The Time Between

by Bryna Hellmann-Gillson

  ‘You’re right, Marrie,’ Marcus said calmly. ‘We have no right to put you people in danger.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Johnny exclaimed.

  ‘No, Johnny, she’s right. But could you do one thing, Marrie, just this one thing? I need to find another place and I will, but can we stay here for a day or so until I do? Thank you.’ He came into the room smiling and sat down on the bed. ‘It’s all right, I told you it would be.’

  ‘For a day or so? I heard you!’

  ‘I know people we can trust. I’ll go out this evening and start asking, and we’ll be out of Marrie’s hair in no time.’

  He could only go out between dusk and the curfew at eight. On these fall evenings, that gave him two or three reasonably safe hours, but she sat and worried about him every time. After three days, he admitted that everybody he spoke to had said no. ‘One guy said they’ve had the Gestapo at the door three times already, the first time they had someone hidden, and a friend at the police station warned them in time to get her out. They’re too scared to try again.’

  ‘Jo said I could come to Elsie, where she lives, but I can’t do that, they already have her and her parents. And I’m not going anywhere without you.’

  At the end of the week, he talked to Marrie and Johnny again and came back and told Pam they could stay ‘If,’ Marrie had said sternly, ‘you don’t go out, not even to the shops. Johnny will get you food, you have to stay away from the windows and not play the radio and not make any noise the neighbors might hear.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Marcus had said, but didn’t she want him to go on looking for something else? No, he might be seen by the neighbors, and she was frightened, and he was sorry.

  They spent most of the time in bed, sleeping, making love, talking, reading aloud to each other or silently. In the morning, when Johnny and Marrie took the boys to school, they got up and washed, took their breakfast into the sunny kitchen, and then ran up and down three flights of stairs for exercise.

  The days went by so slowly that Pam was surprised, one morning, to realize she would have lost track of the time if Johnny’s little devils hadn’t been home on the weekends. ‘Shouldn’t we have a calendar?’ she asked.

  ‘If you want one, my little love, I’ll make you one.’

  ‘I mean a real one!’

  ‘I’ll make you a real one! We’ll start with Day One of the First Week, when God created the heavens and earth, that’s a Sunday, and then on Friday He’ll make us and on Saturday He’ll say, “Look at her, Marcus, isn’t she the most beautiful woman in the world?” And I’ll say,’

  ‘You’ll say, “Shall I compare her to a summer’s day?” and He’ll shake his head and say, “Watch those anachronisms, dear boy, you’re spoiling the story.” But I mean it, Marcus, I need to know how long I’ve been here.’

  ‘Because?’

  She pushed her head into the space under his arm and whispered, ‘Because we won’t stay here forever, and I want to know how many days we’ve had.’

  ‘You’re in one of your mournful moods, are you? I’ll have to sing to you, it will make you laugh. I know all the songs from the revues, and from Louis Davids, and the lovely and inimitable Henriette. I could have understudied everybody, even her.’

  ‘But sing something cheerful.’

  Sitting up against the brass headboard, he cleared his throat dramatically and began, 'Mr Whatshisname just loves composing, his nose is in his sheet music all day. The kids who come to him for music lessons stay only once, and then they run away! And why? I’ll tell you in eight words, he thinks that jazz is for the birds!'

  Pam applauded, ‘More, please.’

  ‘No, I want to sing you a love song. 'You aren’t pretty, no, you ain’t, the way you smell could make me faint. Because I love you, oh so much, I’ll never want another.' Second verse, and don’t giggle like that, 'You’re from another, odder race, and yet I love your homely face,'

  ‘You’re making it up as you go along, aren’t you?’ She reached up and put a hand over his mouth. ‘It’s too silly to be a real song.’

  ‘What, that I love you anyway?’ He slid down and lay on top of her, pinning her arms under his. ‘There’s nothing silly about that. What would really be silly is to have a calendar, Pamela, because you’d be lifting the pages and looking at the months ahead, instead of being with me one day at a time.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in her most mournful voice, ‘I suppose I would. All right, make me a Biblical calendar, with one day equal to a hundred years.’

  '"I would love you ten years before the Flood,"' Marcus quoted, '“and you should, if you please, refuse till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow, vaster than empires, and more slow. An hundred years should go to praise thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze. Two hundred to adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest.”’

  ‘Stop,’ she said, ‘Stop it right now! I hate that poem! And get off me, I can’t breathe.’ When she was free, she scrambled off the bed and started to get dressed.

  Watching her, he began to sing again, ‘“I’m going to get right up and put on my clothes. I’m going to go right out and take in all the shows. I’m going to drive around in an open carriage and, if I meet my girl, there’s going to be a marriage. The doctor says my days are done, so if I’m going to die, I’m going to have some fun.” I’ve made you laugh, that’s good.’

  ‘Get dressed, silly, I’m not coming back to bed.’ She stopped speaking, turned her head to listen. ‘Did you hear that, the bell?’

  It rang again, then they heard a fist pounding on the door.

  His shirt unbuttoned and hanging loose, he ran into the hall, slamming the door behind him. She could hear voices, his and then another man asking loudly, ‘Well then, who are you?’ Then a door slammed, and it was so quiet that she was sure they’d taken Marcus away. She stood with her back to the wall, hidden from the door by the enormous wardrobe, and waited. For a few minutes nothing happened, then the door opened, and a man’s voice said, ‘Yes, here she is! Good afternoon, Miss Chambers!’

  Later on, she remembered how he’d said that, so cheerfully, and that it was the most frightening moment of the day. Ted had told her the Gestapo wore civilian clothes when they arrested people. That way the neighbors wouldn’t know anything was happening though, even if they did, they wouldn’t protest. This man was Gestapo. He knew her name, they had been looking for her, not Marcus. And now Marcus had been arrested because she was here.

  ‘Do sit down,’ he said, ‘and let me look around. What an interesting room this is, lovely furniture, French antiques, aren’t they? Not Dutch.’ He circled the room reading the lists, nodding approvingly when he saw Marcus’s red and black drawings of swastikas and the wide-winged German eagle. ‘An interesting man, one who likes poetry but has an orderly mind as well.’

  They sat across from each other. Pam kept her trembling hands under the table and tried to look calm. He was a handsome man, his eyes a clearer brighter blue than she’d ever seen before, the gray hair above his ears almost unnoticeable among the blond, and his small blond Hitler-style mustache not comical, distinguished really. Was he Hannah’s Gestapo officer? It showed on her face, and he put out his hand and touched hers, ‘Yes, Pamela, I am Hannah’s friend.’

  ‘Lover,’ she whispered.

  ‘Lover, if you will. I assume that’s why you tried to kill her. Lucky for her, too bad for you, that you didn’t, nicht wahr?’ He paused, smiled, went on, ‘Ah, but you didn’t, did you, try to shoot her? That was your cousin Anne, your second cousin Anne, I suppose, the first being somewhere in another country.’

  Ted had warned her the Gestapo were always friendly, because then people told them things they never would if they were being hit or screamed at. They would give you coffee and a cigarette, even light it for you, and you’d find yourself telling them everything you knew. They were smart enough, he said, to put your two together with somebody else’s two and come up with five.


  ‘You have nothing to tell me, I know that,’ Conrad said. ‘Nothing I don’t already know. Now, please, get your coat, and we will go down to headquarters and decide what to do with you. You’d like to know where your friend is and where he’s going? What’s his name? Oh, yes, Marcus. If you’re a good girl, I’ll find out for you. Come, get dressed, pack warm things, it’s cold in prison.’

  Before she closed her suitcase, he took two towels out of the wardrobe and handed them to her. ‘Take a few books, Pamela, it can be very boring waiting around for something to happen. Here, some poems.’ When she shook her head, he chose another book, ‘Shakespeare, that will do,’ and, waving her to go before him, walked with her down the hall, closed the door securely behind them, and took her downstairs to a small car at the curb.

  She sat beside him as if they were friends out for a drive. ‘You’re wondering what will happen to Mr and Mrs De Jong. They were so good to you and Marcus, up to a point, of course. But the children come first, don’t they, and after a while I suppose she came to her senses. So we will leave them for now, keep an eye on them, and hope they don’t feel compelled to shelter anyone else.’

  That’s what Adrie had said, ‘It’s no contest whom they choose.’ She hoped nobody would tell Marcus. In their weeks together, no matter how much he made her laugh, she knew he was worried and guilty about involving Johnny’s family. When the theater and the nursery were closed, everybody who worked there was sent to Westerbork. The Jewish Council went too, their immunity lasting only as long as the Germans needed them to keep the Amsterdam Jews in line. Marcus ought to have gone with Süskind, but he had said no, disappear, go underground. It wasn’t Marrie who’d betrayed him, she had.

  Hannah’s friend, lover, said he knew everything, but she didn’t believe him. When they questioned her, what did she have to be careful not to admit? Who her cousin Anne really was, and where could they find her, where was her brother Ted, who were the people who smuggled the children out, where were they taken? She had to make them believe she couldn’t tell them anything, would if she could, if she had to.

  Sitting on the floor of a cell, one wrist handcuffed to the radiator, she waited all afternoon. Footsteps went by, doors opened and shut, somebody shouted in German, ‘Raus, raus, get out’, a woman’s voice told someone in Dutch, ‘Here’s a letter for you’, but nobody came for her. Her Shakespeare lay out of reach. What, she wondered, would he have said about this?

  Hours later a woman guard brought her a bowl of soup, bent and unlocked the cuff and, when Pam thanked her, said, ‘Put the bowl near the door when you’re finished.’

  ‘How late is it?’

  ‘Late,’ she answered and went out.

  Pam crawled over to the mattress that was the only furniture in the cell and sat on it, grateful to be off the cold floor. The soup was still warm and, drinking it, she realized how thirsty she was. When the guard came back, she would ask for a glass of water. In the meantime, she would just close her eyes for a while. She would sit up in case someone came for her, she would keep her coat on, and it would be best not to take her shoes off. If someone came, she would be ready. Her back to the wall, she fell asleep.

  During the night, crying woke her, a man gasping, sobbing, choking, a sound so terrible that she pulled her woolen cap down over her ears. She would never know what they had done to him, she didn’t want to know. When it was that bad, did you want to die? Would she?

  After two days alone in her cell, they brought in another girl, Tineke, who said she had no idea why she had been arrested. ‘Maybe because the man I fell in love with got into trouble, I don’t know. Is that what happened to you?’ While she was talking, she kept one finger over her lips to warn Pam she was lying and Pam should to.

  That afternoon, finally, she was taken to Conrad, who said only, ‘We shan’t bother asking you a lot of questions you won’t answer, Pamela. I’m sure you expected to be tortured, but we won’t bother with that either. So off you go, and let’s see how lucky you are in the next place. Just between us, you might actually come home again someday.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Ah, what can I tell you?’ He hesitated, then leaned forward and whispered,’ If you’re lucky, you might survive the end of our grandiose thousand year empire. I might too, who knows?’

  A policeman took her, Tineke and three men in a van to the train station, where they spent the night in a locked boxcar with several dozen other prisoners. There was just enough room for them to sit with their knees up and arms crossed. The best places were along the walls where air seeped through between the slats. Just before the guard slammed the doors shut, she looked out at Amsterdam, at the river beyond the railroad tracks and the small houses along the green bank on the other side, their windows lit by the last sunlight. A sailboat drifted by, some seagulls circled low over the water, the air smelled salty. Remembering what Conrad had said, she thought she would not say goodbye. This was just for now, she would be lucky, and she would be back.

  22 Hannah, April 1944

  When she brought the children’s trays into the kitchen, Cook said, ‘Mrs Moll wants you.’

  ‘Now? She told me at lunch to help you clear up.’

  ‘No, she wants you now.’

  ‘All right,’ Hannah said. She would be asked to go out, and she resented it. None of the nurses liked leaving the hospital. They tried to ignore the police, but they were everywhere. Helmeted as if they were going into battle, gun holsters dangling from wide black belts, they patrolled the streets in groups as if their enemy might spring out of an alley at any moment. If Mrs Moll wanted somebody to do an errand, the nurses ran to find something to do upstairs and out-of-sight, but she would send for one of them, and you couldn’t say no.

  Hannah climbed the stairs slowly, wondering whether to go all the way up first and get her coat. It had been raining all week, icy rain, colder than snow, and a fierce and steady wind blew into your face no matter which direction you walked. If she had to go clear across town, she’d come back ill. It would serve Mrs Moll right if she went to bed until she got better.

  There was a woman sitting in the waiting room, pregnant, she’d probably come for tests, but what a day to leave the house. The skirt of her coat and her shoes were soaked, and her black umbrella was leaning against the bench in a pool of water. She was going to catch a cold too, not good for her and bad for the baby.

  ‘Oh Hannah, yes,’ Mrs Moll said, ‘Isn’t that nice, your sister’s come to see you, all the way from Utrecht! Take a few hours off, dear, and have a real visit.’

  ‘Vera? Is she here?’

  ‘Yes, dear, she’s waiting for you. Take her down to the kitchen, and ask Cook for tea and something sweet. Go on!’

  Hannah stood in the doorway and looked at the pregnant woman. Was that Vera? She cleared her throat to speak just as the woman looked up. ‘Oh Hannah, there you are! Oh, I’m so glad to see you!’

  She got up awkwardly, one hand on the arm of the chair and kissed Hannah, then stepped back and said, ‘How well you look!’

  ‘You too, Vera.’

  ‘Oh no, I look terrible!’

  ‘Well, you’re very wet,’ Hannah said, ‘and you ought to take off your coat and shoes. Come down to the kitchen where it’s warm.’

  Vera did look terrible. Her face was pale, her ankles swollen, and the skin under her eyes was blue from fatigue.

  Taking Vera’s arm, she walked her slowly down the stairs and into the warm kitchen.

  When the cook saw them, she turned a chair around and put it close to the stove. ‘Just you give me that coat,’ she said and, helping Vera out of it, she hung it over the chair. ‘And those shoes, my God, you’ve been walking in puddles.’

  ‘This is my sister,’ Hannah said. ‘Mrs Moll said you’d have tea and something.’

  ‘Of course,’ Cook exclaimed, ‘tea and cake! How far along are you, dear?’

  Hannah couldn’t have asked, a pregnant Vera was too embarrassing. She
hadn’t even known her sister was married, if she was. They hadn’t written or phoned each other for months, and people you didn’t see weren’t supposed to change.

  While Vera and Cook discussed pregnancies, Cook having had three, the horrible weather, Vera’s miserable train trip from Utrecht, and the growing shortage of decent food, Hannah got out cups and spoons and made a pot of tea. Sitting down finally across from Vera, she heard her say, ‘Well, I’m his second wife, but they didn’t have any children, so of course he’s pleased.’

  ‘Drink your tea while it’s hot,’ Hannah said, and Cook stood up and went back to the sink. ‘How are Uncle Bernard and Aunt Mina?’

  Vera shook her head and whispered, ‘It’s sad, Hannah. Uncle Bernard went away, we don’t know where he is now.’

  ‘Was he?’ she couldn’t say arrested with Cook listening, but Vera understood and shook her head.

  ‘He wrote Aunt Mina that he had to go away, because she would be safer without him.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nick told him to go, so she’s mad at him and won't speak to me either.’

  ‘Who’s Nick?’

  ‘Oh Hannah, that’s Mr Braun, remember, the man I worked for?’

  ‘Do you still?’

  ‘No, no,’ Vera laughed faintly, ‘he’s my husband,’ and, folding her two hands across her belly, she said, ‘my baby’s father.’

  Cook had finished hanging the clean pots up on their hooks and came over to the table, poured herself a cup of tea and said, ‘If I were you, Hannah, I’d take my sister upstairs and put her to bed. You look worn out, dear. And I’m going to put my feet up too.’ Patting Vera’s shoulder, she took her tea and went out.

  ‘She’s right,’ Hannah said. ‘Let’s go up to my room, we can talk there and, while you’re taking a nap, I’ll get my work done and then I’ll take you to the station.’ Vera’s coat was almost dry, and her shoes were damp but warm enough to put on. They went up to the fourth floor slowly, Vera holding the banister and Hannah walking behind in case she stumbled.