Five
Everything is different. The family in the Bilderdijkstraat in Dordrecht have a mooie kamer, a room at the front of the house that is kept for special occasions and for the rest of the time stays unused, cool and dark. After a few months of staying there Lien gets very ill with suspected tuberculosis, and she lies there on the sofa for days on end, watching the light of the day brighten and fade through the curtains, waves of cold and heat shaking her frame. “Auntie,” as she is told to call the mother of the new household, brings clear soup in a teacup with a piece of toast that cuts when it touches her throat. Auntie washes Lien’s face with a damp towel and helps her to sit up. The room, like the rest of the tiny single-story apartment, is sparsely furnished, with just two chairs facing the sofa on which she lies. Beside the unlit coal burner there is one precious object: a cabinet of dark polished wood with a china teapot and matching cups set out on top. The cups, which are never used, are pure white inside and they gleam even when the curtains are closed. If she picks one up and holds it to her eye, ever so gently, she can see her reflection in it. The curved sides of the cup bend the walls of the room so that they surround her like a burrow.
When you are ill the whole world exists at a distance. She senses movement outside on the street through the curtains and the front windows: men calling in the Dordt accent, so different from her own. At the end of nearly every sentence they say “hey.” As the children arrive from school there is noise from the adjoining kitchen: voices, a chair scraping, a tap running. “Be quiet! Lien is asleep next door, hey!” The kitchen is where the house comes to life. Mothers and children enter without knocking from the back of the house, bringing friends and news. Auntie’s voice is the loudest. “Do you know what they are charging for mincemeat at the butcher’s?” “Nell is getting her meat straight from the farm, Kokkie told me, hey?” Movement here is rougher than it was in Lien’s old house. There is banging of pots and cutlery and if Kees behaves badly his father will give him a whack on the arm. But everyone is welcome, the neighbors are friends, and there are always new voices at the dinner table. The men talk of workers’ rights and of the bosses at the factory with a sense of confidence and strength. A strong smell of cigarettes pushes its way into the silence of the front room.
EVEN THOUGH IT HAPPENED a few months after she first arrived, Lien’s strongest memory of the house in the Bilderdijkstraat is that of being hot and feverish in the mooie kamer. When Mrs. Heroma first brought her, she also went to the mooie kamer, sitting on the sofa, looking across at Auntie, a big woman with a rosy-cheeked face, who told Lien about her new cousins. Besides Lien, there are three other children in the household: Ali, who is eleven; Kees, who is nine; and little Marianne, who is nearly two. Ali and Kees first had a different mother, but she died.
After their talk in the front room, Mrs. Heroma says good-bye, leaving Lien behind with Auntie, who takes her through into the back of the house. In the kitchen Lien is absorbed into the hubbub. Because there are so many people coming and going it is impossible to feel like a guest for long. As she enters, little Marianne totters on uncertain legs in the corner, half supervised by Ali, and then slumps into a heap. Lien feels grown-up as she crouches to comfort her and she and Ali soon have the girl in fits of laughter. When Lien does a ballet dance Marianne sits rapt with attention, looking up with adoring eyes. At bedtime, from Auntie’s arms, Marianne gives Lien several wet kisses, leaving a little trail of cold baby spit on her cheek.
The first dinner is not so easy. She is given a deep plate with a mountain of potatoes, sprouts, and a meatball, all covered in gravy. Everyone is already eating—the talk continues uninterrupted except for the regular scrape of spoons. Lien toys with a potato. The digestive medicine, which Mamma normally gives her with a glass of water before a meal, is in her bag. She raises her hand to ask if she can go and get it. It takes a long time for her to be noticed but eventually Auntie calls out in her loud voice to ask what she wants. “Medicine?” Auntie loudly repeats the word as if it is something in a foreign language. Lien slips away to fetch the brown bottle and holds it out, label first, so as to explain. Auntie’s rosy face is all scrunched up with suspicion as she examines this object that Lien has brought into her house. Then she delivers her verdict. “You don’t need this, you can just eat your dinner with everyone else, hey,” Auntie tells her and pours the thick white liquid into the sink. Returning to the stove, Auntie continues to take part in the conversation, turning only briefly to instruct Kees not to bolt his food.
Around her, the plates are already emptying. The moment one is finished, Auntie reaches over the seated person, picks up the plate, brings it to the sink for a vigorous wash, then returns it steaming with fragrant tapioca. Gradually the kitchen fills with the smell of the hot pudding. Lien would like to leave her sprouts and potatoes and move on to her sweet, which was often what happened at home. The boy Kees, nearly finished, has stopped eating—he looks over at her with a conspiratorial, comradely air. Auntie, though, gives short shrift to the rebellion. The last of the tapioca is scraped from the pan and divided among the existing pudding eaters, who barely notice the ladle as it reaches down over their heads. Plates are cleared and not a word is spoken about the uneaten sprouts and potatoes. Lien is dumbfounded and feels a hollowness inside her—it is all so different—but she joins Kees and Ali to head outside.
After dinner they are allowed to play for another hour. Kees takes Lien with him and introduces her to his playmates. He seems proud of her. He is certainly proud of his ability to walk on the crumbling brick wall in the wasteland beyond the houses and scoffs when she notices afterward that he has cut his knee. Lien merges easily with the huddle of children who stand watching Kees as he jumps from one brick stack to another. Although they notice her accent and listen vaguely to her story she is soon part of the group.
As the late summer evening darkens, a new consciousness settles over the children, who move almost in union like a flock of birds. They melt into the little terraced houses, exchanging brief words about tomorrow’s plans. At number 10 the bustle is over. Auntie has finished cleaning the kitchen and is now knitting; Uncle sits reading, his face stern with concentration beneath the room’s only light. Kees, Ali, and Lien wash themselves at the sink and visit the loo. “Trusten,” says Auntie, which is short for welterusten, meaning “good night.”
The children share one bedroom, with the adults and baby Marianne in the other. Within minutes, Kees and Ali are sleeping. Lien lies listening to their regular breaths. As far as she can remember she has never slept in a room with other people. For a moment she thinks of her bedroom in the Pletterijstraat. At home Mamma always comes to sit by her in the evening, stroking her hair before she kisses her good night.
KEES SHAKES HER AWAKE IN THE MORNING. It is still holiday time and today he is going to catch tadpoles. He knows a place where you can find them even in August and Lien can come. They wolf down their bread and cheese at the kitchen table while Auntie watches and then scramble out the door. Outside the sun is shining, so she barely notices the chill as she runs following Kees through the empty lanes.
After ten minutes they are already in an area of farmland and industrial depots, which is where the secret supply of tadpoles is to be found. The blocked-up ditch that is their home has a slippery slope of grass and brambles and Kees edges down carefully, plowing the soil with a stick in his right hand to keep him steady, holding a jar in his left. He looks over his shoulder at Lien above him, then turns to paw at the water. Lien is not sure what he is trying to do, but after a few sweeps Kees seems satisfied. He holds his eye to the glass and then picks his way back up to her, the jar now filled with milky green liquid that sloshes over his hand.
Lien hardly dares touch the wet container, and it takes her a while to spot the strange tailed and legged creature swimming inside. She has never seen anything like it, though she has been told in school about tadpoles. It looks like a frog gone wrong. After a bit she is goaded into trying to catch one and finds herself sliding a little on her way down the slope. Reaching into the brown-green water she has the horrible sensation that there is something trying to climb its way into her shoe. Kees is confident about everything and calls down encouragingly, adding instructions to improve her technique, and soon there is a fellowship between them, which makes Lien more certain about what she is doing, so the air is filled with mutual cries of admiration as they work. At the end of the morning they have a whole set of the little monsters decanted into a single jar. After scrutinizing their catch through the glass, giving them names and characters, they pour the tadpoles back into the murk.
With this adventure behind them, Lien and Kees become firm friends. On other days there are different excursions. Kees teaches her to ring the doorbell at people’s houses and then scamper away to hide and look. They also climb the great bridge over the canal and peer down on the barges, which Kees tries to hit with little stones. He is very good at throwing and sometimes they hear the satisfying tinkle of glass. The town of Dordt and the countryside around it is their playground, and they can disappear into it for a whole unimaginably long day at a time. The two of them follow only the rules that they themselves decide on, glorying in their liberty as only children can. When they return in the evening to the Bilderdijkstraat they feel like conquering heroes, worthy of the banquet of sprouts, meatballs, and potatoes that awaits.
For the first time in her life Lien is free of her tummyaches. She eats happily in the small kitchen, she loves the talk and the bustle, she loves the freedom of running wild. At home she looks after little Marianne, telling her stories as she feeds her, one extra bit of story with each bite. Everyone follows the rules of the household—bedtimes, mealtimes, keeping your things tidy—but really she has to do almost nothing. Auntie cooks, washes, and cleans, seemingly without having to think about it, and for dinner everyone is always welcome to bring friends. If Uncle is studying in the evening they have to be quiet. She is a bit afraid of him but she also admires him terribly. Men and women listen when he talks to them and they always do what he says.
THEN, AFTER A MONTH, she is back in school and it is her ninth birthday: September 7, 1942. She gets to choose her own dinner and she chooses sprouts. After breakfast, Auntie brings her some letters and packages from home. When Lien arrived in early August there were three dates ahead of her: her birthday (which was the most important), her mother’s (a long way ahead on October 28, when she would surely be home), and then far away in the distance there was Pappa’s in December, further off even than St. Nicholas. Now the first of these dates is upon her and she is nine. Before anything else, she opens the packages: two big bags of sweets, including one of licorice, of which she takes one piece and then two. There is also a knitted thing and a book that she puts to one side.
Four letters. It is strange to sit here in silence looking at them in the mooie kamer, where she has hardly been since she arrived. The first she reads is Pappa’s, which has “7 SEPTEMBER” written in bold capitals in the top right-hand corner to make sure it is read on the proper day. She recognizes Pappa’s faultlessly joined sloping writing, which is also there on the first page of her poesie album. It is four sides long:
Dear Lientje,
I am writing this letter on the occasion of your birthday. I congratulate you on your ninth birthday and hope that you will have many happy returns in future years to remember this day. Then, of course, we will be together again and will celebrate this one an extra time. As Mamma is sending you a present (I don’t know what it will be?) I will do the same and so enclose one guilder, with which you can buy something that you like, or you can use it to give others a treat if you have a ration card for sweets.
I have heard you are having a nice time there and that you are learning to swim. Can you swim well already?
We are always happy to hear news from you and if you ever have not so much to do, write to us with some news. It doesn’t have to be a long letter and it will help you to practice your handwriting. You are probably back in school now? That must be nice, because then you won’t be behind the others when you come back.
Hey Lien, I saw the menu for your birthday meal; it looks delicious. I think we will eat exactly the same things on the day itself, because it is kind of also a celebration for us (is “celebration” with an “e” or an “a”?).
If you sit there with the six of you I would really like to see your pudding. Draw it for me if you like, because that must be a big pudding. I don’t know who had the last bite of it, but I think it was you. We will have to remember because when you come back we will start from where you left off.
Are you always the first or the last to be dressed in the morning? And with food? You can win that race I think. You will have to write to me about all this and about how you celebrated your birthday.
Don’t forget Mamma’s birthday!! [Pappa squeezes in “28 October” in little letters, deciding afterward that she might have forgotten the date.]
Lientje, I hope that you have a very, very, very, very happy time of it and we here will have a nice glass of lemonade and let’s hope that we will soon be together, the three of us, maybe even before Mamma’s birthday. That would be the best present. Hey Lien, the paper is nearly full and I had wanted to write so much more.
Thank your foster parents on our behalf, also for their kind letter to us, and look after yourself, then the time will go quickly, till we collect each other from the train.
I also have to pass on the congratulations of the family. Both grannies and grandpas, Auntie Fie, Uncle Jo, Rini, Daaf, Auntie Bep, Uncle Manie, Auntie Riek with the three children, Uncle Bram, and Auntie Ro. Have I forgotten anybody? Because they have all told me that I must congratulate you on their behalf. I had nearly forgotten to send a greeting from Pretty.
Lien, many more years after this one.
Hip, hip, hip HOORAY.
from Pappa
The second letter is a short one from Mrs. Andriessen:
Dear Lientje,
Many congratulations on your birthday. I hope that you are healthy and are having a nice time. Also, best wishes to your housemates. You should have a pleasant day and let us hope that everything will be normal again soon, like it was. I am well. You’ll see a small present for you. Now Lientje, take my warm greeting, in thought
many kisses
from Mrs. R. A.
The next letter is from Aunt Ellie, who wrote a poem in Lien’s album, decorated with a beautiful fan. She leaves a lot of space at the top of her big sheet of lined paper, below the date, “The Hague, 2 September ’42”:
Dear Lientje,
Many congratulations on your birthday and I hope that you will become a big girl to make Mamma and Pappa even prouder of you than they are now!
Aunt Ellie had wanted very much to come and see you but it is better not to. Your present, you knew what it was anyway, you will get from somebody else now. Babs has knitted it beautifully, hasn’t she?
I have heard that you are having a nice time and that everything will be fun.
If you want to see Aunt Ellie very much, just for a moment, you should ask your aunt and uncle if they can think of a way to do it.
But over there you have lots of new aunties and uncles and playmates, so perhaps you have forgotten us already long ago!
Dear little thing, I’m stopping with this. A nice happy day, I hope that you can have one, and enjoy your lovely birthday meal.
Very many kisses from
Aunt Ellie
E. Monkernuis,
Kanaalbrugweg 87,
The Hague
The licorice is from Granny and Auntie Bep!
Finally there is Mamma’s letter, the one she wanted to save till last. Crosswise at the top is written “meant for 7 September”:
Dear Lieneke,
Heartfelt congratulations on your ninth birthday. Although I cannot congratulate you myself now, because of this I still think of you the whole day and I hope that you will have just as much fun as you would with us at home. I will send you a book and some nice things to eat and you will have to make do with that this year. I have not been able to buy a watch for you. I hope that Aunt Ellie will come to you herself, that would be very nice for you and for me. If she doesn’t go then the package will go in the post and you will still get everything. I hope that you are now going to school and that you will be happy and that you will appreciate what Aunt and Uncle are doing for you, because that is a lot. I don’t know if Pappa can write to you, because he is out of town. But please believe that he will also think of you the whole day and that he thinks it is a shame that we cannot be together. But maybe everything will come good again. Think of that, love. Write Mamma a little letter back, but don’t put it in the mail, because we don’t live at the Pletterijstraat anymore. So just give the little letter to Auntie and Uncle, they will make sure I get it. Or you can give it to Auntie Ellie, if she comes.
Good-bye angel, a really lovely day for the rest and thousands of kisses from your loving
Mammie
The book that Mamma sends her is called About a Happy Holiday. Its cover shows three children, drawn in pastel colors, who are standing on a quayside with a lady in a green hat looking protectively on. Behind them is an enormous ocean liner at which the children are waving excitedly as it comes in to dock. The whole thing is cheerful colors: the bow of the ship is a solid triangle rising above the quay and above this there is a long white line marked with regular black circles that are portholes. Right at the top, above the waving figure of what must be the captain, an orange funnel puts a little puff of smoke into a bright yellow block of sky. In a picture like this, going away seems like a simple and beautiful thing.
Lien takes the book and places it high on a shelf in the mooie kamer, where it remains untouched.
THERE IS AN ALIEN, grown-up sadness in these letters, like the sadness she felt when Mamma and Pappa quarreled and she had to go away to stay with Daafje and Rini. Suddenly Lien wants more than anything in the world to be home. Real home, in her own bedroom in the Pletterijstraat. But now she thinks that maybe her bedroom has a different girl living in it, just when she wants so much to be lying in her little bed with Mamma stroking her hair.
Lien feels a tightness in every part of her and sees that she is weeping and once she knows it she cannot stop. The tears just keep coming. Her breathing gets all muddled and she begins to sob in hard, sharp bursts. Then grief overwhelms her like sickness, rolling over her as a great, dark wave.
Now she finds herself crying constantly, for days, for hours on end. There is no comfort possible, she just wants her Mamma and Pappa with an all-consuming hollowness. Desperate, not knowing what to do with her, Auntie takes Lien for a walk in the park, where she just carries on crying, so unhappy that it hurts like a raw wound. Then both of them are weeping, hand in hand with the gray autumn sky above them, the leaves still dark green and brown on the trees. They just walk round and round the same paths, seeing the same faces, not speaking at all. As they cry together, Lien holds herself close to this warm, strong woman, and the feeling of loss is joined by a new feeling, of love.