by Monica Hesse
“I wish their route didn’t have so many open spaces,” Willem says, walking his bicycle at a slow pace. Still we’re pretending to have a casual conversation. Still, we’re pretending not to notice the violence around us. “It isn’t as good for us.”
No, this route is not good for us. It’s the shortest distance to the railway station, which makes sense. But it also means we’re taking wide streets through open spaces, and long blocks that are uninterrupted by alleyways. There aren’t many places along this route that would make for good cover, and we need good cover. A uniform will only get us partway.
“As we walk along, think about what you see.” Willem’s eyes dart furtively to the left and then the right, sweeping along the horizon. “What route would let you get away with the least chance of someone seeing you?”
“We’ll be passing the Oosterpark,” I suggest. It’s a big, manicured municipal park, and it would be easy for several people to disappear into the Oosterpark’s darkness.
Willem thinks. “But we don’t have any contacts near the park. No one in our group lives there. Once you got there, where would you go?” He’s right. Besides, the Oosterpark doesn’t come until after we will have crossed two canals. It’s not a good idea for an escape route to rely on bridges; they’re too easily closed or blocked.
“It needs to be before Plantage Muidergracht,” I think out loud. “Close enough to get back to Mrs. de Vries’s. We should try to get Mirjam and the carriage as soon as possible after they leave the Schouwburg.”
“I think you’re right. If we get as far as the bridge, we won’t have a chance.”
Focus on escape routes, I tell myself. Focus on how close you are to saving Mirjam. Focus on that one life. I have to focus on Mirjam because I don’t want to think about my third-grade teacher, who I won’t be saving, or Mr. Bierman, who I won’t be saving, or any of Mirjam’s classmates or the entire group of people walking so close to us right now. I won’t be helping any of these people.
“What about here?” Willem stops walking, pointing up to a building like he’s merely interested in showing off the architecture.
We’ve come to an intersection where three streets cross each other, veining off at odd angles so that the sightline cuts off after less than twenty-five meters. If Mirjam and I ran from here, we’d be out of sight in five seconds, and two soldiers—assuming there were only two soldiers, assuming a lot of things—wouldn’t have enough bodies to explore which direction we ran to.
Scanning the buildings lining the street, my eyes land on a butcher shop. A large awning hangs over the entrance, orange, the color of our exiled monarchy. Somehow this seems like a good omen.
“That butcher shop.” I nod toward it. “Under the awning.” The shop itself is tucked back farther from the street than the shops next to it, so it already has more natural cover. Under the awning is a large plaster cow, life-size, more than big enough for one or two people to hide behind.
Willem gives a loud sigh, squatting to the ground in mock annoyance with his bicycle chain, while really taking the time to observe the butcher shop. “Good,” he says. “Between the cow and the way the doorway is built, you would have to know someone was standing there to see them.”
Does he really think it’s good? Do I? Or do I just want it to work? I can’t tell. This intersection Willem and I have chosen—this overhanging awning and this plaster cow—it’s more than one kilometer from the Muiderpoort station. That seems like a long distance. Is it enough space to save one life?
The transport has moved ahead of us now. Solemn, silent rows of people being taken to God knows what, and we stare after them, helpless. Then it’s just me and Willem.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks. “With your part? With the uniform?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“If you need me to try to put you in contact with anyone… I don’t know that I know any of the right people, but I could—”
“It’s all right, Willem.”
He nods and hesitates before speaking again. “Hanneke, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,” he begins. “It’s just that getting a uniform is usually the kind of thing we would plan weeks for. I like you. I think you’re a strong person. But Ollie… he is my best friend, and I can’t let anything happen to him. To any of them. You weren’t that eager to help us. I want you to tell me it’s okay for us to put our trust in you.”
I’ve spent two years wanting nobody to trust me, wanting not to be depended on. But now I have seen a transport, and I have seen a deportation center, and I have seen the hopeful handwriting of a frightened girl, and I have seen brave people forced to hide, and mean people become secretly brave, so when I open my mouth, I say to Willem: “You can. I’ll do my best, Willem.”
My throat starts to swell, and I look away, and when I finally look back, Willem is still holding my eyes, appropriately polite and achingly concerned. “I hope everything is okay with you, Hanneke,” he says. “If there’s something you want to talk about, I don’t need to tell the others.”
I bite down hard on my cheek because Willem’s question is so genuine and because, after everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours, I already feel so raw.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine. I just—I don’t sleep well,” I say finally. “I don’t sleep well, and I don’t cry, since Bas died.”
A half explanation. Still more than I’ve said out loud to anyone.
Willem places his hand on my arm again. “This won’t bring Bas back, Hanneke. I know you know that already. But just in case your mind is trying to get you to believe otherwise. You could rescue Mirjam and still not be able to sleep at night.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The doorbell has changed. It used to be a grinding, buzzing noise, and now it’s a clear-toned bell. At first I think I must have misremembered it, but how could I misremember a sound I’d heard one hundred, two hundred, five hundred times in my life?
Elsbeth must have had a new one installed when her parents moved in with her grandmother, and she and Rolf took over her childhood home. It’s strange to think of her this way, as a wife making domestic decisions about the way her household is run. I wonder if she tore down the wallpaper in the sitting room, too. She’d probably have the money to do that, and she always thought it was ugly.
No one answers the door, so I ring the new bell again, pressing my face close to the glass. Same sitting room. Same wallpaper.
I knew it would make me nervous, to come here. I knew it would be uncomfortable. I didn’t anticipate the heaviness of the dread spreading through my stomach, though. I didn’t know I would have to root my feet in place so intentionally, just to make sure I didn’t run away.
Nothing—no noises from the inside, no flickers of light from a reading lamp. Nobody is home. It’s better this way, I tell myself. Safer. Easier. I’d planned for a million contingencies: Her at home, him at home, both of them at home, and this is the one I knew would be the best scenario for me. It’s why I came now, because Elsbeth’s family always had a big Sunday dinner at her grandmother’s house, and I bet this tradition has continued even through the war. So why does a part of me feel so disappointed to not see her face?
Another thing that hasn’t changed about this house: the spare key on top of the doorframe, slightly rusty, cold in my hand.
Everything smells the same: the whole house, like cloves and laundry powder, the way it always did, the odor particular to the Vos family, the one I know well enough to have it be comforting. But this time I’m not a guest, I remind myself. This time I’m working.
Before I can second-guess myself, I slip all the way inside. The master bedroom is upstairs, at the end of the hall. I almost never went inside it, though Elsbeth would occasionally sneak in and return with her mother’s rouge for us to practice applying. As soon as I step into it, I know it’s wrong, though. This room doesn’t feel occupied; the bed is piled with a half-finished sewing project.
My heart sinks.
If Elsbeth and Rolf haven’t moved into the master bedroom, then that means I have to go into a room I was hoping to avoid. Back toward the stairwell. The first door on the right.
I open the door and am overrun by ghosts. Elsbeth’s bedroom is where I spent so many afternoons: practicing dances, pretending to do homework, ranking our favorite film stars. Talking about how we would grow up and have babies at the same time, and eventually become old women together, walking around the square and holding each other’s arms for support. Stop. Stop.
Her dressing gown hangs on the door. It still has a hole in the sleeve, from the time we smoked secret cigarettes on the balcony.
To steel myself against emotion, I’m clinging to the practicalities of breaking the law. Elsbeth used to share this room with her older sister. Nellie’s wardrobe was on the left and Elsbeth’s was on the right. When she installed her new husband in her childhood home, I bet she gave him Nellie’s old space to use for his clothing. That seems like something Elsbeth would do, telling him to shove things aside, make room for himself anywhere. He would discover one of Nellie’s forgotten brassieres, and Elsbeth would laugh at his embarrassment.
I slide open the left closet. I’m right. Inside, neatly pressed men’s clothes, slacks and shirts, hang in a row. These are the clothes that Elsbeth’s husband wears. Her husband. Rolf. For her new life, which I am not a part of.
No uniform, though. The uniform isn’t in here; I check twice. He must have at least two—one to wear and one to wash—but there’s nothing in here. Nothing draped over chairs, nothing lying across the quickly made bed. Where could it be?
Back in the hallway, I open the linen closet. Inside is a wicker basket, full of crumpled towels and bedsheets, waiting to be washed. I paw deeper, looking for flashes of gray and black, the color of death, the color of the Gestapo. Toward the bottom, I spot something dark-colored, so I pull it out.
How could I have forgotten? Elsbeth’s grandmother gave gifts in twos. The Tonsil didn’t fit, and Elsbeth gave it to me, giggling at my face when I opened the hideous dress. But Elsbeth had to keep its mate, another dress in dismal grayish purple.
It smells like her, like talcum powder and perfume, and I have a dozen memories of Elsbeth in this dress. Making faces when her mother suggested she wear it to a party. Wearing it anyway, but trying to “accidentally” spill punch on it. Gossiping at the party about what a good kisser Henk was, sagely telling me that a first kiss was never as good as a second one.
I kissed Ollie, I want to tell her. I kissed Ollie, and Bas is still dead, and how are you doing, and was it stupid for our friendship to end because you loved a boy, or is that just what happens?
I stuff the dress back into the laundry basket and grab at the black collar peeking out from the bottom. Rolf’s shirt. And just as I’m grabbing the matching pants below it, the front door opens.
Without even thinking, I dive fully into the linen closet, squeezing myself next to the laundry hamper, Rolf’s rumpled uniform clutched in my fists. I ease the squeaking closet door shut, all but a sliver—I’m too afraid of the clicking sound to close it all the way. My heart is pounding so loudly in my ears I’m sure anyone could hear it, and I tell it to slow down, but it won’t obey.
“I can’t believe you forgot the cake. Dinner is not worth having without cake.”
Yet another thing that hasn’t changed: Elsbeth’s voice, teasing and bouncy and hitting me like a punch in the gut. My mouth opens in a whimper. I stuff Rolf’s evil uniform against my lips.
“Apparently life is not worth living without cake, if you’re my wife,” he teases her.
“So I like the sweeter things in life.” She laughs.
“Is there anything else you need while we’re here?” Rolf asks.
“I might as well grab a sweater, since Granny’s house is an icebox.”
They’re so normal together. I wasn’t expecting that. They don’t sound like war. They sound like jokes and kisses, like the friends I should still have. I hear her footsteps on the stairs, the squeak on the fourth tread. Her bedroom is the door before the linen cupboard; she’ll have no reason to walk past. Next door, I hear her opening her wardrobe, riffling through hangers, humming something tuneless. Elsbeth never could sing.
“Have you seen my yellow sweater?” she calls downstairs to the kitchen.
“Didn’t you put it in the hamper?”
Saliva pools in my mouth. I see Elsbeth’s slim ankles approach, closer, and my nose is tickled by her talcum powder. She puts her hand on the knob. What will I do when she finds me? I run through the escape scenarios I do with every Nazi, except that in this case they’re insane. I could hit her. I could hug her. I could greet her like the past two years never happened. But they did happen, and now I don’t just hate and love and miss Elsbeth; I also have to fear her.
“Elsbeth, it’s in here,” Rolf calls. “Your sweater was on the chair.”
She moves away again, heels tripping on the floor. My heart pounds out of my chest, both nerves and anger and grief. And then she’s gone again, my old best friend.
When I get home that night, Mama and Papa are already in bed. It’s too early for them to be asleep, but they don’t bother to come out. For years I’ve begged them for this—to just go to bed without waiting up for me—but now I picture them in their nightclothes, listening to me hang my coat, and it makes me feel unsettled. Something shifted between us, after the last fight when I left with Willem. I’m still their daughter, but I’m no longer their child.
There’s a letter propped against a book on my bedside table. I don’t recognize the handwriting on the envelope, and when I open it, a small, star-shaped note falls out. Christoffel must have dropped it off while I was out, after his father returned from Den Haag. A response from Amalia. Just what I thought I wanted a couple of days ago, and now it doesn’t matter at all.
Dear Hanneke, I read as I unfold the crisp notebook paper. I don’t know where she is. I wish I did. I miss my friend, too.
I picture Mirjam joyfully reuniting with her friend, carrying a stack of magazines, carrying weeks’ worth of thoughts and feelings to share, having the reunion that Elsbeth and I will never get to have.
When I fall asleep I have an old nightmare again, the one I used to have all the time after Bas died. He comes to me in his uniform with the letter I’d torn up. In the dream, he’s pieced it back together and is angry that I never read it. “It means you’ve forgotten me,” he says. “It doesn’t,” I try to tell him. “It doesn’t mean that at all. I think of you every day.
“Look,” I say to him. “I’ll read it right now. I’ll read it this very minute if it’s important to you.” But for every word I try to read, Bas turns a little paler and a little more gray. By the time I’m halfway through, he’s a corpse standing in front of me, and I can’t finish the letter, because I’m crying. When I wake up my eyes are dry—my eyes are always dry—but my sheets are twisted around my body and drenched with sweat. The next night, just before curfew, Ollie knocks on my door. When my mother answers, he explains: His mother isn’t well. He and his father need to take her to the hospital. Pia is afraid to stay home alone; might I come and spend the night with her?
My mother doesn’t agree or disagree; she doesn’t even look at me. She turns her head and says, “Do what you want to, Hanneke.”
“I should go, then, for Ollie’s mother,” I say.
Except, of course, Ollie’s mother is fine and Pia is probably home right now obliviously doing her schoolwork. Mirjam’s transport is scheduled to begin in two hours.
TWENTY-FIVE
Monday
We have to stand very close and stay very quiet, underneath the awning of the butcher shop. It’s a good spot, though. The awning and the ridiculous cow cover us as much as I hoped they would: Two pairs of soldiers have walked past without noticing we’re there. I just hope the sky stays clear. If it starts to rain or snow, one of them might duck under for cover.
I can’t see
Willem, but I know he’s not far away, a few blocks down, hiding with a change of clothes for Ollie.
Because Ollie, Olivier, Laurence Olivier, when Bas was feeling silly, is now wearing the gray Gestapo uniform of Elsbeth’s husband’s. It’s too big around the shoulders. If anyone looked too closely at Ollie, they would realize he was all wrong, and if anyone who knew Ollie walked past and questioned his uniform, that would be even worse.
So this is the plan: for Ollie and me to wait under the awning until the transport comes. For him to stop the soldier leading it, saying he has orders to search one baby carriage for contraband. He’ll get the camera. He’ll meet up with Willem to change out of the uniform so that suspicious neighbors don’t see him wearing it. Ollie must be nervous, but he doesn’t show it. He stares ahead, into the night, at the people who hurry past on their way home. We have time. Half an hour, at least—we’ve gotten into position just before curfew—and we’ve been killing time by barking reminders and observations to each other.
“You’ll only have a minute to get her,” Ollie says abruptly. “I’ll be querying them about the carriage, showing the false orders Willem created. I’ll draw it out as long as I can, but you’ll have barely any time, and they absolutely cannot see you.”
“I know, Ollie.”
“And then you’ll run to the street around the corner, where I’ll meet you and—”
“Ollie.”
We both fall silent again. I know everything he can warn me about because we’ve been through every variation of the plan that we can think of, and because I’ve already been warned, several times: If I can’t find Mirjam or get her to come with me in the period of time that it takes him to get the camera from the baby carriage, then she is not going to be rescued.
