CHAPTER ONE

Marijke de Graaf
May 3, 1943
Amsterdam, the Netherlands

The infant in the baby carriage opened her eyes and saw that I was not her mother. Her face grew red, wrinkling up like a walnut. I forced myself to swallow and glanced ahead, where three German soldiers patrolled the gated entrance to the Vondelpark. Beside me, Theo’s voice dropped to a hush. “You go on alone. It’s less suspicious. Just act calm.” He pressed his lips to my hair before ducking off into the nearest shop.

I leaned down to coo at the child. “Shh, quiet now. Everything is all right.” But my pulse betrayed me. My knuckles blanched around the handle of the carriage, and I adjusted the blanket to conceal the telltale seam beneath her, the hidden compartment that would give us away. Forged ration coupons and foxhole radios Theo and I had built, secreted away in cigar boxes. Not to mention a pistol.

Through the fog, swastikas flying from a nearby building caught the morning sun, and the soldiers smoked as they checked the identification of passersby. A few meters back, Theo pretended to be absorbed in a rack of newspapers. He nodded in encouragement. The little one stared up at me as I carried on, but when the wheel of the carriage stuttered over a loose cobblestone, she started to cry. Loud, grating wails. I debated turning around, but the damn moffen had already noticed. The soldier who looked my age, or no more than twenty-four, stepped forward. “And where are you rushing off to?” He hitched the rifle strap up over his shoulder. “You’re the first pretty pair of legs to come by all morning.”

The nape of my neck tingled. The baby’s cries escalated while the soldier held out a hand for my ID papers, and his gaze dropped to my chest as I drew them from the pocket of my peacoat. I tried not to cringe, hoping Theo was too far away to notice.

The other soldier approached, his brow like a pan greased for baking. He peered into the carriage. “What a racket. Does it need to be rocked?”

I checked the padding, the blanket, but nothing had shifted. “She’s just hungry.” My words were too sharp, and as I tried to calm her, I wondered if he recognized the inexperience in my actions. Sweat dampened the folds of my blouse while I waited for them to demand I pick her up. The men looked me up and down unabashedly.

The one studying my identification squinted at me. “Marijke de Graaf. Just how old is this photograph?” He held it up for his companion to examine. My curly hair was longer in the photo, my face a little fuller.

“Four months.”

The child, finally quiet, sucked her thumb, her cheeks scarlet with tears. After an unbearable pause, the soldier handed back my papers. “Well, it sure doesn’t do you justice.” He winked and waved me on my way.

My mouth was dry, my arms tense as I continued on into the park, humming a nervous, shapeless tune. I found a bench near the teahouse, where more uniforms were scattered between the suits and dresses at the tables: soldiers eating pastries, looking out over the water at the ducks and squirrels as though our city had always been theirs.

Within a few minutes, Theo found me. He bent down to check on the child before giving me a kiss. “They took their time with your papers, didn’t they?”

I shook my head. “They’re just searching for entertainment.”

He lifted the baby from the carriage.

“Darling, not here. Let’s get her to safety.”

“But look at this tiny frown.” He pulled faces at her until she gurgled a laugh and stretched out as if trying to tug on his big ears, and I watched with yearning as I imagined us with a daughter of our own to comfort and love.

“If only we could keep her.” He placed her back with a wistful sheen in his eyes that made me want to take him in my arms.

“But you know we can’t. Plus, she needs to be breast-fed. Our time will come, I promise.”

He sighed. “I know.”

From there, we cut across the park and exited through another set of gates, these ones thankfully unguarded. Women bustled down the streets, and collectively they formed a walking fashion catalog from three years earlier, colors fading and hems showing their wear. Since the invasion, everyone had learned to keep their heads lower, their movements more purposeful, and the few men in sight were prepubescent or already wrinkled, so many others afraid of venturing out, only to be rounded up in the impending call-ups for forced labor.

As we approached the address the resistance had given us, the front door of the house opened a crack, and a woman peeked out, observing the baby carriage. She recited our code in a stiff voice that wouldn’t have fooled anyone. “Have you come to see my new flower beds?” On hearing our response, she checked for onlookers and beckoned us into her front hall. Inside, she bent over the baby carriage with a look of heartbreak, her eyes ringed red, her skin showing the toll of sleepless nights.

“Please, come sit down,” she said at last. “I’ll put on the kettle.”

“We can’t stay, I’m afraid.” I glimpsed an empty bassinet in the sitting room, a baby blanket crocheted with initials draped over the side. The sight of it made my throat tighten. “We’re so sorry about your loss, mevrouw.”

She picked up the baby and gazed down at her. “It’s a dreadful time to bring a child into the world, isn’t it?”

Theo and I exchanged a glance.

“Well,” she said, “at least I can still be of use to another young life.” Her chin started to tremble, and she retrieved a handkerchief from her pocket. “Such light hair, for a Jew. What happened to her mother?”

 “Pneumonia,” Theo replied. “We were hiding them in our attic, and by the time we found a doctor who would come, it was too late.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’m sorry, we need to get going. We can’t thank you enough, mevrouw. Please hide the carriage well. Your husband knows what to do with its contents.”

I leaned to kiss the baby on the forehead and squeezed the woman’s hand in farewell. Theo paused in the front entrance. “It warms my heart to see how willing you are to care for a child that’s not your own.” She nodded, but kept her focus on the baby, and once the street was clear, we left the house without looking back.

* * *

SHORTLY after eight the next evening, the blackout curtains went up across Amsterdam, erasing the city from the sky. The Nazis had cut the electricity again, so I lit a candelabrum and sat beside the darkened window to play the violin. Nobody went to the symphony anymore, yet I still practiced every day. My bow glided across the strings while the grandfather clock ticked like a metronome, counting the passing minutes. I put down the instrument and drummed my fingers against it, wondering what was taking Theo so long, raking my thoughts for the forgotten mention of some appointment, but all that came to me were the signs in the squares, threatening forced labor in Germany, men picked up from the streets at random and carted off in trucks. I thought of Theo’s favorite student, who had disappeared the week before.

I’d set a potato-and-nettle soup to cook in the hay box, and when the aroma wafted over, I rose to go stir it. In the hope of a distraction, I surveyed the kitchen, our good Delftware, the tablecloths from my trousseau, making a mental inventory of what we’d next barter when we ran out of eggs and butter.

A key jiggled in the front door lock. With it came that balm of relief, soothing my ever-fried nerves. Feeling silly for letting my imagination get the better of me, I resisted the urge to rush over to Theo, to run my fingers through the lone wave in his hair, to chide him for keeping me on edge. Instead, I bent over the pot, humming to myself, until he came up behind me, encircled his arms around my waist and lifted me into the air, the wooden spoon in my fist dripping soup across the tiles. He whispered into my neck, “I missed you.”

“You know,” I said, “it’s impossible to think straight until you make it home.”

When he put me down, his thick eyebrows hung lower than normal, like a shelf over his eyes. “Sorry, dear. I had a few stops to make. Piet is coming by in an hour to drop off some newspapers.”

“One of the resistance publications?” I took his cold hands in mine, pressed them to his chest. “Where does he want you to deliver them?”

“I’ll pass this batch on to my students.”

“Good idea. You can tell me more about it over dinner.”

“Later. It’s almost nine.” He led me upstairs to our bedroom, where he reached into the back of our wardrobe, pulled out the old atlas and opened it to reveal the small radio hidden within its pages. I lay beside him on the rug as he hooked up the moffen sieve and fiddled with its modulator dials to filter out the interference from German jamming stations. The Westerkerk chimed the hour, one of the few churches that hadn’t yet lost its bells to the Nazi armament factories. As silence spread across Amsterdam with each passing week, it felt as if the city were holding her breath alongside us. But then came the sound we waited all day to hear. The first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, the Morse code V, for victory. Radio Oranje on the BBC, the broadcast from our exiled royal house.

Theo passed me a headset and held my hand while we listened by candlelight. The government spoke of the recent factory strikes, the growing Nazi retaliations, but urged us to stay calm. “Resist the pressure to answer the labor call-ups. Stand strong or go into hiding—we must persevere.”

I leaned over until my cheek brushed his and tried to picture the house empty at night, Theo deported for work in Germany. I couldn’t bear the thought. He turned to kiss my hair. “Don’t worry, love. We’ll find a way.”

After the broadcast, we stayed there on the rug, with my head resting on his shoulder. I wanted nothing more than for us to lie in bed all night and all day in an armor of blankets, sheathing ourselves from the troubles of the world.

“That child will have a good life with those people, won’t she?” I asked.

“They’re devout Christians. They’ll treat her like their own, I’m sure of it.”

I looked up at him. “And do you still think we’re making the right choice by waiting?”

He hesitated. “It’ll be hard enough for even the two of us to get through the war with all these food shortages and wage cuts. The last thing I would want is—”

A knock came at the front door. I moved to spy under the blackout paper, but Theo was already halfway to the stairs. “No use looking. It’s dark as a cave out there. That’ll be Piet, right on time.”

I got up and followed him, but right before he reached the entrance, there was a loud noise, the splintering crack of wood. The door flew open. I saw the guns first and then the uniforms. The Gestapo burst into the house, yelling at us in German not to move. While they searched the rooms, we stood there in terrified silence, our hands above our heads. A lamp crashed to the floor. Drawers were flung open, papers sent fluttering, my violin tossed aside with a clunk. The smell of warm soup grew nauseating. Shaking, I rubbed my thumb against my ring finger, my wedding band cool against my knuckles. I lowered my gaze along the tiled floor until this granted me a glimpse of the corner of Theo’s shoe, the anxious tap of his foot. One of the Gestapo shouted from upstairs. He’d discovered the radio supplies, the secret alcove in our attic. I thanked God we had nobody left in hiding.

The moffen circled us with taunting expressions, the barrels of their Lugers staring like deadened pupils. “Hand over your identification,” the head agent said. “You have two minutes to pack. No talking.”

One of them escorted us to our bedroom, where my undergarments lay strewn across the rug. As Theo reached for our luggage, his face met mine. His hair was disheveled, and behind his glasses, his eyes looked wild, all whites. We packed our warmest clothes, and I took our wedding photo off the wall, placing it in Theo’s suitcase. I refused the moffen the satisfaction of seeing me cry. On our way downstairs, Theo laced his fingers through mine, sending a silent plea. Don’t tell them anything, don’t let them win—I love you. The Gestapo agent smacked him against the temple, knocking him sideways and ripping him from my grasp. When I reached out for him, they held me back, rough hands choking my wrists. I whispered his name, but it got lost in the noise. In front of me, Theo cradled his head. Then they shoved us forward and marched us out into the night.

* * *

Copyright © 2018 by Ellen Keith