Chapter 16 Aleida
Aleida
After two years in this house with Dietrich, Aleida could bear no more. It had only been a few days since Madame Bellamy’s
disappearance, yet each relentlessly plagued her with thoughts of how to escape. Where she would go, Aleida did not know.
Underground, perhaps, so she could continue aiding the resistance. If surviving underground proved impossible, or if Dietrich
hunted for her, she would flee to protect the work. It would continue with or without her, and she would instate someone else
to lead the Muziekschool’s group.
Except she could not abandon Mother, not if she, too, felt trapped. She had to convince Mother to join her—but if she tried,
and if Mother proved loyal to Dietrich, they would not let Aleida leave. Not when she knew too much.
Perhaps a solution regarding what to do would come to her this morning during dance class.
The new ballet mistress, appointed by Dietrich, was supposed to arrive today, so Aleida had already warned her resistance group that their blackout performances might be impossible until they found a way to continue without getting caught.
When she reached the Muziekschool, two Ordnungspolizei stepped from their vehicle and approached.
“Halt, Aleida de Vos.”
The harsh command immediately set her heart thudding, although over these last years of occupation, she had been stopped for
various inconsequential reasons. Surely this would be no different. If these officers already knew who she was, maybe they
had been to one of Mother’s gatherings.
She handed them her papers, ones stating her real name. Unlike most resistance members, she didn’t carry false documents,
not when so many SS men and Orpo officers attended Mother’s events and might recognize her. As she waited, she kept her manner
light, polite.
“May I ask what this is about? If there’s something I—” She fell abruptly silent when one officer caught her chin in a viselike
grip.
He said nothing, yet the look in his eyes indicated another word would make him raise a hand. She drew a shallow breath, flinched
when the second officer caught her arm, yet she didn’t move, couldn’t move.
Not until she felt the round, solid mouth of what could have only been a pistol against her back—enough pressure to make her
gasp and force her to take a stumbling step forward, then another, closer and closer to the waiting car.
When Aleida shifted positions to give the woman beside her more space, it only brought her closer to another woman shoved
into their small cell. She had been imprisoned in the Oranjehotel, as it had been nicknamed by those who had the misfortune
of being sent there, for the past—two days? She didn’t know, nor did it matter.
Time did not exist in this place. Only moments.
In this moment, she was in her cell. In the next, she might be in an interrogation room.
Aleida drew a shallow breath; any deeper and the smell of blood from the woman beside her would be too overwhelming.
More of a girl than a woman, really. Sixteen, maybe. She lay still. One eye was swollen shut; the other stared at nothing.
Aleida had no water to offer her, nor any to quench her own parched throat. Instead she tore a fragment of her skirt, suddenly
grateful she had not had time to change into dance clothes prior to her arrest.
Where to begin? The blood covering the girl was mostly dried black, so Aleida pressed the cloth to a seeping forehead wound.
At her touch, the girl flinched, then her shoulders heaved as a breath passed over her dry, cracked lips.
A pathetic offering, this scrap of fabric for a girl who had been taken from their cell and returned almost unrecognizable.
Not for the first time, Aleida cursed her own helplessness. Her eyes fell to a bloodstain on the girl’s clothing, low on her
right breast. Each of her cellmates had returned in various states betraying the severity of her interrogation, yet all bore
a similar bloodstain. Aleida could not bring herself to consider what might have caused it.
The next few moments were no different from what she had come to expect. Booted footsteps nearing. The creaking cell door.
A guard barking the next woman’s name.
“On your feet, Aleida de Vos.”
Her own name.
Performing onstage was a singular experience binding movement and emotion into one.
Aleida had never found that rush of intensity or focus or feeling anywhere else until now.
Hearing her name, feeling the strong hands dragging her from the cell, staggering down the hall, smelling blood and antiseptic in a cold interrogation room.
Each linked her mind and body not through the exuberant passion of performance but through sharp, gripping terror.
The guards shoved her into a chair across from Polizeiführer Gregor Dietrich.
Of course he knew she was here. The clang of metal accompanied one guard who handcuffed her wrists to the chair. More than
ever, she needed to play her role, to settle this matter, to protect the work. So she scowled as if this were all an inconvenient
misunderstanding.
“Why am I here, Herr Polizeiführer? Could this matter not have been resolved at home?”
No reaction. She glanced at the two guards, who stood at attention behind Dietrich. Three of them, one of her. She could not
do this, could not withstand what those girls in her cell had endured if the same awaited her—except she had to find the strength
somehow. After all these months of resisting in silence, she would not let Dietrich force her to betray anyone.
“Constance told me about your twin,” he began. “You profess no interest in the war effort. Yet you are the sister of a staunch
anti-fascist, and you continued your dance training under a Jew’s guidance.”
“My mother never forbade it. I’ve wanted to dance ever since I was a girl, so why should the war change anything?”
“After you learned of my intention to replace her at the Muziekschool, my men found her and her husband gone and the house
in disarray.”
That would have been the morning after Aleida warned them to escape. It would have looked as if someone had pillaged the home
while attacking, kidnapping, even murdering the Jewish couple who lived there. Not as if someone had advised them to flee.
What a brilliant woman Madame Bellamy was.
Except Dietrich was a cunning man. He might see through the lie.
“One must wonder if the dance instructor was attacked. Or if the note you had around your hairpin was a message; therefore you are both involved in subversive behavior. In which case she might have escaped.”
Understanding settled over Aleida, cold and aching. It had been too much to believe he would dismiss the note as nothing,
would be too drunk to act on his observations from dinner. He suspected Aleida had helped Madame Bellamy to flee, that they
had been involved in the resistance together.
Though her heart thudded more with every second, she combated the rise in her voice. “Am I being accused of breaking the law,
Herr Polizeiführer? I don’t know anything about Madame Bellamy or subversive behavior, and Mother will be worried, so I’d
like to go home.”
Dietrich chuckled—a chilling, callous sound. “One of Constance’s daughters ran away. Why not the other? Perhaps I found you
unharmed. Or I found you left for dead. Or I did not find you at all.”
The perfect excuse: Ingrid. If Aleida did not return, all Dietrich had to say was that she must have run off like her sister.
Even if she did return, it was an explanation for her absence: She had run away, perhaps gotten attacked by thieves or partisans, thus resulting
in whatever injuries he intended to inflict upon her now if she did not cooperate.
Would Mother believe him? Or if Aleida told her the truth, would Mother believe her? With profound, sudden sorrow, she realized
she did not know the answer. But she would give him nothing—not her knowledge, not her fear, not a single word or tear or
plea.
A moment of terrible silence, then Dietrich rose and left the room.
The guards moved Aleida’s chair back and the table aside while her wary gaze shifted between them and the door.
Would they torture her before Dietrich returned?
Or had he gone to fetch his instrument of choice so he could do it himself?
She did not have long to wonder. The door swung open again, bringing Dietrich’s voice as he ordered someone else into the room—another prisoner. A bruised, bloodied, middle-aged woman.
When a cry burst from Aleida’s chest, the woman’s rich brown eyes met hers, widening with immediate recognition before she
whirled to face Dietrich.
“Let her go—she’s just a girl!” Then, although her hands were cuffed behind her back, Madame Bellamy dropped to her knees
beside Aleida’s chair, meeting her at eye level. “Protect the work and yourself,” she said, her voice low and strong despite
swollen cheeks and bloodied lips. “However you must.”
How was Aleida supposed to do either when she had already failed at both? She had led Dietrich to uncover a resistance message,
had told Madame Bellamy to flee, and they both had been captured. This was entirely her fault.
She had no time to reply before one guard dragged Madame Bellamy away. Once the two women were facing each other, Dietrich
forced the ballet mistress to her knees, then he drew his pistol and leveled it at Aleida.
She was to be the instrument of torture. The bile raging in her stomach refused to settle while Madame Bellamy stared in disbelief
before Dietrich touched the cold metal to Aleida’s temple. The elder woman drew a sharp breath while Aleida’s cuffs bit into
her skin. He would do it, would shoot her, then he would lie to Mother about everything.
“Did Aleida advise you to flee?”
Madame Bellamy’s jaw tightened, her eyes on the pistol. “Yes.”
He shifted his aim to her, and Aleida’s stomach jolted again. He was using them both.
“Aleida, are you part of this woman’s resistance organization?”