Chasing Shadows

by Lynn Austin

“It’s in pretty bad shape but it beats walking,” he replied. He grabbed the handlebars. “I’ll take that now, Liebste.”

  Ans hung on tightly, knowing they could do whatever they wanted but hoping they would show mercy. “Please don’t take my bike!” she begged in Dutch. “I’m miles and miles from home!”

  Whether they understood her or not, they seemed indifferent, chatting about how they’d use the bike on their days off. “Please, I need it to get home. Otherwise I’ll never make it there before curfew.” Her tears were very real. One of them made a crude comment about Ans in German, and she tried not to blush so they wouldn’t know she’d understood. “Please!” she begged. The soldier yanked the bike from her grasp and climbed on.

  “Too bad for you, Liebste,” he replied. Ans knew better than to resist. She watched them ride away, laughing, and was grateful they hadn’t done worse to her in this out-of-the-way place. She started walking. It was too far to make it all the way home to the farm before curfew and too dangerous to be out on the open road alone after dark. She tried to recall the last milepost she’d passed and decided she was closer to Woerden than Bodegraven. She could ask for shelter in one of the houses where she delivered ration cards.

  The sun flamed low on the horizon by the time she saw church steeples and the blades of the korenmolen on the horizon. Her legs were weary, her feet blistered from the oversize shoes. Ans was almost there, heading for her contact’s house near the water tower, when a church bell tolled the hour of curfew. She hoped curfew breakers wouldn’t be shot on sight.

  Ans summoned the last of her strength, jogging through Woerden’s back lanes, staying away from the main streets, trying to recall where the bridges were. She remembered the military map she still carried and considered tossing it while she had the chance but decided this new information was much too important.

  The outline of the water tower loomed above the rooftops. Almost there. She ducked down a shadowy alley at the same moment that a policeman turned in to the other end. He was unfastening his belt as if he was about to relieve himself. “Hey! Stop right there!” he shouted when he saw her.

  Ans’s instinct was to turn and run, but running would make her look guilty. Besides, she didn’t think her weary, trembling legs would carry her any farther. She held up her hands in surrender.

  The Dutch policeman strode toward her, refastening his belt. “What are you doing out past curfew?” He gave her a rough shove, slamming her against a wall. “Can’t you tell time? Or are you up to no good?” He had no reason to speak so gruffly or treat her harshly except to instill fear. She wondered if Erik was this cruel when he patrolled Leiden’s streets after curfew.

  Ans struggled to control her terror long enough to stammer an explanation. “I-I’m a maid . . . on-on a farm. Nazi soldiers stole my bicycle on my way home from Bodegraven. I’ve been running as fast as I can to get home before curfew, b-but I’m late.” She paused to swipe away tears, searching for any signs of pity in his expression. Her stomach ached with fear. “Please, you must believe me, sir. I-I know about curfew but the Nazis stole my bike!”

  “Show me your ID card.”

  Ans groped through her bag. Before she could find it, the policeman snatched the bag from her and searched through it himself, tearing away the lining where she hid the ration cards, feeling inside the space. Thank God she’d made her deliveries. The space was empty.

  But she still carried the map. Her stomach writhed as if she’d swallowed live eels.

  “Please, I’m only a few minutes late,” she begged. She felt trapped, backed against the wall while the policeman stood in front of her, rummaging through her bag.

  He studied the napkin that had wrapped her lunch as if it contained hidden messages. He found her forged ID card and examined it closely. Would it pass official scrutiny? He finally looked up.

  “Well, Miss Bernandina Kamp, you’re under arrest for breaking curfew.” He grasped her arm so tightly she winced. Terror turned her stomach inside out.

  “I’m going to be sick!” she moaned, and before she could stop herself, Ans bent over and vomited. She tried to turn away but the policeman stood too close, and some of the vomit splattered on his shoes.

  He shoved her to the ground. “Wipe it off!” he demanded.

  Ans crawled to her knees and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe his shoes.

  “You stink!” he said. “Stand up!” He yanked her to her feet and pushed her forward.

  Ans’s fear mounted with every step she took toward the police station on the square. They would search her thoroughly. They would find the map. And the terrible things Erik had warned her about would happen.

  Lord, help me get rid of this map . . .

  Red banners with swastikas fluttered in the evening breeze as she was led up the steps and through the station door. She saw a photograph of Adolf Hitler on the wall and felt her stomach contents rising. “I’m going to be sick again!”

  The policeman dragged her down a hall to a lavatory. He shoved her inside, leaning against the door to watch her.

  Ans barely made it to the toilet before vomiting as if her guts were falling out. She knelt in front of it, gasping and spitting. The room had only one dim light, and as she huddled over the bowl, Ans reached beneath her blouse and pulled the folded map out from the front of her bra. When she leaned forward to vomit again, she dropped the map into the toilet, praying that the sound of her retching would make the policeman turn away. She quickly flushed, watching to make sure the map went down, then knelt there until her dry heaves subsided. At last she stood, legs trembling.

  “Clean yourself off.”

  Ans used the tiny sink to splash water on her face and rinse her mouth.

  “Let’s go.”

  She felt dizzy and disoriented, her legs rubbery as the policeman dragged her down a long hall, down a set of stairs, down another long hall. He pushed her inside a tiny cell and slammed the door. A key turned in the lock.

  Ans collapsed onto the cold floor, weeping. Thank You, God . . . thank You, thank You!

  CHAPTER 47

  The daytime workers at Meijers House brought news that gave Miriam and the others hope. French and American troops had liberated Paris and were advancing through Belgium. But the Nazi military activity in the region surrounding Meijers House was steadily increasing. A line of troop vehicles had rumbled past the house this morning, making Miriam wish she were hiding in the attic with Klara and Tina. But with the housekeeper cleaning the second-floor bedrooms, there had been no opportunity. “May I have a word with you and Miss Willy?” Miriam asked Miss Hannie as they prepared for bed.

  “Of course, Christina.” Klara and Tina had come downstairs for food and water and hadn’t returned to the attic yet. The women all stood in the upstairs hall, their faces shadowy in the candlelight.

  “Those military convoys we saw today scared me,” Miriam said. “I think . . . I think it would be safer for all of us if I hid in the attic with Klara and Tina.”

  “I understand, dear,” Miss Willy said. “Of course you may. How shall we explain it to Rietje? She’s devoted to you.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think of something . . .”

  “I can give her extra activities during the day to keep her occupied,” Miss Hannie said.

  “Or maybe I shouldn’t come down at all in the evening when Klara and Tina come down,” Miriam said.

  “No, you have to,” Tina said. “You’ll go mad up there if you don’t come down.”

  Miriam remembered sharing the tiny space in the chicken coop with Alie and Lies and her girls. It had felt wonderful to step outside sometimes.

  “Let’s give it some more thought,” Miss Hannie said. “We don’t have to make all of these decisions right now.”

  “Do you want to sleep up there tonight?” Miss Willy asked.

  “I think I should. The Nazis know you have an infirmary now, and they’ve been driving past here all day.” Miriam knew her fear cre
ated difficulties for everyone, but she’d been running and hiding from the Nazis since Kristallnacht, nearly six years ago, and couldn’t stop now. Avi had begged her to survive.

  “We’ll need to pack more food and water for you,” Klara said.

  “I’ll look for some bedding,” Miss Hannie said. “It won’t do for the housekeeper to ask what happened to the sheets and blankets in your room. We’ll tell the day staff that your family took you home.”

  Miriam awoke the next morning to the sound of Rietje throwing a tantrum after seeing Miriam’s empty bed. Miss Willy tried to quiet her with the promise of an extra sprinkle of cinnamon on her porridge while Miss Hannie coaxed Frits to stop shouting. Miriam regretted getting close to the girl instead of keeping her feelings walled off from everyone. It had been a mistake. Miss Willy seemed to be standing right beneath the attic hatch when she shouted above the noise, “If you stop right this minute, I promise that Christina will come back and visit tonight. But she won’t come unless you’re a good girl.” It seemed to work. Rietje’s cries tapered off.

  It wasn’t the safest option, but when Miriam came down the ladder from the attic that evening, she explained that they were playing a new game. “If you don’t tell anyone where I’m hiding, I’ll play my violin just for you, Rietje, before you go to bed at night.” In the meantime, she asked Miss Hannie to contact Dr. Elzinga and tell him that all three of them needed a new hiding place. “Tell him I’ll be glad to go back to the Mulders’ farm.”

  Two days later, the messenger who delivered extra ration coupons to Meijers House returned with Dr. Elzinga’s reply. It wasn’t safe to move anyone at the moment. But there was good news. British paratroopers had landed in the Netherlands near Nijmegen. And American ground forces and tanks had crossed the border from Belgium and had liberated Eindhoven.

  “That must be what’s causing so much Nazi movement,” Miss Hannie said.

  “Are those places near here?” Miriam asked.

  “Nijmegen is at least fifty miles away, I should think,” Miss Hannie replied. Everyone agreed it was good news. But it meant more waiting, and Miriam’s nerves felt on edge every moment. She didn’t dare to hope.

  The next morning, Miriam was in the attic with Klara and Tina when a vehicle pulled to a stop in front of Meijers House. Someone pounded on the front door. Tina carried the ladder to the round attic window at the front of the house, below the roof peak. “Nazis!” she mouthed. Klara motioned for her to get down before she was seen. The three women sat very still, straining to listen. A male voice bellowed in a mixture of German and Dutch, shouting louder when he wasn’t making himself understood, as if volume alone could scale the language barrier. Miriam’s panic soared when she figured out what he was trying to say. “They want this house,” she whispered. “For a hospital, I think.”

  A confusing jumble of voices and boots along with Frits’s shouts came from below. Then footsteps thundered up the stairs, bedroom doors opened and closed. The man continued shouting as he tried to make Miss Hannie understand. “Out! All of these persons must be cleared out! We need hospital beds!”

  “But these are our residents’ rooms. Where will they sleep?”

  “I told you! You must contact their families! Send them to their families!”

  “Meijers House is our home.” Miss Hannie’s voice trembled. “My sister and I and my son live here. Where would we go?”

  “If you let us stay,” Miss Willy said, “we can help you tend the wounded.” Miriam didn’t hear the reply as the man moved away and down the stairs.

  “Are the Nazis staying?” Klara whispered. Miriam nodded. “We’re trapped! What are we going to do? There’s no other way out of this attic!” She clutched her daughter close.

  “Hannie knows we’re up here,” Miriam whispered between frantic gasps. Terror had sucked all the air from her lungs, and she struggled to breathe. “She’ll find a way to get us out.” She had to believe it was true.

  But two days passed with no relief in sight. Their food ran out, and they had to ration their water drop by drop. The Nazis weren’t leaving. Instead, it sounded as though more men and equipment were moving in while the residents’ families were arriving to take them away. Miriam urged Klara and Tina to put their belongings in a back corner behind a pile of discarded furniture, creating a barricade where they could hide if the Nazis inspected the attic.

  “What good will that do if we starve to death?” Klara asked. Miriam didn’t know.

  On the fourth morning, Miriam heard Rietje throwing a tantrum outside her bedroom and guessed that her parents had come for her. “I want Christina!” she screamed. “I don’t want to play the hiding game! Tell her to come down!” Miriam’s chest squeezed in panic.

  “Christina went home to her family,” Miss Hannie soothed, “and now you must go home with your papa too.”

  “No, she’s hiding! She’s up there, and I want her to come down!”

  “There’s nobody up there but the mice,” Miss Hannie said. “Come, Rietje. It’s time to go.”

  Miriam motioned for Klara and Tina to creep across the attic with her as quietly as they could and hide behind the barricade. Terror filled every inch of her.

  “Christina . . . !” Rietje’s screams grew farther away but they didn’t stop.

  Miriam struggled to breathe. Her heart thumped loudly, painfully. They waited for several minutes, then she heard a louder thump as the attic hatch flipped open. “Take a very good look for those mice,” a voice from below said in German.

  Footsteps creaked across the attic floor. Miriam trembled from head to toe. She couldn’t stop her tears. The heavy boots halted beside the barricade. She looked up into the face of a Nazi soldier.

  “Out!” he said. “All of you! Out!”

  CHAPTER 48

  Ans sat on the narrow bunk in the Woerden jail, smelling the stench of vomit on herself, tasting bitter bile. She was alone in the cell only long enough to calm herself, gather her wits, and pray. Then footsteps came down the corridor. A key rattled in the lock. She stood, her stomach still roiling. Maybe her prayers were being answered and they were letting her go.

  The cell door opened and she faced a guard who didn’t look any friendlier or kinder than the man who’d arrested her. He held her bag, the lining ripped open. He beckoned her forward, prodding her down the hall and up the stairs the way she’d come. One of the special paddy wagons the Gestapo used to transport prisoners waited outside, the engine running, dashing Ans’s hopes for a quick, merciful release. The guard pushed her into it.

  Night had fallen while she’d been in the cell, the city dark under the blackout, but she recognized the imposing building they halted in front of a few minutes later. Kasteel van Woerden was a Nazi military barracks and Gestapo prison. Ans’s legs wobbled as she climbed from the car. Why hadn’t she listened to Erik and stayed safe? All his warnings about the terrible things the Gestapo did to Resistance workers flashed through her mind, making her feel sick again. She stumbled up the steps into the lion’s den. Then she thought of Miriam and Avi and Elisheva and knew she would do it all over again.

  Ans stood before a desk in an office bristling with Gestapo officers, the walls plastered with swastikas and a portrait of Hitler. A clerk questioned her while he filled out forms and stamped papers: name, age, address, occupation. She was Bernandina Kamp, age twenty-two. She worked as a maid on a farm outside of Woerden. The clerk had her ID card and knew all the answers but asked her anyway. “The charges?” he asked Ans’s guard.

  “Breaking curfew.”

  A Gestapo officer at a nearby desk looked up and seemed to study Ans when he heard the reply. He pushed back his chair and came to stand behind the clerk. He was in his forties, with light-brown hair and a face that reminded Ans of a fox. “Let me question her when you’re finished,” he said to the clerk in German.

  Ans hadn’t had much time to rehearse her story while she’d waited in the first cell, but she knew from her underground trainin
g in Leiden how important every detail was. She kept her head lowered, playing the part of a simple farm maid, while the paperwork was completed. The Gestapo officer waited as well, a fox watching his prey. Ans was led to another room when her papers were complete and was told to remove all of her clothes in front of the guards and the waiting Gestapo officer. She wept in spite of her resolve not to. When they finished their thorough, humiliating search, they gave her back her underwear and a shapeless prison gown.

  “Come with me, Bernandina,” the fox-faced Gestapo officer said in Dutch after she dressed. He led her into a tiny windowless room, no bigger than a closet, and told her to sit down on the only chair. He stood above her. “Why are you breaking curfew, bitte?”

  “Because I—”

  “Ah, ah, ah . . . look at me when you speak, bitte.”

  Ans lifted her face. He would see that her fear was genuine. Would he also see that some of what she was about to tell him were lies? She needed to keep her answers simple and short to convince him that she was a naive, guileless maid. “Because I was riding my bicycle home from an errand in Bodegraven and—”

  “What was your errand?”

  She gave the reply she’d rehearsed in the jail cell. “Shoes. I needed new shoes.” She pointed to her blistered feet and worn-out boots. They hadn’t given her time to put them back on after they’d pulled out the laces and searched them thoroughly.

  “Where are the new shoes?”

  “I didn’t buy any.”

  “So you came to Woerden? To search for shoes after curfew?”

  “No, I-I—”

  “Wouldn’t it make sense to come to Woerden first before going all the way to Bodegraven? They sell shoes here, too.”

  “It was my day off. I wanted to get away—”

  “Tell me why you were out after curfew.”

  “Two soldiers stopped me and stole my bike. I begged them not to. I knew I couldn’t get back to the farm in time, but they—”