‘No you don’t! Leave it to the police.’ He shook his head and was gone.
David and Jacoba had fled upstairs, and Jo peered out between the curtains to see what Hendrik was doing. Elsie and Dirk stood behind her, and Elsie asked, ‘Can you see him?’
‘Yes, and there’s somebody else, it’s a policeman. I think it’s Menno.’
‘Is it? That's good! What are they doing?’
‘I can’t see from here. I’m going out. It’s all right, it’s safe.’ She leaned out of the open front door. Hendrik and Menno were bending over two bodies, one sitting against the wall of the house, and the other sprawled face down a few feet away in the middle of the sidewalk, as though he had been running away.
When Hendrik straightened up and saw her, he said, ‘Jo, tell Ma to come. Mrs Hoorn is hysterical.’ The man propped against the wall was Mr Hoorn, their fat neighbor who sat all day at his window, watching everything and everybody, and even now he had a cigarette between his lips.
Menno put his boot under the other man and flipped him over. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he muttered. ‘Look at this, Hendrik! It’s a kraut!’ Bending down, he hooded his flashlight with his hand and scanned the body more closely, then straightened up and said, ‘He’s in uniform, but there’s no gun holster, no tie. He couldn’t have been on duty.’
‘Then what the hell was he doing here?’
‘Visiting? Hiding out?’ Menno stepped back and sighed. ‘Who would want to kill them? Hoorn was nothing but a sneaky little smuggler, and this one was just a corporal. Jesus, is there a bullet for everyone?’
Elsie had gone inside to talk to Mrs Hoorn, and she came out and said, ‘She’s no use, but the kid told me what happened. He said Helmut was staying with them. He’s a friend, he told me, he’s Daddy’s good friend.’ They stared down at the German soldier. His eyes were open, pale and alive in the light from Menno’s flashlight, but his gaping mouth was a black hole in his face. He’d been shot in the back, and he lay in a widening puddle of blood.
Menno said, ‘I’d better get them moved. And my super needs to know what happened. Hendrik? Did you know this was going to happen, beforehand?’
Hendrik shook his head. How could he answer that, even to Menno, without admitting he was in the resistance? Menno knew, but he didn’t really want to know, he had to ask and he didn’t really want an answer. ‘Hoorn was a nobody,’ he answered. ‘He can’t have been much use as a spy. Why would anybody risk murdering him and getting caught?’
‘Right! Leave everything just the way it is,’ Menno ordered. ‘Go inside, and don’t even look out the window. That soldier’s a deserter, that’s what this is about, so it’s obvious the SS did this. There won’t be any arrests, but stay away anyway, will you?’ He looked over at the houses across the street and shook his head at the people peering out between their drawn curtains. ‘Nobody saw or heard anything, right?’
His last words were drowned out by the roar of a car’s engine. It came around the corner half on the sidewalk, so fast that they had just enough time to flatten themselves against the wall. As it passed, Jo saw a man put his hand out the open window and then withdraw it. If he’d intended to shoot them, he changed his mind and the car turned the next corner and was gone.
‘In with you, Jo,’ Hendrik said, pushing her through the door. He turned to Menno and said, ‘It’s all yours!’ and slammed the door behind them. When they entered the kitchen, Elsie was alone. ‘Ma,’ he said, ‘Menno’s gone for his super, and he’ll have to report to the SS. We don’t want them coming in here asking what we know. Don’t go back to Mrs Hoorn, whatever you do.’
Elsie nodded. ‘The boy will tell them the soldier was papa's friend, and all he knows is his first name.’
‘Menno’s going to suggest it was an SS bullet. If his super agrees, that will put an end to it.’
‘The car we saw,’ Jo asked, ‘those were Germans, weren’t they?’ Hendrik nodded. ‘Well, they looked at us and went away, so maybe they won’t come back.’
‘I hope so. And how about we start acting normal again? Did you mention pudding, Ma? Where’s Pa? Jo, tell your parents not to come down until the police have gone.’ When she went upstairs, she looked into Elsie bedroom. Dirk was kneeling next to the bed, his folded hands hiding his face. She’d never seen him pray before, perhaps he did it every night, perhaps it had kept them all safe.
She could have been stopped so many times, questioned, arrested. At Kris’s farm when the SS came, when she biked through the city delivering newspapers, the time she took the gun to Pam, and every time she brought a Jewish child to a safe place. She’d helped Adrian kill a man, and she’d spied on Hannah and tried to shoot her. And now that hand lifted through the window, pointing at her, had it been just a hand? She had thought, ‘No no, I don’t want to die.’ So that was what fear felt like.
She’d never been really afraid before tonight, afraid to die, that is. There were so many things she still wanted to do, she believed she’d get the time to do them. Stupid really, arrogant too. Pam must have had things she wanted to do, and Jan too. And Adrian, what did he want more time for?
David looked up from his book when she came in and held out a hand to her. ‘Shh, Mama’s sleeping,’ he whispered. ‘Is it over? The police came?’
‘One came, Hendrik’s friend Menno. The Hoorns have been hiding a German soldier, a deserter, that’s why they’ve been shot, but it's all right, the mother and the little boy are all right.’
‘All right? The husband is murdered? The boy’s father? That’s all right?’
‘He was a bad man, Papa. Remember, you saw him when we went for our stamps? And once he wrote Elsie that she had to give him money, or he would tell the police there were Jews in her house.’
‘He knew that?’
‘Elsie said he couldn’t have, and Menno said he probably wrote to lots of people, hoping somebody would be frightened enough to pay him.’
‘So he was a liar and a traitor?’ She nodded. ‘And there is no court to punish him? Men with guns, that is our justice now? I’ve said it before, my darling child, this is not my world.’
But it was his world. What had all his stories about the Great War and the revolutions in Russia and Spain been about, if not that? He had talked about the bravery of people fighting for their freedom and for a safer and better life, but he never mentioned the killing they did to get it. How many thousands of deaths, how many millions? Things got worse for some people, better for others. When nice Mr Stoffels taught them history, he said, well, so-and-so thought he should be the ruler, so he had the other so-and-so murdered at this-or-that castle. He never said it was wrong to kill somebody because you wanted his title and his land and his power. It wasn’t right or wrong, it was history. What was so different now? In a hundred years, nobody would care how many people the Germans had killed.
Under his folded hands, she saw his Bible. ‘Oh Papa, it’s even in there! I know it says thou shalt not kill, but what about King David and his army, they were fighting all the time!’
He laughed so loudly that he surprised them both. They looked over at Jacoba, asleep on the bed at the other end of the attic, her loosened hair covering half her face.
‘There are so many hundreds of years in the Bible, pick what suits you!’ He wet a finger and started to ruffle the pages. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘this will do. “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise,” and so on, and then, “but chance happens to them all. Nobody can anticipate the time of disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net,”’
‘Oh!’ she said. She knew that, had already imagined them, the wet, slippery silver mass straining against the web that held them, the light blinding them.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, go on.’
‘“And birds caught in a snare, so we are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly befalls us.” This is our time of calamity, Jo, and, as it says, not because we deserve it or because we don�
��t.'
She thought of Mrs Cooper opening the door to Adrian and his gun. ‘Is it just luck, where you are when something happens?’
‘That’s what the sage said, and he also said that the wicked think they can do anything they want, because so often they prosper and good people suffer. So they believe God doesn’t condemn what they are doing.’
‘Don’t you believe the Germans are losing this war? That we’ll fight them until they give up and go away? I do!’
‘Ah, but that’s something else! That’s not God’s work. That is what your brave young friends are doing.’
‘Without any help from God?’
‘Oh yes, he helps. What is that beautiful Christian song? “He works in his mysterious ways, his wonders to perform?” So he helps.’
‘Do you really believe that, Papa?’
‘Yes, no, maybe. It depends. What is mysterious is usually so far from our understanding, that we would waste our time trying to explain it when it happens. But I will tell you how simple it is, sometimes, to see God’s hand. When you were twelve, remember, we had a special party for you with our Jewish friends and their children. After supper you opened my Bible and read to us about Ruth. It was what you chose to read, and it was very beautiful. Do you remember why you wanted to read about Ruth to us?’
‘You told me I would be a responsible woman when I turned twelve, and I always thought Ruth and her mother-in-law were the bravest and smartest women in the Bible. I thought that’s how I wanted to be when I grew up. I even wanted to change my name to Ruth. Joanna isn’t a name in the Bible.'
‘We wanted you to have a good Dutch name.’
‘But what’s Ruth got to do with God’s mysterious ways?’
‘This is the part that is not so mysterious. I put the Bible in your hands, you picked the story, you have tried to be a Ruth. That’s it.’
She had tried, and she had been brave, and she had been smart enough too. ‘What about you, Papa? I mean, you know the Bible from front to back and you pray every morning.’ She looked around them at the bare attic, two beds, a table, two chairs that didn’t match, the blanket hung from a crossbeam to hide her bed. Their home for three years, and only a little promise it was ending. ‘Why do you pray every morning if He’s not listening?’
‘Did I say He isn't listening? He is, I'm sure of that.’ He smiled when she raised her eyebrows at him and said again, ‘Yes, no, maybe.’
‘When I came upstairs I saw Dirk praying.’
‘And what did you think?’
‘I know he and Elsie go to church sometimes. Holidays at least.’
‘Christians truly believe God will judge whether they are worthy of his help and guidance and will act accordingly. That’s one difference between them and us. We Jews don’t ask for anything. Our God isn’t going to make us healthy or successful or powerful or keep us safe from our enemies. We have to do that for ourselves and for each other. He can’t help or he won’t, it’s all the same.’
‘Well, if we have to do it for ourselves, isn’t it all right to kill somebody like that man tonight?’
‘Oh oh! You are his judge and jury?’
‘No, all right, I’m not sure he deserved to die like that.’ Was this the time to tell him about Adrian shooting Mr Cooper? What would he think of her, his daughter who helped to kill a man? No, it wasn’t the time and, anyway, she didn’t know the right words. ‘We need another King David,’ she said.
‘That’s right, we do, we need an army and a general. Well, the radio says the Allies are coming. Until then we’re safe up here. This is a good place.’
Jacoba sat up suddenly and said, ‘It’s time for bed, David.’
‘Yes, you woke up just in time,’ he teased.
‘I have not been asleep! I have been thinking.’
‘I'm coming,’ David said. 'We will sleep well tonight, I promise you, my dear.'
Feeling her way down the dark stairs, Jo thought of Adrian. Even if he were still alive, he would never look at her the way Papa looked at Mama. After that night when he’d needed to kiss someone, anyone, to celebrate that he was alive and it was Cooper who was dead, months, years, she’d waited for the moment when they might kiss again, when she could tell him she loved him. The moment had never come and wouldn’t now.
24 Hannah, September 1944
When she rang the doorbell and he didn’t let her in, Hannah looked at her watch and frowned. He had said one o’clock, later than usual, because he had an appointment with Schmidt at eleven. ‘He’s not above keeping me waiting for an hour, my treasure, and I don’t want you to have to wait for me.’
‘I’ll let myself in,’ she said. 'I don't mind.'
Conrad had an enormous record collection, not Wagner’s operas and Beethoven’s symphonies, which bored both of them, but lots of American and French jazz. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, they listened and danced or sang along.
‘It ought to be much louder,’ he said, ‘but we don’t want the neighbors to hear.’
The neighbors were all Germans, any one of whom might decide Conrad was a traitor. Having this secret with him made their love even more wonderful. When they danced, or he sat and watched her dancing, she knew nobody would ever love her the way he did.
And then she would remind herself that it was his job to keep her loyal to Schmidt, and she wondered whether he was playacting. When he kissed her, it felt real enough. Everything he said, everything they did together, felt real while it was happening, but she needed his love so badly that she might be imagining it.
Searching for her key, she heard the latch click open, and she went into the hall and looked up the staircase. He was leaning over the railing as he always did, and he waved and went back inside. ‘I thought you weren’t home yet,’ she said, handing him her raincoat to hang up.
Instead he threw it on a chair and led her into the bedroom. ‘Come and help me.’
The bed was covered with clothing, his suits, shirts and shoes, her evening dresses and slippers, and all the jars and tubes from the bathroom cabinet. His two large leather suitcases and her small battered one were on the floor at the foot of the bed. ‘Stop staring,’ he ordered her. ‘And start packing. We haven’t much time.’
‘Are we going away?’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Did Schmidt tell you to go?’
‘On the contrary, he ordered me to stay while he goes. No chance of that. If he thinks it’s time to move on, we’d better go too.’ He was rolling up his several pairs of trousers and arranging them along the bottom of a suitcase, and he straightened up and laughed at her expression. ‘I said we, but if you don’t want to?’
‘Oh, Conrad!’ She wanted to thank him, to kiss him, but he had turned away. ‘Of course I want to go with you. I’m surprised, that’s all. We haven’t lost the war, have we?’
‘Haven’t we? Schmidt didn’t say what he's heard, but I get reports too, and we’re being chased out of Russia, the Allies are beating the hell out of us, the Canadians are already in Brussels, and somebody told me the railroad lines near the Belgium border are being torn up. If that happens here in Amsterdam, we are rats in a cage. Come, my lovely, begin, there’s a car coming at two.’
Hannah pressed her lips together to keep from crying, and began to fold up and pack the pretty dresses he had bought her. In her room at the hospital were all her underclothes and daytime dresses, her winter coat, but there was no time to go back for them. The silk and velvet going into her suitcase weren’t meant for everyday, and there weren’t going to be a lot of parties back in Berlin. What was she doing? Why not leave it all here for some Dutch woman to wear!
Conrad saw her looking down at the blue velvet evening gown he’d surprised her with for her birthday and said, ‘Take it, Hannah. It’s worth a meal or two where you’re going.’ He came around the bed and took it out of her hands. ‘I’m going to give you some money, I’ve plenty and half is yours, but I’m afraid German marks may be worth a
lmost nothing. You’ll see when we get there. The cities have been bombed, the big ones over and over, but everywhere it is very bad. Your dresses and jewelry may be worth more than any of my paper money.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘We are going to the station, and we are going on a train, at least I hope so, and we are going across the border and then, well, we’ll see. So now, finish the job and let’s be ready when the car comes.’
Hannah put on her fur coat and Conrad said, ‘You can sell that for a fortune, but you might want to keep it for the long cold winters. Warm or well-fed, Hannah, you’ll have to decide.’
They stood in the doorway, out of sight of the neighbors, until an SS car pulled up, and somebody opened the back door from inside. Two men in civilian clothes and a woman, perhaps a wife, perhaps a Dutch mistress, made room for them, and nobody spoke until they reached the station.
‘Oh, my God,’ the woman said, when they got out and saw the crowd trying to get inside to buy tickets. ‘Who are these people?’
‘Dutch, it looks like. There have been so many murders these last weeks that our friends don’t even feel safe in their own living rooms. Look at those children, they have no idea what’s happening to them.’ Conrad took her arm, ‘Stay close, Hannah. Don’t get lost or murdered at the last minute.’ It sounded like one of his sarcastic jokes, but she knew he meant it, and she clutched his arm and leaned against him.
Almost two hours later, he had their tickets. They’d lost sight of the others and Conrad said he was glad to be rid of them. Helping her up the steps into a crowded car, he told her, ‘Don’t talk to anybody but me. I’ve got some food for us and a bottle of water, and we’re not going to share any of it. If these people have forgotten to bring provisions, that’s their problem. They can’t expect a dining car on this trip.’
He found a seat for her in a compartment with three men, two women with small children on their laps, and a bigger boy squeezed between his parents. There was enough room on the baggage rack for their suitcases and her fur coat, which he carefully turned inside out. Then he went out to stand in the corridor and look out the window.
The Time Between Page 27
