It’s hideous. And beautiful. Just as I had hoped.
It’s so sore. So very sore.
I miss you, Opa.
Angelo
E
ver notice that with a dream or a daydream, you can be gone for hours, and only miss a few minutes?
The last we heard, Nellie was being tarred and feathered. But there’s so much more of the story....
Back to 1982
Bijenkorf Department Store
Rotterdam, Holland
Nellie and Janine
N
ELLIE PULLS OUT A TINY BOX
. Janine opens it and retrieves an exotic gold ring with multiple rubies in it. The rubies form a crown.
“I got this from Ruud when we were living in Asia,” Oma Nellie says. “Ruud is pure faithfulness. The best man I ever knew. A man of family wealth and reputation who made a second fortune on his own in Asia with me. We were a formidable couple. When we were together, I would feel power all around us.
“Here, Janine, I want you to have it. Wear it and let it remind you of the secret I’m about to share with you. A secret Ruud wanted you to know about, but I wanted to wait until you were a young woman.”
Nellie takes a breath, suddenly nervous. “Ruud is not your physical grandfather. Let me tell you about a man named Walter. He was the love of my life. Your face, Janine,
Je lijkt sprekend op hem
(you look just like him). You remind me of him every day.
“My love for you, my dear grandchild, is, in a manner of speaking, the only way I can live out my love for him without hurting others. Walter passed away a few years ago, but he always asked about you. I sent him many pictures of you, which he had to keep hidden. Ruud knew about Walter, but Walter’s wife…well, she was never told.”
Nellie pulls out a familiar winter picture of a younger Janine eating (fried potato cakes with applesauce—what the locals call
Reibekuchen
) outside the Cologne Cathedral.
“Do you remember, a few years ago, when I took this picture of you and that nice man we met outside the Cologne train station? He posed for a picture with you. I could barely hold the camera; my hands were shaking so badly. Do you see the resemblance in your faces? This is the only picture of you together with your grandfather Walter. You had no idea who he really was. You asked me why I handed the man an old wristwatch; I made up some excuse to satisfy your curiosity.
“Ever since his return from Russia, we had met secretly a few times. The day you were with me was one of those precious times. It was also the day I gave his treasured Ziffer à Grand Complication 1924 watch back to him—the one he’d given me for safekeeping while he was away in Russia. I knew, somehow, that he should have it back.”
A single tear gathers on the rim of Nellie’s eyelashes. “I sent him the picture of the two of you, and he wrote later to say he would someday arrange to have a copy of the picture secretly tucked inside his German officer’s uniform jacket when he was buried. He always wanted this picture next to his heart.”
Nellie struggles with her next words. Her voice moves to a whisper. “That day with you in Cologne was the last time I ever saw him in person. Janine, even though I was totally faithful to dear Ruud since we married, for me, Walter was the one. Our letters helped us work through all we had been through during that hellacious time of war and rebuilding….”
Nellie seems lost in memory for a moment before she continues. “A mysterious person delivered your mother, baby Adri, to Ruud’s mother, Tante Riek, at their Hillegersberg home on the darkest day of my life,” Oma Nellie explains to Janine. “Riek said that, after handing Adri over, the messenger vanished into thin air. Literally. Not running or walking away…simply vanishing.
“Your Opa Ruud found me, his young wife, half-unconscious and tied to the black-iron church gate. He had promised to protect me, but he came too late. He carried me home.”
As Janine’s jaw drops in shock, Nellie goes back over the details of the
pek en veeren
incident and then continues.
“No hospital would take me in, given the political climate at the close of the War, so my family secured the services of a doctor brave enough, despite social pressure, to care for me at my in-laws’ home.
“The first night was touch and go. The necessary scraping of the tar from my skin added to the trauma, and I drifted in and out of shock. The back of my head needed stitches, and I had numerous burns on my body.”
Taking Janine’s perfect young hands in hers over the restaurant table, Nellie sighs. “What a relief it was to wake up the next morning and realize I was fully able to breathe. And to see Ruud’s faithful eyes! How troubled they were, how pained…and, yes, how angry as well. But his touch on my brow was infinitely loving.”
Nellie swallows hard. “I had no idea, until much later, how intensely he suffered with me during that time, or how, for years, he would wrestle with the injustice of what happened…dear Ruud. So kind always.” Her voice and hands tremble.
“In my very first words that morning, my maternal instincts deep within commanded me to ask, ‘
Waar is Adri?
(Where is Adri?)’ Then Ruud’s mother told me the whole story about the disappearing messenger while she brought in baby Adri for me to cuddle.”
Angelo
E
ventually, Nellie and Ruud would share a huge apartment in Ommoord, Holland, where they raised Adri as a teen. It was at the top of a postwar apartment building and took up the whole floor. The 360-degree view was magnificent. The elevator opened directly into their living room—you needed a key to get to that floor.
To the north and west, you could see across the Rotte River to Hillegersberg. On a clear day, the IJssel and Maas rivers were visible. To the north were soggy, deep green pastures with black and white cows hemmed in by countless canals. You could almost feel the industrial hum from the bustling port of Rotterdam, only a bike ride away. Around them, high-rise apartments were under construction for decades.
Ruud and Nellie had spent the first ten years after the War abroad in Asia, and when they returned, they chose this new town of Ommoord, arising out of farmland on the outskirts of Rotterdam.
They couldn’t go back to live in Hillegersberg, because Nellie had, along with a plethora of folks, been
fout in de oorlog
(“mistaken” in the War—collaborating or fraternizing with the enemy), and it was too hard for her to see any of the town or its people ever again.
When an enemy army occupies your nation and you cooperate with them at any level, you roll the dice. If they stay, you win. If they are expelled, you lose big.
Nellie played the grand piano in that penthouse apartment every single day. She knew Chopin’s preludes by heart. Janine could still play “Für Elise” on the piano at the Methodist church in Zarzamora, since Nellie had taught it to her back in Ommoord.
Nellie would often sing when she played the piano. Her voice was deep, resonant, and haunting. It sent out a kind of authority.
And she would sing psalms
a cappella
in the morning while making coffee. She would sign her birthday cards to her granddaughter, Janine, with psalm references.
The three of them, Nellie, Ruud, and Adri, would go to church together in a smallish warehouse in the middle of Ommoord. The little flock was Pentecostal and independent, not like the established Reformed church in Hillegersberg. It was a safe church for social outsiders. Immigrants. Those who had been
fout
in the War and all kinds of uninhibited spirits in this most buttoned-down of societies. Anyone wired a little differently. A simple big sign was painted on the side of the warehouse:
K
OM EN
Z
IE
(Come and see). They would sometimes break into dance and spontaneous singing during worship.
Adri was less exuberant. She would often sit quietly during these explosions of expression. But very early on in her teens, the congregation recognized that Adri had a special gift.
She could speak for God.
This was a congregation that embraced Adri’s gift of the prophetic. The prophet Joel had written, long before Christ, that “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (2:28).
Adri had one mood and one only: focused and present. And only one expression on her face: attention. She was always, even as an adult, tiny as a bird; perhaps because of prenatal and early childhood wartime malnourishment. Never would she break eye contact with anyone first. After a while, during a conversation with her, people had to look away, just for a respite from the intensity of looking at her flaming eyes.
The penthouse apartment was home to the multi-generational family that raised Janine and was in a constant flurry of activity. Piano. Bicycling every day. Cocktail parties for dignitaries who came—partly just to be seen with Ruud, partly to enjoy the spectacular view. Churchgoing. And, for Janine, school.
Ruud would take the train to work in The Hague. He would manage the old money from the family and the new money he had made in Asia.
Nellie was very entrenched in her new life, but she could never forget the German officer whom she had loved…the father of her baby....
1979
Oberwinter am Rhein, Germany
Just south of Bonn
Walter
W
ALTER IS READY TO DIE
, and he knows the time is short. He has put on his military uniform from decades ago. Still has perfect posture and great dignity. He is standing in front of an open sea chest.
Just this morning and just in time, he received the registered package from Nellie of all the letters he has ever written her, knowing it is time to lock the entire story away for another generation, in due time, to discover and learn. Didn’t the prophet Daniel do something similar?
He and Nellie have both decided that Harald will be the one best suited to handle the contents of the sea chest. Adri is too unpredictable.
Neatly arranging the contents of the chest, Walter takes his favorite picture of all—the one of his granddaughter, Janine, in Cologne—and places it inside his vest pocket. He knows his eyes will close for the last time before seeing it again. But he is ready.
One last task before closing and locking the chest. Walter removes the Ziffer watch from his wrist, places it in the special Asian-wood watch cabinet with the others; then he seals it. It’s doubtful anyone else in the family will appreciate elite watches as he does, Walter thinks.
Twenty-four hours from now, he guesses, the last of the watches will run out of spring tension and stop ticking. He doubts his heart will still be pumping by then. The doctors are amazed he is still alive. His lungs never recovered from Russia.
He signs one final note to his son, Walter, with a quote from Bertold Brecht:
Denk an uns mit Nachsicht.
He closes the chest for the last time and kneels beside it. He mouths the simple prayer of Luke 23:42 out loud:
Jesu, HERR, gedenke an mich, wenn du in dein Reich kommst
(Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom)!
He stands and puts a huge padlock on the sea chest, locks it, and puts the key in his coat pocket.
Then he walks downstairs to die in peace.
Angelo
Back to 1982
Bijenkorf Department Store
Rotterdam, Holland
N
ellie still is remarkably beautiful. She’s also very active, riding her bike to all of her errands daily. She’s never learned to drive. Even as an older grandmother, she draws the attention of everyone in the room. The notch in her eyebrow and the scar along her jaw from her tar-and-feathers experience haven’t put a dent in her elegance. She is regal.
Her thick hair has grown back in nicely and covers most of the razor scars; she wears it in a swooping, elegant updo to mask the small, bare patches. Janine is one of the only people who ever saw her grandmother’s hair down—and her scars and bare spots. Nellie lets her brush it out and put it back up.
Nellie’s eyes now shimmer with tears. “That I can sit across from such a wonderful young woman as you, today, who reminds me so much of Walter, is proof that God has forgiven me.”
Janine holds the ring with the tips of fingers from both hands, then slips it onto her right ring finger. A perfect fit. Her eyes well up. The gold and rubies start to blur. Her thoughts likewise blur. Pain, atrocity, cruelty,
fout in de oorlog
, shame, faithfulness, secrets, the “one.” It’s a lot for a sixteen-year-old to handle.
Janine glances once again at the ring box and the birthday card resting on top.
“Just a minute,” Oma Nellie says and pulls out her Mont Blanc fountain pen from her purse. Taking the card, she writes in elegant script,
Psalm 51.
September 11, 2001
Zarzamora, California
Janine
J
ANINE SHUDDERS BACK INTO REALITY
at the Zarzamora Winery.
No one is there.
She looks down at her right hand, laid out flat on the bar.
And sees the rubies set in gold.
Deep calleth out to deep....
2011
Huntington Beach, California
Josh
T
HE
U.S. O
PEN OF
S
URFING IS FINALLY HERE
, and up until this morning, I was in the running for the trophy.
Not that I had much of a shot at the $100,000 first-place prize, but this thing is called “Open” because it’s…well…open. Days and days of qualifying and heats. Intense boredom punctuated by moments of great intensity. On any given day, the right wave could come along, and…you just never know. Local boy Brett Simpson knocked out world champion Mick Fanning back in ’09, and Jordy Smith in ’10.
This place is an anthill. Three hundred thousand people are all over downtown Huntington Beach. Airplanes pull huge beer-ad trailers back and forth across the cloudless blue sky. The festival at the beach is free. Bands. Booths. Motorcycles doing flips in midair. The ubiquitous smell of coconut-scented sunscreen. Skateboard competitions. Beach volleyball nets in neat rows as far as the eye can see. Flat, tanned stomachs everywhere you look. Packs of young women glowing in the sunshine; packs of young men on the hunt.