by Cathy Ace
I resisted the temptation to tell Hannah I had known those little nuggets of information. Instead I said, “There was one woman in the Group, we understand. Greta van Burken. Were you and she friends?”
Once again Hannah laughed with gusto. “No way. Now there was a woman who walked around looking as though there was always a smell under her nose. May the Good Lord forgive me, but I hated her. Hated her hats, too. I’ve never known anyone else able to make me hate hats, but she did. She might not even have had a top to her head for all I know. I never, ever saw her without a hat. She bullied them into letting her ‘join,’ she did. She wasn’t ever really one of them, I don’t think. Money, though, you see. Whole family had pots of the stuff, and they had good contacts with City Hall, too. Because of her, Jonas always worked where he wanted, when he wanted. Knew everyone, she and her family did—the people who ran the city, the museums, the palaces, the police. Probably still does, if she hasn’t already been killed off by someone she attacked with her tongue.” Hannah grabbed the drink Bud had set on the table in front of her as he retook his seat.
“Greta once told Jonas an orange he’d painted was as bad as a Cezanne orange,” confided Hannah, laughing. “Can you imagine? A put-down of Jonas and Cezanne, in just a few words. Typical of Greta. Of all of them she was the only one who did her art all day. Never worked a real job in her life. I heard from Jonas she’d married well—though how that could be, I don’t know. She and I agreed on one thing: we both thought she was top dog.”
“Who else was there?” asked Bud.
“Dirk, Menno’s father. A good, solid man. Not good-looking, but tall, straight. I should have fallen for him. Should have chased after him. But no, typical of me! I went for the bright, shiny object, only to be disappointed. Shakespeare was right, ‘All that glisters is not gold.’ Dirk was a good man, a quiet man. He loved to draw flowers, landscapes, outdoor stuff. Sketched and did watercolors a great deal. Jonas used to try to get him to use more pigment, but Dirk stuck with washes. Maybe that’s why I preferred Bernard—nothing wishy-washy about him. Dirk deserved a good, steady woman, but he got Marlene.” Hannah’s facial contortions suggested that this wasn’t a good thing. “Worse than a flibbertigibbet like me. Now, Dirk’s career I followed, best as I could. Not a man in the news, but he made his mark. Antiques trade, he was in. Meant he could always be with beautiful old things, and a sharp brain for a deal. Gave up creating art altogether, as far as the outside world was concerned, but I knew his spots, and he’d plant himself out on the canals and set up his easel and have at it. I daresay his boy Menno is a good man too, but he’s noisy.”
“When he visited Jonas’s home after he had died, did Menno make a lot of noise?” Bud sounded eager.
“Sounded like he was movin’ the furniture about the place. Scraping and banging. Must have worn clogs doing it, too.”
“Do you remember exactly when Menno was there, Hannah?” pressed Bud.
“They took poor Jonas on the T’ursday, and he was there a week later, also on the T’ursday, twice, then again on the Saturday and Sunday. Not after that. I’ve been on the telephone to him a lot about what’s going to happen about me home. I’m a bit old for too much change, you see. Take pity on an old woman, won’t ya? Don’t be t’rowin’ me out on the streets.” She maintained a serious, pleading look for a few seconds, then laughed aloud. “Ah, you’ll do what you want, I know that much. And why would you two be wanting a house in Amsterdam, so far away from where you live? Makes no sense, it doesn’t.”
I finally got to ask a question I’d had tickling around my brain for quite a while. “If you’ve been living at that house for almost fifty years, when on earth did Jonas buy it? As far as we know he arrived here in 1947 when he was only eighteen, and he wasn’t exactly flush after that. If you moved in in 1964, when did it become his property?”
Hannah looked pleased with herself. “Ah, now that I do know, because we talked about that. He bought the house, outright, in 1956. I seen the papers wit’ me own eyes, I did.”
I was amazed. “He was just twenty-seven. That’s extraordinary—especially if his only work was as a guard at a museum. That can’t pay a great deal. Was there something wrong with the house? Some reason why it might have been sold off cheaply?”
“Well, I t’ink it was from the Jews,” said Hannah quietly.
We looked surprised, because we were—and puzzled.
Hannah leaned in and dropped her voice. “After the war there was a lot of places—houses, apartments, shops, you know—that had been taken from the Jews during the time the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. Most of them poor souls never came back from the camps. Whole families wiped out. Every generation, gone. So a lot of places were never claimed. They say a hundred and forty t’ousand Jews or more was taken from Amsterdam. After the war, only about twenty-five t’ousand or so was left alive to come back, and t’rough the fifties and sixties a lot of them left. Can’t blame ’em wanting to sell up and get out. Lot of bad blood about the place, even after the Black Tulip thing when the Dutch kicked out the Germans and took everything they owned.” Hannah leaned forward. “The Dutch ran the railways what took the Jews away to the camps, you see, even policed the whole t’ing—Nazis didn’t have to do it themselves, they did it for them.” She sipped her drink.
Bud shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “But there were a lot of Dutch people who left the Netherlands and joined up with the Allied Forces to fight against the Nazis, and the Dutch Resistance was famous. I know for a fact that lots of ordinary Dutch people risked their lives to help the Jewish population,” he said quietly. “The whole Anne Frank thing, for example.”
Hannah spoke conspiratorially. “They even got her, didn’t they? Ever read anything by Mulisch?” Bud shook his head, and I nodded. “You should,” she said to Bud. “The Assault and The Discovery of Heaven challenged, and some would say even changed, the Dutch psyche. He wrote a lot of other stuff, of course, but those two did it. Never understand the Dutch until you’ve read them books, you won’t.”
“You said you married Bernard de Klerk, and you’re Irish, but you’re called Schmidt,” I said. “That’s because…?” I allowed the question to hang in the warm air.
Hannah delighted me again with her laugh. “I’m Irish, so I hate to make a long story short, but I will, because it should be. All Jonas’s fault, of course. When I got divorced from Bernard, I said I’d go back to my maiden name, Delaney, but Jonas said I should take a more European one. So I picked Smith—in German. It confuses the heck out of the Dutch. Like I said, they have a complicated relationship with the Germans, so my fluent Dutch, Irish accent, and German name confound them many a time. It’s grand to watch them try to decide if they should ask me about it, or not.” She finished her drink. “I’ll walk back to the house with ya,” she said, standing.
“Before we go,” I said, quickly pulling the photograph of the unknown man from my purse, “Did you ever see this man visiting Jonas at all? Or have you seen him anywhere else?”
Hannah took the photo from me and held it close to her face, squinting. “Blurry. Too blurry. Doesn’t look like anyone I know. Though…maybe someone in the area? Looks like a common type of face for these parts.”
I took the photograph from her, and we rushed our beers while I wondered about how on earth she’d been able to just “pick a new name” for herself after her divorce. I suspected it wasn’t something one was able to do easily or honestly.
“Later, boy,” she called at the young man behind the bar, who didn’t look around but waved in our general direction. “Vibrates with personality, that one,” she quipped as we blinked in the sunlight and headed toward her home. It was only then I noticed she walked with a pronounced limp and wore one shoe built up in the sole. Making good speed, she turned back toward us and almost shouted, “I t’ank the Good Lord every day that when that police car hit me chasing t�
��rough the streets in 1986 and took me leg with it, the compensation was enough for me to live here, as I do. I do miss me leg, you know, but it meant I could give up me work and rest a bit.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Ran a brown café. The Marie Café. Best gezellig in town, if I do say so meself. Takes an Irish woman to run a good bar, you know.”
“Gezellig? Is that a drink?” asked Bud.
“It’s like the Irish craic,” replied Hannah, “you know, spirit, fun, atmosphere.”
“That must have been hard work,” I observed.
“Couldn’t do it properly once I lost me leg,” said Hannah sadly. “Doesn’t mean I can’t go back as a customer t’ough,” she added with a wink. “Now, come on, I t’ink you two could work a bit harder to keep up with a one-legged old woman who’s had a couple more whiskeys before lunch than she’s used to.”
Bud and I cantered to do as she’d asked, then, arriving at her front door, she said, “Want to come to mine for a cuppa? Go on wit’ ya, you know you do.”
“We really should get the pieces we need for our next appointment,” said Bud. “How about tomorrow? Around ten? Then you could come up to my uncle’s studio and pick out something you like.”
“It’s a date,” replied Hannah. They opened the two front doors at the same moment, and we all trooped inside.
Cityscape: Summer
OUR NEXT TWO VISITS WERE due to be to Menno’s mother—Dirk van der Hoeven’s widow, Marlene—and to Pieter van Boxtel’s home. Bud had taken the advice of our concierge and booked a car with driver, rather than hailing a taxi. According to the concierge, we’d only have ourselves to blame if we risked taking a cab from a taxi rank, where drivers often didn’t speak English, or know the city. I’d kept my mouth shut, because I wondered if the concierge was getting a kick back from the company he’d recommended after frightening us half to death. In any case, the price quoted for what we wanted had seemed reasonable. However, now the car was five minutes late and I was beginning to wonder if we’d made a mistake.
Waiting as patiently as possible, I pondered how easily a person could come to love the city. I sat perched on the windowsill of Jonas’s sitting room, overlooking the canal and the streets below through an open window. The water was busy with craft of all types and sizes, and was like a living, breathing thing moving through the largely brick- and cobble-built cityscape. It brought the colors of the sky down to the streets, and lightened and brightened the view in myriad ways. Sunlight played on the wakes of the vessels, the reflected light bouncing off windowpanes, while tinkling cycle bells, and the lack of motor noises from cars, all made for a unique visual and aural experience.
“I guess that’s him,” said Bud leaping to his feet, indicating a sleek, black car that had edged its way along the canal-side road, and stopped in front of the house. “Come on, we’d better be quick. He can’t really wait there for long.”
“Bud, we rented this vehicle just so we could not rush, so let’s just take care to get the pieces out and into the car safely.” We’d balanced them on the stairs, set against the wall, so all we had to do was take each one and place it in the trunk of the car, then we jumped in ourselves and off we went. I didn’t have a chance to pay much attention to the driver himself as he and Bud arranged the artwork in the car, because I was keeping an eye on the open front door to the house. By the time we got going, he was just a neck above a white collar, with a thatch of sandy hair above that, and a pair of sunglasses reflected in the rearview mirror. Because I was sitting directly behind him, it was all I was likely to see until we reached our first destination.
“I am Frans,” said the driver, not turning around. “I have driven here for many years—all my life, in fact. I know where you are going and will take you there efficiently. Do you want for me to tell you about our history as we go?”
I threw Bud a look of alarm, which he interpreted correctly. “We’ll just sit back and take it all in; thanks, Frans,” he replied on our behalf. I squeezed his hand in gratitude. I was glad of a bit of time to mull over everything Hannah and Willem had told us about Jonas and the other members of the Group.
“You want music?” asked Frans.
“No, thanks,” we chorused from the back seat.
“Air okay?” asked Frans.
“Just fine, thanks. It’s nice and cool back here,” I replied, hoping he’d shut up.
“Let me know if you want anything,” he concluded, sounding disappointed.
It wasn’t long before we were traveling along wide boulevards constructed between modern buildings, designed to accommodate multiple lanes of traffic as well as the trams, which thrummed alongside our car. I noticed Bud checking his watch. “She said to come anytime,” he said, “but I wonder if it would be polite to let her know when we’ll get there. It’s sort of lunchtime.”
Without waiting for me to reply, Frans said, “We’ll be there in five minutes. Maybe she will make lunch for you.”
I rolled my eyes at Bud. “How about a quick call?” He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number he read off our master list. After the call ended, he said, “She’s there and ready for us. I’m not sure she’s with it. Sounded a bit vague.”
The Waltzing Woman: A Study
A FEW MINUTES LATER WE pulled to a halt outside a building that made me think of a barracks; an unappealing pale brick frontage with too-regular rows of windows piercing the façade loomed up beside us. It filled the whole of one side of the street. Entrances were let into it at militaristically regular intervals and were topped with large metal numbers.
“Here we are,” announced the driver. “Apartment 1558 will be through this door.” He double-parked on the street. “I cannot stay here. I will drive until I can find a space and wait. Phone me when you need me. You had better both get out on the safe side,” he added, quite unnecessarily.
We pulled the correct parcels from the trunk and made our way into the unwelcoming entrance. Inside the glass doors was a sterile, narrow hallway lined with gray marble. One wall was covered with mailboxes and numbered buzzers. Bud pressed 1558. We waited. And waited. He pressed again.
Finally, a clicking, crackling sound became a female voice. “Laat me met rust!”
“Hello? Mrs. van der Hoeven, is that you? It’s Bud Anderson.”
Silence, then an uncertain, “Goededag. Wat is uw naam?”
Bud looked puzzled, I stepped up. Hoping I didn’t confuse the woman, I decided it was best to say, “Zijn naam is Bud. Spreekt u Engels?”
“Of course I speak English. Are you Bud, my son’s friend?”
“Yes,” replied Bud.
A buzzer sounded and I sprinted for the glass door that popped open ahead of us.
“A bit more than a little confused, I think,” said Bud as we worked out how to make the elevator take us to the correct floor. “I think this might be a bit more delicate than we thought. Menno might have warned us.”
“He might not see it,” I ventured.
The door marked 1558 was opened by a woman I towered over—and I’m only five-three, five-four on a tall day. Beady, rheumy eyes blinked up at us, and her whole face twitched like a bunny’s when she wrinkled her nose as though sniffing us.
Straining to look along the corridor toward the elevators, she said, “Where’s Menno? Is he with you?” Now face to face, I recognized her accent as French, not Dutch. It came as a surprise.
“We are here alone, Mrs. van der Hoeven,” said Bud patiently. “I am Bud Anderson. We just spoke on the telephone.”
The lawyer’s mother looked unsure as she moved back inside her front door and slammed it shut in our faces. In the uncertain silence that followed, Bud and I exchanged meaningful glances. A few moments later the door opened again and the woman said, “I spoke to my son. He said you are safe. Come in. I am Mar
lene. Sit.”
An armchair and a sofa designed for two slim-hipped people were the only seats available in the tiny sitting room. Bud sat first and I squeezed in beside him. We held the two paintings in front of our knees. I felt nervous; when the elderly begin to swim about in their reality, you can never be sure which current will carry them in what direction, so it can be difficult to keep up. I was suddenly certain it would be a challenging meeting, not helped by the fact that the room was stiflingly hot and stuffed with too much old, dark-wood furniture—some of it beautiful and of good quality—covered and filled with all manner of knickknacks. My mind flew to Bud’s mother—she and Marlene van der Hoeven shared an aesthetic when it came to home décor. Marlene’s room was made to feel even smaller by the fact that almost every inch of each wall was covered in art. Mainly watercolors, with some large, garish prints, and a few fine oil pieces thrown in for good measure. I judged the watercolors to have been executed by the woman’s late husband. I wondered if the prints were examples of her preferred style of art.
“Are those for me?” asked Marlene van der Hoeven, smiling at the paintings.
I wondered where on earth she would hang them “Yes, they are.”