The last time I saw Bas:
I did go to the sad, stupid going-away party his parents held for him, the one in which his mother spent most of the time crying and his father stood in the corner so tight-lipped and still that people kept bumping into him and then saying, “I’m sorry; I didn’t see you standing there.” I did give Bas a locket with my picture in it; he did give me a lock of his hair.
I did kiss him in the dining room.
But when I left, he came running after and said he had something else for me. It was a letter. It was a letter in case he died. I was supposed to open it if the navy contacted his family, and inside it would talk about how much he loved and missed all of us, and how happy we had made him.
At least that’s what I imagine letters like this usually say. I wouldn’t know. I never opened Bas’s. When he gave me that envelope on the street, I told him the letter could only court bad luck. I told him that in order to prove how unnecessary it was, I was going to destroy it as soon as I got home.
And I did. I ripped it to pieces and threw it out with the trash.
So I’ll never know what Bas’s final, final words for me were. Sometimes I think they were to tell me he loved me. Sometimes I dream that I open the letter and inside it says, “I never forgave you for what you made me do.”
NINE
Thursday
It’s nice to see you socializing again, Hannie,” Papa says. My mother is gone this afternoon, a rare excursion into the outside world to visit her sister in the country. Because of the curfew, she’ll probably stay overnight, so it’s just Papa and me, alone. I came home from work to make him lunch, and now he’s reading in his chair while I’m sitting with Mirjam’s packet of school things, biding time until one afternoon delivery, and then I will go meet Judith and her cousin at the theater. Mr. Kreuk is running a funeral later; I’m hoping that he won’t notice if I don’t come back to my desk.
“Socializing?” I repeat after Papa, distracted.
“Out with friends, like last night. I can’t remember the last time you did that.”
He’s right. It’s been years. There used to be a group of us. Bas the ringleader. Elsbeth the brazen. Me, part of the inner circle but not quite as audacious, not as sparkling. Happy to bask in the glow. Other friends, moving like small moons around me and Bas and Elsbeth, the two other people I loved the best. Last night, all I could think about was how strange it was to be pulled into a resistance meeting. I didn’t think about how strange it was to be pulled again into a group of friends.
“Ollie’s not really a friend, Papa. He’s just—” I realize, belatedly, that any way I qualify the statement will only bring suspicion. “I suppose he is a friend. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”
“You’re young. It would be nice to have someone to more than talk to.” He winks, and I toss a cushion at his head. “Now you abuse an invalid?”
I toss another one. “What would Mama think if she heard you encouraging me to stay out late with boys?”
“She never minded when you stayed out late with Bas. Though we always thought the two of you would—”
Papa realizes what he’s about to say and breaks off in midsentence. I should say something to end the silence, but I can’t find the words. Instead I stare into my lap and look at Mirjam’s paper at the top of the stack. “What are you reading?” Papa asks.
“Old letters and schoolwork,” I say, which is true, I just don’t mention that they’re not my old letters and schoolwork. “Should we turn on the radio?”
He nods eagerly; I knew the suggestion would distract him from more questions. Information and communication with the outside world—it’s so valuable. The Nazis already turned off most of the private telephone lines. We don’t have ours anymore, though people in some wealthier neighborhoods where sympathizers live still do. There’s a rumor that the Germans are going to demand we hand in our radios, too. Papa and I already pulled an old, broken one from a closet to turn in instead of our nice one.