by Sara Young
It was suddenly hard to breathe, as if Anneke's death was in the room, drawing all the air out of it.
"She died?" Neve asked. "The war?"
I waited, calmed my breathing. "Yes," I answered, surprised by the truth of it. "The war."
"I'm sorry. It's what I really hate, of course."
"It can't last much longer," I said.
Neve rolled over to face me, her chin propped up with one hand. "Do you know something? When I try to remember what it was like before, I can't. It hasn't even been two years. And when I try to imagine what it would be like to have the war over, I can't do that, either."
I nodded. "I can't imagine what it would be like not to have to think about it every minute. To have it be part of everything I do or say."
"You know what I want most?" Neve leaned back and stroked little circles into her belly. "I want to wake up and make a decision. I want to say what I want to say or eat what I want to eat or go where I want to go. I swear, when it's over, I will never let another person tell me what to do."
I wondered how it was Neve and I hadn't become friends before this. There was not so much separating us after all. "Me, too," I agreed. "Never again. But what I want most is to wake up and not have to be alert. I'm tired of living like a mouse in a roomful of cats. I want to let my guard down."
"Well, at least we can do that here," Neve said. "It's ironic—how our enemies are going to such lengths to protect us. All because of a random bit of bad luck."
"Bad luck?"
"Well, except for the German girls, it's not as if any of us got pregnant on purpose. Who would do such a thing?"
"Someone very foolish," I said quietly.
Someone who had let her guard down.
The next morning, I arrived early for my appointment. "Excuse me," I asked the nurse at the desk. "But I'm wondering if there's been a mistake. I'm not due until the end of May, so I wasn't expecting my six-month checkup this early."
"I make all the appointments," the nurse said, as if this fact precluded the possibility of error. She looked down at her list and checked me in, then waved for me to take a seat. When I didn't leave, she went though a stack of charts on her desk with a big show of irritation. I watched her read mine, find the date. Her forehead creased and she looked up at me, suspicious.
"They did the initial exam in the Netherlands," I suggested. "You know how they are there...."
She nodded then and dropped my chart. "Incompetents. Well, you can go now. We'll see you in a month."
The close call woke me up. That night, I started to make my plans—I would no longer wait for Isaak to rescue me. The biggest problem was how to make it past the guards, of course. I put that aside, trusting I would come up with that piece soon. Meanwhile, it was the details that consumed me.
First, I would need money. I hadn't touched any of the notes my aunt had packed, so there were still ten guilders. Which I would need when I was back in Holland. To leave Steinhöring, I would need German bills, enough for a train ride to the border. And I would have to steal them.
As soon as I escaped the home, I would find a post office and call Isaak or my aunt. The thought of finally hearing one of their voices gave me strength.
Timing. I went over this a hundred times. The weather was the main factor. As much as I wanted to run right now, I couldn't consider it: Even one night in the bitter cold or snow would be a serious risk. The later I left, the safer traveling would be. But the later I left, the more vulnerable I was. I studied the girls in the home—after eight months, they seemed barely able to lumber along, waddling swaybacked and slow, their faces drained from exertion.
In mid-April I would be seven months pregnant and the winter would have broken. I made a tiny mark on my calendar—April fifteenth.
Would they come after me? Probably, out of worry if nothing else. Should I try to hide for a while somewhere along the border? Disguise myself?
Once I was back in the Netherlands, I would feel much safer. There were German guards everywhere, of course, and I couldn't risk showing them Anneke's papers. But at least I would feel reasonably safe knocking on a farmhouse door. "I've been robbed of my papers," I would say. "I'm afraid to be out without them. Could you please take me in?"
But where would I go then?
FORTY
I found him right away. I hadn't needed Ilse's help. All I had to do was look at his face, imprinted with my friend's, to know beyond doubt.
"May I?" I asked Sister Solvig, the nurse who had met me at the door, a kind-looking woman of about sixty.
"One less baby to worry about while we see to these others, eh? Of course."
"Hello, there," I said as I picked him. "Look at you." He didn't squirm, only lay in my arms, inspecting me gravely. I held him close, suddenly shaken. "Look at you." I buried my face in his neck, and when I pulled away, it was wet.
I looked up to see Sister Solvig still watching me. She smiled. "It's feeding time. I've got one helper"—she nodded to a Little Brown Sister wheeling a cart into the room—"and seven hungry mouths. Why don't you feed this one for me?"
She brought me a warm bottle and I sat down and fed him. We stared into each other's eyes, reading each other. I couldn't stop smiling—he was so beautiful at four months, fat and sturdy—but he remained serious. "This won't do," I said to him. "I'm going to teach you to smile. Those dimples—I know how they're supposed to look." I smiled more widely at him and he looked back at me, worried, and sucked harder. I laughed and nuzzled him and whispered into his ear. "First of all, you are certainly not Adolf. Who could smile with a name like that?" I thought for a moment, then gave him his name. "Klaas. It will be our secret. It means victory of the people. Your mother would have liked that. You have her curls, exactly. And she loved you, you know. She loved you."
And so those first few weeks in February passed, more quickly than any others in the home. I went to the orphanage almost every day. Sister Solvig welcomed me: As long as I helped with the four o'clock feeding and changing of the babies—tasks as comforting and sustaining as kneading bread—she didn't mind how long I stayed. Sometimes I was there all afternoon: I could hold Klaas, simply hold him tight against the mound of my own child, for hours.
These afternoons lulled me into a false sense of peace. Until the morning an announcement was made at breakfast: Sometime after the meal, we were to stop into the laundry, to pick up new linens.
The tables were covered with whites, folded and stacked high. Heavy sheets, bordered with wide lace and narrow satin piping. Towels with thick loops, bright whites, creams, blue stripes. There was a table full of draperies—velvet, brocade, tulle—and a large pile of table linens. I picked up a tablecloth to feel the starched fabric between my fingertips—for a second I could actually see my mother ironing a tablecloth exactly like it, the fragrant linen steam rising in front of her arm.
I returned to the pile of sheets and chose a new set—crisp white cotton with a crocheted edge along the pillowcase. "What's the occasion?" I asked Inge, who was standing next to me. Inge's room was on the same hall as Neve's and mine, and she was the only German girl who didn't seem to resent those of us from other countries. Instead, she acted as though we were all conspirators in a special club, all as thrilled about being pregnant as she was, which she showed by exaggerating her discomforts—puffing out her cheeks and rolling her eyes to show how fat she felt, or waddling like a duck, even though she was only four or five months along. I liked Inge.
"They've just closed a ghetto, probably," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"Everything here comes from the ghettos. Didn't you know that?"
Another German girl stepped between us to lift a white pillowcase from the pile. She inspected the monogramming, picked at a loose thread. "Those people don't deserve things like these."
"What people?" My voice was as thin as smoke.
The girl tossed the pillowcase aside. "They're Jews. Why do you care?"
I dropped the bedclothes and sta
red: My mother might have ironed this very tablecloth. My neighbors might have slept on these sheets, wrapped their children in these towels. Where were they now? I ran from the room, a blade through my heart.
As hard as I tried not to hear Isaak's voice, it seemed to echo through the halls as I ran. When they close the ghetto, they're relocated. And that means to the camps. A labor camp ... my father might be in a labor camp. Because he was a valuable worker. He told me that. But no, there were a lot of ghettos....
Everything I passed accused: the credenza, the Persian rug, the mirrors and paintings. Everything stolen. From people who were ... where? Even in my room, the bureau seemed to stare at me, the bedclothes, the bed itself. Only the books beside my bed belonged to me. I lifted Letters to a Young Poet. "Let Rilke seep into you," my teacher had said. "Read him over and over. Let him unlock the poet in you."
I thumbed the book open, my hand shaking, to a letter in the middle.
"There is no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Patience," the paragraph ended, "is everything!"
What did Rilke know of patience? Would he tell those people now forced into camps that time had no meaning? I threw the book against the wall. Even Rilke had deserted me. No, that wasn't it. The world had deserted Rilke. Had deserted all of us. And in here, I didn't even have the luxury of imagining myself an artist. In here I was a mother with a child and a secret inside her, both of them pressing every day closer to birth. These days, time had meaning.
FORTY-ONE
"Anneke, the father is here!"
I dropped my sewing to my lap and stared at Inge in the doorway.
"He's in the dayroom. I was sent to tell you."
I felt an instant of irritation that Isaak hadn't warned me that he was coming, but only an instant. I jumped up and opened the wardrobe. Would I need my papers or would he have new documents for me? Should I pack? And what about the bundle beneath the wardrobe?
I felt Neve's eyes on me. "What are you doing?" she asked. "What are you waiting for?"
"I just thought ... do I look all right?" I grabbed Inge's hands. "He's really here? Did you see him, Inge?"
She smiled. "He's handsome. If I weren't already pregnant..."
Isaak's face flashed before me. For a second I panicked—his dark hair, his dark eyes in this place? But no: He could take care of himself. And now he would take care of me. Five months of worry suddenly swelled over in choking laughter. "He is! He is very handsome!" I rushed out of the room—I couldn't get to him fast enough. In a moment I would see him. In another moment we would leave here. It was over.
"Slow down, be careful," Neve grumbled, hurrying to catch up.
But I couldn't. I tore down the stairs and flew through the halls to the dayroom as though I were afraid he would vanish.
When I caught my first sight of him, through the French doors, I gasped: Bent over the piano with his back to me, he seemed broader than I'd remembered, and he was wearing a Wehrmacht officer's uniform. I pulled open the doors and rushed in, my heart nearly bursting with excitement.
He turned at the sound. I froze.
Neve came in and I quickly made my face a mask and forced myself to take a step toward him. "Karl. You've come." With my eyes, I begged him to not ask the questions I saw in his. Then I turned to Neve. "We'd like some privacy."
Neve left, but she trailed her fingers along the wainscoting and slid me a look as she passed. I closed the glass doors behind her.
"Where's Anneke?"
"She's not here. Thank you for not saying anything just now."
"I need to see her, Cyrla."
"She's not here," I repeated. "You can leave."
Karl pulled an envelope from his breast pocket and held it up. "I know she's here. And that she's pregnant and that she's named me as the father. So I need to see her."
I glared at him for acting as if news of Anneke's pregnancy surprised him.
"Has she left? Is she at home? And what are you doing here?"
The room grew so bright the colors blanched. Tears threatened. "Shhh! She's not here," I managed one more time. I folded my arms over my belly and whispered, "I'm using her name. You can go. She was never here."
Karl came closer, still holding the envelope. "She's not pregnant?"
I shook my head.
"So ... what? You did this? You named me as the father and sent for me?"
I could only stare back.
"Or was this her idea?"
"No!" I couldn't think quickly enough. I could see him trying to answer the questions for himself, and my heart began to jump. "I mean, yes. She filled out the forms. I didn't know she'd put your name down. Look, I have reasons for using her name. But you can leave. This doesn't concern you."
"It does." He lifted the envelope again and came closer, his voice lower. "These are orders. I'm expected to take responsibility for Anneke's child once he's born, at least financially. I don't care why you're using her name. But this certainly does concern me."
"I'll see that that's corrected," I agreed quickly. "I'll change the name on the forms."
Karl stood a moment, looking at me, then the envelope. Then at me again.
"I'll take care of it today." I crossed the room and picked up his overcoat, wet with snowmelt, and handed it to him.
"How is she?"
I set my jaw and looked away.
Karl took his coat and walked to the doorway. He put his hand on the knob and then turned back. "I wrote to her. She didn't answer. Will you tell her something for me? Tell her that I think about her and hope ... well, I hope she's happy. Just tell her that."
I could only nod, my lips pressed together so they couldn't give anything away. I looked to the door, but he still didn't leave.
"You know, whenever we met it was almost as if you were there, too—she talked about you that much."
I felt the danger rise in the air and my chest tighten. Please stop. Please leave now. Please. But he leaned back against the glass doors and looked at me more deeply.
"She showed me some of your poetry. There was one line ... it was in a poem about wood, about what wood meant to you. I don't remember it now, but when I heard it I thought, Yes. That's exactly how I feel. I wanted to tell you that. And look," Karl smiled, his teeth so white it startled me, his eyes too blue. "Look. Now I have."
For an instant, I actually smiled back. He had touched a place I had forgotten to harden against him. "I'll take your name off the forms today." My voice was cold.
Karl looked as if I had stung him. Good. He pulled the door open and left, his boots clicking down the hall in sharp military steps, and I collapsed onto the sofa, my hands pressed to my racing heart. The blood was pounding in my ears and I didn't hear him return, but suddenly he was back in the room in front of me.
"No." He threw his coat onto the chair. "I remember something."
FORTY-TWO
"What are you doing here?"
The look in his eyes was not unkind, but I recoiled.
He straightened and I followed his glance. Through the other glass doors—the ones leading to the dining room—two of the kitchen staff, setting the table for dinner, had stopped to stare at us. From the hall came a burst of chatter.
"We'll take a walk." He offered his arm to help me up from the sofa.
I pushed his arm away but told him I would get my coat. Upstairs, I crumpled onto the bed. I knew what he had remembered, what Anneke had told him. It was in the way he looked at me. The other night at dinner, one of the girls had whispered about the Jews found hiding in Zaandam. I stood and crossed to the dresser and splashed water onto my face from the basin. Panic was a luxury my baby could not afford. I still had choices—and one chance.
I would pull myself together, take a walk with Karl, and say whatever it took to get him to leave without reporting me until after he returned to his headquarters. Whatever it took. Because in another few hours it would be dark.
Frau Klaus was behind the desk at the ma
in door. Karl identified himself and told her we would be taking a stroll around the grounds.
"The air is good for her," she agreed. "The girls don't go out enough in the cold weather." She looked us over and seemed to approve. I forced myself to smile up at Karl, as if I were happy to see him again. Karl smiled back and I understood what had made Anneke trust him—it was the kind of smile that could make you believe any lie. I wouldn't make that mistake, though.
Outside, the snow had stopped but it was still windy. Karl turned on the step and tugged my coat together. "It doesn't button around your middle. You need a new one." Then he pulled his gloves from his coat pocket and my breath stopped. I tasted leather and motor oil. And blood.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." I walked away from him. He was not the Oberschütze. He was as dangerous, though. I began to walk along the path to the back gardens, swept into commas of dry snow, with him following me. "What do you need to know?"
Karl crossed to my other side and walked sideways, his body blocking the cold wind. "Everything. What are you doing here? This isn't a safe place for you."
"I'm pregnant. That's all."
"That's not all. Why are you using Anneke's name?"
I looked away.
"Ah. Papers. But what's Anneke doing for papers, then? Where is she?"
I still didn't look at him. "You're right. I needed her papers. She doesn't need them. You can leave now, Karl."
"No. Something doesn't make sense. Why do you want to be here?"
"Why do you care? This doesn't involve you."
"It does. I'm named as the father, remember? I think that gives me the right to know what's going on. What are you doing here?"
You have a right to know nothing, I thought. You have no rights at all because you didn't ask about Anneke's baby. Your baby. Because you're pretending you didn't know about him. I bit my lip so the words wouldn't escape.
We turned the corner and a rush of icy air stung my face. Karl stepped in front of me and walked backward, waiting for my answer. I didn't want his protection. I turned and headed back to the courtyard.