Anne does not answer.
“In any case, I didn’t really understand my Tova’s suffering. I didn’t understand what it was like to be lonely, not yet. Not in the way Tova was lonely.”
Anne stays frozen as the woman gazes at her snifter of brandy, then takes another swallow. “When the Boche came rolling in with their tanks and troop lorries,” she says, “they were billeted in several of the houses up the street. All those strapping, fair-headed farm boys with their big black boots. They would jeer at my Tova on her way to school. A homely Jewish girl with the star pinned to her coat. They would jeer at me, too, of course, but not in the same way. It was harder for Tova. She took their insults inside her. That’s when she began to have nightmares. Terrible nightmares. I told her to keep her chin up. I told her that she had to be strong, but she didn’t know how. She didn’t know how to be strong, not like you, Anne. In any case. One night she was late coming home. Very late. I was frantic. The razzias had started. Hundreds of Jews had already been rounded up in the public squares. I went to the police station, where they laughed at me. A missing Jewess? Who cared? There must be plenty by now. But when I came home, Tova was back.”
She falls silent for a moment, Dassah, scowling into the pocket of a private shadow. “I knew immediately that something had happened, but Tova wouldn’t tell me what it was. I kept asking her, ‘Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?’” The woman shakes her head and then looks bleakly in Anne’s direction. “It was a German. A soldier, she said, but that she wasn’t hurt. I’ll never know exactly how it happened. Did he force her? She wouldn’t say a word. But as the days passed, I knew. . . .” For a moment she breathes in and out. “I knew that it was still going on. I could tell by the look on her face. I was so angry. So enraged. My own daughter—a moffenhoer. But she said to me, ‘Mama, don’t worry. We’ll be safe now.’ At first I didn’t know what she meant. I just couldn’t fathom it. And then I realized: Tova was protecting us. She said that the SS would never harm the mother of a German soldier’s child.” A pause as Dassah swallows bitterly. A smear of tears glosses her eyes. “I struck her when she said that,” Dassah admits simply. “As hard as I could. I think in that instant I wanted to . . .” she starts to say, but cannot finish the sentence. “The truth is,” she croaks, “the truth is that I wanted to believe her. Underneath all my fury, I wanted to believe that my Tova had actually made the right decision by whoring herself to a Nazi. Of course”—she shrugs in a small way and stares out into the air—“of course, that was a fantasy. When she was four months pregnant, there was a massive razzia in the Jordaan. The biggest yet. I wasn’t there. I was in Amstelveen making arrangements with a man I knew, a Dutch Christian, who was willing to hide us for the right price. When I came back to our flat, I was told by the only neighbor who still deigned to speak to Jews that the Grüne Polizei had swept the neighborhood, street by street, house by house.” She breathes out, as if she is finally ousting a breath that has been caught in her ribs for a very long time. “Tova was gone, and I never saw her again. As far as I have ever been able to determine, she was gassed during her first hour at Sobibor, as were all the pregnant women in her transport. She hadn’t protected anyone by defiling herself. Just the opposite. Her childish scheme was her death sentence.” She shrugs, but when she turns to Anne, a kind of dead fury is buried in her eyes.
“So now, my dear Annelies”—she glares—“you can imagine my concern when I hear that you are whoring yourself in a similar manner.”
Anne’s jaw tightens. “That’s a lie.”
“Is it? I know what you’re doing, and I know with whom you’re doing it.”
Anne blanches.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m the only one who knows—for the moment. Your father still assumes you are pure, and I have no desire to create more pain for him. There’s no reason for him to know that his daughter is desecrating herself.”
“If that’s what your spy Lueders is telling you, he’s wrong.” Anne swallows heavily. “I see a boy, yes. But I’m not doing anything with him,” she declares. “At least not what you think.”
“No? Well, then maybe I should test you. Shall I, Anne? Shall I ask you if he’s touched you here or touched you there?”
“I’ve let him kiss me. That’s all.”
“Don’t lie!” Dassah bursts out. “Don’t lie, Anne. I hate lies. Lies are worse than the crime!”
“I’m not lying, and I haven’t committed any crime!” Anne shouts back. “I’m not Tova, and he’s not a Nazi!”
“Oh, really? Are you actually trying to tell me that you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“His father was NSB.”
“No, that’s not true.”
“It is true.”
“No. I know that his father was beastly and brutal, but that doesn’t mean he was a Nazi.”
“You must know that your father was forced to hire party men by the local NSB office?” Dassah informs her bluntly. “Well, he was one of them. A Nazi, Anne. For all you know, he could have been the one who betrayed you and your family to the Gestapo. The man who sent your mother and sister to their deaths!”
“No! No,” she repeats to Dassah. “You’re the one who’s lying!”
“If you think so, Anne, then ask the boy,” Dassah suggests, “the next time he’s got you on your back.”
Anne seizes the nearest thing to her, a book that Pim has left on a shelf, and hurls it. Not really aimed at anything, but the crash of the porcelain vase bursts inside her head. She is sobbing with such wild anger as she charges out the door, not even seeing her father hurrying through the drizzle until she collides with him on the sidewalk.
“Anne! My, God, Anne, what’s happened?! Where have you been? What’s happened?”
But she has no explanations to offer. All she can do is try to swallow her tears without choking on them. “Let me go, Pim,” she cries. “Let me go!”
“I will not. Not till you tell me what’s happened.”
“She’s a monster!” Anne shrieks at him. “You’ve married a monster!”
• • •
“She insulted me, Pim.” Smearing the tears from her eyes. “In a very hurtful way.”
They are camped together in her tiny room. Pim’s stooped figure folded onto the chair. A blanket around his shoulders. She has retreated to her bed, curled up against the wall, a fortress, refusing to look in her father’s direction unless it’s to offer him a volcanic glare. Rain dribbles down the window glass.