by Monica Hesse
She was eighteen, I was seventeen, Bas was dead. She’d met her soldier by then. Her mother didn’t mind the relationship. Her parents supported the German occupation, though they weren’t obvious about it. It was a private, obsequious support.
It was six months after the invasion. My marks had plummeted, while the rest of the school tried to stagger on like everything was normal. Elsbeth was the only friend I still saw. She came over dutifully, every day, even while I stared at the wall and said nothing. She played with my hair, or told me the latest gossip, or brought random gifts that served no purpose other than to produce a shadow of a smile: A windup toy. A funny card. A lipstick in the ugliest shade of coral, which she smeared all over her mouth, puckering her lips and prancing around my room, telling me to kiss her.
One afternoon Elsbeth came over and sat on my floor, flipping through magazines she’d brought over, her latest effort to cheer me up. She was quieter than usual. I stared at my feet and Elsbeth smiled like a sphinx, like something had happened and she wanted me to guess what it was. Finally she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Rolf loves me,” she said. “He told me yesterday, and I said it back.”
“No, you don’t,” I said automatically. “You don’t love him. You flirt with everyone.”
She pursed her lips, and I could tell she was gathering patience before responding. “I’ve flirted with enough boys to know the difference. I love Rolf. He wants to marry me. After the war, I’ll move back with him to Germany.”
“You can’t,” I told her, but even as I said it, I wasn’t sure what I was telling her she couldn’t do. Marry a German? Leave the country? Have somebody when I had nobody? Her words had bludgeoned me, bludgeoned even the parts of me I thought were already dead. How could she want to marry one of them? “You can’t, Elsbeth. You want me to be happy for you, but I can’t be. I can’t forgive you for loving the side that killed Bas.”
“Rolf didn’t kill Bas. Rolf doesn’t even want to be in this country. He wants the war to be over so he can go home,” she said. “He doesn’t agree with what Germany is doing—he was sent here. You’re just upset right now.”
“Of course I’m upset right now,” I exploded. “Can you even hear yourself? Are you listening to what you’re saying? You want to marry a Nazi, after what they did to Bas.”
“I’m sorry, Hanneke, that I can’t sit with you and be depressed forever,” she spat. “I’m sorry that my life is going to move on.”
“I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry because it should be your boyfriend who is dead, not mine. I hope he dies soon.”
She looked at me for almost a full minute before she spoke again. “Maybe I better go for now,” she said finally. “I’m supposed to meet Rolf anyway.”
“Go,” I said. “And don’t ever come back.”
TWENTY-TWO
The streets are still quiet when I leave Mrs. de Vries’s. A few schoolchildren, a few milkmen and street sweepers, but otherwise, our early-morning meeting is over before I would normally even leave for work. I’m somewhere between euphoric and half dead; floating spots drift in front of my eyes whenever I look too long at one thing.
Maybe my parents aren’t awake yet. Maybe they went to bed last night and left the door unlocked for me. They’ve done it before. Not often. But at least twice they’ve gone to bed early without making sure that I came in before curfew. I peel my shoes off on the stoop of my building, tiptoeing up the inside stairs.
Three steps from the door, it flies open.
“Where have you been?” My mother crushes me to her chest. “Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry,” I say automatically. “I’m sorry; I was with some people, and I didn’t realize how late it had gotten. When it was past curfew, I just had to stay.”
“Which people?” Behind my mother, in his chair, my father’s face is flat and icy. He almost never gets angry, but when he does, it’s so much more terrible than my mother. “Which friend would let you make your parents worry?”
“Someone from work,” I elaborate. “I was helping Mr. Kreuk. It was for a funeral. He needed me to go talk to the family. That’s why I ran out of here so quickly yesterday; I almost forgot. They were grieving, and I didn’t feel like I could leave, and then curfew passed and I was stuck.”
“Mr. Kreuk?” she says.
“He apologizes, too.”
“I’m going to see him right now. I’m going to see him right now and tell him—”
“Of course,” I interject. “Of course you should go visit Mr. Kreuk. I only hope he doesn’t feel he needs to hire another person, if he can’t count on me to work nights in cases of emergency.” I’m praying that she won’t go see Mr. Kreuk. She won’t want to do anything to jeopardize my job.
“Do you have any idea what you put us through?” my father asks. “Do you have any idea what last night was like for us?”
“I do. I can imagine. But I’m fine. I’m fine.”
Mama releases me from her hug, turning toward my father. Her hands dart in front of her face, swiping. Is she crying? When she turns back to face me, there are no tears, but her face is red and blotchy.
“I’m sorry,” I start to say again, but she silences me with a shake of her head.
“Go and change your clothes, then come back for breakfast.”
“Go and… what?”
“Your clothes. I’m going to cook breakfast. You are going to eat breakfast. You are never going to stay out all night without telling us, ever again. But right now, you are going to change your clothes and comb your hair, and we will not speak of this morning.”
I don’t know why she’s offering me this reprieve—maybe it’s just that she’s as exhausted as I am, maybe she doesn’t want to fight today—but I’ll take it.
In the bedroom, I drag a comb through my hair and pull on a plaid dress that Mama loves but I hate. It’s an olive branch gesture, and she’ll recognize it that way. My bed is still unmade from yesterday morning, and I desperately wish I could crawl into it. Instead, I splash cold water on my face in the bathroom and pinch life back into my cheeks. I want to see Ollie and the rest of the group, so we can keep making plans. But we’d been awake so long, we decided it was better to rest, change clothes, and freshen up. Ollie said he would find me later.
When I come out of my bedroom, Mama’s rushing around the kitchen, pulling food out of the cupboards, not just the porridge that we usually have for breakfast, but the rest of our eggs and a side of ham I didn’t even realize Mama was saving. Instead of the careful, responsible rationing she usually does, Mama is making breakfast like there is no war, like everything is normal.
“Bread?” she asks when she hears me come in, her upper body buried in the pantry. “If I sliced bread, would you eat it?”
I glance at Papa, trying to figure out how I’m supposed to respond, but he won’t meet my gaze. “If you want to, slice it. I’ll eat anything you make.”
We sit down at the table to more food than we normally have in a week. I can tell Papa doesn’t believe my lie. His eyes are on me with every bite I take, while I talk about any silly thing I can think of—the weather, the loose button on my skirt, the good price I saw on turnips—and secretly wonder how long I’ll have to wait for Ollie to arrive. Will he try to get in contact with Judith first, to see if she has any ideas? Did he even specifically say he would come to me, or was I supposed to find him? I’m so tired I’m not even thinking clearly. Should I go to Leo’s and wait?
It’s Sunday, not a day I normally work, so I don’t have any excuse to leave the house. Mama is watching me like a hawk anyway. Instead of escaping, I help with the chores that didn’t get finished yesterday. We wash the windows, sweep the floors, and finish polishing the silver. When we run out of polish, I hopefully suggest that I could go borrow some from a neighbor, but Mama triumphantly produces another jar. When I suggest that I could go buy a newspaper for us all to read, Papa is the one who stops me, saying he has an idea of something he’d much r
ather listen to than news stories.
“Why don’t you play something, Gerda,” my father encourages my mother.
“Oh, a neighbor could be napping, and I need to peel the beets for lunch,” she protests.
“No, play something, Mama. I’ll peel the beets.”
At first I suggest it because I think music will put her in a good mood. But when she sits down at the piano, I’m longing to hear her play, too, like she used to. Before the war, I’d be able to hear the music from halfway down the block, first a melody played by my mother and then a student’s plodding, clunky version a few seconds later.
She doesn’t play at once, just lets her hands rest on the keys. When she finally starts, it’s a beginner’s tune, one she even managed to teach me before admitting I had no musical skill. It’s basic and simple, not the kind of music you would play to show off. The paring knife hangs in my hand. This song reminds me of being young and carefree. She plays it again and again, each time adding a new variation that makes the tune more complex, until the original simple melody is barely audible beneath the trills and chords on top of it. It’s still there, though, when I listen closely.
After an hour, Mama is lost in the music and Papa dozes in his chair. I think my transgression is mostly forgiven. In another hour, I’ll try to leave. I’ll tell them I’ve made plans with Ollie. They like him. Just when I’ve settled on that plan, I hear a noise, under the sounds of Mama’s playing. Mama hears it, too, and stops, her fingers poised a few centimeters off the keys.
“Hanneke!” The call comes from downstairs, and since the voice is half whispering, it’s hard to make out who it belongs to.
I throw the window open with beet-stained fingers, leaning my chest out to see who’s standing on our stoop. “Ollie? Are you there?”
“No, it’s me.” A tall figure standing next to a bicycle steps back and removes his hat.
“Willem? What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry,” he shout-whispers, trying not to disturb the neighbors. “Ollie gave me your address but not your apartment number. I didn’t know which buzzer to ring.”
“I’ll be right down.”
As soon as I close the window, Mama stands, the piano bench scraping across the floor. “Who is that?”
“A friend. He didn’t know our apartment number.” I start to pull on my coat. “I told him I’d be right down.”
“No, you won’t be right down. Not with a boy I’ve never met.”
“It’s Willem—he’s Ollie’s roommate.” The bowl of beets still sits on the floor where I finished peeling them. “Do you want me to put these on the stove?”
“No.” Mama slams the lid down on the piano, creating a sickening wooden crack. “I forbid it. You were out all last night.”
“I’m not going to be out all night this time,” I explain patiently. “I just want to go talk to Willem for a while.”
Her chin quivers and her eyes have a wild look to them. “I forbid you to leave this house again. You are still my child, Hannie.”
“Oh, Mama, I’m not your child.” It’s the sort of thing that I would usually scream in anger, only now when I say it, I just feel tired and sad. “I bring the money into the house. I buy the groceries, run all the errands. Mama, I’m the one who takes care of you.”
Mama’s face crumples, and all the goodwill we amassed during the breakfast and the piano playing disappears. “The daughter I know never would have spoken to me this way.”
It’s nothing she hasn’t said to me a dozen times, but this time it stings. I’m exhausted by these comparisons to the girl I was before the war. By replaying all the ways I was better and the things I will never get back.
“That daughter doesn’t exist anymore,” I say to Mama, and my voice is resigned. “She is gone, and she’s never coming back.”
TWENTY-THREE
Are you all right?”
Willem takes my arm as soon as I get outside. I wonder if he heard the fighting coming through the open window, or if he’s just reading my face.
“I’m fine.”
“This is how you look when you’re fine?” he asks lightly.
“No, this is how I look when I don’t want to talk about it.”
If I said that to Bas, he would have put his hands out in fake kitty claws, hissing and pretending to paw at the air until I laughed. If I said that to Ollie, he would say something equally sarcastic back to me, giving as good as he got. When I say it to Willem, he just nods, looking concerned.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t want to think about the stricken look on Mama’s face when I walked out the door. “Did Ollie send you?”
Ollie was going to come and see me himself, Willem explains, but he asked Willem to let him sleep for twenty minutes first. “I’m letting him sleep for a few hours instead,” he says. “He’ll be furious when he wakes up, but he was barely coherent. If I’d let him ride to your house, we’d be fishing him out of a canal this afternoon. He works too much. So it’s just me, and with your help, you and me.”
“You and me for what?”
“Sanne and Leo are bringing food to some of the children in hiding. When Ollie wakes up, he’ll go to Judith’s spot and find out anything she might know about the soldiers who usually lead the transport. You volunteered to get the uniform. And I’m hoping you’ll help me do my job as well.”
“What’s your job?”
“My job is to figure out the escape route.”
I don’t know Willem nearly as well as Ollie, but he has a reassuring kindness that immediately feels familiar. While we walk through my neighborhood, he keeps his head bent toward mine as though we’re having an intimate conversation, but what he’s really doing is explaining the Schouwburg.
Some of it I already know. The theater is only a stopping place—Jews are brought there for a few days or weeks. After the theater, the next destination is a transit camp elsewhere in the Netherlands. Prisoners don’t stay at those for long, either, Willem explains. They’re just way stations before the prisoners are taken out of the country, to other camps with foreign-sounding names, to places where healthy young men may die of mysterious illnesses.
But before any of that happens, Jews are packed onto trains at a station on the outskirts of the city. And to get to the railway station, soldiers sometimes put the prisoners on trams or trucks. But often, they simply force the prisoners to walk.
It’s not far, about two kilometers. They don’t block off the streets or make any special preparations for the transport. Sometimes they do it at night, while the rest of the city pretends to sleep behind its blackout curtains. Sometimes they do it in broad daylight.
So that’s our chance. Sometime in the space between the Hollandsche Schouwburg and the train station, we need to get the camera from the carriage—which will presumably have a child in it. And I need to spot Mirjam, distract the guards, and run with her to safety without anyone noticing. That’s all.
“But the soldiers?”
“That’s Ollie and Judith,” Willem says. “That’s their job today. You and me—our job today is just geography. We can do this. Everything is going to be okay.”
I want to believe him. He sounds sure, and I cling to that certainty. Not because I think he’s right, but because it feels good to have someone tell me everything will be fine.
Beside me, Willem looks at his watch and starts walking faster. “We need to hurry.” He takes my hand to pull me along. “The deportations to Westerbork are usually in the order the people arrived in. The prisoners from the roundup with Mirjam and the carriage should be deported in a night transport tomorrow. I wish we could practice by watching another one happening in the evening, but there isn’t one—we’ll have to follow one this afternoon to figure out what route they take.”
“What if there aren’t any holes in the route?” I ask.
“There’s at least one.”
“Which is?”
“They probably don’t think anyone is stupid
enough to impersonate Nazis and stop a transport. So they won’t be expecting it.”
We stop at the end of the Schouwburg’s block, close enough to see the theater’s entrance without looking like we’re actively watching. Willem leans over his bicycle; he’s disabled his chain and is now pretending to fix it, working it back over the sprocket. It gives us a reason to loiter in the area. While he pretends to work, I watch the theater’s heavy door.
It’s a little before four o’clock. Precisely on the hour, it opens. I nudge my foot against Willem’s, and he easily slips the chain back into place, sighing like he’s sorry his broken bicycle held us up for so long. The soldiers appear first, two of them, one younger and one who reminds me of my father’s older brother, the one who still lives in Belgium and used to send money on my birthday.
The prisoners follow, carrying suitcases, disheveled and tired like they haven’t slept in days. The crowd is big, maybe seventy people, and the soldiers march them down the middle of the street. It’s a lovely winter day in Amsterdam, and though there are other people on the street, couples like me and Willem, nobody acts like the forced parade of people is out of the ordinary. Our sense of ordinary has become horrifying.
There’s no Mirjam, but there are girls her age or younger, surrounded by young couples and middle-aged men. One walks past, wearing a green tweed coat and felt hat. He keeps his eyes straight forward, but something in them is familiar, something about them makes me think of chalk dust. It’s my third-grade teacher. The one who used to bring a box of hard candies on Wednesdays and pass them out to us, one by one, as we left. I can’t remember his name. I didn’t know he was Jewish.
The soldier who looks like my uncle yells something. It’s in fast German; I can’t understand the words, but I can understand the meaning as he gestures to the end of the block. In front of me, an older woman trips in the crowd. The man next to her—her husband, from the familiar, tender way he touches her—tries to help her up, and the soldier lifts his gun and gestures for the man to keep going. He moves again to help his wife; the soldier spins his gun around, using the butt of it to shove the man forward. He staggers onward, and now it’s his wife who helps him. I try not to look.