Judas

by Astrid Holleeder

  I had loved Cor as a brother since the day Wim brought him into our home. He treated us and those around him completely differently from the way Wim did. Cor was warm and friendly. Wim was cold and heartless.

  I didn’t see why Wim would surrender to the enemy this easily, why he wasn’t backing Cor up, after all they’d gone through together. Even if Cor had done something wrong, what did it matter? We’d never abandoned Wim despite all the misery he caused, had we? Why would he do that to Cor now? Of course, I was aware that supporting Cor could have serious consequences, but what about principles? Surely you wouldn’t have your spouse, or even your sister, shot at and then pretend nothing had happened, right?

  It shocked me to think Wim didn’t seem to feel that way.

  The next day, I flew back to the Netherlands with Francis and tried my best to keep her away from Wim. Cor moved to a small French farmhouse that lay hidden away in the woods and was rented out as a holiday home. The interior was described as “authentically French,” which turned out to mean outdated and seedy. The outdoor swimming pool was the only thing that fit the description of a holiday home. It was not the kind of place Cor would normally take for a vacation, and at this moment that was crucial. He didn’t want to be anywhere he’d usually go. Nobody could know where he was.

  By “nobody,” he meant Wim.

  Sonja and Richie were there on and off. One evening, Sonja and Cor were sitting on the terrace outside when Cor said, “If anything should happen to me, I want us and our children to be buried together in a family grave, and I want a horse-drawn carriage.”

  Maybe Wim was right—maybe it would be better to pay up, she proposed timidly.

  Cor exploded with anger. He took her remark as treason. “Are you going to forsake me, just like him? That Judas! If that’s the way you feel about it, you may as well join your brother, and I’ll never have to see you again!” he yelled.

  Sonja was struck by the ferocity of his reaction. She hadn’t meant it that way, she said, she was just worried about his safety and that of the children. What good was money compared to their lives?

  Cor remained steady: paying wouldn’t solve anything.

  Sonja was stuck between her husband’s will and her brother’s. All she could conclude was that she’d better stay out of it. Cor had always been the one to decide what was best, and she’d leave it to him this time, too.

  Cor left for Martin’s Château du Lac, in Genval, Belgium. Sonja kept traveling back and forth, but it was hard to keep up with the kids having to go to school.

  Whenever Sonja returned home, Wim would be on her doorstep, asking the same question.

  He wanted to know where Cor was staying.

  With Cor’s instructions not to tell anyone in mind, Sonja pretended she didn’t know.

  Part I

  Family Business

  1970–1983

  Mom

  2013/1970

  My mother called me at seven a.m., which is quite early for her. She usually gets up at eight sharp and starts her daily routine by feeding the cat, making breakfast, taking her heart and blood pressure pills, and giving her daughters a call. The fact that she was calling me this early meant something was wrong.

  “Hi, Mom. Up this early?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’ve been awake since six thirty. Your darling brother stopped by this morning.”

  This seemingly humdrum remark was her way of telling me that, once again, there was a problem with Wim.

  “That’s nice,” I replied, thus implying I understood the visit had been anything but nice.

  “Are you coming by today? I got you some dried pineapple,” she said, really meaning, Come over now: I have something to tell you and it can’t wait.

  “All right, I’ll drop by today,” I said, meaning, I’m coming over right now because I know you need me.

  “Good. See you later.”

  We’ve been communicating this way since 1983: every conversation is layered, every “regular” interaction harbors a completely different meaning known only to our family. This manner of speaking originates from when Cor and Wim were first identified as Freddy Heineken’s kidnappers.

  Ever since that moment, the Justice Department has put our family under a magnifying glass, and for decades all our phone calls were recorded via wiretap. To communicate safely and without the Justice Department knowing what we were talking about, we developed our family code.

  Apart from the veiled language we used with Wim, we had developed our own coded way of discussing him. Just as the authorities were a danger to Wim, Wim was a danger to us.

  I drove to my mother’s house. After living for a few years in the southern part of Amsterdam, she had moved back to her old neighborhood, the Jordaan, where we had lived as a family and where my siblings and I grew up. We lived there from my birth in 1965 to when I was fifteen and we moved to the Staatslieden neighborhood. I knew every paving stone around here, from Palmgracht to Westerorten.

  The Jordaan used to be a working-class neighborhood, a depressed neighborhood, in fact. Its inhabitants called themselves the Jordanese, a willful bunch wearing their hearts on their sleeves but respecting one another—live and let live. From the seventies on, the neighborhood’s historic character and picturesque looks began to attract young and more highly educated people, and the neighborhood became extremely popular. Many Jordanese disappeared and “outsiders” arrived, but my mother enjoyed living there, still finding a few friends among the people she knew from the old days.

  I parked my car on Westerstraat and walked to her house. There she stood, already waiting for me at the door. I was touched at seeing this sweet old lady. She was seventy-eight now, so fragile.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, and kissed her tender wrinkled cheek.

  “Hello, darling.”

  As always, we sat down in the kitchen.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  She rummaged around the kitchen and put two mugs on the table.

  “So, what’s going on? I can tell you’ve been crying. Has Wim been pestering you again?” I asked.

  “Very much so. He wants to get himself registered at my address, but I just can’t do that. This is communal housing for the elderly and children are not allowed. If I did it I could get in trouble, I may have to leave my house, and I’d be out on the street. He was outraged when I told him and went off the deep end again. He called me a worthless mother, said that I didn’t do anything for my own child. Child?! He is fifty-six years old!

  “I should be ashamed for not even wanting to help my own son. He kept on screaming, so loud I was scared the neighbors would hear. He’s just like his father, just like his father,” she repeated, as if she had to hear it twice to believe it.

  She was worn out by the terror that had passed from father to son. Wim had been terrorizing her ever since he was a little boy, and she had always attributed it to his lousy father. That’s why, even in old age, she let him treat her like garbage. That’s why she never abandoned her son, despite the gravity of his crimes, and kept visiting him in prison after his first conviction, hoping he would change, and even after his second conviction for the extortion of several real estate tycoons—after all, he was still her child.

  All in all, she visited him in prison about seven hundred and eighty times. Seven hundred and eighty times she waited in line, seven hundred and eighty times she went through security, took her shoes off, and put her things on the belt to be scanned. From 1983 to 1992, when Wim was locked up for the Heineken kidnapping in La Santé Prison in Paris, she traveled a thousand kilometers to France and back every week. After he was extradited to the Netherlands, she visited him here. Nine years in all, and six more years later when he was imprisoned again for several extortions.

  “Wouldn’t you like to get some peace and quiet, Mom?” I said, taking her hand.

  “I don’t think I ever will,” she sighed.

  “You don’t know that. W
ho knows, maybe he’ll go back inside and never get out.”

  “I won’t visit him then,” she said right away. “I’m too old for that. I can’t do it anymore—it’ll be too much for me.” Every visit he humiliated her and blamed her for all his mistakes.

  I realized if he were to be jailed because of my own betrayal, she couldn’t even visit him anymore because he’d use her to track me down and kill me.

  No, if I went through with my plans, she couldn’t ever see her son again, and only then would she find real peace.

  As much as I wanted to tell my mother about my plan to finally take a stand, I couldn’t run the risk of her slipping up. As long as I hadn’t made up my mind yet, I shouldn’t tell her anything, and I should keep behaving normally, meanwhile doing what I’ve always done in our family: protecting whoever didn’t comply with Wim’s raging demands.

  And so I reassured my mother: “Listen to me, Mom. You’re not going to register him here. He can find another address. I’ll talk to him. It will be all right, don’t worry.”

  I finished my tea, got up, and kissed my mother goodbye. “I’ll find him. It will be okay.”

  “Thanks, honey,” she said with relief.

  I walked to my car, but instead of getting in, I walked the route I had taken homeward during grade school, to the house I grew up in. I saw the green lantern hanging from the facade. It marked a gloomy place, and the closer I got to the house, the colder I felt. The chill that used to prevail there still made my body freeze.

  I stood across the alley, and the sight of the house brought back a flood of memories, of my childhood, of our family living there—my mother, father, Wim, Sonja, my brother Gerard, and me. As the oldest, Wim was always “brother,” whereas Gerard was demoted to “little brother,” even though he was older than I was.

  My mother met my father at a sports event where he was taking part in a cycling race. He was a couple of years older than she, handsome and extremely charming. He seemed sweet, friendly, and attentive to the people around him, and was a hard worker. They dated for a while, then got engaged and moved in with my mother’s parents.

  Mother Stien and Willem Sr. (1956)

  When my father found work and a house near the Hoppe factory in the Jordaan, they got married and moved there. My mother was over the moon with having her own home and her position as a married woman.

  Soon, however, her thoughtful fiancé transformed from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde: a fickle and unpredictable tyrant, a side of him she had never seen before and which he displayed only after she’d been caught in his web and couldn’t get away.

  He quit cycling and started drinking heavily. He began hitting her and forced her to give up her job and all her social connections.

  My maternal grandmother had offended him by saying once that he “probably didn’t want any coffee.” He interpreted this as her not wanting to serve him any coffee, and my mother was no longer allowed to stay in touch with her parents; after this, my mother didn’t see my grandparents for fifteen years.

  My father had succeeded in completely isolating her. He imprisoned her within her marriage, and he set the rules she had to follow. From his perspective, he was “boss”: boss of her, boss of their home, boss of the street, boss at work.

  My father was a megalomaniac. Every day he’d scream, “Who’s the boss?” and my mother had to reply, “You are the boss.”

  After he had isolated her, he brainwashed her. She was “just” a woman, and women were inferior beings, their husband’s property, and whores by nature. To prevent her from “whoring and harloting,” she was forbidden to encounter other men. She had to stay home all day and was not allowed to go out. When she had to get groceries, she had to leave a note letting him know exactly where she was going.

  He was pathologically jealous. He’d come home during his lunch break, and if she happened to be out, he’d hide in the hall closet to spy on her. She never knew if he was in there and she didn’t dare open the closet because he would then conclude she was planning to cheat on him. Surely, if she wasn’t planning to cheat on him, she wouldn’t have to check for his presence in the closet. Even a necessary visit to the doctor would be followed by cross-examinations and torture to determine whether she was “fooling around” with the doctor. He dominated and controlled her entire life.

  And he scared her to death. She wasn’t allowed to talk back to “the boss” or she’d get hit.

  The first time that happened, my mother was taken completely by surprise. How could this sweet and sympathetic man suddenly have turned so cruel? Surely she had done something wrong—she had to have. He confirmed this during lengthy monologues: how lousy she was as a housewife, how happy she should be that he still wanted her as his wife, how she didn’t actually deserve him because she was worthless. He made her believe that she deserved the abuse because she was a terrible wife and messed everything up on purpose just to make his life miserable.

  She responded by trying even harder to live up to what he wanted, hoping she would do better and thus prevent him from abusing her. The beatings weren’t even the worst part; it was the continuous threat that terrorized her into obedience, and she was much too scared to leave. The ceaseless terror had shattered her identity and willpower.

  When she was pregnant with her first child, she hoped becoming a father would change him, but it didn’t. During her pregnancy, his abuse continued as it did with her subsequent pregnancies and deliveries. My mother had four children with this man.

  We called all of our Jordanese neighbors “auntie” or “uncle,” so our next-door neighbor was always our Auntie Cor. She took my mom’s situation to heart. My mother never said a word about it, but these houses were so flimsy that everyone on the block knew my father attacked her at night.

  Auntie Cor told my mom about birth control pills. “Stop having these kids,” she told my mother. My mother wasn’t allowed to use the pill. According to my father, birth control was for whores and women who wanted to fuck around without getting pregnant. But after the fourth baby, Auntie Cor couldn’t stand to watch it any longer and personally got the pill prescription for her.

  “Enough is enough,” she’d said when she came to visit, and handed her a box of pills. From then on, my mother was secretly using birth control.

  That made me the last kid in line.

  Stien, Willem Sr., and Astrid (1966)

  My father treated his children the same way he treated his wife. He beat us, no matter how small and defenseless we were. As with my mother, he didn’t need a reason—he made one up on the spot. That was how he justified his actions. It always was “our own fault”—we made him do it. My mother protected us from him when she could. Whenever he started hitting us, she would jump between us and catch the blows. The morning after, she’d often have trouble walking or moving her arms.

  Left to right: Stien, Sonja, Gerard, Willem Sr., Astrid, and Wim (1966)

  From the time we were little, we all tried our utmost not to draw my father’s attention, for his attention included the risk of scolding, shouting, and beating. We were well aware that none of us could risk having a schoolteacher or neighbor going to my father to complain about our behavior, for then all hell would break loose. Not just for ourselves, but also for my mother and the other children in the family, who’d have to suffer my father’s fury. Our behavior at home was exemplary. At school we were obedient, paid attention in class, and worked hard. In the street, we were never cheeky or wanton. We were all compliant, good kids who never broke any rules.

  Left to right: Wim, Gerard, Astrid, and Sonja (1966)

  After the beer brewer Heineken took over the Hoppe factory, my father worked in the company’s advertising and promotion department on Ruysdaelkade. My father was so devoted to his boss, he worked Saturdays, too. Sometimes he took us with him. We’d play among Mr. Heineken’s parked cars.

  While we were at the factory one day, I discovered a large wooden tub covered by a tarpaulin. I was just four years
old and thought I could sit on it. When I did, I immediately fell through. The tub turned out to be filled with some kind of liquid, and my trousers got soaking wet.

  After a while, my legs started to hurt more and more, but all I was worried about was whether I’d been a bad girl, and refused to tell my father. The pain got worse by the hour, but I didn’t show it. As the day went on, my trousers dried and my accident was no longer noticeable. That evening, my mother set me on the sink as she always did to wash me. We didn’t have a shower. When she pulled my trousers down, skin fragments from my legs peeled off, and my skin had been soaked off in some places. It turns out I had fallen into a tub of caustic soda, but I hadn’t made a sound all day because crying was forbidden.

  Astrid (1970)

  During the day we could escape to school or play outside. But there was no getting away from evenings.

  Every night, he’d come home drunk, sit down in his antique armchair, and keep drinking all through the evening and much of the night. My mother was to supply him with cold beers. “Stien! Beer!” he’d keep shouting. He’d easily finish a case of half liters in a night.

  Each of us tried to be as invisible as possible in the living room, and we all wanted to go to bed as soon as we could, just to be minimize our time in his presence.

  Once in bed, you might be out of sight, but you still weren’t safe. Every night we’d lie listening to him shouting and raging. We were experts at guessing from the tone of his voice or manner of speech how badly things would get out of hand that night. We’d listen carefully in case one of us was mentioned in his tirade, fearing the moment he’d come into the bedroom.