The Hiding Place: Chapters 3–4

And so she chattered easily and knowledgeably about things of interest to students—this new theory of relativity by a man called Einstein, and whether Admiral Peary would really reach the North Pole.

Tante Jans, who loved medical paraphernalia of every kind, took a tremendous fancy to the new doctor and from then on consulted him as often as her finances would permit.

The horse-drawn trolley on the Barteljorisstraat had recently been replaced with a big new electric one. But it still squealed to a stop, spitting sparks from rails and wire, when Tante Jans stood imperiously before the Beje.

It was that spring that Willem came home for his final holiday before ordination. He had graduated from the university two years before and was now in his last months of theological school.

Father, his jeweler’s glass in his eye, was bent over the shoulder of the newest apprentice, deftly selecting an infinitesimal part from the array before them on the workbench.

As the woman left I burst through the door with the telltale beaker.
“Betsie!” I cried. “Oh Betsie, it’s black! How are we going to tell her? What are we going to do?”

We imagined that we had a huge old manse like this one to decorate, and rejoiced to discover that we had the same ideas about furniture, flowers, even the same favorite colors.

She stood smiling at me. I took in the hat with its sweeping feather, the ermine collar, the white-gloved hand resting on his arm.

It was that the solemn mother-daughter talk promised over the years for this night, the entire sex education which our taciturn society provided, was now not possible.

“Oh Corrie,” she said, her voice suddenly small and contrite, “I know it’s horrid and selfish of me when you’ve had to be in the shop day after day. And I will take better care of myself so you won’t have to do it much longer; but, oh, it’s been so glorious being here all day, pretending I was in charge, you know, planning what I’d do. . . .”

The soup kettle and the coffee pot on the back of the stove, which I never seemed to find time for, were simmering again the first week Betsie took over, and soon a stream of postmen and police, derelict old men and shivering young errand boys were pausing inside our alley door to stamp their feet and cup their hands around hot mugs, just as they’d done when Mama was in charge.

Long before the sum was raised Father came down with the hepatitis that almost cost his life: during the long stay in the hospital his beard turned snow white.

The ultimate ignominy came the day Father set the astronomical clock by the radio.

This was not only because we never saw him without two large bulldogs on the end of a leash but because, with his wrinkled, jowly face and short bowlegs, he looked exactly like one of his own pets.

From the very first I had been baffled by his brusqueness with the old man.