“Willie?”
“I’m here.”
Her eyes remained tearless. She hadn’t cried in many, many years, although she had lost many friends. It was the worst part of growing old. Slowly, she sat at her small table where already a half-dozen of her clay pots were lined up, scrubbed and empty.
“I’m sorry to have told you so abruptly,” Catharina said. “I know it’s shocking.”
“How did she die?”
“She fell on the ice-an accident, they say.”
Wilhelmina was instantly alert. “You have doubts?”
“I don’t know. I-I don’t know what to think.”
“Tell me everything, Catharina.”
Haltingly, Catharina related the events since Rachel’s appearance at the bakeshop for tea, requesting corroboration of her story to Senator Ryder. Although she was alone, Wilhelmina refrained from showing any visible reaction to what she was hearing. Not since the winter of 1944-Hongerwinter, the Winter of Hunger-had she and Catharina discussed Hendrik de Geer or even spoken his name. There was no need. He was a man neither would ever forget. Wilhelmina had tried.
“I’m probably overreacting,” Catharina said. “But I don’t know. It’s late here; I haven’t been able to sleep. Juliana came by the shop earlier, and she’s asking so many questions. She-she’s asked me about Hendrik. I wouldn’t talk to her, I…Willie, how can I tell her? This doesn’t concern her! It can’t touch her-I won’t let it!”
“You’ve never told her about Amsterdam?” Wilhelmina tried to keep the condemnation out of her tone, but it was there; she could hear it herself. And of course Catharina would be listening for it.
“No, I did not. Don’t interfere, Willie. What I do or don’t tell my daughter is between us.”
“You were the one who called me,” Wilhelmina pointed out, her sister’s agitation all that kept her tone mild.
“I know! I thought…I don’t know now what I thought, just that you have a right to know about Rachel, I suppose. Maybe I thought you could help.” Catharina paused and gave a small, bitter laugh. “I always do, don’t I? Nothing’s changed. Oh, Willie, I’m not blaming you. God knows I haven’t changed, either. When something goes wrong, who do I call? My big sister. I want you to be strong, Willie, I expect it, just as you expect me always to crumple and do as you say.”
“It’s all right,” Wilhelmina said, feeling tired. Catharina had Adrian, Juliana her piano, Johannes his diamonds. What did she have? Her pots of flowers. Well, she wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. Her flowers were enough.
“I’m probably being silly,” Catharina said, breathing deeply, nervously, and Wilhelmina felt her younger sister’s uncertainty, her dread of censure. Too many times she’d had big sister Willie tell her she was being foolish. “When I saw Hendrik at Lincoln Center, at first I thought it must be my imagination.”
“Have you ever imagined seeing him before?”
“No, of course not.”
Wilhelmina had.
“It was so strange seeing him again,” Catharina went on, calmer now. “He’s the same.”
Wilhelmina snorted. “Did you think he’d be any different?”
“I suppose not. I-I can’t believe he had anything to do with Rachel’s death. It must have been an accident.”
“Perhaps.”
“I’m not afraid, Willie, I wouldn’t want you to think that-not for myself, anyway.”
“For Juliana?”
“Yes.”
Wilhelmina had to smile at her sister’s eternal naiveté. “Catharina, please. Hendrick would never hurt Juliana.”
“You sound so sure.”
“I am. Don’t you see? Juliana’s your daughter. Hendrik could no more hurt her than he could you.”
Catharina cried out in surprise and disbelief. “But he did hurt me!”
“Not in any way he would understand. In the mind of Hendrik de Geer, he saved you. That’s all he knows.”
“Willie…”
Her hands were trembling, but she blamed age rather than emotion. “Call me if there’s anything more.”
“What should I do about Juliana?”
“If I were you, I would tell her everything.”
“No.”
“But, of course, I’m not you. Just-how do you say it? Lay low, I believe. Do nothing. Juliana will stop asking questions soon enough. Now that Rachel is dead and any threat against him eliminated, Hendrik will simply disappear. He must be very good at that by now.”
“You really think he will?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he was at Lincoln Center on Saturday. If he was going to disappear, wouldn’t he have done it then?”
Not if he came to kill Rachel he wouldn’t, Wilhelmina thought. But Hendrik had never been one to do his own killing. Catharina had a point-one, of course, Wilhelmina had already considered.
“Unless you want to go after Hendrik yourself, Catharina, there’s nothing else you can do but pretend you never saw him on Saturday.”
“How-how could I go after him myself?”
“That’s something you must answer for yourself. I cannot.”
“I have to go, before I wake Adrian.”
“You’ve not told him what’s been happening?”
“Of course not. Goodbye, Willie.”
Wilhelmina was appalled, but she said goodbye and hung up. She made herself some café au lait, ignoring the sinkful of flowerpots. Hendrik de Geer. She’d hoped he was dead, although she’d never believed it. She took her coffee into the living room and sat on her chair by the window, watching her narrow, picturesque street. She missed the pots of begonias that had stood on her windowsill. They’d all become diseased and died. Perhaps it was an omen.
“No matter,” she said aloud, accustomed to talking to herself after so many years of living alone. “They were old enough to die.”
Johannes Peperkamp stood on the deck of the old cargo ship and looked out at the busy Amsterdam harbor. It was still early, very cool, and the ship was an old one that smelled of bad fish and rancid oil. He remembered how he’d dreamed of being a sailor when he was a boy, and home sick for days with influenza. While he was recovering, his father had sat with him and filled his head with another dream, the legend of the Minstrel’s Rough. The Minstrel had made the Peperkamp diamond tradition real for Johannes, something that was exciting and mysterious. For a long time now, that excitement and mystery had been absent. Diamonds were work. They provided a living. That was all.
He had been looking out at the city since dawn, watching it slowly rise out of the darkness into the new day. Not since Ann’s death had he been back to Amsterdam. For both of them, it had been a city of painful memories. But she’d wanted her ashes brought to the Jodenhoek, the old Jewish quarter, and he’d acceded to her wish. During the sixteenth century, thousands of Jews had fled to Amsterdam for its tolerance and religious freedom. With them, they’d brought diamonds and their knowledge of the gems. They were predominantly Sephardic Jews escaping persecution in Lisbon and Antwerp, and their diamond money had helped finance the Dutch East India Company. With it, Amsterdam could establish its own route to India and become the main European port of entry for diamonds. The Netherlands’ golden age followed, and it became for a time the major seafaring nation of the world.
In 1940, Nazi Germany invaded, violating Dutch neutrality, imposing and encouraging intolerance and hatred. After four hundred Jewish men were rounded up, beaten and deported in early 1941, the Dutch responded with a general strike. The furious Reichskommissar, Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Viennese attorney who’d engineered the Anschluss of Austria with the German Third Reich, crushed quickly and brutally crushed the strike. Resistance moved underground. Before the Allies liberated all of The Netherlands in the spring of 1945, seventy-five percent of its Jewish population-one hundred thousand people-had been killed.
Ann had been one who lived. A part of her, at least.
The old cutter’s eyes filled with unbidden tears. How happy they’d been before the war! And even after, when they’d still had each other. Now he felt so tired. The brisk morning air didn’t penetrate his fatigue as a kaleidoscope of images from the past spun around him. Perhaps Wilhelmina was right-he should have killed Hendrik de Geer when he’d had the opportunity, before, in Amsterdam. But he’d been unable to believe Hendrik had actually betrayed them. Wilhelmina had accused her brother of being overly sentimental. Perhaps she was right about that, too. Hendrik had been his friend.