Cut And Run

“But how are you, Catharina?”

“Fine, I’m fine.”

“That’s good.” Rachel concealed her own awkwardness as she tried some of the tea. “I can see why you opened a bakeshop. You were always a wonderful cook, and you took such pleasure in it. Nobody could make the meager rations we had in the war tolerable the way you did—and remember your beet stew?” Rachel laughed, not a happy, carefree laugh, but still a laugh. “It was ghastly, but much better than anything we’d had in weeks.” She was suddenly silent, observing Catharina’s discomfiture with a small sigh. Did her old friend never think about the war? Rachel asked softly, “Adrian’s a decent man?”

“Yes, wonderful.” Catharina seemed relieved at the switch in subject. “He’s so kind and strong.”

“He’s a banker?”

“Yes, and he loves it.”

“I’m glad. I’ve often wondered what would have happened to you if he hadn’t come along when he did. Holland—” Rachel shrugged and thought perhaps it would be best not to dig any deeper than was strictly necessary. “You needed to get out of there. Wilhelmina would have suffocated you. Have you been back?”

“To Amsterdam, once, when Ann died. Johannes was inconsolable; I’d always hoped they’d die together.” She quickly picked up a scone, absently coating it with raspberry jam. “And to Rotterdam seven years ago, when my daughter made her Dutch premiere in the church in which Adrian and I were married. He didn’t come—he and Willie have never gotten along, and their fighting would have spoiled everything.”

“Does she still think you’ll come back?”

“Of course.”

Rachel nodded, remembering the tough, solid woman who was Catharina’s senior by a dozen years and had been Rachel’s closest friend. Wilhelmina Peperkamp had held the Nazis in the strongest contempt from the very beginning, long before Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, certainly long before the German occupation of The Netherlands. Rachel had never met anyone more reliable. “Yes, I can believe that.”

“Do you see her?”

With their five-year age difference, the friendship between Wilhelmina Peperkamp and Rachel Stein had been more a meeting of equals. Catharina had always been the baby. They’d all protected her—Wilhelmina, Johannes, Rachel, her brother Abraham. Everyone. They’d seemed to believe that if they could prevent the war from touching her, they could somehow preserve some of their own innocence. But the war had touched her. Nothing they could have done would have stopped that. It had robbed her of her youth, her girlhood. Rachel saw that now, understood, but she wondered if Catharina felt she’d failed them all.

“How can I see Willie?” Rachel said with a snort. “You know she doesn’t travel, and I won’t go back. She sends me cards at the holidays. She tells me about you, Juliana, her begonias.”

“Do you write to her?” Catharina asked.

“No, but of course that doesn’t stop Willie from doing what she feels is right. If it did…” She lifted her small shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe then I would write. Catharina.” Rachel sighed, taking a tiny sandwich of smoked salmon. She wasn’t hungry, but she knew she needed to eat. Five years of near starvation had developed in her a practical attitude toward food. “Do you have any idea why I’m here?”

“I can guess.”

“I’ve seen him,” Rachel said without further preamble. “I’ve seen Hendrik de Geer.”

Catharina shut her eyes and held her breath, and Rachel thought her old friend was going to faint. “Catharina?”

She opened her eyes. “I’m all right,” she said weakly. “I’m sorry.”

“Please, don’t.”

“I’d convinced myself he was dead.”

“Hendrik dead?” Rachel hooted. “He’ll outlive us all. He’s blessed that way, you know—or cursed. Remember the time he brought us the chocolate? We’d had nothing but sugar beets to eat for days and Hendrik showed up with chocolate. I thought I’d never tasted anything so wonderful. He was so proud of himself, and we were too thrilled even to think to ask him where he’d gotten it. But you know Hendrik. He’s the kind who picks up the world each morning and gives it a good shake. For once, Catharina, I want it to go the other way around. I want the world to give Hendrik de Geer a good shake.”

Catharina stared down at her tea, which had become cold, the cream filming on the top. She hadn’t touched her scone. “Where did you see him?”

Rachel nibbled on a watercress sandwich. “On television, two weeks ago. It was fate, I think. Abraham and I have retired to Palm Beach.” Fleetingly, she thought of the last thirty years, during which she and her brother had become two of the savviest, toughest Hollywood agents. It seemed so distant now. The past, Amsterdam, seemed so much closer. “I never liked Los Angeles, I don’t know why. Anyway, now I have a whole new group of politicians to watch. I always watch politics, of course, since Hitler. One of our senators is Samuel Ryder—very handsome, charming, on the whole too conservative for me, but nothing I can’t live with. One day I’m watching the local news, and a reporter catches Sam Ryder as his car pulls up to the curb and starts firing questions at him—you know how they will—about some controversial bill he’s sponsoring, and sitting beside him is Hendrik de Geer. Hendrik! In a limousine with a United States senator.”

The bell at the door tinkled, and Rachel looked around, pausing as two young women entered the shop, loaded down with shopping bags. Rolls of bright Christmas wrapping paper poked out of one bag.

“You’re certain?” Catharina asked.

“Absolutely. After all these years, do you think he’s changed? No, he looks just as he did in Amsterdam. I knew immediately it was he. My stomach told me, before my brain.” She remembered how she’d run to the bathroom and vomited. That was something she would never admit to Catharina, for whom, she felt, she must remain especially strong. “I called Ryder’s office at once and demanded to know why he was riding around with Hendrik de Geer, and, of course, they thought I was crazy. But I persisted, and finally they put the senator on.”

“You told him—”

“I told him everything I could think of about Hendrik. Yes, that’s exactly what I did. I talked and talked; everything just poured out of me, because now I think the time has come. I told him Hendrik de Geer betrayed me and my family and the people who were hiding us to the Nazis and that he was a Nazi collaborator and has never answered for what he did.”

Catharina regarded her old friend with despair. “He’s never even admitted he did anything wrong. Oh, Rachel, what’s the point? You know what he is—”

“That’s the point. I do know what he is!”

Rachel balled one tiny hand into a fist and thumped the table with her bony knuckles. Dishes rattled. Catharina jumped, looking startled and hurt.

Inhaling deeply, Rachel calmed herself and went on with quiet intensity. “He says Hendrik conned his way into seeing him to urge him to support an increase in defense spending but that he, Ryder, knows very little about him and had no way of getting in touch with him. I don’t believe him, but no matter. He’s agreed to investigate my allegations further if I can corroborate my story. I asked Abraham, but he thinks I’m crazy and that Ryder is only trying to pacify me and look good to a Jewish constituency. Maybe he’s right.” She laughed, remembering the shouting match she and her brother had had. But they had been fighting all their lives; they had good fights. “Abraham’s content to believe Hendrik de Geer will meet his fate one day, if not until the moment of his death. Me, I believe Hendrik will even fast-talk God!”

Rachel grinned, but the light in her dark eyes faded as soon as it appeared. “I intend to make Hendrik answer for Amsterdam,” she said, her gaze on the fair woman across the table, not easing up, not letting her off the hook. “You can help me, Catharina. You can corroborate my story.”

“You can’t make Hendrik answer for anything,” Catharina said, tension strangling her words. “No one can. Rachel, he’s a hard, hard man. Please don’t do this. Don’t go after him. Leave the past alone. Not for his sake, not for mine—for your sake, Rachel. You know what he is!”

Rachel filled her teacup once more, her hand steady. “I can’t leave the past alone.”

She could see the mix of anguish and determination in her friend’s face and understood, because she had waged the same battle with herself and made her decision.

Catharina sighed softly. “Of course, how could I even ask you? It’s just that I’m afraid for you, Rachel.”

“I know.” Rachel smiled and waved a hand, but she couldn’t dismiss the pain in Catharina’s beautiful eyes. She’d forgotten what it was to have someone—aside from Abraham of course—care about her. “The future holds nothing for me. It never did, even when I was twenty. I think only of the past. I can remember so clearly, as if it happened just this morning, how my father would sit me on his knee and tell me about diamonds, let me help him sort them. So boring! But there was such life in his eyes. Do you remember?”

Catharina nodded sadly. “Your father was one of the gentlest, wisest men I’ve ever known.”

“He was younger than I am now when he died.” Rachel drank some tea, replacing the cup on its saucer with a firmness that underlined her own resolve. “Don’t be afraid for me, Catharina. I’m doing what I must do, what I want to do. I know exactly the kind of man I’m facing, and I don’t care. If Hendrik wins, he wins. But at least I’ll have tried. All I want is for him to understand what he did.”

“He never will, Rachel,” Catharina said.

“We’ll see.”

“Hendrik never intended for bad things to come of what he did, and when they did, he couldn’t admit he was at fault. He couldn’t accept the consequences of his own actions—he probably still can’t. It’s not in his nature. You’re not going to change him. Hendrik de Geer will always be out for himself.”

“Let’s not argue,” Rachel said. “I won’t force you to help.”

Catharina looked shocked. “No, that’s not what I meant. Of course I’ll talk to Senator Ryder, if that’s what you want, but I’m pessimistic that anything will come of it. Even now, Hendrik probably already knows you’re after him. He won’t stick around. And Rachel, my God, you’ve suffered enough.”

“We all have,” she said, fire coming into her eyes. “But not Hendrik.”

“I know, but…”

Rachel reached across the table and grabbed Catharina’s strong hand, squeezing it tightly, aware of how small and frail her own hand was—but it was only bones, skin, muscle. Nothing that counted. The bond between them, what was unseen and immeasurable and timeless, was all that mattered. “You live on Park Avenue and have dried dough under your nails. Only you, Catharina. My friend, my dear, dear friend, I know how difficult this must be for you. But you don’t have to see him. You—”