I don't doubt such a thing happened. War's effects never run cold. Still, it's an amazing story--a woman marries in order to emigrate, then, once arrived, goes in search of her war-time lover. Amazing. What most writers do is start a "what if," and try like mad to make it work. That's what I'm up to here.
_______________________
"I honestly don't know," I told her. "I don't know a word of the story. You're a revelation. Before yesterday, I had absolutely no idea there ever was a Berendina Janssens-Versteeg--no idea."
In liitle more than ten minutes, I'd seen iron resolve, an arrogance that angered me, and now something close to defeat--all of it so clearly written on her face that she never had to speak at all. I've seen that before in Dutch people--eyes that mirror every splintered emotion from the soul--concrete conviction to abject helplessness. What's going on inside appears so openly on their faces that I wonder what immigrant experience altered that characteristic in so many of the Dutch who left this country, my father included. Dena Janssens never ever would have buried the secret my father did. She could not have. Why?
And then, just as quickly, those eyes softened once more. She pressed her lips together, then smiled, softly. "You could have been my son," she said. Gentle smile--even adoring. "Maybe I would have liked your mother."
"No," I said. "Not really."
"Why so?"
"The older I've become," I told her, "the more I believe his marriage was not what he wanted us to believe it was. He is a good, good man, but he is capable of falsehood, for righteousness' sake."
"I believe that," she said.
"He was happy in the barn--a different man in the house," I told her.
"What is she like?"
"She's gone. She died five years ago. He's alone." I pushed back the chair from the table, and just for a moment as I looked down at that hiding place beneath me. "My mother," I said, "is as difficult to describe, as she was hard to love." I wasn't tailoring my words. "No one would deny that. But he never complained--I never heard about you, nor about her--never."
Determined smile, sympathetic, even stoic. "It is an act of faith," she said, "to withstand pain--and acts of faith count with the Lord." She bowed her head for a moment, seemed almost sad. "Bloody Christians all swear by election but work their heads off chasing righteousness for a reward they think they're winning all the same."
But she didn't know my father. He is not arrogant, not boastful; he is not puffed up. He may have faults, but he has never chased righteousness for any reason other than personal happiness and service to God--what he would call, simply, "thanks."
"So, you--" she said, and sat down once again beside me, "where do you fit in all of this?" She pulled the chair up close, leaned both her arms over the table towards me. "If you're not your mother's child and you're not your father's boy, then where did you come from--you historian?--"
Every word was measured and cut sharply to fit a path. I will admit it now. In a way, in those few moments in that old house, I loved her for her deliberateness, the way she cut to the quick, so much unlike my father, who seemed to me then to be living--and dying--in a completely different world. She had told me that she was too much like God to love him, and in a way I believed her. Not for a moment did she fritter away the words she could have chosen. I watched her moods shift like wind in the moods in her eyes. Everything was at the surface--nothing hidden away like my father.
"Where did you come from?" she'd asked me.
And I answered her in her own way--unflinching, direct. "Where did you?" I said. "Where do any of us come from?"
"From the air we breathe," she said. "All this genetics is just so much wasted science," she said. "I am a child of the war, the third child, second daughter, of Hendrick and Berendina Janssens. I was raised in their home--this one. But the war made me what I am." She sat back once again. "You would not believe what this place was like back then." Her arms spread instinctively. "It was a railroad station in here--people coming and going. Resistance people. Three Jews in the barn," she pointed to the back, "three pilots in the mooie room." Behind me, a closed door. Onderduikers in and out and in and out." Her hands twisted and whirled and jigged. "And my parents--they were like your father, so naive. I sometimes think my father heartily believed that some great dome of grace protected this house." She looked at me directly, silent. "I hated him for that, really--for his innocence. It is a curse to be born of innocent, Christian parents--a curse. And all that time, me and my Canadian were making love--"
"Where?" I said. "With everybody in this house, where did you find a place?"
She laughed. "The great tragedy," she said, "is that we die--and before that grow old." She was back in this house, fifty years before. "For everything that happened--for what I did to your father and what that big-time hero did to me, for all of my parents' innocence, and the craziness," she laughed to herself, "--and the craziness of all of those people and outside the Nazis capable of killing us all." She shook her head. "With everything that happened to me since--my children, who knows where, and your father, and being forced to come back here to Holland--for those months at the end of the war and that man, that Canadian, I'd probably do it all again." She raised a hand toward me. "You'll never understand that, but you asked, 'Where did we make love'? And my answer, Professor Versteeg, is where didn't we?"
"It was war--people were killed, millions," I said.
"And you," she said. "Did you ever know love?--you and your wife?"
"I'm divorced," I told her.
"I don't care," she said. "What I asked you was did you ever know love?"
"As a child?"
"Have you ever known love?" she said, slowly, as if pronouncing the words to an idiot.
"I don't know," I said.
"Then you haven't." Her fingers peaked as she held her hands up in front of her face. "For six months of my life, I had all I could do to breathe it in--in the middle of all of that bombing and Nazis all over, I was in love."
"Seventy-some years," I said. "And that's all the longer it was--six months?"
She raised her finger, pointed. "I was born in 1929, more than a decade before Hitler came to the Netherlands, but I am a child of the war."
"My father?" I said.
"You know him."
"Not like you did."
She nodded at me as if to say I deserved what she was about to say. "A good man. Not handsome. A Christian--but not a damned hypocrite--never a hypocrite." She touched her finger to her lips, sat there for a moment, thinking. "Of course, I used him, and I remember those nights, too. But I had too--my body told me I had to, and my soul said it too. I remember feeling his body on mine, in mine--and all that time I kept telling myself that when we got to Canada, the moment we get to Canada--." She made a bundle in her hands. "I can't say that what I did haunts me, because it's all now so far behind, but I remember him loving me--yes, here on this farm. I lied to myself before. I had to make him think the child already there was his. And I remember wanting to cry, not for him, but for my burden of having to deceive a good man, a man I didn't love." She looked at me, shook her head. "I don't expect your sympathy."
"You never loved him?"
"I couldn't let myself love him, even if I wanted to. Heaven was in Ontario, Canada. All I wanted was heaven."
"What did he say when you left him?"
"I never told him."
"You mean you simply walked away?"
"In a letter," she said. "I left him a note three days after I left that horrible farm. Three days. I told him the whole story and that he shouldn't come after me because I'd known what I wanted from the day he'd come here to this back door. I'd known exactly what I wanted." She looked at her open hand, as if there were some scar there, something telling; then she raised it to her face, wiped at the corners of her eyes. "In Canada, I simply disappeared--as if it were still the war. I left him, two weeks after we first put down our feet over there, and I went to find my lover and hero."
She looked up at me, her eyebrows raised, not so much a smile on her face, but something endearing pulled from a corner of her heart she'd not opened before. "You should not have come," she said. "Maybe even your father would say it--we can get by in this world from day-to-day if we don't have to remember some things."
"My father would say there's forgiveness," I told her.
"Yes, he would," she said.
She sat there at her table, alone in a house with more history than a place should have, and for the first time something unburdened within her threatened the strength of what had kept her energized, alive. Maybe they were not so much different, I thought--my father and this first bride.
"I hadn't even thought about that time," she told me. "I hadn't even thought of your father for years--and years. He was gone."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"And so am I," she said, nodding. "And so am I."
Something broke, something stiff and unyielding and very, very beautiful. For the first time, grief came over her eyes like a shadow. "You tell him that, Professor Versteeg," she said. "You tell your father that before he dies--you tell him Dena Janssens is sorry for what she gave him--that pain."
At that moment it hit her for the first time that I hadn't been lying to her, that the man she'd once married under pretext, the man she'd hauled on to some straw mattress somewhere in order to cover her sin, the man she had slept with, only to reach her baby's father in Canada--at that moment she understood that this man she didn't know at all had never even suggested her existence to me. She looked at me and said, "You don't know, do you?"
"I honestly don't know," I told her. "I don't know a word of the story. You're a revelation. Before yesterday, I had absolutely no idea there ever was a Berendina Janssens-Versteeg--no idea."
In liitle more than ten minutes, I'd seen iron resolve, an arrogance that angered me, and now something close to defeat--all of it so clearly written on her face that she never had to speak at all. I've seen that before in Dutch people--eyes that mirror every splintered emotion from the soul--concrete conviction to abject helplessness. What's going on inside appears so openly on their faces that I wonder what immigrant experience altered that characteristic in so many of the Dutch who left this country, my father included. Dena Janssens never ever would have buried the secret my father did. She could not have. Why?
And then, just as quickly, those eyes softened once more. She pressed her lips together, then smiled, softly. "You could have been my son," she said. Gentle smile--even adoring. "Maybe I would have liked your mother."
"No," I said. "Not really."
"Why so?"
"The older I've become," I told her, "the more I believe his marriage was not what he wanted us to believe it was. He is a good, good man, but he is capable of falsehood, for righteousness' sake."
"I believe that," she said.
"He was happy in the barn--a different man in the house," I told her.
"What is she like?"
"She's gone. She died five years ago. He's alone." I pushed back the chair from the table, and just for a moment as I looked down at that hiding place beneath me. "My mother," I said, "is as difficult to describe, as she was hard to love." I wasn't tailoring my words. "No one would deny that. But he never complained--I never heard about you, nor about her--never."
Determined smile, sympathetic, even stoic. "It is an act of faith," she said, "to withstand pain--and acts of faith count with the Lord." She bowed her head for a moment, seemed almost sad. "Bloody Christians all swear by election but work their heads off chasing righteousness for a reward they think they're winning all the same."
But she didn't know my father. He is not arrogant, not boastful; he is not puffed up. He may have faults, but he has never chased righteousness for any reason other than personal happiness and service to God--what he would call, simply, "thanks."
"So, you--" she said, and sat down once again beside me, "where do you fit in all of this?" She pulled the chair up close, leaned both her arms over the table towards me. "If you're not your mother's child and you're not your father's boy, then where did you come from--you historian?--"
Every word was measured and cut sharply to fit a path. I will admit it now. In a way, in those few moments in that old house, I loved her for her deliberateness, the way she cut to the quick, so much unlike my father, who seemed to me then to be living--and dying--in a completely different world. She had told me that she was too much like God to love him, and in a way I believed her. Not for a moment did she fritter away the words she could have chosen. I watched her moods shift like wind in the moods in her eyes. Everything was at the surface--nothing hidden away like my father.
"Where did you come from?" she'd asked me.
And I answered her in her own way--unflinching, direct. "Where did you?" I said. "Where do any of us come from?"
"From the air we breathe," she said. "All this genetics is just so much wasted science," she said. "I am a child of the war, the third child, second daughter, of Hendrick and Berendina Janssens. I was raised in their home--this one. But the war made me what I am." She sat back once again. "You would not believe what this place was like back then." Her arms spread instinctively. "It was a railroad station in here--people coming and going. Resistance people. Three Jews in the barn," she pointed to the back, "three pilots in the mooie room." Behind me, a closed door. Onderduikers in and out and in and out." Her hands twisted and whirled and jigged. "And my parents--they were like your father, so naive. I sometimes think my father heartily believed that some great dome of grace protected this house." She looked at me directly, silent. "I hated him for that, really--for his innocence. It is a curse to be born of innocent, Christian parents--a curse. And all that time, me and my Canadian were making love--"
"Where?" I said. "With everybody in this house, where did you find a place?"
She laughed. "The great tragedy," she said, "is that we die--and before that grow old." She was back in this house, fifty years before. "For everything that happened--for what I did to your father and what that big-time hero did to me, for all of my parents' innocence, and the craziness," she laughed to herself, "--and the craziness of all of those people and outside the Nazis capable of killing us all." She shook her head. "With everything that happened to me since--my children, who knows where, and your father, and being forced to come back here to Holland--for those months at the end of the war and that man, that Canadian, I'd probably do it all again." She raised a hand toward me. "You'll never understand that, but you asked, 'Where did we make love'? And my answer, Professor Versteeg, is where didn't we?"
"It was war--people were killed, millions," I said.
"And you," she said. "Did you ever know love?--you and your wife?"
"I'm divorced," I told her.
"I don't care," she said. "What I asked you was did you ever know love?"
"As a child?"
"Have you ever known love?" she said, slowly, as if pronouncing the words to an idiot.
"I don't know," I said.
"Then you haven't." Her fingers peaked as she held her hands up in front of her face. "For six months of my life, I had all I could do to breathe it in--in the middle of all of that bombing and Nazis all over, I was in love."
"Seventy-some years," I said. "And that's all the longer it was--six months?"
She raised her finger, pointed. "I was born in 1929, more than a decade before Hitler came to the Netherlands, but I am a child of the war."
"My father?" I said.
"You know him."
"Not like you did."
She nodded at me as if to say I deserved what she was about to say. "A good man. Not handsome. A Christian--but not a damned hypocrite--never a hypocrite." She touched her finger to her lips, sat there for a moment, thinking. "Of course, I used him, and I remember those nights, too. But I had too--my body told me I had to, and my soul said it too. I remember feeling his body on mine, in mine--and all that time I kept telling myself that when we got to Canada, the moment we get to Canada--." She made a bundle in her hands. "I can't say that what I did haunts me, because it's all now so far behind, but I remember him loving me--yes, here on this farm. I lied to myself before. I had to make him think the child already there was his. And I remember wanting to cry, not for him, but for my burden of having to deceive a good man, a man I didn't love." She looked at me, shook her head. "I don't expect your sympathy."
"You never loved him?"
"I couldn't let myself love him, even if I wanted to. Heaven was in Ontario, Canada. All I wanted was heaven."
"What did he say when you left him?"
"I never told him."
"You mean you simply walked away?"
"In a letter," she said. "I left him a note three days after I left that horrible farm. Three days. I told him the whole story and that he shouldn't come after me because I'd known what I wanted from the day he'd come here to this back door. I'd known exactly what I wanted." She looked at her open hand, as if there were some scar there, something telling; then she raised it to her face, wiped at the corners of her eyes. "In Canada, I simply disappeared--as if it were still the war. I left him, two weeks after we first put down our feet over there, and I went to find my lover and hero."
She looked up at me, her eyebrows raised, not so much a smile on her face, but something endearing pulled from a corner of her heart she'd not opened before. "You should not have come," she said. "Maybe even your father would say it--we can get by in this world from day-to-day if we don't have to remember some things."
"My father would say there's forgiveness," I told her.
"Yes, he would," she said.
She sat there at her table, alone in a house with more history than a place should have, and for the first time something unburdened within her threatened the strength of what had kept her energized, alive. Maybe they were not so much different, I thought--my father and this first bride.
"I hadn't even thought about that time," she told me. "I hadn't even thought of your father for years--and years. He was gone."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"And so am I," she said, nodding. "And so am I."
Something broke, something stiff and unyielding and very, very beautiful. For the first time, grief came over her eyes like a shadow. "You tell him that, Professor Versteeg," she said. "You tell your father that before he dies--you tell him Dena Janssens is sorry for what she gave him--that pain."
_________________________
And thus he leaves. But it's not the end of the story. Tomorrow denouement, the end of the story, the end of the fiction.
And thus he leaves. But it's not the end of the story. Tomorrow denouement, the end of the story, the end of the fiction.
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