I want to believe him. He sounds sure, and I cling to that certainty. Not because I think he’s right, but because it feels good to have someone tell me everything will be fine.
Beside me, Willem looks at his watch and starts walking faster. “We need to hurry.” He takes my hand to pull me along. “The deportations to Westerbork are usually in the order the people arrived in. The prisoners from the roundup with Mirjam and the carriage should be deported in a night transport tomorrow. I wish we could practice by watching another one happening in the evening, but there isn’t one—we’ll have to follow one this afternoon to figure out what route they take.”
“What if there aren’t any holes in the route?” I ask.
“There’s at least one.”
“Which is?”
“They probably don’t think anyone is stupid enough to impersonate Nazis and stop a transport. So they won’t be expecting it.”
We stop at the end of the Schouwburg’s block, close enough to see the theater’s entrance without looking like we’re actively watching. Willem leans over his bicycle; he’s disabled his chain and is now pretending to fix it, working it back over the sprocket. It gives us a reason to loiter in the area. While he pretends to work, I watch the theater’s heavy door.
It’s a little before four o’clock. Precisely on the hour, it opens. I nudge my foot against Willem’s, and he easily slips the chain back into place, sighing like he’s sorry his broken bicycle held us up for so long. The soldiers appear first, two of them, one younger and one who reminds me of my father’s older brother, the one who still lives in Belgium and used to send money on my birthday.
The prisoners follow, carrying suitcases, disheveled and tired like they haven’t slept in days. The crowd is big, maybe seventy people, and the soldiers march them down the middle of the street. It’s a lovely winter day in Amsterdam, and though there are other people on the street, couples like me and Willem, nobody acts like the forced parade of people is out of the ordinary. Our sense of ordinary has become horrifying.
There’s no Mirjam, but there are girls her age or younger, surrounded by young couples and middle-aged men. One walks past, wearing a green tweed coat and felt hat. He keeps his eyes straight forward, but something in them is familiar, something about them makes me think of chalk dust. It’s my third-grade teacher. The one who used to bring a box of hard candies on Wednesdays and pass them out to us, one by one, as we left. I can’t remember his name. I didn’t know he was Jewish.
The soldier who looks like my uncle yells something. It’s in fast German; I can’t understand the words, but I can understand the meaning as he gestures to the end of the block. In front of me, an older woman trips in the crowd. The man next to her—her husband, from the familiar, tender way he touches her—tries to help her up, and the soldier lifts his gun and gestures for the man to keep going. He moves again to help his wife; the soldier spins his gun around, using the butt of it to shove the man forward. He staggers onward, and now it’s his wife who helps him. I try not to look.
“I wish their route didn’t have so many open spaces,” Willem says, walking his bicycle at a slow pace. Still we’re pretending to have a casual conversation. Still, we’re pretending not to notice the violence around us. “It isn’t as good for us.”
No, this route is not good for us. It’s the shortest distance to the railway station, which makes sense. But it also means we’re taking wide streets through open spaces, and long blocks that are uninterrupted by alleyways. There aren’t many places along this route that would make for good cover, and we need good cover. A uniform will only get us partway.
“As we walk along, think about what you see.” Willem’s eyes dart furtively to the left and then the right, sweeping along the horizon. “What route would let you get away with the least chance of someone seeing you?”
“We’ll be passing the Oosterpark,” I suggest. It’s a big, manicured municipal park, and it would be easy for several people to disappear into the Oosterpark’s darkness.
Willem thinks. “But we don’t have any contacts near the park. No one in our group lives there. Once you got there, where would you go?” He’s right. Besides, the Oosterpark doesn’t come until after we will have crossed two canals. It’s not a good idea for an escape route to rely on bridges; they’re too easily closed or blocked.
“It needs to be before Plantage Muidergracht,” I think out loud. “Close enough to get back to Mrs. de Vries’s. We should try to get Mirjam and the carriage as soon as possible after they leave the Schouwburg.”