Edouard orders us another bottle of wine.
“I will be with you forever,” Evert promised me. He was so gracious and so eloquent: our evenings together were precisely as I imagined true love would be. Music from the dance floor drifting out onto the terrace. Stars like diamonds overhead. “In Java we’ll have a house by the water,” he whispered. “Then we’ll start a family.”
I tell Edouard about Evert Pallandt’s plans. “He wanted a little girl and two little boys. He wanted to reproduce his own family, and he had grown up with two sisters.”
“So what happened to this young prince?”
I finish my glass and pour myself another. How many glasses have I had? “Have I already told you that he was on leave? He was, and I waited for him to ask me to join him when he returned to duty.”
“To Java?”
I nod. “To Java. I had created our life together in my mind. I had never been outside of The Netherlands but Java was as real to me then as you are right now. Eight days before his ship was to sail, Evert appeared at my aunt’s house. It was a Monday. Aunt Marie was taken aback by my handsome visitor.”
I remember how I rushed down the hall. “Evert!” I shook his hand as though we were old friends. “Aunt Marie,” I said, “this is Evert Pallandt, the brother of one of the girls I used to teach with. What a wonderful surprise!” Of course, she believed my lie. She had faith in me.
“Everyone believed whatever I told them,” I tell Edouard.
He doesn’t look surprised. Neither did Evert. He introduced himself to my aunt and then said, “I have news for M’greet from my sister, who’s fallen ill. May I take her for a walk to deliver the message? I will not keep her for long.”
My aunt cast a nervous glance at her husband, as if he might object. He didn’t. “I’m so sorry. Well, I don’t see why not.”
“I didn’t realize your aunt was married,” Edouard interrupts. “You didn’t mention that.”
“Yes. She was married. To a man named Taconis. They were a strange couple.”
He was not at all religious. I couldn’t imagine what had brought them together until my aunt confided in me that she wasn’t born a cripple; she was once young and carefree.
“When they were married they were a good match, I suppose; her leg was crushed near the docks where Taconis worked. She was bringing him his lunch, when a cable snapped. That ill-fated day made her pious; it caused him to retreat into guilt.”
“A sad story. Though now I have a more accurate vision of your circumstances. You were living with your aunt and her husband. What happened when Evert took you outside? Did your uncle reconsider giving you permission to walk alone with a young man?”
I recall the scene. How I’d teased Evert. “Are you nervous?” I’d asked. I was so confident in him.
“Nervous? No.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I want to say,” we paused under the shade of a maple, “that I love you, M’greet.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and placed something round and solid in my palm.
My heart beat so fast I could hear it in my ears. I closed my eyes, painting the moment behind my eyelids so I could see it always, even when I was asleep. Then I opened them and looked at what I was holding.
It was a locket containing a photo of the two of us.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“It’s a token,” he said, “for when we’re apart.” He paused. “I told my parents about you.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “If I take you with me to Java, they’ll disown me.”
It’s been twenty years and the memory still brings me to tears. I swirl the wine in my glass so I don’t have to look at Edouard, who says quietly, “The boy was a fool.”
I meet his eyes. “When he gave me that locket, I remembered something my mother told me one afternoon while we were sitting in the garden together. ‘There are the girls you marry and there are the girls you enjoy but never take home.’ I had given myself to Evert because I thought I was the girl he would marry. But I was wrong. I was the other girl—the one no one wanted to take home.” I dab my eyes with my napkin.
“What did you say to him? You must have been deeply shocked at the turn of events.”
“I said nothing. I threw the locket in his face. Then I ran back to Aunt Marie’s house. I expected him to chase after me. When he didn’t, I cried for days. After a week passed I was still hoping he’d change his mind. That he’d come back for me. That he would propose.” I shake my head at my foolishness, my naivety.
“You were young,” Edouard says. “You were gullible. You were hoping he’d do what your father hadn’t.”
“Yes. Come back and rescue me.” I hadn’t learned anything. “The date he was due to leave The Hague for Java came and went. I never saw him again. But I loved him.”
“You think you loved him,” Edouard counters.
I cover my eyes. “I’ve never told anyone this story,” I say.
“I’m honored you shared it with me.”