Authors: Eris Field
What would she say? How could she explain the circumstances that had brought her to Leiden? She had made what seemed to be the best decision at the time but she was haunted by feelings of shame. She should have tried harder to find a solution instead of using an innocent old man to solve her problems.
She could not face Emine and tell her that she had married Carl because she needed a home and health care. They had shared their dreams of marrying for love, of being cherished, and of having families. How could she expect Emine to accept what she could not accept herself? No, she could not contact Emine. Determined to make the best of it, she unpacked the cartons of things from Carl’s home and arranged them to make the rooms more appealing but, while Carl enjoyed them, they made her feel even more of an outsider.
Only in the breakfast room that she had claimed as her own did she feel comfortable. She had found a bookcase for her books and keepsake’s and had hung a picture of the poplar tree and mulberry tree in Carl’s garden over it. To her delight, a search through the old furniture in the attic had unearthed an antique rocking chair with a rattan seat and low arms to accommodate a mother feeding her baby and an old chest of drawers that would serve as a changing table as soon as she made a pad for it. A tiny shop near the market had yielded two plain but sturdy wicker Moses baby baskets. She had done all she could to prepare a day room in the old house for the babies. She had already decided that they would sleep in their baskets beside her bed at night. She would worry about cribs and safety gates for the steep stairways later.
One morning, as she sat with Carl in front of the large window overlooking the canal fashioning baby garments out of ivory colored cotton flannel similar to the ones she remembered the women making when she was a young girl in Erzincan, Carl began to talk about the past in a way that he had never done. “The Germans took over The Netherlands about six months after my father sent me away. That would have been in May of 1940. My father and mother and my baby brother lived here for a year after I left. They must have been so afraid. I remember that my mother’s letters to her older brother, my uncle, mentioned ‘changes.’”
“Was she able to say what the changes were?”
“She said that my father was very upset about the change in the banks.” Carl paused, trying to remember. “I remember hearing my uncle telling my aunt that my father had lost his teaching job at Leiden University and that he had to shut down his practice. I didn’t understand the words but I remember the note of fear in my uncle’s voice.” He paused. “I do remember my uncle saying that they had confiscated my father’s bicycle.” He plucked restlessly at the lap robe covering his legs as he watched the bicyclists going by his window carrying their groceries or laundry and talking on their phones. “I couldn’t understand how someone could take his bicycle. It was always in the hall.”
“Later, my uncle said that he had heard on the news that the Germans were ‘resettling’ all Dutch-Jews.” His voice trembled. “I didn’t know what he meant but I still remember the horror in his voice.” Much later, I learned that, over a two-year period, between 1942 and 1944, the Germans deported all of the Dutch-Jews in Leiden, even the 50 children in the Jewish Orphanage. My father must have known what was happening. Can you imagine the terror he faced wondering what the day would bring for his family?
When would they step out of that door for the last time wearing a yellow star on the left side of their chest and carrying a back pack?
They would have had to walk to the trains waiting to take them to the Westerbork transition camp?”
He shuddered. “My father would have known that the trains were taking them closer to Germany.” He covered his face with his hands, his voice a weak whisper. “And then they had to walk to the trains that would take them to Auschwitz, to their death.” He sobbed, “I should have been with them. They were travelling to their death and I was safe with my aunt and uncle—eating, going to school, and playing ball with the neighborhood boys.” His voice dropped lower. “It has tormented me all my life. They were dying, and I was playing.”
“You are your father’s triumph over the Nazis,” Janan said fiercely. “He went to his death knowing that he had saved his firstborn son. That victory would have comforted him.”
“All through the years, I believed that returning to my father’s house would honor him and bring me peace.” Carl lifted his thin hands helplessly. “It hasn’t.”
“You’ve honored him by becoming the man he wanted you to be, a man who has given his life to helping others.”
“My father’s house, the house that I carried so long in my thoughts, is an empty shell.” He waved his arm at the dark, bare walls. “The beautiful paintings, the tapestries, the antique carved chests, the old maps, and his books are all gone.”
“No, it’s not an empty shell. You, Dr. Carl Ahren, your father’s oldest son, are here in the family home. Your father stood against the Nazis and won.”
“I’m truly sorry, my dear child. This is not the life you dreamed of as a young girl. You deserve better.”
“I never dreamed of what my life might be,” Janan answered honestly, setting tiny, precise stitches around the edge of a flannel nightgown.
No, she had not dreamed of what her life would be like, only of being found by a man who would love and cherish her.
“It seems as though I was always busy looking after my parents. They were sick for so long, first one and then the other. My girlhood just slipped away between studying and looking after them, and then I was working as a nurse and looking after them and the house.”
My life sped by without my noticing, until that night when I decided that I wanted it all. All my dreams crowded into one night
. She watched the activity along the canal without seeing it while she waited for the flame of desire that always came when she thought of Pieter to subside and then said, “I have no regrets.” She looked directly at Carl to make sure he understood what she was saying. “No regrets about any of it.”
He nodded at her words and said quietly, “I’m afraid this arrangement has benefited me more than you. I realize that you’ve had to make so many adjustments. I don’t want you to go through a lengthy mourning period after I die.” He hurried on, ignoring her murmured protest, “I want you to marry as soon as possible. You are too young to be alone with babies in a foreign country.”
Janan tried to lighten the moment. “I am not sure that a
buitenlandse
, a foreign woman, a 29-year-old one at that, with two infants, would be a matrimonial prize in Leiden.”
“Oh, Janan. There will be men at your door.” He grimaced. “I can already see desire in the eyes of the men whenever we are out.”
She lowered her eyes to her work
. Would she ever again see desire in the eyes of the only man who mattered?
Chapter 10
The first day of November was sunny with clear blue skies instead of Leiden’s usual drizzling rain. A strange restlessness had been with Janan ever since she woke that morning, and, after breakfast, she launched a cleaning spree that caused Carl to look at her with apprehension.
“Are you feeling all right?” He swept a clinically appraising glance over her.
“Yes, I feel fine. I am going to the market as soon as I finish cleaning the front room window,” she said. “I want it to be sparkling clean so that you can enjoy the colors of the canal.”
“The markets will be crowded. Perhaps you should rest. Surely we have everything we need for a while?”
“I want to stock up on some things for the first few weeks after the babies come.” Janan tried to conceal her worry.
How was she going to do the shopping with two newborns to care for? Carl was not able to do it and Betje was still rigidly unapproachable.
She straightened her back to ease the ache that had been with her all morning and let herself slide into a favorite daydream
. No walking to the market with a basket on her arm. No trudging from one shop to the next. No waiting for the tram with a heavy basket. She would get into her car and drive to the biggest supermarket she could find. She would take a mammoth shopping cart and fill it with meat and vegetables, all kinds of pastas, jams of all flavors, crunchy, salty crackers, cheeses of the world, and ice cream. Lots of ice cream.
She pulled herself out of the dream as she thought of the tiny refrigerator in the kitchen with its freezer space for two ice-cube trays. “I won’t be long,” she called over her shoulder as she picked up her shopping basket.
The restless feeling and her back ache had both increased by evening, and Janan found she could not settle down to her usual knitting. She walked around the rooms picking up things and putting them down. She glanced at Carl, noticing that he had changed out of his sweater into his suit coat. “Are you expecting a visitor?” she asked.
“No.” He smiled gently. “I think we may need to go to the hospital this evening.”
“I‘m not due for another three weeks.”
“It’s been my experience that babies come when they are ready not when the calendar says they should.”
“I am not having any contractions,” she said in a bewildered voice.
“Perhaps not but I think you are having a steady backache. Right?”
She nodded, realizing for the first time that her back ache was becoming more insistent and wider spread. “Do you think I should call the obstetrician?”
“Yes. Call him and tell him about your back ache.”
She put down the phone carefully and turned to Carl with a puzzled expression. “He said I should come to the hospital now so that I can be examined. He also said that I should notify my
doula
.”
“Oh, that’s the woman who stays with you in the labor room and helps you.” Carl noted Janan’s stricken expression. “You have arranged for one, haven’t you?”
“No. I’ve never heard the word. In Buffalo, it is the hospital nurses in the labor room who help you during delivery.”
Carl wrung his hands. “I am so sorry. I should have thought of the difference. Here, most uncomplicated deliveries are home deliveries. A midwife delivers the baby but it is a doula who stays with the mother during labor and helps her with breathing and relaxing.” He studied her tense face. “I have called a taxi to take us to the hospital. Your doctor will meet us there. Getting to the hospital, that is the most important thing. We will worry about a doula after we get there.”
It was well after nine p.m. when Loes went to the library in search of Pieter. “I have just had the most extraordinary call. I couldn’t imagine who would be calling at this hour.” She gave an exasperated sniff. “It was Carl Ahren. Calling from the hospital in Leiden. Can you imagine? He wants me to locate a doula. How does he think I can find a doula at this hour?” she exclaimed with an affronted grimace.
“Did he say why?” Pieter managed to ask as his heart pounded.
“Evidently, his wife hadn’t make arrangements for one. She went into labor and he took her to the hospital. Hospitals don’t provide someone to stay with a woman and help her during labor. Their job is the delivery. Everyone knows that. I can’t imagine why she didn’t arrange for a doula long before now.” She gave an exasperated sigh. “You don’t wait until the last minute and expect someone else to solve your problem.”
“Carl called you, his solicitor, for help?” Pieter’s voice was steely. “That’s your work, isn’t it, to solve your clients’ problems?
“Yes. I suppose he didn’t know anyone else to call.” She shrugged. “I said I would come to help her.”
Pieter watched his mother closely. What wasn’t she telling him?
“Carl did not want me to drive there alone in the dark, but I told him I would ask you to drive me.”
He clenched his teeth as raw anger swept through him.
His Janan having Carl’s baby? Why had she done this?
He turned at his mother’s “Pieter?”
He could do this. Drive his mother to the hospital and leave.
“It will take at least 45 minutes to get there,” Pieter said, not mentioning that was if they speeded whenever they could.
Pieter glanced at his watch as he nosed the car into a parking slot in front of the glass-walled entrance of the Leiden University Medical Center. His mother was not one to be hurried and it had been over an hour since Carl’s call. Anything could have happened in that time. He took his mother’s arm and hurried her through the rotating door, stopping briefly at the reception desk to ask for obstetrics. Without speaking, he urged his mother toward the elevator and pushed the button for the 7
th
floor. As they stepped off the elevator, Pieter was the first to notice Carl huddled in a chair, his face gray.
“Thank you for coming,” Carl managed to say. “She is all alone and I can’t do anything to help her.”
Pieter took in the situation immediately. “Carl, you need to go home and rest.” He turned to his mother. “I think it best if I call a taxi and you take Carl home and wait there. I will help Janan.”
“How can you help her?” Loes scoffed. “I have had three children and you haven’t had any. You’re a psychiatrist. You don’t know anything about childbirth.”
“Oh, but I do, Moeder.” He smiled ruefully at the memory of his three-month obstetrical rotation in Dallas. “You may not believe it but I have delivered close to 50 babies.”
“Pieter,” Janan whispered in disbelief as Pieter stepped into the room and paused in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”
“Carl called and asked my mother to find a doula for his wife.” He took a step closer to the bed. “My mother knew that she couldn’t find one this late at night and so she decided to come and help you. I drove her.” He stopped, unsure how to go on and then took a deep breath. “When we got here, Carl did not look well and I asked my mother to take him home.”
“Will he be all right?” Janan gasped as another contraction began.
“I think he is just very tired.” He moved closer. “If you are willing, I will stay and help you.” At her slight nod, he took off his jacket and washed his hands at the sink in the corner of the room “Will you let me help you now?”