The Time Between

by Bryna Hellmann-Gillson

  ‘Ah,’ Bernie murmured, ‘doomed. What a word.’

  Adrian said, ‘Yes, what a word. And if it fits, wear it. Know any Latin? “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori”, it is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country. Keep it in mind, children. Some of us will die, but it will be worth it.’ He leaned back and spoke to the accordionist, ‘Here, get yourself a beer.’ He tossed over a coin, and the musician put his accordion on the floor and went over to the bar.

  Was this what they did for fun? Hannah wanted none of it. All this talk about guns and bombs, heroes and doom! A fancy Latin quotation didn’t make it any more wonderful. What did Tommy mean when he called Adrian a radical? She’d have to stay away from him, too bad, but she hadn’t come to Holland looking for trouble.

  The accordion player left, the barman leaning against his rack of glasses yawned, and Hannah’s beer, half-drunk, was already too warm to enjoy. Adrian looked across the table at her. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Around the corner,’ she answered and added, ‘in the hospital.’ Why did he want to know? He was grinning at her, his eyes narrowed, the blue hooded.

  ‘I’ll walk you back. Okay, Hans?’

  Hans nodded. ‘If Hannah agrees.’

  Did she? She looked up at Adrian, whose mouth twitched as though he were trying not to laugh at her, as though he knew she wouldn’t say no. When she stood up, he came around and helped her into her coat. Hans had turned his back and was talking to Suza and her friend.

  ‘You’re in good hands,’ Adrian said. ‘I can see in the dark.’ He waved at the others, took her arm and marched her out. They walked without speaking, she close to the wall and he holding her arm firmly. At the hospital door they stopped, and he pulled her around to look at him. In the dim moonlight she couldn’t see his expression.

  ‘It’s here, thank you,’ she whispered, thinking she should get out her key but waiting to see what he would do or say.

  He put his free hand on her other arm and pulled her toward him so unexpectedly that she lost her balance and fell against him. ‘Now I know where you are,’ he said, bent and kissed her forehead. ’Have you got a key?’

  She nodded, took it out and turned to use it. When she looked back, he was gone. ‘Now I know where you are,’ he’d said. He’d be back, she was sure of that. Only, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to.

  8 Pam, April 1941

  Adrian said they ought to cancel the telephone. They couldn’t really afford it, but Pam and Ted wouldn’t let him do it. ‘Ma expects a call every week, she’ll worry if she doesn’t hear from us,’ Ted said.

  ‘And I need to ask her things,’ Pam added.

  A few weeks after their parents moved south, Mrs Lenz, who had cleaned for them every week for years, stopped coming. A note put through the door said, ‘Can’t do it,’ and that was that.

  ‘Don’t tell Ma,’ Ted advised. ‘She’ll think she has to come back. Can you manage?’

  Pam said of course, what was so difficult about shopping and cooking, and she expected the boys to help keep the house tidy. The meals were the biggest problem. They had enough food stamps, but there were shops she couldn’t go into, and more and more foods were rationed, sold-out or had just disappeared. Ma said it was better down south, but even from there trainloads of food were going to Germany.

  After the summer holiday, when it would have been embarrassing or even dangerous to try to sign up at the uni, she had gone on studying by herself. When the chores were done, she sat at the dining room table with her Shakespeare, her notes and an English dictionary. The first task she set herself was Dr Kamp’s final essay. When he assigned it, she knew immediately what she wanted to write about.

  At the end of Cymbeline, a play about a secret marriage, a wicked stepmother and a sister reunited with her brothers, there was a song. Nobody knew what the music had sounded like. She searched her notes, found the song, read aloud, ‘Fear no more the frown of the great. Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke. Care no more to clothe and eat…’ and began to cry. And then, feeling foolish, she rubbed her tears off on her sleeve and went on reading, ‘Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust.’

  She stared at a blank piece of paper until it made her so nervous that she covered it with her initials sketched upside-down and backwards, just for something to do, while she rejected one useless idea after another. In the end, she wrote that she had two brothers, like Imogen, the heroine, and admitted that she didn’t know anybody who had died, not yet, and she wasn’t sure she’d think they were lucky.

  Folding it into an envelope, she had known it wasn’t about anything really, and she’d never pass the course that way. Maybe Dr Kamp hadn’t sent it back because he wanted to spare her the shame of knowing she’d earned a failing grade. She thought she could write something better now. She wondered what had happened to Marcus, was he still studying? He had such a beautiful voice. She hoped he was all right.

  Remembering other mornings, the family at breakfast, plans made to meet a friend, exchange library books, book concert tickets, she counted up the things she couldn’t do any longer and told herself they weren’t important. Ma and Pa were still safe, and the boys came home every evening, that was important.

  From the kitchen, where she was setting the table, she could hear them laughing. They were in their parents’ bedroom, the door closed, and Adrian had asked her not to come in. He didn’t want her to clean the room either, he said he and Ted would do it. She’d peeked in once and seen the bed covered with a tablecloth and, laid out neatly on it, were copper pipes of various sizes and lengths, coils of wire, small flat pieces of metal that somebody had cleaned until they shone, a drill, large and small screw drivers and some tins without labels. Whatever the boys were doing, it wasn’t something they wanted her to know.

  ‘Can you come?’ she called out.

  The door opened and Ted looked out. ‘Sure, Pam. Adrie, come on. No, now!’

  He came into the kitchen and put his arm around her, sniffed his plate of cabbage and mashed potato and said, ‘Ah, that smells good.’

  They’d had the same dish twice before that week, but she could count on him to say something nice. Adrian never did, but he ate everything she put in front of him, and she took that for a compliment.

  He appeared waving his hands in the air, his fingers black with oil. ‘Have we got any paper? Water won’t take this off.’

  ‘In my bag,’ Ted said. ‘In the hall.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Pam whispered.

  Ted shook his head and didn’t answer. When Adrian joined them, they ate in silence. She waited for Ted to say something, but he kept his head down and didn’t look at her. They were doing something illegal, that was why. She wouldn’t ask again. ‘Ma called,’ she said. ‘She wanted to tell you to go ahead and sell something.’

  ‘Is that all she said?’

  ‘She only had a minute. She was calling from their neighbor's house, and the husband was due back any minute. He’s not happy about his wife being friends with Ma. He has too many friends in the government.’

  ‘Another collaborating sneak,’ Adrian exclaimed. ‘What branch of the racket is he in?’

  ‘He buys paintings and sells them to the Germans.’ Ted said. ‘That’s how Ma got the idea we could do that too. It’s a booming business, with so many people needing money to get out of the country, and the Germans very interested in Dutch art.’

  ‘Ted!’ Pam interrupted. ‘Is that what she told you? That they want to get out?’

  ‘She didn’t say that, no. Just that they need money and so do we. It’s not as if you get what anything’s really worth but, now that Pa’s been fired, they’ll be grateful for whatever comes in.’

  ‘Do we know anybody like that man?’

  ‘No, but there are plenty of art dealers in Amsterdam, and some of them have German clients.’

  ‘Rich pickings!’ Adrian said. ‘Every family has a Rembrandt or two. Or a good imitation.’
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  ‘Or something almost as valuable. It’s a profitable business, especially if you can buy cheap and sell dear. If the Germans find out how much money those so-called art experts are stealing from them, or how many fakes they’ve fallen for, heads will roll.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ Adrian said. ‘They might smack the bastards around a little, but they need them. The Nazis don’t want to steal, it’s more civilized to buy what they want. Did Ma say which picture we should sell?’

  ‘No, she just wanted you to try to find somebody.'

  ‘I’ll look,’ Ted said, ‘but I can’t roll a painting up and take it out of the house under my arm.’

  'Maybe somebody could come here and look first?'

  ‘Hold on!' Adrian said. 'Nobody comes here, not if he’s a collaborator. He’d pass the address on, and we’d come home to an empty house.’

  ‘Do we have to choose which painting?’ Pam asked. She couldn't have done it.

  ‘They’d probably want Elegant Company,' Ted said. ‘The Germans are mad for anything from the Golden Age.’

  Pam sighed. ‘I love that painting. Can’t we sell something else?’

  ‘Sooner or later we’ll probably sell them all, sweetie,’ Adrian said. ‘In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun!’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘An American song, but it’s just right for now, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you are having fun,’ Ted said. ‘I guess you are, you’ve always enjoyed a fight.’

  Is that what they called it, she thought, ‘a fight’? Nobody said ‘war’. Pa said resistance came out of the barrel of a gun, and war was when nice people became murderers. Ted and Adrie wouldn’t do that, they couldn’t. As a little girl, she had seen them wrestling, shouting and grunting while they pummeled each other. Adrie always ended on top of Ted, pinning him down and repeating, ‘Say uncle! Say it!’ It had frightened her until, one day, when she leaped on his back and tried to pull him off Ted, they had laughed and hugged her and said it was just fun. It was what boys do, they said, something she’d never understand.

  Now she listened while they talked about parties they’d been to or friends they’d happened to meet on the street, and she understood that they were never going to talk about the metal scraps and tools in the bedroom. Or what she’d once seen Ted going into the cellar with, bags of stuff he didn’t want her to see.

  ‘What’s making you so quiet?’ he asked.

  She leaned away from the table and looked toward the window, not meeting his eyes. ‘You two talk enough for three,’ she said. ‘And all you talk about are your friends and the parties you go to. I don’t know any of those people, and I’m never invited.’ She stopped and then said, ‘That’s not what I meant to say.’

  ‘It’s all right, Pam, go on.’

  She put down her fork and looked at him. ‘I don’t know where you work or how safe it is. I’m afraid every day that you’ll be arrested and sent to work in Germany. I won’t know where you are, and there’s nobody to ask!’

  ‘Oh Pam!’ Ted exclaimed. ‘I’m sorry! I never thought,’ and he looked at his brother for help.

  'It's all right, Pam, Ted and I are going to be all right. It’s not as bad as you think. People are getting arrested, but it’s always a reprisal for some kind of sabotage, and it’s mostly Jews, because that’s part of their plan too.’

  ‘They won’t send you to Germany to work?’

  ‘Not as long as I’m useful. I'm working at the central station. There’s lots of stuff coming in every day, and we have to get it unloaded and send the trains back the same day. We do all the heavy lifting, and the Green Shirts stand around and make sure nothing gets stolen. Well, almost nothing. They always manage to take a bit for themselves.’

  ‘I thought you knew what I do, Pam,’ Ted said. ‘It’s not very interesting. I work for a printer and, in the evening when most of the men are gone, we run off an illegal paper.’

  ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’

  ‘Not if we keep quiet about it. The boss knows but he doesn’t, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘And what are you doing in there?’ She tipped her head toward the hall.

  ‘Honestly,’ Adrian began and laughed when she glared at him. ‘I was going to be honest. I just don’t think we should tell you everything. The more we tell you, the more we put you in danger.’

  ‘Adrie’s making radios,’ Ted said. ‘And I help find the wire and stuff he needs. That’s all. I swear it, Pam, it isn’t much but it’s important.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Adrian explained, ‘after the strike and that big round-up last winter, the police have been going around banging on doors and looking into people’s closets. So everybody’s being extra careful. Even my Communist buddies aren’t planning anything that I know of. At least I haven’t been told.’

  ‘All right,' Pam agreed. 'I suppose I’ll go on worrying, but it helps to know something and, don’t worry, I don’t have anybody to tell your secrets to.’

  ‘What about your friends? What are they doing?’

  ‘Oh, are you asking? Which friends do you mean? I don’t go to classes anymore, so all I do is keep this apartment neat and go shopping and try to make something decent to eat out of whatever little I can buy. But I’ve been looking for something else to do, something useful, some way to earn money for us.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, Pam,’ Ted said. ‘You ought to be with people every day, not just hang around here. Oh, sorry! I know you’re not just hanging around. But you’re not our mother, and it’s not right that you spend all your time taking care of us.’

  ‘Have you found anything?’ Adrian asked. ‘Because I do know some people who might help.’

  ‘I think I have, but I don’t want to talk about it, not yet. They won’t take a Jewish girl, I think, that’s the only problem.’

  ‘You don’t look Jewish,’ Ted said.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s good enough,’ Adrian said. ‘The Telegraph had a story yesterday about Mussert going to Prague to trot around one of their camps. He was very impressed, especially at the way the prisoners, sorry, the residents were allowed to have schools and an orchestra, a theater, even a ballet school. He said, and I quote not very accurately, that these people, who are, after all, inferior, he didn’t need to say to whom, are very lucky. Doesn’t it make you laugh, that this scrawny dark-haired runt, Hitler I mean, imagines a world full of tall, blond, athletic supermen? When I read stuff about Mussert, I think how lucky I am to be a big blond guy like my Dutch buddies.’

  ‘I read it too, it’s sickening,’ Ted agreed.

  ‘Did he really say inferior?’ Pam asked.

  ‘Yeah, he did. Did you see that, Ted, that chart in the paper that shows who’s Jewish and who isn’t? One grandparent is enough. How many do we have? Two.’ He passed a finger left to right across his throat. ‘Remember that rally in Nuremberg five years ago, when the Nazis announced their racial law? What was it? Oh, yeah, “for the protection of German blood and honor”. When people start talking about their honor, run for cover! After that, Jews were no longer full citizens, couldn’t vote or hold a government office, study, teach, be doctors or lawyers. Sound familiar? It’s what they’re doing here, one step at a time, only faster now, because it’s easier when you do it the second time.’

  They'd been lucky so far, she thought, but it was just luck. They lived well away from the ghetto, the Germans hadn’t taken their house to billet soldiers, and she avoided the center of town, the Dam Square and the shopping streets. She didn’t want to be stopped and questioned, she’d seen that happen just once, had heard the loud quarrelsome voice of the soldier and seen the timid way the man had handed over his identity card. It had made her feel sick, with embarrassment or fear or both.

  ‘It’s not just Jews they’re arresting,’ Adrian went on. ‘It’s Christians married to Jews unless they’re willing to divorce, it’s Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witness, homosexuals, screwballs, sorry, Pam, the m
entally ill, Slavs, Asians, Socialists and Communists, and it won’t be long before anybody who’s caught going into a church will get a notice to report for duty in one of Krupp’s factories. I don’t know, maybe I’m being pessimistic, that’s easy enough these days.’

  ‘Why did you say you’re not Jewish anymore?’

  ‘Because I never say I am, our last name doesn’t cause anybody’s hackles to rise, and I’ve got a nice clean identity card without a J for Jew on it. I’d never have gotten that job at the station otherwise. I’ll get you a card too, Pam, and you’ll be okay.’

  ‘And promise you’ll tell us everything you do,’ Ted added, ‘before you do it. Bargain? And you ought to come out with me some evening. Would you like that?’ When she nodded, he said, ‘Good, let’s do it next Saturday. You too, Adrie?’

  ‘I don’t know. I might meet Hans.’ Ted laughed. ‘Yes, all right, Hannah too. We’re taking her to a bar.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘We, the usual crowd.'

  ‘Who’s Hannah?’ Pam asked.

  Ted stood up, took their plates to the sink and said over his shoulder, ‘She’s from Berlin. Adrie doesn’t know whether he can trust her.'

  ‘Hans does, for what that’s worth, she works with him at the hospital. And, yes, she’s German.’

  ‘Why can’t you trust a German?’ Pam asked. ‘Maybe she came here to be safe.’

  ‘Or to spy?’ Adrian was being the devil’s advocate. He enjoyed arguing, and any side would do.

  Ted frowned. ‘I don’t know how you can know, do you?’

  ‘A few well-placed questions might do it.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘How about “Have you got any friends in the German Army?”’

  ‘Oh good! Really clever! Of course she’ll tell you.’

  ‘All right, it was just a joke and not funny, but I’ll think of something when the right time comes. Anyway, it’s none of your business who I go out drinking with.’

  ‘Is she Jewish?’ Pam asked. ‘Is that why she left Germany?’