by Andre Norton
“Until I come again — ?”
Klaas reached out his hand and touched Lorens’ forehead with one brown forefinger. “Is it not true that Fate writes here each man’s future when he is born? Yes, you shall come again, and your coming will be good — good for Norreys, good for this water-woven country of yours. Until then, Allah be with you in your comings and your goings, Mijnheer Lorens — ”
“Hurry along with you!” ordered Smits impatiently.
He had wedged his bulk half through another trapdoor, this one in the flooring of the hidden room. Lorens could hear the hiss and gurgle of water threading about piling and, as the Captain disappeared, he caught a glimpse of a skiff below where someone held a dimmed flashlight as a guide. As he, too, went down, rung by rung, he caught a last fleeting sight of Klaas’ face before the Eurasian dropped the door into place.
Cautiously they angled the skiff out, setting a zigzag course through the maze of piling. And when they reached the open bay they crept toward the bulk of a low-lying fishing smack. The rowers skillfully brought the skiff alongside this.
Lorens climbed the rope ladder awkwardly. Underfoot the deck seemed curiously unstable. He had never been aboard one of these fishing boats before and in the dark he could see little enough of this one. Capt. Smits brushed past him, heading for the wheel, while two of his sons busied themselves with the anchor. The third dropped down a small hatchway to disappear completely.
As the anchor came up dripping, Lorens felt more than heard the drum of the engine — it was as if a giant heart had suddenly begun to beat. The rising, salt-seasoned air stripped back his hair and burned his face, they were heading out into the Channel. He stumbled along the deck to join Capt. Smits.
“She’s a good lass, my Trudie,” the latter greeted him with a burr of warm satisfaction softening his voice. “Listen how little noise her engine makes — fine work there. And my Flip knows how to keep it in trim. She does not wear her colors in her face, does Trudie. In the daylight you would say when you see her, ‘There goes an old fishing tub.’ Yes, how many times I have heard them say that. But she can show her heels when she has to, can Trudie. Now if we can contrive to keep out of sight of those flying Nazis we have nothing to worry us.”
Lorens looked back toward the low-lying land behind them. To the north a band of scarlet leaped from sea and land.
“There burn the basin and wharves of Rotterdam. May the Good Lord help the ships there.” Capt. Smits had seen it too. “Payment must be made for that, payment in kind if the future is good to us. And may I have a hand in the collecting!”
“We shall all have a hand in that collecting, every man of the Netherlands, wherever in the world he may be today!”
And Lorens knew that, as long as he might live, the scent of the salt air, the touch of strong wind in his hair, the sight of a night sky, would bring back before the eyes of his mind that bloody band forged across his country. The full horror of this day and night he might not be able to grasp, it would be too great to be held by any living man. In days to come, Netherlander might gather and piece together hundreds of stories, but what they would be putting on paper would be the separate stories of many men, each, seeing what affected him and his most. All any one of them would carry with him were bits of the whole — just as Lorens would remember best the flaming roofs of Norreys bringing day to an evening countryside.
But if every man, woman, and child carried such memories, knew such sorrows — and worse — then the whole would weld his people into a single living will to fight against the powers of darkness, even as the Inquisition and the iron rule of Spain had once forged of Netherlanders a sword for Spanish undoing. This fight was only beginning. Wherever men of Netherlands blood stood today, they were united, united by that flaming band across the sky — by the memory of what lay beneath it — a peaceful city unable to defend itself blasted from the face of the earth without warning. This desire for a fight to the death rose above personal hatred —
“Now, Mijnheer Lorens” — Capt. Smits had turned his back upon the land — “we must keep an eye on the sky. Though I have a feeling that we shall be lucky.”
However good a fisherman Capt. Smits might have been, he was no prophet. For Luck, who had smiled her sweetest upon them so far, now chose to turn her broad back. It was out of the north that the throb of air-borne motors sounded. A plane was on the prowl in the night sky.
The Trudie carried no lights, but against the silvered water she would probably make only too clear a target for a keen eye aloft. And her crew could not see the plane, only hear the roar of the engine as it drew nearer.
“Down with you!”
Capt. Smits’ voice carried even above the crackle of the machine gun as lead spewed down upon the Trudie’s deck in lines of tracer fire. Lorens stood fast, staring up. A moment later he saw the sinister outline of their attacker, bracketed against the glow of the city. It was diving again for the kill. Then a hand closed about his ankle and jerked him off balance. He found himself face down on the deck beside on of the Smits boys.
“To live, one lies flat,” he was cautioned out of the dark. “We are good sport for that one up there — by luck he carries no bombs. But he will keep coming until he tires or his guns are empty. See.”
Again tracer bullets wrote in fire across the deck, cutting a neat line up the center of the Trudie. Four times the flyer dived and slashed. Then he did not return. Seconds lengthened into minutes, and young Smits and Lorens cautiously crawled out of their hole between a dory and the water butt.
“How is it with you, Corny, Jaap, Flip, Mijnheer Lorens?” bellowed the Captain.
“All right, Father.”
“And I.’
“And I, Capt. Smits,” echoed Lorens.
“And you, Flip? Flip!” concern became urgency. “Flip! Answer me at once!”
“I will see, Father.” The boy beside Lorens moved toward the hatch of the pocket-sized engine room and Lorens followed.
He helped to tug the hatch open. The glow of a muffled lantern came up as they knelt to look down into the oily-smelling pit. But they found they were looking directly into the white face of the young man lying in a heap below. And, even as they watched, a thin crimson line trickled down from his matted hair to divide cheek and jaw in half. With a choked cry Jaap swung down beside his brother and lifted the limp head. But after a close inspection of the wound, he gave a grunt of relief.
“Will you tell Father, Mijnheer, that Flip has got him a good knock on the head and that is all. He’ll be up trying to tell us how to nurse his precious engine before we know it. Here you, Corny,” he ordered his other brother, who had materialized out of the shadows, “help pull him out of here and tie up that plowed scalp of his. I’ll see to the engine. I’ve always wanted to see if the old girl hasn’t more in her than Flip has managed to get out.”
So the Trudie puffed on, following a twisted, circuitous course marked not on any map but in Capt. Smits’ round head, a course which brought her safely through mine fields, so that at dawn, when another plane dived threateningly above her, Lorens was able to see red, white, and blue rings marked on the wings.
“That’s a Sunderland,” announced Corny unnecessarily.
“Don’t stand there admiring the view, you rabbit head!” roared his father. “Break out our ensign before she takes it into her head to see how well we’ll sail with a ton of metal in us!”
As the red and blue bunting broke from the masthead and whipped out in the breeze, the dive of the Sunderland leveled out. She circled them once, then dipped her wing in salute before going off.
“They will be out after us now, as soon as she flashes back her news. And there is England!” Smits pointed to a blue shadow on the sea.
Bullet scars, yellow in the wood, laced her deck and her round sides, but the Trudie seemed unharmed. And there was England! Lorens was still watching that shore line grow when, a half hour later, the patrol boat came beating up to bring them in.
/> . . . that is the way I reached here. I have not used the right names, you will understand, because there is work just beginning for Captain Smits.
But here there is nothing for me to do. And now I am waiting for a ship to take me to Java where my cousin lives. He is, as once I told you, the managing director of the Singapore-Java air line.
If you do not hear from me for a time, all will be well, but if you do not hear from me within a year, then, out of your kindness, send to someone in authority among my countrymen in Amerika and tell them what I now tell you — that the Flowers of Orange — to be used for the Netherlands — are sealed behind that word which we two have in common.
May you in Amerika never know the darkness we are fighting now.
Your friend,
Lorens van Norreys
— Hospital
Sydney, Australia
8 April 1942
Dear Lawrence:
This is the first day I have been allowed to sit up in my bed and have writing materials. So now I hasten to tell you all that has happened during the past few months. So much — and all of it bad.
I saw in a newspaper which Piet brought me that a writer has said our men had only ‘the courage of lions and baling wire’. Well, that was close to the truth, and neither was much good to us. We only did what we could with what we had.
On December eighth — which was your memorable December seventh, I was in Sumatra, at Salabania —
4
LULL BEFORE MONSOON
The damp, steaming heat of the tropics was boxed in by the high thick walls of the room. Only a tchitchak lizard had energy enough to move, hitching his semi-transparent body across the ceiling in quest of winged dinner. Lorens, for the tenth time in as many minutes, tugged at his shirt collar, and this time a button gave, popping across the paper-littered desk to the floor.
“Ach, Tuan van Norreys, you have dropped this.” A brown hand caught up the button and put it before him. “You are finding it hot today, neit?”
“Hot!” Lorens leaned back in his chair to look up at the slim young Javanese clerk. “In my head my brains have melted to sugar syrup. And now they stick instead of move! Yet there you stand, Dewa, looking as cool as if you were cased in ice. How do you do it?”
Dewa’s laugh, which never dared to be more than a very decorous chuckle, sent the tchitchak into hiding. “Perhaps because I was born here, Tuan. But it is not well for any of us to work through these middle hours — ”
Lorens drew the back of his hand across his face. It came away damp and sticky, just as he had known that it would. If he moved, he would doubtless turn to water and end up as a little salt pool on the floor. Every inch of his thin shirt clung to his ribs and back. But at Dewa’s hint he shook his head.
“These were promised for tonight, they must be ready. If I weren’t so new to the job, it might go faster. How about ordering up another of those lime drinks of yours, Dewa? They’re the only really cold things I’ve tasted in days.”
“When the monsoon breaks it will be fresher — perhaps — ”
Lorens grinned. “Or perhaps not. It only gets hotter here, never cooler.” He looked down at his hands. “I think that a wash is needed before I leave a regular finger-print manual over all these papers.”
He paused for a moment before the open window, leaning out over its wide sill to look down upon a scene he was never tired of watching. This was one of the older buildings in the Dutch pioneer Old Town of Batavia and it fronted the Molenvliet Canal which tied the three separate parts of Java’s capital into one.
But the canal was not only the transportation center of the town; it was also where the native population came to bathe and wash clothing, to gossip and bargain. The brown scum and floating refuse was no bar to cleanliness, it seemed; though Lorens had not yet lost his amazement at the sight of a Javanese belle or beau emerging from the smelly liquid, a wet sarong clinging to limbs and back, and a very western toothbrush and tube of toothpaste clasped tight in hand. But if the Javanese were so clean, it was not because of the freshness of the water.
In this section of the city the architecture of the buildings was solidly Dutch. Lorens, by lifting his head a few inches, would find himself staring at the old Records Office, considered one of the best bits of ‘Old Dutch’ in the East Indies. If it weren’t that he could see a taxi coming along, he might well believe that he was in the fortified Batavia where Jan Pieterszoon Coen had ruled, with an iron hand unencumbered by any velvet glove, the spice capital of the world three hundred years before.
It had taken him weary months to reach this room: three of them lingering in London waiting for a ship. But there his restlessness had been faintly appeased by doing odd bits of business for Capt. Smits. Then had followed the long journey around by Cape Town, Madagascar, and India to Singapore, with a last quick hop by one of Piet’s planes to Batavia. Once there Piet had hardly given him time to draw breath before he had set him hard at work in a grim and busy world, for the Netherlands East Indies were now the heart of the empire. The homeland might be policed by Seyss-Inquart’s black horde, but Netherlanders were still free — and preparing with all their taxed might to remain that way.
Nowadays the vastly expanded shipyards of Surabaya were shooting finished craft into the opalescent Timor Sea at a rate which even the most optimistic had never believed possible. For everyone, from Jonkheer van Starkrenboug Stachouwer in the austere elegance of the government house to the most ragged beggar on the temple steps, knew that it might be only a matter of months, or maybe even days, before the enemy struck again.
Those little brown men from the north who now bowed and hissed so politely, suggesting co-operation in the matter of oil and tin a little more loudly than in past months, who made long speeches concerning trade agreements while they tried to glimpse from the corners of their eyes all there was to be seen, inspired no trust in even the most blind. And the time was coming when it would be masks off and weapons drawn. Although the Americans, with all their seagoing might still tightly leashed, did not seem to understand that yet.
Lorens picked at a bit of loose mortar in the sill and wondered for perhaps the thousandth time what the United States was really like. Maybe some day when the war was over, he could go and see. He had found three letters from Lawrence waiting him here in Java — that all-important one he had sent from London had gone through — and there had been four more in the months since. Why, tomorrow he would have been here a year to the day! Eighteen months since he had left Holland! — Eighteen months older — if he pointed out that important fact to Piet maybe he could get him to agree to the air cadet plan. Why, they were taking even younger boys now. Didn’t Nico van Duyn join up just last week? And he was at least six months younger than Lorens.
It was all very well to drill with the Landstorm, but he couldn’t even count on that since Piet had given him this job of paper work — just because he had a head for figures and could draw a little. He hadn’t even seen any of these air fields Piet was hacking out of the jungle in Sumatra. Polishing a teak office chair with the seat of his trousers — that was his war work! Piet was due in from the other island tonight, and this time he, Lorens, was going to demand a straight answer — no listening to any more talk of being needed in a job such as this — not this time!
Lorens dabbled his hands in a basin of water poured from an earthen pitcher which seemed to keep the musty-smelling liquid almost cool. It felt refreshing on his face, too, and he only half blotted it off with the limp towel. Now if Dewa would only bring up the lime juice, he might feel able to attack those columns of figures again and get the right total this time.
“Goeden dag, Mijnheer van Norreys — ”
Dropping the towel, Lorens turned to the door. And the surprise mirrored in the face of the gray-haired man standing there was almost as great as his own.
“You must excuse this intrusion, I am in search of Mijnheer van Norreys.”
“I am he, sir.” Lorens felt
that he must have shed all his adult dignity with the coat which now hung on the chair back. The newcomer certainly still distrusted him.
“But — I was under the impression that Mijnheer van Norreys was” — the laughter lines about those deep-set brown eyes deepened — “shall we say, an older man — ”
“You must be looking for my cousin Piet van Norreys.”
“The manager of the Singapore-Java Airline?”
“That is Piet. But I regret, Mijnheer, he will not return until late this evening, or perhaps tomorrow. Is there any way in which I can serve you?”
“I am Robert Cortlandt from the States. Just now I am representing the Canfield- Cortlandt Corporation on this side — ”
“But, of course, Mijnheer Cortlandt, it is your company that has sent us the flying-boat. Will you not be seated, sir? Dewa” — the Javanese had appeared with his frosted jug — “get another glass, if you please, for Mijnheer Cortlandt!”
“Afraid I can’t stay, Mijnheer van Norreys. You see, my daughter is waiting for me in the taxi. I just ran up for a moment to see if your cousin was in — ”
“But, Mijnheer, it is not good for anyone to be out in this heat of the middle day. Would not the Juffvrouw Cortlandt enjoy a rest in the shade? Though” — he glanced around the bare and somewhat untidy room — “this is not the proper place in which to entertain a lady.
But it is cooler than the street.”
“Now that’s kind of you, Mijnheer. Carla was saying that she would like to see the inside of one of these old houses. You see, we’re Dutch ourselves — way back. Came over and helped buy New York for some red and blue beads, the first Cortlandt did. And she thinks that these places are something lifted out of a history book.”
