Girl in the Blue Coat

by Monica Hesse

  “Did you take Judith? Is she all right?” Mina asks.

  Ollie nods. The farm where he’s taken her is crowded, he says, and it has six people hiding there already, sleeping in a barn. But it’s safe, with only a few soldiers assigned to patrol that region.

  Mrs. de Vries removes her hat, smoothing her hand over her hair. “The children are in bed?”

  “Sleeping,” Mrs. Cohen reassures her.

  “Did you find him?” I ask. Now that she’s safe, I feel less guilty for asking her to go. “Your photographer friend?”

  Mrs. de Vries pulls a small packet from her coat pocket. The envelope looks the wrong shape to contain photographs from an entire roll of film. “Slides,” she explains. “I understand that’s how this film works?” She raises an eyebrow at Mina, who nods. “I don’t have a projector. My husband’s coworker said he would lend us his, but obviously I wasn’t going to tow it through the streets tonight. You can at least look at the slides to see if you can find your friend.”

  She doesn’t wait for a thank-you, instead murmuring that she needs a hot bath. The Cohens excuse themselves as well. It’s so late it’s almost light, and they’re both swaying in place. After everyone else has gone to bed, Mina and Ollie and I crowd around a desk in Mr. de Vries’s empty study and remove the slides from the envelope—translucent images, each just an inch wide. The squares are so small and the people are so many it’s going to be nearly impossible to pick out one in the crowd.

  “If we hold them up to a lightbulb, we’ll be able to see the images a little better,” Mina suggests. She makes sure the blackout curtains are fully closed before turning on the lamp at Mr. de Vries’s desk. Gently, using only the tips of her fingers, she begins to pick up the slides one by one.

  “They’re in color!” Ollie exclaims.

  Mina nods proudly. “I already told Hanneke. My parents bought it off the black market. I can’t even imagine how much it cost.”

  Nor can I. I’ve never been asked to find any, but it’s got to be outrageously expensive.

  “Is this the right order?” I ask.

  “Yes, that’s the order I took them, at least.”

  Together, the three of us lean over the slides. The pictures don’t begin with Mirjam’s roundup, as I’d expected them to. Instead, the first image is from the summertime, of a public park, with grass, and flowers, and in the foreground, a row of men with yellow stars on their jackets and their hands in the air, and on their faces, terror, clear even in miniature.

  “That was the first time I used my new camera,” Mina whispers. “That was the first razzia I saw, too. I passed it on the street. Someone told me later those men were executed.”

  “Are all the photos you take like this?” I ask her.

  “I ration the color because it’s so expensive,” she says. “But the black-and-white photographs are like this, too—they show the same things.”

  Even though Mina already told me the film was in color, I couldn’t imagine how stunning the images would be. They show the corners of the war we aren’t supposed to talk about. A hungry child. Two soldiers jeering at a frightened Jewish man. A basement full of onderduikers, waving at the camera to show they’re all right. The color makes everything so saturated, so current, just like real life. When I look at black-and-white photos, it feels like I’m looking at something historical. But it’s not historical. It’s happening right now. Mina’s work makes sense to me now. Each image is her own small rebellion.

  Finally, we reach the photographs from yesterday at the theater. They tell a miniature story: In the first, a tram has just arrived, a streetcar, repurposed for these transports. It’s full of people wearing Jodensters, carrying suitcases or cloth grocery bags. A woman with a rose-colored hat holds the arm of a man in a fawn-colored fedora. Two stooped ladies who could be sisters are dressed in matching lilac. The colors are beautiful and make my eyes ache.

  In the second frame, everyone from the tram stands near the rear entrance of the theater. A soldier has his arm outstretched, obviously organizing them into rows. In the foreground, I can make out a teenage boy in a chocolate-brown coat sticking his tongue out at the soldier, in an unseen act of defiance.

  We spend several minutes examining each frame. The story continues to unfold: A disorganized crowd of people become neat lines; couples cling to each other’s hands for support.

  Peach and red. Green and black.

  It’s not until the fourth-to-last frame that I see what I’m looking for. The picture is of the same scene as the others: scared people carrying suitcases. There are the captured prisoners, three or four abreast, filing into the theater.

  There, in the bottom corner, is Mirjam.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Once there was a mouse caught in our walls. It only seemed to make noise when I was in the room alone; Papa and Mama never heard it, and if I brought it up, they would look over my head and say, “Right. Your mouse.” I was nine, maybe, and eventually even I began to think the mouse wasn’t real. It was a pretend playmate I must have invented for company. Then one day Elsbeth came over to play, the mouse appeared by her chair, and she screamed bloody murder. That was the moment when the mouse became real, really real. When someone else saw it. When I wasn’t alone.

  “That’s her.” I point to the slide.

  “What?” Mina asks. “Where?”

  “The corner. In the right.”

  She crowds in, shoving her shoulder against mine. “Are you sure? It’s so blurry and small.”

  Nearly out of frame is a girl with curly hair wearing a coat the color of the sky. The face is blurry, not that seeing it would help me anyway, this girl I’ve only met in description. What’s not blurry is the bright blue coat, and, if I squint hard enough, a row of minuscule double-breasted silver buttons marching down the front. There she is, the girl who ran from a safe hiding space, the girl who was slightly spoiled, who loved a boy and had a best friend, who did well in school only to please her parents. Maybe her face is blurry because she’s doing exactly what I like to think I would be doing: looking for an escape route rather than following the rules.

  “Do you think Mrs. de Vries has a magnifying glass?” Ollie suggests. “Is there any way to see it a little closer?”

  Mina finds an old-fashioned one with a carved wooden handle in Mr. de Vries’s desk drawer. I press my nose as close as I can, going over the photograph millimeter by millimeter for anything else that might be useful, but find nothing more.

  “It’s still so hard to see,” Mina says.

  “It’s her,” I say definitively. It’s her because I feel a pang in my heart when I look at this photograph. All the other people being herded into the theater seem to be with others—families or neighbors. She’s alone.

  “She’s right there, Ollie,” I say. From the window of the room I’m sitting in, I could see the building where she’s being held, less than one hundred meters away.

  “It’s her,” Ollie says evenly. He’s watching me, wondering what I’ll do next. “It’s what we thought it would be.”

  “We have to get her out.”

  He’s shaking his head even before I finish the sentence. He expected this.

  “Yes, Ollie,” I continue. “Look at her. She must be so terrified.”

  “Hanneke, nothing has changed since I told you that we couldn’t help you.”

  “It has changed. We have a safe place for her, right here, across the street. Mina and Judith know the theater. Why won’t you help me, Ollie?”

  “I don’t understand you, Hanneke,” he snaps. “We’ve all been hoping, for the past four days, that you would help us with the resistance, with things that can actually matter for not just one person, but hundreds of people. And now here you are, telling me I have to risk the lives of all my other friends to help you? You really are—”

  “What am I?” I challenge him, furious but keeping my voice down. “Crazy? Damaged?”

  “I felt bad for you, Hanneke. For the fact t
hat you had to grieve for Bas on your own. I felt so sorry for you, and I also thought you would be useful to us in the resistance. But if I had realized how bullheaded you would be, I wouldn’t have brought you to the first meeting at all.”

  “Bas would help me.” It’s cruel, to compare Ollie to his brother right now, but I can’t help it. It’s true. “He would. He would wonder why we’re even still having this conversation when we know right where she is. He would say we should go and get her right now. Do you remember his party that one summer when my parents wouldn’t let me come because I was sick? He sneaked up the drainpipe just to bring me cake afterward. Bas wouldn’t be able to stand that someone had specifically asked for help with finding her, and we were ignoring it.”

  “And he would be dead.”

  I reel backward, staring at Ollie. “What did you just say?”

  “Hanneke. Bas was a thousand good things. A million good things. But he was brash, and reckless, and he never thought before acting. That night of the party when he brought you the cake? You were happy, but he was punished. My parents were furious at how late he’d stayed out. And now? Now Bas would try to help save this girl, and the Nazis would catch him, and he would die.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say.

  “Don’t you think I want to help you? Don’t you know how hard it is for me to think about what might happen to that girl, all alone? I want to be like Bas all the time because he was charming and fun. But he wasn’t perfect. Someone has to be the careful one. Someone has to think, every moment of every day, of how dangerous a single slip could be.”

  His hair is squashed to one side of his face; he has purple bags under his eyes. He must be exhausted. I don’t know how many miles he had to bicycle into the country to take Judith to her hiding place, and then he came straight here after. Seeing him makes me aware of how tired I am, as well. Whole worlds have happened since the last time either of us slept.

  “Hanneke? Ollie?” It’s Mina, still sitting at Mr. de Vries’s desk, still holding the slides. She obviously hasn’t even been following our conversation.

  Her face is frozen in horror.

  “Mina? What is it?” I ask. She points to the slides in her hand, toward the last series of images that we hadn’t yet looked at. “Is Mirjam in those, too?” I go back to the desk, leaning over to see whatever she’s pointing to. “Let me see.”

  “It’s not that. It’s… they’re closing down the crèche.” She hands me the magnifying glass before continuing. “Look, in this one—there are the other helpers, taking all the children into the theater. They never go in a big group like that. They’re going to close the nursery and transport the children with Mirjam.” I squint my eyes and see a parade of small children, and two of the young women I’d seen working in the nursery with Mina.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say to Mina. “I know you knew them well.” But she’s shaking her head, pointing again at the slide.

  “No. Look,” she says. “Look.”

  I look. And I finally understand what she’s talking about. The older children from the crèche are walking into the theater. Two of the younger ones are in carriages. And one carriage in particular. The carriage holding the photographs of the brutal war and secret resistance, and everyone I have met and grown to care about in the past few days.

  “They’ll find the camera in a minute,” Mina says. “The Nazis. When the carriage goes to the transit camp. And then they’ll find all of us.”

  Ollie looks completely confused; he has never heard of the camera and has no idea what Mina is talking about. But I do. And I know that a few minutes ago, when we saw Mirjam in the photographs and Ollie told me that nothing had changed—he was wrong. Everything has changed.

  Sunday

  “What are we going to do?” Sanne asks for the fifth time, and for the fifth time, nobody has an answer.

  Ollie flew around the city on his bicycle to gather everyone here, first to his apartment, where Willem had already left for an early class, and then to Leo, who promised to fetch Sanne and come straight to Mrs. de Vries’s. Now everyone is here but Willem and Judith, who knows more about the theater than anybody else and who can never come to another meeting again.

  “I can’t believe you would be so stupid,” Leo snarls at Mina. “I had no idea you were taking pictures. We’re trying to save actual lives, and you’re flitting around with your camera? I told everyone you were too young.”

  “Don’t yell at her,” Ollie warns. “Don’t yell at all.” He nods meaningfully toward the study’s closed door. Mrs. de Vries is furious that we’re all here. She hasn’t moved once from the front window, promising she’ll make us all leave immediately if she hears a noise coming from the study.

  “It’s already done, Leo, okay?” Sanne says. “It’s too late to change that she did it. Now we have to figure out: What are we going to do?”

  “Let’s think it through,” Ollie says. “Maybe nobody will find the camera. Mina was using it to take pictures for months, and the other volunteers in the crèche didn’t realize it. Is that a possibility?”

  Mina bows her head miserably. “You know it’s not. When the transports get to the transit camps, they search everyone’s personal items—sometimes people try to sew jewelry or money inside their coats and suitcases. The guards will rip that carriage apart at the seams. And when they do…”

  We all know what will happen when they do. Pictures of the resistance workers. Pictures of dozens of hidden exchanges, of children going into hiding, of innocent, innocent people.

  “But how do you even know they’ll take the carriage to the station?” Sanne asks. “When people are called for transport, they’re usually allowed to bring just one suitcase apiece. Why would guards let a family bring along a carriage? Maybe it will just be left in the theater.”

  “How is that any better?” Leo snaps. “Do you think the camera won’t be discovered there just as easily?”

  “It’s not any better,” Sanne says defensively. “I’m just saying that we don’t know for sure that the carriage is going to be searched, or when, or by whom. We don’t even know for sure that all the children will be on this transport. I know transports usually happen in the order that prisoners arrive, but sometimes they don’t. Is there any way we can get into the theater?”

  Ollie shakes his head. “They know everyone who works there, and they’re not bending any rules to let in new people now. Everything has changed since the Council members and their families are being called up.”

  “What if we asked Walter?” Leo suggests. I know that Walter is the man who oversees the theater, who helps falsify papers for the children in the crèche.

  Ollie’s voice is final. “No. This isn’t a resistance mission. This was us messing up. Our own idiocy. We’re not going to drag him into it until we try to fix it ourselves.”

  “They are going to take the carriage to the train station,” Mina whispers. “I just know it. They never leave things behind in the theater; it’s too crowded there and they’re always looking to pack more people in. The carriage is going to the train station; you have to believe me.”

  Sanne winces, then takes a deep breath and starts again. “Okay. So you are saying we would have to get the camera back, but not when it’s in the theater. We would have to get it when the transport leaves the theater, on the way to the station. And it would have to be a secret. And nobody could see us. Correct?”

  “We’d be out after curfew,” Leo says. “So we’d need special papers, at least.”

  “Or a disguise,” Sanne says. “A Gestapo uniform would be best—high-ranking enough to walk through the city after curfew without being questioned.”

  “We can’t get one,” Ollie says shortly. “If we could, that plan might work. But we can’t. I know other resistance groups have stolen German uniforms to use for their operations, but we don’t know anybody who has one now, and we’re not going to be able to arrange a second secret operation to get one. Certainly not in
the two days we have before the transport. Think of something else.”

  “You’re all being stupid,” Mina says, shaking her head. “Of course there’s a way to get in the theater. I’m supposed to be in there right now. I was supposed to report for transport. So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll report for transport, and then once I’m inside, I’ll find the camera and I’ll destroy it.”

  “And then you’ll be sent to a camp,” Ollie says quietly.

  “And?”

  “Mina—” Sanne begins.

  “What?” she says fiercely, her voice breaking. “It’s my fault, no one else’s! Leo just said so. And you always talk about how the mission is more important than any one of us. So I’ll do it. I’ll turn myself in this afternoon.”

  Sanne opens and closes her mouth again. Ollie buries his head in his hands, and Leo stares hard at the desk. Nobody says anything. Nobody has to. Mina’s offer is horrible, and it’s also the best option they have.

  I clear my throat. “I can get one.”

  It’s the first time I’ve spoken in this entire exchange. Everyone swivels toward me. There are so many things I have done wrong in this war. Starting with Bas, starting from the beginning. But all through it. The times I have known things were wrong and told myself the best thing to do was ignore it. “Mina doesn’t have to turn herself in. I can help you get the camera,” I continue. “But when I do, I want to also get Mirjam Roodveldt. I won’t ask any of you to help me with that part. I’ll take those risks myself; if I’m caught, I’ll say that I’m acting on my own.”

  Nobody responds.

  “You’re saying you need a uniform to get the camera,” I say finally. “I’m saying I know how to get a uniform.”

  The second-to-last time I saw Elsbeth: