The Safekeep(57)

Hand healing slowly. Long shift at factory. Basje taught the girls to blow rings. The trick: push your tongue out when you blow. Ha!





March 4, 1960


I’m thinking, What did they keep? What did they sell? I don’t know if it’s worse if they kept everything. Malcha told me she knew a woman who came back from the camps and then went to the family who was safekeeping her things. They told her that they had sold everything. Then one day she walked by their house and looked inside and saw they were eating from her plates, and using her silverware, and the meal had been cooked in her oven dish. I asked Malcha what she did then, and Malcha said the woman did nothing. That she walked on. I said, why didn’t she knock? Why didn’t she say, I see you didn’t sell my things, give them back now. Malcha said they didn’t lie because they were embarrassed. They lied because they were never going to give them back.

A bit of sun today! Such a small square of sun in the yard. Basje and I crowded into the square and had to hold on to each other like men on a sinking ship. She teetered and I screamed and said, No don’t fall don’t leave me! And she laughed so much she snorted and then Jan shouted at us to stop fucking around so we had to go inside. No more sun when I walked back home. Sad. New stove. Good.





March 16, 1960


2:30. Night. Nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares

Soft sheep. A plate of buttered carrots. A big hug where someone holds you tight and long. Music & dancing to music. The smell of someone else’s coffee through a window. Slippers by the door. Dry sheets. Smiles! Smiles! Slow kiss. The bottom of a foot. The bottom of a foot. The bottom of a foot of someone you love. The bottom of a foot of someone you love when they’re lying on the couch and their legs are up over the armrest and they’re not wearing socks and it’s summer and you pass by and you see the naked bottom of their foot and you drag a finger down the middle and they





March 30, 1960


Went out to town with Shula & Basje & Lola. Good time. Small bar, no one was dancing, but we started dancing, and people joined. Sweat so much! Very drunk, not great. Shula stayed here, roads too slippery for biking back. We talked and talked and talked. It was so cold! I put four blankets on her and she was still shaking. She kept saying, You’re so lucky! You have all of this to yourself, you’re so lucky! And I look around and I see a room the size of a box that is a kitchen and a bedroom and a living room and the shower is a curtain and there is a mushroom that is growing from the rotten windowsill. I asked her about coming back. She said she was very young when they came back, that she probably did not remember things correctly, and I thought: Someone has told her to say this, when people asked. Someone told her to always wear long sleeves over her wrists. Anyway she is my age so she must have been around fifteen. You remember your life at fifteen. I didn’t say this. Her cousin once told me that Shula was the youngest kid to come back from the camps, which is probably not true, I don’t know. She was only there at the very end. Her family got their home back after the war but had to pay outstanding taxes so had to sell it in ’47. They all live in an apartment in Slotermeer now, all 6 of them. 2 rooms. I said, Don’t you ever want to go to your old home and go inside and scream and tell these people to get out get out get out? She said, No, we sold it. I said, So what? She said, It’s not ours anymore, we sold it. I said I disagreed with her: if you have to sell something because you’ve been tricked into poverty, then that’s not an honest thing. If you haven’t given it away out of free will, it is still yours, I said. She was too drunk to have this conversation. She started crying very loudly and I stared at the window mushroom until she fell asleep. In the morning we went to Café Goededag for breakfast. I ate three buns! Cheese was good. Mmmm





April 11, 1960


April! April! Does whatever it wants! Snow today. Poor baby flowers, poor baby birds, poor baby toes of mine. Frozen blue on the way to work, brrr! It’s Erev Pesach.





April 15, 1960


Seder with Auntie Malcha. Mostly we got drunk before the end of the plagues. Frogs! Blood! Drink drink drink. She has an old Haggadah from when they were kids and in the back there is a little drawing of a sheep that Mum drew when she was eight years old. Baby Mum, I can hardly imagine it. Sausage little fingers, baby. She was a baby once. It’s hard to think. Soft little baby in a blanket with tiny nails and tiny toes.





May 3, 1960


Danced with a man last night. What was his name? I don’t remember. He put his hands on the small of my back. I thought, touch me! I thought, touch me touch me touch me! And then he tried to kiss me and I thought I would be sick. Could not recall ever wanting to be touched by anyone, anyone ever. I pulled away and he would not let go and I shouted at him and gave him a big fright. How strange can the body be. I do not know it, I never know what it wants. Does anyone know their body truly? I wonder.





May 30, 1960


Busy. Basje’s wedding next week. Short on funds. Not turning on lights, but nearly summer, okay.





June 10, 1960


Wedding! Was lovely. Cried.





July 13, 1960


Went to visit one of Mum’s cousins up north. Took the train and there were so many fields. Saw two hares jumping out of grass. Remembered the time with the hare. Could not stop thinking of the moment Papa realized the animal was out of control. His face—horror. Uncle Shimon ran after the thing like he could catch it and he couldn’t. I started laughing in the train and could not stop. A woman in the compartment got up and left. I really could not stop laughing. I don’t think I was breathing at all. I smoked a cigarette to calm down & it helped. Mum’s cousin Rita was nice/sad. She had written to me & so I knew she was missing her left leg but I still startled when she got up from her chair. She wanted to look through photo albums together. We looked through photo albums together. She asked me if I knew who the people in the pictures were and I said no. Before I left she said that she had seen my father two days before they killed him and that he looked proud even though everyone’s feet were ankle-deep in shit, and that she wanted me to know that, that he looked proud. I don’t know why I need to know that. I don’t like thinking about it.