Girl in the Blue Coat(12)

FIVE




I’ve been gone from my daily tasks for nearly an hour. If I don’t get back to my deliveries, Mrs. de Vries will complain.

The line at the butcher’s is almost out the door with tired housewives trading tips on where they’ve managed to locate which hard-to-find item. I don’t wait in the line. I never do. As soon as the butcher sees me come in, he waves me toward the counter while he disappears into the back. It took me at least a dozen visits to build this relationship. The first time, I listened while he told another customer that his daughter loved to draw. The second time, I brought some colored pencils and told him they were old ones I’d found in the back of my closet. They were obviously brand-new, though, and I watched his reaction to this: Would he allow himself to believe a white lie, if it meant he got something he wanted? Later, I talked about a sick grandmother, and her sick, wealthy friends who were willing to pay extra money for extra meat.

When the butcher returns, he’s carrying a white paper parcel.

“That’s not fair,” a woman behind me calls after she sees the exchange. She’s right; it’s not fair. The other customers never like me much. They might like me better if I were hungry like them, but I’d rather not starve.

“Her grandmother is sick,” the butcher explains. “She’s caring for a whole family at home.”

“We’re all caring for people at home,” the woman presses on. She’s tired. Everyone is tired of standing in so many lines for so many days. “It’s just because she’s a pretty girl. Would you let a boy skip the line?”

“Not a boy who looks like your son.” The other people in line laugh, either because they think it’s funny or they just want to remain in the good graces of the man who supplies their food. He turns to me and smiles, whispering that he’s tucked a little something extra into my packet for me to take to my family.

It started to rain while I was in the butcher’s shop, fat, slushy drops mixed with ice. The roads are dark and slick. I put the meat in my basket, covering the package with a newspaper, which soaks through in minutes. At the door of Mrs. de Vries’s apartment, my teeth chatter and water slides off my skirt and pools into my shoes, which would matter more if my feet hadn’t already gotten soaked in the rain. The soles of my shoes are worn through and growing useless in wet weather. I knock on the de Vrieses’ door, and inside I hear the clinking of china. “Hallo?” I call. “Hallo?”

Finally, Mrs. de Vries answers, overdressed as usual in a blue silk dress and straight-seamed stockings. She’s in her thirties, with regal features, two irritating twins, and a husband who publishes a ladies’ magazine and spends so much time at work that I’ve met him only once.

“Hanneke, come in.” Mrs. de Vries waves me vaguely into her apartment but doesn’t bother to take her packages, or to thank me for coming out in a monsoon just to bring her some beef. “My neighbor and I were having tea. You don’t have anywhere to be, do you? You can wait in the kitchen until we’re finished.” She nods toward the older woman sitting on the sofa but makes no introductions. It’s clear she doesn’t mean to interrupt their conversation to tend to me. Mrs. de Vries is one of those people who behave as if the war is a nuisance happening in the periphery around her. Today I ignore her suggestion to wait in the kitchen, even though she obviously considered it an order. I don’t want to make it easy for her to forget that I’m here, so I set her packages on a table, stand in her foyer, and drip.

The neighbor in question, a gray-haired woman, arches one eyebrow at me and clears her throat before turning back to Mrs. de Vries. “As I was saying. Gone. I heard about it only this morning.”

“I don’t believe it,” Mrs. de Vries says. “Does anybody know where they went?”

“How would we? They stole off in the middle of the night.”

“Hanneke, would you get us some more biscuits from the kitchen?” Mrs. de Vries calls, picking up a crumb-filled plate and holding it aloft until I walk over and get it.

In the kitchen, a half-empty tin of store-bought buttery cookies sits on the table. I cram two of them in my mouth as I refill the plate. A pair of solemn eyes stare at me from around the corner. One of the twins. I can never remember their names or tell them apart; they’re equally spoiled. I could give him a cookie, but instead, I shove another one deliberately in my mouth and lick the crumbs off my lips.

“So you think they went into hiding, then?” Mrs. de Vries asks her neighbor. “They weren’t rounded up?”

“Certainly not rounded up. I should know. I have friends in the NSB. I’ve told them before, several times, that there was a Jewish family living in my building. If they’d been taken, I would know. The Cohens sneaked away like thieves in the middle of the night.”

I bring the cookies back into the sitting room, making as much rattling as I can to catch Mrs. de Vries’s attention. She sips her coffee. “I can’t believe nobody saw them! You’re sure?”

“I was hoping to at least get a look in their apartment. My son and his wife have been looking for a larger place—she’s expecting, you know—and it would be so nice to have them in the building.”

The neighbor is vile. They both are, with their oily, refined support of the Nazis. But also rich. I don’t think Mr. Kreuk considers morals when he chooses who to sell to. If they can pay, they can buy.