Girl in the Blue Coat

by Monica Hesse

  “Ask my friend,” she said, because she was always doing that, making sure I got equal attention, pushing me to the center in ways that made me annoyed and then grateful. “Ask Hanneke.”

  “What about you? Which do you prefer?” the blond friend asked me, and I still don’t know how I was so bold, because I looked past both of them to where Bas was sitting on a ledge, and his auburn hair caught in the sunlight.

  “I like redheads,” I said, and then I blushed.

  The first time I kissed Bas:

  He was sixteen, I was fifteen. It was after our first trip to the cinema, our first real trip, when I didn’t feel the need to make Elsbeth chaperone. I suggested a street early that we get off our bicycles and walk. I said it was because the weather was nice, but really I wanted to be alone with him before my parents could see us outside the window.

  “You have something in your hair,” he said, and I let him brush it out even though I knew there was nothing in my hair, and when he kissed me, he dropped his bicycle and it clattered to the ground, and we both laughed.

  The last time I saw Bas:

  He was seventeen, I was sixteen.

  It was getting late. My parents had come to his going-away party, too, but they had already left. Mama said I could stay an extra hour, as long as Elsbeth and I walked home together. Bas and I kissed again and again in a dark corner of his dining room until my hour was up. I’ll never forget his hand, pressed against the window as he watched me—

  That’s not what really happened.

  I’m not ready to think about the last time I saw Bas.

  SEVEN

  Wednesday

  I just don’t understand.” Mrs. de Vries bows her head, as if she can’t even look at me because she’s so disappointed. “I asked for Amateurs.”

  I stare at the green-and-white cigarette pack in my hand, trying to arrange my face into an appropriate expression of understanding, when what I really want to do is slap her. I have found her two packs of cigarettes. In 1943, in this absurd country of ours, I have managed to find her two packs of cigarettes—not just cigarette paper and tobacco to roll, which are hard enough to get ahold of, but actual cigarettes—and she’s upset because these don’t have the right label on them?

  “I couldn’t get that brand, Mrs. de Vries. I’m sorry. I tried.”

  “Honestly, you would think I’d asked for the moon. I don’t understand what makes it so difficult. I wrote down for you exactly what I was looking for.”

  She did ask for the moon, very nearly. I had to try four different contacts; eventually I got these cigarettes from a woman who gets them from a German soldier. She says he’s her boyfriend and he gives them to her; I think she might steal them. I also think he’s not her boyfriend but someone paying her for what she does in the bedroom, but I don’t ask questions. And I only go to her when I don’t have any other options.

  Now my temples are pounding. I don’t know whether to yell or laugh at Mrs. de Vries. Her worries are so pedestrian, so soothing in an absurd way, like a holiday from all the things that real people have to care about. One of the twins tugs desperately on Mrs. de Vries’s skirt while the other, the one who always looks naughty, like he has something to hide, tries to poke his head into my bag to see what else I may have brought.

  “Stop that,” Mrs. de Vries chastises the skirt-puller. “We’ll have tea as soon as Hanneke leaves.”

  “Mrs. de Vries.” I try a new approach to keep her on track. “If you don’t want these, I won’t have a problem finding someone else who does.” The minute hand on her grandfather clock ticks another notch toward the top of the hour. I have somewhere to be.

  “No!” She grabs the cigarettes, clutching them to her chest, only now realizing I don’t have to give them to her, that she could be left with no cigarettes at all. “I’ll take them. I just thought… if there were any others.”

  What does she think, that I’ll slap my hand to my forehead and say, “But of course! I forgot that I actually did have the brand you wanted. I’ve just been hiding them from you”?

  “Mama, it’s crowded in here,” the naughty twin says, staring at me and poking his tongue between his lips. “I’m tired of it being so crowded.”

  “I’m leaving soon,” I assure him. Horrid child.

  The Municipal University of Amsterdam is where I might have gone, if the war hadn’t started. I wouldn’t have taken it seriously. It just would have been a way to pass time until Bas’s mother thought he was old enough to inherit his grandmother’s wedding ring. Bas would have gone here, too. What would he have studied? He never talked about his career dreams; he wasn’t the type to look more than a few months in advance, and I can’t picture an adult Bas. It both bothers and reassures me that, in my mind, he’ll always be seventeen.

  The university doesn’t have a central location; its buildings are scattered through the city. But everyone knows the Agnietenkapel. It’s one of the oldest buildings in Amsterdam, a convent from the fifteenth century, and the address Ollie gave me is on the same street.

  I’d planned on changing clothes before I got here, clinging to some vague memory of the vanity I used to have when going to parties, but Mrs. de Vries has made me late and I don’t have time. I’m in a mauve wool dress that I inherited from Elsbeth, which fits me well but is such a regretful color that she and I used to call it the Tonsil. Her grandmother had given it to her. Elsbeth was relieved when it was too small and she got to give it away to me. It used to feel like a joke between us, whenever I wore it. Now it feels like a practicality: It’s hard to buy new clothes, so I wear all the ones that fit me, even the ugly ones, even the ones that remind me of better times.

  This supper club will be a roomful of boys carrying chewed-up pencils in their pockets—they’re probably studying architecture, like Ollie is—and girls citing philosophers I’ve never heard of. On the rare occasions I run into one of my old friends who did continue on to college, I feel both inferior and dismissive. None of them would survive on their feet if they had to. I’m defensive about everyone in Ollie’s supper club before I even knock on the door.

  Ollie peers through the window on the door, and I show him my jar of pickles when he opens it. I meant to bring something better but ran out of time to make anything. Instead I’ve brought the canned goods that a grocer gave me as a secret present this afternoon. Nobody in my family likes them anyway.

  Ollie isn’t wearing the jacket and tie I expected. His clothes are even more ragtag than mine are: rolled-up shirtsleeves smudged with graphite as if he’s spent the day at a drafting table.

  “Welcome,” he says in a cautious voice that makes me wonder if I’m truly welcome at all.

  He waves me into a small, bachelor’s apartment. A sofa and a couple of chairs are clustered on one side of the room, opposite a kitchenette with mismatched cups drying on the countertop. There are only two other people in the room: a boy with full lips and heavy-lidded eyes, and another boy, handsome with wavy hair, who looks like the American film star William Holden. Both of them drink tea, or tea substitute, out of chipped cups.

  “The famous supper club,” I say. “And I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to find you in the crowd.”

  Ollie is not amused. He holds out both hands for my coat, hanging it on the prong of a swaying coatrack. I don’t know why I’m being tart. He’s doing me a favor. I’m nervous, I think. If he were a new contact I had to impress, I’d be able to wear a better mask, but I can’t un-remind myself of the fact that this is Ollie, who I’ve known for years. “Judith isn’t here,” I notice out loud. “She’s coming, isn’t she?”

  “She’s coming.” He has tired eyes, up-all-night-studying eyes. “But you can’t accost her right when she gets through the door. Sit through the regular meeting first. She wasn’t excited about talking with you. The least you can do is show a little restraint and prove you aren’t a complete lunatic.”

  “Half a lunatic?”

  “Do you promise?”
<
br />   “I promise,” I say.

  “I went out on a limb for you and I don’t want you to embarrass me.”

  “Ollie, are you going to introduce me to the other people in the room, or should I sit mutely in the corner and try to refrain from breathing?”

  He grimaces, then relents, turning toward the other two boys.

  “And Ollie?” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you. For inviting me.”

  Ollie nods an acknowledgment before leading me the rest of the way to the coffee table. “This is Leo.” He gestures to the one with the full lips first. “He lives here—we’re in his apartment.” Now he turns to the one who looks like William Holden. “And this is Willem, my roommate.” One name I won’t forget, at least. Willem is the Dutch version of William, just like his American movie star doppelgänger.

  Leo drops his cup into the saucer with a clatter, wiping his hand on his pants and banging against the coffee table as he moves to greet me. Willem smoothly kisses both of my cheeks and offers me his place on the sofa, moving to a less comfortable-looking chair. He has a friendly, open face. I bet everyone who meets him thinks they must have met him before.

  “You were Bas’s girlfriend, right?” he asks, once I’ve settled in and smoothed my dress over my knees. “I only met him once, but he made me laugh. Ollie says he made everyone laugh.”

  “He did make everyone laugh.” Usually I’d be put off by a friend of Ollie’s presuming to know anything about Bas, but Willem’s face is too earnest not to like. “My mother used to say he could charm the hands off a clock.”

  “I’m glad to meet you. We’re just expecting two more. Tea?”

  I shake my head, declining. “This club is smaller than I thought it would be. Cozy.”

  “There are more of us. We try to meet in smaller groups instead of having everyone at once,” Willem explains. “If there’s a raid, we don’t want them to have a way of catching us all. The only time we’ve all ever been in a room together was for our friend Piet’s wedding. Otherwise, it’s small groups. Smaller is better for the work that we do.”

  “Work?”

  “We do lots of things,” Leo interjects, opening the jar of pickles I set down and fishing one out. “Right now, what we’re trying to figure out—”

  “Let’s wait.” Ollie cuts him off from across the room, still posted by the window on the door. “Until Judith and Sanne arrive.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t bring something more to eat,” I tell Willem and Leo. “I came straight from work.”

  Leo snorts, spearing another pickle. “You don’t see any of us carrying cakes, do you?”

  “So are the others bringing the food? Or do you take turns, or…”

  A thin dribble of vinegar trickles down Leo’s chin; he catches it before it hits the table. “What, now?”

  “The food. Does one person host, and bring everything, or do you take turns?” His stare is blank. He has no idea what I’m talking about. I whip my head over to Ollie by the door. His shoulders are hunched up around his ears so his strawberry hair disappears into his collar, and the infinitesimal tilt of his head tells me he’s been listening to everything we’ve said. Leo is still waiting for me to explain my question.

  “I’m sorry,” I say stiffly. “I got confused. Would you excuse me? I forgot to ask Ollie something.”

  He doesn’t turn to face me, even though he’d have to be deaf not to hear me stomp up behind him. When I’m standing so close our sleeves are touching, I whisper quietly enough that Willem and Leo won’t overhear.

  “Ollie. Where did you bring me?”

  “What do you mean?” He raises his eyebrows.

  “You know what I mean. What kind of meeting is this? Judith’s not even coming, is she?” My heart has started to thud. “Who are you really watching for?”

  Was I a complete fool to trust Ollie after all? I thought he was safe, but it’s not like you can tell a Nazi informant just by looking. I move toward the coatrack, but before I can take my coat, Ollie nods toward the door. On the other side, two figures approach, one of them clearly Judith.

  “What is this meeting?” I ask again.

  “It’s about to start,” he says, raising his eyebrows again. “If you’re going to leave, be careful on your way out. The door closes fast.”

  So he won’t stop me if I try to leave, but if I do choose to go, I’ll also be missing out on my chance to ask Judith about Mirjam. My only lead, my only clue, and a decision to make in less than a second. How much do I want to find this missing girl?

  “It’s us,” a sharp voice whispers. “It’s Judith and Sanne.”

  Ollie opens the door, and I don’t leave through it.

  Judith really is stunning, with her pale parchment skin, molasses-colored hair, and a gaze that could cut glass. Sanne, the other girl, is friendly-looking, plump, and pretty, with white-blond hair that floats with static electricity when she takes off her hat. “Sorry we’re late; roads blocked,” Sanne explains, lightly patting Ollie’s shoulder and moving to greet Leo and Willem.

  Before I have a chance to say anything to Judith, she brushes past me, too—either preoccupied or deliberately ignoring me—and takes a seat on the sofa.

  “Judith,” I begin, but Ollie interrupts me by clearing his throat. Later, he mouths to me. After the meeting. You promised.

  He sits on the edge of the sofa, and Sanne takes one of the chairs. It’s a fluid movement, one that says she’s done it a million times, that in this meeting everybody knows their place.

  “Hanneke?” Ollie looks up at me. I’m the only one left standing, halfway between the door and the sofa. “Hanneke, are you sitting?”

  One seat remains, a squat velveteen footstool. I move toward it slowly and sit down.

  “Everyone, this is Hanneke,” Ollie says. He doesn’t introduce me further, so they must have been expecting me. There must have been a vote, or a discussion at least, about my presence. “As I told you all before, I vouch for her.”

  He says this last part seriously, and with it, he puts me in a terrible position. Because I can’t say now that he shouldn’t vouch for me. How will Judith ever talk to me about Mirjam if I say I can’t be trusted? But still… what has he just implied that I can be trusted with? What is he bringing me into?

  “Now,” Ollie continues, “the first order of business is to discuss the ration-card bottleneck. The Germans are getting more and more strict with—”

  “Wrong,” Willem interjects. “The first order of business is for us to agree what it is that we’re celebrating. It’s been my birthday twice already this month.”

  “And Leo and I have already been engaged several times,” adds Sanne.

  Willem turns to me and explains, “We can’t tell people what we’re really doing, so we always have a pretend celebration in mind, that we’ll all use as our excuse if we’re stopped.”

  “We used to say it was Bible study,” Sanne says. “But once I was stopped and the soldier asked me which book we’d been reading. I told him Genesis, because it was the only one I could remember, and then we decided none of us knew the Bible well enough to have that be our cover.”

  “It can be my birthday,” Leo says. “It really is next week, so it’s plausible.”

  “As I was saying,” Ollie breaks in again. “The ration-card bottleneck. The forged ones aren’t being produced quickly enough. We’re taking care of sixteen more people, just since last month. It’s too time-consuming for one person to produce all those cards. We need to find another forger or come up with another solution.” I don’t like the way his eyes land on me when he says that last part.

  “In Utrecht, they’ve got someone on the inside of the ration-card office,” Willem says. “They arranged a fake theft. The worker reported that the office had been broken into. Really, he’d stolen them himself and passed them on to resistance groups.”

  The conversation moves around me while I try to keep up. Ration-card fraud. I’m a
solo criminal who has walked into a den of them. But instead of using the ration cards to sell goods for profit, like I do, they pass the cards to the resistance. For what? Food and goods for resistance workers? People in hiding?

  “Judith, do you think your uncle might know anybody?” Ollie asks. “With his Council connections?”

  The Jewish Council. Judith’s willingness to be out at night and her boldness at the school make more sense knowing that her uncle is on the Council. As the Jewish leadership appointed to be liaisons with the Nazis, they communicate German orders and have a little more freedom than other Jews.

  Judith shakes her head. “Even if he does, you know I can’t ask him. He’d disembowel me if he knew I came to these meetings.”

  “I can see if Utrecht has any ideas,” Willem says. “Maybe their contact in the ration office knows somebody in our ration office.”

  So these five in Amsterdam are part of a larger network, spread into the suburbs and maybe through the whole country. In spite of my fear at being here, I can’t help but feel professional curiosity. Their operation must be huge. How do they find enough merchants to work with them? How good is their forger? Are the soldiers stationed in Utrecht more or less lax than the ones here in Amsterdam?

  My mind only snaps back to attention when I hear the end of one of Judith’s sentences: “…and then bring the cards to the Schouwburg.”

  “To the theater?” I interrupt, wondering what I’ve missed of the conversation. “Why would the cards go there?”

  “You don’t know about the Hollandsche Schouwburg?” It’s the first time Ollie has addressed me in the meeting, and he seems disappointed.

  Of course I do. I’ve been there with him, even if he doesn’t remember it. The winter I was fifteen, the Van de Kamps invited me to go see the Christmas premiere with them at the Schouwburg, an old playhouse that Mama let me wear her pearls to visit. Their whole family went. I sat next to Ollie, actually, holding hands with Bas on the other side. Ollie had only just started university; he was wearing new spectacles, serious and important.