“Just a drop behind the ear, Marie. Perfume is the visiting card of the lady!”
They laughed. And Nico laughed along with them!
“And what is the white queen’s favorite?” Coba asked, with a glance at the chess pieces in battle formation.
“It depends whether she is about to win or lose.”
“But Nico? I thought your perfume would help a lady win.”
“Well, then you’d have to be playing, Coba, not me,” Nico sighed. He knocked over the white queen along with her foot soldiers. Crash!
“I know a pianist”—she kept on chatting, undisturbed—“who’s stuck at a table like you. But he’s playing a piano.”
“At a table?”
“He drew a keyboard on the tabletop so that he wouldn’t get totally out of practice. Beethoven was deaf too, after all.”
“How long has he been stuck there so far?” Marie asked timidly.
“We’re trying to find him a third table now — oak, if we can. He’s already played through two others.”
“So you’re better off with your chess then,” Marie said with a friendly nod to him.
“Yes,” he agreed, a bit passively, “it’s true, I have it better…”
Such visits helped, or visits like the ones from Leo, the photographer, who also brought along hair clippers. He came regularly, every three weeks.
“I only do one kind of cut,” he said, eagerly rubbing his hands together. “I hope you like it. And if the esteemed client wishes to continue to make use of my services after the war…”
He was a teacher of natural science and geography at the lyceum. Nico sat like a patient sheep on the chair and let everything take its course. These visits made him happy. He was cheerful and joined in with everything. Then he couldn’t anymore. Even with clippers, after all, sometimes a clump of hair or dust got in and brought the smooth workings of the blades to a halt. “So here I sit, happy because my hair is getting cut,” he thought to himself, “happy, while…”
The others noticed. But Leo kept cutting.
Wim and Marie sat in the room during the haircut. They themselves barely escaped the clutches of the hardworking clippers.
At the end, Leo gave an extra show and cut his own hair. But only the right side.
“He hasn’t learned the left side yet,” Nico teased, and he looked at his own haircut in the mirror for the third time. After the procedure he always felt a bit sad, and lonelier.
“The left side is for the next customer!” Leo said, brushing off his shirt.
V
There were problems too. Obviously, whenever people live together there are problems, like little bombs with long fuses planted in the gray hours and mostly exploding at moments when you think everything is going perfectly. Boom! There’s a bang, you’re surprised, startled, and a little annoyed; the problems are a burden because they come as a surprise and because you have to make an extra effort. People who say that they can see a problem “coming” are like people who say they have a sixth sense.
One problem was the cleaning lady. She came every Tuesday and Friday, the same as she had for the past two years, to clean and scrub the rooms downstairs and the rooms upstairs, alternating, and the kitchen and the stairs, and to darn stockings and mend clothes when she had any time left over. She knew every nook and cranny of the house and was used to moving freely through it, working without any special instructions from Marie. And now, all of a sudden, the upstairs rooms, especially Nico’s, were supposed to be “taboo” for her…
“To fire her suddenly,” Marie said to Wim one evening when they were alone, “would really stand out. I’ll cut back slowly.”
“I’ll just stay in my room,” Nico decided. That’s what he always did anyway, except for the days when he was so thoroughly bored that just for a change of scene he went faithfully, every hour and a half, like clockwork, to the bathroom on the upstairs floor. “This afternoon too will pass.”
“Stay in your room as much as you can,” Wim had said at the beginning. “During the day someone or another still comes by to visit. Marie will call you when the coast is clear.”
When the doorbell rang, he held his breath for a second upstairs and strained to listen. The milkman? No, he didn’t come until around noon. A woman’s voice! It must be — he heard laughter and bright voices — it must be — and suddenly the cry of a child’s voice between the others, so it must be little Jaap with his mother. Good people, Marie had said, during a friendly hour with him when she had let him in on something about her circle of acquaintances. Good people, but a little simple. Be careful, very careful. Luckily they never stayed long.
Later, hidden behind his curtain, he saw little bowlegged Jaap across the front garden, his mother following behind him while still turned around to talk to Marie, who stayed in the door to the house. The garden gate was open. Look at that! A horse-drawn wagon! But little Jaapje stayed standing on the threshold and waited.
“Mama, Mama!” he yelled. “Tum!” And he could talk too! He’d really come a long way in the last six months.
“He’s calling me to come, I have to go,” said Mama, proudly. “Bye, Marie!”
When they were gone, Marie called him downstairs. “Would you like to dry the dishes with me for a change?”
“I’d like that, Marie.”
He stood downstairs in the kitchen, carefully took the plates and cups in his left hand, and wiped them all around with his right, which held a cloth all crumpled up.
“You don’t need to press so hard, Nico. Like this… softer…”
The next time it went better. Marie could wash so fast that Nico fell behind with the drying. Plates, cups, and pots piled up on the green rubber mat.
“Slower, slower, Marie, I can’t keep up.”
Marie laughed. She just did it automatically; it was as if the plates and bowls flew from the boiling sink water onto the table. “Wim is totally at his wit’s end when he helps me,” she said. “He says he gets dizzy just watching.” She held the big aluminum pot for boiling potatoes in the water, turned it all around so that little sprays of water fell on the stone counter and into the basin, while working on the inside of the pot with a wire mesh scrubber. “You can’t buy what you need to clean pots with anymore. It takes twice as long. You can feel the war even in the kitchen, whether the pot is full or empty. Always the same old story.”
She poured the dishwater out and grabbed a cloth to wipe off the basin and clean out the drain. Then she helped him dry the rest of the dishes. “And then I’ll make us a cup of coffee.”
A sojourn downstairs like this was like a trip to another country.
One time he went downstairs himself, without thinking about it, when he smelled burned milk in his room and throughout the house. Marie must have gone out to get something; she must have been planning to come right back and had put the milk on the stove in the meantime. The smell was getting stronger every second.
When he walked into the kitchen he ran into Marie at the stove. Nico was startled. “Oh, I thought…”
“What’s wrong, Nico?” It sounded a little surprised, but still perfectly friendly.
“The milk smelled so strong.”
Then the doorbell rang and Marie went to answer the door. Nico stayed behind in the kitchen. The burned milk had boiled away into a dark brown crust on the black stovetop.
The fishmonger stood outside with a big woven basket full of his fresh catch on the stoop in front of him. A rare opportunity! She always let him into the kitchen, where he cleaned the fish. Marie couldn’t send him away, he would never come back again. And they all liked to eat fish. But now Nico was in the kitchen.