Searching for Sylvie Lee (21 page)

In the end, burdened by guilt and indecision, I took nothing. How could I remove something of theirs and never give it back? Lukas’s voice:
That is what it means to steal something, Sylvie.
I threw some of their clothing around and made a mess. I knew I should stomp on a few of Willem’s origami sculptures, but then I thought of his pleasure in the hobby, the way his eyes glowed with happiness when he finished a creation, and I could not bear to do it. I was a terrible, unbelievable thief, just as Lukas had predicted. Finally, I went downstairs and snuck out via the back door. Lukas would later lock it and hide the key again when he returned.

I went to my cello lesson with Filip for real this time and by the time I returned, the police were at the house, along with an agitated Helena and Willem. I set down the heavy case in the hallway and followed Helena’s shrill voice into the living room, where Lukas and Willem were both leaning against the walls, doing their best to be invisible. Lukas and I did not dare to meet each other’s eyes.

The uniformed police agent, a small, tubby man with a kind face and round spectacles, turned to me as I stepped in the room. “You must be the daughter.” He waved a pudgy hand at Willem. “You can always tell family.”

We all froze. None of us dared to breathe as we waited for Helena’s fury. People had always assumed I was their child, and Helena would fume and sputter for days afterward.

She said acidly, “Just because the Dutch think all Asians look alike is no reason to believe we are all family. Sylvie is just visiting.”

I was of course related to both her and Lukas but found it prudent to remain silent.

The police agent turned an eggplant color. He bumped into the cup of coffee beside him and almost knocked it over. “It causes me regret. I did not mean—” He stopped and straightened his glasses, then cleared his throat and returned to trying to make sense of the entire bizarre situation. “So nothing was stolen.”

“A fortune has disappeared,” said Helena, her voice rising to a screech.

“Aha,” he said, scratching his balding head. “Do you have any photos of the missing jewelry? Insurance reports?”

Helena’s mouth was a tight red line. “No. Grandma never showed it to us so we did not officially register it.”

He peered at his handwritten notes. “That is the elderly lady upstairs? So she is the only one who knew about this missing treasure?”

“I saw it too once, many years ago.” Helena gestured at me. “She used to let Sylvie play with it, right?”

All the attention in the room turned to me. I acted confused, tugging at a lock of my hair. “What has happened?”

Willem finally spoke up. “Someone broke into the house.”

I gasped. “Oh no!” I brought my hand to my mouth, trying to be the murderer playing innocent. Across the room, Lukas widened his eyes at me, signaling me to tone it down. “I was very little then. I have no idea if it was real or costume jewelry. I do not think Grandma would have let me play with anything valuable.”

Now Helena narrowed her eyes, as if turning things over in her mind. Uh-oh. Did she suspect me? My heart started to race, nearly exploding in my chest. Her head tilted like she was mentally cataloging the evidence.

Lukas quickly changed the subject. He seemed calm. “I should not have left the front door ajar.”

Willem threw his hands in the air. “We have reminded you a hundred times, Lukas. How could you do that? You know it sticks. It has been like that for years.”

Lukas cast his eyes downward, the picture of regret. He always seemed so guileless; I had no idea he could be such a good actor. “This is all my fault.”

Helena replied, “Leave him alone. He had enough to do with taking care of Grandma, her portable oxygen tank, and her wheelchair.” Why had she never defended me like that? I had been a child under her care too, once. When I was little, how many times did I daydream of Helena hugging me, telling me I had done something wonderful?

The police agent said, “But the back door was left open as well, correct? It has a blind covering, which means it cannot be locked or picked from the outside. So the thief entered from the front door and exited through the back.”

Lukas had forgotten to lock it after I was gone. And such a crucial clue too. This would lead their suspicions directly to me. Could nothing go right today? The hair lifted on my nape and arms.

Helena tapped a finger against her temple. “It is strange because the key is always hidden. What a clever thief to have found the key so quickly.”

She was not stupid. I could go to jail. The air was bursting in and out of my lungs. I jammed my hands into my armpits in a self-hug and asked, “How is Grandma?” What if all of this excitement hurt her?

“She is as fine as you would imagine, under the circumstances. She is with Isa. It was hard for the police to question her, with her limited Dutch and scattered memory.” Helena deliberately lowered her head to stare at me. She gave me a false smile. “But something like this is such a violation. It is unforgivable.” She knew. My legs were shaking so much, they would all see. I dragged my sweaty palms across my pant legs.

Then Helena asked with forced nonchalance, “How was your cello lesson today, Sylvie? Isa mentioned you were gone a long time.”

I spoke despite the sour taste in my mouth. “Fine. I stayed a bit longer for a chat with Filip.”

Lukas’s expression tightened. He cracked his knuckles so loudly I jumped. “Oh? Do you do that often?”

He was upset with me about this? Today of all days? “Sometimes.” I often stayed if Filip did not have another student directly afterward. I would drink Earl Grey tea or his excellent espresso while he smoked.

The round policeman shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “So aside from the jewelry, which no one except for Grandma has seen in recent years, was anything else taken?”

“Is that not enough?” demanded Helena.

Meanwhile, Lukas was frowning at me, his lip curled. Because I was hanging out with Filip or because I had been a poor thief?

“I will make a report of the supposed missing jewelry, but with cash and jewelry, there is a very limited amount you can claim without preregistration and proof of possession. You will have to resolve that with your insurance company,” the man said.

We all knew what the insurance company would say.

After the policeman left, I asked, “Is Grandma very upset?”

Helena’s eyes were cold and flinty. “Surprisingly, no.”

T
he next day, I watched as Filip’s long, capable fingers tuned his cello, which to my eyes was far uglier than mine. I had a modern instrument, with a warm glow to the maple. The varnish on his cello was uneven and burned in some places. It looked like it had been worn thin by centuries of use. Small bubbles had formed in those spots, and they’d filled with dirt over the years. I had come to cherish these moments as he concentrated on tuning and I could watch him unobserved: the intensity of his focus on each string, the grunt of satisfaction he made in the back of his throat when the tune was just right, the texture of his rough knuckles against the wood. I was completely unimportant then; to him I did not exist, and this gave me the freedom to utter whatever flew into my head.

I asked, “What happens if I break your cello by accident? How much would it cost?”

He slapped the Y-shaped metal tuning fork against his knee, and then set it on the bridge of his cello. He listened to the hum of the note and then adjusted the pegs. “The one you are using? It is an inexpensive one. I think around three thousand euros.”

My lips parted. I was glad I had not yet succeeded in dropping it down the stairs. “How much does that old thing of yours cost?”

“Fifty thousand euros.” He smiled at my incredulous look. “It was made by Cuypers in 1767. Listen to the sound.” He played a quick melodious phrase that sounded like sunlight shining upon gold. Behind him, the waves outside took on the color of his intent eyes and slivers of clouds crowned his finely shaped head. He lifted his bow off the strings and the spell was broken. “This cello cost me a rib out of my body but I love her.”

Had he ever cared about anyone like that? What would it feel like to have all that intensity focused on me? He was the sort who loved seldom but deeply. He would be faithful, to the point of being consumed by his passion. I shook my head, cleared my unruly thoughts. “You have expensive taste.”

He looked rueful. “Yes, between my competitive skier daughter and my beautiful instruments, I need to find a pot of gold somewhere.”

Today, the water and sky had melded into a single blue expanse that cradled the two of us on his boat, rocked by the waves, submerged in the liquid voice of his cello. Into this intimacy, I said, “There was a burglary at the house yesterday and Grandma’s jewelry was stolen. It was worth a great deal.”

He cocked his head, and moved to tune the next string. “Oh? When did that happen?”

“During her daily walk.”

“How coincidental.” He placed his cello on his carved wooden stand and started on mine.

As he struck the tuning fork against his knee again, I asked, “What do you mean?”

Instead of using the fine tuners at the bottom of my cello, he fiddled with the giant pegs at the top of the neck. “Good God, Sylvie. What have you done to this thing?” He shuddered. “I do not know how it is possible you made it so out of tune in one day. I am glad I do not live where you practice.”

I grinned. “I revel in imperfection.” I was learning from Lukas to relax my standards. Then I asked airily, “But what did you mean, coincidental?”

He was still muttering to himself as he worked but paused to say, “That they knew exactly the right time. Was the jewelry just lying around?”

“No, I believe it was hidden.” I traced the embroidered velvet of the chair where I sat with my index finger.

“So they found it quickly too. Sounds like an insider was involved. She is not well, right? Was there some sort of conflict over who would inherit it? Who was she going to leave it to?”

I fixed my eyes on the upholstery. “Me.” In two seconds, he had made clear every weakness in our plan. I rubbed my hand over my eyes. In two more seconds, he would have figured out the whole thing. I cast about for a change of subject. I pointed to his stand. It was engraved, and I asked abruptly, “Is that a menorah?”

“Yes. My mother gave that to me. I am surprised you know what it is.”

“I grew up in New York City. Many of my friends are Jewish.”

Filip finished tuning my cello and began to play a melancholy piece on it, a low accompaniment to his words. I sensed that talking while playing made it easier for him to share, just as my own pained music somehow eased my mind. “That is quite different from here. Most of us have been killed or left for other countries. The Jewish community here is small and very aware of being survivors. Do you remember that kid Rafael from our class?”

“The name, yes, but I cannot recall a face.”

“Well, he used to chase me during our lunch breaks, yelling, ‘You stink, you dirty Jew.’” Filip said this in a sardonic way, as if reciting a story about someone else.

I recognized a kindred spirit in him. I too could talk as long as I did not need to admit that any of it had ever hurt me. “Fun. Some of the girls used to call me a ‘poop Chinese.’”

“Oh yes, there was a phase when everyone was saying that on the elementary schoolyard. As we grew older, Lukas got into trouble for fighting too. They would call him a cunt Asian or a fat samurai, as if he were ever overweight.”

My lips flattened. I did not remember those particular insults. I must have already been gone then and Lukas had endured it alone. So many years I had missed. “It is like people become blind and they just yell things that have no connection to who you are.”

Filip segued seamlessly into a sharp, fiery melody. His left hand flew from string to string, trembling, as the bow relentlessly sawed against the instrument, cutting the blazing music out of the cello piece by piece. “My grandfather was part Indonesian. During the war, he sat in a camp run by the Japanese and, to the end of his life, would never buy a Japanese car. My grandmother was hidden here in Holland, moved from house to house. She wound up killing herself. My mother found the body.” The bow lifted off the strings with a flourish, and then a soft, lilting refrain began.
Nothing to see here,
it said.
No grief. No rage. Just move on
.

I made my voice as casual as his expression. This, I realized, was what attracted me to him: his need to control all his demons, to wrap them up and confine them neatly in a locked compartment never to be opened. Still, the beasts we tried to tuck away writhed, twisted, and wailed to be free. “It is sad how trauma gets passed down from generation to generation. Helena, my own ma and pa: They taught us to keep our heads low, to hold our secrets as closed as an oyster. Keep ourselves apart from everyone else. At a certain point, you wind up dividing yourself internally into so many different people you do not even know who you are anymore.”

Filip stopped playing and looked up at me. For once, his eyes were vulnerable and his voice filled with emotion. “That is it exactly. My mother told me everyone was anti-Semitic. Do not stick out your head in case it gets cut off. Never trust anyone outside of the family, while the family itself was, of course, completely untrustworthy. Do not reveal what you are truly feeling or thinking. Never show who you are. She wanted me to become a rabbi.”