The Tree and the Vine

by Dola de Jong

  Erica spotted Judy in the Chartres Cathedral where she was wandering around looking bored, her eyes hidden behind outlandish red sunglasses that made her look like a clown. I still have to smile when I think of how I was more interested in the symbolism of a centuries-old wood carving of the life of Christ than in the famous stained-glass windows. As Erica and Judy sat down in a pew and settled the previous day’s argument, I imagined myself as a martyr. I was so inspired by those wood-carved faces that I decided to turn the other cheek and continue south with them in Judy’s Renault.

  By the time we got to Tours, another fight had broken out. This time I was the cause, and even though I’m sure Erica would have preferred to take Judy’s side, she remained loyal to me. In fact, she attacked Judy with such ferocity that I was completely crushed. In the space of a few weeks, I experienced three of these eruptions. Her face boiling with hate, the steam kettle whistling behind her words. I felt that she was expressing much more than what she could actually feel in that moment, more than what the situation called for. During those spats with Judy, I always had to suppress, in addition to my astonishment, a sensation of hilarity. The level of emotion they displayed was ridiculous. Later in life, I realized that women in Erica’s presence, both those she loved and those she despised, had a tendency to sway toward extremes. Erica and Judy acted like two little girls—one minute they were hitting and scratching each other and the next they were wrapped in each other’s arms and sharing their deepest secrets, promising to be friends forever. I wasn’t used to it yet back then.

  In Tours, I managed to regain some control by refusing Judy’s offer to treat us to lunch at the most expensive restaurant. Our budget was calculated for bread, wine, and cheese picked up along the route or, if necessary, at a village inn, and only I knew where the money for those simple meals was coming from. Although I wasn’t prepared to reveal the secret of our fatter wallet, I didn’t want to spend my precious savings on unnecessary excesses just to keep up with Judy. And I wasn’t about to accept the perks of her financial position either. Later, when we hitched a ride with an English couple, Erica called me a bluestocking and an old stick in the mud, which was surely meant as a joke. We enjoyed the ride. The couple, though British and thus reserved by nature, proved friendly and attentive and let us tag along with them to Nice. We had to be at their hotel at a certain time in the morning to go, but otherwise they left us alone and provided us with nothing more than the back seat of their car. We were really lucky, and those three days were ideal.

  In Nice, things took another turn for the worse. Erica developed a passion for roulette—a fascination I feared. Still, I went along and enjoyed watching and philosophizing. But then Judy showed up again. After she and Erica had thrown their arms around each other’s necks, they were once again attached at the hip. I have to admit that Judy’s Renault was a major plus. We drove along the entire coast all the way to the Italian border, and I managed to stay out of their way by isolating myself. I was the neutral spectator, a position I forced myself into and maintained with vigilance despite many moments of misery. This was the only way to keep the expedition possible and my position unassailable. On the outside, I was completely detached from Erica, and I doubt she noticed my inner struggle. Every once in a while, she’d toss a little friendship in my direction and I accepted it without making a scene. She sought these brief moments of contact with me whenever she needed a witness to confirm the reality of her glorious experiences.

  Within a day or two of arriving in a new place, I’d branch off on my own. We’d set a departure time, and then I’d head out to explore. Of course, Erica and Judy rarely bothered to look at a clock, and I spent hours waiting for them. But at least I was able to discover the things that interested me without the torture of their company. It was mainly the evenings that were a problem. Erica just couldn’t get enough of the roulette table. Sometimes we had to drive miles to the nearest casino, where Erica and Judy would be swallowed up at the entrance, and I would end up wandering around outside. Later I’d overhear in their conversation whether they’d won or lost. That’s how I figured out that Judy was giving Erica cash to play with.

  Those cool, fragrant nights alone in my hotel room seemed to last an eternity. I couldn’t sleep. Even the soothing powders I’d bought from a pharmacist in Nice didn’t calm me down. Since we only had sixteen days of vacation, and Erica still insisted on seeing everything, we kept tearing around. When I think back on my memories from the Côte d’Azur, I still see that gray Renault tearing down the boulevards, Judy behind the wheel, Erica next to her, me in the backseat. The “resort town” that had seemed so alluring in Paris turned out to be (in reality and in my memory) nothing but a merry-go-round. I know I spent hours lying on the beach, but I can’t picture it anymore. Sometimes I saw Erica and Judy lying there with their arms around each other frying in the sun or tossing a big rubber ball back and forth in their short French bathing suits, shouting like happy schoolgirls, their suntanned bodies glistening with oil. If they spotted me, they’d call out a nonchalant “Hello,” but most of the time I managed to pass unseen.

  I started avoiding the fashionable boulevards after they deliberately ignored me once on a café terrace. Blinded by the bright sunlight, I didn’t recognize them at first. There, sitting under an awning, was a group of women, American and French by the look of them, drinking Pernod with a studied look of boredom on their faces. The group consisted of a strapping, middle-aged butch woman in a sailor’s sweater and six young girls dressed and coifed with a refinement intended to set them apart from less complicated souls. I scanned the circle and spotted Erica and Judy. They exchanged a quick look of warning and then Erica greeted me with a faint smile. I turned around and rushed off. It was a pitiable retreat, and the humiliation of it stuck with me for a long time. After that, the boulevards were nothing more than routes to the beach to me, and I decided to limit my wanderings to the villages and seaside resort areas. Looking back, I see those long walks in Antibes, Cagnes, St. Paul, Villefranche like a cinemagoer who hardly notices the extras climbing the stairs to the cathedral, standing at the gate of the town hall, walking toward the camera on a country road. And what the extra thinks or feels, despite the bounce in her step and the cheerful look on her face, is of no importance.

  The day we were supposed to head home, Erica bluntly informed me that she was going to stay on a bit. Judy, who was there when she made the announcement, shot me a challenging look, but I didn’t respond.

  “Call the paper and tell them I’m extremely sick,” Erica said in her best American English. “Tell them something, I don’t care what.” It was true—she didn’t care, and the decision not to return home on time didn’t cause her the least bit of stress. Even though the end of the vacation had been hanging over her head the entire time, and she’d filled our days as a result, when the moment of departure arrived, she simply couldn’t bring herself to go. As a concession to me, she persuaded Judy to drive me to the station in Nice. It was a sign that she at least felt a little bit guilty on my account, but I was too defeated to think about it. After a cold goodbye in front of the station, they drove off, and I followed the porter with my luggage.

  6

  ERICA WAS GONE until the end of August. She later confessed to me that she’d been forced to return to Amsterdam after Judy had rushed home to America due to the threat of war. I didn’t hear anything from her the entire time she was away. I checked the mailbox three times a day for a letter or even a postcard. In the morning, I’d listen for the arrival of the morning post, and when my inner turmoil got the best of me around lunchtime, I’d even go home to check the midday delivery as well. Then, in the evening, I’d find myself watching out the window for the mailman. As the international crisis escalated and fears of a German invasion grew, so did my concern for Erica. The crisis actually served as an excuse for my distress and made it possible for me to talk about Erica’s absence with my friends and colleagues at work. To be honest though, the
world around me could’ve gone up in flames, and I still would’ve been more worried about the conflict between Erica and me. I was consumed by my own troubles. It’s always that way, isn’t it? War offers a way out for people who’ve been backed into a corner, who no longer see any salvation or future for themselves, and who quietly hope for an external tragedy to come along and put an end to the unbearable situation they’ve found themselves in.

  That year, the world was pushed to the brink of collapse, but I hardly thought about the atrocious events happening in Spain, Austria, Munich, and Asia. I was running in circles around my own experiences and problems, like a horse in a ring, blinders preventing me from seeing anything other than Erica in front of me, while I was unable, unworthy, of catching up to her. Finally, I had an outlet for my tormented thoughts. I used the international crisis as a cover to tell everyone I knew about my concern for Erica. I even went so far in my self-delusion as to call the paper where she worked. Van der Lelie advised me to contact the consul in Nice. He even offered to send a telegram himself. Perhaps they’d know whether Erica had been admitted to a hospital.

  “I actually wanted to call you,” he said pompously. “I’m terribly worried about her myself.” I guess he’d bought my story about Erica being sick.

  When the call came for general mobilization on August 29, I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, but by one o’clock the next afternoon, Erica was standing in front of me. She’d come home by plane, and her enthusiastic report of her first flight neutralized the conflict between us. Pretty soon, she was running down the stairs to go to work. All of a sudden, she was in a hurry to get to the office on time. A few minutes later, when I was walking along the canal to the tram stop, I saw her riding her bike around the corner, as if she’d never been away.

  That evening, I made dinner, as always, while she sat there and said, “I acted like an animal, Bea, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was all too heavenly. Forget it, if you can, and if you can’t, then let me have it right now, come on, give it to me, but whatever you do, don’t keep looking at me with those sad puppy eyes.”

  That was that, as far as she was concerned. I devoured my food, told her I had an appointment, and left the house as soon as the dishes were done. I wandered through the old town until midnight, and when I finally came home, I’d seemingly won the battle with myself. I can now admit that I was so happy to have Erica back that the whole inner struggle had been an act, a comedy I’d performed for myself, an attempt to write a suitable ending to the drama.

  Our lives went back to normal—except that thick envelopes from America arrived several times a week, and Erica was spending a lot of time writing letters.

  That fall, she had no trouble staying busy. Maybe she lived off the vestiges of her satisfying summer. Maybe all the excitement and restlessness provided a distraction from the tense political situation. There was so much was going on at home and abroad that Van der Lelie was forced to make use of Erica’s skills. She often worked overtime, and by October she was working the night shift. She came home increasingly wound up with all kinds of crazy stories and for the first time since I’d known her, she had an outspoken opinion about fascism and the Nazis. True to form, she jumped to extremes and rattled our apartment with her fiery speeches. There was no limit to her hate for the Germans, and Ma, as the closest opponent within her reach, bore the brunt of it.

  “Get a load of this, Bea—that stupid bitch—it’s unbelievable, she says that Hitler is going to save Europe. You should hear her rant about the Jews. It’s because Pa’s one of them. Did I ever tell you that? It’s true—I’m half-Jewish. But, anyway, maybe that’s not even it, though she’d be more than happy to see him drop dead. She’s stupid, Bea, and disappointed with her life, exactly the kind of person that gets sucked into all that stuff. My mother, of all people!”

  And then she closed with: “She’s not welcome in this house anymore, remember that.”

  I hadn’t seen Ma in months, and with all her political activities I assumed she didn’t have time to visit her daughter anyway. But it didn’t occur to Erica that if her mother just showed on our doorstep one day unannounced, I wouldn’t be able to refuse her. And oddly enough, Erica was still visiting her. Most likely she couldn’t resist the temptation to use her political combativeness as a means of telling her mother the truth, to vent her long-suppressed contempt. There were no more jokes about her mother. She even started sharing stories from her past with me, and they were anything but cheerful. It was through Erica’s reaction toward her mother, the National Socialist, that I came to understand how much contempt, hatred, and pent-up aggression were behind those jokes Erica used to make. She seemed to find those tempestuous visits with her mother deeply satisfying.

  That November she was recruited by a charitable organization that went down to meet Jewish children fleeing Germany at the Dutch border. She also attended political meetings, including those of the Dutch Nazi party, where she liked to stir up trouble and—as she told me with childlike pride—got herself thrown out from time to time.

  “I hope Ma saw that,” she said.

  “Was she there?” I asked.

  “Probably. That bitch has gone completely crazy.”

  “What does the General have to say about it?”

  “That’s another thing! He’s just like her, of course. You’ve met him, haven’t you?”

  To Erica, you were either good or you were in the NSB—the National Socialist Movement—and she had an opinion about everyone.

  “He could be one,” she’d say about any given person. “Either he’s already a Nazi or he’ll be one soon.” Most of her suspects were innocent citizens, but there were a few cases where her assessment was spot on.

  I was averse to all the commotion and tried to keep my distance. Nevertheless, Erica sometimes talked me into doing a bit of administrative work, which she took on but never carried out, or got me to read the books and pamphlets she brought home with her. I’ve never had much respect for political fanaticism. Even then, I had little faith in humanity, and now that I’m in my forties, I know for a fact that when people get on their soapboxes (as they say here in America), they’re driven more by haste than goodwill. Erica was trying to populate the lonely steppes of her life with friends and enemies, but whenever I tried to express this, she’d rip me to shreds. Once she accused me of always seeing the worst in people and said that I had no love in me. These ruthless words upset me for days. I knew I’d changed, that I’d grown bitter, and silently I blamed Erica for it.

  But soon enough, Erica gave up her political ambitions. Her charity was no match for Van der Lelie’s intrigues, and she threw down her weapons as quickly as she’d taken them up. Suddenly, she was back at home, and she didn’t say another word about the dangers of Nazism. Only after about a week did she relay what had happened in bits and pieces. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Van der Lelie was in the NSB. If you asked me, that black shirt suited him. There were already plenty of rumors flying around about the newspaper’s political sympathies, and Van der Lelie had nothing to lose by forcing Erica to choose between her political convictions and her job. At that point, I took a combative stance and told her I was surprised that she’d backed down so easily. At first, she made all kinds of excuses. Van der Lelie had threatened her, said he’d make it impossible for her to get a job anywhere else, that he wouldn’t write her any letters of recommendation, that he’d give her a bad reference and warn people about her. He’d told her that if she ever got a job at another newspaper, she’d have to work her way up from the bottom again; that she wouldn’t earn enough, that there were no other jobs in journalism for women, that the political world could do without her, and finally, “What does it matter anyway?” Of course, I didn’t accept any of these excuses, but I let it drop. Erica looked so miserable and seemed so depressed that I left her alone. She spent the entire Sunday in bed, something she hadn’t done for a long time. Her inexplicable behavior kept me up
at night. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Was she still in love with Van der Lelie? Had she surrendered just to keep his interest? Or had the disillusionment of finding out that he was in the NSB been too much for her? What a child she still was!

  Wies started calling repeatedly. She’d never called the house before, at least not to my knowledge. She asked where Erica was, what time she’d be home, if I ever saw her. I answered to the best of my knowledge and passed her messages along to Erica, who wasn’t interested. Even if she was home, she shooed away the phone and told me to tell Wies that she wasn’t there. The first time Wies called, I assumed she and Erica still saw each other, and from the next few calls, I concluded that she had turned to Wies for comfort and support in her crisis. So why was she avoiding her calls? I was completely lost. How innocent I was! But how could I have known that Van der Lelie had taken advantage of what he thought he knew about Wies and Erica’s relationship in order to put Erica on the chopping block? It never occurred to me that she was being blackmailed. I hardly knew what blackmail was. It was just a word I’d picked up somewhere but that had no place in my vocabulary. From where I stood, I just couldn’t see that Erica, who was so much younger than me, who always seemed so childish with all her whims and immaturities, her boyish haircut, sloppy boy’s shirts and silly knee socks, had exposed herself to someone with a knife up his sleeve.