My Otto,
I nearly died today. The Gestapo came. We thought someone had betrayed us. I thought Mr & Mrs X, and their nephew, who lives with them, would be shot on the steps of their own house. All I wanted to do was disappear, evaporate. I’d have killed myself, even with our child inside me, if it would have saved them. But I knew, too, that it wouldn’t. So there was nothing for me to do but wait. I never thought it would be possible to be so entirely consumed with fear – for our child, for Mr & Mrs X, who would each die, if they died, because of me. I had no fear for myself, strangely, as I do on most other days. As, to save them, the two who risk their lives every day for me, I would have run out onto the street to be shot.
Of course, once our child is born, once he is out of my body I know my greatest fear shall be for him, even above our protectors, though that feels rather unfair. But I’m afraid I shan’t be able to help it. I would surrender myself in a heartbeat for him, of course, but I would surrender them too. Not that I’d have the right and though it would be a great wrong indeed to do so. I wonder if they will guess at this, once he is born and if they will cast us out.
When at last I told Mrs X of my condition, I believe she talked with Mr X about doing just that. I don’t blame them for this. When they agreed to hide me, they didn’t expect to be hiding a baby too. He might cry out too often and too loudly; he might be heard, we might be betrayed. And, even though it would make sense, since to be discovered would kill us all, I could not smother him, I simply could not. I will fight for him, I promise you, I will protect our son until I can do no more.
Ever Yours,
Marthe
‘But, how? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t explain it. I am not a historian. I can only give you the facts.’
Clara stands behind the counter of the Office of Records on Haarlemmerdijk, 102. Having already waited three days and four hours for the information she applied for, Clara is now feeling more than a little agitated at not being given it.
‘So, you’re saying that there’s no record of an Otto Josef Garritt van Dijk being born in Amsterdam, ever?’
‘No, Miss Cohen,’ the short, spidery woman says. ‘I’m saying we’ve no record of an Otto Josef Garritt’ – she slides from her precise, perfect English to give extra, particular emphasis to the pronunciation of the surname, highlighting Clara’s mangled attempt – ‘van Dijk being born between 1939 and 1949. Those were the dates you gave for us to check. Correct?’
Clara sighs and nods. ‘But I don’t understand. I have his name here, written down by his mother.’ She slides the letter onto the counter.
The woman purses her thin lips. ‘Yes, you’ve already shown me it several times. As I told you before—’
‘But look,’ Clara taps the paper, feeling the panic rise in her chest. ‘She gives his exact name. It can’t have been that common. I mean, it’s unlikely there was another boy born with the very same name, so …’
The woman’s eyes narrow. ‘Yes, clearly that is correct, or we would have found record of one. However, as I’ve already explained, if the mother – as you believe – was a Jew being hidden by a Dutch gentile family during the war, then that explains why she never registered the baby. It’s very simple. It makes perfect sense.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ Clara says, trying very hard not to raise her voice, ‘which is why I asked you to check the marriage and death records too. I mean, even if his birth wasn’t registered during the war, it might have been afterwards, to make him legitimate – don’t you think? And, if he got married or had children, there would be no reason not to register that, don’t you think?’
‘I am not paid to think about such things, young lady,’ the woman retorts. ‘My job is simply to check the records. A job you have been preventing me from doing for the last’ – she glances at her watch – ‘fourteen and a half minutes. So, if you don’t object, I really ought to get back to it.’ Without waiting for a reply, the woman turns from Clara and ensconces herself firmly behind a computer screen, immediately tapping her skinny fingers rapidly against the keys.
For a few moments Clara remains, reluctant to let go of her only chance of finding her unknown relative. Still, she holds on to the one piece of good news: there was no record of Otto Josef Garritt van Dijk’s death. Which might, just might, mean that he’s still alive. And thus she somehow, if only she can figure out how, still has a chance of finding him.
‘You should return to England,’ Mr Akkersijk says. ‘You’ll probably find records of him there. After all, your grandfather left Amsterdam as a teenager, yes? So it’s possible his older brother went with him.’
‘But, why do I know nothing about this brother?’ Clara asks. ‘Why did Granddad never mention him? If he was still alive, wouldn’t he have told me all about him? It doesn’t make sense.’
Mr Akkersijk sips his tea. ‘I’m afraid many families don’t make sense. Especially those of older generations. My father was taken to Auschwitz in 1944, three months before the end of the war, before that camp was liberated. He was fourteen years old. He never spoke about it. Not a word. Not as long as he lived. I asked him a few times, especially when we started learning about the war at school, but he’d just shake his head and mutter something I couldn’t understand and my mother would tell me not to bother him.’
Clara sits in silence, clutching her teacup, not knowing how to respond to such a grand, grave admission. She glances at his kitchen floor, anchoring her gaze to a pile of letters. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says softly.
‘It’s okay,’ he says, though his voice has a raw edge, like the underbelly of a wounded creature. ‘It’s a long time ago now.’
‘Still …’
He shrugs. And Clara suddenly wants to reach out and touch him, to press her face against his chest.
‘How old are you?’ she blurts out, before instantly regretting it. ‘Sorry, I—’
Mr Akkersijk smiles. ‘That’s all right. I’m fifty-four. You?’
It’s fortunate that Clara wasn’t sipping her tea at the time of this revelation, or she’d surely have spat it out across the table. ‘Fifty-four?! Really? You’re twenty-one years older than me? I didn’t, I didn’t – you’re so, so … You’re still …’
Mr Akkersijk’s smile deepens. ‘Alive? Walking without a stick? Able to remember my own name? You young people are so funny, how you perceive the ageing process, when you really have no idea.’
‘No,’ Clara huffs. ‘Actually, it wasn’t that at all. I wasn’t thinking anything like that, I was thinking, I was just …’
Something in the air shifts as Clara trails off, as if her unspoken words have strung themselves together in a taut wire suspended across the table. When Mr Akkersijk looks at her now there’s a dash of mischief in his gaze.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Well, I, um …’ Clara’s own gaze slips quickly back to the floor, to the safety of the papers, their curling, crisp edges, the scratch of black ink across their creamy surface. ‘Nothing.’
Mr Akkersijk inhales deeply, then picks up the teapot on the table between them. ‘More tea?’
Clara looks up. ‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’
He nods at the plate of speculaas between them. ‘Biscuit?’
Clara shakes her head.
‘Will you,’ she ventures, ‘will you read me the letter again, about the baby?’
Mr Akkersijk looks surprised, but nods. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Thank you,’ Clara says. She sets down her teacup and opens her bag – hanging on the back of the chair – and pulls out the letter. ‘I want … I’ve never, never—’
‘Yes,’ Mr Akkersijk says softly, ‘I’ve never experienced anything like it either.’
‘You haven’t?’ Clara asks, without looking him in the eye. ‘Oh, I—’
‘Thought I would have,’ Mr Akkersijk finishes. ‘Given my grand old age of one hundred and three.’
Clara giggles. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Well, I haven’t,’ he says. ‘Their feelings are quite incredible, aren’t they? And – it’s comforting, in a way, to know that love like this survived, even amid all the tragedy.’
‘Yes.’ Clara slides the letter across the table, letting her hand rest atop it for an extra moment, so their fingers touch when Mr Akkersijk picks it up.
My dearest Otto,
He’s a boy, just as I promised he would be. He’s beautiful. So beautiful. Just like his father, though even now, I’m so sorry to say that your face is fading in my memory – I used to know every line, every freckle, every eyelash, every curl of hair. As I squeeze my own eyes shut now, to put you in focus you come back to me, though still as a watercolour rather than a photograph. His eyes are blue, just as yours, though I hear they can change up to two years after birth. I hope they won’t. I dearly hope they will be just as yours are, for ever.
How I wish I could get this letter to you. None of the others before this matter, only this. I wish that somehow I can get word to you. I would ask Mr & Mrs X to deliver this to you, or word alone, but I cannot. They are doing so much for me, risking their lives every day just by my being here. And now, little Otto is here too and we are praying that he will continue to be as quiet as he has been thus far. I sleep with him at my breast so he never wants for food or comfort. I swaddle him in blankets, his only clothes so far, but I shall sew him more.
Mrs X brings me extra bread and soup, to keep my milk plentiful, and she even slips me an extra piece of meat now and then. I know she’s taking it off her own plate and I’m so grateful but cannot say because she would deny it. Even her nephew sneaks down here now and then to bring us little extras, for which I am deeply grateful. He stays to talk sometimes, too, and provides some welcome distraction, though, given that you are of similar ages, I cannot help but wish he was you.
What do you do every day, in your hiding place? Are you as well cared for as I? I do dearly hope so. How much longer will we have to wait? Will we live? We must. We must survive to raise our son and love him and show him a world that is bright and beautiful, not this wild, terrible world we hide from now. I will write to you every day, telling you news of your son. I shall pray for us all; I shall pray that this madness will soon be over.
Ever Yours,