He winces, almost imperceptibly, before answering. “Not really.”
“In this light you do,” I insist. “In the light of my apartment you look like him.”
“Maybe your family should trade apartments with mine. My parents would probably pay a lot of money for that light.” His voice is somewhat bitter, but mostly sad. “They just miss him so much. We all do. That was why—” He breaks off.
“Why what?”
He sighs. “When I came here the first night, I was hoping I could get you to join the resistance. And I was making sure you weren’t working for the NSB, putting Judith in danger. But I was also just worried about you. When Judith told me what you said about Bas, I just felt so sorry for you. I thought you might be really… damaged.”
“Damaged,” I repeat, and it doesn’t hurt to hear him say that. It’s almost a relief, to have someone else speculate over the things I think privately.
“But it’s normal to miss him,” Ollie says. “Pia and I talk about him all the time. Him and his obnoxious jokes, his laugh, what he would have become.”
The apartment seems very still all of a sudden; I lean forward to hear every word coming out of Ollie’s mouth. “What would he become?” I whisper.
“An attorney. And then a politician. City-level. He’d only want to hold offices where he could meet all his constituents. He’d sponsor socials and dances. He’d love his family.” Ollie’s eyes are wet, and he’s looking at me. My throat is tight. It would be so easy for us to grieve together.
“The dress is from that day,” I whisper. “That’s why you remember it. I was wearing it that day.”
That day. I don’t need to say any more than that. Ollie puts his hand to his stomach, like I’ve punched him there. The dress is from the day we found out about Bas. Pia came to tell me. I ran to the Van de Kamps’ home, and Mrs. Van de Kamp slapped me, hard, across the face, and Ollie stood there in the middle of their sitting room like if he moved the world would collapse. I went home, and tears poured down my face for hours and hours while Mama stroked my back, until they finally stopped coming because I was all dried up inside, and that was the last time that I cried.
“Oh,” Ollie says. “I didn’t remember.”
“I’m going to make tea,” I say. “You don’t have to have any if you don’t want.”
Ollie follows me into the kitchen. He stands behind me—I can feel his eyes follow my movements. My hands are shaking when I reach for the kettle, and he steadies it for me, helping me place it on the burner.
“The Hollandsche Schouwburg,” he says finally.
“What about it?”
“It smells like death.” Ollie finishes the sentence I started earlier but couldn’t complete. “That’s what it smells like in there. Death and fear.”
Fear. That’s right. That was the odor I couldn’t place before. That’s the smell of my beautiful, breaking country.
I’ve been leaving something out, shielding myself. Before, all those times, when I remembered the tissue with my tears on it after Bas told me he was joining the military.
I don’t like to remember that they were tears of pride.
The Netherlands tried to remain neutral. We wanted to be like Sweden, allowed to be left alone. Hitler said he would. Up until the day he invaded our country, he said he would leave us alone.
I was the one who said that joining the military would be a symbolic stand, anyway, against the Nazis.
I was the one, all along, who had been saying how the Germans shouldn’t be allowed to just do whatever they wanted, to conquer country after country.
I was the one who accompanied Bas to the navy office, and watched while he enlisted. The officer there kept asking if he was sure. The draft didn’t begin until men were eighteen, the officer said. In the army, they didn’t even accept volunteers younger than that. Why didn’t Bas go home, the officer suggested, and wait a year in case he changed his mind.
I was the one who told the officer that Bas had come to the navy so he didn’t have to wait in order to be brave. I talked that officer into signing him up.
Bas wouldn’t have joined if he didn’t think it would make me happy.
And it did make me happy. Until it made me sad.