‘And I can take them?’
‘Yes, because I told them you’re studying theater and music at the university, and they don’t want all these wonderful papers to get lost. This has been a theater for fifty years and everything’s still here, so I’m going to give you all the old musical scores and scripts. Inside them is what Virrie has to burn, the lists and identity cards.’ With one finger he turned a paper around for her to look at, a list of names and descriptions in a strange spiky handwriting. ‘These don’t match the ones the SS gave me, so out they go before it’s too late.’
It was what Virrie had said, ‘before it’s too late’. What happened after it was too late? When the theater closed, what happened to Mr Süskind and Marcus? ‘Where will you go?’ she asked, looking first at him and then at Marcus.
‘I’m going to Westerbork, my wife and little girl are already there. My work here is finished, the Jewish Council is finished, and we are all going. The Gestapo decides everything now. I can’t even stop them from shutting down your nursery, though I’ve tried. With all the experience I’ve had faking documents, I might be able to help some people at the camp to disappear. Anyway, I don’t have anything to say about where I go. But Marcus is still a free man, aren’t you, my son?’ He stood up, slipped the last papers on his desk between the sheets of a script and gave it to Marcus. ‘Go to the door with her, see she gets out all right.’ Putting his hand out across the desk, he shook Pam’s hand again. ‘Thank you, my dear girl, be safe,’ he said, his broad handsome face lighting up with a smile.
The guards had gone outside, the doors to the auditorium were open, and she could see people lining up below the stage at the far end of the big room. The red plush chairs had been ripped out of the floor, some arranged in groups and the rest piled against the walls. Except for a bright light over the stage and a few unshaded light bulbs hanging from the ceiling meters above, the room was so dark that she could only see the faces of a few old people slumped in the chairs nearest her, and a baby lying asleep on a mat just inside the door.
‘It looks like hell,’ she said and Marcus answered, ‘It is.’
Outside, handing her the pile of envelopes, he held onto the last file for a moment. ‘It’s so incredible to see you! Can I again? Not here?’
‘Do you want to come over to the nursery?’
‘I thought maybe you’d like to come home with me some evening, maybe tonight? I’ll give you supper.’
‘With your parents?”
‘No, they were picked up last winter with my sisters. I was working, lucky me. They didn’t come through here, and I haven’t heard anything from them,’ he hesitated, then said almost cheerfully, ‘But Süskind heard a month ago that they’re still in Westerbork. And I’m living with some friendly goyem, a Christian guy I went to school with before the war and his wife and kids. So far so good,’ he said and rapped his knuckles on the doorpost. ‘I’ve missed you, Pam.’
‘And the university? And Dr Kamp? Don't you miss that too? I do.’
‘It’s so long ago it’s as if it happened to somebody else. Don’t you think that? Who were those people, you and me? Please, can I come and get you later on, give you a meal? Please?
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’ She had always liked him, admired his talent, his wit, his willingness to risk making a fool of himself. They shared a love of poetry and plays, the English language, arguing and learning. She remembered him standing next to her on the bridge, watching the Germans go by, remembered his shoulder pressing on her back and his breath in her ear.
One of the guards coughed, and Marcus put the file into her hands, said, ‘Thanks for helping, and please thank the university for us,’ backed through the doors and was gone.
For an hour she and Virrie went through the scripts and musical scores, fishing out Süskind’s lists and throwing them into a box near the stove, and Hester lit the fire and starting feeding the papers in a few at a time. ‘I’ve never seen this kind of writing before,’ Pam said. ‘Isn’t it beautiful!’
‘That’s how they write in Germany, it’s called Gothic,’ Virrie said. ‘Mr Süskind is German, that’s why the council chose him to manage the theater, poor man.’
Marcus rang the bell at six and Pam introduced him to Virrie, who nodded and smiled and said, when he walked back to the door to wait, ‘Yes, indeed!’ as though she approved and Pam had her blessing.
‘I’ll try to get home before the curfew but, if I don’t,’ she answered and Virrie, teasing her, said again, ‘Yes, indeed!’
Marcus’s friends were just sitting down to supper. Jumping up, the man shook her hand, ‘Johnny de Jong, nice to meet you,’ he said. ‘This is Marrie, and those two little devils are my sons. Sit down, join us.’
Pushing Pam ahead of him out of the kitchen, Marcus shook his head, ‘I promised to feed her,’ he explained. ‘Come in, Pam, this is mine.’ It was a surprisingly large room with a round dining room table and two chairs near the windows, a tall double-doored antique wardrobe, a matching glassed-in bookcase, a brass bedstead in the corner and, he said, laughing, ‘room left over to dance in. Isn’t it amazing? Marrie’s parents gave her this house when she got married, and this probably priceless antique stuff. She’s always been ashamed of it, I think. She’s a rich girl who feels guilty.’
Hanging up her coat and his jacket, he said, ‘I’m going to wash up, I stink like the theater. I’ll be back in five minutes.’
Pam made a circle of the room, examining the large sheets of paper he’d hung up, on which he’d written, with a thick black crayon. two of Shakespeare’s sonnets, lyrics to songs from shows he’d seen or been in, three lists headed animal, vegetable, mineral and decorated with his drawings, a chart of chemical compounds, another showing the rankings of SS officers that was decorated with a swastika and the runic SS like two bolts of lightning, and quotes and poems she didn’t recognize. His omnivorous mind made her laugh, there didn’t seem to be anything he wasn’t interested in.
He came back barefoot and wearing only a clean pair of trousers, ran a hand through his wet hair, brushed fine drops of water from his bare chest, and dried his hand on his trousers. ‘I’ll get dressed, then we’ll eat.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Get dressed. You look so,’ she was surprising both of them, ‘clean,’ she finished lamely. ‘I miss taking a bath. I used to slide way down under the water so only my knees and my nose stuck out. All that hot water!’ She didn’t know what she was going to say next. Her whole body was aware of Marcus standing there, half-dressed, almost not-dressed, almost not-smiling.
‘I won’t then,’ he said.
‘What are these?’ she asked.
‘Things I like and want to remember.' He put his hand on her shoulder and led her down the wall to one of the poems. ‘I got this one from Professor Kamp. Read it to me.’
‘“Ideal and beloved voices,"’ she recited, ‘"of those who are dead,"’ and stopped. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s a Greek poet, he told me who but I’ve forgotten. Go on.’
‘"Or of those lost to us like the dead. Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams, sometimes in thought the mind hears them." Why did he give it to you?’
‘He was going away with his friend, Petrou, nice guy, a Greek. They didn’t want to hang around and get arrested.’
‘Why would they be?’ When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘Oh, you don’t mean friend, do you?’
‘Kamp called him a friend but, yes, he ought to have said lover. I think he was pretty sure by then that I’m not like him, and he was being careful. I wish he hadn’t been, careful I mean.’
She turned back to read the rest silently, ‘And with their sound for a moment return sounds from our life’s first poetry – like music at night, distant, fading away.’ Like music at night, her mother playing the piano, Ted his violin, Leo, where was he, crippled, starving, dead? ‘Why are there so many poems about death?’ she asked.
>
‘Come away from there. This is supposed to be a happy occasion.’ While she turned back to the papers on the wall, he set dishes and glasses out, pulled out a chair for her, poured wine into two glasses and said, ‘Come, Pamela, let’s break bread together. It’s the first time!’’
When he sat down opposite her, his legs under the table, he looked even more naked. She’d seen boys at the swimming pool, her brothers in their pajamas on their way to the bathroom, in Florence with her parents they’d admired Michelangelo's David, penis and all. This was different, she didn’t know why. She had to look at him when he spoke, keep her eyes on his face if she could. Eat. Smile.
‘Kosher pickles, Pam, have one. One of the policemen brought them back after a raid, just like what they have at home, he said. The cheese comes from Marrie’s mother, and we’re not to ask who had it before that. Have some bread.’
They ate silently for a few minutes, Marcus poured a second glass for himself, and she put her hand out to stop him giving her more. ‘I get drunk and silly,’ she explained.
‘Silly would be nice.’
‘No, it wouldn’t!’
‘Nicer than mournful.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, laughing. ‘That’s a good word for how I am. It’s just that it’s getting harder and harder to be cheerful. I have to be when I’m around the children. Marcus, what’s going to happen to them?’
‘You’ll get them all out in time, and then you’ll get yourself out, and everything will be all right.’
‘Marcus,’ she said again, ‘I’m so glad to see you!’
He stood up, leaned across the table, rescued the wine bottle just before it tipped over and kissed her cheek. Sitting down again, he said, ‘It’s taken me three years to get around to that. You know I wanted to back then?’ She shook her head, too surprised to speak. ‘My God, Pam, you have no idea what I thought every time I saw you. I wanted to sit next to you, and I didn’t want to. Every time we had a class, it drove me crazy trying to decide. That was me. Not you? You didn’t think about me that way?’ It was a question but, before she could answer, he jumped up, lit some candles, set them on the table and closed the curtains. ‘You don’t need to answer,’ he said nervously.
‘Shut up, Marcus, it’s my turn. I don’t exactly know what to say, but perhaps if you kissed me again, properly, I might think of something.’ As soon as she spoke, she knew she meant it. Standing up at the same time, they met in the middle of the room. When he put his arms around her waist, she leaned against him and laid her head on his shoulder. She could hear his heart beating, no, of course, it was hers.
‘Don’t move, don’t go away,’ he whispered.
‘I won’t, I’m not going anywhere but, Marcus, look at me.’ If he was going to kiss her again, if he really wanted to, she wanted him to do it now. She leaned away from him and, at the same time, he pulled her closer. Then he bent his head, kissed her mouth, dropped his arms and walked back to the table.
‘Marcus,’
‘I’m being stupid, I know.’ He poured wine into both glasses and brought her one.
‘No, you’re not. But if you didn’t like kissing me, that’s all right.’
‘What?’ He began to laugh so loudly that she looked instinctively toward the door. ‘If I didn’t like it?’
‘Well, did you?’
Taking the glass from her hand, he set it on the table with his and came back to put his arms around her. ‘This is worse than it was in class, Pam, I can’t bear being this close to you,’ and he kissed her again. ‘You can’t imagine,’
‘Tell me.’
‘I can’t. I don’t know how. Look at all this,’ he waved at his wallpaper library, ‘all these facts! When I wrote them down and hung them up, I thought they were important. But they’re not really. Don’t tell me they will be someday, I know that’s possible, but it’s not good enough.’
‘Do you think we won’t be here then? Is that why?’
‘We will, we won’t, who knows! It’s just, oh God, I just want to say,’ he shook his head.
‘Say it, Marcus! What are you afraid of, that you’ll make me angry or scare me?’ She put her hands on his shoulders and gripped them so tightly that he winced. ‘Go on, say it!’
‘Yes, all right! I want to make love to you. That’s what I wanted to say! Would you come and lie down with me? Let me hold you?’
‘Just don’t say you love me, please don’t. Everything else is fine, honestly, but please don’t say that.’
‘But I do! Oh, all right! I won't, but I do!'
Sitting down on the bed, she took her shoes and stockings off, then stood up, took off her skirt and folded it over a chair. He stood a few feet away, watching her, then, sitting down beside her, cupped his hand around one of her knees and held it there. When she smiled, he moved his hand down her leg to her ankle and back again. ‘Your skin is amazing,’ he whispered.
‘Is yours?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘how would I know!’ Bending over, he pulled off his shoes and sat back again, his arms folded across his chest. When she laid her palm on his back, she could feel him trembling.
‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, actually,’ she said, ‘but I do want you to make love to me if you want to.’ His not looking at her made it easier to say. ‘What should I do?’
‘Let’s see.’ He pulled her around so that their legs came up together, and they lay down face-to-face, not speaking, looking at each other intently as if they could say important things with their eyes.
‘What I was thinking,’ she whispered, ‘was a poem. There’s always a poem, isn’t there! You haven’t got it, I’ll give it to you sometime.’
‘Tell me now.’
When she shook her head, he said, ‘This isn’t a time for secrets, tell me!’
‘"Now therefore,"’ she quoted slowly, trying to remember the exact words, ‘"while the youthful hue sits on thy skin like morning dew, and while thy willing soul transpires at every pore with instant fires,"’
‘Oh yes,’ he interrupted.
‘"Now let us sport us while we may", and I don’t remember the rest, but that part’s beautiful, isn’t it?’’
‘Doesn’t it go, "the grave’s a fine and private place"?’ They finished it together, ‘"But none I think do there embrace."’
‘So you already know it,’ she said. ‘You know so many things.
‘You know what, Pam, I’m going to kiss you.’
‘I’m going to kiss you.’
‘And then we’ll see. Take off that damned blouse.’
Standing up, he took off his trousers, bent down to take her blouse, bra and underpants from her and said, ‘Shall I blow out the candles?’
‘Don’t you want to look at me?’ Over his shoulder she could see the candles on the table, and how their light outlined his shoulder and arm. When she tilted her head, she saw his hip and the beginning of his thigh. With one finger she traced along the line, felt him shiver and laughed. ‘I'm drawing you,’ she said. 'You're my model.'
‘I’m your lover.’ He propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at her. ‘A confused and tongue-tied lover, because I don't know what to say.’
‘You don’t need to say anything,’ she whispered. ‘I love your skin, Marcus. I love how heavy you are.’ She didn’t know whether he could hear her, he was moving his lips over her neck and shoulders and breasts very slowly, and then his head came up and he kissed her mouth. ‘How nice,’ she thought, ‘how nice that it’s Marcus.’
The Germans had commandeered De Groote Club on the Dam, the swastika flew above its door, and women friends went out for tea at a nearby hotel, just as they had always done.
20 Jo and Pam, October 1943
Brushing snow off her head and shoulders, stamping her shoes clean, Jo leaned her head against the door and pressed the bell. The door opened so fast that she fell against Pam.
‘I was watching for you,’ Pam explained, holding Jo with both arms to steady her.
>
‘Did you know I was coming?’
‘I hoped you would. But what a day to be out!’
The apartment was almost as cold as the street, and they went quickly into the kitchen, where steam rising from a kettle of boiling water on the stove gave an illusion of warmth. Jo took off her coat, hung it over a chair and took the tea Pam gave her. The cup warmed her hands, and she sipped slowly.
‘Have you seen Adrian? Has he tried to reach you?’ Pam asked.
‘No, the group broke up months ago, and I haven’t met any of the others since. I only see you and Hendrik now. Oh, and Hans. He comes to visit my parents sometimes. Hasn’t Ted seen him either?’
Adrian had disappeared one day in September, he’d gone to work at the railroad station but hadn’t arrived. Somebody got word to Ted, who asked everybody he knew without success. They thought he must have been picked up off the street and sent to Germany. The factories there were desperate for workers, their sources for forced labor all over Europe had almost dried up, and the few prisoners they did get were so weak after a few months, that they were sent on to the camps to die.
Adrian had managed to stay strong and healthy. Unloading shipments at the station had given him a chance to steal enough food for himself and Ted, and shifting boxes and barrels all day was exercise, not work, to him. Anybody seeing him on the street, his grin, his ruddy face, his pace that told the world, ‘I’ve got someplace to go!’ would know he was fair game for a roaming band of SS.
‘Everybody thinks he’s in Germany.’
‘But you don’t.’
Pam looked away. How could she tell Jo, who loved Adrian, what she thought? They had both been trying for weeks to accept the idea that he had been rounded-up and deported, holding onto the hope that the war wouldn’t last much longer, knowing he’d always been a survivor and would be now. How could she say it was more likely he’d died in an Amsterdam prison? She looked at the girl and saw that she already knew what she was trying not to say.
‘He’s been shot, hasn’t he? Who told you?’
The Time Between Page 23