A door half-open

Marga Minco's story 'The Address' is set in the Netherlands after the Second World War. The narrator, the daughter of Mrs S, who did not survive the war, goes to an address she has carried in her memory for years. She knocks at the door of Mrs Dorling.

Mrs Dorling opens the door only a little. She says she does not know the narrator. But the narrator notices that she is wearing her mother's green knitted cardigan.

Mrs Dorling says she thought nobody had come back, and shuts the door.

The narrator remembers how this began. Early in the war, Mrs Dorling had renewed an old acquaintance with her mother. She offered to keep the family's valuable things safe, in case they had to leave their home.

On each visit, Mrs Dorling carried away something: silver, plates, vases. The mother trusted her, and would not even ask her for a promise. The narrator had doubted Mrs Dorling even then. Now the cardigan tells her she was right.