Eleven

The afternoon has passed almost without our noticing it and as we get to questions about the hideout in IJsselmonde it is already 6:30 P.M. Although the events themselves are traumatic, the process of reassembling them has a positive side to it. Lien has long since worked through her experiences, in part with a counselor, and as I sit listening I find myself taken up with the practicalities, so that emotion takes a backseat. It is only as I think back that I am haunted by what has occurred.

Lien herself is almost euphoric. “I didn’t think I could talk for so long about all of it,” she says as she stands up and begins to clear the tea things from the table. Only now, as an afterthought, she mentions that she may have a letter from Jo. I tell her that I would very much like to see it and a few minutes later Lien returns from the adjoining room with a single sheet of lined A4 paper, folded to a sixth of its size. The enclosed photos, which Lien kept for a long time, are now lost.

While back in Oxford over Christmas I bought a digital recorder to use alongside my notes for our interviews. It is still running, so every word of our conversation is logged for me to listen to afterward as I write.

Lien unfolds the letter, pointing first to her own handwriting at the top. In neat individually printed letters, Lien, by that point aged twelve, has written:

a letter that Lien must keep

''     ''     from Jo.

As she reads this out loud, Lien laughs at herself for having given this firm order to posterity. She continues on to the letter itself, occasionally stumbling as she tries to make sense of Jo’s diction and spelling errors. It is dated March 4, 1946, from Singapore:

Dear Lien,

What a long time ago it is that we heard from each other. At about this time two years ago I had to leave unexpectedly and I didn’t get to see you and we haven’t written. When I heard from Mieneke that you were in good health and living in Dordrecht, I thought now really I must write to Lien. Lien, what a lot has happened in this time. Dear Lien, you have never been out of my thoughts. Not when I was in Amersfoort and not when I was in Germany and also not now when I am so far away from Holland. Lien, if you have one you must send a photo of yourself. I will enclose a few of myself with this letter. Lien, now a few questions. How are you? Are you still at school, and in what sort of class? Lien, if I can do anything for you then you must write to me about it, if I can do it I will do anything to help you. You will have heard from Mieneke . . .

When she gets to the name Mieneke for the second time Lien stops.

“I don’t know who Mieneke is. Maybe the woman in IJsselmonde? I think it is the woman in IJsselmonde, but I don’t know.”

The certainty only gradually grows. Then Lien continues:

You will have heard from Mieneke that I am serving in the Marines now, which is working out well. I was in England for three weeks, in America for six months, for the last two months now I’ve been in Malacca, and right at this moment I’m on the ship New Amsterdam. And the ship is currently in the harbor in Singapore—you’ll have to look it up in an atlas! Any moment now we may depart for Java. Lien, I don’t know what other news to give you. Pass on my warmest wishes to all our old friends, and also to your adoptive parents, and if you are writing to Mieneke, then do give her my best. Lien, take from me the uttermost heartfelt wishes. From your friend who will never forget you,

Jo Kleijne

P. S. Dear Lien, I don’t know your address exactly. Now I will enclose this letter in a letter to Mieneke, I think hope that Mieneke will quickly send this letter on to you and that you will very soon write back to me. Once again, all the very best from your friend. Jo.

At the bottom of the page, he writes his military ID number in block capitals:

CORPORAL OF THE MARINES, J. W. L. KLEIJNE. NL 4502759.

“He has written his address at the bottom,” Lien says in a voice that is full of cheerful reminiscence.

“And do you still know if you wrote back, and what you wrote?” I ask.

All at once the mood of the conversation changes. Lien’s reply is thoughtful but not filled with any deep sense of regret.

“I have never . . . I have never done anything,” she says. “I never wrote, I have never . . . I have never looked into anything. I never kept contact. No.”

She sighs.

“It’s . . .”

There is a pause.

“And, for the rest, you never heard anything of him?”

“No, no. It stops then, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s, you know . . . I was in a different phase of my life then. The connection wasn’t there.”

There is a long silence. Then the recording picks up the clicks from my camera as I take images of the letter from Jo.

“It’s rather beautiful, the way he underlines his words for emphasis,” I say, as I begin reading it for the first time myself.

“Jo Kleijne,” she says, and smiles, still reminiscing. “I do still have a letter written by a friend of my mother, but that is . . . I don’t know if you want that?”

“I want everything, I mean, if it can . . .”

Lien is smiling broadly now—“You want everything!” she laughs.

And after a bit more searching, she is holding the letter sent by Aunt Ellie for her birthday in September 1942.

“Aunt Ellie—I don’t have much of a picture of her. Shall I read it out loud?”

Lien reads the letter to me, which we had missed before—the one about wanting to come and visit and about how Lien will now have a whole new set of uncles and aunts—and then, as Lien ponders, a few more details of the resistance hideout in IJsselmonde come to the fore. But of the journey onward from there she still remembers nothing.

“I believe it was with Took,” she says, “but I do not know.” Her emphasis is on the word “believe,” making this an act of faith rather than remembrance. So while the trip from The Hague to Dordrecht remains so vivid, this one, nearly a year and a half later, is a blank.

I am again reminded of what Lien said when we first talked together about her wartime memories. Without families you don’t get stories. After all those months in the half-light, Lien did not really see other people, even if they were there, because she had no connection with them. As a result of her isolation, she stopped seeing the world.

“It was being that was just being,” she tells me, “and where, and how, and with whom, that was all uncertain. Not concerning yourself with the past or the future, it brings a perspective with it. The involvement [Lien uses the English word] . . . the involvement was on a very low heat, if that makes sense to you. I believe, when I say it like that, I have got it right. Can you understand?”

The metaphor of low heat strikes home to me and I will use it more than once as I describe this phase of Lien’s life. As I hear her speak about her feelings, both in IJsselmonde and afterward, I begin to understand her better. I have never felt so strongly how a person is the product of the life they have led.