The Upstairs Room

  “Dammit, I’ve got too many women in the house.”

  He slammed the door when he left.

  While Johan was on his way to Boekelo, Mr. Hannink came to see us. A truck was going from house to house, he said, checking.

  “Checking what?” Dientje gasped, but Mr. Hannink had already gone.

  Sini and I got into the hiding place as fast as we could.

  “God-o-god-o-god, Dientje, don’t close it yet.”

  “But they’ll be here any minute. Mr. Hannink said so.”

  “You stay up here and sit in front of the window. When you see that truck, you close the opening to the hiding place.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the kitchen, of course. Where else? Johan’s coming home at twelve to eat.”

  Sini and I stood close together, listening, waiting for Dientje to come.

  “Okay, okay.” Dientje ran over to us. “They’re here. They’re here.”

  She closed up the hiding place with the piece of wood. We heard her lower the shelf and close the closet door. We heard her footsteps as she ran down the stairs. Then nothing.

  Where were they? What took them so long? We could suffocate in here if they didn’t come for a long time. I leaned up against Sini.

  Footsteps. Loud ones. Boots. Coming up the stairs. Wooden shoes. Coming behind. Sini put her arms around me and pushed my head against her shoulder.

  Loud voices. Ugly ones. Furniture being moved. And Opoe’s protesting voice. The closet door was thrown open. Hands fumbled on the shelves. Sini was trembling. She tightened her arms around me. I no longer breathed through my nose. Breathing through my mouth made less noise.

  A man was speaking German. Then another was saying, “We want to know where all those pieces of material come from.”

  “What’s he doing? He can’t just take all of that. It’s mine,” Opoe said. “Tell’m that.”

  A stick pounded once on the floor, and then again. The closet door was slammed. My heart was beating too loudly. What if they could hear us? Would they stick a bayonet through the closet wall? They could. All over the wall, to be sure to hit whoever was behind the wall.

  My mouth was dry, yet I didn’t dare breathe through my nose. They might still be there. But you clearly heard them storm down the stairs, didn’t you? I know, but what if they had left a soldier behind? Sini must think so, too, or she wouldn’t be holding me so tightly.

  There were noises on the stairs again. They’re coming back? No, only wooden shoes this time.

  “They’re gone, girls.” Dientje removed the piece of wood. “We were lucky. One of ’em was standing right here. I was afraid he would hear you breathe.”

  We didn’t move. Dientje bent in front of the hole. “They’re gone.”

  “Girls, I brought you a drop of coffee,” Opoe said. “You can come out now. They were nasty people. They took the pig we were going to kill, and the cloth I’ve been saving for years.”

  Pig? Cloth? It could have been us.

  “No, Opoe, we’ll stay in here this morning. They might come back.”

  “If you hadn’t nagged me out of the house, I’d have been here. Now you see,” Johan said when he heard about the search. “You let them take that pig away? Fools, you are. Ma, you should’ve stopped them.”

  “Johan, don’t yell at me. I did want to stop them, but Dientje here was awfully scared.”

  “I was not.”

  “Dientje, I saw you.… ”

  “Well,” Johan said, “I’ve got to go back to the bleach works.”

  “No, Johan, stay home this afternoon.”

  “What d’you mean? I’ve got to go to work. I’ve been late too many times.”

  “But, Johan, what if they come back?”

  “That’s why you want me to stay? Eh? To… what d’you call it… protect you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I will. I almost wish they’d come back. I’d tell them a thing or two. I’d get the pig back too, I bet. Okay, okay, I won’t talk about it anymore. At least they didn’t find the girls.”

  Sometime in the afternoon, Dientje ran in. “Remember when I took you to the farmer with the ten Jews? Mimi was one of them? Remember, Annie, you didn’t talk to her?” Her voice trembled. “The Germans found ’em. They took everybody in the house away on the truck. The farmer and his wife, too. Everybody.”

  “Weren’t the Jews in the hiding place?”

  “Yes, but that’s where they were found. You see now how careful you’ve got to be? Because if they get you, that’s it.”

  “Yes, Dientje.”

  I licked my lips. They felt cracked.

  I remembered Mimi. She hadn’t talked to me either.

  Mimi no longer had to stay inside … she was probably even traveling … sure she was … on that train.

  My lips were cracked.

  It was very late and very dark when Mr. Hannink came again to the house. He had something important to ask Johan, he said, something that had to do with the farmer and the ten Jews who had been caught.

  “Sit down,” Johan said solemnly.

  “Somebody tipped off the Germans,” Mr. Hannink said. “They knew all those Jews were there and where their hiding place was.” He spoke in an even lower voice. “And I know who that somebody was.”

  We were looking at his mouth. What was he going to say next?

  He cleared his throat. “That man has to be killed before he does more harm.” His eyes rested on Johan. “Could you do it?”

  Dientje walked over to Johan. Menacingly she stood in front of him.

  “Well,” Johan said hesitantly, “to tell you the truth, Mr. Hannink, I’ve actually never killed anyone before.”

  “God-o-god-o-god,” Opoe said.

  It wouldn’t be difficult, Mr. Hannink explained. “I’ll give you a revolver. You can hide yourself in the ditch next to his house and wait for him to come out. As soon as you’ve shot him, you get away.”

  Slowly Johan shook his head. “If anything happened to me, the women here would go crazy,” he said.

  Dientje went back to her chair.

  A few days later a boy came over. He wanted to talk to Oosterveld about a job that had to be done, he said. He showed Johan a note signed by Mr. Hannink.

  He stayed for a little while, then left with the revolver and the instructions that Mr. Hannink had given to Johan.

  It only took a day. The Germans were furious. Why had such a good man been shot? To show how furious they were, they arrested several people. We’ll let them go, they said, as soon as the killer of our friend has turned himself in.

  When he didn’t, the hostages were found along Usselo’s main road, shot. Their fingers had been broken.

  It made us very quiet, especially Johan.

  In the middle of September thousands of British parachutists were dropped at Arnhem.

  “You know, you can get from Arnhem to Usselo on the bike in one day?” Johan said. “Yep, if you have big legs like Dientje.”

  Sini laughed. While she was helping Johan with his English, I looked at her. Her face was flushed. I felt like crying. Remember how long they fought in Italy, Sini? Months. Why do you always forget these things? I know Arnhem is in Holland. Still.… Tomorrow you may be miserable again.

  In less than ten days it was all over. No, not the war, just the fighting. More German soldiers were in Arnhem than the Allies had thought, and the Allied soldiers that came up through the south of Holland to help the paratroopers had to go back. But not all the way back. Part of the south of Holland remained free, the part of Holland Usselo was not in. People in Eindhoven were probably singing and dancing and shouting.

  The Allies should have freed the rest of Holland, too. We all wanted to get rid of the Germans. The soldiers were becoming nastier and nastier, and people were more scared than ever… almost everybody… about everything.

  One night soldiers had marched into movie houses in Amsterdam. They had turned on the lights so that
they could see which men were young enough to go to Germany. So much work still had to be done for Germany, and there were not enough Germans to do it. Not enough Jews, either. But there were still Dutch Gentile men around. After that night men stopped going to the movies, but it didn’t matter. The soldiers looked in other places: in churches, on trains. If they were angry at not finding enough men to take away, they shot people in the streets. They had done it. When Johan tried to tell Sini what the man he worked with thought the Allies would do next, she started to scream. When I walked over to her, she turned her back on me.

  And the rain continued, as if it were never going to stop. Leaves were fluttering around aimlessly and landing on the ground in soft, slippery piles. A few stuck against the window and stayed there, forming a pattern.

  It was getting chilly, and there was no longer any coal. At night we went down to the kitchen to get warm. “Johan, are you sure nobody can see through the shades?” Dientje asked every time.

  But who’d be there to look? Nobody was allowed out after dark anymore. “So, who’d come, eh?”

  It was cozy in the kitchen. The oven door was open. Sini’s and my feet were resting on it. Opoe got up and stuck her hand into the oven for a piece of dry wood. With a bent wire she tried to remove a disk from the top of the stove. “Fui-fui, with just that oil lamp I can’t really see what I’m doing. No electricity at night. What’s next? Industry needs it. Pooh, industry. What’s the matter with houses?”

  “Ma, I remember what you used to say. ‘Electricity, pooh. That’s for young people. For the few years I’m going to be around, oil lamps suit me fine.’ How many years ago did you say that?”

  “Ja, ja. I can’t help it.”

  “Johan,” Dientje said, “I don’t know what to do with all those city people who come to the door for food. Six today. They said they were lucky they could still drag themselves around. People are lying in the streets, starved to death, they said.”

  “God-o-god-o-god, Johan, they’re so thin.”

  “What did you give them?”

  “A couple of potatoes each,” Dientje said. “You know they wanted to give me a lot of money for them?”

  “Don’t take it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “It’s a disgrace. So many farmers charge all they can get away with. It’s a scandal.”

  “Now’s when you get to know people. And, boy, most of ’em are no good.” Opoe shook her head.

  “But I didn’t, Johan,” Dientje said.

  “A goddamned scandal.”

  “A few came from that town where they were fighting, Johan. Arnhem. That whole town’s a ruin, they said. People from there are just wandering around Holland. Fui-fui, and with winter coming.”

  Johan scratched his head. “Damn, it’s that we’ve got the girls, or I’d say let some of them sleep in the garage. But we can’t have any strangers poking around.”

  Out in the street a car stopped suddenly. The gate opened and loud footsteps sounded at the side of the house. Boots. Johan pushed us upstairs. “Into the hiding place, fast.”

  My goodness, what a long time. Weren’t they coming? What was going on?

  “Sini,” I whispered.

  “Hush.”

  Hush for what? I shifted my weight from one leg to the other. The closet was getting stuffy.

  The Germans had not come back to search the house again, Johan told us after they had left. They had come to tell him that they needed part of the house for their headquarters. “Look, I said, you don’t want to live here. We haven’t got running water. We haven’t even got a decent toilet. But it didn’t matter. Well, I said, upstairs is out, you wouldn’t want to climb those steep stairs. The only thing that makes sense is to let you have the three rooms in front of the house. I showed them the rooms, and they said they were fine.” Noisily Johan blew his nose. “Damn. And I bet they’ll be here day and night.”

  My hands felt clammy. I stared at my feet. They were ugly, not the kind of feet I read about in books.

  “Well,” Sini said, “what now? Do you think Mr. Hannink can find us another place?”

  “Eh? What d’you mean? You’re going to stay here. What else? Right, Dientje?”

  “You’ll have to be very careful,” Dientje said, “but we wouldn’t send you away.”

  “I’ll tell you something: you’re going to be pretty safe here. As long as you don’t make any noise. Because what fool would search our house for Jews? Eh? Nobody. Ha, ha, Germans and you in the same house! How’s that for a dumb farmer?” Johan wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “But Johan,” Dientje said, “what if they come up the stairs?”

  “I thought of that. I’m closing those three rooms off from the rest of the house, so nobody can get through that way. The only other way they can get to the stairs is through the kitchen. Either you or Ma have got to be there all day.”

  “But what if they go up anyway?”

  “Dientje,” Opoe warned, “keep your wits together.”

  “How long are they going to be here?” Sini asked.

  “How could I have asked them that? Till the end of the war maybe.”

  That could be a long time. Nothing new was happening.

  “You’ll have to stay in the back room all day because the front room’s right over their offices.”

  “But, Johan, they’ll freeze in there. That’s the coldest room in the house.”

  “They’ll have to stay in bed then.”

  “The radio, Johan,” Sini said.

  “Goddammit. We can’t hear the news anymore. I’ll have to take the radio out of that place and put it somewhere else. Can’t leave my radio in their office, can I?”

  “Then how will we find out what’s really going on, Johan?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find out. What a hell of a thing to have… German headquarters. Ma, how’s that for excitement?”

  Opoe shook her head. “I don’t like it. And then those telephones they’ll put in. Telephones. What’s next! Have you ever talked on one?” she asked Sini.

  “Sure, Opoe.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “That’s hard to explain.”

  “Ja, ja, I guess. If Hendrik knew.”

  “Johan, he said they were going to use the garage. Now, what if the girls come too close to the window? Johan, I want their hair dyed. That black hair is no good.”

  “How are we going to do that, woman?”

  “Go to Mr. Hannink. Maybe he has some stuff for it.”

  He did. I hated myself with red hair. I was never going to go outside again. Not even when the war was over. Furiously I pushed my chair against the wall. I liked it here.

  The next week the Germans moved in. At the same time Sini and I started to live in bed. October 17, 1944 … that’s what the calendar said. The days were long, and silent. Evenings were just as long and silent. Sini hardly talked. Maybe she would if I made her mad enough, but how could we fight if we could only whisper?

  Opoe brought our meals up in a towel. “In case I meet one of ’em. They keep coming in the kitchen. For coffee, all kinds of things. Oh, my God, what’s that noise?”

  “That’s the telephone.”

  “You can hear it all the way up here? Boy, that’s scary stuff. I better go downstairs.”

  Where it was warm. To them. What kind of headquarters was this anyway? Where they went in and out of the kitchen all the time, day and night, drinking coffee. I stuffed my pillow in my mouth and bit it until I felt nauseous.

  Would they never go away? Restlessly I rolled around the bed.

  “Watch it, I have a needle in my hand.”

  Didn’t Dientje have the time to mend socks? After all, she sat in that kitchen all day. “Sini, don’t you think so, too?”

  “Yes,” she said. “How dare they have fun with those soldiers. One of them even calls Opoe ‘Opoe.’ He gave her chocolates. Sure, we ate them, but she shouldn’t take anything from them. And Johan is boasting that he??
?s learning so much German. I’m out of wool.” Her voice had become more and more annoyed. “And I wanted to finish this sock. Now I’ll have to wait till Dientje comes up here with more wool sometime today.”

  She threw the sock down. “We’re always waiting for somebody.” She sobbed in her pillow. “I can’t stand it any longer, Annie.”

  Well, why should she? I sat up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Downstairs to get some wool.”

  She grabbed my arm. “Let go, Sini.” How was I going to do it? “Leave it to me,” I said, imitating Johan. “Sure, I’ll be careful. I’m not crazy.”

  Carefully I got out of bed and crawled to the door. With difficulty I stood up. I moved my legs up and down a little bit. They ached. Four weeks in bed was a long time.

  “Did you change your mind?”

  “No, I just have to wait a few minutes before I can walk.”

  “Come back to bed and forget it. I can wait.”

  “No, no, I’m fine.”

  There, I was through the door. It was chilly. I shivered in my pajamas. It would actually be nice to go back to bed. Later I would, after I got the yarn. I grabbed the railing. Hesitantly I lowered one foot, then the other one. I put my weight on them only when they were both together on the same step. Next. Very well. Halfway down. I stopped a minute. The only sound came from their typewriter. Good, they were in the front. Well, maybe I could go a little faster then. My legs felt better, too. Walking could only be good for me.

  There. I was at the bottom of the stairs. I put my hand on the doorknob and looked through the glass part of the door. Was anybody on the other side of it? No, no one. I probably picked a very good time to do this job. As quickly as I could, I crossed the room. Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? I put my cheek against the kitchen door. Nobody seemed to be there.

  Wait a minute. That was Johan’s voice. “What d’you think, Ma, are we going to get snow today?”

  “We could. My head hurts an awful lot.”

  Then nothing. Dientje must not be in the kitchen. Maybe I should go back upstairs and try again later? No, Opoe probably knew where the wool was.