1001 Nights Cast

The woman she had never met, would never meet, who was dead now, lay still in her bed, in the spring of 1944, wondering what she could buy with her coupons. Her head swam, and she got up, running for the outside toilet. Her young husband watched her broad back as she stumbled past, and thought again that he had made a terrible mistake. She wiped her mouth as she came inside. The air was chilly, the same temperature outside as in. The swelling under her dress was already pushing through. The skin beneath her eyes was brown. They looked at each other in the kitchen. The man looked down again to wipe the surface free of grey crumbs from the leaden bread he had eaten.

‘Do you want some?’ he asked her.

‘Can’t. Can’t keep it down.’

‘You must try to eat something today, Dora. The doctor says you need to put on weight’. His concern was another kind of guilt. Dora laughed outright into his face.

‘Weight? You must be joking.’

Meanwhile, Cherry woke each morning with a chalk and metal taste in the back of her throat. She rolled from side to side in the big bed, counting the minutes as the early morning light eased its way between the heavy curtains. She would reason with herself that it would be better to throw the curtains back, let in the sun, get up and eat toast until the pit in her stomach was nicely coated with carbohydrate. There was folic acid to swallow, and keep down. Cherry lay back and swam through her own consciousness, willing herself to get up.

The woman she had never met was lying on a sofa, in a darkened living room in Haarlem, Western Holland, in the summer of 1944, unable to get up even to answer the door. Her neighbours came each afternoon to bring her a little pulped sugar beet, fried with onion, and spiced with sambal oelek—‘It’s almost like nasi goreng’, they said each time. The faces of the two women who kept an eye on her were the colour of lard, and their cheeks curved inwards, their wrists like sticks. Her husband was no longer working, he spent all day out in the countryside, trying to barter things from his mother’s house for food. Sometimes he returned with bread, milk, cheese, eggs. Often it was confiscated on the way back by German soldiers. He had not yet been confiscated himself, but almost all his friends had been picked up at least once. Dora never expected him to return. Dust lay like felt on every surface of the house. She could not remember when she had last cleaned her home.

Cherry forced herself to slice bananas and pour orange juice into a blender, every so often pausing to lean against the counter. She clapped the lid on and hit the ‘start’ button. A chirring rasp burst from the machine, and the mixture glooped round and round in front of her mesmerized gaze.

The woman she had never met was trying to bake biscuits for Sinterklaas. She had almost none of the ingredients. She was using sugar beet instead of sugar, ground up bird seed that she had found in the cupboard under the stairs, instead of flour, and she was trying to grate bark to use instead of the cinnamon spices. She caught her knuckle on the ancient grater, and put her hand quickly up to her mouth, tasting her own thin blood. It was December, and her belly was blown up in front of her like a sandbag. Six weeks to go. Her back ached from trying to reach over it to the kitchen counter. She stood for long minutes at a time, her hands braced on the counter, breathing heavily. Her head hung down. Dizzy, she propped herself on one arm while she tried to stir the grey mixture she had concocted. There was no fat, she used water. It came from a bucket that her husband had fetched from a stand pipe that morning. A skin of ice filmed it. She had not boiled it, there was not enough fuel, and she was saving what there was to cook the biscuits. She hoped that the cooking would kill anything bad in it. It was past five o’clock, but her husband still wasn’t back. He had gone away the day before, out to the country in search of wood to heat the house. Normally he came back the same night, but he had told her he might stay with a farmer if it got too late.

Meanwhile, Cherry stood under the shower. She had already thrown up the smoothie, as she did every day, and felt better. Thank God she wasn’t working. The words ticked in her brain like a mantra. Behind them lay other words. Could she work again? Would she cope with two? What had happened to her brain? Money money money.

It was the fourth of January, 1945. It was not yet evening but the light had withered from the sky just after three. The house was in near total darkness. Pains had come two weeks early, but she was too tired to care. She had not left her house since Christmas. She lay on the sofa, a damp cloth on her forehead. Her husband hovered above her, twisting his ring on his finger, and wishing he could run away.

‘What can I do, Dora? Shall I go for the midwife?’

‘It’s—good. I’ll—do it. She—knows. No. Go’. Dora’s face crumpled.

Her husband ran to the neighbour, and begged for wood to light a fire. They had none. Dirk put on his coat, and said he would come to look for some. Griet told the children to stay in the house, and went next door to sit with Dora. Meanwhile, Dora’s husband looked from one face to the other in an empty panic.