“The things you know,” she said. It didn’t appear to bother her that I was drawing things out. Impatience was for the young. Ironic. They are the ones with so much time.
“To calculate the weight, first I needed to know how tall the monument was,” I said. “I couldn’t remember, although I should have known, because we studied this in architecture school. The tip of the reflection of the monument almost reached the end of the pool. I went to the side of the pool and I paced off the distance from the tip to the end. It was twelve feet. That meant if I stood at the edge of the pool, from my feet to the tip of the reflection, it would be twelve feet if I wanted to walk into the water and touch it. But, of course, I didn’t. The elderly are too often viewed with suspicion.”
She leaned against me as if nothing fascinated her more than my rambling.
“My eyes are just under six feet above the ground,” I said. “It meant that I knew the two sides of a triangle. Twelve feet from my feet to the tip of the reflection was the horizontal length, and six feet the vertical length to the ground from my eyes. Knowing those two sides was an easy task to calculate the length of the third side, the distance from my eyes to the tip of the reflection. That gave me the proportions I needed, so with a final measurement, the length of the reflection from the base of the monument to the tip, I would be able to deduce its height based on the proportions. After pacing that, I can tell you it is somewhere between five hundred twenty-five feet to five hundred seventy-five feet tall. And that would have been a close enough estimate to begin calculating the weight of the stone blocks.”
I drew a deep breath and paced out my words. Later, with this journal to help me remember, I wanted to be able to convince myself that I had made the correct choice, the correct risk. But that wasn’t why I was telling her this. I loved her. She needed to know; otherwise my selfishness would be proof that it wasn’t love, but a need for ownership.
“When I opened the door and saw you that evening last week,” I said, “I was ten years old all over again, determined to write a sonnet and win your hand. I knew with certainty beyond certainty that I still loved you as no other man has loved a woman. Here, this morning, I went to a jewelry store and found a ring. This morning, there was a moment I could have presented it to you on my knees.”
“Yet,” she said, “you didn’t.”
“My love for you is such a love that I cannot bear to chain you to me for the remainder of my life. You deserve more than that.”
Laura tried to shush me.
“Don’t,” I said, feeling a bitter curl of my lips. “What I want to do is convince you to marry me so that you are chained to me. After you cannot leave, then I will tell you who you married. In Holland, you didn’t leave your husband until his death, didn’t even reply to my letters. If I can chain you to me now, you’ll stay with me, no matter what.”
“You think there is something about you so horrible that if I knew, it would keep me from choosing you?”
No doubt, she was thinking of the Jappenkamp.
“Yes,” I answered. “There is.”
She stroked my face, and I was aware of how her knuckles protruded from her fingers, aware of the age spots on her hands. One of the minor indignities of aging. “We are old. Think of what it was like for us as children. We have survived the worst that life could have given us. Tell me and we will face the monster together.”
I let out a long, ragged breath. “I’m so weak, I want to hold you to that promise. But I can’t. Hear me out, and if you go back to Holland, I will accept it without a fight.”
She studied my face until I could no longer meet her gaze, and I again examined my notebook.
“I began to calculate the height of the monument,” I said as I looked at my neatly drawn numbers, “but even now, I need to read my notes to know why. In the time it had taken to pace the length of the reflection in the pool, I’d forgotten why I had started.”
She didn’t interrupt.
“You see, I know that the structure is classic architecture. I learned it as a draftsman. The monument is a narrow, four-sided structure capped by a small pyramid. I can calculate the height, and I can decide the foundation it needs, but I can’t remember why I’m doing it, or the name of the structure.”
I took one of Laura’s hands. Kissed the knobbed knuckles and the age spots. “In two years, three years, seven years, I won’t be here, Laura. My body will be as strong as ever, but only a shell. I have a disease that is slowly ravaging my mind. You shouldn’t have to endure that. Yet I am so selfish that I’m terrified there will be times when memory returns, when I know who I am and that you are gone.”
“You only know how to do one thing, Jeremiah,” Laura replied. “And that is not quit. You refuse to feel sorry for yourself and all you are going to do is keep fighting the forces of the universe, although in the end you won’t win. In the end, time steals our glories and our loves.”
She paused, struggled for words. “Unless there is more to life on earth than this life on earth. Like my grandmother, I believe there is, that we have a soul and another destination. That’s what gave her courage in the Jappenkamp. Now I need to find that same courage.”
She stood. “Let’s walk. This is too difficult for me. I can’t look at you as I talk.”
I followed her example. This time, she didn’t take my elbow. It filled me with dread.
“With you beside me, I want to weep,” she said. “But I can’t find the strength. What I want to do is beg you to propose, what I want to do is accept your proposal and run with you and find a justice of the peace, and while you are strong and vigorous and the man that I love, I want to chain myself to you so that when the darkness comes, I will have no choice but to care for you like the woman you need me to be. But I don’t know if I have that courage.”
Each step felt like my feet were stuck in buckets of concrete.
“I understand,” I said. There was nothing else to say. She had come to America to accomplish something, and after I met Georgie Smith in the evening, it would be accomplished. This was life. If she returned to Los Angeles with me to get her suitcase, I would try to enjoy each moment with her, and I would refuse to beg as she left again for Amsterdam.
“Do you?” she answered. “Because I am telling you that all I want is time to absorb what the future holds if we are bound together. If I beg you to marry me, I want to be certain that I will have the courage for what lies ahead.”
“Obelisk,” I said.
“Obelisk?”
“It just came to me. That’s the name for the Washington Monument. It’s an obelisk.”
I pulled out my moleskin notebook again and wrote a single word in it, repeating it aloud. “Obelisk.”
FORTY-EIGHT
That evening, Rachel and I endured a wand sweeping by a man in a black suit who seemed bored at his task. Then we were escorted out of the cloakroom. A waiter led us to Senator Knight.
I knew nothing about Washington power circles, but I recognized the obvious aura of exclusivity, an established restaurant that showed no signs of trendiness with its dark-paneled walls, dark carpet, and low lighting. It was an atmosphere soaked in discretion, dispensing generous drink portions and steaks of even greater proportions. Rachel had expected this and had dressed for it. Dark skirt with a hem below her knees, suit jacket over a dark silk blouse. She clutched her purse at her side. I, too, wore a suit, with my moleskin journal in my jacket pocket. Rachel had promised I wouldn’t need it. She had promised that if it appeared I was searching for a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, she would handle the conversation until I rejoined.
This was a new sensation for me, the feeling of being able to trust the help of someone. I was proud of my daughter and, more importantly, was able to tell her that by leaning in and whispering. My reward was a radiant smile from her.
Knight was waiting for us in a booth near the back, away from the kitchen. A large candle centered on the table gave the only real light, and he was facing away f
rom the traffic area, holding a glass with lime on ice and beaded with condensation.
He stood as she sat on the opposite side of the booth, then sat and sipped his drink when she and I were settled.
I was happy to follow Rachel’s lead. He was drinking a soda, so she ordered two sodas, one for her, one for me.
He frowned. “I try, but I don’t like soda. What’s the point of health if you don’t enjoy it? Not that I’m healthy. Is extending life a few extra months worth drinking this stuff?”
A waiter stopped with another drink on a tray.
“Johnny, make a note that I lasted nearly five minutes with the soda water before succumbing,” Knight told him. He smiled at Rachel. “Gin and tonic.”
“Yes sir.” The waiter glanced at Rachel. “And for the lady and her companion?”
“Still sodas.” This, I thought, was subtle gamesmanship on her part. Had she changed her mind, it would have appeared her initial order of soda was a flattering move to mirror him.
Knight raised his eyes to mine. “You are going to speak at this meeting?”
“The marble,” I said. I’m sure my tone was terse. “It’s mine. I want it back.”
I needed possession of it before the apology. After, I doubted he would part with it.
Knight pulled a small box out from his suit jacket. It looked like a box that held a ring. He pushed it across the table.
I opened it. A surge of sorrow threatened to bring me to tears. It brought me to the moment when my father had handed it to me. It brought me to the memory of chasing the truck that held all the Dutch men and boys that the Japanese were taking away from me.
I could only whisper when I spoke to Knight. “Thank you.”
Rachel and I had earlier rehearsed how I would then tell Knight that I had something to give him in return. But choked by memories, I found it difficult to speak.
She interpreted that as a lapse into blankness and spoke for me.
“My father has something to give to you as well,” Rachel told Knight. “After you read it, then you will have the conversation that we agreed would occur between the two of you.”
“I’m not interested in games. I’ll make my apology, all right?”
“You’re going to need to know what my father and I have learned from Laura,” Rachel said. “Think of me as a mediator that you can trust.”
Knight made a grunting noise that Rachel took as assent.
“I’m going to start with the catalyst,” Rachel said. “There is no coincidence about the timing of all of this. Jeremiah didn’t wake up one morning after seven decades and decide to find some resolution to those years in the internment camp.”
Rachel paused, because the waiter had returned with her drink. His experience at a restaurant like this was apparent, because he read their body language correctly and didn’t linger.
“I’m not interested in being treated like a puppy, with my nose rubbed in my mistakes,” Knight said. “I’m prepared to apologize. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Laura Jansen, as you might know, married into the outer circles of Dutch royalty,” Rachel said. “That is relevant here, because her husband had a bureaucratic position at a high level. You understand that kind of power, don’t you?”
Knight took a long gulp of his gin and tonic. I took the green marble out of the box and held it inside a clenched fist.
“In the late forties,” Rachel continued, “Queen Juliana began to give royal recognition to citizens who had been heroes during the war. Those who hid Jews, those who led underground resistant movements. It was a program where citizens nominated candidates, and careful background research was done before royal recognition was given. It was a great honor to receive such a letter.”
Knight was more interested in his gin and tonic than her preamble.
“The short of it—,” she began.
“For this meeting, my favorite phrase,” Knight said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“—is that Laura’s husband was the one to dispense those letters, usually with some kind of ceremony, depending on who had received royal recognition. One of the letters went to this woman.”
Rachel opened her purse and pulled out the photograph. She placed it on the table.
“Too dark here,” Knight said.
On her smartphone, Rachel turned on the flashlight app, and the bright light on the photograph showed a blocky woman standing beside one much more elegant.
“Queen Juliana,” Rachel said.
Knight straightened in surprise. “And Dr. Eikenboom.”
“Survivors from your camp put her name forward as a candidate. She received a royal commendation.”
“Wonderful. You mentioned something about the short of it.”
“Dr. Eikenboom used this recognition to pursue a commendation for Laura’s grandmother, Sophie, who was granted a letter from Queen Juliana within the year.”
Rachel paused and gathered her thoughts. “Dr. Eikenboom also successfully pushed for two others from the camp to receive commendations from the queen. The research was done—which Laura’s husband oversaw in his official position for Queen Juliana—and the letters written, but when it was convenient, he found a way for the letters to be filed in such a manner that they never reached those other two from the camp. He worried the two of you might someday be reconnected.”
“Look,” Knight said, “I’m not a fan of ancient history.”
It didn’t ruffle Rachel. She spoke as if she had not been interrupted. “Laura found those letters in his papers after his death. That’s why she flew to America. To share those letters with Jeremiah. She found him through my Facebook page.”
Again, Rachel reached into her purse. This time to pull out a letter on heavy parchment, with a royal seal.
Rachel said quietly, “Senator Knight, this letter is written in Dutch. I’m glad Washington hosts so many nationalities, because it was a simple matter to find a translator on short notice. I had it done in case it’s been too long since you’ve used your Dutch. It’s a letter that never reached your mother.”
He had his glass halfway to his mouth, but those words stopped him and he set the glass down.
“My mother.”
“Did she ever talk to you about her camp years?” she asked.
Knight gave Rachel a challenging look, someone too proud to acknowledge an act of shame. “My mother gave birth to a half sister who was half Japanese. My mother raised the child in a village outside the camp, because she would have been ostracized by the Dutch for becoming impregnated by the commander’s rape of her.”
“Dr. Eikenboom’s account of the situation is different from that, Senator Knight. Dr. Eikenboom’s testimony is that it wasn’t rape, but consensual. Over a period of weeks.”
She’d spoken gently, but he slammed his glass down, shattering it across the table. He ignored the shards. As did she.
“If you are now threatening me with—”
Rachel reached across and put her hand on the senator’s wrist. The waiter had come to the table. With her free hand, and without looking up, Rachel waved him away.
“Senator,” she said, “Jeremiah hasn’t shared much with me about his time in the Dutch East Indies. I only know enough to have wept on your behalf when I learned the truth. I could only imagine how you would have fought to understand what your mother did, and how a part of you must have been aware of her nightly visits to the commander.”
“Enough!” He began to slide out of the booth.
She did not let go of his hand. “I am begging you, read the letter.”
“We are finished here.” He was now standing, his voice almost choking.
I could not pretend that I liked him now any more than when we first met. Even so, I ached with his pain.
“Your mother,” Rachel said, “saved hundreds and hundreds of lives. God Himself only knows the price she had to pay for it. Read the letter, Senator, and find the peace that you deserve after all these years.”
> She pulled on his wrist, and he sat, grudgingly. He did not reach for the letter, but struggled to keep control of his emotions.
“Then let me read the letter to you,” Rachel said. “The translation.”
He didn’t protest, so she unfolded another piece of paper. I could not imagine how I would have found the strength to do this, and I felt gratitude wash over me for my daughter’s strength on my behalf.
She read to Knight, lifting her eyes occasionally. “In recognition of the sacrifice and risks that Georgina Ruth Smith took to ensure that Red Cross supplies reached those in desperate need of medicine and food, I declare, as the Queen of the Netherlands, that royal recognition should be bestowed upon her for—”
“Red Cross supplies,” Knight said, with vague bewilderment.
She gave him the original, and the translation.
That’s when I spoke. “Georgie—”
“I am Senator Knight.”
“Senator Knight,” I said, swallowing a prideful reaction of anger at his admonishment, “I have been wrong for seven decades. I am ashamed of that, but I will not be ashamed of what I must say.”
Knight’s hands, on the table, were trembling. He did not pull them away from the spreading puddle of gin and tonic among the shards.
“Senator Knight,” I said, “there was a night that I snuck into the commander’s house. I was determined to steal the Red Cross supplies that he had been withholding from the camp. Your mother caught me and prevented me from doing so. I thought she was collaborating with the Japanese. I was wrong. She was using her time in the house to pull medicine out of full boxes in such a way that Nakahara wouldn’t realize she was stealing medicine for the doctors in camp.”
Rachel continued for me, “Each dose of sulfa that saved a life was a dose of sulfa that your mother had to risk a beating or possible death to steal. Doctors Eikenboom and Kloet knew this but had to pretend that, indeed, she spent evenings with the commander for her own benefit. No one knew that much of what Nakahara gave her for food and luxuries to be his mistress was what she in turn gave to the doctors to distribute.”
Thief of Glory Page 29
