by Monica Hesse
Ollie takes his hands from mine and cups my face, holding my eyes steady. “You didn’t know what the right thing to do was. Amsterdam is a big city, and Mirjam could have been anywhere.”
“But, Ollie, what if it’s not her in the theater?”
“Hanneke, I wish it wasn’t her, but it is.”
“No, listen. M. Roodveldt? Maybe it’s a different name. Margot or Mozes, or… lots of names start with M, Ollie. Is there anybody in the theater who saw her or talked to her, who can say for sure?”
“I can’t find out without asking questions that will give us away. We’ve decided we need to pause and regroup, now that they’re deporting the Council’s families.”
Think, I instruct myself. Think rationally. If I can’t get into the theater, how else can I find information? “Maybe if I found someone who lives across the street, or works nearby. Maybe they would have seen her go in.”
Ollie’s mouth opens, a quick movement he tries to cover up.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says, but it’s not nothing.
“Ollie, what is it? Is there someone who might have seen something?”
“I can’t tell you,” he protests. “It’s against the rules.”
“Damn the rules, just tell me. Who saw something? Please, Ollie.”
“Hanneke, we have the rules we do for a reason. We need to think of the greater good.”
But I hear an opening in what he’s saying, and I take it. “I know your ‘greater good,’ Ollie, but if the good that you’re working so hard for is one that won’t work to rescue a fifteen-year-old girl, then is it worth it anyway? What kind of society are you trying to save?”
Finally he exhales, angrily. I’ve upset him with my begging. “We are not going to help you get Mirjam out of the theater,” he says. “We can’t. But I will do one thing—one thing—to help you verify that it really is her in there, so that you don’t spend the rest of the war not knowing. And I’m only doing it because you running around asking office workers if they saw her… that puts all of us at risk.”
My shoulders go limp with relief. “Thank you, Ollie. Thank you.”
“Only this. Don’t ask for anything else.”
He looks around to make sure nobody is watching, then takes a piece of paper from his pocket and scrawls something on it. An address, I can tell from upside down. “Memorize it, destroy it,” he instructs. “It’s where Mina is staying. She might be able to help.”
“Why would Mina—”
Ollie looks down at his watch. “I have to go, right now. I can’t risk being late getting Judith to her hiding place. I’ll come and meet you when I can. It might be late.”
“But—”
“Later, Hanneke.” He looks regretful almost immediately; he’s already doubting the help he’s given me. I try to smile, to show him I’m grateful, that he made the right decision, but I can’t hold it for long.
After he’s left, I wheel my bicycle into an alley so I can memorize the address the way Ollie wanted me to. As soon as I read the numbers on the page, I know Ollie has made a mistake. What he’s given me can’t possibly be the right address. I’ve been to it before. I go there every week.
NINETEEN
The bell rings, but nobody comes to answer it. It seems that no one is home, but when I press my ear against the door, there’s a faint scuffing sound, like chairs pushed back from a table. Finally the door chain rattles as someone locks it. One blue eye appears in the gap between the door and the jamb.
“Mrs. de Vries,” I say.
“Hanneke.” She arches an eyebrow. “I haven’t ordered anything. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’m not here for a delivery. I’m here for something else. Can you let me in to talk?”
“I don’t think so. It’s not a good time.”
She peers beyond me into the empty hallway, as if willing me to go away. I can’t even begin to imagine what I look like: mismatched clothes, my hair loose and tangled, a run in my stockings.
“It’s all right, Mrs. de Vries,” I say, leaning in close. “I know.”
“You know? What do you know?”
Again, I wonder if Ollie got the address wrong. Mrs. de Vries is as haughty as ever, an icicle of a human being. I lower my voice to barely a whisper. “I’m a friend of Mina’s.”
Her eyes flicker. She reaches her hand to her throat but covers the gesture by adjusting the brooch at her collar. “You should go, Hanneke. I don’t need anything from you today.”
“Please let me in.”
“Really, this is quite out of the ordinary,” she hisses. “I’m going to speak with Mr. Kreuk about this the next time I see him.”
“We can telephone him now if you want. But I’m going to stand in this hallway until you let me in. I’ll say hello to all your neighbors.”
Finally, she closes the door to unlatch the chain, and when she opens it again, I step through before she can change her mind. Inside, the twins sit on the floor, playing with toy cars. Everything looks normal, exactly as this apartment has looked every time I’ve come to visit. No suspicious sounds. Nothing out of place.
Mrs. de Vries stares at me, taking out a cigarette as I stand in her foyer. She doesn’t offer to take my coat. Neither of us knows what to say to the other.
“I came to see Mina,” I say finally. “Where is she? It’s important.”
“Is something wrong? Do the police suspect my apartment?”
“It’s a personal matter.”
Mrs. de Vries exhales a trail of smoke before turning her back to me. For a minute I think she’s ordering me out of her apartment, but I realize she means for me to follow her. I’ve never been invited back this way, down a long hallway with multiple doors on either side. The de Vries family is even wealthier than I’d realized; the furnishings in the rooms we pass are ornate and expensive-looking, with paintings on the walls and a rich, textured wallpaper. She stops in the doorway of what I assume is the twins’ playroom; two rocking horses sit in the corner, and child-size shelves are lined with books and toys.
“Hanneke? A little assistance?” Mrs. de Vries has walked to one of those shelves and is looking back at me with irritation, waiting for me to help her push it aside.
I brace my feet on the rug, sliding the shelf over. Behind it, cut into the wall, is a small cupboard door, big enough for a person to squeeze through, but only on hands and knees. Mrs. de Vries nods permission for me to open it, and when I do, I see two oxford shoes and a pair of ankle socks. Mina quickly drops to her knees and tucks her head out of the crawl space.
“Hanneke! I thought I heard your voice!”
Once she’s free from the cupboard, Mina throws her arms around me. “I didn’t think I’d get to see anybody. Judith said it was too dangerous. Did Ollie get her into her hiding space? What’s happened since I’ve been here? It feels like a year even though it’s only been a day.”
Before I can figure out which question to answer first, another scraping sound comes from the crawl space. Mina hears it, too. “It’s all right, you two,” she says. “It’s safe.”
“You’re not alone?” I blurt out.
Another pair of legs, wearing brown men’s shoes, appears in the space Mina has just crawled out of. They belong to an old man with a white beard, blinking into the light. He’s followed by an older woman, fussy-looking, with impeccable hair and makeup.
“This is Mr. and Mrs. Cohen,” Mina explains to me. They both nod cautiously in greeting. “This is my friend Hanneke Bakker.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” I murmur, while trying to figure out why the name sounds familiar.
“Is everything all right, Dorothea?” Mrs. Cohen asks Mrs. de Vries. “The inner walls in this building have always been so thin, we couldn’t help but overhear.”
I turn to Mrs. de Vries. “The Cohens are—”
“My neighbors. Yes. They’ve been staying with me for a few days.”
Mr. Cohen extends his hand. He sm
ells faintly of cigarettes and leather, a reassuring smell that reminds me of my grandfather.
“But when your other neighbor was here—” I cut myself off. When the woman with the fox fur stole was here, Mrs. de Vries acted as though she was pleased the Cohens had disappeared. But then, what else could she do?
The Cohens nod politely at me, and then Mrs. Cohen suggests to her husband that Mina and I might like some privacy. They leave; Mrs. de Vries stays, as if unwilling to allow any conversations in her house she is not privy to.
“Here, I’ll show you our hiding place,” Mina says, taking my hand and pulling me toward the cupboard entrance before I have a chance to say no. The entrance smells like paint, the only clue that this hiding space has been recently constructed. The craftsmanship is impeccable. From the outside, it looks like it was built at the same time as the rest of the apartment. There are even scuff marks on the baseboards. Mrs. Janssen’s hidden pantry is amateurish by comparison.
“We only have to go in here when strangers come,” Mina explains. “The rest of the time we can move around the apartment.” She closes the cupboard door again, and the entrance all but disappears. “When I got here yesterday, they made me practice, again and again, seeing how quickly all of us could gather our things, get into the hiding place, make sure we hadn’t left anything out that would give us away. You should see one of our drills.”
“I’d like that, but not now,” I mutter, distracted. When Mina shut the hiding place door, it created a breeze, causing the window curtain to flutter open and reveal a view of a large, familiar stone building.
“The Schouwburg,” I whisper. “This apartment building is right across the street from the Schouwburg.”
I’ve only ever seen out the front windows of the de Vrieses’ apartment building. Because I’d never been invited farther into the family’s living quarters, I never put together what the view would be from the rear. Now I know why Ollie gave me this address.
“Mina. Did you—” My mouth has gone dry. I swallow and start again. “Did you see the group arrive yesterday after the razzia?”
Mina nods. “It was just after I came here. There was so much yelling. I stood behind the curtain and watched it all, feeling so guilty that I was safe, and everyone down there wasn’t.”
“This is important. Did you see Mirjam? Did you see her be brought in with those people?”
“Mirjam was in that group?”
“I don’t know. Someone with her last name was. So you didn’t see her? Are you sure?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t know to look for her.”
Another door closing. Another hope slipping away.
“I did take pictures,” she offers, using her sleeve to wipe her eyes.
“You took pictures?”
“I left behind clothes so I could fit my new camera in my suitcase. I wanted to still be doing something. Even if I’m stuck in here, I can still take pictures of everything happening out there.”
“Can I see them? Your pictures?”
Her face falls. “They’re not developed yet. I just took them a day ago.”
“Let’s get someone to develop them, then. I’m sure we can find someone to trust.” Mentally, I scroll through my list of black market clients, thinking of the artistic ones who might have basement darkrooms. There was the owner of an art gallery once, but when I went to his house, he had pamphlets with Adolf Hitler’s face lying on the coffee table.
Mina shakes her head. “We can’t—they’re Anscochrome.”
“What do you mean?” I’ve never heard this word before.
“They’re Anscochrome. It’s a color film, the special brand I was waiting for at my birthday. Most photographers won’t have dealt with it before; it’s a German-American brand. Even if we wanted to risk getting it across the border to a sympathetic German photographer, it would take weeks to come back.”
“But maybe a teacher at an art school, or someone who works at a newspaper… they could rush it, or—”
“It’s not a matter of hurrying. It’s that regular photographers might mess this film up.”
“But…” I trail off, frustrated. I can think of ways to find almost anything. But I don’t know how to find a photographer to develop a film I’ve never heard of.
“Give the camera to me,” Mrs. de Vries says. It had been so long since she’d spoken I’d almost forgotten she was still in the room. There she is, in the corner, her arms folded elegantly. “Give it to me,” she repeats, a note of irritation in her voice. “I’ll take it to one of my husband’s business contacts.”
“His business contacts?” I repeat blankly.
“He publishes a magazine,” she reminds me. “A fashion magazine, full of photographs.”
“But Mina just said that this is special film.”
“And he has special contacts.” She raises one eyebrow. “He knows all sorts of people with access to technology in private darkrooms. I won’t promise, but I’ll try. Give it to me.”
Mina looks at me again, and I nod at her to give the camera to Mrs. de Vries. “Please be careful,” she begs. “It’s so expensive, and those photographs are dangerous.”
Mrs. de Vries stares at her. She knows about danger; she is hiding three Jewish people in her house.
“Can you go right now?” I ask her. “Can you go this afternoon? Ollie said the next transport is in just two days. I need to know if the girl I’m looking for is in the theater, as soon as possible. Can you please go now?” I don’t know if it’s because Mrs. de Vries knows that I know her secret, and she thinks she has to obey me, or if it’s because she wants this over with quickly so I’ll leave her apartment. Whatever the reason, she now walks briskly out of the room, heels clacking on parquet floors, and by the time I catch up to her, she’s already pinning on a navy hat.
“I’ll be back soon,” she says. And then, because she’s still Mrs. de Vries, she says, “Please refrain from touching too many things while I’m gone.”
She slips on her coat, and then it’s just Mina and me, and nothing left to do but wait.
TWENTY
Mina and I stay in the playroom, perched uncomfortably on child-size furniture, while Mr. Cohen entertains the children, kneeling on the floor and letting them drive their cars up his legs and arms. Mrs. Cohen helpfully washes dishes in the kitchen and makes us cup after cup of ersatz tea.
“You need to be another mountain,” one of the twins informs me, rolling his car on my shoe. “So we can each have our own.”
I jerk my foot away. “You could each be your own mountains.”
Mr. Cohen smiles. “How about I tell a story instead? There will be lots of fast cars and fast horses and mountains in it.” He’s so patient with them; I wonder if he has grandchildren of his own.
“Hanneke, I’m worried about something,” Mina says, moving her chair closer to mine.
“What is it?”
She glances over to Mr. Cohen and the twins and lowers her voice. “The thing that I showed you when we went for a walk. It’s still there.” She reads my bewildered expression and raises both hands to her face, mimicking a gesture I immediately recognize. Her other camera. It’s in the carriage, and she didn’t have time to retrieve it. “Do you think it’s okay?” she asks.
Even if I didn’t, I don’t see what could be done about it, or what use there would be in me making her worry any more than she’s already worrying. “I’m sure that if one of your coworkers finds it, she’ll keep it for you,” I reassure her. The guards seem to leave the crèche alone anyhow.
After a while, the children start to complain that they’re hungry. Mina finds potatoes and parsnips in the pantry, and boils them along with leaves of kale. We all eat silently. The children start yawning, and Mr. Cohen goes to put them to bed.
“Hanneke, you’re going to miss curfew,” Mrs. Cohen warns me. “You should go.”
It’s too late to leave now. I want to be here the second ther
e is any news. Have I done the right thing, pressuring Mrs. de Vries to go out the way that I did? Mrs. Cohen takes up a pile of socks from Mrs. de Vries’s mending pile and quietly begins to darn them. Mr. Cohen reads a book. The evening drags on. The sky outside turns from bruise-colored to pitch-black.
My parents will have started to worry an hour ago, with Mama turning white around the edges and Papa making loud jokes to cover up his own concern. After worry will come anger: Mama at me for being so selfish and not keeping track of the time, and Papa because I’ve worried Mama and because he’s mad at himself for not being able to go out and find me. I don’t know what comes after the anger stage. I’ve never tested their patience enough to find out. Tonight I’ll have to.
In the distance, a church clock strikes another hour. The four of us exchange worried glances, and guilt begins to gnaw the pit of my stomach. Why didn’t we ask for the address of Mrs. de Vries’s photographer friend, or at least a name? Why did I insist she had to go now, when tomorrow morning wouldn’t have made much of a difference? I don’t like Mrs. de Vries, but I don’t want anything to happen to her.
“She wasn’t doing anything illegal,” Mina says. “It’s not illegal to visit a friend.”
“I just hope that if she was stopped, it was on the way to the photographer’s and not on the way back home,” Mrs. Cohen says. Her perfectly applied lipstick has begun to fade. “They might not question a roll of undeveloped film, but if—”
“Hush, Rebekkah,” Mr. Cohen stops her. “Can’t you see—”
He doesn’t finish. The lock in the door begins to turn. The four of us freeze in our seats. Mrs. de Vries comes in, her cheeks flushed, but otherwise unharmed. Ollie follows her inside.
“I got back an hour ago,” Mrs. de Vries explains. “But there were soldiers loitering on the corner. I didn’t think it was safe to walk past them, so I hid in an alley like a street beggar until they left.”
“I was already hiding in the alley across the street,” Ollie explains as Mina runs to hug him. “I could even see Mrs. de Vries in the shadows in her own alley, but I didn’t dare call out to her; it was completely absurd, like we were actors in a stage farce. I thought the soldiers would never leave.”