15/2/24 Story of Jews who survived the holocaust and returned to the Netherlands.
Set in the Dutch countryside in 1961, it’s focused on a woman, Isabel, living in her late mother’s large home. Isabel is set in her ways, and her routines are disrupted when her brother Louis insists that his girlfriend, Eva, stay with Isabel while he works overseas for the summer.
Eva is a typist at Van Dongen - an aunt passed on a sum of money to her and so she is quite independent.(so she says) Louis has a string of different girlfriends but they don't last long. He will get bored of you and I'll never hear of you again. Louis had digs in the city paid for by his company but was often abroad. Eva helped Louis decorate his room.
Louis only came to the house twice a year once at Easter and once to visit mothers grave at Swolle cemetery. Eva seemed like the type who had lots of friends.
Isabel went to church on Sundays. On Thursdays when Johan was in town she went to the Van der Bergs to see him so that he would not come to her house.
Uncle Karol had promised the house to Louis if he ever wants it, unspoken was that he must be married and have a family, though he never did seem to want a family or house. Uncle Karol had found the house in winter of 1944 during the famine. At first only the children could leave Amsterdam. The house is bigger than the Amsterdam one and they have food. Isabel was 21 when her mother died. Her father fell down the steps and died a week later.
At school she was called shit breath Isa by popular Vera and the whole class followed and called her that because of the pickles she ate.. Bombs were falling over Amsterdam.
A women and a young girl came knocking on the door " She wanted our stuff" Isa was 15 when they first heard about the camps. They complained at that "the school treated them worse and maybe should gas us" When the war ended they never returned to Amsterdam but stayed in Uncle Karol's house. This was a house of fathers dying, mother dying, pets dying. Finding bullet holes and finding names on the bark of the tree who were not there.
For the mother funeral Hendrik and he male partner stayed in a bed and breakfast. Uncle Karol told her not to become a burden to her brothers.
Isa had a friend Silke who wanted to know about her brother Louis and then talked about every boy in the class. Isa asked her "are boys the only thing you can talk about." Isabel bit her and after that all the boys barked at her. Neelke was Silke sister and Isa gave her job as maid with great satisfaction.
Louis had said that Eva could stay in mothers room and she wouldn't move out. Bijenkorf Catalog of a department store.
When Isabel had her first period she soiled her clothes and sheets her mother never explained what this was about.
Eva asked Isabel "Is there anything you want to know about me? No said Isabel. Does nothing bring you joy said Eva? Why are you determined to dislike me
The dinner service patterned with leaping hares, silver cutlery, blue baking dishes, a writing desk with a lock and key – all of these things play a role. "Oh your so protective. Eva a house is a precious thing."
Isabel did not like Eva treating Needke as a friend rather than a servant and drinking wine together. Isabel had strong ideas of beauty that she did not find in herself.
If Johan touched Isa it sent shivers up her spine. Eva " is it such a strange thought that you should be liked "
Hendrik took piano lessons Isa did not even though she tried several times but gave up. The piano teacher didn't seem too close to his wife. One day after his piano lesson Hendrik went after the teacher and Isa followed and found Hendrik and the teacher entangled. When Hendrik arrived for dinner he had a mark on his neck and that was the end of the piano lessons. Hendrik told Isa he lied he doesn't love me, I wanted Edwin. Like Louis before him Hendrik was suddenly gone and Uncle Karel found Hendrik a small apartment in Scheveningen. A coastal resort town.
When mother got sick Louis came for a day Hendrik came with a man. Isabel did not want the man to stay in the house and this cooled her relationship with her brother and he never came the next Christmas.
The only stranger who came into the house were the maids. A few years later Hendrik and Sabastian came to the house for a holiday. After the holiday Hendrik told her that he and Sabastian are settling in Paris and she is welcome to visit, but she said she can't just leave the house. "Will you ever tell me anything Isa" said Hendrik.
Eva gets Isa after some drinks to dance and then arouses her sexually and Isa thinks she has a fever as she has not had such an experience. Hendrik tells Isa that Eva is good for her as she has loosened her up.
The 4 of them get caught in a rainstorm and Eva askes Sebastian about his childhood. He was born in Algiers and came to Paris aged 4 and his mother raised him alone. But his family was nowhere.
In the draw was an EDH and her mother name was Elizabeth she never knew what the DH were for and never asked.
You've done this before with other women asked Isa? Eva has night terrors and Isa would stop her from hurting herself and Isa. Isa wants Eva to be her partner. Eva said I will have to go with Louis he is better than nothing. Eva was prepared to marry Louis for his money.
Louis phones and asked Isabel to get Eva out of the house as he is has met Mary and is mad about her. Isabel kicks Eva out. When Louis and Mary arrive Isabel is extremely ill. Mary speaks English and French but not Dutch. However they wont live in the house as it is far away from everything.
Eva's diary is left behind Eva de Haas (hare) she reads the notes in it.
Malcha told me she knew a woman who came back from the camps and went to the women with whom they had left their things to be told that it had all been sold. Eva was told to always wear long sleeves. One family got their home back but had to pay back taxes and so sold the house in 1947, You have to sell everything and you have been tricked into poverty. One girl got the family who now lived in her family home to hire her. and as a maid took the things piece by piece.
Eva had heard about the family Den Brave now in her home that only the daughter lived there. She found Louis and managed to form a relationship with him. I think I could make him marry me. Saw a woman in the market with a number on her arm that was 2 numbers off Mum's number. After the war the Red Cross came for the French and Swiss but nobody came for the Dutch so they went with the Swiss to Switzerland, where they were helped recover after a few years they came back home but the Swiss government wanted payment from the Dutch government who asked the survivors to pay up. They were sent to a big barn in Eindhoven for left over Jews.
When her mom arrived back from the camps in Amsterdam Centraal in 1945 she was told she was lucky as the whole of the Netherland had suffered great hunger.
Louis told Eva that his mothers favorite animal was the Hare. Eva and her mother hid at families as long as they had money. She hid at a farm where the old women knew she was stealing food but pretended not to see her. Eva kept stealing things and sending them to Malcha. Eva says that for years Isabel had treated her mother things like treasure and takes care of them even the plate shard. When Eva was 16 she and her mother knocked on the door and were not admitted to the house. Eva had been born in this room and had carved the EDH.
The tailor shop that Isabel mother did not want her to look at where she returned a skirt that had been repaired insisting that That Jew had soiled it .
Isabel requested a meeting with Uncle Karel and asked him about their house during the war. He guaranteed her that he had not come on the house in a dishonest way. He only took out 2 biscuits? He said that every day people cannot pay the mortgage and the taxes. The house was empty. Every house has a history. The bank took back Parate execution' a standard procedure. Isabel said" I want this house to be mine and to grow old there."
Isabel found the Menorah in the wine cellar. Before the war a woman had given aunt Rian an oven dish and asked for it back. Rian refused to even though there were 5 oven dishes in the kitchen.
People in the Netherland were living on rations and starving and not concerned what was happening to others. Hendrik and Sabastian were going to live in Paris. She told Hendrik he was lucky to have Sabastian. Hendrik reminded Isabel that when she had night terrors and he used to comfort her.
Needke had a boyfriend Bas van der Laan. Needke stops coming and married Bas in the city hall on a drab Monday.
When Johan comes she wont let him in, he tells her that he is her last chance to marry but sends him away.
Louis told her she should make a effort to find a man and no man wants to move into his wife's home. "I will never marry."" Hendrik will never marry" Louis agrees she can use the house while she is alive. He and Mary will be living in a city.
She traces Eva in a hovel and brings her to share the have as partners. Eva tells us her father was the school principle and died in the camps and didn't pay the mortgage. The vitrine is empty as all the plates have been wrapped up as Isabel doesn't feel it right eating from someone else's plates. She tells Eva this is your house and you must live in it with me.
The book ends with her looking at the local synagogue with the quotation "for my house will be called house of devotion for all" Isiah 56.7
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