“Later,” she interrupts. “Later. First, we’ll have coffee, and a stroopwafel, and we’ll talk.”
Next to her sits a dust-covered canister that smells like the earth. Real coffee beans. I wonder how long she’s been saving them. The stroopwafels, too. People don’t use their bakery rations for fancy pastries; they use them for bread. Then again, they don’t use them to feed black market delivery girls, either, but here is Mrs. Janssen, pouring my coffee into a porcelain cup and placing a stroopwafel on top so that the waffle sandwich softens in the steam and the sugary syrup inside oozes around the edges.
“Sit, Hanneke.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say, even as my stomach betrays me with a growl.
I am hungry, but something makes me nervous with these stroopwafels, and with how eager Mrs. Janssen is to have me sit, and with the irregularity of the whole situation. Has she called the Green Police and promised to deliver them a black market worker? A woman desperate enough to sell her husband’s opklapbed might do such a thing.
“Just for a minute?”
“I’m sorry, but I have a million other things to do today.”
She stares down at her beautifully set table. “My youngest. Jan. These were his favorite. I used to have them waiting when he came home from school. You were his friend?” She smiles at me hopefully.
I sigh. She’s not dangerous; she’s just lonely. She misses her son, and she wants to feed one of his old classmates his after-school snack. This goes against all my rules, and the pleading in her voice makes me uncomfortable. But it’s cold outside, and the coffee is real, and despite what I just told Mrs. Janssen about my millions of tasks, I actually have an hour before my parents expect me for lunch. So I set the parcel with sausage on the table, smooth down my hair, and try to remember how to be a polite guest on a social call. I knew how to do this once. Bas’s mother used to pour me hot chocolate in her kitchen while Bas and I studied, and then she would find excuses to keep checking in to make sure we weren’t kissing.
“I haven’t had a stroopwafel in a while,” I say finally, trying out my rusted conversational skills. “My favorites were always banketstaaf.”
“With the almond paste?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Mrs. Janssen’s coffee is scalding and strong, a soothing anesthetic. It burns my throat, so I keep drinking it and don’t even realize how much I’ve had until the cup is back on its saucer and it’s half empty. Mrs. Janssen immediately fills it to the top.
“The coffee’s good,” I tell her.
“I need your help.”
Ah.
So the purpose of the coffee becomes clear. She’s given me a present. Now she wants a favor. Too bad she didn’t realize I don’t need to be buttered up. I work for money, not kindness.
“I need your help finding something,” she says.
“What do you need? More meat? Kerosene?”
“I need your help finding a person.”
The cup freezes halfway to my lips, and for a second I can’t remember whether I was picking it up or putting it down.
“I need your help finding a person,” she says again, because I still haven’t responded.
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone special to me.” She looks over my shoulder, and I follow her line of vision to where her eyes are fixed on a portrait of her family, hanging next to the pantry door.
“Mrs. Janssen.” I try to think of the right and polite way to respond. Your husband is gone, is what I should tell her. Your son is dead. Your other sons are not coming back. I cannot find ghosts. I don’t have any ration coupons for a replacement dead child.
“Mrs. Janssen, I don’t find people. I find things. Food. Clothing.”
“I need you to find—”
“A person. You said. But if you want to find a person, you need to call the police. Those are the kinds of finders you want.”
“You.” She leans over the table. “Not the police. I need you. I don’t know who else to ask.”
In the distance, the Westerkerk clock strikes; it’s half past eleven. Now is when I should leave. “I have to go.” I push my chair back from the table. “My mother will have cooked lunch. Did you want to pay now for the sausage, or have Mr. Kreuk add it to your account?”
She rises, too, but instead of seeing me to the door, she grabs my hand. “Just look, Hanneke. Please. Just look before you go.”
Because even I am not hardened enough to wrench my hand away from an old woman, I follow her toward the pantry and pause dutifully to look at the picture of her sons on the wall. They’re in a row, three abreast, matching big ears and knobby necks. But Mrs. Janssen doesn’t stop in front of the photograph. Instead, she swings open the pantry door. “This way.” She gestures for me to follow her.