Little Thief*

The orange sat alone on the shelf, a sun glowing above a basket of shriveled potatoes. Anneke imagined its journey north from Spain. Her mouth watering, she grabbed it.

“Do your parents know you’re a thief?”

Anneke froze. “I just wanted to smell it, Mijnheer Wolff. It’s been months since I’ve seen one.”

It was the second day of the city-wide strike, and Mr. Wolff’s was the only shop open in Amsterdam’s oldest market. To everyone in Waterlooplein, the greengrocer was the worst kind of Jew, the worst kind of citizen—a collaborator. Still, she’d be in a heap of trouble if he told her parents she was stealing.

She turned, braced for a tongue-lashing. But instead of seeing the grocer’s white-aproned belly, she found herself staring into a black SS jacket.

Anneke’s stomach lurched. The soldier leaned down, so close she smelled onions on his breath. “Looks like you were going to smell and take.”

“I’m no thief,” she whispered. But she was a liar. She was lying to him just like she lied to Moeder an hour ago.

“Going downstairs to Ilsa’s,” she had called across the apartment. She’d been cooped up for two days with the strike, and she was dying to run along the canals.

“Be back by four!” Mama waved her wooden spoon, swirling the cigarette smoke rising from the circle of Papa’s friends seated around the table. Anneke wrinkled her nose. Pea soup for dinner. Again.

These men had been coming and going for weeks, falling silent the moment she entered the kitchen. Sometimes she caught snippets of conversation.

“They’re looking for people to punish,” Mr. Abels had said. “To make examples of.”

“They’ll target the Communists first,” Papa had replied.

A whiff of onion brought her back to Mr. Wolff’s shop.

“Do you know what we do to thieves?” She pressed her knees together to stop them from shaking. “Especially dirty Jew thieves?”

Anneke swallowed. She knew better than to respond. The soldier wrapped his meaty hand around her forearm.

“Ah, Kapitein! I have that mustard you requested.” Mr. Wolff appeared beside them. “It should go nicely with some kaas and wurst tonight, no?”

“Ja, ja.” The Kapitein wedged the jar in his pocket and thrust her forward. “I caught this girl stealing.”

“Really?” Mr. Wolff frowned. “I’ve not seen her before.”

Anneke’s mother had been sending her to Wolff’s shop ever since she started school five years ago. Why was he covering for her?

“We must stop these urchins from running wild.” The Kapitein snatched the orange and placed it on the shelf.

Anneke blinked back tears.

“You have so many burdens, Kapitein.” Mr. Wolff shook his head.

“I accept them. For the Motherland.”

“Of course. But the strike, the black market, and now little thieves…“ Mr. Wolff snapped his fingers. “I have just the thing for you!”

He returned with a bottle of Jenever and placed the liquor in the crook of the Kapitein’s arm. “Let me handle the girl. I’ll find her parents. Make sure she’s given a proper strapping.”

A line of soldiers goose-stepped outside, their boots clapping through the square.

The Kapitein sighed. “You’re right. There are more pressing matters today.”

Anneke stood still as a statue, heart pounding, as he strode outside into the gloom.

“What am I going to do with you, kleine vos?” Mr. Wolff asked, smoothing his apron.

“I’m sorry.” She looked at her shoes. “Please don’t tell my parents. I promise I won’t do it again.”

“Don’t make such a promise, Anneke. Not in these times.” He shined the orange on his sleeve and held it out.

“I can’t—“

“You can. You will.” He wrapped her hands round the orange and, she realized, something else. Stuck between her palm and the fruit was a slip of paper.

She had seen papers like this wedged beneath tins of herring and sacks of flour in her mother’s kitchen, spidery handwriting scrawled across them.

“Share it with your father. Oranges are his favorite.” Mr. Wolff’s eyes were dark, unreadable. “Run along now.”

Relieved, Anneke pocketed the orange and sprinted across the square. The wind whipped off the Amstel River, and she wished she had remembered her mittens.

She turned the corner, thinking of steaming pea soup—and skidded to a stop.

Kneeling in the street, hands on their heads, were her father and his friends. A ring of soldiers surrounded them, rifles drawn.

“Papa!” she screamed.

Her father shook his head. “Go home!”

“Schweig!” A solder cracked his rifle butt into her father’s skull, knocking him to the ground.

With a cry, Anneke lunged forward, but someone held her back.

“No, Annikush.” Her mother gathered her close, her sweater smelling of peas and cigarettes. “It’s alright. They’re just taking them in for questioning.”

“It’s because of the strike, isn’t it?”

“They’re innocent,” her mother said. “They’ll be released by morning.”

Anneke knew a lie when she heard it. She was a liar, after all.

The wind picked up, making her teeth chatter.

“He needs his coat! Papa, your coat!”

The orange bounced against her leg as she took the apartment steps two at a time. Papa needed his coat. She found it in a crumpled heap next to an overturned chair.

As she flew down the stoop, she saw her father’s curly head disappear behind a truck’s canvas flap.

“Papa!”

No movement behind the canvas, no sound of Papa or his friends. Just creaking metal and exhaust as the truck pulled away.

Anneke yanked the orange from her pocket and hurled it. “Monsters!” she screamed.

The orange landed with a splat in an icy puddle.

“Anneke! Do you want them to take us all?” gasped her mother. “We’ll send for Rabbi Samson. He’ll know what to do.”

Weeping, Anneke ran to the puddle and ground her heel into the orange. Ignoring the icy water soaking her shoes, she watched helplessly as Mr. Wolff’s words bled across the slip of paper plastered to the dirty rind, irretrievable.

*Published in the Orange Issue of Juste Milieu, January 2021.