River in the Sea

by Tina Boscha

  So, when Leen found herself in the bakery’s small supply room, sweeping the trivial pile of gray dust that used to be white when there was enough flour to bake with, she saw the salt bin and knew. The thought didn’t have enough time to fully form before she decided. The zout would be a treat, a rare something just for herself, a little secret that wouldn’t endanger anyone. At worst it’d give her a sore in her mouth.

  “Leen? What are you doing in here?”

  Leen twisted around and was horrified to hear the paper crinkle from inside the layers of her skirt. She coughed to cover the sound, and felt the nerves in the back of her neck ripple down between her shoulder blades.

  From the doorway, Mrs. Deinum regarded her carefully. “Are you feeling well?” She walked right up to Leen and touched Leen’s forehead. Leen kept as still as she could. “You’re warm. Your face is burning up.” She reached for Leen’s hands and Leen yanked them out of her pockets, and as Mrs. Deinum felt them, remarking how sweaty they were, they began to shake. She was caught. There was no way she’d get away with it again.

  “Heh, leafe, you’re feverish up and down, aren’t you?”

  Fragments of words tumbled out of her mouth. Leen tried to say something about feeling sick in her stomach, which, in that moment, became truth, and Mrs. Deinum said, “You don’t look very good, I’ll tell you that.” She sighed and glanced around the spare shelves. “This is hardly the place to take a break, now is it? Let me make you some tea and then you can get home a little early.”

  Leen followed Mrs. Deinum to the kitchen. Already she was getting out of a half hour of work; this benevolence could not be genuine.

  “Sit,” Mrs. Deinum said. Leen obeyed. Blix. Had she closed the lid of the bin? She didn’t know what to do with her hands. Mrs. Deinum put the water on, her skirt and hose sliding and hissing against each other as she moved around the sink set into a narrow counter top covered with painted tiles, tiles Leen had wiped dry after she had washed and put away the lunch dishes. It was just after lunch when she had begun sweeping the kitchen floor free of crumbs, and then the hallway, and then the supply room, her broom suddenly still as she saw the bin, her grip already loosening on the handle.

  Mrs. Deinum noisily opened the cupboards to gather the cups and teaspoons. Now it was past the moment of confession, when she should have handed over the salt, crying over how terrible she felt, and after listening to the rebuke, accepted the amnesty. Leen’s distress turned to a fretful annoyance. Hurry up, she mouthed to Mrs. Deinum’s back, making sure her voice did not escape. She ran her tongue throughout her mouth to rid herself of any last hidden bits of salt, as if it was more illicit than the evidence poking her hip through the worn fabric of her pocket.

  Mrs. Deinum set the tea on the table and settled herself into her chair. Leen could hear her undergarments slide against each other as she arranged her legs.

  “Go on, famke, drink up! It’ll warm you before you head home. No use getting sicker in that wind,” Mrs. Deinum said, pushing the tea closer to Leen. For a moment she was glad to have something her hands could latch onto so they wouldn’t shake, but when she brought the cup to her lips, her whole head quivered with nerves. She waited until Mrs. Deinum took a sip herself to steady the cup with her other hand and swallow a drop before she set the cup down again, still using both hands.

  Mrs. Deinum shifted her weight in her chair. She was forever rearranging herself, patting her hair, fingering a broach or a button. “Goodness knows I don’t want to fall ill either, and those fevers are catching. But maybe for a few minutes we can chat. So, tell me, how is your moeder?”

  “Goet.”

  “And your sister? Does she have a young man?”

  Leen shook her head. For a second she was distracted by the thought of Tine with a beau. But that lasted just a moment before she was back to panic. She contemplated spilling the tea, just to empty the cup and get out of there. But then she’d have to clean it. Mrs. Deinum wouldn’t think she was that sick to clean it herself.

  The kitchen’s rear door opened and Mr. Deinum came in, his back bent to them as he reached out to catch the door before it blew in the wind. “Ver domme! Damn wind.”

  “Leen is here,” Mrs. Deinum said, feigning a smile.

  “Sorry, I didn’t see you,” he said to Leen, ignoring his wife’s covert reminder to watch the swearing. Even from the door Leen could see his eyes were bloodshot. When Leen arrived at the house at 7:30 he’d been awake for hours already to knead ropy knobs of dough, keeping up the same pace even though the bakkerij’s ordered shelves carried half of what they used to. He put his coat on the back of a chair, the muscles of his forearms wrinkling under his skin. Mrs. Deinum immediately got up and put his coat on the hook next to the door. Leen wasn’t sure if she should be relieved to see him; normally she quite liked his company, but that would make watching his disappointment at learning of her crime that much worse.

  “They bombed Huesden,” Mr. Deinum said. He sat down heavily and rubbed his hands together.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Deinum said. “Well. Huesden. So they did.” She poured him a cup of tea, and Leen drank hers, still shaking. She’d never been to Huesden, never been anywhere, but she’d seen maps. The Netherlands was so small, nothing was truly far away.

  “Tante Gaatske, she lives in Huesden. She is 78. My only living aunt. How long has it been since we’ve seen her?” Mr. Deinum stared at the floor as he asked this.

  Mrs. Deinum pursed her lips together. She stirred a half spoonful of sugar into her husband’s tea. Mr. Deinum took the spoon and gave himself another. He put the wet spoon right on the pressed tablecloth, and Leen watched as a light stain began to spread. Mrs. Deinum said softly, “It’s been a long time. Tante Gaatske. It’s been a long time since we visited her.”

  Mr. Deinum rubbed the inside of his eyes with his thumb. “They bombed the town hall. Several Resistance were killed.” His voice rose. Leen had never heard him shout. “The bastards! As soon as the Allieds free a city, they bomb it. It’s desperation, that’s what it is.”

  Leen did not know what to say. A small part of her wanted to touch Mr. Deinum’s hand, to say that she knew about fear and worry and grief, that she had experienced death in her own family. Hearing of bombs and death was never anything but startling. She knew it was real. Forty–five kilometers away civilians were dead. And it was that much worse for them when Resistance men were killed. The L.O. was not an empty rumor or a hollow sermon; those men were actual, in–the–flesh hope. But even amid the terrible news, she could not forget about the lumpy ball of salt in her pocket. She took another awkward sip, trying to control the tremor that emanated from her chin.

  “Dear, you are shaking like a leaf. This news doesn’t help, I’m sure. You have anyone in Huesden?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Goet, goet.” Mrs. Deinum’s voice was breathy. “Well, get your things together, but don’t leave just yet, I want to get something for your mother.” She disappeared in the hallway. Mr. Deinum stared past Leen as she tiptoed past him and removed his coat from the hook so she could take hers. She didn’t want him to ask why she was leaving, and she didn’t want to hear more about the bombing either. She didn’t want to speak at all, at the risk of sounding guilty, both for not caring enough about Mr. Deinum’s family or worse, for once again not admitting her theft.

  Mrs. Deinum came back, a small folded packet between her fingers. “It’s some salt,” she half–whispered. “Mr. Deinum doesn’t like me to give it away, but I’m sure your Mem could use it.” She started to slip it into Leen’s pocket but Leen quickly grabbed it before she could tuck it in.

  “Thank you,” Leen said, flushing heavily. She had to get out. What was behind Mrs. Deinum’s wan smile?

  “You be careful, okay?” Mrs. Deinum squeezed her shoulder tenderly. Her face was still ashen from her husband’s announcement. Mr. Deinum paid no attention to her gift.

  “My father, he told you about the dog,” Leen blu
rted, not quite sure why those words spilled out, and why they sounded like a question, almost explanatory.

  “Yes, you be careful,” Mr. Deinum said. Leen jumped, thinking back to the muddy grave. “Those Allieds ought to be here by now,” he said, looking into his teacup, still full. “They’re near Rotterdam, they’re coming to the river. You’ll have Canadians on your doorstep any day now. And then, our Klaus will come home.”

  “Any day now,” Mrs. Deinum said, nodding furiously, and Leen was not sure if she was talking to herself or to her husband.

  “Dunke,” Leen said, slipping quietly out of the door. She tried to close it as softly as she could. But the wind picked up and her hands were still shaking, and the door slammed shut.

  It was the first time she would pass the camp alone.

  As she pedaled near, she saw soldiers milling about, standing in groups, eating what looked like hunks of bread. They looked haggard, like shadows, not at all frightening, not like the driver had been. Pater said they were stretched thin, that the cuts in rations were due to the German army’s own hunger. He was right; the camp soldiers’ faces were drawn, gaunt and pale, and across the mud and grass, Leen’s eyes met another pair from across the fence. She quickly turned away, but there was something about his face that stayed with her no matter how hard she tried to think of something else. Then it hit her. Of course. They all looked hungry, but they also looked expectant. They were waiting too.

  As soon as the camp was behind her Leen’s body reacted by releasing a deep yawn. The cold air was a shock against her dry throat. She ached for a summer day, for a warm, dry spot in a freshly plowed field where she could nap. She yearned for an escape, for empty pockets, for no more worries about salt or the camp or if Pater might overhear someone call her name and then make a playful barking sound.

  It wasn’t until she neared the turn to go home that she realized she didn’t have to go home. She wasn’t ill, and Mem and Pater didn’t expect her for another two hours. Maybe it’d get back to them that she’d been at the café, but maybe not. Besides, another chocolate milk sounded nearly perfect to her. If she could not have sunshine and sleep, she could have a little bit of sweetness. Perhaps Mr. Iedema would be there, and he could buy her one. She’d let him, just one more time.

  Inside the café, Arnold struck a match against the lip of the bar and lit a cigarette before the flame had a chance to die down. He nodded to Leen as he exhaled. Breathing in the sulfur and tobacco, the idea of a glass of chocolate milk quickly diminished as Leen realized what she had not had that day, the one thing that could give her the hot sunshine she’d been craving, deposit it right inside her lungs.

  Skiet, she thought. Issac wasn’t there, and he was the one she pestered to give her cigarettes. She didn’t have any money either. She stopped and patted her pockets. Of course she had money.

  Leen found an empty table in the back. She weighed different strategies. She could be direct, even just ask for a cigarette without ever mentioning the salt. “I’ll smoke it outside,” she practiced internally. But who would she ask? And who would give a girl a cigarette in public anyway? And if someone did, did she have the nerve? Could she really allow herself to flick a match and marry it to the cigarette pressed between her lips? She’d be noticed. She would be in the day’s local gossip before the cigarette was halfway gone. But wasn’t she already? Her own questions exhausted her. Leen ran her fingers over the worn grain of the tabletop, oiled by a thousand fingertips. Perhaps if she hadn’t already stolen today, she’d have the nerve.

  Minutes passed. At this rate Arnold would ask her to give up her table for someone who would pay for a greasy frikandel or a cool pint of beer. Her neck itched. She thought about sliding the wad of salt unto the table, thinking someone might approach her. Maybe she should just go home. It was just a silly cigarette. She could get one from Issac later that night. The extra salt, some of it anyway, should be given over to Pater.

  She could not make herself leave.

  She didn’t know if her own selfishness or not wanting to come home too early kept her in her seat. Maybe it was spotting Jakob Hoffman, and imagining getting his attention so that he’d abandon his tablemates and walk over, bend his head low to hear her whisper, then silently hand her his nearly full pouch of tobacco. Maybe he would sit with her and they’d smoke together, just the two of them. And if he asked, she would tell him exactly what happened, how she’d killed the dog. He would love to hear it, she thought. He would smile at her and lean across the table while she told the true story behind her bravery.

  Five minutes of staring at the tabletop passed before Leen chose to make a move rather than agonizing any longer. And just as it was at the Deinum’s, when Mrs. Deinum appeared in the doorway moments after Leen had withdrawn her overflowing hand from the bin, the second she motioned to Jakob, two soldiers stepped into the café with Jan Fokke behind them.

  Jan Fokke was the half–crazy man who lurked on Wierum’s streets. He liked to pretend to give village children coins but instead placed in their open palms a ball of his own brown spit before running away, shrieking with laughter. It appeared he was meant to be with the soldiers, as he sat next to the uniformed men at the bar, which immediately cleared two stools each to the right and left of them. Jan Fokke – no one ever called him anything except his full name – was a little off in the head, as Pater sometimes said, but Leen was still afraid of him, even though she no longer fell for his promises of nickels. It was rumored he used to run through the streets of Wierum at night without any clothes on, before the curfew.

  In the short moment Leen had caught the soldier’s faces, ashen like their uniforms, she hadn’t recognized them, but they were too far away and now the soldiers’ backs were to her. She didn’t want to know if one was the gatekeeper or the driver or the one with the sallow eyes, and yet simultaneously she wanted to see their faces plainly. But to do that risked exposing herself.

  She never should have come. She’d been taught this lesson from her earliest days: one sin begat another. A tiny snowball could grow so powerful you could not stop it.

  The air’s weight changed and Leen looked to see that Jakob was gone, as were his tablemates. They must have slipped out the back door that Arnold had built exclusively for that purpose. It was barely visible amid the dark walls and anyone seated there automatically moved aside in situations like this, the doorknob a lever at the base of the door, released by a surreptitious press of a boot. It was not the same as a false wall but it was fast, especially with soldiers facing the bar and ordering two beers. Jan Fokke leaned close to them, pushing a pile of some type of paper towards them and gesturing emphatically.

  When the soldiers had entered, the entire café went quiet, and then in a collective effort not to draw attention to themselves, everyone began to talk quietly and pretend that things were normal. The soldiers turned and looked over their shoulders, taking inventory. Perhaps they were looking for faces they knew, familiar men with whom they’d formed tentative friendships. She saw their eyes scan her, and the only relief she felt now was that the gatekeeper did not recognize her. He had cried over Minsha so much he had barely seen her, but she remembered his filthy hat and his young face that had made her think of Issac. Her heart beat wildly. She turned her head, praying that he would not scan her again, his memory sparked by her hair or coat, anything familiar to him from that October Saturday. Doeval, Leen thought. She was caught, part of it now; it was too late to leave through the back door, even if she crawled, and walking past them out the front was out of the question. The other soldier was much bigger than the gatekeeper, with broad shoulders out of proportion to his short neck that still carried color from the summer’s wind and sun. He looked like he could take two steps and put her back in her seat with one arm. In contrast, the gatekeeper was very thin. As he raised his glass Leen could see his wrists were slender and pointed, almost feminine.

  To Leen it sounded like everyone was speaking underneath a blanket, and it was b
ecause of this that she could hear Jan Fokke clearly when he exclaimed that he had enough pamphlets. There must have been another airdrop in the night; Leen never noticed them anymore, even though papers littered the ditches, eventually rotting and floating away. During the first months of the occupation, German warplanes dropped pamphlets proclaiming the Vaderland’s sovereignty, and the soldiers promised a penny for every five that the kids gathered. Leen had gone scrambling along with the others, returning with arms full of crumpled, wet and dirty pamphlets. But the soldiers never paid. The only propaganda anyone read now was from the Landelijke Organisatie, and the Frisian Resistance always made sure their L.O. newsletters were distributed much more carefully than by a free fall from a warplane.

  “Fyftich! I’ve got fifty. You said all I needed was fifty!” Jan Fokke sounded petulant and whining. Even though he had a man’s deep voice, his words always came out slurred. Mem said that when he was born, it had taken too long for him to get out of his mother’s belly, that he had gotten stuck and didn’t get enough air, and that’s why he was like that.

  The gatekeeper shook his head and said, “Nee, hundertfünfzig.” His long fingers drew the numbers in the air: 1, 5, 0.

  “Fyftich!” Jan Fokke said. He wiped his mouth and leaned in close, patting the stack of pamphlets. “You said fifty!” He put his head in his hands and shook it roughly.

  Leen cringed. She had seen Jan Fokke get belligerent before; he was known for his temper. Most people avoided him, making him all the more a nuisance when he came around, clingy and loud. He would try to catch up with a group of boys to walk with them, but they would only walk faster. It always made Leen feel bad when she watched this, yet she herself was guilty of turning the other way and quickening her own pace when she spotted him.

  The bigger soldier laughed and nudged his comrade.

  “I’m sorry, hundertfünfzig,” the gatekeeper said again, shrugging and holding both hands out, palms up, as if there was nothing he could do.