Girl in the Blue Coat

by Monica Hesse

  Ollie realizes it at the same time. “A roundup.”

  The sounds are getting closer. My eyes meet Ollie’s, our argument immediately forgotten. He raises his wrist and frantically peels back his coat sleeve. I don’t understand what he’s doing, until he taps his watch and shows me the time. We spent so long arguing in the street that now we’re about to miss curfew. Both of us are on foot today, and we’re still a mile from my house.

  We can’t be found, not in the middle of a roundup, when soldiers are already dangerously engorged with power.

  “This way!” a soldier barks. His voice echoes off the cobblestones. “Move!” The voice is just around the corner. The soldier and prisoners will be on our street any minute.

  “We need to—” Ollie starts.

  “Follow me.” I reflexively grab his hand, pulling him toward a small side street. We walk quickly down that one, and then turn onto another side street, and then another. For once, I am grateful for Amsterdam’s winding street plan.

  Beside me, Ollie’s gait is relaxed, but his upper body looks tense, and we speak to each other in gestures while ignoring the shouting I can still hear from a few blocks over. Both of our palms are sweating. I don’t want to have to see the people the soldiers are taking away. It’s cowardly, but I don’t want to be reminded that because I have blond hair and the right last name, they’re not taking me.

  The street we’re on now is barely more than an alley, so narrow that I could nearly touch the buildings on either side with my outstretched arms. It’s safer than a main road because there’s less chance of being seen; it’s more dangerous than a main road because if someone does see you, there’s no way to run. I’m clutching Ollie’s hand so hard we’ll both have bruises tomorrow.

  Our surroundings are beginning to look familiar. We pass a bookstore, closed for the night, whose owner I find coffee for sometimes, and an optometrist, and a cobbler who is willing to trade shoes for beer. I know where this street ends: near a dancing studio where Elsbeth and I were forced to take horrible waltzing lessons.

  From there, it’s only a short walk home. If Ollie and I needed to, we could knock on a neighbor’s door, pretending to borrow an egg, and one of them would probably let us in. We’re almost safe. In the distance, I can still hear the cries from the raid. I quicken my pace to put more space between myself and that fear. Suddenly Ollie squeezes my hand even harder.

  Two silhouettes wait at the end of the street, with long shadows that I know are guns.

  We have to keep walking. There’s no alternative. There never is. I know their uniforms are green, and so we have to keep walking. We have to pass them; it would look suspicious to turn and walk in the opposite direction. I wish Ollie weren’t with me. Nazis don’t like it when you wink at them while with another boy. It probably reminds them of what could be happening at home.

  Their guns are pointed down. They’re talking with each other in German too fast for me to fully understand. One of them slaps the other on the shoulder and laughs. It doesn’t even look like they’ve come from the raid. They were just out on their regular patrol, and it was our misfortune that we chose the same street.

  I fold myself in close to Ollie’s body, making sure there’s more than enough space for the soldiers to pass.

  “Good evening,” Ollie says in German as we quietly squeeze through. I nod and smile.

  We brush by, and my body begins to un-tense. We’ll be at the end of this alley in just a few seconds. Next to me, Ollie is doing the same things I am: keeping a measured pace, making it look like we’re in no hurry to be anywhere.

  “Wait!”

  We have no choice, so we stop and face them. Several meters behind us, one of the Green Police has turned around, starting in our direction. I glance briefly back to the end of the alley, but Ollie firmly tugs on my hand. Don’t try running, he’s saying. Not while they have guns.

  “Wait,” he calls out again, closing the gap between us. “Wait, don’t I know you?” He leans in, inches from my face.

  Does he? It’s hard to tell in this light. Where could he know me from? Is he one of the soldiers I’ve flirted with? Someone Mr. Kreuk has sent me to sell to, laughing at his bad jokes until the transaction is done? Or has he seen me more recently, going into the Jewish Lyceum?

  A curtain flutters in a nearby house. Inhabitants all along this street are crouched in their living rooms, silently watching us.

  “I do know you,” he guffaws.

  “I don’t think so,” I murmur, keeping my voice friendly. “I’m sure I’d remember you.”

  “Yes,” he says. “You’re the couple. The romantic couple!”

  “We are!” It’s Ollie, next to me, who answers the soldier. He’s responding in German, talking more loudly than I’ve ever heard him. His accent is still impeccable, but he’s slurring his words like he, too, has been out for a night of drinking. “Rembrandt!”

  “Rembrandt!” the German agrees, and now I recognize him: the one from the square last night.

  Ollie slings one arm around me. “How is our good friend, the fellow art lover? My fiancée and I love Rembrandt, don’t we, darling?” He looks at me pointedly, and even though my heart is beating out of my chest, I reach up to Ollie’s hand and give it an affectionate squeeze.

  “Our favorite,” I manage.

  “If you come to Germany one day, we have magnificent art.”

  “We will,” I promise, with what I hope is a friendly smile. “After it’s all over.”

  His eyes narrow. “After what’s all over?”

  After the war, is what I meant. After we all get to return to normal. I don’t think what I just said is offensive, but the soldier obviously didn’t like it. “After,” I say again, beginning to improvise an explanation.

  “After our wedding!” Ollie exclaims. “After all the wedding madness!”

  Bless you, Ollie, Laurence Olivier. I’m not used to other people being as fast on their feet as I am when it comes to dealing with Nazis.

  “So nice to see a couple in love.” The soldier pinches my cheek with cold fingers. “It reminds me of my wife, back home, when we were young.”

  “To your wife!” Ollie raises an imaginary glass in the air.

  “To my wife!”

  Ollie winks at me meaningfully, lasciviously. “Maybe we should get home, my soon-to-be wife.”

  “To your wife!” the Green Police yells.

  “To my wife!” says Ollie.

  “Kiss her!” he says, and so Ollie does.

  There, in the street, for the benefit of the German Green Police and the people who are cowering in their houses but peeking out from their curtains, Ollie cups my face in his hands and kisses me. His mouth is soft and full, his eyelashes brush against my cheek, and only he and I know that our lips are shivering in fear.

  Things that have changed about me in the last two days: everything and nothing.

  I’m still lying to my parents, they’re still worried about me, I still ride around a changed city on a used bicycle with a stubborn tire and feelings of perpetual numbness and fear warring in the pit of my belly.

  But the things that I’m lying about are much bigger, the things I’m doing much more dangerous. I’m an accidental member of the resistance, and if I am caught, instead of slapping my wrist for black market beer, the Germans could kill me.

  I also kissed my dead boyfriend’s brother.

  The last time I saw Bas:

  I did go to the sad, stupid going-away party his parents held for him, the one in which his mother spent most of the time crying and his father stood in the corner so tight-lipped and still that people kept bumping into him and then saying, “I’m sorry; I didn’t see you standing there.” I did give Bas a locket with my picture in it; he did give me a lock of his hair.

  I did kiss him in the dining room.

  But when I left, he came running after and said he had something else for me. It was a letter. It was a letter in case he died. I was supposed
to open it if the navy contacted his family, and inside it would talk about how much he loved and missed all of us, and how happy we had made him.

  At least that’s what I imagine letters like this usually say. I wouldn’t know. I never opened Bas’s. When he gave me that envelope on the street, I told him the letter could only court bad luck. I told him that in order to prove how unnecessary it was, I was going to destroy it as soon as I got home.

  And I did. I ripped it to pieces and threw it out with the trash.

  So I’ll never know what Bas’s final, final words for me were. Sometimes I think they were to tell me he loved me. Sometimes I dream that I open the letter and inside it says, “I never forgave you for what you made me do.”

  NINE

  Thursday

  It’s nice to see you socializing again, Hannie,” Papa says. My mother is gone this afternoon, a rare excursion into the outside world to visit her sister in the country. Because of the curfew, she’ll probably stay overnight, so it’s just Papa and me, alone. I came home from work to make him lunch, and now he’s reading in his chair while I’m sitting with Mirjam’s packet of school things, biding time until one afternoon delivery, and then I will go meet Judith and her cousin at the theater. Mr. Kreuk is running a funeral later; I’m hoping that he won’t notice if I don’t come back to my desk.

  “Socializing?” I repeat after Papa, distracted.

  “Out with friends, like last night. I can’t remember the last time you did that.”

  He’s right. It’s been years. There used to be a group of us. Bas the ringleader. Elsbeth the brazen. Me, part of the inner circle but not quite as audacious, not as sparkling. Happy to bask in the glow. Other friends, moving like small moons around me and Bas and Elsbeth, the two other people I loved the best. Last night, all I could think about was how strange it was to be pulled into a resistance meeting. I didn’t think about how strange it was to be pulled again into a group of friends.

  “Ollie’s not really a friend, Papa. He’s just—” I realize, belatedly, that any way I qualify the statement will only bring suspicion. “I suppose he is a friend. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

  “You’re young. It would be nice to have someone to more than talk to.” He winks, and I toss a cushion at his head. “Now you abuse an invalid?”

  I toss another one. “What would Mama think if she heard you encouraging me to stay out late with boys?”

  “She never minded when you stayed out late with Bas. Though we always thought the two of you would—”

  Papa realizes what he’s about to say and breaks off in midsentence. I should say something to end the silence, but I can’t find the words. Instead I stare into my lap and look at Mirjam’s paper at the top of the stack. “What are you reading?” Papa asks.

  “Old letters and schoolwork,” I say, which is true, I just don’t mention that they’re not my old letters and schoolwork. “Should we turn on the radio?”

  He nods eagerly; I knew the suggestion would distract him from more questions. Information and communication with the outside world—it’s so valuable. The Nazis already turned off most of the private telephone lines. We don’t have ours anymore, though people in some wealthier neighborhoods where sympathizers live still do. There’s a rumor that the Germans are going to demand we hand in our radios, too. Papa and I already pulled an old, broken one from a closet to turn in instead of our nice one.

  As it is, we’re supposed to listen only to approved propaganda. It’s illicit to tune in to the BBC, which, along with underground newspapers, is our only source of real news now that the Dutch papers have been taken over. The Dutch government in exile broadcasts through that channel sometimes; we call it Radio Orange. Mama forbids the BBC entirely, terrified of getting caught, but Papa and I don’t mind it at a low volume, with all the windows closed and towels stuffed under the doors to keep sound from escaping. Papa listens to the words that the British newscasters say. My English isn’t as good as his, so I muddle through and he helps me later with anything I’ve missed.

  The radio tuned to a droning hum, I go back to Mirjam’s belongings in my lap. The dates on the pages are all from the late summer or early fall, just weeks before she would have gone into hiding. Her papers all have high marks on them, and she kept a running tally of her grades compared to everyone else’s. She was a good student. Much better than I ever was. In addition to the schoolwork, she’s kept a few torn-out magazine pictures of fashionable dresses and grand houses.

  The quiet hum of the radio has been overtaken by a rhythmic sawing sound. Papa is snoring in his chair. As I sort through the papers, another flutters out. This one is smaller than the others, and folded intricately into a star pattern. The folding is familiar—I once spent two days learning to fold my notes just this way, instead of paying attention in math. It was a popular way girls in my school passed notes; Elsbeth learned first and then taught the rest of us.

  It takes me a minute to remember how to open it, but once I find the right corner to start with, the rest comes back easily. It’s the only paper written in casual printing rather than the formal cursive of a school assignment, and the handwriting is tiny. It looks like the sort of note Elsbeth and I used to pass, composed in secret behind our textbooks and handed off as we passed in the hallway.

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I’m sitting in math, and the teacher has this loose sole on his shoe, and every time he takes a step it makes the rudest noise you ever heard. It’s practically indecent, and everyone is laughing at it. I wish you were in this class. I think T noticed me today, a proper noticing, not just accidentally stepping on my foot, or handing me my pencil after I drop it next to his desk, or saying “Excuse me” when I run into him in the hallway. (Have I mentioned I’ve tried all these things, Elizabeth? Have I mentioned I have become so pathetic that I have resorted to standing near doors when I know he’s going to walk through them? Yes, darling, it is true. I am literally throwing myself in harm’s way so he will talk to me. I can’t believe that when we were little, he used to come and eat toast at my house after school and now I can’t even say two words to him.) But! Today was different. Today in literature class I stood up to give my presentation and I made a little joke, and T laughed, a genuine chuckle, and afterward he told me it was a funny joke. A funny joke! So I’m not as pathetic as I feared. (Or am I?)

  I miss you, dearest duckie, and write back soon, sooner, soonest!

  Love and Adoration,

  Margaret

  I read the letter again, and then once more, the familiar rhythms of friendship sparking out from the page.

  Didn’t I tell Elsbeth about the first time I made Bas laugh in a note just like this one? How many notes did I once write, full of secrets and stories and folded into a perfect star? How many did I receive? Elsbeth gave me a box for them once, for the dozens of folded star-letters. It was an old cigar box that had been pasted over with colorful papers, and then shellacked with varnish: a just-because present. I asked her if she made it herself, and she laughed. “God, no. I’m not going to get my hands dirty like that. I just saw it and thought you’d like it, silly. To put notes in.” That was Elsbeth. Generous and careless, giving presents that never made you feel indebted for receiving them, because they were done so casually. “You should tell Bas that another boy gave it to you,” she said. “Make him jealous.”

  Do I still have that box somewhere? Would I still recognize myself in those letters?

  Here is the thing about my grief: It’s like a very messy room in a house where the electricity has gone out. My grief over Bas is the darkness. It’s the thing that’s most immediately wrong in the house. It’s the thing that you notice straight off. It covers everything else up. But if you could turn the lights back on, you would see there are lots of other things still wrong in the room. The dishes are dirty. There is mold in the sink. The rug is askew.

  Elsbeth is my askew rug. Elsbeth is my messy room. Elsbeth is the grief I would allow myself to
feel, if my emotions weren’t so covered in darkness.

  Because Elsbeth isn’t dead. Elsbeth is living twenty minutes away, with a German soldier. She says she loves him. She probably does. I met him once. Rolf. He was handsome and tall; he had a friendly smile. He even said the right things, like how he knew all the boys wanted Elsbeth and he felt lucky to have her, how he worked for someone high up in the Gestapo and if I ever needed anything, I should let him know because a friend of Elsbeth’s was a friend of his. I shook his hand and wanted to throw up.

  So right now, when I’m looking at these schoolgirl notes, it’s like the light in my messy room has been flicked on, just for a moment. I’m not distracted by Bas. I can see Elsbeth again.

  This note is such an optimistic one, exactly like the ones we would have written long before the war, as we puzzled through who might love us and who didn’t, who ignored us and who didn’t.

  Who are Elizabeth and Margaret? Did another student’s papers somehow get mixed in with Mirjam’s? The girls sound like good friends, placed in different homerooms, maybe in different grades like me and Elsbeth. I add it to the mental list of things I need to ask Mrs. Janssen and Judith’s cousin. What more have I learned about Mirjam since I first drew the imaginary picture of her almost forty-eight hours ago at Mrs. Janssen’s? She was popular with boys. She was a good student, a little hard on herself, competitive enough with her classmates to bother keeping track of their grades. She was spoiled, maybe? After all, her parents gave her a new blue coat when her old one ripped, and lots of families now would insist the old coat just be repaired, even if they were able to find such a nice new one. She is… dead? She’s alive?

  She left a house that could not be left, where the back exit was sealed and the front door was monitored.