In her room, where just enough heat came from the small radiator to keep the cold air dry, she straightened the sheet, shook out her quilt and spread it over Vera’s legs. Vera lay on her back, her arms folded across her chest, ‘Danke schön, little sister, it’s good to get off my feet. Can we talk later?’ Her eyes closed and she sighed. ‘I told Nick I’d be late.’
For a moment, Hannah stood and looked down at her sister. If she became pregnant, what would Conrad say? She didn’t think he’d be pleased, she didn’t even know whether he was free to marry her. There might be a wife and children back home, a family he would return to. She pictured them in a castle somewhere safe, away from the cities being bombed every night, a pretty blonde Aryan wife, a ruddy-faced, athletic son and a pig-tailed, blue-eyed little girl who missed her papa more than anybody else did. Idyllic, all of it, and no room for her and her half-breed Jewish baby. Sex was heaven, love hell, when had she suddenly started to understand that? Too late.
Meeting Nettie in the hall reminded Hannah that she had promised to supervise the children’s supper. ‘My sister came for a visit,’ she told her, ‘and I think it might be a good idea to take her to the station. If I’m not back in time, could you start without me?'
For an hour Hannah tended to the children, taking their afternoon temperatures, sitting them up for milk or juice, and entering notes on their charts. Upstairs, she found Vera out of bed. ‘Oh, good,’ they both said, which made them laugh. Hannah said, ‘I’ll go with you to the station,’ and Vera asked, ‘Can we go now?’ and they laughed again.
The rain had stopped, the sun made strings of glass beads on the wet windows, and a nurse coming in exclaimed, ‘The storm’s over! What a wind that was!’
‘Yes, Hannah, go with your sister, much safer,’ Mrs Moll said. ‘Can you also do something for me while you’re out? I’d like to have some flowers, see what you can find along the way, please.’
She treated herself to a bouquet for her desk every week all summer long, sending someone out to the flower stall at the corner on Monday morning. In November, it seemed like a fool’s errand. The stall at the corner had been carted away, or somebody had broken it up to use for firewood after the owner died.
‘He was a nice old man,’ Hannah told her sister. ‘I saw what happened to him, I was just over there,’ she pointed to the other side of the street, ‘so I ran back to the hospital, and they came and got him.’
There had been three German soldiers standing in front of the open stall, two of them talking and smoking, and the third holding a bunch of those little white flowers they had back home, Schneeglöckschen, little snow bells, they were called. What had made the soldier angry? The old man was smiling, he’d made a joke perhaps, and suddenly the soldier’s free hand had whipped out and punched him so hard that he fell back against the step behind him. He must have hit it so hard that something in his spine snapped.
‘Oh Hannah, we haven’t had flowers in Utrecht for years. It’s all so sad.’ She squeezed Hannah’s hand. ‘If it weren’t for the baby, I don’t know,’ her voice trailed away. ‘Nick goes to work, and I sit at home and wait for him. He doesn’t want me to work, and there’s no place to go except shopping, and he does that now. He thinks I’m safer in the house if the English bombers come.’
‘He’s a good husband.’
‘Oh yes!’
‘I didn’t know you’d gotten married. Wasn’t he already?’
‘To Yvette, yes, but she went back to France years ago, in ’42 already. She wanted to be with her parents.’
‘So then you and Mr Braun, Nick, got got married.’
‘Not right away, but when we knew there was a baby coming, Nick said we should.’
‘But he knows you’re Jewish.’
‘Yes, of course, but he said he didn’t care what the authorities say.’
‘Being an NSBer helps.’
‘But that was never really true! You know he protected me for years. He never wanted the Germans to come here and, after the party got so anti-Semitic and nasty, he just kept on with them for the sake of business. No no, he’s really a good man. I’m so lucky!’
There were plenty of Dutch people who said one thing and did another, especially when it was good for business. Sleeping with Adrian but with all her loyalty going to her German lover, she was neither different nor better than all the other hypocrites. Perhaps Vera’s Nick was as honest and uncomplicated as Adrian and lucky to have gotten Vera instead of her.
‘Tell me about Uncle Bernard. Why did Nick tell him to go away?’
‘There’s a law about Jews and Christians who are married. If they wanted to stay together, they would have sterilized Uncle Bernard.’
‘What nonsense! They’re far too old to have children and, anyway, they never did, so he probably couldn’t. Or she couldn’t.’
‘That’s true, but the law’s the law, Nick says. The other thing, far worse, was that if Uncle was arrested, she might be too.’
‘So she’s safer now but angry.’ How would she feel if Conrad left Amsterdam, sent a note to say goodbye and just went home? He would someday. Whether the Germans stayed forever or not, there would be orders some day to go home. Vera hadn’t asked about her life, whether she had friends, a special friend. She’d never imagine her little sister had a lover, though she’d been sleeping with her Nick before they got married. Hannah could tell her and see what happened, but how could she explain who Conrad was. An SS officer was not an NSBer who hated his party and married a Jew.
They waited in the station hall till just before Vera’s train left. When they kissed, Vera said, ‘Oh, I never asked how you are! I’m so selfish!’
‘There’s nothing to tell.' Nothing you should know, nothing you'd even want to know. 'Let me know when the baby comes, what it is, what you name it. Perhaps I can come to Utrecht.’
‘That would be lovely, Hannah, you must meet Nick too! Oh, goodbye, be good, take care of yourself!’
Walking away, Hannah realized she hadn’t asked for news from Berlin. Perhaps there was none, wouldn’t Vera have mentioned them? Perhaps not, she was so absorbed in her Nick and her baby. It would be weeks before she’d send a message saying all was well, and then a visit to see the baby would be necessary, her first time back in Utrecht in years.
What had Adrian said about the time between that day in May when the Germans came and the day in the future when they left? A time between being who they had been and who they might become when they were free to choose. Now they were all play-acting, lying, keeping secrets, some of them better at it than others, but all of them painfully aware of how dishonest, confused or unfeeling they were, and how guilty they felt about that. He’d sung ‘Ain’t we got fun?’ Well, no, they didn’t.
She’d read a story in the newspaper about a family that went out of the city to pick blackberries. The father complained that they had to wait hours for a train, because so many of them were being used to transport prisoners to Germany. But they had a wonderful day, he wrote, and came back with baskets full of fruit, enough to share with friends. And then he wrote, ‘Afterwards I felt bad about complaining about the trains. We had such a perfect day, we had a good lunch at a little hotel, and we brought back more fruit than we could eat. Those trains were for people who were going to prison camps! I felt ashamed, but I was also proud that I could give my wife and children such a perfect day!’
Halfway to the hospital, she found a shop selling holly branches and bought three for Mrs Moll, who might think she deserved flowers but, if this was all there was, would have to be satisfied. ‘There’s a war on,’ she’d say if she had the courage.
23 Jo, September 1944
When the message came from London to go on strike, Hendrik told them, ‘At last we can do something! There aren’t going to be any more false alarms. There’s been sabotage down south and in the east, rails torn up and boxcars pushed over. Some lines are out of commission altogether. We’re ready to go, and in a few weeks the Canadia
ns will be here.’
‘It was supposed to be a few days,’ Dirk reminded them. On Sunday the Allies had freed Brussels, on Monday Antwerp. Their tanks and trucks had been moving steadily north, and Radio Orange from London said Rotterdam was next. They even reported the next day that troops had crossed the border. All over Amsterdam the red-white-blue flags and orange ribbons that had been hidden away for years were hung from windows and doors, and young people danced in the streets. And then it wasn’t true after all, the Germans had dug in their heels, and the Canadians had retreated.
‘I’m not putting out the flag again,’ Elsie said, ‘until I see the Yanks myself.’
‘I guess London doesn’t know everything,’ Hendrik admitted. ‘All they’re saying now is that the biggest cities in Belgium are ours, and that’s something. I just wish we could have stopped the devils getting away.’ He looked at Jo and mouthed the word ‘Hannah’ and she nodded.
‘Who? The Germans?’ Dirk asked, and Hendrik nodded. ‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know, we stood there and watched them piling onto the trains with all their stuff, half of it stolen, and part of me wanted to kill them, and another part just wanted never to see them again. Especially our home-grown Nazis. I felt sorry for their kids though, I don’t know where they thought they were going. You think the Germans want our Nazis? They have enough of their own.’
Elsie said, ‘Well, good riddance. Go on, what about the strike?’
‘Some guys say they won't help, it’s stupid to stop the trains running, because it will cut us off from the rest of the country.’
‘So?’
Dirk said, ‘So we won’t get any food or coal. All we need is a winter like the last one, and we’ll either starve or freeze to death. It’s a good thing some people are smart enough to see the consequences.’
‘But if London thinks,’ Elsie began, but her husband’s laugh cut her off. ‘Oh London! You mean the queen and her German husband, and all those hoity-toities that got away with her. What do they know about what it’s like here?’
‘London’s been bombed worse than here.’
‘And you think they’re in London, do you?’
Hendrik lifted his hand to interrupt. ‘They’ve asked us to do it and the sooner the better. You have to understand, Pa, when Radio Orange sends an order, we need to believe it’s the right thing to do. We do believe it!’
‘Will you blow up the station?’ Elsie asked.
‘Oh no! Orders are to keep the sabotage to a minimum, just enough to paralyze the system. There’s no point in destroying what we’ll need later.’
‘So the trains can start running again as soon as the Germans are gone? That makes sense.’ She hesitated and then said, ‘And you’ll be all right?’ She didn’t need to say she was thinking about Jan, he knew that.
‘I will, Ma, don’t worry. I’ll be fine.’ He stood, leaned over the table to touch her cheek, said, ‘Thanks for supper’ and signaled Jo to follow him.
In the hall he whispered, ‘Come into the parlor. Shut the door.’
A rainy summer had made the house damp and chilly, and it had been months since there’d been enough coal or wood to heat all the rooms. Every evening Elsie threw a single shovel of coal into the kitchen stove, and they sat in a semi-circle around it with their hands stretched out toward the warmth. Sometimes Jo’s parents came down to sit with them, to get away from the wind that blew in through invisible cracks in the roof.
‘Yesterday the station was full of NSBers and Germans. Hannah will try to get out too. She must know she can’t stay here. After she ratted on Pam and Adrian, I don’t know why we didn’t shoot her while we could.’
Jo didn’t answer. She had promised Pam never to tell anybody what they had done, and she couldn’t bear to talk about Adrian. When she heard his name together with Hannah’s, she wanted to cry. He was meant to be hers, not Hannah’s, and now he was nobody’s.
Hendrik said, ‘I’ve asked everybody I know, people who get messages from the camps through the Red Cross or the Party, and Adrian’s name doesn’t come up anyplace. When the SS interrogated Tommy, they never mentioned Adrian, and usually they boast about everything they know. He doesn’t believe they murdered him.’
‘Tommy was arrested?’
‘A few weeks ago, but they let him go. Can you believe it, when he said he was a baron, they went all polite, apologized, offered him coffee and a cigarette. At first he thought they were being clever, hoping he’d open up, but they really were impressed. Germans love titles, don’t they! The last time I saw Ted, that was months ago, he said he’d gotten a message from his parents. They’re in Switzerland, and they hope the kids can join them. They don’t know about Adrian. I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell them. And what about Pam?’
‘I don’t know. I wanted to go to Corelli Street to see if she’s there,’
‘Don’t!’
‘No, I know, but I can’t think where else she might have gone. I don’t know anybody who knows her. She mentioned somebody named Marcus, but nobody knows who he is.’
‘What about Hans?’
‘I haven’t seen him for months. He was working at the hospital. We talked about Hannah.’ It was just possible to keep her voice calm. Having secrets from Hendrik was as bad as lying to her father and Elsie, but she did it, because her parents were frightened enough, and Elsie had Dirk and Hendrik and Jan to worry about.
‘What did he say?’
‘He said Hannah was working for the SS. I wanted to kill her but he said no, we couldn’t do that, she was being watched all the time.’
‘You should have told one of us, we'd have done it.’
‘No, I wanted to.’
‘And did you?’
Jo shook her head. That was all she wanted to tell him.
Hendrik stood up and said, ‘Leave it for tonight. Maybe she left with her SS lover, but I promise you, if she’s still in the city, I’ll track her down and put a bullet through that pretty head of hers.’
‘If she’s with him, how can you get near her? You’ll get caught!’
‘Don’t worry about me. We’ve put a lot of collaborators out of action lately, and we haven’t been caught yet. That’s why the rest of them are running away. Better Germany than a graveyard. Well, maybe. You know the bombing is something terrific there. Most of the planes going over here every night are heading for Berlin, but they’ve been dropping their extra bombs on everything in between.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing, you’ve done enough. I’ll sort out Hannah, I promise.’
Since Jan had stopped coming home, nobody talked about him. They were pretending he’d piloted his boat to Haarlem and had a reason to stay there. ‘What if something happens to you? Your mother and father couldn’t bear it. Besides, it’s almost over, you said so yourself. Why would you want to get arrested now?’
‘You’re right. I don’t. Certainly not because of Hannah, she’s not worth it, though I make no promises.’ He was smiling, and she knew he didn't mean it.
They went back to the kitchen, where Elsie was talking to David and Jacoba. When her mother whispered, ‘It’s safe enough, isn’t it?’ Jo nodded, took her cold hands and rubbed them warm. The curtains were drawn, and behind them a frame covered in black paper kept their light in and the neighbors’ eyes out. Just the same, Jacoba felt uneasy. Even going down to the bathroom brought her too close to the world outside.
Dirk was bent over the radio, turning the station and volume knobs back and forth and muttering. The Germans were blocking the reception, and sometimes a sharp hissing noise was all they could hear. ‘He’s talking about V-bombs and fires in the city.’ He leaned forward to put his ear to the speaker. ‘Something else is going on. Something else about London, but I can’t make it out. It’s always, “Oh, we’re doing fine, we’re so brave. Chin up!” Isn’t that what they always say, chin up?’
Elsie slapped his arm, ‘That’s it, chin up, dear. By the
time this war is over, you’ll be speaking English like a native.’
‘German more likely.’
Elsie sighed. ‘You must be the only person in Holland who thinks the Germans are winning the war. Even the NSBers don’t think so any longer.’
‘Is it possible?’ David asked. Like everyone else, he’d had a rush of joy and excitement when Elsie called up the stairs that they could come down, it was safe, the Allies were coming. He’d even gone out for a moment and looked at all the flags. The letdown had been almost the worst moment in the three years they were hiding.
‘Oh David, I know, we thought it was over and it wasn’t. I’m sorry!’
‘There’s no need to apologize. But we will wait now to see what happens. If Hendrik says victory is inevitable, then it is. We will wait.’
Dirk put up his hand, ‘Listen, there’s more news.’ He turned the sound up as far as it would go. The announcer must have known the reception was poor, because he repeated the same announcement over and over. The Belgian government had flown home from London and was now in the City Hall in Brussels. Then he said that Dutch troops had taken a town on the border with Holland. ‘Dutch troops!’ Dirk shouted. ‘Finally!’
When they heard gunshots, they thought at first they were coming from the radio. Then Elsie reached across the table and turned it off and, in the silence, they heard somebody shouting in German, ‘Nein, nein, tu es nicht!' and a woman screaming.
‘Where’s that coming from?’ Elsie whispered, and Hendrik ran into the parlor to peer between the curtains. Jacoba pulled her hand away from Jo’s and went to stand with David at the foot of the stairs. They heard a car door slam, and then the car pulling away. ‘Germans,’ Elsie said.
‘I’m going out to look.’
‘No, don't!’ Elsie begged.
‘It’s over, Ma, they’re gone. There’s a body lying on the sidewalk next door. I have to go out.’
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