by Dola de Jong
I worked more than necessary to cover our living expenses because constant activity was the only way to escape my unbearable thoughts. But every time I came home from work or from running errands in town, where people huddled together in small groups or gazed at each other wide-eyed in the street, I found Erica as I’d left her. That’s how we entered the occupation period. Erica had burned all her bridges. No work, no money, no family, no friends—she’d lost everything. She had nothing and no one but me. In an effort to bring her back to reality, I tried to talk about Inge. Where was she? Would we ever hear from her? My intentions were good, but Erica saw it differently. She shook her head furiously, as if my question had been too much for her, as if thinking about Inge would destroy her. It made we want to bite my tongue off. Even now, I shudder to think of how harsh and stupid I was, the cruelty of my mistake.
But there wasn’t much time to dwell on it then. We had to make plans. Under the circumstances, we were better off living in Amsterdam. I foresaw that commuting back and forth through occupied territory would eventually become too complicated. Who knew what would happen next? We seemed better off moving back to the city on our own free will than waiting around to be evacuated with the other residents. I was pessimistic from the start, and yet, in hindsight, I was acting intuitively. I never could’ve imagined the misery to come. I told Erica to find us a place to live, because I had to work.
“But remember, not on the Achterburgwallen,” I warned.
She responded with a long, penetrating look.
“Madame has conditions,” she said sharply, “Madame is boss now.”
The caustic comment saved us from a major blowout. The position of caretaker and guardian angel that I’d taken up so naturally had gone to my head. Erica saw through it. Her proud resistance brought me back down to earth, and thanks to her we were able to enter into this abnormal period in a healthy way. Despite her dependency, she remained my equal and didn’t give me the chance to take the upper hand. I’m still ashamed of my momentary imperiousness, especially since I’ve had to suppress a tendency to dominate a number of other times since then. But it wasn’t so easy for me either. My need to protect Erica didn’t stand a chance against her desire for autonomy. She was so independent that it was hard to know how to help her, and she was unburdened by obligations. The concept of yours and mine was of no interest to her. In her eyes, it all came down to the uncertainty of the situation. The way she saw it, I happened to be in a more advantageous position, but if the roles had been reversed, she obviously would’ve taken care of me too. It was just a coincidence that the opportunity never presented itself. That’s how Erica saw life and that was the philosophy I had to contend with. It was up to me to keep things in balance.
In the summer of 1940, Erica went off on her own again. Yes, she felt the significance of the bond between us and continued to call our new attic apartment home; yes, she was warm and considerate toward me, but she remained fiercely independent. She didn’t have a job and she wasn’t looking for one. She was too busy. I knew what she was up to as if she’d told me herself, but I played dumb. With fear in my heart, I’d wait for her to come home. Sometimes she was gone for days. It was so like her to get involved in underground activities. It was small acts of sabotage that paved the way for organized resistance. It seemed innocent at the time, and at first it didn’t have much impact. I made things easy for myself and for her by not talking about it, by pretending to be naïve. I spent my days at the office, earning money for both of us. But inside me was the growing conviction that Erica wouldn’t survive the war if she stayed in Holland. Apart from the persecution of the Jews (which seemed like nothing at first, but I, in my pessimism, saw it as a ticking time bomb), my knowledge of Erica’s character was enough to make me worry about the other dangers she might face. To be honest, I was more worried about her actions than her ancestry. She couldn’t compromise, make the best of it, and try to stay out of harm’s way like the majority of the population. The circumstances of her life were too unusual for that. She had constructed her raison d’être piece by piece, and her only hope for future happiness was to challenge fate, which had always been her sworn enemy.
I had to protect Erica from herself. That’s the way I saw it.
Didn’t I admire her initiative, her courage? Wasn’t I proud of her? In a way, I was—no need to claim otherwise. At the same time, however, I realized that heroes like Erica are doomed. They’re too spontaneous, too unstable. It’s the heart that calls us to action—as it should be—but for the action to be successful the mind has to take over. I knew that, no matter what, Erica’s heart would continue calling the shots. And so, I quietly made plans. I sold the jewelry my grandmother had left me and used the money to buy a false identification papers. I bid my time, waiting for the right moment to persuade her to leave. Meanwhile, I tried to sabotage her work. It’s true. I kept her from her dangerous activities by assigning her the time-consuming task of collecting our rations. And Erica, in an effort to do her part for our household, stood in line for hours. At the end of the summer, when she still refused to flee and told me there was no point pursuing the matter any further, I went so far as to fake a nervous breakdown and kept her at my bedside for three weeks. I’m not ashamed of it. I had one goal, to protect Erica. Didn’t I have the right to try? Eventually, the underground movement replaced her. Call me selfish, call me immoral, I don’t care. I did what I had to do and had no qualms about it.
In November, we received a surprise visit from Ma, the Comrade!
I was home alone, and her unexpected visit sent me into a panic. Please God let her be gone before Erica comes home, I thought. It was still an hour before dinner, but she might be early. The odds were slim, but there was a chance.
I was almost rude to Ma. I said I was extremely surprised to see her, didn’t invite her in, pretended to be in a hurry, said I was right in the middle of cooking and that Erica generally didn’t come home for dinner. But she followed me up to the kitchen and made easy work of climbing the stairs.
She was wearing the uniform of the National Socialist Women’s Organization. The girlish-looking suit, with the little hat perched sideways on top of her overly long black hair, looked ridiculous on her. Her cheeks were covered in rouge and her lips had a bluish tint to them. The dark lines along her eyebrows and eyelashes accentuated her flaxen, wrinkled skin. But she was lively and quick to tell me how her role as group leader made her feel young again, how it had enriched her life. She made a great effort to convince me of the importance of her position and convey just how indispensable she was to the cause. I listened tacitly while my thoughts jumped back and forth between repulsion and pity and other calculations.
But my desire to avoid a meeting between Erica and Ma took precedent. In a last-ditch effort to get her out of the house, I suggested that we go out for a drink, “You know, at that cozy bar around the corner?” I didn’t have any alcohol in the house and hated to see her go dry, I said. But it was no use. Ma hadn’t seen “the child” for so long; she’d deliberately chosen this time of day to drop by because she knew Erica would be home. That drink could wait.
“What are you doing here?” Erica said when she walked into the kitchen around six-thirty.
“Well, young lady …” Ma began. She stood up and smoothed her narrow skirt. For a moment, she gasped for words, but Erica didn’t wait.
“Come on, Ma, buzz off. You’ve got no business here,” and with a scathing glance at Ma’s outfit, she added, “Nazis aren’t welcome in this house.” She swung open the door and nodded toward the stairs.
Apparently, Ma had been prepared for such a reception.
“I’d watch my tongue if I were you, young lady,” she said. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? I know more about you than you think.”
Erica sized her up and laughed scornfully. I felt the blood drain from my face. Just a few weeks before, I’d gotten my hands on a few yards of high-quality wool on the black market, and,
at Erica’s insistence, had a seamstress use it to make her a kind of sleeved vest and a pair of pants. I hadn’t protested against the strange get-up because Erica had argued that she needed something warm to wear with all the coal rationing. The suit made her look like a teenage boy, but at least it would protect her from the cold.
“I’m going to count to thirty,” Erica said. “If you’re not on the stairs by then, I’ll push you down them myself.”
“Erica!” I cautioned, in spite of myself. But she ignored me. She’d gone deathly pale, wheezing as she began to count painfully slowly. The roles were reversed, that much was clear. I realized that Ma must have presented Erica with the same ultimatum back when she was in control, and God knows what the circumstances had been back then. It wasn’t any kind of normal manifestation of parental authority.
Ma didn’t make any motion for the door. She laughed defiantly, tugged down her corset in the vulgar way that fat women dressed too young for their age do, and took a few steps back. Trapped between her and the stove, I just stood there in the steam of the boiling potatoes, my legs shaking, barely able to support my weight. I never knew it could take so long to count to thirty.
“All right, Ma, Erica,” I said, trying to bring things to a close.
Before I knew what was happening, Erica had grabbed me by the wrists, jerked me out of the kitchen, and pushed me so hard into my room that I tripped and slid across the floor. She slammed the door shut behind me. I just lay there, stunned by the shock and pain of my fall, and listened to the scuffle unfolding in the hall, the shuffling feet, the stumbling on the stairs, Erica’s hoarse panting, Ma’s screams. Then came the voice of our downstairs neighbor who’d come out to see what was going on. People on the other floors shouted for an explanation as well. The house exploded into chaos.
Finally, Erica came back upstairs and said, “Well, that’s done.” She wiped her hands as if she’d just finished a chore. The sober remark was accompanied by Ma’s shrieking in the entry hall, curses and threats alternated with explanations to the neighbors. No one seemed to answer her. The residents in our building were all “good” people. I heard doors closing and knew that everyone had gone back to their own apartments. After a while, Ma had blown off all her steam, and I heard her footsteps heading toward the door to the street. A few seconds later, the door shut behind her. After that, Erica went into the kitchen. The sound of the pan in the sink, the murmur of water echoed through me. She drained the potatoes. As I slowly crawled to my feet, I realized with renewed shock that Erica was headed down the stairs. Moments later the door to the street closed behind her. I could feel her standing on the stoop, lighting a cigarette, her fingers trembling. Through my bedroom window, I saw her hurry across the street and disappear around the corner.
11
A FEW DAYS LATER, the Germans raided our house. They showed up around midnight and ransacked the place. I was alone. Erica hadn’t come home. As I answered their questions truthfully, told them that my roommate had left, that I didn’t know where she was, I thought about what our downstairs neighbor had said when she came upstairs to check on us after the fight.
“You ought to be careful, that woman’s a party member … If she reports you … God—mother and daughter,” she stopped short. “Things are just terrible these days,” she said and went back downstairs in tears.
That night, when the Germans asked me what Erica’s profession was, I said “writer.” They left with a pile of notebooks that she’d filled with poetic musings as a teenager.
I stayed up until the early hours of the morning sorting the beans and peas that the Germans had poured all over the floor. I can still feel the knobby legumes between my fingers as I picked them up one by one and dropped them into the right bags; I still remember the thoughts that were released inside me and rearranged into new paradigms.
Once again, I found myself waiting at home, waiting to see what would happen next. It felt like an eternity, but in reality, the fatal message arrived within a week. Dolly came over at seven o’clock in the morning to tell me that Erica was in prison in the Weteringschans.
It was too much for me to process all at once. I was confused as to why Dolly was bringing the news, and after the sound of the doorbell at that ungodly hour had nearly given me a heart attack, the news itself felt almost anticlimactic. I remember drinking the glass of ice-cold water that Dolly had handed me and how humiliated I was to be having a nervous breakdown in front of her, of all people.
“You’ll get an official message,” she said matter-of-factly. “You can bring her a fresh change of clothes and things.” She stood over my chair, calm and collected. Once again, I felt small and ridiculous next to her. I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t allow it.
“Don’t bother, just sit,” she said. “I’ve got to get going. I just came to warn you. Do you have money? You won’t get anywhere without money and influence. You’ll hear from me.”
She was already at the door when I called after her. “Dolly—” even saying her name aloud was difficult for me. I barely knew her and had never called her by her name. “Dolly, what happened? What did she do?”
“Do?” She laughed. “You really are naïve. You know Erica, don’t you?”
“So, was she living …?” I ventured. “How do you know? When did it happen?”
“Last night. She didn’t come home, and I went out looking for her.” She chuckled. “Jesus, that Erica! She didn’t stand a chance, and yet … She’d heard about the raid from one of your neighbors in the movement. Betrayed, of course, by you know who. I’d forbidden her to …” She fell quiet and looked at me searchingly for a moment. Then her eyes became hard, as cold and callous as they’d been that day in the dance studio. “If you weren’t such a pushover … God knows what she sees in you. You’re neither one nor the other. Why don’t you just let her go? What do you want from her? Well, it’s none of my business. What is my business is getting her out. You’ll hear from me.”
In the end, there was nothing I could do. I tried everything, the impossible, the lowest I could think of. Dolly was my accomplice, my anchor and support. It was through her that I got in touch with the underground movement. I was referred to a lawyer in The Hague with good connections, but he wanted eight thousand guilders, which I didn’t have and there absolutely no way I was going to be able to scrape it together, but I had to try. I even went to Pa to beg. He swore he didn’t have the money, though I could tell he was torn.
“Logical,” Dolly declared when I told her about his refusal. “He needed it for his own escape, he’s gone.” How did she know that? “I went to see him myself after you failed. I’m better suited to these tasks than you are. But the bird had flown the coop.”
I gathered all my courage.
“Ma,” I said. “Blackmail.” There was that word again, it had become so familiar, so easy to say out loud. After all the days of deliberation, I’d rehearsed a dialogue with Ma over and over again in my mind. Dolly shrugged.
“You got proof? Then forget about it, darling.”
Still, I tried. I’ll never forget what an excruciating undertaking it was. Ma was really on her high horse.
“She’s being treated very well there,” she said. “It’ll do her good, she needs to learn a lesson. Don’t worry, she’s got everything she needs. I’ve been sending her a package every week actually. Anonymously, of course. Before you know it, she’ll be back on your doorstep. Pretty soon you’ll both realize that the Germans aren’t the evil ones.”
I’d saved my weapon for the end, but Ma beat me to it. A few words had been enough. She already knew what I was going to say.
“Prove it,” she said. “And I’d be careful if I were you. Before you know it, you’ll be the one locked up. I’ll tell you something else, young lady. Even if they believed you, even if you could prove it, they couldn’t care less about me. Pa was a Jew, don’t forget that. And if you really want the truth, Erica’s father wasn’t. One Jew was enough for me. Now go
home and relax. Your dear friend will be home in a few weeks. Then you can …” I didn’t let her finish, because if she’d completed that sentence, I would have attacked her and destroyed the only hope we had left.
“She’s still your child, Ma,” I said, nearly choking on the words.
“Yes, and I’ve done a lot of favors for her over the years without so much as a word of thanks. All my sacrifices for nothing. I struggled for her my entire life … the best upbringing, the finest schools …”
“Erica knows that, Ma. She talks about it a lot.” I continued with my betrayal, after all, that’s what it was. Erica could never know about this visit. But my lies had a profound effect on Ma. She became visibly milder and soon switched to the role of the misunderstood, acquiescent mother.
“Bea, you’re still so young, you don’t understand, child. For a mother, there’s no sacrifice too great. But if nothing comes of it, well, let me be honest with you, when your child still grows up to be so abnormal … God only knows how she got this way, she most certainly didn’t get it from my side of the family,” a coquettish smile slid across her face. “Anyway, you know what I mean. Not an ounce of gratitude, no love in return.” Her eyes welled up with sentimental tears.
“Still, you don’t let your own child sit in jail,” I tried again. “You do have some influence in the party, don’t you?”
“It’ll all work out,” Ma said hastily. “Don’t worry about it.”
Later, at Dolly’s, I cried for the first time in weeks, and she showed sympathy.
“Oh, you poor little sap,” she said. “What a mess! And what a stupid bitch that woman is! She honestly thinks they’ll make Erica sit in the corner for a little while and then let her go.”
In the end, Dolly and I were sidekicks, almost friends. I learned to appreciate her, and she stopped showing so much disdain toward me.