The Upstairs Room Read online

  “Johan, you’re late.” Opoe came in, dressed.

  “Stop nagging. The cows’ll wait.”

  But he left the room. Opoe went downstairs with him. Dientje turned the light off again and moved to Johan’s side of the bed. It was nice to have more space. I closed my eyes. From downstairs came the noise of the stove being lit and the hushed voices of Opoe and Johan.

  The Oostervelds got up early. At least, two of them did. An hour later Dientje went downstairs.

  They were talking when they came upstairs a few minutes later. “Johan, it doesn’t make sense for those few days. Johan, you hear?”

  “Leave’m alone,” Opoe said. “He’s already worked hard.”

  They walked in. This room was at the front of the house, Johan explained, and the window faced the street. “We can’t keep the shade down during the day. We never did before. Groothuis across the street would think something was peculiar, but for Godsake don’t go near the window.”

  Opoe and Dientje nodded.

  “We have another bedroom in the back,” Johan went on, “but it’s too cold there in the winter, and we can’t heat it. That one would be good in the summer.”

  “But Johan,” Dientje stammered, “they’re only staying for a few weeks.”

  “You’d have more freedom there,” he went on calmly. “Ma, where you going?”

  “Downstairs to get the girls some breakfast.”

  Obviously Dientje hadn’t stocked up on real tea either. It tasted funny. Un-tealike. But it was hot. Nice. Johan got a tin box from his pocket and a package of cigarette paper. Carefully he pulled out a piece of paper. He opened the box, took a fingerful of tobacco from it, and distributed it inside the cigarette paper. Deftly he rolled the paper around the tobacco, licked it, pinched off the ends. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and lit a match. He inhaled deeply. “I’m growing my own tobacco. Can’t smoke the stuff they’re selling.”

  “Johan, you’ve got to go to work,” Dientje complained.

  He didn’t answer her. Opoe was staring at Sini’s skirt. She came closer and touched it. “Fine material. Must’ve been bought before the war. What you get now’s junk. D’you know that I haven’t bought any clothes for over ten years?”

  “Ma, you complaining?”

  Opoe turned to us. “When my sister died, I got all her clothes. She had fine stuff. Real solid. She wasn’t built like me, but it doesn’t make any difference for an old woman. I’ve got a lot more from her that I’ve never worn yet. Some beautiful Sunday aprons. I’ve even got enough for Dientje, but she’s got modern ideas in her head. Wants to go to a store. Pooh!” Opoe looked disgusted.

  Dientje pretended she hadn’t heard. Sini and I were slowly eating our breakfast, which tasted good.

  “That’s true.” Opoe didn’t want to give up the subject yet. “Textile they call that junk they’re selling. Name’s fancy enough. Textile. In my days we said cloth. And, boy, that’s what it was. This stuff doesn’t last. Rips on you while you’re wearing it. You think you’ve got something new. Ha, after a couple of years it’s old.”

  I didn’t dare look at Sini. She was probably sucking in her cheeks, too, trying not to laugh.

  “Okay, Ma. Enough. Well, I’m going to work. A couple of days a week I take my horse and cart to the bleachworks in Boekelo, the next town over. Can’t live off this farm. Maybe we could if Dientje wouldn’t eat so much.”

  “Johan, what’ll the girls think?” She started downstairs with him. “I’ll get you some water, so you can wash up.”

  A pump handle squeaked. A few minutes later she came back, carefully carrying a bowl of water. “Must’ve been fancy at the Hanninks,” Dientje said. “They got real faucets, don’t they? At least that’s what people say.” She sat down on the bed. “If you girls knew how dangerous it is for us to have you. We’ve never done this before, but how could we say no to the Hanninks?”

  I dipped my fingers in the bowl. The water felt icy.

  “You always get awfully nervous over nothing,” Opoe said.

  “Nothing? We haven’t even got a hiding place like the Hanninks. You don’t know what’s what,” Dientje said disgustedly.

  I slowly rubbed my fingers over my face.

  “You’ll see, they won’t keep us here any longer than they have to,” Sini said after Opoe and Dientje had gone. “Dientje is frightened. She can’t wait till we go back.” Sini was probably right.

  But I answered: “Maybe she’ll become less afraid, and fight with the Hanninks over us. ‘No, Mrs. Hannink, we want to keep them.”’

  Wouldn’t that be something? It made us laugh and laugh. From downstairs Dientje called, “For God’s sake, girls, be quiet.”

  We decided to see what else there was upstairs. We peeked into Opoe’s room. She slept sitting up apparently… four pillows. Her room faced the front, too. We closed the door. Then there were the stairs which were partly covered with a red runner. The uncovered parts were painted green. We looked around. All the walls were painted that same color. They must like green.

  The back bedroom was much bigger, and there were two windows. We each went to one. Blue sky, the kind that meant cold weather. I could see several separate buildings in the back. The one closest to the house seemed to be some sort of garage. A little beyond that was a small house that looked like a chicken coop. Next to it was a low, wide building.

  “That must be the stable,” Sini said. “I think I hear cows.”

  Across the path from the stable was a shed. Maybe that was where Johan kept his cart. Here and there, in between the buildings, were trees. Opoe came from the house with a pail in her hand. On one side her skirts were bunched against her leg. On the other side they billowed out. Windy day. Cold wind probably. She went into the chicken coop.

  “Annie, let’s go back, it’s freezing in here.”

  Dientje was lighting the stove in our bedroom. Sini asked her whether she had any books.

  “Books?” She stopped taking care of the stove. “What kind?”

  “To read.”

  “Wait, I think Johan has one. Where does he keep it? I’ll ask him tonight. We’ve got a Bible around the house. Did you mean that?”

  “No.” We laughed. We should have brought something to read from the Hanninks. Silly.

  “I read, too, but not every day. Sometimes I look at the paper. But Johan, he reads every word of it. He remembers it, too. Me, I forget.” With an embarrassed look at us, Dientje left the room.

  We sat around the stove and spat on it. It made nice hissing sounds.

  “O God, how much longer,” Sini cried.

  “Six days,” I said. She hadn’t heard.

  “The war has got to be over by spring. Annie, do you think it will be?”

  I was getting tired of that question. She asked it all the time, and how was I to know.

  I was pleased to see Opoe come in. “I thought I’d darn these socks here, talk a little bit to you. Poor things, being inside all day.” She sat down heavily.

  “Fui-fui, God-o-god-o-god, what a human being doesn’t have to go through!”

  “Opoe,” Sini and I cried at the same time, “are you sick?”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what you said.”

  “What did I say? I don’t remember. No, I’m not sick. Not yet. It’ll come. Now, let’s see.” Opoe stuck one hand in a black sock. Several knuckles showed through the hole. “That Johan. Such big holes.” She pulled her hand out again, unrolled some wool from a skein, took a needle from several that were stuck on her apron, held the yarn in her right hand, needle in her left, pushed her glasses down toward the tip of her nose. She held the needle up against the light. Her right hand trembled on its way to it. She missed.

  “Let me do it for you, Opoe.”

  “No, no.” She tried again.

  “Come, give it to me.” Sini got up and took the needle and yarn from her.

  “I’m becoming helpless. Old. Bah. Thank you.”

 
“Maybe you should go to an eye doctor.”

  “Nonsense. I’m wearing glasses already. I’m getting old. That’s what happens. No, at my age it doesn’t pay to go to an eye doctor. What can he say?”

  She bent her head over the sock. Once in a while she wiped a tear from her cheek. They weren’t crying tears. They were a different kind… straining-to-see tears.

  “Want me to help you, Opoe?” Sini asked.

  “No, your hands aren’t used to this kind of work.”

  “I mean it, Opoe. I used to work on a farm. I even know a little bit about sewing, and I have very strong hands.”

  “You worked on a farm?” Opoe sounded as if she didn’t believe Sini.

  “Yes. I have a milking diploma, too.”

  “Milking diploma? They give those? Not here in the country, they don’t. We just do it. Milking diploma. God-o-god-o-god! That’s too crazy. If I got a diploma for everything I know about a farm, I’d have a chest full. Planting-potatoes diploma, manure-spreading diploma, feeding-cattle diploma. How come you worked on a farm?”

  “I liked the work.”

  Opoe had stopped moving her needle up and down in the hole. “Now, that’s something.”

  Speechlessly Opoe handed Sini the other sock. She brushed a few wispy hairs back from her face. I noticed that the braid at the back of her head was brown, not white like the rest. It had been coiled around and around and was held together with lots of hairpins. How come Opoe has two-colored hair? I wondered.

  Dientje came upstairs, carrying four cups and a pot. “We can all have some coffee up here. But one of us’ll have to go downstairs soon, in case anybody comes in.”

  “Can’t you lock the door?” I asked.

  “During the day?” Opoe and Dientje laughed. “If somebody came to the house and couldn’t get in, you know what would happen? An hour later all of Usselo’d know it. No, that we can’t do.”

  Dientje rapidly drank her coffee. “Johan’ll be home in an hour. That’s when we eat dinner.”

  “Can’t stand this coffee,” Opoe complained after Dientje had left. She got up. “Fui-fui, God-o-god-o-god.”

  Johan walked in, smelling of winter weather. “Hi, girls, can you stand it? Pretty lazy life you’re leading. Eh? Feel.” He put his hands on my cheeks.

  “Ooh, stop, Johan. They’re freezing.”

  On his way out, he almost bumped into Dientje, who came in carrying a deep steaming bowl. She put two forks on the table and left.

  “What’s for dinner?” We looked. Potatoes, beans, and meat.

  Sini speared a piece of meat on her fork and smelled it. “I thought so… pork. We’ll have to leave it. Just eat the rest. I wonder when they’ll bring us plates.”

  We waited and waited. Soon steam stopped coming from the bowl.

  “Sini, Dientje must have forgotten about the plates. Didn’t you see in what a hurry she was? Can’t we eat?”

  “I guess you’re right.” She pushed the meat to one side, took her fork, and marked off a dividing line. “That’s for you. This is for me.”

  We giggled, and chewed, painstakingly eating around the meat.

  It was still there when Dientje came to take the bowl away. “Didn’t you like the meat? Now, that’s a pity.” She looked unhappy.

  “Dientje, we’re Jews.”

  “Ja, I know.”

  “We’re not supposed to eat pork. That’s what it was, right?”

  “Ja. But what did you eat at the Hanninks’?”

  “We just didn’t eat meat when they had pork.”

  “But that’s all we ever eat. Once in a while a nice piece of veal, and chicken at Christmas, but for the rest, pork. And a couple of times a week, bacon. Mother, come upstairs. Something’s the matter.” Dientje’s voice sounded nervous.

  Opoe came. Dientje explained the situation to her. Together they bent over the bowl.

  “Maybe they left the meat because it wasn’t soft enough. I had trouble, too.”

  “No, Opoe, we never even tried it.” Sini’s face was blotched.

  “But,” Opoe said, “the potatoes and beans were fried in the same pot with the meat. Now, you ate those. So, you also ate pork, in a way.”

  Embarrassed, I looked at Sini. “You’re right,” she said, “tomorrow we’ll try.”

  A few days went by. Every night Dientje reminded Johan that he’d have to ask Mr. Hannink when he was going to take us back. “I’m so afraid the Germans will get us, Johan. You heard what happened when they caught that Jew in Enschede.”

  “Ja, ja, woman. I know.”

  “He was taken away. But, Johan, the people who hid’m were shot. If they catch us, Johan, that’s it. That’s it.”

  Johan said he’d talk to Mr. Hannink. “Don’t worry, woman. I know.”

  He knew what? I didn’t want to go back to the Hanninks’. And Sini didn’t either. We liked farms. Farms were nice, cozy. Johan, don’t ask. Don’t listen to her. And if Dientje wants us to go, why did she tell me she was going to make me a dress out of an old one of hers? A pretty flowered one, too. Would she bring the dress over after it was finished? But I didn’t want that; I wanted it here. Miserably I stared at my hands. They should have scratches on them, from playing. Why didn’t they?

  When Dientje nagged Johan again several days later, he became impatient with her. “Goddammit, woman, don’t talk about it again.”

  “Dientje, don’t bother him. He’s worked hard today.” That was Opoe. I smiled at her, but just a little bit.

  The next day Dientje took my measurements for the dress. “It’s going to look pretty on you,” she said. “Come here and give Dientje a kiss.”

  Johan wasn’t going to talk to Mr. Hannink, he said. “You girls are to stay right here.”

  I put my arms around his neck. “I like you, Johan.”

  “Ja, ja.” He looked at Sini.

  “Johan, you’ve got to feed the cows now,” Dientje said nervously.

  “You milk ’em first; then I’ll come. Boy, have I worked today.” He jumped up. “Damn, it’s time to listen to the radio. Want to come with me tonight?”

  Stealthily we followed him down the stairs. Before Johan let us go through the door that led into the good room, he went to the kitchen. He locked the door, and pulled down the shades there and in the good room. “C’mon.”

  In the room we turned left and went through another door. We were standing in a hall, which had three doors leading off it. Johan climbed on a chair. He pulled a wide plank out of the ceiling and stuck his hand in the opening. An old radio appeared. He pushed it to the edge of the hole, pulled down the cord, and plugged it in a socket near the floor. A voice from the radio whispered, “Here is Radio Oranje.”

  “That’s it,” Johan said. “Quiet.”

  Sini and Johan stood on their toes to hear better, their faces raised toward the hole. News, the real kind.

  “Johan, did you ever find that book Dientje said you had?” I asked later in the evening.

  “You wouldn’t be interested. It’s the farmer’s almanac. We don’t have real books in the house. We’re just dumb peasants.”

  “Oh, Johan, you’re not,” Sini said.

  He looked satisfied. “No, I guess not.” He tipped his chair backward until it seemed about to fall, stuck out his legs, crossed his arms over his chest. “There are lots dumber. I’ll tell you what we can do. We know the minister pretty well. Every time I’m in his house… when I’ve an errand there… I look my eyes out. Books all over the walls. Walls. Can you picture that? Dientje’ll go to’m soon and borrow some. The Hanninks, of course, have books, but I don’t want to go there. If the Germans ever catch’m doing all those things, they might want to find out who came to their house a lot. Can’t risk anything now with you girls. Got to get you through the war. Yep.”

  Opoe was standing in the doorway. She was taking hairpins out of her braid. With the last pin the braid came off. That’s just what I thought. Her own hair ended in a thin wisp in the back. S
he put her nightcap on. “Not that I’ll sleep, but it’s bedtime,” she announced.

  Shouldn’t we have a hiding place for them, too? Dientje asked. “Johan, don’t be stubborn. Under the bed’s no good. Even the Hanninks had one for them.”

  I stared at Dientje with big eyes. Please not another cave. I … I was afraid in it.

  “I wouldn’t have one of those,” Johan said. “What good is it to have a hiding place out in the yard. No, that’s not for me. I’ve just thought of one, woman, that’ll make you wonder why smart Mr. Hannink didn’t think of it.”

  After that, on the days that Johan didn’t go to Boekelo, he worked on the hiding place. He was going to cut the closet in our room in half and put in shelves. ‘Sini, hand me that piece. Good. Out of the way, Annie. I know you’re curious. Dientje, you’re in my way, too. Move. That’s the girl, Sini. Just right.”

  Dientje turned to Opoe. “I didn’t like the way you washed the dishes this afternoon. There were still crusts in the pans. Next time a salesman comes by with a suitcase full of glasses tell’m to go some place else. You’re not going to buy another pair from one of those men.”

  Why did Dientje yell at Opoe? Just because of a crust? She should yell at Johan. He was the one… telling her and me to get out of the way. But I guessed she didn’t dare. What if he got mad? When the hiding place was ready, Johan called Opoe and Dientje and me. We had to look at the bottom shelf, he said. “There’s nothing special about it,” said Opoe. “It’s got stuff on it just like the other shelves.”

  Johan looked triumphantly behind him. “Wait.” He took the clothes off the shelf and put them next to him on the floor. Then he lifted out the shelf. With both hands he removed the piece of wood that was in back of it. A dark opening showed, the doorway to our hiding place.

  “That Johan,” Opoe said proudly.

  “We’ll keep it open from now on, so the girls can get right in. Then one of us’ll put the door back, lower the shelf, straighten the clothes on it, and close the door. As simple as that.” He picked the clothes off the floor and piled them in a corner of the shelf.

  “But what do we do if they’re by themselves? Who’ll put the piece back and lower the shelf?” Dientje asked.