Girl in the Blue Coat(2)
“Is it of your sister?” I press on. “Your little pet dog?” It’s a difficult balance, to sound the right amount of naive. My words need to have enough innocence in them that he can’t justify getting angry with me, but enough sharpness that he’d rather get rid of me than keep me here and interrogate me about what I’m carrying. “I haven’t seen you before,” I say. “Are you stationed on this street every day?”
“I don’t have time for silly girls like you. Go home, Hanneke.”
When I pedal away, my handlebars only barely shake. I was mostly telling him the truth about the packages. The first three do hold a book, a sweater, and a few potatoes. But underneath the potatoes are four coupons’ worth of sausages, bought with a dead man’s rations, and underneath those are lipsticks and lotions, bought with another dead man’s rations, and underneath those are cigarettes and alcohol, bought with money that Mr. Kreuk, my boss, handed me this morning for just that purpose. None of it belongs to me.
Most people would say I trade in the black market, the illicit underground exchange of goods. I prefer to think of myself as a finder. I find things. I find extra potatoes, meat, and lard. In the beginning I could find sugar and chocolate, but those things have been harder recently, and I can only get them sometimes. I find tea. I find bacon. The wealthy people of Amsterdam stay plump because of me. I find the things we have been made to do without, unless you know where to look.
My last question to the soldier, about whether this street is his new post—I wish he’d answered that one. Because if he’s stationed on the corner every day now, I’ll have to either consider being friendly to him or change my route.
My first delivery this morning is Miss Akkerman, who lives with her grandparents in one of the old buildings down by the museums. Miss Akkerman is the lotions and lipstick. Last week it was perfume. She’s one of the few women I’ve met who still care so much about these things, but she told me once that she’s hoping her boyfriend will propose before her next birthday, and people have spent money for stranger reasons.
She answers the door with her wet hair in pins. She must have a date with Theo tonight.
“Hanneke! Come in while I get my purse.” She always finds an excuse to invite me in. I think she gets bored here during the day, alone with her grandparents, who talk too loudly and smell like cabbage.
Inside the house is stuffy and dim. Miss Akkerman’s grandfather sits at the breakfast table through the kitchen doorway. “Who’s at the door?” he yells.
“It’s a delivery, Grandpa,” Miss Akkerman calls over her shoulder.
“It’s who?”
“It’s for me.” She turns back to me and lowers her voice. “Hanneke, you have to help me. Theo is coming over tonight to ask my grandparents if I can move into his apartment. I need to figure out what to wear. Stay right here; I’ll show you my options.”
I can’t think of any dress that would make her grandparents approve of her living with her boyfriend before marriage, though I know this wouldn’t be the first time this war made a young couple reject tradition.
When Miss Akkerman comes back to the foyer, I pretend to consider the two dresses she’s brought, but really I’m watching the wall clock. I don’t have time for socializing. After telling her to wear the gray one, I motion for her to take the packages I’ve been holding since I arrived. “These are yours. Would you like to make sure everything’s all right?”
“I’m sure they’re fine. Stay for coffee?”
I don’t bother to ask if it’s real. The only way she would have real coffee is if I’d brought it to her, and I hadn’t, so when she says she has coffee, she means she has ground acorns or twigs. Ersatz coffee.
The other reason I don’t stay is the same reason why I don’t accept Miss Akkerman’s repeated offer to call her Irene. Because I don’t want her to confuse this relationship with friendship. Because I don’t want her to think that if one day she can’t pay, it doesn’t matter.
“I can’t. I still have another delivery before lunch.”
“Are you sure? You could have lunch here—I’m already going to make it—and then we could figure out just what to do with my hair for tonight.”
It’s a strange relationship I have with my clients. They think we’re comrades. They think we’re bound by the secret that we’re doing something illegal together. “I always have lunch at home with my parents,” I say.
“Of course, Hanneke.” She’s embarrassed for having pushed too far. “I’ll see you later, then.”
Outside, it’s cloudy and overcast, Amsterdam winter, as I ride my bicycle down our narrow, haphazard streets. Amsterdam was built on canals. The country of Holland is low, lower even than the ocean, and the farmers who mucked it out centuries ago created an elaborate system of waterways, just to keep citizens from drowning in the North Sea. An old history teacher of mine used to accompany that piece of our past with a popular saying: “God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands.” He said it like a point of pride, but to me, the saying was also a warning: “Don’t rely on anything coming to save us. We’re all alone down here.”
Seventy-five kilometers to the south, at the start of the occupation two and a half years ago, the German planes bombed Rotterdam, killing nine hundred civilians and much of the city’s architecture. Two days later, the Germans arrived in Amsterdam by foot. We now have to put up with their presence, but we got to keep our buildings. It’s a bad trade-off. It’s all bad trade-offs these days, unless, like me, you know how to mostly end up on the profitable side of things.