Found and Lost Read online

Are you interested in contacting him, or shall I?

  Beste,

  Gerlof

  HI ALISON,

  My mother has now been taken to a nursing home near Hoorn. What will come out of this, I don’t know. We can only wait. The chocolates have arrived at my mother’s. Please send all letters to our address and not to her address anymore.

  Regards from snowy Hoorn.

  Paul

  According to the BBC, blizzards are covering western Europe with snow

  HI ALISON,

  No change in Miep’s condition. One day better than others. Not sure that she holds out. I would suggest if a visit is possible that we pick you up in Hoorn and drive to the nursing home. You could also stay at us.

  Paul

  On 9th Avenue, six big rucksacked blonde women, three abreast, two rows, stride uptown. Hear the pebble-chewing, throat-clearing sound of their conversation; shadow the group, supping on the Dutch language, until they reach Holy Apostle Church, where they stop and stare at the long line of people waiting in the snow for the soup kitchen to open

  HI ALISON,

  I have spoken to the doctor and the one thing that is keeping her alive is her heart. We wait and see.

  Paul

  A handful of Griliazas candy left in a brown and beige striped bag on my doorknob with the address of Vilnius on it

  DEAR ALISON,

  I decided to sell my house and did so in three hours two weeks ago, and now I’m moving to a loft, pictured.

  People are still going about their piddling lives here in New Orleans, but I thought I better cash out of my big investment here in case even worse things happen.

  I feel like I live in such a vulnerable place!

  I had a good last walk with my dog Sherman by the creek. As we walked along the sand I told her some slapping good stories about her life, the one about how she got her scar when she had the venomous snake hanging from her yapper and was bit by the cottonmouth; the time she chased the skunk under my bed and of course it sprayed her right under the floorboards and I had to quickly evacuate in the middle of the night and sleep in the hay field.

  Much love to you from your redneck friend,

  Tess

  DEAR ALISON,

  – Please keep me apprised of Miep’s condition – How well I remember the long-ago days of your first visits to Amsterdam, your condition of high anxiety, your astonishment as each shard of information was wrestled from impending oblivion – Never fear – Like me, she’s tough.

  Denny

  DEAR TESS,

  My heart goes out to you. It’s a shame Hurricane Katrina scared you into selling that great New Orleans house I remember so well, Sherman’s antics with the lizard he dragged in, included. You’re not alone, cashing out, as I’ve read that many African-Americans down there have too, and not returned, not that most had any actual cash. Even our much-admired Tennessee Williams didn’t see fulfilled his wish to die in New Orleans in the famous big brass bed he associated with so much passion.

  As you and I can no longer escape into bourbon or gin like Blanche DuBois, let’s keep our bathtubs full of hot, sudsy water for soaking our frazzled nerves.

  Until we meet again.

  Alison

  Stolen Baccarat Vega ruby martini glass with a zigzag stem filled with cold buttermilk. So little buttermilk

  DEAR DENNY,

  I well remember the early days too, once we became friends and would lunch at the Cuban-Chinese restaurant on Broadway, after which you walked down the street so quickly even I couldn’t keep up with you. You were editing, also condensing, for a magazine syndicate at the time, fretting over whether or not to correct ‘who’ with ‘whom’. I was traveling from Los Angeles to Amsterdam, hideous, endless KLM flight. On each arrival in Amsterdam I would approach the Gieses’ building from tram #2, pass the bakery, cross the street toward the bicycle shop. I recall how, before I was even halfway across the street, the front door of their building would fly open and I would walk through it and climb the steep, narrow, curving stairway that smelled of damp and old cigars. One flight up, their landing. They would be standing in their doorway, smiling, immaculately dressed as always, pleased (as I was) that, once again, Jan had pulled the metal bar that released the front door before I rang the bell, since he had been watching for me from the window.

  For the past ten years, to please her son Paul, who lives with his family near the small harbor city of Hoorn on the IJsselmeer about 40 km north of Amsterdam, and to save him the stress of having to drive an hour to see her, Miep has lived in an apartment in Hoorn as well. Did I ever tell you the story of her move? I hope not, and if I have then you’re going to hear it again.

  At age ninety, a widow, after almost sixty years at the same Amsterdam address, her son Paul drove to Woestduinstraat to fetch her. He escorted her down the narrow stairs; her handbag hung over her arm. She shook hands with the man who owned the bicycle shop on the ground floor, who had been her neighbor for over half a century, crossed the street to say goodbye to the Greek greengrocer, got into Paul’s car, and was driven to Paul’s house in Hoorn, and left there. Then Paul drove back to Amsterdam where he met the movers, who packed up her apartment and transported the contents to the empty one in Hoorn.

  Once the moving truck was unloaded and the movers were gone, Paul’s wife Lucie and several of her friends arrived. These women worked through the night, unpacking and preparing things for Miep who was asleep at Paul’s. In the morning, before coffee, Paul drove his mother to the new building a short distance away. After entering the building at the ground floor, he guided her to door number eight and handed her a key. She opened the door, and – first off – smelled fresh coffee. After walking along a hallway she stepped into the living area where she saw that all her furnishings had been placed just as they had been at Woestduinstrat – pictures hung in their right places, exactly as before. There was nothing estranging about the new place, except that the no. 2 tram no longer rumbled by. Lucie announced: ‘Coffee!’ Miep’s favorite china cup was filled and placed on the coffee table beside her favorite chair; a plate with a slice of lemon cake was set down beside it. They all sat and drank coffee together in an almost familiar place.

  Since then, each time I visit her in Hoorn, I get off the bus from Amsterdam Central Station at the Groot Beer (Great Bear) shopping center, pass the Chinese restaurant, the library, the herring stand, the doctor’s office. I drag myself and my luggage through the parking lot of Miep’s building, the final steps to the front entrance, where I ring bell number eight, then wait anxiously. My nerves jump at this point. How will she be? Finally, after what seems like a long while, I’m buzzed in. The first door on the left is hers. Through a round porthole window in the door I can see her slowly approaching to let me in, and I can breathe again. Though, yes, it’s true, her walking has slowed considerably these last years, never once, when making that five meter walk to the door to greet me, has she used the cane or zimmer foisted on her by her doctor. Our hug lasts a long, long time – I savor her softness, her warmth, and am always surprised how small she is. Then, and I can hear it now, the distinctive, slightly wavering voice telling, not asking: ‘Now we have coffee!’

  Since she was ninety, I’ve anguished at every parting, wondering if this will be the final one, and have always looked back again and again, etching her face into my mind as she waves me off, continuing to wave even after I am out of sight. Her son says her heart and willpower are still strong. As Miep herself would say: ‘Hope for the best’. And this also goes for your own ongoing battle with cancer as well as the new newsletter that’s hired you.

  Try to stay strong,

  Alison

  Dreamt two Romanian women carrying soft suitcases were brought to my door by a maintenance man. Could they wait there? Yes. When they were seated on my couch I couldn’t ask why they had come or how long they would stay. They spoke no English, and I know no Romanian. Have let everyone down by growing older

  DEAR TIN
NEKA,

  Had been waiting for further news on Miep’s condition since she broke her neck. Sorry I had to cancel our week at your vineyard. While waiting for news in New York, the temperature sank so low that iguanas were dropping from trees in Florida. Although Miep’s heart remains strong, yesterday I was told she has stopped eating and speaking, so I booked the first flight I could. Am on it now, and just now it was rerouted to Frankfurt because of a blizzard. Frankfurt: the place of Anne Frank’s birth. Rather than landing there, though, we have just been diverted to Dusseldorf.

  Now we sit in the plane in Dusseldorf while they de-ice and again de-ice its wings.

  Finally we’ve taken off, though from what I can see, there is zero visibility. This reminds me of the time Simon & Schuster (who wanted to have a look at us to see what kind of promotion to do for the book) flew Miep, Jan, and me to New York from Los Angeles where they had been visiting me. On the airplane, Miep and Jan insisted I sit between them, me who at the time had a terror of flying. Approaching the east coast, we flew into a wild blizzard, experienced awful turbulence. My palms sweated and I gripped the armrests for dear life while the plane bumped through dense white, until they diverted us to Washington, DC. Through the turbulence, while I quaked inside and intoned my own version of a begging prayer, Miep and Jan sat quietly, unchanged, never batting an eyelid.

  Suddenly: we are on the ground at Frankfurt airport. Stranded …

  Later: It seems I’ll be unable to make the final short flight to Amsterdam. I’m snowed in with thousands of others.

  It’s a great pity Miep was too old to visit me in New York after I moved back there in 2001, the way she did those times in the nineties when I lived in Santa Monica: those visits gave us a chance to take walks along the Pacific, away from the Old World where the Frank family’s tragedy and World War II still cast a shadow on her (that she was unable to protect and care for all her friends until war’s end).

  Though you don’t like traveling, I hope you’ll make an exception for California and that we’ll visit there sometime – I’ll drive you everywhere. When Miep would visit, my cockatiels so enjoyed her attention, sat on her shoes, sat on the end of her fork while she ate cake. Now, it’s a shame she won’t see the Empire State building from my living-room window in New York (as you have), sitting at my glass table spreading softened butter on bread – the way it’s lit up nightly in brash colors.

  Thinking of how much bread Miep and I have buttered over the years, I remembered the way she admonished me on her first visit to my home on seeing that the butter had been refrigerated, explaining that butter is not meant for refrigeration, so that it remains soft and ever-spreadable, as hers always is in the ceramic cream-colored butter bowl on her kitchen counter. Even my Russian friend Lily – now that I think of it – who cared not one whit for kitchen hygiene, kept her butter in her rusty, antique refrigerator. I recall an argument I had with Lily over whether watermelon left out of the fridge would stay colder than watermelon put inside it. Her view was the former. (I have no idea anymore what her reasoning was but, as in most things, I bent to her will and thenceforth never refrigerated watermelon on Hydra.) And likewise, after Miep’s admonition, I never refrigerated butter during her visits. Forgive me for rambling.

  Soft kisses,

  Alison

  DEAR ALISON,

  Our cat that we care for every year when we come to Hydra has had kittens. One had his foot caught in a door. The vet wanted to cut off his toes but Agatha said Nicht and took over. The cat lived but is not well enough to survive on the island so we will take him to Düsseldorf when we go home. He is now named Nico.

  Alles Gute,

  Boris & Agatha

  DEAR TINNEKA,

  Frankfurt Airport has turned into a zoo. Can’t tell yet if dawn has come. Someone has spilled nuts and raisins that have gotten trampled by so many shoes. Irritable crowds mill, unable to reschedule flights. Lufthansa has begun to hand out mineral water and soft drinks. No flights have landed or taken off in many hours. I’m wound up like a spring, and it is snowing again. Squeeze my hand, please …

  DEAR TINNEKA,

  For three hours I stood in a line that inched forward, in order to get rebooked. Behind me was a man who resembled a young Picasso. No flights landed or took off all morning. Through the windows I could see snow and more snow. I could feel the grip of your hand holding mine.

  In the inside pocket of my winter coat I came across a torn piece of paper tablecloth from one of my last Hydra dinners with Lily. On it, she had written out a love poem that she said might one day be ‘helpful’ to me. She refused to speak German though she knew the language, and what she jotted down for me was a translation by Michael Hamburger that she much admired. She explained to me that it echoed an autumn poem by Rilke, and that it was all the more precious for being one of Paul Celan’s very rare love poems. Here are some lines:

  My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:

  we look at each other,

  we exchange dark words,

  we love each other like poppy and recollection,

  we sleep like wine in the conches,

  like the sea in the moon’s blood ray.

  Even Celan, with his terrible freight of experience – experience of a sort that is much in my mind as I travel to see Miep – was able make an exhortation to love and to celebration:

  We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from

  the street: it is time they knew!

  It is time the stone made an effort to flower,

  time unrest had a beating heart.

  It is time it were time.

  DEAREST TINNEKA,

  Am at an almost deserted hotel in Amsterdam, the Mercure. I took the #16 tram to the Prinsengracht stop near to where you once lived, near to Anne Frank’s hiding place. This was as close as I could come to Hoorn. From the tram I pulled my suitcase through snowy, deserted streets, across bridges over frozen canals to get down an alley/lane to the hotel. Although I spent whole winters in Amsterdam while working on the book, and have been visiting ever since, I have never seen weather like this. Maybe one day we’ll be in your home country together during snowy days, and cozy, sexy, rather than anxious, ungrounded, and you will show me the world of your early life. I continue clasping your large hand.

  Alison

  Piccolos in the pipes

  DARLING TINNEKA,

  Left the hotel in the dark, dragged my suitcase through still more snow to Central Station. Fortunately, the train to Hoorn is operating again and even the flower stall is functioning so I could pick up tulips. Paul’s black Volvo station wagon was outside the station, beside a hill of plowed snow. My nerves are beginning to fail. Paul says that yes, Miep had made it through the night but her condition is unchanged. Then he warned that I should be prepared: ‘She looks frightful.’

  ‘I can take anything,’ I reassured him, ‘I will be very glad to see her, no matter how she looks.’

  Parts of the highway are not yet plowed. We drove slowly, leaving signs of urban life behind. Exiting the highway we drove on curving country lanes, past fields, farms, even a few cows who, like me, were gazing at the all-encompassing whiteness. An other-worldly landscape until we reached the nursing home that is close to the tiny village of Abbekerk.

  There’s nothing medical about the building; it could be a country inn. Beyond the entrance and common rooms are a series of private suites linked by a corridor. Miep’s room is at the end of the corridor. Miep was lying flat out, wrapped in blankets up to her shoulders, hands at her sides and tucked under the blankets. An immobilizing apparatus surrounds her head, two strong metal poles in front that go down along her chest and two at back, ending below her shoulder blades, all four actually embedded in her skull. The whole is held together by a metal ring at the top of her head that steadies the poles. Within the apparatus/brace is Miep’s face, eyes closed, mouth ajar.

  She is deeply asleep, showing cheekbones rather than soft cheeks.
There is something almost Slavic about this face that was never there before. I wonder if, for the first time, I am seeing a link to her impoverished Viennese roots (she was originally Hermine Santroschitz); as a starving eleven-year-old she was put on a train with other children and sent far, far away to Holland where she was fed and cared for by a kind Dutch worker’s family, never to rejoin her original family. What was left behind got blotted out by the milk-fed Dutchness she acquired so proudly.

  The light in her room is muted. Her bed is beside a large picture window that frames a rural snow-covered field as far as the eye can see, a farmhouse, a conical church steeple. I put my lips against her warm forehead, kiss her, whisper my greeting into her ear, thinking, Maybe, just maybe, she can hear me. I stand at her side, as close as I can, and reach under the covers, find her hand, enclose it in mine. It is so soft, so warm, living, more the familiar Miep than the sleeping, ageless face encased in what looks like either a halo or a crown of thorns.

  I’m lying now in bed, upstairs at Paul and Lucie’s house, my suitcase open on the floor, and the room is spinning. I didn’t want to leave Miep alone in that place and begged Paul to let me spend the night with her. I told him I could easily curl up with a blanket on the floor. His answer: ‘It’s not necessary.’ I wish I had insisted. Why didn’t I insist? Lily would not have taken No for an answer. It’s dark outside. Fat snowflakes are gathering on the window pane. I’m too tired to sleep but fit myself against your imagined body.

  Alison

  DARLING TINNEKA,

  At eight I went down for a breakfast of bread, butter, cheese, salami, a boiled egg. I drank tea and cold milk: the usual. Around the large rectangular table: Paul, Lucie, their children, and the fiancée of the eldest son. As we were finishing, Lucie diced a stack of bread slices on top of a cutting board, brown and white bread. Followed by me and the two large house cats, she carried the cutting board out into the garden that is beside the Ijsselmeer, and waded into calf-deep snow past small trees and covered flowerbeds. As the cats and I watched from the doorway, Lucie flung the bread scraps into the air and, amazingly, birds swooped out of nowhere to catch them. These were gulls, small birds, waterfowl that had bred on the Russian tundra in summer and taken their traditional path to winter in the Netherlands. Lucie explained that the birds were very hungry as snow has obscured their food for many days.