“You didn’t know?” I can’t imagine my own parents being able to keep such a secret from each other.
“I knew Hendrik was spending more time in the shop. I thought he was just working longer hours because David was no longer around to assist him. I thought the Roodveldts had gone to the safe house in the country. I didn’t know that all of them were right there, in hiding.”
“When did he tell you?”
“He never told me. Last month I was home alone when I heard knocking at my door. Frantic knocking; it was after curfew. I thought Hendrik had forgotten his key, but when I opened the door, there was this girl, this pale girl, wearing a blue coat. She’d grown so much. I hadn’t seen her in a few years, and I wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t introduced herself. She told me my husband had been hiding them, but now she needed a new safe space. She said everyone else was dead.”
“Mirjam Roodveldt.”
Mrs. Janssen nods. “She was shaking, she was so scared. She said the Nazis had come to the factory that night and gone straight to the wood shop. Someone betrayed Hendrik, an employee or customer. Hendrik wouldn’t show them the hiding space. He pretended he had no idea what they were talking about. Because he wouldn’t speak, the officers began threatening him. And David heard. And he tried to help. But the officers had guns.”
She gulps in a breath. “When the shooting was done, Hendrik was dead, and David, and Rose, and Lea. Only Mirjam managed to escape.”
It must have been complete chaos. I’ve heard of people imprisoned, taken away and never returned. But four people, including a woman and a child, shot dead in cold blood?
“How did Mirjam escape?” I ask. “They shot everyone else. How would one young girl manage to escape from Nazis with guns?”
“The bathroom. The shop has a restroom in the front. The Roodveldts could use it once the sales floor was closed. Mirjam had just gone in to get ready for bed when the Nazis came, and she ran out the front door when she heard the gunshots, to the closest safe place she could think of. My house. That was three weeks ago. I was hiding her until last night.”
“What happened last night?”
Mrs. Janssen reaches into the pocket of her sweater and pulls out a folded slip of paper. “I wrote everything down so I would have the timeline exactly right for you.”
She traces the first line with her index finger. “She was here yesterday at noon, because I went in to bring her some bread and a copy of Het Parool. She liked to read the news of the underground, over and over again, memorizing even the classified advertisements.”
“Are you sure it was noon?”
“I’d just heard the Westerkerk strike, and people outside had left for their lunch hours.” She looks back down at the paper to find her place again. “She was here at a quarter past four, because I went in to warn her that Christoffel, my errand boy, was going to drop something off, and so she would need to be still. She was here at five thirty, because I asked her if she wanted some dinner; she told me she had a headache and was going to lie down. Right after, my neighbor Mrs. Veenstra asked me to come over. Her son, Koos, hadn’t been home, and she was scared for him. After I sat with her for an hour, Koos came up the street. His bicycle had lost a tire; he walked it twenty-five kilometers. I went home and called out to Mirjam to ask if she was feeling better. She didn’t answer. I assumed she’d fallen asleep. A while later, I opened the door to see if I could bring her anything.”
“She was gone?”
“Vanished. Her bed was empty. Her coat was gone. Her shoes were gone. She was gone.”
“What time was it by then?”
“Around ten. After curfew. Sometime between five thirty, when Mirjam said she was going to lie down, and ten, she disappeared, and there is no explanation.”
Finished with her story, she refolds the paper and starts to put it back in her pocket before handing it to me instead. There are matches near the burners on Mrs. Janssen’s stove. I fetch one now, strike it against the box, and let Mrs. Janssen’s penciled sleuthing burn into sulfur and ash.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“What are you doing, keeping written records of the girl you’ve been illegally hiding?”
She rubs her forehead. “I didn’t think of that. I don’t know these rules. It’s why I need your help, Hanneke.”
The Westerkerk chimes again in the background. Another quarter hour has passed. Before, I was using the time as an excuse to leave, but now it really is getting late. I fold my arms over my chest. “You were visiting with a neighbor for an hour. Couldn’t Mirjam have walked out then?”