He took a few puffs and contemplatively exhaled into the smoky room. Two, three cigarettes like this in a single evening—what a luxury!
“And if they get caught, Wim?”
“With a herd of sheep they’d lose twenty, thirty thousand guilders. But the next transport makes it up again.”
“And for people, when they get caught?”
“It depends whether it’s pilots from English planes that were shot down . . .”
“What? That happens too?”
“Of course, Nico. Then they travel disguised as mutes, as a transport of mutes for labor deployment.”
They had to laugh when they pictured it: these young, strapping men, a deaf-mute labor deployment!
“And the others?”
“That seems to be well organized too. Anyone who gets across is saved. Belgium is only under military control, there’s not a civilian governor like here.”
“Are you saying you think I should try it too—?” Nico said suddenly, because he had recently gotten a piece of paper that proved that he was such and such a person. False papers, of course, but still, if you didn’t hold it right under the quartz lamp . . . But why, in truth, was he asking? It was his quiet fear. He was always afraid that one day Wim wouldn’t answer right away, that he would act like he was thinking it over and then calmly, apparently objectively, say, “That’s something you’d have to consider very carefully.” He almost expected it. So now and then Nico prodded him with a little test. The feeling came over him like some sort of feverish illness that he was a burden, that the others had had enough of him and wanted to be rid of him at last.
Even though no one had ever given him the least indication of such a thing, these imagined thoughts of the others held him in their grip: “If we didn’t have him here, we could . . .” Or: “Well, we have one too . . . it’s not so simple. And it’s dangerous too . . .” Or . . . It is like a sickness affecting the thoughts of people in hiding, it destroys their naturalness and makes them rude or weak. Few are left unaffected.
But Wim interrupted him: “No, Nico, it’s better that you not stick your nose out into the daylight.” With all the strict checkpoints! There’s a four-hour train ride before you get to the border. Besides, anyone could tell just by looking at him. “I wouldn’t take the chance.”
Had Nico even heard? Yes, yes, but his thoughts were already racing further. They rode with the trains heading east with no stops, they ran through the camps, those whorehouses of death, slipped into the cells and chambers, saw all the way to the end, to the—
And then he said: “They better be quick about it, Wim, or it’ll be too late for us too.”
This was the deepest point that he could reach. And he reached it often—only too often.
“Ach, Nico,” Wim said, and leaned back in his chair. At the same moment he wished he were sixty and the other man forty. Then it would have been easier. But even so he couldn’t have kept it from ending like this—
It was so cold at night. Wim threw wood and peat into the stove, and together they gave off a pleasant
warmth that quickly grew stronger. And that delicate, spicy smoke.
Marie appeared in the doorway. She had pushed it open with her elbow and was drying her wet hands on a kitchen towel. Her face shone with effort and her eyes were still red.
“Wim, I was thinking—”
“Yes?”
“I was thinking—maybe you’ll think, Why is she mentioning this now?”
“What are you thinking? Just say it . . . Come on, sit down.”
“No. I’m not finished in the kitchen yet . . . What’ll happen with his things?”
“What kind of things?”
“You know, Nico’s—his clothes, his underwear—”
Wim gave out a short, pitying laugh. “Well, he didn’t have much.”
“No, not much. Should I wash them tomorrow? Or . . .”
“Yes, just wait until tomorrow.”
“Coba’s coming tomorrow, I’ll ask her,” Marie said, and she shut the door again. Coba had already helped them often, she would know what to do with the clothes too.
Yes, Coba knew, of course, and so did Marie’s mother, and Leen and his friend Leo, who did all sorts of useful things for people in hiding. It could not be
avoided—the narrow circle that Marie had imagined at first had been pierced. It happened practically on its own. And so did the other thing. It was unexpected—or maybe not, in the end, totally unexpected. Just a small event, but still a harbinger, an ambassador that the great event, the daily occurrence, had sent as a reminder, since it itself was almost invisible, as if happening between the lines. A wind that also blows in from the sea during the summer, just a little fuller now, and more biting, so that you shiver a little, a cloud that it brings along when September comes, outlined a little more sharply and not so shining and transparent anymore. Or like a faint illness, hardly worth going to bed for, which has already welcomed death into the house.
The three of them had lived together for five months already, wary and often tense, but still, it was normal life. Like every group where one person is dependent on the others, it straightens itself out and finds the guiding star under which everyone can live together.
“He’d rather eat upstairs today,” Marie said, still a bit disturbed by what had happened. She poured the thick pea soup into the deep soup plate and put it on the tray, where a glass of water was already standing.
Wim quietly lifted up his own still empty plate, weighed it gently with his fingertips, and then put it carefully down again on the table, a little farther to the left.
Then Marie brought the meal to his room.
“So, you told him,” Wim said when she appeared downstairs again. He slowly massaged his thighs with his two hands, and his torso moved back and forth with the same rhythm.
“Yes, this afternoon. He seems to have suspected something like that himself. Suddenly he asked me himself, why—”
“And . . . ?” Wim interrupted her. His impatience betrayed him.
But there was no “And,” none at all. Marie put the empty tray on a chair near the door and stepped closer to the table.
They had caught Jop and taken him in three days ago; he had fallen into a trap—he was careless, he was betrayed, who could say? That kind of thing happened, unfortunately, all too often these days. Those were the stakes everyone had to play for if they took part in the game at all. They had searched his house, looking for papers that would incriminate him. Now he was in Amsterdam, sitting in an infamous police prison, and no one knew if he would get through the “cross-examination” alive. He didn’t need to say much; people were so modest, they were satisfied with just a little, a tiny little bit of evidence—just the tiniest little pebble, high in the mountains, that worked loose and fell and in falling would grow into an avalanche.
Marie and Wim were warned as well, too late in any case; the danger had already passed. They discussed
whether or not to tell Nico the news—whether it wasn’t, in fact, better to get him out of their house for a while. Two days later the report came that Jop was in jail with the so-called “light” cases. So there was nothing to fear, for now. But still, you had to be on your guard. That was when they decided to tell Nico.
“Ach,” Marie began, “he actually stayed rather calm.” She faltered. “He was scared.” She fell silent again. It took her a long time to find the words to express what she had, to her horror, perceived.
She had seen fear: the terrible helpless fear that rises up out of sadness and despair and is no longer attached to anything—the helpless fear that is tied only to nothingness. Not fear or anxiety or despair about a person or a situation, nothing, nothing, only the exposure, the vulnerability, being cast loose from all certainties, from all dignity and all love. The man offered it up to her so shamelessly that it felt to Marie like she was seeing him physically naked. No cry out loud, no contortion of his face or his hands, he was simply uncovered, he stood in the middle of the room, the focal point and bull’s-eye for all the poisoned arrows being shot at him from beyond life. And Marie understood that words like “love your neighbor” or “national duty” or “civil disobedience” were only a weak reflection of this deepest feeling that Wim and she had felt back then: wanting to shelter a persecuted human being in their house. Like the way people veil a body in fabric and clothing so that the blaze of its
nakedness does not blind too deeply the eyes that see it, people veil life itself with precious garments, behind which, as under ashes, the double-tongued fire of creation smolders. Love, beauty, dignity: all that was only put on, so that whoever approached the glowing embers in reverence would not singe his grasping hands and thirsting lips. But wherever violence and annihilation tore away the protective covering, the undaunted heart was thrown into turmoil and could not rest until new costumes had formed, new threads had been spun, to mask and raise up what was shameful and unbearable.
He, too, the man standing so pale before her who had shut his eyes for a moment, felt the look she was giving him. He whispered: “I’d felt so safe here, so safe.”
He did not speak Jop’s name. But Marie saw that he was still thinking about him and that he had included him in his own—purported—safety and security. She was almost ashamed that she had to be witness to all this.
She had no words for any of it. She said: “He was afraid, of course, for all of us—for Jop, for himself, for us. Maybe not in that order exactly, but what’s the difference?”
“Strange,” said Wim, “I would have bet that . . . Didn’t he say anything else?”
“Should we eat first?”
She sat down. Then she continued: “He suggested to me that he look for another place.”
“How could he think such a thing,” Wim asked, a
little aggressively. “He wants to just go out onto the street, not knowing where? I hope you told him, Marie.”
Marie started to fill the bowls and, in her mind, was already back in the kitchen. She was thinking about the pieces of meat she had always used to put into her soups, which made them so especially tasty. When would they have meat in their soup again?
They started to eat. “I’ll talk to him later,” Wim said.
“Tonight he won’t be coming downstairs again, I’m sure.”
“Then I’ll go upstairs.” Silence. “Did you also tell him that his ration cards are taken care of?”
“I forgot,” Marie said, and she let her spoon fall back into the meatless soup. “I never even thought of that.”
And Wim said slowly, without looking up, “He won’t be eating a single bite of his food up there.”
“I’ll go right now,” Marie cried, a little ashamed, and she flew up the stairs. She didn’t stay long.
“You were right, Wim,” she announced when she came back to the table, slightly flushed. “Everything was standing exactly as I brought it to him, untouched.”
“Maybe it was still too hot for him,” Wim said, and he blew on his soup-filled spoon for a long time before carefully bringing it to his mouth.
That evening he had a talk with Nico.
“So what will happen now?” Nico asked timidly.
“Nothing,” Wim answered.
He was right. Nothing happened. Jop stayed away
and Leen came by and did exactly the same things that Jop had done. It went on.
More than anyone, Coba proved herself to be a great help. She watched the house whenever Marie had to be away for a shorter or longer time, like the time when Marie’s mother fell ill and Marie took care of her for ten days. Coba’s nature was just like her walk: not heavy, lightly swinging past every obstacle, but still firm and decisive. She laughed easily. “Excellent!” she said when Marie—during Coba’s very first visit—confided in her. “Excellent. How old? That’ll work. Older and they’re already too fossilized. I had wanted to ask you two for a long time if you’d take someone in.”
“Really? Would you have done it too?”
“One? I’d take two or four! Just not three together, that’s bad in arguments and so on. It’s always two against one. By the way, you don’t have anyone else waiting in the wings, do you? I need to take in another three soon.”
“You?”
“Yes, well, these things just come up . . .”
Coba—who would have thought it. Marie felt dizzy.
“Does he have visitors? . . . No one? But he needs to see someone else’s face now and then.” It turned out she had quite a lot of experience in all sorts of useful things. “Careful,” she said, “be careful, my friends! But within reason, don’t overdo it. That leads to a complex, to anxiety, and that’s how mistakes get made. Don’t isolate him,
fresh air every now and then, when it’s possible. Imagine if we . . . !”
Coba and Nico were on a first-name basis right away. She was in her late twenties. The next time, she brought him new books in English and French, detective novels and others.
“When this is all over, Nico, Marie and I get a lifetime supply of perfume from you, agreed?”
“Nuit de Paris. Romance for the lady in the evening . . .”
“Not just in the evening, Nico, I’m a lady all day long—”
He went on: “Violetta, Sans-Gêne for afternoons, and some mornings, for fashion shows . . .”
“I’ve never been to a fashion show myself,” Marie said.
The names that used to waft from his lips, sleek and melodious like magic formulas, now sounded perfectly ordinary, and strangely fresh, unused. They too once were, and maybe one day would be again . . .
“Just a drop behind the ear, Marie. Perfume is the visiting card of the lady!”
They laughed. And Nico laughed along with them!
“And what is the white queen’s favorite?” Coba asked, with a glance at the chess pieces in battle formation.
“It depends whether she is about to win or lose.”
“But Nico? I thought your perfume would help a lady win.”
“Well, then you’d have to be playing, Coba, not me,” Nico sighed. He knocked over the white queen along with her foot soldiers. Crash!
“I know a pianist”—she kept on chatting, undisturbed—“who’s stuck at a table like you. But he’s playing a piano.”
“At a table?”
“He drew a keyboard on the tabletop so that he wouldn’t get totally out of practice. Beethoven was deaf too, after all.”
“How long has he been stuck there so far?” Marie asked timidly.