Girl in the Blue Coat(10)

Outside, something new: Long Live the Führer has been written on the building across the street in white paint, still wet, and now I’ll see it every time I leave work. Did the shop owner do it as a show of Nazi support? Or did the Nazis do it as propaganda? It’s always hard to tell.

There have been acts of protest since the start of the occupation—an organized worker strike that was squashed quickly and left dead bodies in the streets. Papa thinks there should be more. It’s easy for him to say, when his leg keeps him from participating. Mama thinks Nazis are beasts, but she wouldn’t care as much if they stayed in Germany. She just wants them out of her country. After the war, people will sit around and recall the brave ways they rebelled against the Nazis, and nobody will want to remember that their biggest “rebellion” was wearing a carnation in honor of our exiled royal family. Or maybe people will sit around and speak German, because the Germans will have won. There are those who would celebrate that, too. Who believe in the Nazis, or who’ve decided it’s smarter to support the invaders. Like Elsbeth. Elsbeth, who—

Never mind.

I almost turn around twice on my way to Mrs. Janssen’s. Once when I walk past a soldier interrogating a girl my age on the street, and once just before I ring the doorbell. When Mrs. Janssen sees me, her face breaks into such a relieved smile that I nearly turn around a third time, because I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing here.

“You decided to help me.” She flings opens the door. “I knew you would. I knew I made the right decision to trust you. I could see in your face. Hendrik always said—”

“You haven’t told anyone else, have you?” I interrupt. “Before or after me?”

“No. But if you hadn’t come back, I don’t know what I would have done. I’ve been sitting here worrying about it.”

“Mrs. Janssen. Stop. Inside.” I grab her elbow and guide her into her own sitting room, where we sit on her faded floral couch. “First, I haven’t agreed to help,” I tell her, because I want to be clear. “I’m here to talk to you about it. To consider it. For now we’ll just talk about Mirjam, and I’ll consider it. But I’m not a detective, and I’m not promising anything.”

She nods. “I understand.”

“All right. Then why don’t you tell me more?”

“Anything. What would you like to know?”

What would I like to know? I have no idea what the police would ask. But usually when I’m finding black market objects for people, I begin with a physical description. If they need shoes, I ask what size, what color. “Assuming I decide to help you, it would be nice to know what Mirjam looks like,” I say. “Do you have pictures? Did Mirjam bring any with her? Any family photographs?”

“She didn’t have time to bring anything. Just the clothes on her back.”

“What were those? What was she wearing when she disappeared?”

Mrs. Janssen closes her eyes and thinks. “A brown skirt. A cream-colored blouse. And her coat. The workroom in the furniture store got so drafty you had to wear a coat all the time back there. She was wearing that on top of her clothes. It was blue.”

“Like this?” I point to the royal blue on Mrs. Janssen’s Delft saucers in the china cupboard.

“More like the sky. On a sunny day. With two rows of silver buttons. I lent her other clothes while she was here, but when she disappeared, her original things were the only clothes missing.”

I keep asking questions, about any physical detail I can think of, mentally drawing a girl in my head. Curly dark hair, falling to her shoulders. A slender nose. Bluish-gray eyes.

“The Roodveldts’ neighbors might have a photograph,” Mrs. Janssen offers. “After the Roodveldts disappeared, the neighbors might have tried to save some things from the apartment.”

“Do you know anything about the neighbors?”

She shakes her head. That means I can’t go to the apartment and ask questions. Not when the Roodveldts’ unit is probably occupied by an NSB family already. Amsterdam is a crowded city, where even in normal times it’s difficult to find housing. Now, when a Jewish family disappears, a family of sympathizers reappears in its place, carrying on as if they’d always lived there. Besides, the war makes friends turn on each other. The neighbors might have been the ones to reveal the family’s secret hiding place.

Where else could I find a photograph?

“Have you been to the hiding place in the furniture workshop?” I ask.

She nods. “The day after Hendrik was—the day after it happened. Completely ransacked. The Germans took almost everything, or maybe the Roodveldts didn’t bring much to begin with. Hendrik’s secretary might have tried to save something, but she left on her honeymoon the day after the raid. I can write to her, but I’m not sure when she gets back.”

“Where did Mirjam go to school?”

“The Jewish Lyceum, since Jewish students were segregated. I don’t know where it is.”

I do. It’s right along the Amstel River in a redbrick building with tall windows. I pass by it all the time and now add it to my mental file on Mirjam. I have a location in which I can place the girl I’ve created in my head.

“What happens next?” Mrs. Janssen asks. “Are you going to speak with your friends about this?”