The Twins (26 page)

‘You really are a proper German,’ said Lotte shaking her head,

‘How so?’ Anna was on her guard.

‘A proper, efficient German … as when you solved that washing machine problem … all thoroughly in the spirit of the economic miracle. But what I ask myself …’

‘Yes …’ Anna was nothing if not obliging, so as to explain everything, but also to dispel every misunderstanding.

‘Were the washerwomen ultimately better off in that organized housekeeping of yours? Could they still laugh, sing, gossip?’

‘Pfff …’ Anna shrugged her shoulders wearily. ‘They still got their coffee and biscuits, you know. But you can’t halt progress. In the days of the landlords the workers learned to read and write; more was not thought necessary. Then came the time when the workers refused to allow themselves to be kept in ignorance any longer – I was such a person – they got trained, television arrived, the computer … If you want to go back to laughing, singing and gossiping you’ll have to eliminate technology and the benefits we get from it.’

‘But a lot has been lost.’

‘You mustn’t romanticize it.’

And so they were back again at their old point of difference.
They stared outside past the woman with the swan, attempting to organize their thoughts, which were fluttering in the wind in all directions, like scraps of paper, as they retrieved memories.

‘I can well understand that you did something for the Russian prisoners,’ mused Lotte, ‘somewhere you were hoping that the Russians themselves would do the same for Martin if he were taken prisoner …’

‘No …’ Anna pursed her lips, ‘I did it to be helpful, without thinking further about it.’

‘Other motives could nevertheless be hidden beneath it. From the moment the first people in hiding came knocking at our door, at last I had the feeling of being able to do something – as though we were still doing something for David … in the abstract, with each person in hiding we could keep out of the occupier’s hands.’

‘So you had people hiding in the house …’

Lotte nodded.

‘Jewish?’

‘Mostly.’

Anna sighed, and all her curves sighed too.

They lunched in a restaurant on Place Albert, with a view onto a colossal angel that had alighted on a tall plinth and was observing humanity from there with perplexity. Afterwards they made a small excursion round the town, their daily dose of therapeutic activity. They wandered into a grey granite church with three towers, whose steeples pointed firmly to the sky like schoolmasters’ pencils. For once they were in agreement that it was an
exceptionally
ugly church. Uninspired, they strolled through the dim space, a leaflet about its history in hand. ‘Built in 1885 in Romanic-Rhine style following the Cologne school,’ Anna read. ‘I didn’t know we exported such hideous architecture then.’ They dawdled by a sculpture that had come from a much older church on the same spot: a group of angels with swords and bishops’ staves. Bored, they walked out of the church into a café directly opposite – a
consolation
for the disillusioned church-goer. They were both in urgent need of coffee. A fighter jet crossed the sky diagonally, behind the misanthropic steeples, as though it wanted to erase them.

When the Frinkel family, an elegantly dressed trio, came to the door one day in the summer, nobody realized that with this
apparently
innocent visit, a period in the lives of Lotte’s mother and her family was coming to an end that would never again return. Bram Frinkel, eighteen years old by then, had arranged the meeting; he had remained friends with Koen all those years. They drank
something
that had to pass for coffee. Lotte’s father put on Bach’s Double Concerto in honour of Max Frinkel, who had acquired a certain fame as first violin in a radio orchestra since his emigration from Germany. The gathering listened attentively; it was as
though the guests had come specially to hear the concert. But when the last sounds died the war immediately took its place – in the sudden silence, in the surrogate coffee, in the presence of the Frinkels. ‘You luff muziek …’ began Frinkel, stroking his chin uneasily. These circumstances emboldened him to ask Lotte’s
parents
for hospitality, in return for payment of the costs, of course, and only for a short time, until a definite solution had been found. ‘All ze Jews from Hilversum haff to assemble in Amsterdam,’ he said meaningfully. ‘You live so splendidly out of the way here,’ continued his wife Sara in faultless Dutch, ‘Max could do his daily violin practice without anyone hearing.’ She was small and
vivacious
, her lips and nails the same colour as her dress.

Bram’s bed was put in Koen’s room, the Frinkels took up
residence
in the nursery, from where dizzy runs and flageolet
harmonics
made the walls tremble. When the father stopped, the son took over with gypsy music and Slav dances. They were looked up by a friend from Germany whom they had taken into their
confidence
, Leon Stein. He had left his country at that time to fight Fascism in the Spanish Civil War. After that he worked in Harlem for many years for his uncle, a manufacturer of barrels and crates, who was allowed by the Germans, for a lot of money, to get away to America. He had been able to take his horses but not his nephew, who had become stateless since his Spanish adventure. The New World, on the other side of the ocean, which was open to all nationalities, closed its borders hermetically to anyone who had no nationality. Stein needed to go into hiding urgently. But it was only from time to time, he said. The old flair of the Spanish
anti-Fascists
had not been extinguished in him and had driven him to the Dutch resistance – in his case it was a strong instance of
contempt
for death because he looked thoroughly Jewish, even when he wore a German uniform during a surprise attack on a
distribution
office and gave orders in his mother tongue.

A bed was put up for him in Lotte’s father’s office; he slept there like a soldier on a narrow wooden plank, feverishly devising
plans, always nervous – only when he was in the greatest danger would a mild calm come over him, he confessed. He was elusive, his life hung together on secrets – at one point he would shelter with them for three weeks, then he disappeared for a month
without
warning.

One morning at dawn they were woken by rifle shots. People ran about the house in pyjamas, the Frinkel family desperately looking for a way to make themselves invisible. Koen went to see how the land lay – the allure of danger shone in his eyes. He
wandered
into the wood quasi-casually. There he came upon three Austrian soldiers, hardly older than himself, who were out
hunting
, to break the monotony of their daily rations. He was given a cigarette, they chatted about hares and rabbits. Later that day they would be starting a raid in the neighbourhood, they said carelessly, sometimes it was easier to catch a Jew than a rabbit. Koen led them to a hill on the other side of the wood which was riddled with
tunnels
and holes. They departed with fraternal shoulder-slapping.

Breathlessly he reported back. ‘They are only hunting hares and rabbits now but in a couple of hours they will be hunting for … for …’ He could not get the word past his lips; ashamed, he looked at his friend standing barefoot on the tiled floor, numb with cold. Shots sounded again in the distance. Max Frinkel massaged his fingers nervously. ‘The Noteboom ladies …!’ he cried. His wife nodded emphatically. ‘Two admirers,’ she explained, ‘they sat in the front row at each concert. If you get into difficulties, come to us, they had once offered. However, they are a bit eccentric …’ They were taken there at top speed. The ladies lived with
forty-eight
cats in a large ramshackle villa held upright by creepers and ivy. Although one was the mother of the other, there was great
difficulty
telling which of the captivating ladies was the elder, with their grey buns and Karl Marx glasses. They could take a hint. Of course the famous violinist was welcome – they took in all strays, whether they walked on two feet or four.

After the Frinkels had gone, the raid was awaited calmly.
Lotte’s mother enjoyed the sudden peace of mind. Only now did she realize how much strain the Frinkels’ presence had caused. The continual fear of an unexpected visit, that the youngest
children
would let their tongues run away with themselves, the anxiety of a small, fatal slip, so insignificant that you overlooked it – the fear of reprisals that no one dared to imagine … a fear that went along with a sense of guilt: all that time she had been putting her children at risk. We won’t start that again, she decided. They are fine there, with the Noteboom ladies.

There was more than enough to be anxious about. If the Russians did not lose, for example, because then everything would be lost. During the Stalingrad period Jet sleepwalked through the house at night. Lotte woke up, discovered the bed next to her empty and found her sister bolt upright and pale as a statue in the living-room, where she slowly and dreamily negotiated the tables and chairs without colliding with anything. To prevent her falling down the stairs Lotte locked the bedroom door from then on, but the urge to walk had to find an outlet: one night Jet opened the
balcony
door and walked out into the rain in her night-dress. Lotte was woken by the wind blowing across her forehead. Not just the bed, the balcony appeared to be empty. Disconcerted, she peered into the night: had Jet got wings? Only when she looked out over the balustrade, into the depths, she saw her lying – soaking wet, in a bed of overblown asters that had been spoilt by the rain. For many weeks Jet lay in a darkened room with severe concussion. A persistent headache had taken the place of her somnambulism. Even so, she demanded to be kept up to date with the latest
developments
in the east – without sparing her.

Rain in the Netherlands was snow in Russia. It seemed as if an unusually large amount of rain fell that autumn. One evening even Lotte’s mother’s good intentions were rained off. The bell rang; two men had braved the rotten weather. The face of one of them was hidden behind heavily framed glasses misted over from the rain. The other seemed to be Lotte’s father’s barber; he did not
immediately recognize him as he was – what was left of a barber without his customary entourage of knives, razors and mirrors? Authenticating themselves by dropping Leon Stein’s name, the barber asked for temporary hiding for his companion who was in great need. It would only be for a couple of days. No one said
anything
. Lotte held her breath. The silence was heavy with tension that was not so much the result of doubt as of inevitability. The possibility of a free choice was only apparent – in actuality it had already been decided, at a suprahuman or even primarily human level. It was impossible to say no, go back outside into the storm, the rain, make sure you find a roof over your head. ‘We aren’t
taking
people any more,’ she heard her father saying, ‘it’s too risky.’ ‘The Frinkels’ bed is still there,’ her mother proposed. Her hands began to fiddle with the unwelcome guest’s coat; she took the wet thing from him and hung it on a clothes hanger next to the stove. She offered him a chair, took his glasses, dried them with a piece of her skirt and put them back on his nose. ‘So, at least now you can see where you have ended up.’

Ruben Meyer discovered that there was a sleepwalker bored stiff in one of the rooms upstairs. He sat on her bed and began to read aloud to her; he brought her tea and improved on the news from the front for her. After six weeks, when still no other address had been found for him, he admitted that he was suffering from sleeplessness because of anxiety about his family. The baker in an Utrecht village with whom they had been hiding had been
blackmailed
by his sister-in-law, who had noticed that in the store behind the oven it smelled not only of bread and currant buns but also of cold sweat. Ruben had been smuggled to the Gooi region by a laundry in a basket of dirty washing, to search for a safe place they could go. ‘The barber was going to organize it …’ his eyes darted back and forth behind the thick lenses, ‘I don’t
understand
…’ ‘We can’t wait for that,’ said Lotte’s mother.

She sent Lotte out on the job. The train rode through a barren landscape beneath a drab, joyless sky. The woods, the hay were not
themselves any more, they had lost their innocence under the marching of strange boots, they had become hiding place and tragic scene simultaneously. That she could calmly ride through there, while Ruben could not, distorted the landscape into something that never again, just like that, could be called beautiful. Absurd, senseless movements were being made in it, she was on the way to his family, he had settled with her family – everything was an expenditure of energy, a fundamental disorder. No one could
follow
the rhythm of their own lives.

In the bakery, squeezed together in a small oppressive room, she discovered his mother, brother of ten, sister and brother-
in-law
, emaciated and beside themselves with fear. The mother clung to her: ‘Please take my boy with you, take him out of here!’ ‘We’ll come and fetch you as soon as possible,’ Lotte tried to calm her, ‘but it has got to be properly organized.’ ‘My little boy, my bubele’ the mother pleaded, ‘take him along with you …’ A boy was
standing
somewhat to the side with an exercise book in his hand. It seemed as though he was consciously distancing himself from her, in masculine shame at his mother’s pleas. He looked much too Jewish to be able to travel in the train. ‘Sums?’ she asked, buying time. ‘I am writing a story,’ he said with dignity, ‘about
shipwrecked
people washed ashore on an island in the Pacific Ocean.’ ‘And what else?’ she encouraged him, feverishly asking herself what she ought to do. She was not equipped for such a dilemma; she was no more than a pawn who had been pushed out to start exploring the situation. This was not a decision that she could just take on her own initiative … ‘They think it is uninhabited and they will be able to live there safely, but there are cannibals who hunt them with spears and …’ ‘Here,’ the mother ripped a
diamond
ring from her finger. Lotte shook her head, an unbearable heaviness pressed on her temples. ‘It is not a question of money … The Germans will just pick him off the train, it would be
irresponsible
, but we’ll come and fetch you … we’ll come and fetch all of you as soon as possible …’

That same evening contact was made again with the laundry boss via the barber. He could take no more than three people, at the end of the week. Because Mrs Meyer looked the least Jewish of the four of them, Lotte’s mother decided to fetch her straight away by train the following day. She took a broad-brimmed hat with her. They travelled back together like chatting women friends. The nervous tics on the face of the one, because she had to leave her children behind for a few days, were camouflaged in the
shadow
cast by the hat. The laundry boss came punctually as arranged; so did foresight: the Germans had been there just before him – all three were picked up the night before.