The novel, a dark comedy, is semi-autobiographical. A Dutch couple, Marie and Wim, agree to hide a Jewish man during World War II. The fugitive, who gives his name as Nico rather than his Jewish-sounding name, dies after a prolonged illness. Dead, the man is more dangerous to the couple than alive. They hide him under a bench, but Marie realizes she has made a tremendous goof: She dressed the dead man in her husband’s pajamas, which have a traceable laundry tag.
Born in Berlin, Keilson fled to the Netherlands in 1936. A couple in Delft — the pair named in the book’s dedication — hid Keilson during the war. His parents fled to the Netherlands in 1939, but never went into hiding after the German occupation in 1940; they died at Auschwitz. Keilson, who had trained as a physician in Germany, became a psychoanalyst after the war and treated children traumatized during the Holocaust.
He began writing “Comedy in a Minor Key’’ and another novel, “The Death of the Adversary,’’ during the war. The latter novel, published in 1959 in German, then in English in 1962, tells the story of a Jewish man’s struggle to make sense of Hitler’s rise to power; Keilson, though, does not use Hitler’s name. He calls him “B.’’
“Comedy in a Minor Key,’’ skillfully crafted overall, has occasional bumpy transitions. The timeline weaves between the couple’s attempt to hide the body without detection and the months Nico lives in their upstairs room. Unless the person narrating is clearly Nico, it sometimes takes a moment to realize whether the book is in the present or the past.
The book’s strength lies in the artful way Keilson reveals the inner emotions of rescuer and fugitive.
Nico, anxious for any news, daily slips out of his room to hear the sound of the newspaper dropped through the mail slot. Then he waits for Marie to bring it upstairs. “The seconds that followed next were often the richest in tension and suspense of his whole concealed life,’’ Keilson writes. “Did they truly understand that, his hosts?’’
