There was a patch of yellow cotton pinned to the breast pocket of his jacket. A large yellow six-pointed star with a black border around some black letters, a word she couldn’t read, because the cloth was too creased. He wasn’t looking her way, and Jo moved a little closer until she was standing almost in front of him. He was selling tablecloths and napkins, dozens of them. His family must be rich, must have been rich. They were like Mama’s tablecloths for Passover. She ran her hand over the top of a neat pile of folded white damask.
‘You’re not buying, so leave it!’
Jo pulled her hand back and looked up at him. ‘I’m sorry, I just thought they’re so beautiful.’
‘They won’t be if you put your grubby hands on them! Go on, move off.’ He lifted his arm to wave her away, and Jo saw the word JOOD printed on the yellow star. When he heard her draw in her breath and saw her staring at his jacket, he started to laugh and thrust out his chest again.
Jo backed away and would have run off, but the woman at the next table called out to her, ‘Come over here, dearie, come on!’ and Jo saw that she too had a yellow star on her jacket.
The woman had the same defiant expression the young man had, the same proud shoulders-back, chin-up way of standing. ‘Come on, I’ll tell you what happened this morning, it’s a joke.’ It was a command. ‘Girl comes along and looks at me and says, “Hey Jew, good morning, heil Hitler!” Wasn’t that clever?’
‘That’s not funny,’ the young man said.
‘Well, it was meant to be. That’s what these are for, to make fun of us,’ she said, jabbing a finger at her chest.
Jo gripped the handlebars of her bike. ‘I’m sorry,’ she offered.
‘You want one? They’re only four cents apiece. Everyone should have one, right Reuben?’ When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘You don’t need one, dearie, I can see that.’ She turned away and looked at a man who had picked up a jar of pickles and was holding some coins out to her. ‘That’s five cents,’ she said, taking it from his open palm. ‘Enjoy it.’
Jo pushed her bike between the other shoppers, mounted and rode away as fast as she could. When she came to the river, she was breathless, and her heart was banging against her ribs. Leaning her bike against a wall, she sat down on someone’s front steps and closed her eyes.
She had read about the slaves taken from Africa to America hundreds of years ago. Some of them had gone on Dutch ships. Like animals, they’d been bought and sold and made to work at whatever white people didn’t want to do. Their skin was their label, and that was what the beautiful Jewish star had become, a label that said, ‘I am not like you, I am less than you.’ What had the woman said, it’s to make fun of us? In Mama’s jewelry box there was a tiny gold Star of David on a thin gold chain, a gift from a cousin in America when she was born. She should be wearing it now, but she knew she wouldn’t dare.
Riding past the butcher’s shop a few weeks before, she had seen him up on a ladder, his wife holding his legs to steady him. He was hammering nails into a board on the window frame over his head. When he backed down the ladder, she saw what it said, black paint in capital letters, JEWS NOT WELCOME! with an exclamation mark to show that he meant it.
After that she noticed signs all over the city. Jews not welcome was polite. There were some that said forbidden to Jews like a slap in the face, and others that said Jewish Shop, so they would know it was safe to go there, it was theirs.
The first time Jacoba had seen one, she came home angry. ‘I was just going into the grocer’s today, I was looking at the pears and thinking, and then his wife came out and took my arm and led me away, and she said, no no, Mrs Hermans, you don’t want to come in today. She was so nice, so pleasant, at first I didn’t see the sign. David, have you see the sign?’
He nodded, but he didn’t want to talk about it. If you didn’t look Jewish, you could risk going to a shop outside your neighborhood, or to a film if you didn’t have to wait in line where somebody who knew you might make a fuss. Most Jewish people made the best of it, there were worse things in life than not going to the films, though nobody knew exactly what worse meant.
She knew or, at least, she thought she did. There was more to come, and the Nazis weren’t going to stop until the last thing, the thing that nobody would be able to make the best of. In the meantime, she was not going to wear that horrible cloth star, and she would go where she wanted to go and do what she wanted to do. She was a Jew, but she wasn’t their Jew.
Being angry made her feel better, and she rode her bike across the bridge and along the river. There were so few cars that everyone rode in the middle of the street. Sometimes three or four friends cycled side by side, so that a bike coming the other way had to swerve up onto the sidewalk. The police got angry, but the bikers would just wave and smile at each other. It was good to have something silly to do and get away with it.
The motor of a barge going past her on the river snorted loudly, and she looked down at it. Two men were standing on the broad open deck surrounded by boxes, canvas bags, mattresses, chairs, a green velvet sofa like theirs at home, a pile of bicycles with their wheels tangled. Somebody was moving house. Then she saw the letters on the side of the barge, ‘A gift from Holland to the German people.’ A gift? Who would give a houseful of things away? Who would want to give things to Germany, to the enemy? It wasn’t a gift, a family had been taken away, or they were hiding the way she and Mama and Papa were, and their empty house had been looted. She would ask Hendrik about it, he knew everything.
Elsie was standing on the steps in front of an open door, and she pulled Jo and her bike inside. ‘What took so long, Jo? Where were you?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. Here’s the shopping, everything’s there.’
‘I didn’t mean to bark at you, dearie, but I need you. Come in, quick!’ She pulled Jo through the hall into the kitchen and shut the door. ‘Quick, before Dirk comes home for lunch. You have to help me!’ She went into the parlor and came out with a little girl. Her mother had combed her hair into long neat sausage curls and pinned a pink bow on top that matched the flowers on her cotton dress.
They stood for a moment holding hands, and then Elsie sat down and lifted the child onto her lap. She had been crying, and her nose was running. Elsie took a towel and wiped her eyes carefully and then her nose and upper lip. ‘This is Jo, dearie, and this is Tamar, Jo,’ but the child turned her head and looked out the window. ‘Her name's Tamar Korngold and she's almost three,’ Elsie said. Looking up at the kitchen clock, she frowned. ‘We haven’t a lot of time, so listen. What happened is I got a phone call from someone I know, and he put a woman on the phone, and she asked if she could bring us her little girl, and I said yes of course, so she did.’
‘Why? I mean, why did she want to bring her here?’
‘She said she and her husband had a hiding place, but the people wouldn’t take a child too. Not enough room or too risky, I don’t know. Here’s her birth certificate, that’s her name and their names and Tamar’s birthday. She’ll need to know that. They don’t have any friends who can take her, nobody who isn’t Jewish too. And that’s all I know.’
‘Do you want to keep her?’
‘I can’t do that, Dirk would be furious!’ Elsie drew a loud breath that made Tamar look up nervously. ‘It’s all right, dearie! Listen, Jo, I called my brother, and he said to come. You didn’t know I have a brother, did you. He lives out in the country, he’s a farmer. He didn’t say, but I think he’s hiding other people. What he said was there’s room for one more, and he didn’t mean just his own three kids.’
She stood up carefully and sat Tamar on the edge of the table. ‘Watch her,’ she said, went into the parlor and came out with a small suitcase. ‘I have to ask you to do this, Jo. I can’t leave, Dirk will wonder where I am and ask questions. You have to take her to the farm.’
‘Of course I will. Tell me where. Can I go by bike?’
‘No, it’s too far, up the river
near Muiden, and you wouldn’t be able to manage her on a bike and her suitcase too. I’ve got some money for the train, and my niece will meet you at their station. Here, put her coat on while I write everything down.’ She scribbled the name of the station on an envelope, put a folded bill and the birth certificate into it and gave Jo a second envelope with ration stamps for her brother. ‘If anybody asks, just say she’s your cousin, and you’re going to grandma for a few days. ‘Tamar,’ she whispered, bending down to put her face close to the child’s, ‘Jo is going to take you to the farm, all right? She’s going to take good care of you. You’ll like the farm.’
‘Mama?’ Tamar whispered. ‘Mama’s fine, Papa too.’ Lifting her off the table, she said, ‘Jo’s taking you on a train. You’ll like that! Go on, Jo, go. I’ll explain it to your parents.’
At the last minute, at the open door, Tamar put her arms around Elsie’s knees and began to cry. Jo put a hand out to touch her and then pulled it back. They were handing her around like a package. First Elsie, then herself, people she didn’t know, handing her over to one stranger after another. Oh, the poor thing!
Elsie bent down and unwrapped Tamar’s arms, pushed her gently toward Jo and then outside. ‘Now! Go now, before Dirk comes home,’ and she shut the door.
As suddenly as she had begun, Tamar stopped crying and put up her hand to Jo’s. ‘We’re going to ride on a tram,’ Jo told her. ‘Have you ever done that?’ There was nobody in the street, two strangers were waiting at the corner and the tram, when it finally came, was almost empty. Jo put the suitcase behind her legs and took Tamar on her lap so that she could look out the window. At every stop, Jo looked to see who had gotten on. All the way to the station, she kept Tamar’s face turned toward the window so that nobody could see her tears.
They were lucky, there was no line at the ticket booth, and there was a train about to leave for the station Elsie had written down. She found a seat next to a smiling woman with a little dog, and Tamar sat on Jo’s lap and stared at it and forgot to cry. When the dog licked her arm, she smiled, and the woman said, ‘What a pretty little thing. Is she your sister?’
‘My cousin. We’re going to our grandma for a few days.’
‘Grandma will fatten her up, I’ll bet. Are you getting enough to eat in the city? I take my eggs to the market, and they’re gone in five minutes. That’s not a good sign, is it?’
Jo would have liked to talk to her, but she didn’t want to answer any questions. When the train slowed down and then stopped, she set Tamar down, lifted the suitcase off the baggage rack and went away without saying goodbye. It wasn’t polite, but she had to get them off before the doors closed again.
Someone lifted Tamar down, a girl about Jo’s age. ‘I’m Elsie’s niece Stella, and you’re Jo and this is?'
‘Tamar.’
‘What a pretty name. It’s from the Bible isn’t it?’ They were walking toward a dusty car parked behind the station, and Jo was relieved that she and Tamar didn’t have to walk to the farm. ‘What’s her last name?’
‘Korngold. She’s Jewish.’
‘Of course! Well, we’ll give her our last name for now, and she can have my auntie’s name, Merel. Not right away, she has to get used to us first.’
‘Are there other children at the farm?’
Stella laughed, ‘Are there! Last time I counted, there were four and Alf, my kid brother, so five. But they aren’t babies. She’ll be the youngest by far.’
The car rattled along a long straight road under a double row of poplars and turned onto a dirt road toward a farmhouse. Behind it, Jo saw fields sloping down to a river and sheep grazing. There were baby lambs, and she thought how much Tamar would like them. This might be all right after all.
‘Do the police ever come to your farm?’
‘They came once. Someone in the village must have said we were hiding people, but they didn’t find anybody. There’s a man, an NSBer, who runs everything around here, a really nasty one he is, appointed himself the mayor as soon as he could, though he’s the stupidest man in the village. Most people hate him or say they do, so we can’t imagine who the sneak was. Here we are.’
Angling the car close to the front door, Stella jumped down and lifted Tamar out. A woman was looking out the window and waving, the door opened and they went inside. In the dark hall, Tamar moved close to Jo and clutched her skirt, then another door opened and they went into a sun-filled kitchen. Stella set Tamar on a chair, but she slid down and went to stand next to Jo.
‘You’d better stay awhile, Jo, until she feels comfortable with us,’ Stella’s mother said. ‘I hope this will work, we’ve never had anybody so young before.’
‘You brought up four, Ma,’ Stella said. ‘You know what to do.’
‘They were mine, weren’t they, not little lost lambs like this one. Where are her parents, Jo?’
‘Elsie said they had someplace to hide, but they weren’t allowed to take Tamar there.’
‘How can people be so unfeeling! Well, we’ll do our best and, once she gets used to us, this will be a fine place for her.’ She looked at Tamar and smiled. ‘We won’t have to hide her, she’s ours, aren’t you, lovey!’ Tamar closed her eyes and Mrs van Elk laughed and said, ‘That means shut up, I guess. All right, it’s tea time and I’ve got cookies.’
After a glass of milk and a cookie, they took Tamar upstairs and put her to bed in Stella’s room. Talking in whispers, they watched the child fight and lose her battle with sleep. In the kitchen Jo gave Mrs van Elk the stamps for petrol and cigarettes. ‘Kris will be pleased! He just can’t give up smoking, though the boys have. I’ll call and thank Elsie now, and I’ll tell her you’re here and you’re staying the night. Tamar has to see you when she wakes up, but once she’s met the chickens and the lambs, I’ll bet she’ll be happy enough.’
‘I thought this morning she’s being handed around like a package. Can she really stay here until her parents come for her?’
‘Let’s hope they do, because she’s not going anywhere else but to them. Stella’s my only girl, and she’s sixteen already. I’ve missed having a baby in the house, and now I’ve got one.’ Wrapping an apron around herself, she handed one to Jo and said, ‘Help me, will you? Oh, and Jo, you call Elsie by her first name, don’t you? Why don’t you call me Aunt Kitty, now you’re part of our family?’
At that moment there was a shout from the yard, ‘Ho! Ho!’ Through the open door, Jo could just see the wide opening into the barn and a young man waving at them. Then they heard the car coming up the road. ‘Get that apron on, Jo, quick. Don’t worry about the boys, they know what to do, we just have to be busy when they come in.’
‘They?’
‘Police. Yes, I know that car.’ She gave Jo a knife. 'Peel these potatoes, there's a good girl.'
The shadow in the doorway said, ‘What’s going on here, Mrs van Elk? I keep getting reports about strangers around your place.’ He stepped in, and Jo saw the gray uniform that meant he was Gestapo.
‘You don’t get those reports from us. If my Kris saw anybody he didn’t recognize, he’d get his rifle out, you know that. Save you the trouble, Gunther, wouldn’t it? It’s probably Jo here somebody saw. She’s just come from the city.’
Shaking his head, he moved toward the table, took the cookie she offered and looked at Jo. ‘Family? You here for a holiday?’ Jo nodded. ‘Well, enjoy it,’ and he turned and went toward the barn.
‘That friendly little chat was just long enough,’ Kitty said. ‘He won’t find anybody in there but Kris and my boys. Gunther’s a good lad.’ Peeling carrots, she stood so that she could look out the door while she worked.
‘Where are the other children? Stella said there are five, are they in the barn?’ She thought of her parents in Elsie’s attic. ‘Or here in the house?’
‘There’s no room in here, but there are lots of hiding places on a farm. Gunther thinks he should search the hayloft, and we know he thinks that, so we don’t put anybody ther
e. But he won’t go near the pig pen.’
‘They hide with the pigs? That’s awful!’
‘Oh, you city people think pigs are dirty and stinky, but they’re not, not really. There’s a cellar under their pen, we used that last time, and the pigs made such a racket when Gunther poked around, that he got scared and backed off. The boys were pretty dirty when they came out, but they were laughing.’
‘Are there only boys?’
‘That’s it so far. There are two brothers from Amsterdam, and we’ve got a couple of Jewish kids from the village. They weren’t home when their parents were taken away, and they came straight here. They’re Alf’s friends, that’s my youngest son. They’re just kids, twelve and fourteen, but they’re good workers.’
It all sounded so simple, how could it be? ‘Can you feed everybody? Hendrik gets stamps for us, and my father still has some money, but,’
‘This is a farm, we don’t need stamps and money! We just don’t sell as much as we used to.’
‘You’re so brave!’
‘Oh,’ Kitty said, ‘Don’t say that to my husband!’ She was watching the policeman and she laughed, ‘Look, he’s got Cal with him, that’s my oldest, Jo. He won’t get anything out of him. Cal always plays the fool, he’s smart enough for that. Well, there he goes.’ A few minutes later the car drove away.
They worked silently, filling up the pots of peeled potatoes and carrots. Jo could see Kris and some of the boys washing out milk cans and Stella carrying kitchen scraps to the pigpen. A cow mooed, a rooster crowed, it was like living in a picture book. She hadn’t felt so peaceful in months. When she looked up to smile, she saw Kitty staring out the window, her knife raised in a clenched fist. ‘What is it?’
The Time Between Page 14
