The Tree and the Vine

by Dola de Jong

  Erica seemed flattered by my aggressive speech, my concern. She clung to every word and behind her eyes was a look of barely hidden amusement, of victory. I realized that I’d exposed myself, that now Erica knew what was going on inside me. And I knew it too. There was no turning back. When she put her arms around me and pulled my rigid body into her chest, I let her do it. We stood there for a long time until she whispered something in my ear. I couldn’t make out what she said, and she had to repeat it. She never spoke those few words again. It wasn’t necessary. We both knew they were irrevocable and would last forever. We’ve accepted it, each in our own way.

  After Erica had left on the last bus, I slowly walked home. It was now up to me to help her get out of the country. The most obvious option was off the table. Erica had all of one hundred guilders in her savings account, which I was still keeping for her. I hadn’t been able to put aside any savings since I’d gone back to work. As far as I could tell, there were two options, and I didn’t know which one seemed worse, Pa or Judy. And I knew that a loan from Erica’s father would undoubtedly lead to a reunion with Judy anyway. She would have to send Erica’s emigration papers. So, we decided on America. There was no point in staying in Europe, and Erica had no interest in the Dutch East Indies. Judy—yes, Judy—had lured her across the pond. Her name wasn’t mentioned during our deliberations, but I knew it as if Erica had made me a partner in her secret hope. She avoided my gaze whenever I mentioned the United States as the best solution and reacted with too much indifference. Moreover, we didn’t know anyone else who could foot the bill. We both knew it without having to say it out loud. And so what? Erica was leaving, I was staying behind. During those days of endless pondering and deliberation, I kept hitting the same dead end, where I’d come to the conclusion that my plan would never work. Erica would just have to stay here, god damn it, we’d have to risk it. And she wasn’t the only one. There were thousands of others in the same position who couldn’t leave either. Maybe the imminent danger would all blow over. And if it got to that point, we could always plot an escape later on. But I’d lost faith in the honesty of my contemplations. No, I couldn’t even give my secret feelings a chance. Every time, I hastily returned to the cycle of my thoughts.

  “Pa!” Erica said when I presented her with my solution. She found the proposition so amusing that she started giggling and saying his name over and over again in different tones. But finally she came to a decision, slapped her knee and said: “All right, let’s do it. Why not?”

  I waited for news about the outcome of her mission in a café across from the newspaper offices. She returned within my estimated timeframe, and I could tell right away that she’d received more than a simple rejection. Without a word, she collapsed into a chair next to mine.

  “Well?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.

  After a long silence she said with a contorted smile, “Did I ever tell you that Dolly and I went to a fortune-teller not too long ago?”

  When she saw that I was surprised and a little irritated, she quickly added: “It was just for fun of course, in a crazy mood, but Dolly … anyway … the lady said I was exceptionally musical and should learn to play the violin.” She smiled sarcastically. “Now I get it. You may as well know, Bea, my father was a Polish violinist.” She stopped there. I took one look at her face and called for the check, then I led her out of the bar as soon as possible. Out on the street, I put my arm around her shoulders. We walked slowly, and I waited patiently for an explanation. Every now and then, I gave her shoulder an encouraging pinch. When my gentle “just tell me what happened” didn’t help either, I left it at that. In the end, I got tired of wandering around aimlessly and decided to force the issue.

  “So your father was a Polish violinist,” I said as lightly as possible. Apparently, I’d hit the right note. The statement was so matter of fact that it sounded absurd. Suddenly, we both started laughing, Erica nervously, uncontrollably. Then the whole story came out. Pa had refused Erica’s request for a loan. She’d called him out, said that she was his daughter and that he hadn’t done anything for her since he left her mother. Even he had to admit that she’d never asked him for anything before. He flew into a rage and, as the staff pricked their ears in the next room, he shouted that she was not his daughter. Sparing no details, he went on to paint a complete portrait of her mother, “that whore.” Erica fled the scene and had to pass through the office on her way out—the entire staff was staring. She really emphasized this last detail.

  “What does he do for a living?” I asked, trying to distract her.

  “Pa is …” She stopped short, realizing that Pa was the wrong word. “He’s an importer,” she corrected herself.

  “I still think Pa is a good name for him,” I said, “You’ve always said it in a mocking tone.”

  “Well, Pa, then,” she yielded. She slipped her arm through mine, and we picked up the pace. I had helped her for a moment, but when we said goodbye after dinner, I could tell by her posture and the way she hung her head that she hadn’t fully recovered from the blow.

  After a sleepless night, during which I found myself identifying with Erica’s feelings, I called her at the newspaper early the next morning. She wasn’t there. I tried to track her down, which was ridiculous, because I didn’t even know Dolly’s last name. I waited for a message from her for two weeks and called the newspaper several times, but they hadn’t heard from her either. In my desperation, I even asked to speak to Van der Lelie. He didn’t come to the phone but relayed the message that Miss Boekman was no longer a member of the newspaper’s staff.

  9

  IN THE END, it was Dolly of all people who called. She didn’t seem nearly as haughty as she was the day I met her.

  “Can you come?” she asked. “I can’t take her anymore, and she’s really gone off the deep end.”

  I left work and hurried over to the address she’d given me on the Achterburgwallen. It was one of those dilapidated canal houses that would probably be condemned nowadays but which, as long as they went unnoticed by the housing department and didn’t accidently cave in on themselves, seemed to attract artistic types and people who were as unstable as the houses themselves. Truly hardworking artists, I thought, with the pedantry needed to boost my own self-confidence, lived in stable houses, where they could carry out their work without constantly having to deal with structural decay. The house was so crooked that I wanted to reach across it with outstretched arms and pull it straight.

  I searched for a nameplate above the crumbling front steps, but there was none. Since no one answered the doorbell and the door was slightly ajar, I presumed I could just walk in. The hall was dark and cold. According to Dolly’s directions, I had to go up to the top floor, so I felt my way up the dark stairwell. Above me, I could hear someone playing a waltz on the piano and the shuffling of feet.

  “Dolly!” I cried in desperation. It felt like a ridiculous thing to do, but suddenly the waltz stopped.

  “Dolly, there’s somebody in the hall,” a man yelled, and the door was opened by a girl in a bathing suit.

  I entered a long, empty room, a kind of studio with mirrors and a bar along one of the walls, a bed, a piano, a cabinet, and a trapeze in the corner. The young man at the piano looked at me indifferently for a moment, and in the middle of the room were a few girls eyeing me with curiosity. Dolly came over. So, she was a dancer. I’d never asked what she did for a living, but it made sense. I didn’t know anything about dancers back then, and I have to admit that I looked down on the profession. Frankly, the idea that someone would want to jump around on stage and twist themselves into every possible position filled me with suspicion. Dolly’s skimpy leotard and her unnaturally long, muscular legs sticking out at the groin didn’t put me at ease either. I looked up at her with a lost expression on my face, into her cold, blue eyes, at the rosy-white forehead above them, at all the unfathomable thoughts wandering around behind it. With a gesture of impatience, she tucked her sweaty,
red hair behind her ears. What was I supposed to say? What did she want from me? She walked toward another door at the end of the room.

  “She’s in here,” she said, as if she were referring to a sick dog.

  The small room—Erica’s sanctuary, I concluded—was dark and filthy. That much was clear. The door closed behind me, and the waltz resumed at Dolly’s command. There, under the window, on a low, wide couch that consumed most of the tiny room, was Erica, lying with her face in the pillow. The blanket had slipped halfway off her, and I saw that she was fully dressed.

  Can I describe the rest of that afternoon? How it wasn’t until I was feverishly scrubbing and cleaning that it dawned on me that Erica was sleeping off her drunkenness? All the repulsive details that revealed the kind of life she’d been leading? Her hat and coat lying in vomit on the floor, the moldy plates and glasses in the sink, the filthy clothes, empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, old newspapers, the rotten food all over the place? I hadn’t known that a human being could fall into such a state. And as I stubbornly cleaned, the rehearsal in the studio next door continued. Erica had suffered alone with the sound of dancing feet and mechanical music ringing in her ears. There had been people close enough to hear her, but she hadn’t asked for help and no one had offered any.

  I listened to the music outside and waited for an interlude between two lessons to take out the trash. It took a lot of courage to ask Dolly where to go, to let her in on what I was doing. Under her indifferent gaze, I felt like an overzealous Florence Nightingale, a ludicrous saint. I asked for clean bed linen. She didn’t have any at the moment, and besides, what for? The same thing would happen all over again the next day. There was no criticism, no indignation in her eyes, she just shrugged. So, I hurried out of the house and ran to the Damstraat, where I bought bed sheets, towels, underwear, and pajamas.

  Erica didn’t even wake up when I rolled her over to change her clothes. I washed her carefully, working around her many bruises, and wrestled the new pajamas onto her lifeless body.

  “Dolly’s a little sadistic”—the words played over and over again in my mind like a chorus. It was evening by the time her coat and hat were washed and hung up to dry. The dance rehearsal was over, and Dolly had gone out. Once again, I ventured out into the street to get some coffee, bread, butter, and cheese. I made my supper in the dirty kitchen.

  When Erica finally woke at eleven o’clock, I was standing at her bedside with a couple of aspirins and a cup of coffee. She greeted me with an ironic smile and after scanning the room, said in the mocking tone I’d been afraid of: “Hello, Florence Nightingale!”

  I stayed with her that night. The next morning, she let me take her to Egmond without protest. She was quiet the entire train ride. The only thing she said, and with that eternal derision in her voice (which may have been directed at herself), was, “Well, at least Dolly saved on the cleaning lady.”

  I turned toward the window, but out of the corner of my eye I saw her eyelids squeeze shut against the rising tears.

  Under my care, which I tried to administer as unobtrusively as possible, she made a noticeable recovery, and I knew from experience that this would open up a new chapter in her life. She’d been denied her birthright, but I foresaw that, despite the wound she’d suffered, she would graft a new branch and quickly nourish it to full bloom, which would hide the scar for the time being. She started talking about America with determination. And I, having witnessed all the anxiety and doubt of my Jewish colleagues, encouraged her in her decision.

  Then one morning, my boss disrupted the staff’s lethargy on the issue when he summoned us to his office and announced that he had sold the company and was leaving for America. I could feel the shame in his voice. As a Jewish man of wealth, he had the money to get out in time. Surely, he felt conscience-stricken and even a little ashamed toward his employees who were facing the same danger he was but couldn’t afford to leave. Of course, he felt more Dutch than Jewish, and his decision, which was quite sensible in my opinion, left him feeling guilty. He tried to absolve himself by reminding everyone of the danger. He made quite a speech. First, he summarized the political situation, then he provided an overview of the methods the Dutch Nazi Party was using and compared its positions to those in Germany, arriving at the conclusion that the Dutch Jews were doomed to the same fate as those under Hitler. He took a book from his desk and asked the bookkeeper to pass it around. Eventually it ended up in my hands. It recounted, with endless details and statistics, the misery of the Jews under the Nazi regime. According to the Nazi ideology, Erica would be labeled “Bastard Jew I” and would likely suffer the same fate as the “real” Jews.

  In addition to all the stress brought on by the sale of the business and the director’s impending departure, the atmosphere at the office was incredibly tense. Work was interrupted by constant arguments among the staff. Some people thought the boss was a coward and a sellout, others were jealous and despised him for leaving. No one appreciated him for his insight. Although he’d disturbed their peace of mind, they couldn’t bring themselves to admit that he was right. They were still Dutch citizens after all, and they weren’t ready to relinquish the sense of security that came with it.

  I took my boss’s book home for Erica to look at. She put on a cool front to hide her horror, but her reaction pierced my soul.

  “It’s crazy, Bea! Now I’m suddenly a Jewess.” She shook her head in disbelief and half-amused despair. “Life’s just full of surprises,” she said with a laugh. “America, America, here I come!” There was comical intonation in her voice. Truth be told, I knew she wouldn’t have even considered leaving if her personal situation hadn’t forced her to make a complete change.

  Before the end of the week, we wrote a letter to Judy, which she asked me to sign.

  “It’s always better if someone else asks,” Erica argued.

  Right before I signed my name, something occurred to me.

  “Maybe your real father wasn’t even Jewish.” I blurted it out without thinking. We hadn’t touched on the subject again, and I was shocked by my faux pas. But still, it was a valid point and needed to be said.

  “You’ll have to ask Ma,” she replied without hesitation.

  “Me?”

  “Of course, who else? It was your idea—you didn’t think I’d ever want to see her again, did you?”

  “But I can’t … How could I ever ask her that, Erica? I couldn’t. I’m just an outsider here. She’ll shut the door in my face.”

  But the idea of holding Ma accountable for her sin had taken hold. Erica was not to be deterred, and in the end, I reluctantly gave in.

  My conversation with Ma in the General’s elegantly furnished living room might as well have been recorded on a gramophone record—I can still replay it word for word in my mind, and the painful sensation I’d felt still comes flooding back. At first, it was jovial reception, lots of “dears” and “darlings,” but the warmth soon faded as my nervousness revealed that I wasn’t just dropping by. I stammered through an explanation of the reason for my visit and then came the big question, which could be asked in no uncertain terms. Ma launched into a passionate monologue with a dramatic description of her living conditions in those years, followed by the plea of a condemned woman. I didn’t like playing the role of prosecutor. Her emotional defense almost made me feel guilty. She wrung her hands, then dramatically pressed them against her heart and reached out to me in desperation. All of her “he” this and “he” that (in reference to her lawfully wedded husband) would’ve caused an executioner to doubt. I hadn’t come for justice, and I tried to make this clear to her. But she wasn’t listening. No matter how many times I said, “Ma, really, it’s none of my business, I just wanted …” it just went in one ear and out the other.

  Finally, her materialism got the last word.

  “And why do you think I gave her my money, the only pennies anyone’s ever tossed into my lap? I inherited those three thousand guilders from Jan—that w
as her real father’s name,” she added hastily, “he died and left that money to me.” She started to sob. “I never saw him again, but he hadn’t forgotten me.”

  So, the mystery of Erica’s inheritance was solved. It wasn’t her uncle who’d left her the three thousand guilders but her father. Erica was right—there was something fishy about that money. I remembered how strange she’d acted after she received it. She’d also alluded to it the night she confessed—penance money, she’d called it—as she was telling me about her miserable childhood and her mother’s endless lecturing. Ma’s affairs had taken place right under Erica’s nose. As a teenager, she’d had her suspicions, but she didn’t know exactly what was going on until one night when she found her mother with someone in her bed. After that, she was sent to a convent school, “cleared out of the way,” as she put it, “to pay atonement for her mother’s sins.” As Erica told me the story, I could feel the misery of the sixteen-year-old girl who, having just discovered her mother’s eroticism in a catastrophic way, was dragged away from her blissful world at the all-girls’ school and locked up in the abnormal religious world of the convent.

  As I listened to her mother relive her past sins, my compassion for her turned to disgust. I got up to leave. Ma began to powder her nose. There was an oppressive silence; we avoided each other’s gaze. With one hand on the door, I said (and it struck me how cold and cruel my voice sounded): “I just came to ask if her father was Jewish.”

  Ma whipped around in fury. Her face blotchy from crying, she narrowed her eyes viciously.

  “If that girl is so worried about saving her own skin, she should go ask the man herself!” she sneered. “If he even knows! He certainly did his best to figure it all out back then. A sly coward—that’s what he is. He gave me his word that Erica would never … that filthy traitor! That’s what you get from a Jew. You know, Hitler’s right …” I didn’t wait for the rest. I could still hear her carrying on in the hall. It made me dizzy. In the sober neon light of the friendly, affluent Minervalaan, where the first green of spring was sprouting in the trees and the city gardeners were preparing the lawns for flowers, the whole visit seemed so unlikely. I shook my head to wake up from the nightmare, and as I did my thoughts latched onto an old memory, one that may have surfaced to give me direction, to help me reconnect with the old Bea, with my original self. Perhaps it brought with it the realization that, through me, Erica had said goodbye to her mother for good.