Girl in the Blue Coat(64)

“We saw the transport leave the Schouwburg last night.” Her face is buried in my neck. “Then we didn’t see anything. We kept waiting and waiting for you to get here, but we only knew for sure something was wrong hours later, when Willem came to us, looking for you.”

The children are awake, still in their pajamas, standing dumbfounded behind their mother, watching Mina and me and obviously trying to figure out what’s happening. Mrs. de Vries notices them and shoos them back toward their playroom, and the Cohens move to help her.

Mina and I stand, hugging each other in the entryway for a long time. In the back of the apartment, the twins laugh. I close my eyes and try to drown out the sound, which seems so inappropriate now. I want to crawl into bed for days. I want to give up.

Even Mina is crying. Brave, optimistic Mina who wanted to resist, even while she had to hide. And what good did it do? What good can any of us do against the monstrous machine that shoots young girls in the back as they run in fear?

I feel a soft tap on my shoulder. It’s Mrs. Cohen holding what looks like a folded white tablecloth. She apologizes for disturbing me, and holds out the material for me to take. “For your friend,” she explains. “I didn’t know if you knew—people of our faith are often buried in traditional burial clothes. This is only a tablecloth; in these times we cannot keep all our traditions. But I thought that perhaps you would like something to wrap your friend in before she is buried. Only if you want it. I don’t mean to presume.”

I dumbly take the tablecloth from her, the soft linen rippling through my fingers.

“We would also have a watcher stand with the body, so the deceased would not have to be alone. We can’t be there for the burial, of course,” Mrs. Cohen says. “But if you tell us what time it is scheduled for, my husband will make sure to begin the prayer of mourning at that moment.”

“Thank you.” I almost start crying again at this gesture. I barely know the Cohens; I’m not even sure how much they were told about what I’ve been doing or why. “Thank you,” I repeat, because I don’t know what else to say.





TWENTY-EIGHT




Mr. Kreuk doesn’t ask me any questions, about who Mirjam was or why I want to take care of her body, and for this I’m grateful. It’s a repayment, I think, for all the questions I haven’t asked him in the time we’ve known each other. At the office, he just pats me on the shoulder, and then neatly folds up his shirtsleeves the way he always does before getting to work. A few hours later, he tells me that the body has been dressed, except for socks and shoes.

After leaving Mrs. de Vries’s house, I’d gone home and sorted through my clothes to find something for Mirjam. Mama and Papa were gone at Papa’s regular doctor’s appointment. I chose a dress that they’d given me for my birthday a few years ago. It still fits—one of the rare nice things I own that does—but I folded it up anyway, and put my favorite patent leather shoes in a bag.

“Can I?” I whisper to Mr. Kreuk. “Can I be the one to do that?”

He looks startled. This is the first time I’ve ever asked to be in the same room with a body. Normally they’re brought in through the back entrance, cleaned, dressed, and then placed in their caskets. I don’t even go into that room.

“Are you sure?”

I nod. “It’s important to me.” Because I failed her. Because I found her too late. Because her blue coat is ruined, covered in blood.

He takes me into the small white room. I carry the shoes and socks and the linen tablecloth Mrs. Cohen gave me. I should have asked her to explain what I was supposed to do with it. Is it meant to be wrapped around Mirjam, or just placed over her? Was I even supposed to bring the other clothes, or is she supposed to wear only burial shrouds? Or does it even matter? Mrs. Janssen said the Roodveldts weren’t observant.

Mr. Kreuk stands a few feet behind me as I look at the body that used to be Mirjam, lying on the cold table. I’ve been with a dead person only twice before, at my grandparents’ funerals when I was eleven and twelve, and then there was dim lighting and music. Now there is just stillness, and Mirjam. She’s so small.

Here she is, in person, the first real time I’ve seen her. Her face is heart-shaped, with her dark hair forming a widow’s peak at her forehead, and her chin comes to a little point, with a small birthmark to the left of center. Her eyelashes are thick and long. Nobody told me that, when they described her, how velvety her eyelashes are. Her nose is blunted at the end, a bit too short for her face. Nobody told me that, either. Just below the collar of the satin dress, the edge of a white bandage covers up the exit wound of the bullet that killed her. I adjust the collar, cover it up.

“You’ve done—you’ve done a beautiful job. Thank you. She looks almost—” I’m supposed to say that she looks almost as she did in life, which is what people say to Mr. Kreuk when they want to thank him with the highest compliment. I can’t say that, though, since I really have no idea what she looked like in life. “She looks peaceful.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you? Or your friend?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The burial arrangements. Will you be needing a traditional plot or… or a special one?”

This might be his way of asking me if Mirjam needs to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. I know how difficult finding such a place would be for him.