Vera smiled at her and wriggled free from Hannah’s arm. ‘Come on, I’ll race you home!’
Their uncle and aunt were still awake, listening to the radio and drinking a last cup of coffee in the kitchen. ‘Come in, girls,’ Aunt Mina said. ‘Join us.’
‘Shh,’ Uncle Bernard whispered.
They were listening to an English station, which came through in spurts of a few sentences between whooshing sounds as if the waves in the Channel were making themselves heard. ‘There’s something going on in London!’
Vera sat down next to him, still wearing her jacket. Hannah stood in the doorway. More bad news, something to spoil their nice time out. She didn’t want to hear it. There was always bad news if you knew where to look. And Mutti and Vati? If there was no way to find out whether they were safe, why not just think they were. Why think about it at all? She was going to bed.
At midnight Vera slid in beside her and woke her. ‘It’s late,’ Hannah protested.
‘I know, but the prime minister in England is going to resign, and the BBC is broadcasting the story. Uncle Bernard explained it to us. He says the war is going badly for them.’
* * *
Sometime during the early morning, thunder woke her and she turned over to look out the window. The moon was bright and almost full, there were no clouds and no lightening flashes. Strange, there it was again. Was it airplanes? What a funny time to be up there! Waiting for the next wave of engine noise, she slept badly and, when Vera’s alarm clock went off, she sat up and yawned.
‘Did you hear something last night? No? It sounded like thunder or airplanes, I couldn’t tell which.’
Vera jumped out of bed, wrapped her robe around her quickly and ran to the door. ‘Oh God, it’s happened!’
‘What? What’s happened?’
When Vera didn’t answer, she jumped up and followed her.
In the kitchen her uncle and aunt were sitting in their robes and pajamas listening to the radio again. This time it was a Dutch station, a man’s voice trying hard to be slow and steady but not quite hiding his excitement or fright or anger, it was hard to say which.
‘I repeat,’ the voice said, ‘there has been no declaration of war. The Luftwaffe flew over our land early this morning, first from east to west as though planning to attack the English coast. Shortly after that, they turned back, attacked the airfields near The Hague and destroyed a number of planes. Those of our planes which did take to the air were successful in shooting down thirteen German aircraft, but we regret to announce only a few returned safely to their base.’
There was a long silence, some low crackling, and Uncle Bernard turned the knob back and forth trying to get the station again.
They sat silently for a few minutes, then he said, ‘I’ll leave it on while we have something to eat. Shall we get dressed first?’
Aunt Mina sat with her head down, her hands folded on the table in front of her. Hannah wondered if she was praying. She was a Christian, but she’d given up church a long time ago, because Uncle Bernard didn’t believe in churches and prayer, and because her family had been so mean to him.
Vera asked, ‘Should I go to work today, do you think?’
‘Why don’t you?’ he said. ‘Perhaps your Mr NSB will have some news right from German headquarters, and you can come home and tell us.’
‘Oh Uncle, he’s not like that! He’s as much a Dutchman as you are!’
‘Sure he is! After all, the Dutch are Germans at heart, aren’t they?
‘Don’t say that! Don’t say “they” like that!’ Aunt Mina put out her hand as if she wanted to cover his mouth.
‘They, they!’ he shouted. ‘Not you, they!’ and he jumped up and left the room, slamming the door behind him so hard they all jumped a little.
Hannah followed Vera back to their room, and they dressed in silence.
Later, at the table for a hurried breakfast, they found nothing to say to each other.
The radio started up suddenly, and the same voice, more solemn now, said hundreds of enemy parachutists had been dropped over The Hague, where the queen lived. Many of the German planes had been shot down and the parachutists captured. So far the queen and her family were safe. Nobody knew what her plans were, but everything was being done to assure her safety.
‘I wonder why we don’t flood the country. That would stop them,’ Aunt Mina said.
‘Not if they’re coming by parachute. Did you hear what he said? They’re wearing Dutch uniforms! I tell you, we’ve been damned fools and maybe we deserve to lose. Those devils know how to fight wars all right, and they’ve had plenty of practice.’
There were several loud bangs from the radio as though the station were being bombed, and then someone speaking directly from the palace told them again that the queen and her family were safe. Of course they couldn’t say where she was, but she was going to make a speech later that day.
The announcer came back to report, ‘The German planes that landed on the unfinished airfield outside the city sank into the sand, there being no runways as yet.’
That made them laugh. Uncle Bernard adjusted the dials to get a clearer sound, and Hannah stood up and went to the door. Something throbbed painfully behind her eyes and her lips were trembling. She didn’t want to hear anymore.
Years ago she’d realized that, if she didn’t think about it, it wasn’t really happening. ‘It’ was her parents arguing so loudly you could hear them through their bedroom door. ‘It’ was a teacher shouting that they were all lazy and useless, just because one girl had forgotten to bring her notebook. ‘It’ was the neighbor’s radio blaring marching music or a passionate political speech. She didn’t have to put her fingers in her ears, the silence happened inside her head. And most of the time the bad things would be over and done with, everybody exhausted by emotion, when she turned herself on again.
When their uncle reluctantly switched off the radio and went to work, Vera left too, a little late, and Hannah took her coat and went out. All morning she wandered through the city, staring distractedly into shop windows or watching the swans and ducks on the canals. There were fewer people than usual on the streets, perhaps because they felt safer in their houses or because they wanted to stay close to their radios. If there had been newspapers, they were long since sold out.
In the cathedral, some people were sitting quietly and others were circling the nave behind the arches. Hannah leaned back and looked up at the point where all the columns curved up and met, and at the pale gray walls and plain glass windows. In one window at the far end, a large dark cross was imbedded in panes of deep blue glass. You didn’t have to be a Catholic to see how beautiful that blue was.
Her Catholic friend Trudie had taken her to church sometimes on Saturday afternoon, when she had to confess her sins. She told Hannah that most weeks she had to make something up, like eating a cookie just before supper or not washing her hands and face before climbing into bed. Both things her mother never noticed, but God would. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ Hannah could still recite it. What about ‘blessed is the fruit of thy womb’? If God blessed it and Jesus was Jewish, didn’t it apply to her too?
* * *
At supper Uncle Bernard quizzed Vera about her boss and laughed when she tried to defend him. ‘Was he hoping the Germans would come? Is he pleased about this?’
‘No, he’s not! He didn’t say much to me, but Mrs Braun came in, and he told her this wasn’t the way to do it.’
‘To do what?’
‘To behave? I don’t know.’
‘Well, I do. People like Braun want us to join what they like to call the great German Empire. Excuse me, I have to get this right: it’s the Thousand-year Empire. Can you believe it? As if any tyrant ever held on that long! Of course Braun doesn’t think they’re criminals. The Nazis have been damned good to people like him so far. It’s the rest of us.’
His face was flushed and his voice loud, and Aunt Mina came over from the stove, where she wa
s ladling meat and vegetables onto his plate, and set it down in front of him. ‘Enough politics,’ she said firmly. ‘At the table we don’t talk politics.’
‘No, of course not,’ he answered. ‘No politics, no money, no religion, no sex! You see how civilized we are, Vera and Hannah.’ He dug his fork into a piece of meat, lifted it and waved it at them. ‘Enjoy,’ he said. ‘We won’t be seeing much of this from now on. No, no, Mina, I am not talking politics. I am talking economics.’
She laughed, shook her finger at him and said, ‘That’s why I married you, a smart man who can talk about economics without knowing the price of meat.’
That evening Uncle Bernard read the paper or listened to the news. Someone who spoke Dutch with a strong accent came on and read a message from the German high command, which, Uncle Bernard said, ought to gladden everybody’s heart. If there was no resistance, Germany would respect their country and their royal family. Otherwise there was a good chance they would be treated like all the other enemy countries. It was now the business of the Dutch government to open a dialogue with the German forces.
‘Well, that was clear enough. Now the rest of us can go to bed and leave our betters to talk us out of trouble. Or into it.’
Turning off the hissing radio, he ducked back behind his newspaper and hid there, not reading or turning the pages. Aunt Mina sat near him and knitted, Vera went to bed, and Hannah played solitaire at the kitchen table until she was tired enough to sleep.
All the next day, Saturday, except for meals, she stayed in her room, curled up on her bed, reading in Aunt Mina’s magazines about how to knit a sweater, cook a stuffed cabbage and brighten up last year’s summer frocks with new buttons and a fresh white collar. None of which she would ever want to do.
On the morning of 10 May, the English set fire to the oil tanks behind the Central Station to prevent the Germans from taking control of them.
2 Pam, May 1940
They were reading one of Shakespeare’s plays about an arrogant, noble and stupid general named Coriolanus.
‘Questions?’ Dr Kamp asked. ‘Comments?’
The usual hands went up, and he pointed to the student sitting next to Pam, the one who wanted to be an actor but had promised his parents he’d try the university first.
‘Does this remind you of anybody?’ Marcus said, laughing and standing up to read aloud, '“I have seen dumb men throng to see him and the blind to hear him speak. Matrons flung gloves and ladies and maids their scarves upon him as he passed, the nobles bowed, and the commons made a shower and thunder with their caps and shouts. I never saw the like!”' He made an astounded face and everybody laughed.
In the back of the room two students wearing NSB uniforms shouted, ‘Shut up! Sit down!’ and everybody else laughed again, even Dr Kamp.
Pam saw the young actor blush, and she touched his arm, ‘That was good, Marcus.’
‘I’m glad some people got the point.’
‘Everybody did! Are you still planning to be an actor?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not planning anything, are you?’ and again she knew what he meant.
Just before this last class ended, Dr Kamp told them their exam assignment was an essay. ‘Choose a passage that means something to you,’ he said. ‘Make Shakespeare live again.’ He looked at the young actor and smiled. ‘He’s not all political, you know. There’s love and friendship, heroism, charity, what else? Everything! Anyway, you’re free to choose. Just think, will you, before you write? Do him honor?’ He looked away from them, out the window, and finished casually, ‘I’ll read your work, nobody else.’ He was telling them to be honest and they would be safe with him.
* * *
Walking under the arcade between the university buildings, Pam stopped to look at the book dealers’ tables. Among the textbooks students sold at the end of the year, there might be an English novel, a Virginia Woolf for herself, an H.G. Wells for Ted or a clever and bloodless murder mystery for her mother. Adrian and her father never read novels, a waste of time, they said. Her father could hardly keep up with what his fellow historians were publishing, and Adrian had a pile of radical pamphlets hidden under his law books. They both read two or three newspapers every day and quarreled regularly about what all the bad news meant.
Pam didn’t know many students who read the newspapers, especially now that the national press was scrambling to show how loyal it could be to the Germans. A few days before the invasion, the government had rounded up all the top NSB-ers, and one daily paper, The Telegraph, had complained so bitterly that Pam’s father dropped his morning paper on the floor in disgust. ‘They can’t make it plainer whose side they’re on.’
‘What is it, dear?’ her mother asked. ‘Who?’
‘The editor and his boss. They’re hysterical, because the police want to know how loyal Mussert and his Nazi-loving friends are before they let them out of prison. As if there’s any doubt.’
Pam picked up the paper, but he took it from her and threw it down again.
‘I don’t know why you read that paper, Pa, it’s pro-German and anti-Semitic and a gossip rag.’
‘Know thy enemy.’
Pam shook her head. ‘I suppose you know when you’re reading lies, but lots of other people don’t.’
* * *
On that Thursday morning there had been nothing to be afraid of. War was impossible and she was a very lucky girl. She would have said blessed, if she believed in things like that. They were having breakfast, a window was open, and they heard a bird singing in the garden, three short sharp notes and a long trill repeated over and over. Her mother said, ‘It’s mating season!’, and her father bit noisily into his toast as if to say she was talking nonsense again, but she and Pam were used to that and smiled at each other.
She did love him. He didn’t make it easy, but that made loving him even more important. Now Ma, you couldn’t help loving her. She looked at her pretty mother, leaning back in her chair and listening with eyes closed to the eager amorous bird.
The twins appeared in robe and pajamas, hair standing on end, and dropped into their chairs with a bump. ‘Out,’ their father ordered, without looking at them. ‘Wash, dress, come back looking like gentlemen.’
Ted raised his eyebrows at his mother and left the room obediently, Adrian after him. Pam saw her mother’s mouth twitch with a smothered smile. They were young men, but for Pa they were still boys, and he believed in obeying the one who feeds you. He’d done it himself. Ma had met his parents just once, when she and Pa married and they had come reluctantly to the wedding in the city hall. Their only son marrying a a Christian! Disobeying them! Perhaps, she told Pam, that simple ceremony was Pa’s way of saying he was free at last of his father’s demands and expectations.
They agreed that he couldn’t have been a happy child, and they had to make up for that. But wasn’t it strange that he was the same sort of parent? Adrian fought him openly, Ted gave in on anything unimportant and hid the rest, and she and Ma, being women, led their two lives, the one he saw and the one they shared. But they were a happy family, in their special way, she believed that. In a year the twins would be gone, out of the university and out of the house. She and Ma would miss them, her father would too, though he’d never say. A year? Maybe sooner, if they were called up.
Biking past the Concert Hall in April, she’d seen reserve soldiers coming out with backpacks and duffel bags. The army had taken over the hall as soon as martial law began. The year before, when German troops attacked Poland, and the whole of the British Empire and France promised to come to its aid, the government in The Hague had started preparing for what they hoped wouldn’t happen. Then Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, and it became a question of when it was Holland’s turn, not if.
On that May morning a week ago, two bombs had fallen from a German plane that hadn’t even meant to fly over Amsterdam. One bomb landed in a canal, another destroyed several houses, a few dozen people died, a few more were injured. Eve
rybody went around saying it was lucky, it could have been worse. That was what people always said when something bad happened that wasn’t as bad as it might have been.
They had listened to reports on the radio about Dutch soldiers in the south being taken prisoner, read the extra editions of newspapers with fat headlines about France and Belgium being invaded on the same day and then, a few days later, that all of Rotterdam was burning. Posters pasted-up everywhere told people in other cities what to do in case they too were attacked from the air.
Except for the parachutists and the bombs and the queen and her family escaping to England, there was, at first, no sign of the lost war in Amsterdam. The professors lectured, and the students scribbled notes, met for beer or coffee and complained about too many assignments with too short deadlines.
Coming out into the sunshine, Pam wondered why so many people were standing along the street at the end of the bridge. The crowd was lined up along the curb, a few old men, some boys and girls who should have been in school, but mostly women with their shopping anchored between their feet. They were all looking the same way, down the wide avenue toward the Mint Tower. More students came out onto the bridge and stopped to see what was going on. Everybody was speaking in whispers or standing silently, as though they were in a theater just before the curtains parted.
Marcus had told her that the German troops were approaching Amsterdam and would enter the city in style. Now he stood next to her on the bridge where she’d promised to meet Ted for lunch. ‘This will be a grand parade, Pamela, impressive tanks and motorcycles and handsome black-booted troops. You wait and see how respectful and welcoming we will be. Well, you have to respect all that power, don’t you?’
He spoke close to her ear, ‘Aren’t you excited? They are!’ He tipped his head toward the crowd below. ‘This is the real thing, just like the Romans, you know, when a city fell to the cohorts. Yesterday the chief of police and a councilman went out to greet the Germans. It was a quiet, formal little meeting, but friendly, considering they were handing over the capital of the country. Just one civil servant carrying the obligatory white flag. After they all shook hands and smiled politely, our police chief told the general he hoped our Jews would be treated fairly.’
The Time Between Page 2
