Together in Another Place (2 page)

‘Are
you sure?’

‘Yes,
Simon, so let that be enough.’ She had heard his eagerness to know that their
separation would not be endured for long.

Simon
watched Harriette walk away, indifferent to how her lovely floral print dress had
become grubby and wrinkled. He drew comfort from seeing her wearing it in these
drab and desolate surroundings. The girl had a wondrous spirit for life and a
happy laugh. She allowed the real person to appear when he had said something
by way of a compliment that amused her. He felt close to Harriette then, when his
words expressed his pride to know her and Harriette had sought him out in the
audience after she had been chosen to help in entertaining the detainees.

Then,
she would dance and sing on a makeshift stage, the wood plundered from a
synagogue in a nearby town. She charmed fellow inmates with a clear voice and
gently cadenced words that took them all, far too briefly, to a different world
and time. At such a moment, Harriette was a wonder to him, a wondrous girl with
long auburn hair who enthralled him.

‘How
can I survive, anywhere…without you?’ he dared to call out before closing the
gap between them. He was disconcerted to have confessed to his worst fear…that
of being separated from her.

‘We
can’t let ourselves go,’ she said gently and touched his arm. Her eyes sought
some acknowledgment from him that it should be so.

‘I
have already…
let go
.’

He
gave an expressive shrug and smiled before clasping her hand to his chest. With
the other he held his cloth cap.

It
had been the first thing Harriette had noticed about him, the jaunty way that Simon
walked and the cap worn so carelessly as if in acceptance of his circumstances and
that others could never, quite, diminish. He was but twenty two, already gifted
as a jeweller, a handy person to have around; he would find his way, somehow.
That was something of the story
 
he had
told her about himself, save that he was alone in the camp. His family had been
taken a few months before the authorities caught up with him. He’d been spared
the punishment cells. All links with his relations had been severed; not even a
postcard, thrown from the deportation trains, had found its way to him.

A
dysfunctional existence in Amsterdam, followed by a stay in the ghetto, had
seen to that.

Now,
Simon had spoken out in ways that were at odds with the mental image she kept
of the young man beside her. He knew of art, and some music, had talked of
books and there were entertaining stories to tell of a happy childhood. So much
of what he held dear she shared with him. Who could have ordained that it be
so, that she should meet him?

‘So
soon?’ she whispered. ‘Is that allowed…letting go? How can you know?’ Her lips
trembled as she thought through what Simon had so readily admitted of his
feelings. ‘We’ve only just met…and…here of all places.’

‘I
did so from the moment I first saw you and heard you sing. And then…I was able
to speak to you…I was allowed to do that. You made me very happy.’

‘I’m
not that important.’ She blushed on hearing his gentle teasing of her.

‘Yes,
you are…to me.’

Harriette
shook her head to disavow what had been said.

‘Please?
Please don’t say anymore? Where…where we are makes…makes those feelings seem so
unreal.’

‘Not
so…that’s not so!’ Simon tried to keep Harriette from releasing his hold even
though he felt her hands shake. ‘Stay? Do that for me…a moment longer?’

She
heard the plea in his voice and felt herself agreeing that they should be
together once more. Closing her eyes, Harriette summoned up the resolve to
continue as normally as circumstances allowed.

‘Walk
me to my hut…where we are, my family? Do that for me, then?’

‘Gladly
done…I’ll do that gladly!’ he laughed out like a child granted a special wish.

Harriette
was charmed. ‘But, Simon? Let go of my hand, please? People will talk…’

‘Let
them! Something normal is happening…’

‘Is
it, ‘
happening
?’

‘For
me it is, yes…yes, certainly!’

Harriette was
unable to offer a reply. It was far too early for her to admit that Simon had
captured her heart. It was enough to have him in her thoughts, a devoted
distraction from all that prevailed around them and that pre-occupied her. She
felt so tired from being caught beyond a known world, a modest home in an
apartment overlooking a tree-lined canal, a place of music and laughter, song
and evocative dance. There, dreamless nights soothed and restored a receptive
mind.

●

‘What
a charming young man,’ Judith told her. ‘I think he’s smitten…quite lost over
you.’

‘I
don’t know, mother,’ Harriette answered somewhat evasively.

She
wondered what would be made of her behaviour when she was in his company and
her family looked on.

‘Don’t
you…
know
?’ Judith held her daughter’s
arm as they strolled along a path that separated the over-crowded barrack
blocks where they had been uncomfortably billeted. ‘Where’s your Pa got to?’

‘He’s
talking, to the orderlies…asking about some work…and, what is to happen to us
all.’

‘We’ll
know that next week, lievert…or in the weeks after.’

‘You
mean before another concert?’

‘Yes…that’s
how it goes here. Are you performing again?’

‘It
seems so, yes...tomorrow evening.’

That
she had been asked to sing meant that she had been spared a journey. The chosen
piece had found favour with recent audiences; she had learnt that the camp’s
commandant had even asked for it especially. It was a German song that wouldn’t
offend his Aryan sensibilities. During the evening, at least, he would be
entertained by people of repute even if they were camp inmates; they weren’t the
marionettes whom the national Chamber of Culture had proclaimed, under the
direction of the occupiers, were more suitable for the world beyond the fence.

‘There
are so many people here…so many gifted people, dear…you among them. You’re only
just beginning and yet they have asked you.’

‘Yes…yes…’
Harriette had been surprised by her mother’s remarks; they had been as one with
her own thoughts.

‘Don’t
be cross…’

‘I’m
not,’ she said to reassure. ‘I was pre-occupied…and I’m concerned…and, I wanted
Betty to be with us.’

Judith
knew her daughter to be a thoughtful young woman.

‘She’s
poorly…but let that be a worry for me and your father. It’s the food…it’s so
bad, and there’s so little of it, that she’s grown weaker since we arrived here.
It is a worry…’

‘I
didn’t know it had gone so far.’ Harriette heard her mother’s deepening
concern. ‘Go back to her?’

‘And
if I do…will you go back to your young man?’

Judith
squeezed her daughter’s arm to prevail upon Harriette that she did so.

‘Simon’s
not that…’

‘Does
he know? I’m not sure that you do…’

‘Is
that really so?’

‘Yes,
dear…it is.’ Judith stopped and chose to kiss Harriette’s hand. ‘Be with him, that
Simon…while there’s time for you both.’

Harriette
met once again the haunted look upon her and nodded in avowal of an unspoken reality
that they knew would soon have to be confronted. The round up in the city had
brought them into a quarter of Amsterdam where they and the multitude of
citizens of a like faith could be recorded. In doing so they had crossed a
threshold, from a known existence to one of uncertainty and fear. It had struck
her as deeply ironic that she, a lover of art and performing in song and dance,
had proclaimed her existence a few weeks before in the renamed Jewish
Schouwburg, a renowned theatre of
Holland
.
Now, it had become an assembly place of quite a different kind.

‘Simon…Simon
likes to watch me dance…to hear me sing. That is where we met, in the Great
Hall…right here, in this camp.’

‘I
know, Harriette,’ mother’s soft laugh in agreement seemed out of place.

‘Did
you?’

‘I
saw you together…’

‘So?’

‘So,
now he walks you home.’

‘It’s
far away from that!’ Harriette answered vehemently.

‘I
know...I know.’ The poignancy of what she said made mother’s voice tremble with
emotion. ‘It’s like a courtship…the beginning of another journey for the pair
of you.’

‘We’ve
only just met, mother…’

‘So,
spend every moment that you can together.’

Harriette
sighed in dismay that they should even be speaking like this about her and
Simon in this God-forsaken place. She could think of it in no other way. Her
family’s prayers and supplications to be spared detention had gone unanswered.

‘I
have you, father…and Betty to think of.’

It
was a dilemma that only now occurred to her; she was being chided for being
away from Simon and the opportunity to be distracted from the seeming futility
of daily existence. She had sensed it to be otherwise, in Simon’s behaviour and
how he conversed with her.

‘We’re
close…we won’t be far from you, lievert.’

’Darling,’
continued to be mother’s consoling name for Harriette. Now she made them turn
and they retraced their steps, walking purposefully. Clearly, mother’s thoughts
were on the claims made upon both her children even in this alien gathering
place, a no-man’s land between two worlds.

●

‘How
much longer am I to endure this?’

Simon
said it to himself as he leant against the wall of the small auditorium and
watched the noisy throng gathering about him. The transport train had departed
earlier in the day and he had been spared that lot. A concert, a
bunter abend
, served as a welcome
distraction for those who could gain entry to the hall and he had made it his
business to be there.

He
remained uncertain how his attraction to Harriette could be resolved; he knew
only that he should live for every moment that the beautiful young woman was in
his presence. He felt unashamedly possessive about her and everything that she
aroused within him.

Such
intensity, an emotional turmoil, had not been experienced before. He chose not
to dwell for too long on the thought that their present circumstances
heightened his senses.

His
only wish was to see her, to watch Harriette dance and, most pleasurably of
all, to hear her sing. Then he would be taken to another place, seduced into
believing that the camp was but a temporary and horrific aberration. Normality might
yet be re-discovered in a labour camp or factory, that servitude would be his
fate; he would be taken to a place where he could put his skills to use. He was
a jeweller, a craftsman, but any manual skills devoted to prosaic endeavours would
serve until a heinous war beyond the fence had been settled. Dismantling parts
recovered from shot down aircraft was deviant behaviour for a man with his
skills.

How
else could he, and countless others, make sense of what was being done to them?
Rumours abounded but they were incredible to believe. The shop, the café and
work inside the camp, and outside under close supervision, confounded the
pessimists. The camp even had its own currency although he knew others profited
from the exchange of money brought in from the
‘real world’
outside.

Hearing
the lovely voice of the young woman he had so recently met would calm any
observer’s tormented soul. He knew the debilitating fear of the unknown and
that a resolute mind could still so easily succumb to. So much happened all
around him to shake one’s defences; the punishment regimes for some, for others
the loss of loved ones and friends on the weekly transports out of the camp,
and for many the loss of life through illness and lack of food.

It
hadn’t been like this for him only a few weeks ago; he had lived beyond the
wire but within the confines of the ghetto. The boundaries to the world were
being drawn in, both physically and emotionally. He was quite alone as he
sought to be reconciled with the changes in his short life.

How
he wished that his own family was close by; how comforting it would have been
to know, like Harriette, that they would be together, one and all, until a
judgement day of some kind and of man’s devising. He believed in only one; that
determined by Jehovah and a faith that he clung to. The man he was, and his
belief, had determined that he be taken to this place; the sight and touch of Harriette
would sustain him during the days of waiting until names were called out again
in a week’s time; then the tumult of uncertainty would begin once more in those
that remained behind.

These
were thoughts that could have overwhelmed him; instead, he felt uplifted as the
small orchestra in the pit before the stage began to play. He found himself
humming along somewhat tunelessly, but he was diverted, and tapped his feet.