The Dutch Orphan, page 29
Aletta wriggled, calling out for “Papa.” I kissed Aletta on the forehead before handing her back to Willem. She settled in against his shoulder, while I tried to conceal my disappointment.
“We’re so relieved to see you,” Liesbeth said. “With every wave of soldiers that came over the bridge, I had my hopes, but we thought it could take weeks, months even. We want to hear everything.”
I smiled weakly. “I’m quite tired.”
It was Liesbeth’s turn for disappointment. “Of course, you must need your rest.”
“We’ll get this Resistance hero straight home to bed,” Willem said with a laugh.
I shook my head. “Please don’t call me that.”
As we retreated through the crowds, I caught the glance that passed between my sister and husband. No doubt, they were wondering what kind of dark clouds I was bringing back and whether they’d been better off without me.
* * *
Arriving home felt like slipping into a dress I’d worn before my pregnancy—although I knew it intimately, it felt strange, suited for some version of me that had long disappeared. In the hallway, one of my hats hung in the same place I’d left it. I picked it up and ran my fingers around the brim, which Liesbeth had dressed up with fur from an old stole. I wanted to give it to Aletta, to play dress-up with her in funny voices, but I worried that she would only cry if I tried to place it on her head.
Willem poked his head around the corner. “What do you feel like, sweetheart? Are you hungry? I’m still trying to get the house in order, but whatever you need, you tell me and I’m your man.”
“I’m going to need some time myself,” I said, “to rebuild.” I wasn’t sure what I meant by that. Rebuild our family? My life? My relationship with Liesbeth? Even though the country was free, the barbed wire still cordoned me off from my former life.
“Come,” Willem said, placing a protective hand on my shoulder, “let’s get you something to eat.”
For the rest of the afternoon, we sat at the kitchen table, talking and laughing and crying, catching up on everything. Willem had a bottle of wine he had saved for the liberation, but I asked for water. My stomach couldn’t handle much more than that, and I was afraid the drink would make my worries and insecurities bubble over.
I told him of the bunker and the rats and the sewing workshop and the German guard and my fortuitous escape. Willem, in turn, told me how he and Aletta had lived between the animals, like so many others. He told me that Aletta had been taken, and how helpful Liesbeth had been through it all, how she’d orchestrated a plan to sneak into the Jewish nursery, all the risks she’d taken to get my daughter back. He told me Jakob had survived, having made it through several months of forced labor in a German munitions factory, but that Ida hadn’t, her body unable to recover from birth and the starvation of the Hunger Winter. I took all of this in, struggling to picture the sister I knew acting bravely and selflessly. I wasn’t yet ready to process what I felt about my sister, what I believed about Ida.
Then, he told me about my brother’s death. Although I had sensed Gerrit’s absence for some time, I hadn’t expected the news to hit so hard. I slid to the floor and sat in a heap, fixating on the geometric fans of the wallpaper. I recalled all the times he’d snuck up on me in the neighbor’s field while I belted out cabaret numbers and leaped from hay bale to hay bale, how I’d chased after him, cornering him and tackling him to the ground. I thought of his warmth toward Aletta, how much he’d wanted to settle down and start a family of his own.
Aletta toddled over from across the room. She stared, unsure what to make of my tears.
“Go see Ma,” Willem said, but she didn’t budge. I closed my eyes. The distance between us seemed unfathomable.
“You can pick her up,” Willem said, “she’ll be fine.”
I couldn’t force my daughter to love me, not after everything I’d put her through. But a sneaking fear crept into my mind: What if my sister had taken my place in Aletta’s heart? And wasn’t it deserved? For Liesbeth was the one who had been there to care for her while I was in prison, had helped Willem in every way she could. Maybe that was already fixed in Aletta’s memory.
Willem watched the standoff between us. His face was lined with a mix of happiness and concern. It must have been so hard on him, trying to navigate the war and parenthood, not knowing if I would ever return. I recalled all those cold nights in the camp, when I’d huddled on my lumpy mattress between strangers and tried to imagine him at home, croaking out off-key lullabies as he tucked Aletta into bed.
“I don’t know how you did it,” I said, “keeping her so strong in spirit.”
“I couldn’t have managed without your sister,” Willem said. He lifted Aletta onto his lap. “She helped every step along the way.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Not now.”
I stood up and walked over to the window. Outside, the guardrail by the canal was covered in orange paper streamers. I thought of the heron that I’d watched all those times while I breastfed. There was no sign of him now. Perhaps someone had hunted him, eaten him in the Hunger Winter. So much of the city had been stripped bare. And much as I ought to be indebted to Liesbeth, for how she’d lent Willem a hand in my absence, I wasn’t ready to forgive her.
Across the room, Aletta fidgeted on Willem’s lap. “She needs sleep,” I said, “and so do I.”
“You go lie down. I’ll put her to bed.”
“No, I’ll do it. I need to start somewhere.”
Forty-Seven
Liesbeth de Wit
May 26, 1945
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
For Liesbeth, the days after the liberation passed in a daze. She felt the elation of her sister’s safe return, the guilt that bobbed back to the surface, that feeling of trepidation as she tried to explore this new freedom, avoiding the main squares, flinching at every loud noise.
Maurits only left the house for work, and he returned home early, before the afternoon rush. They ate their meals in an uneasy silence. Now and then, he commented on the weather or asked for the salt, but that was it. After two weeks, Liesbeth convinced him to join her on some errands. His stack of paperwork had been filed away and it was a fine day, perfect for a picnic. He had no excuse.
They strolled down the long avenue that ran parallel to the Vondelpark. The birds were chirping, and the sun was shining but Maurits kept his hands in his pockets and his head to the ground. Liesbeth didn’t mind. It would have almost felt strange to intertwine her fingers with his, to lean into him as she once had. They lived in two adjacent worlds, and she wasn’t sure if any love still smoldered in the cinders of their marriage. After everything she’d felt for Dirk, the passion he’d brought out in her, it felt so hard to trust her own feelings. She knew she owed Maurits some loyalty, to repair what was lost, make up for her mistakes. But all she could think of were her own dreams, the hope that maybe, now that the war was over, she had a chance for a fresh start.
They turned a corner by a tailor’s shop and milliner that had closed during the Hunger Winter, lacking fuel and customers. Maybe one day, she could return to her sketches and make something of them. “Soon these places will reopen, don’t you think?” she said.
Maurits grunted. “Wouldn’t count on it.”
Liesbeth wondered if she wouldn’t have been better off having the picnic by herself. When was the last time they’d managed to have a lovely day together? She recalled the afternoon they’d spent boating at the beginning of the war. How much fun they’d had, swimming and sunbathing, until he’d ruined the day with his news about taking over the pharmacy. Back then, she’d seen him as someone pure, someone with principles. Yet if she’d been so opposed to his morals, why had she never stood up to him about this?
They kept walking in silence until they reached the bakery. A line wound out the door.
“Maybe we should come back,” Maurits said.
“We won’t have much of a picnic at all without bread.” She joined the line and started going through her ration coupons. The people in front of them lived two buildings over. They turned up their noses at Maurits, but Liesbeth pretended not to notice. When the baker called out for the next in line, the two of them entered the shop.
The baker looked Maurits up and down. “Out,” he said.
Liesbeth took a step back. “I beg your pardon?”
“I won’t have the likes of him in my shop.”
“But we’ve been coming here for years.”
“You’re welcome to stay, mevrouw. But he needs to leave.”
Liesbeth played with her purse strap, unsure how to react. She waited for Maurits’s temper to flare up, but he simply grimaced and strode out with his head held high. Liesbeth stuffed her ration coupons back into her purse. He was already at the opposite end of the small square before she caught up to him. She didn’t look back at all the prying eyes behind them.
“There’s another bakery two blocks down,” she said.
“Let’s go home.” As he lowered his hat over his brow, she saw his weariness and frustration. They walked home as they’d come, without speaking. Liesbeth thought of all the newspaper headlines she’d seen, the government’s promise to bring justice to Dutch society. There was no room in society for traitors; that point had been made clear. But was her husband guilty of treason, or just of taking the advantages that had been handed to him? And where did this leave her?
* * *
That afternoon, Maurits stayed indoors, bent over a journal he’d read several times over. A classical program was playing on the radio, but when the news came on, Maurits switched it off.
Feeling stifled in their small apartment, Liesbeth set off for a stroll in the next neighborhood, where she could wander in blissful anonymity. How different it felt from the days she’d wandered there with Dirk, trapped in her own romantic fancies. She mulled everything over, trying to decide the best course of action, for her marriage, for her own future. There didn’t seem to be any clear answers.
On her way home, she encountered a commotion down the road from their house. Several people were dragging a man from a taxi. The man kicked and yelled, writhing in protest. “Leave me be,” he said, “let me call my lawyer!”
Liesbeth stopped, nervous. A group of bystanders had gathered. More men joined in, some of their neighbors. They knocked the poor fellow to the ground and beat him with whatever they had: brooms, sticks, dustpans.
A woman spit at him. “Traitor!”
Liesbeth made a move to cross the street, but the man on the ground looked her way, panicked, like he was seeking an ally. She recognized him; he had been in the Landwacht, the branch of the NSB Maurits would have been assigned to, had he kept his membership. Liesbeth averted her gaze and hurried on home.
When she got to their building, she looked up at their window and saw Maurits staring outside, watching the lynching. His face had hardened. While she ran up the stairs, she heard a loud crash, followed by cursing. She gripped the railing, her heart drumming in her chest. Traitor—that was her husband, all right. He knew it as well as she.
She waited five minutes before continuing up the stairs. She nudged open the door to their apartment and found Maurits sitting on the floor, a table lamp shattered beside him. He held his head in his hands.
“Maurits?”
When he looked up at her, he was crying. “Lies,” he said, “I need you here. I need you here beside me.”
* * *
One month after Johanna’s return, Liesbeth received an invitation for dinner. It arrived by mail, written in careful handwriting, which felt uncharacteristic for Johanna. The notecard was addressed to Liesbeth, with no mention of Maurits. “A dinner to thank you,” it read, “for everything you’ve done for my daughter.”
In the end, Liesbeth didn’t need to devise an excuse to tell Maurits, because he had left town for several days to visit his brother. Took refuge was more like it, away from critical eyes. She showed up at Jo’s with a tin of biscuits she’d managed to claim from one of the Allied food drops, the boxes and sacks that had floated down from the sky like trinkets from heaven.
Liesbeth arrived to find Aletta in bed, earlier than normal, and she couldn’t help but wonder if that was intentional. She couldn’t blame her sister, nor did she want to compete for her niece’s affection, but the apartment felt too still without Aletta’s babbling and monkey hugs. At the sight of Aletta’s toys tucked away in the corner, Liesbeth felt that pining ache return to her womb.
Johanna had managed to get her hands on a small piece of fish, which came out of the oven dry and charred at the edges. Liesbeth washed down each bite with plenty of water and a polite smile, while the dinner unfolded over awkward remarks and toasts. Johanna preached about freedom, about what it would mean for Europe, the long process of rebuilding and taking stock of their losses in people and property. When her tone grew vindictive, Willem cut her off, but this only made Liesbeth feel worse. After all, didn’t Jo have every right to be resentful? Liesbeth didn’t know if she could ever expect things to go back to how they were before the war or whether she deserved that. But it was up to her to lay the first stone in that bridge.
“Jo, I’ve been meaning to say something—” Liesbeth began.
“Yes?”
Liesbeth glanced at Willem, who fixated on his plate as he edged his knife around the blackened bits of fish.
“You were right,” Liesbeth said, “about Maurits. I should have trusted your judgment.” She let out a breath of relief. While it was not the full confession she owed her sister, it was still something she’d never admitted. With every passing day, she felt it growing in her heart—the knowledge that she couldn’t live out the rest of her days with any hope of happiness with a man like her husband.
“Yes,” Johanna said, “well, we all misjudge people, don’t we?” A brief hint of something—vulnerability, guilt?—flashed across her face, before she tensed up again. “Are you going to leave him?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s no place in society for traitors,” Johanna said. “He’ll get what’s coming to him.”
Liesbeth fiddled with a stray thread on the tablecloth. She knew this was true; it was only a matter of time. She’d seen the girlfriends of the German soldiers marched naked through the squares, their heads shaven and their bodies tarred. She’d heard the stories of spontaneous arrests, NSBers rounded up and sent to camps, where they awaited prosecution.
Johanna went on. “If he’s convicted, they’ll strip him of his citizenship, and you, too, if you’re unlucky. Everyone will know what side you were on.”
They already did, Liesbeth thought. The past few weeks, she’d felt like she and Maurits had been walking around with sizzling brands on their foreheads. She shifted in her seat. “I’m frightened,” she said, in almost a whisper.
“You should be.” There was heat in Johanna’s words, like she wanted to see Liesbeth suffer. And maybe Liesbeth deserved it for what she’d done. If it hadn’t been for her ridiculous concern for Dirk, Jo would have never been sent away.
Willem cleared his throat and shot Johanna a warning look. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. We may have won, but we can’t run around like a bloodthirsty lynch mob with no regard for due process. It’s not easy to decide who was truly bad and good. And who has the authority to make that decision?”
“The government,” Johanna said.
“The government that was stuck on the other side of the English Channel for the past five years? What do they know of the many shades of gray that shaped our actions?” Willem said.
“And what do you think?” Johanna asked Liesbeth. “Was Maurits too blind to see the masses of Jews herded into the back of trucks? Too deaf to hear the cries of starving children across the city? Were you?”
Willem interrupted her. “We owe a great deal to Lies.”
“That’s true,” Johanna said. “And I’ll be forever grateful for your help. Wim says Aletta wouldn’t be here with us today if it weren’t for you.”
Liesbeth looked up, hoping this marked a turn in the evening, that Johanna was willing to forgive her. However, whatever hint of compassion her sister had shown vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Johanna took a sip of water. “As grateful as I am, this doesn’t change the fact that you made some very poor decisions along the way.”
“Johanna,” Willem said.
Liesbeth dabbed her lips with her serviette. “It’s all right,” she said, although she was trembling, “she’s right.” She got up. “I understood Maurits was wrong. Maybe not in the early days, but I did soon enough. But I was too much of a coward to do anything about it.”
“Please, Lies,” Willem said, “sit down and have another drink. We’ll talk about something else. I have a funny story about the sea lions at the zoo.”
It took all her will to keep her emotions from spilling over. She brought her plate to the kitchen. “I should get going. It’s getting late.”
Willem tried once more to change her mind while Johanna sat there without saying a word. When Liesbeth tried to kiss her goodbye, Jo turned her cheek.
“Good night, sister,” Liesbeth said. “I hope we will be able to mend our relationship in time.”
“Good night.”
Liesbeth walked out into the warm evening. A clear divide had settled between them, and it was time for her to accept the consequences of her loyalties. In all those years of occupation, everyone had faced the same choice. Maurits had collaborated. Johanna had resisted. She herself had hoped to adapt. And at the end of the day, they were left trying to make sense of it all, and everything seemed so much more black-and-white in retrospect. She knew she wouldn’t be part of Johanna’s life, or Aletta’s, if she continued on the same course.
She stared up at the gabled rooftops that lined the block. The sun was dipping out of sight, casting a reddish glow over the roof tiles. The blackout paper had long been taken down and shredded, but still, many houses had their curtains closed. Something told her the city would stay that way for many years to come.
