The Safekeep

“Isabel had developed a thought over the years and the thought was: They would allow her to stay here, her brothers. Her uncle. They had to, where else could she go? She had nothing else in this world. Nothing but these clean floors and neatly made beds. It was enough. If she could keep it, it would be enough.”

The gendered power that men wield over Isabel is exemplified by their control over the house and its future—the one thing that Isabel holds dear. Eventually, this struggle over The Nature of Home will become something that she shares with Eva, who also lost the house because of unfair power dynamics. In this way, van der Wouden establishes a parallelism between the two women, despite their enmity, in the earliest parts of the book.

“It was 1946 and the war was over but Isabel’s mother closed all the windows in a hurry and said Go upstairs […] They watched from the bedroom window as outside an upset woman banged on their doors and windows and screamed and screamed. Her shouts were unintelligible, desperate. She had a young woman with her who did nothing, who stood to the side, arms crossed, head down.”

This brief memory, nestled amid a series of other recollections from Isabel’s time in the early postwar period, will prove to be a crucial detail by the end of the book. By presenting it in such a sparing, brief fashion, van der Wouden evokes the fogginess of Isabel’s childhood memories while also foreshadowing the revelation that Isabel’s family took over the house that rightfully belonged to Eva’s family. This passage is thus an early indication of The Complexities of Civilian Complicity in the persecution of the Dutch Jewish community.

“I’ll sleep here for now, Isabel. It’s only for a little while, isn’t it? I’m only a guest. I’m not—taking anything from you. You know that, right? I’m just passing.”

Eva blatantly lies to Isabel, telling her that she is not going to take anything, when that is her true purpose for staying at the house. Her tone mirrors the condescension with which Louis and Hendrik treat Isabel when she voices her suspicions about theft. Eva is thus able to take advantage of preexisting family dynamics, which serve to discredit Isabel, in order to reclaim the belongings that were stolen from her own family.

“It was a water-heavy fruit, full-ripe. The first bite spilled on Isabel’s skirt. It wouldn’t show: the fabric was brown, checkered. There was no way of eating it in silence—the sounds it made, the wet. Isabel ate through the whole thing: the flesh and stick and pits and core and all. She made sure nothing was left of it, as though it had never been given in the first place.”

Eva’s gift of a pear, and Isabel’s subsequent furtive devouring of it, has strong erotic undertones, establishing the fruit’s symbolic significance (See: Symbols & Motifs). Isabel’s determination to keep her consumption of the pear a secret reflects her sexuality, which she fearfully hides from everyone close to her.

“Eva said, ‘You do that with such care.’ It came out quietly. Isabel held the jug in the dip of her palm. The night had made the space between them odd, hushed. Isabel met Eva’s gaze and said, ‘A house is a precious thing.’”

In another charged exchange that has incomplete meaning until the revelations of Part 3, Isabel and Eva find commonality in their belief that the house is precious, invoking The Nature of Home. Unaware that she is caring for Eva’s family heirlooms, Isabel is unable to truly understand Eva’s commentary and piercing gaze.

“Isabel didn’t like to look at herself in the mirror too long. It embarrassed her, her own reflection. She had strong ideas of beauty that she did not find in herself: how tender the face must be, how thick the hair. She had strong thoughts about what it meant, to care too much about beauty. To want it, to search for it in oneself. In another. They weren’t nice thoughts.”

In this moment, van der Wouden indicates the interrelationship of Isabel’s insecurity and cruelty toward other women. Isabel’s “strong” beauty standards are one of many hints about her repressed sexuality.

“Isabel did not answer. She had poured herself a glass of jenever. She drank it and thought, You were where you wanted to be. I was where I needed to be.”

Isabel’s frustrations with her brothers’ ability to come and go from the house as they please are ultimately frustrations with their flippant misogyny. She has been expected to shoulder a plethora of domestic responsibilities that do not even occur to them; still, she knows that she has no claim over the house. In this moment, her frustrations manifested in the cruel, rebellious act of not telling Hendrik that their mother died as soon as it happened.

“‘She isn’t silly.’ Isabel was blushing. She meant to say: She is horrid. She meant to say, I think she’s stealing from me, and then thought of the kiss and blushed more angrily.”

Isabel’s refusal to mock Eva alongside Hendrik is a key inflection point in the novel, where it becomes clear that, in spite of herself, Isabel is experiencing character development and The Transformative Power of Unexpected Relationships. Here, her intentions and her words are in direct conflict with one another, illustrating that her attraction to Eva is just as much an internal conflict as an external one.

“They both stood out in the lake’s crowd—darker skin, more defined. Sharp. Nose, chin. Italian youths, perhaps, if one were not to look too closely.”

Isabel perceives a homology between Eva and Sebastian, their phenotypic “otherness,” not fully understanding what that visual homology implies. This is one of many subtle details that foreshadow the reveal of Eva’s Jewish identity, clouded by Isabel’s own ignorance.

“Isabel knew what she’d thought when she first met Sebastian. Foreign had been the word. She hadn’t wanted him in her house. She hadn’t wanted him touching her things. She knew, too, what she thought of Eva when she first saw her. She knew what that made her, what kind of person that meant she was. She ran hot with it now, indignant and embarrassed all at once.”

Once again, Isabel draws a connection between Eva and Sebastian, placing them in the same vague category of people who trigger her intolerant instincts. This perception characterizes them as belonging to marginalized groups within Dutch society, with Isabel becoming a perpetrator of that society’s xenophobic and antisemitic tendencies.

“‘Go do groceries, Isabel. Figure it out.’ He opened the door awkwardly: smoke between his lips, arms occupied, only one hand to shimmy at the key. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘He’ll expect you to cook for him sooner or later, anyway.’”

The casual tone with which Hendrik delivers his misogynist remarks reminds readers that although Hendrik suffers oppression as a gay man, he also perpetuates gender oppression on Isabel and other women reflexively. Hendrik and Louis have both benefited from Isabel’s domestic labor, leaving her alone to care for a house that will be inherited by a man, and now Hendrik affirms Johan’s expectation of her domestic labor.

“How quickly did the belly of despair turn itself over into hope, the give of the skin of overripe fruit.”

The metaphor likening Isabel’s emotions to fruit immediately calls to mind the imagery of pears, which carry symbolic significance throughout the text (See: Symbols & Motifs). Van der Wouden’s choice of the word “overripe” ties back the “full-ripe” pear from Chapter 4, now implying that the romance has aged past its prime and that rot is imminent.

“‘What did you have nightmares about?’ ‘Airplanes. Bombs.’ She paused, finger pad to Eva’s bottom lip. ‘Girls at school. People knocking at the door. Wanting to get in.’”

Isabel’s descriptions of her nightmares recall the brief glimpses of her childhood that readers have been offered, including the scene where Eva and her mother arrived back at the house to demand it back. Ironically, Isabel does not know that Eva is the subject of her nightmares.

“‘Who are you?’ She said, ‘Have you always been like this? Have you just been waiting for it to happen?’”

Eva’s questions present Isabel as if she is the same as all the objects in the house: in a decades-long, static period of safekeeping during the war. This observation sheds light on one meaning of the novel’s polysemic title and also offers one explanation of why Isabel is so attached to all the things in the house: She identifies with them.

“One foot out, she paused. Turned. Said, ‘You were never supposed to have it.’ She said, ‘It was never yours.’”

The subtext of this statement is only made clear later, once it is revealed that Eva is the rightful owner of the house, alluding to The Complexities of Civilian Complicity in the dispossession of the Jewish community. Eva knows that Isabel cannot understand the true meaning of her words, and in this way, many of the things she says to Isabel have the effect of a one-sided conversation. Her stance, caught halfway between the house and outside, is a metaphor for how the dark past prevents her from living freely in the present.

“They didn’t lie because they were embarrassed. They lied because they were never going to give them back.”

The subtext of antisemitism in the first two thirds of the novel is made explicit text in Eva’s diary, where Jewish characters reveal that they understand the malicious intent of their gentile neighbors who pretended to keep things safe for them during the Holocaust. The anaphoric beginning of these two sentences draws attention both to the lie itself and to the meaningful difference between the endings of the sentences. The gentile neighbors’ refusal to return possessions to their rightful owners illustrates The Complexities of Civilian Complicity.

“2:30. Night. Nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares nightmares.”

In Eva’s diary, van der Wouden makes heavy use of repetitive devices. In this instance, she uses epizeuxis: one sentence comprised solely of the world “nightmares” eight times. By using the plural form and repeating the word over and over, she conveys the all-consuming nature of Eva’s night terrors and evokes the character’s innermost experience, which transcends proper sentence structure.

“Little baby Jesus everywhere. They have no problem letting Jews into their homes as long as they’re carved from wood, do they.”

Eva’s diary entry from Christmas 1960 is a prime example of her distinct, sarcastic voice. Her dry, observational humor is aimed at the hypocrisy of her Christian neighbors, who have been active participants in the theft of Jewish homes and property but who celebrate Jesus (himself a Jew) every year. Eva’s diary is filled with observations such as this one, as she finds cruel ironies almost everywhere she looks in post-Holocaust Dutch society.

“When I went to leave she held onto my arm and said that I looked just like my mother, and that my mother was also such a pretty Jewess. I said please let me go. She said do you forgive me, tell me you forgive me. I said I forgive you so that she would let go. She did let go.”

The neighbor’s desperation for forgiveness does not make any sense in light of her insistence that she did not turn Eva’s family over to the Nazis (readers are left to interpret what she might be lying about). In combination with her micro-aggressive use of the term “Jewess,” the repetition of the word “forgive” has a demanding, aggressive effect. Rather than seeking to remedy the harm that has been caused to her Jewish neighbor, the woman prioritizes assuaging the guilt she feels about The Complexities of Civilian Complicity.

“‘What does it matter,’ he said, still looking to the side, ‘that someone has lived there before? They’re gone. They did not come back for it. Every house has a history. What house doesn’t have a history?’”

Karel’s questions in response to Isabel’s have a defensive effect, as he tries to deflect any implication of wrongdoing. Karel’s refusal to acknowledge the fact that he took possession of someone else’s home—and benefitted directly from the persecution and dispossession of Dutch Jews—speaks to The Complexities of Civilian Complicity. Learning the truth about her family’s house also forces Isabel to confront The Nature of Home.

“Louis. I will never marry. Hendrik will never marry and I will never marry. Do you understand?”

This is the closest the book comes to offering a coming-out scene, with Isabel’s lesbian identity remaining subtext beneath the literal meaning of her words. By tying her own identity to Hendrik’s, Isabel rejects her own internalized anti-gay prejudice and claims her own future. Her newfound confidence and decisiveness reflect The Transformative Power of Unexpected Relationships as she has experienced it with Eva.

“You saw me? You saw what you wanted to see. A stupid girl. And then you saw—I don’t know. Something you could have. And then you thought I was a thief and then you did what you were always going to do. What you’ve always done to people like me […] You sent me away.”

Eva’s use of the euphemistic term “people like me” indicates to readers that she is not only speaking of herself and Isabel as individuals but as representatives of Dutch Jews and gentiles. This intimate argument thus reveals the allegorical significance of their relationship—and the house that they are at odds over—as a stand-in for their shared homeland and The Nature of Home.

“The synagogue, an undefined broad facade, had not been for her. With its red brick and inlaid windows and a wrought iron fence it sat like a bad taste, a bad memory of something old. She had walked by it before and quickened her pace. She had tried not to think of it too much, she did not wonder at the people behind its doors—how many of them were left at all. The lettering above the windows looked frightening: she did not know what it meant, what it said.”

Reflecting on her prior antisemitic instincts, the use of the past perfect tense emphasizes that Isabel has developed beyond her prior intolerant ways. Her fear of the unknown, embodied by the unfamiliar shapes of the Hebrew text, gives way to familiarity when she finds the same words, in Roman script, in her Bible at home. Her fears about difference are, therefore, revealed to be superficial, as she discovers substantial commonality between her faith and Eva’s. Her personal maturation reflects The Transformative Power of Unexpected Relationships.