Bart van Es - The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found

Shakespeares Comedies

Shakespeare in Company

A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies

Spensers Forms of History

Without families you dont get stories.

The woman who tells me this stands making coffee in her apartment in Amsterdam. Her name is Hesseline, Lien for short. She is over eighty and there is still a simple beauty about her: a clear complexion without noticeable makeup; a little silver watch but no other jewelry; and shiny, unpainted nails. She is brisk in manner but also somehow bohemian, dressed in a long dark gray cardigan with a flowing claret paisley scarf. Before today I have no memory of ever having met her. All the same, I know that this woman grew up with my father, who was born in the Netherlands immediately after the war. She was once part of my family, but this is no longer the case. A letter was sent and a connection was broken. Even now, nearly thirty years later, it still hurts Lien to speak of these things.

From her white open-plan kitchen we move to the seating area, which is full of winter sunlight, filtered partly through stained glass artworks that are fitted against the panes. There are books, museum catalogs, and cultural supplements spread beneath a low glass coffee table. The furniture is modern, as are the pictures on the walls.

We speak in Dutch.

You wrote in your e-mail about being interested in the family history and about maybe writing a book, she says. Well, the family thing doesnt really play for me. The Van Esses were important in my life for a long time, but not now. So what kind of writing do you do?

Her tone is friendly but also businesslike. I tell her a little about my work as a professor of English Literature at Oxford Universitywriting scholarly books and articles on Shakespeare and Renaissance poetrybut she knows most of this already from the Internet.

So what is your motivation? she asks.

My motivation? Im not sure. I think hers could be a complex and interesting story. Recording these things is important, especially now, given the state of the world, with extremism again on the rise. Theres an untold story here that I dont want to lose.

On this bright December morning we talk of world affairs, of Israel, of Dutch politics, and about the situation in Britain, where David Camerons coalition government is nearing the end of its five-year term. We move quickly from subject to subject, almost as in an interview for a job.

After perhaps an hour she pushes away her empty cup and speaks definitively:

Yes, I have faith in this. Shall we sit at the table? Do you have a notebook and pen?

I had not wanted to arrive like a reporter, so I need to ask her for paper and something to write with, but we are soon seated at the dining table, which is made of pale laminate wood. I can ask anything I want about what she remembers: what people said and did; what she wore and what she ate; the houses she lived in; and what she dreamed.

We sit in the bright, warm modernity of the apartment and our first meeting stretches on for hours. The documentsphotographs, letters, various objectsappear only gradually as she thinks of them, but by midafternoon, with the light outside already fading, the table is covered in mementos. These include a childrens novel with a bright yellow cover featuring a steamboat, and a ceramic tile with a cartoon on it of a drowning man. There is also a photo album of red imitation leather that has a well-worn spine. On the first page of the album there is a picture of a handsome couple with the words Mamma and Pappa written beneath in blue pen.

The woman on the left in the photograph is Liens mother, whose name is Catharine de Jong-Spiero. She is perched on the edge of a rattan chair, the curved back of which envelops her. The sun is full in her face and she is smiling a little shyly. Her husband, Charles, Liens father, sits on the ground in front of her in his shirtsleeves, his large hands resting comfortably on his knees. He leans back against his wife, who has one of her hands on his shoulder, and he looks up with a confident, ironical gaze. There is an air of nonchalance about him, laughing at the idea of a posed photograph in a way that his wife, with her fixed smile, finds harder to do.

The mans confidence is also there in a few more photographs pasted on the first page of the album. One shows him in the back of a motorcar, surrounded by a group of dapper young men. In secret he holds his fingers, like bunny ears, behind the head of the friend who poses in front of him with a pair of gloves and a cane.

In another he stands, hat in hand, in front of a large black doorway, his leg with its polished shoe thrust to the fore. There are about a dozen of these early pictures. The most crumpled of themtorn, folded, and restuck with yellowing glueis of a beach party of twenty-three young men and women in bathing suits, smiling and embracing. A woman in white at the center holds up what looks like a volleyball. Mamma, Pappa, Auntie Ro, Auntie Riek, and Uncle Manie reads the handwritten text beneath.