the one I entered through, I head toward it.
“Can I help you with something?”
A woman stands in the doorway of what I assume is the school office. She’s taller than I am but looks only a few years older, with sharp, wary eyes and her hair piled in a knot on top of her head. She wears a cardigan with a yellow star sewn to it. Jood. “Are you lost?”
“I was just leaving.”
She hurries to catch up with me, planting herself between me and the doorway. “But why were you here? You’re not a student.”
“I was…” But a lie won’t come, not as easily as it usually does. “I was looking for a photograph.”
“Of?”
“Just of students.”
“Of students,” she repeats. “Which students?”
“Never mind. I’ll come back another time. I shouldn’t have bothered you.” I try to slide around her, but she shifts her position so the only way I could exit would be by literally pushing her aside. She’s testing me, to see how desperate I am to get what I came for.
“Of whom?” she persists. “Why are you really here?” She grabs my arm. “Why are you really here?” she asks again, softly.
“Bas,” I whisper, before I can stop myself. It just slipped out. The composure I had fifteen minutes ago is coming undone, thread by thread. Everything about this school makes me think of him—the chalkboard smell and the writing desks, and how it used to feel to have his schedule memorized and know precisely the minute when I might walk by him in the hall. He wasn’t a dedicated student, but he passed anyway because everyone loved him, students and teachers both.
She jerks her head and her grip tightens. “We don’t have any students named Bas. Who is Bas?”
But now I’m spilling the emotions I work so hard to keep bottled. “Bas died. I loved him.”
Her face softens, but her eyes are still suspicious. “I’m sorry. But we don’t have any pictures of him. Whoever Bas is. We don’t have pictures at all. A fire damaged our records a few weeks ago.”