‘Don’t tell anyone, it’s American,’ he said and, slightly off-key, he sang, ‘Ev’ry morning, ev’ry evening, ain’t we got fun? Not much money, oh but honey, ain’t we got fun?’ One of the old men looked over at them, put his thumb up to show he agreed and went back to his cards.
Adrian grinned and sang louder, ‘In the winter, in the summer, don’t we have fun? Times are bum and getting bummer, still we have fun. There’s nothing surer, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer. In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun!’
‘Ain’t we though,’ Hannah said, clapping softly to show she enjoyed his singing.
‘It’s a great song and, not only that, it’s true,’ he said. ‘Isn’t this the in-between time?’ When they looked at him doubtfully, he said, ‘No, really, think about it. One day real life stopped, that was when we gave up, when the Germans came.’
‘Adrie,’ Pam interrupted, conscious of the bartender watching them. She didn’t want him to go on, he might say something stupid, he didn’t care who heard him.
‘Well, anyway, some day real life will start up again. We believe that, don’t we? We have to or how could we ever,’
‘Shut up, Adrian,’ Pam hissed. ‘You’re right, and you don’t need to bludgeon us with facts to prove it.’
‘Good. Next topic, without the music.’
Hannah said, ‘Adrian told me you work at a nursery. I work with children too, I love it, don’t you? Is it nice there?’
‘It’s about as nice as your hospital, I suppose.’ Pam leaned away from the table and looked around at the men playing cards, the bartender polishing a glass, a young couple coming in laughing.
Hannah turned to Adrian, raising her eyebrows in a silent appeal. He shook his head, his face signaling that he couldn’t help her. What an idiot! Why did he want them to meet? His little sister was jealous, anybody could see that.
‘How are the kids?’ Adrian asked Pam.
‘Fine. Well, a few sick babies, that’s all. Hans says it’s nothing serious.
‘Hans?’ Hannah asked. ‘Is that the same doctor who works at my hospital?’
‘Of course,’ Adrian said. ‘I forgot you knew him. He’s an old pal of mine. The kids are in good hands with him. Have you been able to move some of them?’
‘I always wondered,’ Hannah said, ‘is it a home for orphans?’
Before Pam could answer, Adrian said, ‘They aren’t when they come there.’
‘Adrie,’ Pam began, but he went on, ‘The Germans don’t want little kids who can’t work for them,’ he told Hannah. ‘They round up Jews to work in their factories, healthy ones, if possible, and then work them to death. That’s the story we’re getting now.’
‘Oh, Jewish children, how awful!’ She leaned toward Pam and whispered, ‘You know, I’m Jewish too,’ and got the same cold stare from Pam as before. It was hopeless, she was a silly cow, and Hannah wasn’t going to try to like her for Adrian’s sake. But there was another reason for her being so unfriendly. She stood up, said, ‘Sorry, I’ll be right back,’ went to the back of the café and disappeared into the ladies’ room.
Leaning against the little sink, she stared at herself in the mirror. Where had she met Pam? It was important to remember, Pam did, she was sure of that. Conrad had something to do with it, not a private party, because Pam didn’t have German friends, and suddenly she knew. She and Conrad had been standing on the curb in front of the Concert Hall, they’d heard Brahms, an interminable symphony that almost put her to sleep. They’d come out with a crowd of army officers and their friends. It started to rain, a fine mist that sparkled on the dark brown fur of her sleeve, and Conrad took her arm and smiled down at her. And then a young woman on a bike skidded to a stop just in front of them. She noticed her because she had the same bright blue eyes and thick eyelashes that Adrie had. The girl looked at her and Conrad and frowned, disapproving, the light changed, she moved on, and Hannah forgot her or thought she had.
She sat down abruptly on the closed toilet seat and sighed. Pam was going to tell him. He’ll say he doesn’t believe it, but he will. He’ll watch her now, question everything she does, he’d be a fool not to. Jumping up, she ran cold water into her palms and washed her flushed face. She shouldn’t have left them alone, but she couldn’t go back and sit down with them. She opened the door and went back, because there was nothing else she could do.
When Adrian stood up and pulled out her chair, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. ‘I do have to go, Adrie. I’ll try to get free Monday, I promise. Bye, Pam, lovely to meet you,’ and she picked up her coat and, throwing it over her shoulders, went out.
In the five minutes it took to walk back to the hospital, Hannah ordered herself to calm down, not think about Adrian and his sister. She had a party to go to and, after that, she and Conrad would sit in his living room, listening to his favorite jazz records and drinking his favorite port. She had something to tell him this time, it wouldn’t be news, perhaps, that children were disappearing, but he would be interested to hear who was doing it and what was involved.
He’d bought her another dress, this time a green and gray silk that pretended to be tweed but was as thin as a handkerchief. He’d hung it in the closet between the others, the blue velvet and the dark crimson taffeta, and he only smiled when she called out to him, ‘Another dress! Oh Conrad, it’s beautiful!’
‘You’re beautiful!’ he called back. He was already in his uniform, it made him look older and more powerful, and she was never really comfortable when he took her out dressed like that. She liked him best at the breakfast table. With his robe open on his bare chest and his hair tousled, he looked years younger, as young as she was.
‘I don’t want you to wear the same dress every time.’ He put his hands on her waist and turned her around to inspect her.
‘The other women do, they wear black and black and black,’ she said.
‘You can wear black when we lose the war, not before.’
‘Conrad!’
‘Conrad,’ he mimicked. ‘Don’t act so surprised, my darling. It’s already started, and you of all people ought to be pleased.’ He put her coat around her shoulders and pushed her to the door. ‘The car’s coming, and we will now change the subject.’
‘I’m going to forget what you said,’ Hannah told him, though she knew she wouldn’t. It was a dangerous admission, telling her so matter-of-factly that the Germans were losing. It gave her an advantage, a small one but the first. He must know that. He had to trust her never to tell anyone that he had lost his faith in his führer, the leader of a thousand-year empire that had lasted ten years so far and, Conrad was hinting, might last only a few more.
Sitting in the car next to a woman she’d met several times who never greeted her, Hannah held his hand and listened to the gossip about their host that evening, the president of the Dutch National Bank. Meinoud Rost van Tonningen and his wife were fanatic Nazis. He’d tried to join the SS years ago but had been turned down. Like the sons of other Dutch families that had made their fortunes in the East Indies, he couldn’t prove to Hitler’s satisfaction that he was pure-blooded. How many ancestors could he have who were uncontaminated Aryans after a hundred years in the tropics?
‘Wait till you meet Florence,’ one of the women said scornfully. ‘She tells everybody that Himmler personally gave them permission to marry. He even came to Holland to be best man and hear the two of them recite their SS vows.’
‘Our honor is our loyalty,’ one of the officers quoted, and everyone laughed.
‘Ah, honor,’ the man sitting next to the driver added.
‘Ah, loyalty!’ Conrad said so softly that only Hannah heard him.
‘She boasts about it being the first SS marriage in Holland,’ the woman went on, ‘with crossed swords and military music! What a circus! Weddings! One more reason not to marry.’
Hannah looked at the woman’s folded hands, at the rings she wore on four of her fingers, three of them with
large semi-precious stones, and one that looked like a gold death’s head. Conrad had better taste than that. He’d given her a chain necklace with a swastika hanging from it but had never insisted she wear it, and a bracelet with strange letters carved into it that he said were Germanic runes for the word forever. ‘Rings mean forever, don’t they, my darling? Around and around, in life and out and in again. Next time we will meet under better stars.’
‘I like our stars,’ she assured him.
‘Do you now?’ He shrugged and, tipping up her chin with one finger, kissed her gently as if she were a little girl.
The party was at Meinoud and Florence’s villa, where they saw photos everywhere of the Van Tonningens posing with Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Göring and everyone else who was anyone in Berlin. There was wonderful food and drink and music played by a small string orchestra so discreetly that nobody needed to listen. Everyone was beautifully dressed and polite and, all together, Conrad said, as they were leaving, the evening was the biggest bore of the season.
Hannah found it not so much boring as alarming. She couldn’t talk about her work or what she did when she wasn’t working. She had no political opinions and didn’t know how to agree with someone else’s. And there were all the young officers who insisted on talking to her, suggested meeting for tea somewhere, didn’t ask with whom she’d come, and couldn’t believe she didn’t want to see them again.
When she told Conrad about them, he said, ‘Well, what did you expect? You were the prettiest, sweetest, most desirable woman in the room. I wouldn’t be surprised if you did make a date behind my back.’
‘Wouldn’t you be angry?’
‘Of course I would, and I’d probably have you arrested and shot to prevent your having tea at the American Hotel without me.’ He sounded as if he meant it, and she sat down abruptly a few feet away from him. ‘Oh Hannah,’ he sighed, ‘I don’t own you just because you love me.’
‘Yes, you do,’ she said. She took a deep breath and said, ‘I saw Adrian today. He introduced me to his sister.’
‘He’s serious then.’
‘No. Well, maybe, but I’m not. He’s just a little boy.’ She wanted to say Conrad was a man, but he didn’t like compliments and wouldn’t be flattered. It wasn’t arrogance. He’d told her once that, to be a Gestapo officer, to pledge your unconditional loyalty to Hitler and Himmler, you had to have a heart of stone but also be, no, continue to be a decent person, no matter what you did or saw.
‘There might be a thousand bodies lying there, Hannah, but you accept that it was for the glory of the Fatherland that they died.’ When he felt her lean away from him, he put his arm around her. ’It’s not something we need to talk about, my darling. Trust me, it’s their way of making us hard and unfeeling. Trust me, it doesn’t always work!’ But he was proud, and sometimes he was unfeeling, that was what you got when you chose Conrad.
‘Tell me, what secrets did the little boy reveal today?’
‘He asked Pam, that’s his sister, how things are at the nursery. That’s where she works. They smuggle the children out, did you know that? Jewish children that they hide with Christian families?’
‘Do they now? We’ll never be able to rid the world of Jewish blood, will we? Those little babies will grow up and take us over after all.’ He was laughing at himself as much as at Pam’s unimportance. ‘I’ll file that away for later. Tell me what the little boy himself is doing.’
‘We went to his apartment, and I saw some odd things,’ She hadn’t planned to tell this, and she stopped abruptly.
‘Go on.’ He was looking out the window as though he were only half-listening.
‘There were little bits of wire, pieces of pipe, tools. Maybe he’s making radios?’
‘Oh, radios,’ he murmured.
‘Well, I don’t really know. He didn’t want me to see it, I know that.’
‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ Conrad said. He got up from the sofa and turned on the record player. ‘Go and put on something more comfortable, and we’ll dance. I missed that this evening, dancing with you. All those handsome young officers breaking in and taking you away from me.’
‘Oh stop!’ she said. Sometimes, when he teased her, she knew it wasn’t like the teasing people do when they love each other. His implied, ‘Don’t take me seriously, but don’t think I don’t mean it.’ He was smarter than she was, but she wasn’t stupid. What was he telling her in that light amused voice that had first attracted her? All she wanted was to hear him say he loved her and sound as if he meant it. So here they were, she loved him, she hated him, and often he made her hate herself. That was their war.
15 Jo, December 1942
Everyone said it was the coldest winter they could remember. All the canals in the city were frozen, and the small boats that had been a way to get around quickly were locked in the ice. People who were lucky enough to live in the center skated to work or school, and shopkeepers anchored crates onto sleigh runners and hauled their goods around the city that way.
There hadn’t been any cars on the streets since the spring, except for the trucks the soldiers used to take prisoners to the railway station, and the Daimlers for the SS officers. And in June, when the Germans ordered men to turn in their bicycles, and they got only a few hundred, most of them old and damaged, they’d gone out onto the streets and just taken them.
‘They need bikes and we don’t? Thieves!’ Elsie said bitterly.’
Dirk shook his head. ‘Leave it.’
‘I’ll say what I like in my own house!’
‘That’s right, Ma,’ Hendrik said, ‘we can say whatever we want in here. It’s just about the last place we can.’
‘Hendrik would like to tell them to their faces what he thinks,’ Jan said mildly.
‘You wouldn’t!’ Elsie put out a hand as if to clap it over her son’s mouth.
‘Oh Ma, of course I won’t,’ Hendrik assured her. ‘Going to jail for insulting someone doesn’t do much good. Now, a shot in the back, that would be a real insult!’
Elsie drew in a loud breath. ‘You wouldn’t!’ she said again.
‘Tell her you’re not that stupid.,’ Jan said, ‘though you act it sometimes.'
‘I’m not that stupid, Ma, I was only kidding, honestly. I haven’t been asked to shoot anybody.’
‘I don’t want to hear this,’ Dirk muttered.
‘Nothing to hear, Pa, nothing to worry about, but you don’t really believe we can just ask the Germans to go home and they will? We have to drive them out, and we’re going to, count on it.’
Dirk shook his head and grunted, he didn’t want to hear that either.
Elsie stood up and started to collect the plates, and Hendrik reached out and took the last two slices of bread.
‘No you don’t,’ Elsie said, taking them back. ‘That’s for Jo’s parents. Go on, Jo, I’ll bring their supper upstairs. Don’t be late.’ She thought Jo was going to visit her friend Lysbet, a nice evening out. It was only a half-lie, but it made Jo uncomfortable. The rule was never talk about your group, not even to your parents. Only Hendrik knew that Jo was with Adrian, and nobody in their group except Lysbet knew her last name. They couldn’t tell someone how to find her or, if they were caught, confess it to the police. She was just one of the girls who carried messages and didn’t know the important things the men knew.
She would never tell her parents, they’d be so frightened that they’d want her to stop. She wasn’t frightened, you didn’t need to be if you were careful. Putting on her warmest jacket in the hall, she could hear the radio whistling as Jan looked for Radio Orange. Elsie put her head around the doorframe. ‘It’s too loud,’ she cautioned, and Jan turned the sound down to a whisper.
‘I’d like to know how much our neighbors can hear, but I’m not going to ask. It’s just what Hendrik said, this is the last place to say what you think. Or do what you want to do.’
Jo knew the neighbors, a thin anxious woman, an even thinner and sadder little bo
y, and an angry man whose red and swollen face glared out the window for hours, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. Elsie was sure he was the one who’d written that nasty letter, and Jo thought he was the one they’d met when they got their stamps.
Tonight she was taking copies of the underground newspaper, De Vonk, to her group. Under her thick winter jacket, they added only a few inches to her body, and nobody would guess they were in there. She would be all right.
Long before curfew, the streets were already silent, the houses dark behind black paper shades and thick curtains that kept the warmth in. She biked as fast as she could until, almost there, she heard two men talking and saw policemen coming around the corner toward her. They were walking in the middle of the street, and Jo almost swerved into the nearest alley, before she realized they had seen her.
One of them held up his hands, palms out, all the soldiers did that. She skidded to a stop a few feet away and smiled. Don’t speak first, they’d told her. Smiling was enough, and they didn’t even expect that anymore.
He was handsome, lots of them were, well-fed and clean. His eyes were bright blue under the peak of his cap, and he was smiling at the pretty girl out on her bike. ‘Do you live here?’ he asked in Dutch. She didn’t, but she knew the neighborhood well enough, and she nodded. ‘Good,’ he went on, ‘we’re looking for a bar called The Laughing Dog. Do you know where it is?’
Jo’s heart was pounding so hard she could hardly speak, and her hands were so tight around the handlebars that they hurt. Thinking she didn’t want to tell him, the soldier stopped smiling. ‘That’s around the next corner, back there,’ she managed to say, pointing behind her, and he nodded and thanked her.
She moved aside to let them pass and then started off slowly. She couldn’t look back. If they caught her staring at them, they would call her back, and you had to obey, she knew that. She had been visiting a friend, she would say, she was just going home. Nobody called out, the street was silent, and she biked on more quickly.
By the time she got to the meeting, she was breathing calmly again. She would have liked to tell somebody how lucky she’d been, but nobody wanted to hear that. If you did something very clever and got away with it, that was worth telling. Everybody had lucky moments.
The Time Between Page 17