Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

“Now,” Aunt Willie said when they’d finished lunch, “you must tell me everything about why you are here.”

“Why me first?”

Aunt Willie picked crumbs off her skirt. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you. It’s not that.”

“Then what? Juliana, I’m not like your mother. You’re her daughter, and she doesn’t talk because she feels she must protect you.” Wilhelmina put her little collection of crumbs on her tongue. “You’re not my daughter, and even if you were, I don’t think people can be protected from the past.”

Juliana agreed, having long been frustrated with her mother’s reticence, but she said, “You won’t get very far with me by criticizing my mother.”

“I don’t criticize, I just tell the truth.” She looked past Juliana, out the window. “Talk if you want to.”

“I do want to, Aunt Willie, but why do you have to make everything so difficult? Oh, never mind. Look, I’ll tell you right now I don’t know very much and what I do know has me confused.”

“One thing at a time,” her aunt said.

Sighing, Juliana began with meeting Rachel Stein over tea with her mother and proceeded from there, neglecting only to mention her knowledge of what the Minstrel was, where it was, and all its mystery and legend. Aunt Willie listened without interruption, and when Juliana had finished the old Dutchwoman leaned back against her seat and closed her eyes. For the first time, Juliana noticed how lined and dried her aunt’s fair skin was.

“It doesn’t look very good for Johannes, I’m afraid,” Aunt Willie said. “Did this Matthew Stark tell you how he’d gotten his name?”

“No,” Juliana replied, feeling a pang of fear for her uncle, whom she recalled with affection as a gentle, cultured man. She’d get rid of the Minstrel now, immediately, if it meant helping him-or anyone. But he’d warned her, seven years ago, against such temptations. He’d told her to hold her knowledge of the Minstrel close and never, never to act without knowing precisely what the risks were. Don’t look only at the consequences of not acting, he’d said. Look, too, at the consequences of acting. With whom would you be dealing? What would those people do if they knew you had the stone-if they got it? Is saving one life worth the loss of many others?

They were sound questions. At the time, she’d thought them melodramatic.

“Aunt Willie, do you know anything about what’s going on? Do you know this Hendrik de Geer, what his role might be?”

Wilhelmina opened her eyes, her expression grim. “I can’t say for certain what this is all about, but as for Hendrik de Geer-yes, I know him. He’s a devil.”

“In what way? How do you know him? Does Mother-”

“Yes, your mother knows him. And Rachel did, too. We all did, Juliana. He was our friend, before the war, during.”

“But you just said-”

“I know what I said. Hendrik betrayed our friendship, and until I talk to your mother, I will tell you no more about him. But you must be careful of him, Juliana.”

“You know you’re not being fair,” she said simply.

Wilhelmina shrugged, unconcerned with fairness.

“What about Rachel Stein? How did you know her?”

“Ah, Rachel.” Wilhelmina’s eyes softened, and she sighed. Juliana sensed her sadness-and anger. “It’s not right what Rachel suffered. There’s no excuse. None. She was a good woman, Juliana, a dear, funny, sad friend, and perhaps one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known. You should have seen her before the war. Oh, did she have the devil in her eye! She and her brother stayed with me during the occupation. They were Jews, so we had to be extremely cautious.”

“You hid them?”

Aunt Willie nodded solemnly, without pleasure or pride.

“But I had no idea! Mother never said anything about it.”

“Why should she? Many people hid Jews, but not enough. Tens of thousands were murdered. Rounded up like cattle, deported, starved, tortured, shot, gassed. My actions saved two people. Two very dear, very important people to me, but still only two.”

“Nevertheless-”

“Nevertheless nothing. I have no reason to brag.”

Juliana tried to imagine her aunt forty years younger, Rachel Stein, her mother, what they must have gone through as young women. Younger than she herself was now. Would she have had the courage to hide Jews from the Nazis? She would like to think so. But she hoped she’d never know such a thing. It was something, she thought, that should never be tested.

“The Steins must be very grateful to you, Aunt Willie,” she said.

“In some ways, yes, of course, but it’s difficult,” Wilhelmina said, matter-of-fact. “They were made into victims, Juliana, persecuted simply because they were Jews, and simply because I was not a Jew, I was put into a position of power over them-along with your mother, your uncle, your grandparents. We could help them or we could destroy them.”

“But you chose to help.”

“Chose? I’m not so sure. For me, there was never any question of what I had to do. It’s like getting up in the morning. You just wake up. You don’t expect anybody to thank you for doing it.”

Juliana nodded, furious with her mother for never having breathed a word of any of this. What did she think she was protecting her daughter from? But she put that aside for now. “Do you think Rachel Stein and her brother would ever have wanted the chance to repay you?”

Aunt Willie looked at her, truly mystified. “For what? They owe me nothing. They never did. I failed them in too many other ways.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I hope you never will, Juliana. None of us had much control over our fates, but they least of all. Rachel and her family weren’t the only ones we helped-there were strikers, too, and men between the ages of eighteen and fifty who were being rounded up for the labor camps. The on-derduikers, we called them.”

“What does that mean?”

“The hidden people. Onderduik means to dive under. In Holland we have no wide forests or caves, very little countryside. To conceal people we had to put them in our houses, in our attics and cellars, often right under the noses of the Germans. But the Steins were with us the longest. For almost five years we lived in close proximity to each other, always fearful of discovery, rarely having enough food, enough heat. Sometimes we would get on each other’s nerves. It’s only natural. That kind of situation can breed resentment as well as gratitude.” She breathed heavily. “But I’m talking too much. Your mother will be annoyed with me.”

For a moment, Juliana was silent. She was proud of her aunt, amazed by what she’d done, amazed at her courage, but concluded that saying so would only irritate her. Instead she asked, “Was Mother living with you at the time?”

“Your mother’s story is for her to tell.”

“But Rachel Stein came to New York to see her.”

“Yes, she did.”

“Aunt Willie, you know as well as I do that Mother isn’t going to tell me a damn thing.”

Wilhelmina sniffed. “Watch your language.”

“I have a right to know.”

“Do you?”

“All right.” Juliana sighed, knowing she was defeated. She didn’t want to waste time with pointless arguing. “The paper said Rachel Stein came to the United States after World War Two. Why?”

“She and Abraham chose not to stay-they couldn’t. Their community, their family and friends were all gone, and the country itself was decimated. We had just suffered a terrible famine. The Netherlands wasn’t fully liberated until the spring of 1945, almost a year after France and Belgium. The Allies had tried to take Arnhem in the fall of 1944. The plan-Operation Market Garden, it was called-was to create a corridor up through the southeast part of the country into Germany and take control of the three major rivers, isolating the Germany forces occupying Holland. Then the Allies would make the final push into Germany. If it had worked, it would have shortened the war considerably.”