There was a newspaper on the table in the parlor. She brought it back to the kitchen and sat near the window trying to read. When the front door opened, she heard Elsie laughing. ‘Come in for coffee, Menno,’ she said. ‘It’s the real thing, and you don’t tell anyone about it.’ She winked at Jo and said, ‘Menno, here’s my godchild Jo.’
‘Good afternoon,’ he said, taking off his cap. He sat down opposite Jo and looked at her approvingly. ‘You still in school?’
‘Today was the last day.’
‘You’re finished?’ She shook her head. ‘You look old enough to be at the university.’
Elsie turned from measuring the coffee into the pot. ‘Stop fishing, Menno, she’s too young for you. And we need to talk. It’s all right Jo, stay. Come on, Menno, you know who that note is from as well as I do, that fat pig next door. So what you have to tell me is, what do we do with him?’
‘What else has he been up to?’
‘Cigarette smuggling for sure. He smokes like a chimney himself.’
‘That’ll do. I’ll pop around there tomorrow and ask a few questions, look around.’
‘I just want him to be too scared to go to the SS with his stupid story about Jews in this house. I don’t know where he got such an idea.’
‘He’s just fishing, Mrs Moss. He probably sent that note to half the people on our street. He only needs one to start paying, and he’s got himself an income for life. The Gestapo pay seven guilders for a,’ he hesitated, ‘for a person. He’ll want to scare more than one.’
‘You are clever!’ Elsie exclaimed.
He shook his head. ‘ I’m not, but I’ve seen a lot of these things in the last year. People taking advantage.’ He took the cup she offered, drank quickly, popped a cookie into his mouth and stood up. ‘Leave it to me, as they say in the movies. Nice to have met you, Jo,’ and he was gone.
Elsie leaned back in her chair and blew out a relieved sigh. ‘I had a feeling about him, and I was right. He was just a little kid the first time Jan brought him home, but polite! Better manners than my boys. I wanted him to see you, so he’d know it’s not Jews we’ve got in here. Thank goodness for your blond hair and green eyes. You’ll save us all yet!’
She poured herself and Jo the last splashes of coffee. ‘I didn’t have a minute to ask you how it went. Was it a success, the singing? Look, I even bought this box of cookies to celebrate. I hope they taste as good as the picture on the label. So tell, was it fun?’ She looked at her expectantly, and Jo shook her head. ‘Why not? What happened?’
‘It was the guest. It was awful, Elsie, there were fathers who applauded, and Mr Koster was so embarrassed.’
‘Who was it?’ When Jo told her, she whistled. ‘The big shot himself? Why did he come to your school? Oh God, it must have been awful. I am sorry!’ She stood up to clear the table. ‘Don't tell your parents!’
On her way up to the attic, Jo went into the little bedroom she slept in sometimes and changed into her everyday clothes. Her notebook was lying open on the desk. She didn’t remember leaving it out like that. Elsie wouldn’t have peeked at her things. Maybe Papa? No, that wasn’t like him either. She wasn’t ashamed of her writing, but almost everything was an experiment, the poems especially, and not ready to be seen. She knew what she wanted to do, but she hadn’t done it yet. She had to read a lot more poetry by great writers before she understood what it was and, maybe, could do it too.
When they were studying Shakespeare in the English class, Miss Leen had said they ought to know some of his sonnets. The boys protested, ‘Not poetry again!’ but she said, ‘Oh, you’ll be glad some day you did it.’ So they talked about an easy one that started, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ and she told them Dutch poets wrote sonnets too and explained how they were put together.
The loudest moans had come from Peter, so it was a surprise when he came the next day, stood just inside the door looking pleased with himself, stuck out his chest and recited the whole poem, all fourteen lines.
‘What was that all about?’ Miss Leen asked.
‘I recited it to my girlfriend,’ he told them, ‘and she was more than pleased.’ He made the sort of face that meant he’d got the thanks he was hoping for, and they all laughed, all except Miss Leen.
When she tried writing a sonnet, Jo struggled with the accents that didn’t always come in the right place. There was no end to the things she wanted to write about. She sat on the windowsill and looked up at the sky, where a pale sliver of moon was just visible in the late sunlight. Why was the moon so beautiful? Looking at it made her breathe differently, peacefully, even when she was upset.
It had been bad today. Poor Rachel, poor Daniel, they must have been frightened. Lysbet was angry, Mr Koster was ashamed, some parents were insulted. Those boys with their drums and trumpets were embarrassing and such awful noise! She would tell her parents about that, not about the speaker.
She put the notebook away, thinking, ‘I’ll write about it tomorrow,’ and went downstairs to help Elsie make supper. Jan had brought home a live fish in a bucket the night before. He was working on the flat-bottom boats that went back and forth along the canal between Haarlem and Amsterdam. Some of them had been fitted out with benches for passengers, most carried beets from the farms to the sugar factory they passed halfway. The crew and some of the passengers brought along nets suspended on long poles because, especially after a rainstorm, the water was teeming with fish. With meat so scarce, it was a treat to have something like that along with the usual vegetables.
Elsie put food on two plates. ‘Take this upstairs while it’s hot, Jo,’ she said. ‘I wish your parents would join us. If I pull the curtains, nobody can see in.’
‘I’ll ask again, but I don’t think they will.’
‘It’s better if they don’t come down,’ Dirk said. ‘If we’re caught,’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Elsie snapped, ‘We’re not going to be caught! Nobody knows anything that goes on inside this house but us, so stop right now.’
They were a funny pair, so unlike Mama and Papa. Elsie made all the plans and all the decisions. If she wanted advice, she turned to the boys, Hendrik mostly, because he had gone to the uni and read books. Even when she told him to be quiet, Dirk didn’t look as if he minded. At other times, she would throw her arms around him and give him a smacking kiss on his cheek, and he would smile at her and hug back.
‘Just sit,’ Elsie told them when they’d finished eating the fish and potatoes. She brought out a small package, red paper with the German word HONIGKUCHEN in blue and a picture of a plate with slices of yellow cake on it.
‘Honey cake! Ma, where did that come from?’
‘I ain’t telling,’ she laughed. ‘So don’t ask. We all have our secrets. Get a knife, Jo.’ She turned to get the teapot, and Hendrik cut slices for all of them and two for upstairs.
When Dirk left them to read his paper and Elsie joined him in the parlor, Jo leaned forward and whispered, ‘Hendrik? Can I tell you?’
‘Sure, Jo, what is it?’ He put out his hand to stop Jan from leaving. ‘Have you got secrets too, like everybody else?’
The story about the diploma ceremony got the reaction she expected. Everybody hated the name Seyss-Inquart. They called him Six-and-a-quarter and other silly names, but he made them anxious. ‘What I really wanted to say, to ask, is, my friend Lysbet and I want to do something to help. You know.’
‘I know. Go on, who’s this Lysbet?’
‘Oh, she’s been my best friend for years.’
‘You trust her?’
She nodded.
‘Well,’ he scratched his forehead while he thought and then said, ‘Never mind about her just yet, Jo. If you really want to help?’ He turned to Jan. ‘Should I ask our friend? He’s always looking for couriers.’
‘Can’t you use her?’
‘No, that’s too dangerous. Ma would kill me if Jo got hurt because of me.’
‘Oh,’ Jo interr
upted, ‘please ask your friend!’ She’d guessed long ago that he and Jan were involved in some sort of resistance work. They didn’t talk about it, Elsie and Dirk would have been too worried. It was all right for the family to hide Jews and risk being arrested, Elsie would say, not for her sons to do dangerous things outside the house.
‘Don’t say anything to your Lysbet, Jo, let’s see what Adrian says first. I’ll speak to him, and then you can meet him. If you like him and he likes you, you two can work out something. You look so Dutch, you can get away with anything.’
‘What would I have to do?’
‘Do you still have a bike? Good, they could use you to deliver newspapers. It’s just once a week, you pick up a bundle from somebody’s house and take it to a meeting, then other people pass them around to their friends. It’s mostly women who do it, the police don’t stop them the way they do the men.’
‘Looking for people they can send home to work,’ Jan added.
‘That’s it, they’re not interested in women for that. Not yet.’
It was easier than she’d expected and wonderful that Hendrik understood so quickly how much it meant to her. She was sure she would like his friend Adrian, and she’d do everything to make him like her. But it was another thing she couldn’t tell Mama and Papa, or Elsie either. This was a time for secrets and lies, and she’d have to learn how to lie and be good at it. All right, she could do that.
In a way, it was like writing a story. First you thought of your characters and what they were going to do and how they felt about each other and themselves. That was easy and fun, but then came the hard part, when you had to find the words that would make your reader believe everything you made up was true. So this would be a new story about Jo, that’s all. She could do that.
10 Hannah, September 1941
’Hurry up,’ Nettie said. ‘There are bananas!’ She skipped past Hannah, and they ran down to the kitchen.
Mrs Moll was standing at the head of the table peeling and slicing the fruit into soup bowls and ladling real cream over them. Around the table the other nurses, Martin and Hans were slowly, almost dreamily, eating one slice at a time.
‘Here you are,’ Mrs Moll said, handing Hannah a bowl. ‘That’s everybody? Good. Nettie, when you’re finished, give the children theirs. Hannah, I’ll see you in the office?’
What now, she wondered. What had she forgotten? She’d scrubbed and polished every stick of furniture in the children’s ward until they shone, and her patients were doing so well that she’d even gotten compliments from their parents. A German officer had been in the hospital a few days ago, was it about her? Did he tell Mrs Moll she had to go?
Martin passed behind her and put his hand quickly on her shoulder. ‘Oh God,’ she thought. ‘He knows, and he’s sorry for me! He’s saying goodbye!’ She looked across at Hans, and he smiled and shook his head. Leaning closer, he whispered, ‘Don’t worry,’ then louder, ‘is there anything better than this?’
‘What do you suppose Mrs Moll traded for these bananas? And the cream, where did that come from?’
Hans shook a finger at her. ‘Don’t ask. You know she has to scrounge and beg for everything we have.’
‘Then she’s an angel to think of this,’ Nettie said.
Everybody agreed. Fruit and vegetables went first to the patients, the milk was for the children. The staff were expected to stay fit and healthy all winter on a diet of potatoes, cabbage, sprouts, oatmeal, margarine and bread. But summer meant beans, radishes, tomatoes, spinach and now, in September, a miracle, bananas!
When everybody was gone, Hannah cleared the table and washed the bowls, working slowly to put off the interview with Mrs Moll. Hanging the tea cloths and her wet apron up to dry, she took several deep breaths, went upstairs and knocked on the office door.
‘Come in, come in, Hannah.’ Mrs Moll was standing near the window, sliding several large brown envelopes into a leather briefcase. ‘Look at that sunshine. What a glorious day. Did you enjoy your banana?’
‘Yes, thank you. It was a lovely surprise.’
‘That’s what I hoped. Now,’ she held the briefcase out to Hannah, ‘here’s another nice surprise. I want you to do an errand for me. I noticed how pale you are, and you can use some sun and a fresh nose.’
The briefcase was heavier than she expected. Hannah laid it on the nearest chair and waited. This was wonderful, an errand, a chance to get out. Hans had said not to worry, so he must have known.
‘They need these test results at another hospital. It’s on the other side of the river on the Nieuwe Keizersgracht. Do you know where that is? No? Here,’ she sketched the way Hannah had to go on a sheet of writing paper. ‘And here’s a pass in case you’re stopped, and here’s money for the tram there and back.’ She walked with Hannah to the door and stood for a minute in the sun. ‘Enjoy your day off,’ she said and went back inside.
So that was what the German had come for, a pass to travel freely around the city. Hannah walked with her face tilted up to the blue sky, swinging the briefcase and smiling. As she neared the corner, she heard horses’ hooves and the wheels of a tram and ran to catch it. It was almost full, but she squeezed in between a woman with a baby on her lap and a man wearing a heavy jacket and a hat pulled down over his forehead.
Sitting with her back to the window, she could see the signs on the shops across the street: kranten, schuhen, koffiehuis, ijs salon, oh, ice cream! KEMPINSKI wasn't a Dutch name, ELKA was, what did she sell? She could come back on her day off, not always spend the day in bed. It had been months since she’d gone window-shopping in Utrecht, and it had been such fun. Maybe Nettie would come with her. She wondered how Vera was, but Utrecht might as well have been in another country.
The tram swayed and clanged through the Leidseplein, turned right past a big hotel, then left again. Hannah began to get nervous. She didn’t know where she had to change trams, and she didn’t have time to go the wrong way. She was just going to ask the woman with the baby, when she hoisted her infant onto her shoulder, stood up and went to the door. The Dutch policeman who jumped in looked down the length of the carriage. Everybody pretended not to see him, but Hannah peeked up at him and saw him glaring at the man sitting next to her.
‘You!’ he shouted suddenly. Everybody looked up quickly, then away. He was pointing at the man. ‘Get up! Now!’ When his victim hesitated, the policeman took a step, leaned down and pulled on the front of his jacket. ‘Up!’ he repeated and, as the man stood up, he knocked his hat off and pulled his jacket half off his shoulder, exposing the yellow star sewn on his shirt. ‘Jew! I thought so!’
The man ducked his head between his shoulders as though he expected to be punched again, but instead he was dragged toward the open door and pushed out onto the street. Like everybody else, Hannah kept her head down, her averted eyes.
At the next stop, the policeman and most of the passengers got off and Hannah, seeing the name of the street on one of the buildings, jumped out after them. It was a stop for a tram going east, but maybe she could walk the rest of the way. Mrs Moll had sketched a river and a bridge but no street names.
‘Can I help?’ The voice was soft, friendly, accented and, without looking, she knew it was a German’s. ‘If you’re lost?’
He was not young, silver above the ears, but fresh-faced and as handsome as many German men were, a broad forehead and strong jaw, clear blue eyes, a small blond mustache, a closed-mouth smile. No uniform? What was he doing in Amsterdam? When she didn’t answer, he took a step back and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I thought you are lost.’
‘I am.’
‘May I see your map? It’s not very useful, is it?’ He examined Mrs Moll’s hasty sketch and started to laugh, and she joined in.
‘I’ve never been in this part of the city before.’
He pointed to the name of the hospital she was looking for. ‘You don’t work there?’
‘No, I’m taking some test results to them, that’s all.�
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‘It’s a bit far to walk. I’m going the same way you are. We’ll travel on the same tram, and I’ll show you where to get off.’ He took her arm and walked her a few steps away toward a nearby shop window that displayed some boxes of rice and noodles, a small pyramid of canned coffee milk, the kind of food most of the shops sold.
‘It’s the same everywhere,’ he said, as if he read her thoughts. ‘The best goes to the soldiers, of course. When did you last have a piece of chocolate?’
‘What?’ It was an unexpected question from a stranger and, when she looked up, he was holding a bar of chocolate on his upturned palm.
‘Share it with me,’ he said. ‘Quick, here’s the tram!’ He folded back the end of the wrapping, broke off a piece and touched her lips with it. When she took it in, he turned her around and pushed her up the steps into the last carriage. He was laughing, at her or with her, she couldn’t tell, but she licked her lips and said thank you.
They leaned against the rear window of the carriage, and he told her the names of the buildings they passed. ‘That’s the famous National Museum. Unfortunately, all the paintings were put in storage months ago. Perhaps it was thought that bombs would fall on them. On this side there's the concert hall, very beautiful. You haven’t been? Oh you must! The Dutch admire German music and play it often. You come from Berlin, of course, another city that loves music.’
Of course? How did he know? Did he know Mrs Moll? Had he been waiting for her?
‘You haven’t been here long enough to lose your accent, you see,’ he went on, as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘How could I miss it? I’m from Berlin too.’ He offered her the last square of chocolate. ‘I think you’re wondering who I am, and why I spoke to you, and whether I am a bad person and not a nice middle-aged German man who only wishes to help.’
The Time Between Page 11
