“And then, after Willem and Judith consult with—” Leo begins.
“Wait.” Everyone stops talking then and looks at me. “The Schouwburg. Is that where everybody goes, or only the people who were asked to report?”
Leo looks confused. “What do you mean?”
“If someone wasn’t actually scheduled for deportation, and they were just found on the street, but they had Jewish papers, would they be brought to the theater, or to another prison somewhere?”
Ollie’s voice is neutral as he answers my question. “There are a few smaller deportation centers in other parts of the city. But for the most part, yes. There’s a good chance that a Jewish person who wasn’t where she was supposed to be would be brought to the Schouwburg.”
I notice his use of she, acknowledging that I’m not merely curious about procedure in general but about one person in particular. This discussion about taking ration cards to the theater has inadvertently led back to my reason for being here tonight. “Mirjam could be there?” I ask. “Right now?”
Judith and Ollie look at each other. “Theoretically,” Ollie says carefully.
“How do I find out if she is?”
“It’s difficult.”
“How difficult?”
Ollie sighs. “The Jewish man who was assigned to run the Schouwburg, we rely on him for a lot of things. I can’t approach him with a personal favor. We have to use our resources strategically. We have to think about what actions will be best for the largest group of people, for the movement as a whole.”
“But maybe if I could just get a message to her. That would be possible, wouldn’t it?”
He rubs his hands over his eyes. “Can we finish the business on our agenda? And then talk about this at the end of the night?”
“Your agenda?”
If I were an outsider watching this conversation, I would tell myself to stop pushing, that no one wants to help someone behaving childishly. But in this moment, I can’t help it. Ollie brought me here under a false pretense, and I’ve finally learned a piece of information that could be useful, but he’s told me help is impossible without really explaining why.
The others resume talking, about the ration-card bottleneck and fake identification papers. None of this helps me with Mirjam. She’s fifteen. How would she know to find a fake ID through the resistance? How would she know how to do anything? She’s probably alone and afraid, and she’s been missing for forty-eight hours now. Could a fifteen-year-old girl manage to elude capture on the streets for forty-eight hours?
As the official business winds down, I glue my eyes to Judith and pull her aside the minute she’s not talking to anyone else.
“Judith?”
“Yes?”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“We’re talking,” she says stiffly, but every syllable really says, I don’t know why Ollie let you come.
“I wanted to first apologize. For sneaking into the school like that, and for scaring you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” she says archly. “It takes so much more than that to scare me at this point.”
“Surprised you, then,” I compromise. “I’m sorry I walked into the school and didn’t tell you what I was really looking for.”
“You could have gotten me in trouble.”
“I was desperate.”
“We’re all desperate.”
If Judith was a soldier, now is when I would lower my eyes and talk softly about how she was right and I couldn’t possibly understand any of it. But Judith’s not a soldier. She probably deplores sycophants. “I’ve apologized,” I say. “And I meant it. And I can do it again if you want. But I came tonight because I wanted help, regarding a girl who was also one of the students at your school.” I stare at the bridge of her nose, which is easier than staring at her eyes, willing her to speak first. I’m stubborn enough to remain silent.
“Mirjam Roodveldt,” Judith says. The air between us parts. “She went to the Lyceum until a few months ago.”
“You knew her. Were you lying? I mean, when you said the photos were destroyed in a fire, is that the truth?”
“I wasn’t lying. The photos were destroyed in a fire. I lit it myself.” She juts out her chin, as if daring me to question this act. “I didn’t want the Germans to have one more list of all the students who were left. Not that it matters. They find everyone anyway.”
Something clicks in my brain. When the war first started and Germans burned down buildings, we hated them for it. But recently I’ve heard of public records buildings burning down, and I wonder if some of them are resistance jobs meant as acts of protection.