Girl in the Blue Coat

by Monica Hesse

  The dress is gingham with buttons at the collar. I look at it and feel my face turn red. I know exactly why he remembers it. “I don’t know,” I lie. He picks up the photograph to look more closely, and when he does, the little wrinkle on his forehead is so familiar it takes my breath away. “You look like him,” I blurt out. “You look like Bas.”

  He winces, almost imperceptibly, before answering. “Not really.”

  “In this light you do,” I insist. “In the light of my apartment you look like him.”

  “Maybe your family should trade apartments with mine. My parents would probably pay a lot of money for that light.” His voice is somewhat bitter, but mostly sad. “They just miss him so much. We all do. That was why—” He breaks off.

  “Why what?”

  He sighs. “When I came here the first night, I was hoping I could get you to join the resistance. And I was making sure you weren’t working for the NSB, putting Judith in danger. But I was also just worried about you. When Judith told me what you said about Bas, I just felt so sorry for you. I thought you might be really… damaged.”

  “Damaged,” I repeat, and it doesn’t hurt to hear him say that. It’s almost a relief, to have someone else speculate over the things I think privately.

  “But it’s normal to miss him,” Ollie says. “Pia and I talk about him all the time. Him and his obnoxious jokes, his laugh, what he would have become.”

  The apartment seems very still all of a sudden; I lean forward to hear every word coming out of Ollie’s mouth. “What would he become?” I whisper.

  “An attorney. And then a politician. City-level. He’d only want to hold offices where he could meet all his constituents. He’d sponsor socials and dances. He’d love his family.” Ollie’s eyes are wet, and he’s looking at me. My throat is tight. It would be so easy for us to grieve together.

  “The dress is from that day,” I whisper. “That’s why you remember it. I was wearing it that day.”

  That day. I don’t need to say any more than that. Ollie puts his hand to his stomach, like I’ve punched him there. The dress is from the day we found out about Bas. Pia came to tell me. I ran to the Van de Kamps’ home, and Mrs. Van de Kamp slapped me, hard, across the face, and Ollie stood there in the middle of their sitting room like if he moved the world would collapse. I went home, and tears poured down my face for hours and hours while Mama stroked my back, until they finally stopped coming because I was all dried up inside, and that was the last time that I cried.

  “Oh,” Ollie says. “I didn’t remember.”

  “I’m going to make tea,” I say. “You don’t have to have any if you don’t want.”

  Ollie follows me into the kitchen. He stands behind me—I can feel his eyes follow my movements. My hands are shaking when I reach for the kettle, and he steadies it for me, helping me place it on the burner.

  “The Hollandsche Schouwburg,” he says finally.

  “What about it?”

  “It smells like death.” Ollie finishes the sentence I started earlier but couldn’t complete. “That’s what it smells like in there. Death and fear.”

  Fear. That’s right. That was the odor I couldn’t place before. That’s the smell of my beautiful, breaking country.

  I’ve been leaving something out, shielding myself. Before, all those times, when I remembered the tissue with my tears on it after Bas told me he was joining the military.

  I don’t like to remember that they were tears of pride.

  The Netherlands tried to remain neutral. We wanted to be like Sweden, allowed to be left alone. Hitler said he would. Up until the day he invaded our country, he said he would leave us alone.

  I was the one who said that joining the military would be a symbolic stand, anyway, against the Nazis.

  I was the one, all along, who had been saying how the Germans shouldn’t be allowed to just do whatever they wanted, to conquer country after country.

  I was the one who accompanied Bas to the navy office, and watched while he enlisted. The officer there kept asking if he was sure. The draft didn’t begin until men were eighteen, the officer said. In the army, they didn’t even accept volunteers younger than that. Why didn’t Bas go home, the officer suggested, and wait a year in case he changed his mind.

  I was the one who told the officer that Bas had come to the navy so he didn’t have to wait in order to be brave. I talked that officer into signing him up.

  Bas wouldn’t have joined if he didn’t think it would make me happy.

  And it did make me happy. Until it made me sad.

  I thought I knew so much then. I thought the world was so black-and-white. Hitler was bad, and so we should stand up to him. The Nazis were immoral, and so they would eventually lose. If I had truly paid attention, I might have realized that our tiny country had absolutely no hope of defending itself, not when bigger countries like Poland had already fallen. I should have guessed that when Hitler told our country in a radio address that he had no plans to invade and we had nothing to fear that it meant his soldiers were already packing their parachutes and we had everything to fear. Joining the military wasn’t a symbolic statement. It was a fool’s errand.

  So that’s why I hadn’t talked to Ollie in more than two years. That’s why I dream of Bas coming to me, angry that I never read his letter. That’s how I learned that being brave is sometimes the most dangerous thing to be, that it’s a trait to be used sparingly. That’s why, if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve become obsessed with finding Mirjam. Because it seems like a fair and right exchange: saving one life after destroying another.

  I’m to blame for Bas’s death. Bas was stupid to love me. I only got him killed. It was my fault.

  THIRTEEN

  Fifty-two hours. I learned of Mirjam Roodveldt’s disappearance fifty-two hours ago. Two sleepless nights. Three encounters with German soldiers. One rescued baby. One still-missing girl. I haven’t seen Mrs. Janssen since I first agreed to help, so I bicycle to her house as soon as Ollie leaves, in the twilight before curfew, to tell her everything that has happened. She installs me at the kitchen table immediately, producing more real coffee and a plate of small croissants. When I bite into one, my mouth fills with almond paste. Banketstaaf, my favorite. Mrs. Janssen remembered from last time and had them waiting.

  “I thought of a few more things also,” she says after I sketch out what I’ve learned so far. “About Mirjam. I’m sure they’re not helpful; they’re just things I keep thinking about.” She produces a piece of paper, squinting. “Number one: You said it would be dangerous to go to the neighbors, but Mirjam once mentioned a nice maintenance man in her building. Maybe you could talk to him? Number two: She liked the cinema a lot. She knew all the stars. Are there movie houses open still? You could try seeing if anyone had seen her there. Number three: She was a quiet girl, Hanneke. She didn’t like talking about her family; it made her too sad. She wasn’t afraid to ask about my family, though. Even Jan. Some people are afraid to ask about him, but Mirjam asked me lots of questions. I would come in to bring her a cup of tea, and we would talk and talk until it was late. And she was polite. She hated beets, but she never complained about eating them, not once. She never complained at all.”

  Mrs. Janssen looks up at me. “Should I go on?”

  “No. No, that was very helpful.”

  So much happened today: the hidden camera, and Ollie, and the horrible red glow of the barren stage at the theater. I almost haven’t had time to work through how it all made me feel. And when I do think about it now, I feel ashamed.

  Because when I first told Mrs. Janssen that I would find Mirjam, I had been viewing her as a discrete puzzle that I could try to solve. A way that I could put order back in my corner of the world. A way that I could take revenge on the Nazi system—a missing girl, like a missing pack of cigarettes. A way of finding the person I used to be. But in that horrible theater, and now in Mrs. Janssen’s kitchen listening to her talk about Mirjam uncomplainingly ea
ting beets, I am finally thinking of her as what I know she has been all along: a life, a scared girl, one of many.

  “Should I burn this paper now?” Mrs. Janssen asks, holding up the notes she just read from.

  I hesitate and then nod. “Yes, probably.”

  “All right.”

  She searches for the matches near the stove but doesn’t seem to see them, even though they’re less than a foot from her hand.

  “Mrs. Janssen, where are your glasses?”

  Her fingers fly up to her nose, where two deep marks are still indented on the bridge. “Oh. I dropped them. Behind the armoire.”

  “When?”

  “The morning after you left.”

  “That was a couple of days ago.”

  “I know where everything is in this house, for the most part.”

  I feel nauseated with this thought of her, bumping around the house with her cane, half blind, ordering almond pastries on the chance that I’ll come over to eat them, wishing that she still had someone to ask about her son. She’s so alone now.

  I brush the crumbs off my fingers. “Take me to the armoire. I’ll get your glasses.”

  She leads me through the house to her bedroom, talking. “I’m just getting used to living alone. The boys or Hendrik would have helped me with my glasses. And then Mirjam, she would have. There’s just always been someone around to help me. You know, I used to be a career girl, like you. Forty years ago, when almost no women worked, I met Hendrik because he hired me to be his shop assistant. I thought I was so independent, but then my life became about caring for other people, and now I don’t want to be alone. I never would have thought.”

  Mrs. Janssen’s armoire looks clunky and heavy, made of oak. I won’t be able to move it on my own. Underneath, I can see Mrs. Janssen’s glasses, but the space is too slim for my arm to squeeze through.

  “I was going to ask Christoffel, the next time he came,” she offers. “It should be tomorrow.”

  “We don’t need Christoffel. Do you have a long rod?” I ask. “Something very thin, maybe for closing the drapes?”

  After several minutes of us both searching for something, Mrs. Janssen finally disappears into her back garden and returns with a flat wooden stake, slightly dirty at the bottom, and a seed packet affixed to the top depicting beets. “Will this work?”

  I use the rod to push Mrs. Janssen’s glasses out the other side. She thanks me profusely while dusting them off, and then adjusts them across her nose, and a minute later we’re sitting back at the table.

  “It could be that all this means nothing,” I tell her, “but I do have a few names. People who might have known Mirjam well. It’s all far-fetched, but did Mirjam ever talk about her friend Amalia?”

  She purses her lips. “I don’t think so.”

  “Ursie? Zef?”

  “Ursie, maybe? But I could be confusing her with my seamstress. Her name is Ursie, too.”

  I’ve saved the most promising for last. “Tobias? He might have been her boyfriend?”

  “She did talk about a boy she liked, but I don’t remember.… Let me think.”

  It seems strange, to think of Mirjam talking about a boy while she was in hiding, mourning her family and fearing for her life. But I suppose love doesn’t stop, even in wars. There’s only so much time a day that you can spend being terrified of something before your instinct to feel natural human emotions would kick in.

  “Oh!” A light has gone on in Mrs. Janssen’s eyes. She reaches for her cane, scooting her chair back from the table. “I’ve just remembered something.”

  “What? What is it?”

  She stands and goes to the pantry. I hear rustling and the sounds of jars clanking, and when she returns, she’s carrying several jars of food.

  “I’m not hungry,” I say, confused, but Mrs. Janssen shakes her head; she’s brought the jars over for a different reason.

  “The day before Mirjam disappeared, I asked her if she would help me by wiping down the dusty jars in the pantry,” Mrs. Janssen explains. “I had to let go the woman who used to clean for me because I worried she’d hear Mirjam. Anyway, Mirjam had gotten most of the way done when my neighbor stopped by, so Mirjam stopped dusting and went to hide. This is what the ones she finished look like.” Mrs. Janssen pushes forward a jar that is wiped down and smooth. “Now look at these.”

  At first, they appear the same as the ones Mirjam finished dusting. But when the light in the room shifts, something looks different. Someone has drawn a design in the dust, with an index finger probably—it reminds me of the designs I used to make on the windows before I cleaned them.

  Mrs. Janssen rotates two of the jars, so I can see them right side up. The dust drawing on the first jar is an M. The second one is a T.

  “I noticed them yesterday and thought they were just doodles,” Mrs. Janssen says. “But they’re not. They’re M and T.”

  “Mirjam and Tobias,” I say.

  “Do you think it means something?”

  Do I think it means something? Something like Mirjam running away from a safe place to try to find a boy she liked? Something like Mirjam risking her life for a relationship whose only evidence so far is a cryptic note, a dusty trail on jar lids, and some flowers Mina says Mirjam once received at school? It would seem crazy to rational people. But isn’t this something like I would have done? Even if I hadn’t seen Bas in months, wouldn’t I still be thinking of him every day, mentally tracing his name on everything I saw? Isn’t that what I’m doing now still?

  Isn’t love the opposite of rational?

  Mrs. Janssen polishes her eyeglasses again while she waits for me to answer, rubbing off dust particles they picked up on the floor, murmuring something about the garden stake.

  “Hmm?” I ask her absentmindedly.

  “I was thinking I should keep the garden stake nearby in the house. The one you used to get my glasses? It could be useful for when I need to reach in small spaces.”

  I sit up, a lightning bolt down my spine.

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m sorry. You were trying to concentrate.”

  “No, no. You’re helping,” I tell her. “This stake was in your back garden?”

  “Yes. I have a little plot of vegetables. Not now, obviously; it’s winter. But in the summer. Why?”

  “I need to see the back door again.”

  “Why?”

  I brush past her, down the dim, narrow hallway to the back door. It’s just as I remembered from last time: When it’s not latched properly, there’s a large, gaping crack of air, and the door blows open. The latch is heavy and black and looks to be made of iron. What I’m thinking could work—I’m sure of it. Theoretically, at least. Experimentally, I lift the latch up and let go. It falls back down, missing the eye and failing to lock. The same thing happens the next time. This is why she thought it would be impossible to lock the door behind you. The latch wouldn’t naturally fall into place.

  Mrs. Janssen is getting impatient behind me. “I don’t understand,” she says finally.

  “Shhh.” I lift the lock again.

  I’m about to decide I must have been wrong. Then, on the fourth try of letting go, the latch naturally closes with a satisfying click.

  I whirl around to see if Mrs. Janssen noticed. “See? Did you see that?”

  “But it doesn’t matter if you get it to close on its own,” she protests. “You’re standing right in front of it. Mirjam couldn’t do that from the other side of a locked door.”

  “Hand me the garden stake. I’m going outside for a minute.” Mrs. Janssen’s vegetable plot is just a small square of frozen dirt. In the dead of winter, nothing is growing, but stakes with seed packets affixed to them stick out of the ground, labeling herbs and vegetables. There’s a small hole missing where the beet stake should go. “Mrs. Janssen?” I call through the closed door. “Watch out, all right? I’m going to poke this through the door.”

  Jabbing upward, I use the veget
able stake to poke around until I feel it—the iron latch inside the door—and I try to use the stake to swing the latch up into place. The first time, it swings back down with a thud. But on the fifth try, I manage to swing the latch up at exactly the right angle, so that when it comes down again, it clicks into place with a heavy noise.

  I’ve locked an unlockable door from the outside.

  Mrs. Janssen opens the door, staring at me as I stand in her back garden with her dirty garden stake, the one I’ve just used to do what she thought was impossible. “How did you think to do that?”

  “Girls in love will do desperate and creative things.”

  Today has been a very long day, but I have solved two things. First, I have learned the identity of the T in Mirjam’s letter. Second: I still don’t know where Mirjam is, but at least I know she didn’t walk through walls to get there.

  FOURTEEN

  Friday

  Tobias still hasn’t been in school. That’s what Mina tells me, when I visit her at the crèche the next afternoon.

  “Sick?” I ask. “Or gone? Does anyone know?”

  She doesn’t know anything, just that he hasn’t been in school, which could mean he has a cough, or it could mean he’s gone into hiding, or it could mean he’s dead. It could mean Mirjam is already dead, too. After yesterday afternoon at Mrs. Janssen’s, I was feeling so optimistic. But now I’ve spent the morning visiting dentist after dentist, looking for Tobias or his father with no luck. How long do I keep looking for Mirjam? She’s been gone for four days. As more time passes, any trail leading to her will only run colder. At what point does it grow so cold that I accept that Mirjam has either been killed or slipped so deep into the cracks of the underground that we will never see her again? Not yet. I’m not to that point yet. But when? Will I be able to tell that I’m there? Will I be able to walk away?