I was at my desk in the bedroom, trying to coax out a few words about the impossibly distant place of my childhood. The desk had the look of a stage prop in a play about a writer, my old Olivetti in the middle of it, resting on a brown-bordered green blotter, a sheet of blank paper in the carriage, a notebook beside it and, on the notebook, perfectly positioned at a forty-five degree angle, a newly sharpened, never-used yellow pencil. I’d felt foolish just sitting there since my run-in with Myra, who, no matter how you looked at it, was a published writer, a writer who, when she sat at a typewriter, typed words onto the page instead of just staring at it.
“Maybe I could get started if I wrote in code,” I shouted to Rachel. “Or I could pretend to write in code. Just hit the keys randomly. Either way, who would know?”
I immediately wished I hadn’t said it, but was rescued by the ringing of the phone. Rachel answered it and soon after shouted, “WHAT? YOU’RE KIDDING.”
“Is something wrong?” I called, but, hearing her laugh, I went back to staring at the page. Minutes later, she burst into the room, both hands on top of her head. “Bethany and Clive just got engaged,” she said. It was almost a question.
“That cannot be true,” I said.
“Oh, it is,” Rachel said. “Mom is absolutely over the moon. That was her on the phone. I think she’s calling all of Cape Town. Bethany and Clive. Three weeks ago, Bethany was rolling her eyes at the mention of his name. And one hour ago, she asked him to marry her.”
“She asked him?”
Rachel nodded. “How else could it possibly have happened? There’s a get-together at Mom and Dad’s tonight to celebrate. The DeVrieses will be there, of course. Gloria and Max are in Amsterdam, and Mom says she couldn’t reach Carmen and Fritz.”
“What on earth is Bethany thinking?”
“Let’s not be like that,” Rachel said. “I mean, I feel the same way, but it’s not as if Bethany is the most normal person in the world, either. And she’s not as hard-nosed as she pretends. Really. Growing up, she fell in love all the time. I’ll wear my best dress, the one with the spaghetti straps, if you’ll wear a tie. We can buy one on the way. They’ll all be dressed to the nines. Or my parents’ version of it, anyway. Let’s say to the fives.”
I nodded. She’d been subdued since the night of her father’s rant against the Jews and Anne Frank, and it was nice to see a hint of buoyancy.
At Liesbeek Road, Rachel rang the doorbell. As before, Bethany came to the door, this time holding a martini palm up in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“Do come in, dahlings,” she said.
“I can’t believe you’re engaged,” Rachel said. “I’d hug you if you weren’t armed to the teeth.”
“You finally popped the question,” I said.
Bethany raised her glass in mock tribute. “I’m off my happy pills tonight, so I’m allowed to drink. In fact, I think it’s mandatory or else I might get all depressed. The two of you are required to drink as well—a lot. You can always get a cab later or spend the night here. Do come in and give your best to my betrothed.”
We followed her into the front room, where Hans and Myra, the DeVrieses and Clive were standing about, all of them but Hans holding martini glasses, though Peter’s was filled with what looked like cranberry juice. “Here they are,” Bethany said. Myra was beaming; Hans, his hands behind his back, seemed lost in thought. The DeVrieses flanked Clive, whose face was as flushed as if he’d just sprinted a mile.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Myra said to Rachel as she hugged her with one arm.
“It is,” Rachel said. “It’s absolutely wonderful.”
“What’s this, now, what’s this?” Hans said as Rachel kissed him on the cheek. “Making a move on the old man, are you?” Everyone laughed.
I extended my hand to him and he took it, but not firmly. “Congratulations,” I said.
“Bethany proposed to Clive, you know,” he said to Rachel, smiling broadly, showing more of his dentures than he ever had in my presence.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “Don’t draw any conclusions about me from that.”
“Well, she has always been unorthodox,” he said.
“I think it’s very charming,” Myra said. “And these are modern times. Why shouldn’t the woman propose?”
“In that case,” Hans said, “I assume that, in spite of what she just said, Rachel will be proposing soon.”
More laughter. I glanced at Rachel, who looked away when our eyes met.
Rachel and I congratulated Clive and his parents in a jumble of hugs, handshakes and kisses. “Martinis for Rachel and Wade,” Bethany said to Clive, putting her hand gently on his back. Clive made for the kitchen and came back with two glasses. “Ready, made and waiting for you,” Bethany said. As we took the drinks from Clive, Bethany stepped into the middle of the room. “Quiet, please,” she said. “I would like to propose a toast.”
Clive lurched forward as if pushed by his parents. Dropping to one knee in front of her, he pulled a ring box from the pocket of his jacket and opened it. “Will you marry me?” he said, his voice breaking on “marry.” Myra gasped as if marriage had not been mentioned until now.
“You stole my line, buddy,” Bethany said as if to herself. “But I guess I stole your thunder, so we’re even. Yes, I will marry the man who’s already agreed to marry me.”
“The ring makes it official,” Theresa said. Clive stayed there, on one knee, looking up at Bethany with a stricken expression as if she had said no.
“Well, put it on her finger, Clive,” Peter said. As Clive stood, Bethany hurriedly handed her drink to Rachel, her cigarette to me, and thrust her left hand out to Clive, her other on her hip, which she cocked in the manner of some movie star she seemed to be imitating. Clive took the ring from the box and, shaking badly, tried to slip it onto Bethany’s finger. “It goes on the one to the right of my pinky,” Bethany said to a chorus of nervous laughter, using her right hand to steady his. Together, they managed to slide the ring into place.
“Ta-dah,” Bethany said, raising her hand so that all could see the ring—the diamond was sizable. Everyone applauded.
“Clive picked it out when we went for the vodka and vermouth,” Theresa said.
Bethany lowered her hand to waist height and splayed her fingers as we all gathered around to admire the ring we all knew had been paid for by Clive’s parents. Bethany gazed at it as if the sight of it on her hand seemed as unlikely to her as it did to me.
“You were going to propose a toast,” I said to Bethany, thinking to rescue her from an awkward moment.
“Yes, I was,” Bethany said, “but nothing I could say could top this. Nothing at all.”
A few minutes later, Rachel and I found ourselves alone in the kitchen with Bethany. “They wanted to get champagne but I insisted on martinis,” she said. “I get no kick from champagne, but mere alcohol drives me insane. I have to blame something.” She locked eyes with Rachel. “Out with it,” she said. “You look like you think I’ve gone all the way around the bend and back again.”
“I am surprised,” Rachel said.
“Well,” Bethany said, “if I had waited for him to ask first—but he did get down on one knee just now.”
“You know that’s not what I mean,” Rachel said.
If I had waited for him to ask first. I remembered Rachel telling me she thought I should ask her out. You don’t have to, but I think you should.
Bethany put her martini on the counter and lit up a cigarette. “I know, I know,” she said. “I was just kidding. Wade, would you rather have a beer? You’re not nursing that martini, you’re doctoring it.”
“No changing the subject,” Rachel said. “I want to know what’s up.”
“What’s up is that I got engaged today. For most of the usual reasons. I swept him off his feet. I guess he loves me or something. So what if I don’t love him. He is smitten and no one else is beating down the door. He may not be a knight in shining armour, but he’s a nice guy, and most guys are not so nice. His father and mine grew up together. My mom likes his mom. He wants a quiet, normal life. He has a job he hates so much that it may make him love his wife and kids all the more. You know, Rachel, not every woman finds a man who loves her just as much as she loves him. The odds are heavily against it. Even fewer meet one who plans to be a writer, but I have to say, I don’t like Wade’s chances of becoming one unless you get down on one knee and beg him to.”
“That’s just the martini talking,” I said, grabbing Rachel as her index finger came within a few inches of Bethany’s face. She took a deep breath and lowered her hand.
Bethany plucked the olive out of her martini and put both on the counter. “Wade,” she said, “what you are witnessing is a standoff between two sisters. Rachel is wondering when I last had a bite to eat and kept it down, and I’m wondering why the underside of her left hand is so smudged with ink. My version of her wrist test.”
Rachel glanced down at her hand, which was, indeed, smudged with blue ink, more so than I had ever seen it. How had I not noticed? Rachel shook her head. “I haven’t been writing my diary. I can’t help it that I’m left-handed and therefore write everything left-handed.”
“What have you been writing, Wade’s novel?”
“Knock it off,” Rachel said, but Bethany persisted.
“We’re on to each other, Wade. She knows why I’m wearing this loose-fitting dress, and I know why her hand is blue. We know each other’s tricks. She worships a book written by a dead teenager and is diarizing day and night. Take my word for it, she is. And people think I’m nuts.”
Bethany and Rachel looked at each other as if both of them were shocked by what Bethany had said. As Rachel’s eyes welled up, Bethany pulled Rachel close and buried her face in her hair, whispering something. Rachel whispered something back. When they let go of each other, they were both smiling and crying at the same time. “Let me get that beer, buddy,” Bethany said to me, rubbing tears away with both hands, then patting my chest.
For the rest of the evening, Bethany and Clive sat side by side on the loveseat, holding hands. I felt certain they had never held hands before, let alone kissed. Rachel and I sat side by side on separate chairs, not holding hands, the flagrant opposite of Bethany and Clive, a couple with no plans to get engaged, let alone married, with no plans period except to go on living in disgrace.
On the way home, I said, “So you’re diarizing. I don’t know why I didn’t notice the ink on your hand, but I can’t say I’m surprised, given your mood lately.”
“I haven’t relapsed,” Rachel snapped. “A few pages here and there does not a relapse make.”
“When have you been doing it? Where? I haven’t seen you.”
“Sweetie, it doesn’t matter. It’s maybe a few pages at most.”
“A few more than I’ve written.”
“You know—”
“I know,” I said. “It’s just that, judging by what Bethany said, my being stuck at the starting line is the talk of your family. I don’t like to think of Bethany and Clive, Clive, exchanging smirks about me.”
Rachel took my hand. I raised hers to my mouth and kissed it.
From The Ballad of the Clan van Hout
HET PAROOL (1967)
(In which I tell the girls of pieces published
about me in Het Parool, the official paper of the
Dutch Resistance during and after the war.)
At Cape Town University,
I told them of my history.
I told those men of lesser rank
that I had almost saved Anne Frank.
Word somehow spread to Amsterdam,
where my undoing soon began.
My name appeared in Het Parool:
“ ‘The Case of Hans van Hout,’ the fool
who claims he would have saved Anne Frank
if not for men of lesser rank.
He persists in the travesty
of falsifying history,
dishonours those who gave their lives
or somehow managed to survive,
the heroes of the underground,
some of whom were never found,
but sent to camps and perished there—
no records say exactly where.
Comrades, witnesses testify
that they were brave and that they died.
Who would cheapen the sacrifice
of those who paid the greatest price
so that a man like Hans van Hout
could strut and boast and brag about
such feats as serving sauerkraut?
A craven clown of false renown
impersonates the Underground
and libels the defenceless dead:
‘It’s their fault that Anne Frank is dead.’ ”
I admit some of their facts were right—
I’d made them up—not out of spite—
to make my story seem more true.
Details do that, you know they do.
I told them that a German said,
“Tell us the truth or Mam is dead,”
and put a gun against her head
and said that, after he shot her,
he’d hang my brother in the square.
The next file Het Parool compiled
read, “Hans van Hout, the only child
of Jan and Cornelia van Hout…”
The profs asked why I lied about
“a younger brother, one named Dittmer,
who almost died defying Hitler.
Dittmer must have been very young
the day that he was almost hung.”
Another of their stupid jokes
that “proved” my story was a hoax.
“Tell us about Cornelia,
the imaginary character,
the one you said was almost shot
the day that Dittmer faced the Knot.
The mother that you haven’t got
was dead before the war began.
Het Parool learned this from the man
who told them that your father ran
after the fall of Amsterdam
and never came to light again.
You were alone by age fourteen
but never were a go-between—
the member of the Underground
of whom no evidence was found.”
I did serve with the Underground
but proof of this cannot be found.
I lost my mother, then my father,
who left me to an empty house—
he ran off like a frightened mouse.
No trace of him was ever found.
Fourteen, I joined the Underground—
the Germans thought me one of theirs,
the Underground knew this, my dears.
Het Parool had exposed only
the fraud your dad was thought to be.
The truth: to be or not to be
was always, always haunting me,
which ones should live, which ones should die—
none would have lived had I not lied,
agreed I would collaborate.
I had to be what I was not
or else more Jews would have been caught.
How could professors understand
the chaos of the Netherlands
when defeat seemed a certainty?
Years of lying from necessity
make habit of duplicity.
It did seem like a game sometimes:
we made up passwords and false names.
Some men were masters of disguise;
my specialty was telling lies.
Deception, misinformation,
codes with multiple translations
depending on the time of day:
you must not give yourself away,
you must not know who you work for
lest it come out under torture.
The lone wolves of the Underground
were written off if they were found.
By war’s end, few men knew for sure
which uniform their comrades wore.
If truth be told, most still don’t know
the traitors from the true heroes.
So much confusion and mistrust,
the worst mistaken for the best—
so, too, the other way around:
the maze we called the Underground.
Whichever way it all worked out
was never good for Hans van Hout:
Hans the deferential waiter,
Hans, inconsequential traitor.
I told them again and again
how close I came to saving Anne:
“They fouled it up, they failed Anne Frank,
those nameless men of lesser rank.
I did my job, they bungled theirs;
I almost saved her—no one cares.
My so-called comrades may have been
traitors, mercenaries, Germans
who duped me all throughout the war—
who knows who I was working for?
I knew the mission only once:
I tried to give the Franks a chance
to get away from Prinsengracht.
I wrote a note and left it where
I found my notes on Henke Square—
when I returned, it wasn’t there.
No one is willing to admit
the lie and what lies under it.
The possibilities are clear.
What might have been if not for their
incompetence or apathy,
their avarice or treachery,
will always be a mystery.
The famous bookcase that concealed
eight should, when opened, have revealed
nothing at all, some empty rooms
that would not be the sad heirlooms
they are today. Anne Frank should be
a woman living happily,
untroubled in obscurity.”
The truth is I may not live down
the mockery from town to town:
“Henceforth, you’ll be the Almost Man,
the almost had a brother man,
a brother who was almost hung
when Hans van Hout was almost young;
a mother who was almost shot
when Dittmer almost faced the Knot:
a gun put to your mother’s head
long after she was good and dead.
The man who almost saved Anne Frank
is nothing but a mountebank.”
My girls, I don’t know what I’d do
without the Special Love that you
hold in your hearts for Hans van Hout—
the Love I could not live without.
I hope that you will always be
what you have so far been for me:
the loyal few, the loving four—
no man could ever ask for more.
It isn’t easy to push on
when you alone know right from wrong,
when you alone know truth from lies,
when evil lives and virtue dies,
when you alone know what you’ve done
but no one else beneath the sun
can see what you are truly worth
because some “secret” was unearthed.
To live in secret and exult—
is anything more difficult?
Anne Frank, Anne Frank won fame, no doubt—
through all the world her name rings out.
She dreamed that hers would one day be
among the names of History.
Hans van Hout, Hans van Hout,
all the world should know his name,
but he prefers to live without
the blandishments of fame.