She laughs, touches my arm. “I’m not going to tell you how fantastic you were tonight. You’re probably sick of hearing it.”
“Do you ever get sick of hearing it?”
She grins. “No.” She looks away. “I know what I said earlier today, about after the show, but all the rules seem to be getting broken today. . . .” She trails off. “So really, can three weeks make much of a difference?”
Marina is sexy and gorgeous and smart. And she’s also wrong. Three weeks can make all the difference. I know that because one day can make all the difference.
“Yes,” I tell Marina. “They can.”
“Oh,” she says, sounding surprised, a little hurt. Then: “Are you with someone else?”
Tonight on that stage, it felt like I was. But that was a ghost. Shakespeare’s full of them. “No,” I tell her.
“Oh, I just saw you, with that woman. After the show. I wasn’t sure.”
Kate. The need to see her feels urgent. Because what I want is so clear to me now.
I excuse myself from Marina and poke through the flat, but there’s no sign of Kate. I go downstairs to see if the door is still propped open. It is. I bump into Mrs. Van der Meer again, out walking her dog. “Sorry about all the noise,” I tell her.
“It’s okay,” she says. She looks upstairs. “We used to have some wild parties here.”
“You lived here back when it was a squat?” I ask, trying to reconcile the middle-aged vrouw with the young anarchists I’ve seen in pictures.
“Oh, yes. I knew your father.”
“What was he like then?” I don’t know why I’m asking that. Bram was never the hard one to crack.
But Mrs. Van der Meer’s answer surprises me. “He was a bit of a melancholy young man,” she says. And then her eyes flicker up to the flat, like she’s seeing him there. “Until that mother of yours showed up.”
Her dog yanks on the leash and she sets off, leaving me to ponder how much I know, and don’t know, about my parents.
Fifty
The phone is ringing. And I’m sleeping.
I fumble for it. It’s next to my pillow.
“Hello,” I mumble.
“Willem!” Yael says in a breathless gulp. “Did I wake you?”
“Ma?” I ask. I wait to feel the usual panic but none comes. Instead, there’s something else, a residue of something good. I rub my eyes and it’s still there, floating like a mist: a dream I was having.
“I talked to Mukesh. And he worked his magic. He can get you out Monday but we have to book now. We’ll do an open-ended ticket this time. Come for a year. Then decide what to do.”
My head is hazy with lack of sleep. The party went until four. I fell asleep around five. The sun was already up. Slowly, yesterday’s conversation with my mother comes back to me. The offer she made. How much I wanted it. Or thought I did. Some things you don’t know you want until they’re gone. Other things you think want, but don’t understand you already have them.
“Ma,” I say. “I’m not coming back to India.”
“You’re not?” There’s curiosity in her voice, and disappointment, too.
“I don’t belong there.”
“You belong where I belong.”
It’s a relief, after all this time, to hear her say so. But I don’t think it’s true. I’m grateful that she has made a new home for herself in India, but it’s not where I’m meant to be.
Go big and go home.
“I’m going to act, Ma,” I say. And I feel it. The idea, the plan, fully formed since last night, maybe since much longer. The urgency to see Kate, who never did show up at the party, courses through me. This is one chance I’m not going to let slip through my fingers. This is something I need. “I’m going to act,” I repeat. “Because I’m an actor.”
Yael laughs. “Of course you are. It’s in your blood. Just like Olga.”
The name is instantly familiar. “Olga Szabo, you mean?”
There’s a pause. I can feel her surprise crackle through the line. “Saba told you about her?”
“No. I found the pictures. In the attic. I meant to ask you about them but I didn’t, because I’ve been busy . . .” I trail off. “And because we never really talked about these things.”
“No. We never did, did we?”
“Who was she? Saba’s girlfriend?”
“She was his sister,” she replies. And I should be surprised, but I’m not. Not at all. It’s like the pieces of a puzzle slotting together.
“She would have been your great aunt,” Yael continues. “He always said she was an incredible actress. She was meant to go to Hollywood. But then the war came and she didn’t survive.”
She didn’t survive. Only Saba did.
“Was Szabo her stage name?” I ask.
“No. Szabo was Saba’s surname before he emigrated to Israel and Hebreified it. Lots of Europeans did that.”
To distance himself, I think. I understand that. Though he couldn’t really distance himself. All those silent films he took me to. The ghosts he held at bay, and held close.
Olga Szabo, my great aunt. Sister to my grandfather, Oskar Szabo, who became Oskar Shiloh, father of Yael Shiloh, wife of Bram de Ruiter, brother of Daniel de Ruiter, soon to be father of Abraão de Ruiter.
And just like that, my family grows again.
Fifty-one
When I emerge from my bedroom, Broodje and Henk are just waking up and are surveying the wreckage like army generals who have lost a major ground battle.
Broodje turns to me, his face twisted in apology. “I’m sorry. I can clean it all later. But we promised we’d meet W at ten to help him move. And we’re already late.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Henk says.
Broodje picks up a beer bottle, two-thirds full of cigarette butts. “You can be sick later,” he says. “We made a promise to W.” Broodje looks at me. “And to Willy. I’ll clean the flat later. And Henk’s vomit, which he’s going to keep corked for now.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’ll clean it all. I’ll fix everything!”
“You don’t have to be so cheerful about it,” Henk says, wincing and touching his temples.
I grab the keys from the counter. “Sorry,” I say, not sorry at all. I head to the door.
“Where are you going?” Broodje.
“To take the wheel!”
• • •
I’m unlocking my bike downstairs when my phone rings. It’s her. Kate.
“I’ve been calling you for the last hour,” I say. “I’m coming to your hotel.”
“My hotel, huh?” she says. I can hear the smile in her voice.
“I was worried you’d leave. And I have a proposition for you.”
“Well, propositions are best proposed in person. But sit tight because I’m actually on my way to you. That’s why I’m calling. Are you home?”
I think of the flat, Broodje and Henk in their boxers, the unbelievable mess. The sun is out, really out, for the first time in days. I suggest we meet at the Sarphatipark instead. “Across the street. Where we were yesterday,” I remind her.
“Proposition downgraded from a hotel to a park, Willem?” she teases. “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
I go straight to the park and wait, sitting down on one of the benches near the sandpit. A little boy and girl are discussing their plans for a fort.
“Can it have one hundred towers?” the little boy asks. The girl says, “I think twenty is better.” Then the boy asks, “Can we live there forever?” The girl considers the sky a moment and says, “Until it rains.”