by Mal Peet
The woman made sounds like a wounded dog. She seized Marijke’s wrist and tried to stuff the watch into her hand. “Please, please. It’s all we have left. We’ll take anything, anything, won’t we, Anton?”
The boy turned his face away.
Marijke closed the woman’s hands around the watch. “No, listen. Please hush. Don’t cry. I will give you something. Please stop crying. What I mean is I don’t want your father’s watch. Keep it.”
The woman wiped her face with the wet cuff of her coat sleeve. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. It’s all right.”
“No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I can’t go back empty-handed. You’ve no idea how they’ll look at me. I can’t face it.”
“When did you last eat?”
“Yesterday. A woman in a cottage gave us some boiled potatoes. There weren’t enough to take home. We had to eat them all. We had to keep going.”
Marijke melted a few chunks of pork fat in the skillet, then washed and sliced two potatoes and fried them with an onion. She couldn’t watch them eat; it was too desperate. She went upstairs to the closet and dug out a woollen cardigan, a sweater, two pairs of socks, and a heavy tweed jacket that had belonged to her grandfather. She had nothing that could replace the wretched shoes.
She returned to the kitchen to find the hunger trippers wiping the fat from the skillet with the crusts of their bread. She went down to the cellar and brought up a jar of bottled plums; the woman and the boy stared at them as if they were fat rubies looted from some fabulous treasury. When the boy had eaten his plums, he put the stones back in his mouth and sucked them. Later, when he was dressed, he took the stones from his mouth and put them in the pocket of the tweed jacket, which came down below his knees.
The woman and the child left the farm carrying unimaginable riches: a cabbage, a chunk of bacon, a bag of flour, four eggs, several potatoes, and a few beetroot. And bread and cheese for the journey. The woman had asked for the bacon to be cut into several small pieces.
“If the Germans stop us,” she said, “we will give them one piece. They will not think that we could have more.” By then she had recovered some of her dignity. “I want you to have the watch. It is the difference between trading and begging.”
Marijke shook her head. “No. And you are not beggars. I cannot believe your courage; I wish I had half as much.”
“Then I will pray for you.”
“Thank you. I may well need it.”
She walked with them up to the road. The woman, and then the boy, shook her hand very formally.
“Look,” Marijke said, “I, er, I don’t know exactly how to say this, but . . .”
In fact, she knew exactly how to say it: by the way, this farm is the operations centre for the local resistance; my lover runs it from here; there is a wireless station in the barn; there are British guns in the house; and no matter how calm I seem, I am shit-scared most of the time.
“Others, others like you. You won’t tell them, will you? It’s not that I don’t want to help, but . . . It’s difficult, people coming here. Do you understand?”
They looked at her with expressionless faces. Then the woman forced a smile. “Of course. I doubt I could tell anyone how to find you anyway. It’s the back of beyond, this place.”
Marijke stood and watched them walk away until they were lost in the broken shadows of the winter trees. She never saw them again.
Marijke fought off sleep for most of that night. She was very afraid that her dreams might be even more terrible than the black bubbles of anxiety that rose in her chest. Whenever she began to drift, unbearable images, like clips from silent horror movies, flashed into her head. Tamar caught exposed at the dropping zone, his face lit white by German torches. Tamar torn by bullets, waiting to die in a ditch. Tamar’s body burning in the fiery skeleton of a car.
When at last she did fall asleep, she dreamed none of these things. She dreamed she was the starving woman from Utrecht, walking slowly and peaceably across a vast field of snow. The boy with her was her son. She knew this even though the child was so swathed in blankets that his face was invisible. Occasionally she would look back and see that their footprints had disappeared, although no snow was falling. They arrived at the gates of a great city of brightly lit towers and warm busy streets. The houses had windows of richly coloured glass. She turned to the child beside her and began to unwrap him, pulling away blanket after blanket, but when the last one dropped onto the snow, there was no one and nothing inside it. She looked up and saw a crowd of people standing just inside the gates, watching her with expressionless faces.
Shortly after nine o’clock the following morning, she heard the distant growl of a motor. She went to the chest under the window and took out the Sten. Then she ran to the dairy and pulled back the sacking curtain from the window. When the asylum ambulance jolted into view, she leaned her forehead against the cold wall and let out her breath.
She went outside, shouldering the gun. Dart was driving, with Trixie beside him, holding Rosa on her lap. As soon as he saw her, Dart brought the ambulance to a stop and stumbled out, mimicking an old man with a bad back.
“God,” he said, “they call this an ambulance, but driving it is enough to kill you.”
She managed a smile for him, but her eyes were on the back of the ambulance, which was shifting and creaking on its ancient springs. When she saw Tamar’s legs swing out, she felt a melting surge of relief and her smile became genuine. He was wearing a green knitted cap, its crown tweaked into a point. For a beard, he’d slit open a field dressing and teased out the white cotton wadding, then tied it around his chin. She laughed aloud because it was the worst Sinterklaas costume she’d ever seen. He cradled a number of packages in his arms.
“Ho, ho, ho!” he said. “Merry bloody Christmas! Now, feed that stove, Miss Maartens. We’re starving.”
During the night before Christmas Eve, winter took hold of Holland and clenched its fist. All slow water froze, and the naked trees groaned beneath their sudden heavy coats of ice. Marijke turned in her sleep, pressing herself against Tamar’s back, shaping the angle of her legs to match his, seeking his warmth. When she opened her eyes, she saw fernlike growths of thick frost on the inside of the window.
Later, when she and Tamar went out into the yard, the mud had solidified into frost-capped peaks and ripples that looked like mountain ranges seen from the cockpit of an aircraft. The black barbs of the hawthorn hedge were encased in melted glass. The world had become so silent and brittle that it seemed dangerous to speak. Then the chickens exploded from under the barn door, gabbling their outrage at this turn of events.
Tamar was happy. Incredible riches had fallen from the sky because he had summoned them. There had been every chance that he would die trying to gather them in, but he was alive and had returned to where his life was. This new harshness of the weather would make his work more difficult, but with any luck it would hamper the German forces even more. They were pitiless and heavily armoured, but they were far from home and must by now smell defeat on the freezing air, like dinosaurs at the beginning of the ice age. He took the saw and the axe and attacked the heap of stumps and branches stacked to dry in the big barn. When he heaved the loaded wheelbarrow over to the kitchen, it jolted so heavily on the frozen ground that his teeth clacked.
Later in the morning, Marijke called him, urgently. She had already set off along the track to meet her grandmother. The old woman was a dark humped shape supporting itself on a staff; she looked like a tragic character from an ancient tale. She moved slowly and cautiously over the frozen ground. When they reached her and took her arms, she nodded her head but was too exhausted to smile. Tamar saw that where her grey hair was not covered by the woollen scarf it was filmed with ice and resembled twists of steel. She had obviously fallen at least once; the skirts of her coat were soiled down one side. He was awed by her obstinate strength, her endurance.
When they got her int
o the kitchen, she was too cold to sit. She leaned with her arms braced on the stove rail, glassy-eyed and breathing like an exhausted swimmer. After a while Tamar was able to lift the old haversack from her back and manoeuvre her into the armchair. Marijke made tea and kneeled in front of her grandmother.
“It’s real tea, Oma, with sugar. Christiaan got it for us, and lots of other things too. We’re going to be all right now. Really.”
The old woman took the cup. Her fingertips were white. She looked over at Tamar. There was a blankness in her eyes, almost a lack of recognition, that disturbed him.
Marijke said, “Oma, how are things at Loenen? How are Greet and the baby?”
Julia stared into her cup, then slowly shook her head.
Dart had become so unused to good feelings that he’d acquired the habit of examining them like a careful shopkeeper who’d been paid with a big banknote. Test the paper between the fingers. Hold it up to the light. Squint at the customer, looking for the slightest flicker of dishonesty. But on this bitterly cold Christmas Eve afternoon, the happiness was genuine.
He had survived the dreadful night of the supply drop. It had probably been a mistake to take the last of the Benzedrine before they set out, because his nerves had fizzed and popped all night like a severed power cable on a wet road. On the other hand, he had not experienced a single moment of tiredness or loss of concentration. And the two bottles of pills he’d requested had been sent, to his enormous relief. Agatha had interpreted his drug-sparked chatter as an attempt to put her at her ease. At the asylum they’d staggered out of the heavily laden ambulance, and she’d embraced and kissed him, which was startling. When they’d carried in the sacks of flour and milk powder, the cans of meat and treacle and jam, the coffee, tea, sugar, he’d been greeted like a hero. In the shadowy kitchen the nuns had fluttered and pounced like magpies at a road-killed rabbit.
But all of this counted for nothing compared with their arrival at Sanctuary Farm. Marijke had been standing there to greet them, and it had taken all his self-control not to cry out with joy. She’d been dressed in rough working clothes — trousers tucked into heavy boots, a frayed woollen jacket, a dark scarf up to her chin — which had made the lovely symmetry of her face more striking than ever. The Sten gun slung over her shoulder should have been grotesquely out of place. Instead it made her seem both fragile and unconquerable. He would have died to protect her. He’d stumbled out of the ambulance and she’d smiled at him. How to describe that smile? It was shy, almost, and not just private. Secretive. Then she had been distracted by Tamar’s stupid clowning, and the moment had passed. She had embraced them all in turn, saving Dart until last. She’d touched his face and said, “You need a shave.” When the time had come for him to leave, she’d groaned sympathetically as his attempts to crank-start the damned ambulance failed; then when it did fire, she’d jumped up and down and clapped her hands in a wonderfully childlike display of delight.
Now, trudging and slithering along the road back to the farm, those hoarded moments of intimacy warmed Dart more than any amount of Ruud’s cognac. It was possible to ride the bike for only short distances; in many places the broken road had vanished beneath sheets of muddy ice that creaked and moaned beneath his feet. The air was so cold that when he breathed through his mouth he felt an electrical pain in his teeth. He had shaved, twice, and his face felt peeled. At the burnt-out chapel he propped the bike and ran on the spot until he could feel his feet. His shoes sent ringing echoes into the distance. When he got back on the bike, the metal was so cold to his touch that it seemed to burn.
He was halfway there.
Tamar had been busy. He’d taken a billhook up onto the heath and cut down a small spruce. In the big barn he’d found a rusting oil drum and carried it into the kitchen. He brought in the tree, propped it upright in the oil drum, and packed it around with sand and stones until it stood firm. When that was done, he and Marijke herded the chickens into one of the stalls in the little barn. The birds were reluctant and bad-tempered, huffed up against the cold. They formed a suspicious huddle in the corner of the stall, emitting slow, dry gargles. Marijke pointed out the oldest of the hens. Tamar moved in slowly, gently shunting the other birds out of the way with his feet. When he had the old hen penned in the corner, he stooped quickly and thrust her inside his jacket under his left arm. He soothed her by running his thumb and forefinger down her neck and over her shoulders, and when she had become calm he killed her with a quick twist and pull that separated the vertebrae of her neck just below the skull. He hugged her until the reflex spasms finished. While he plucked and gutted the bird, Marijke went back inside the house and rummaged in the cupboard under the stairs until she found the box of decorations for the Christmas tree.
When Dart, perished to the bones, gave his usual knock at the farmhouse door, no one answered. Knowing he was expected and aching with anticipation, he fumbled at the latch with his numb claws. The door wasn’t locked, and he stumbled forward into the dim and silent hall. There was a movement and an increase in light: he looked up, and she was descending the stairs, holding the tall oil lamp. She stopped when she saw him, four steps from the bottom. She was wearing a green belted dress and a pale cardigan patterned with small dark flowers. It was the first time he had seen her in feminine clothes. Her deep black eyes each reflected a tiny flame. Her hair was loose and a little tousled, as if she had hurried to greet him before she’d finished brushing it. His desire to touch her was so great that before he could stop himself he had held his stiffened hands out towards her. She drew in her breath, a little gasp, and stared at them.
“I . . .” He could not speak the next words. Instead he looked down at his hands and said, “I am so cold.”
She came down to him then. “Dear God, Ernst, you must be frozen. Come into the kitchen.”
She moved past him. She was, amazingly, wearing perfume: a warm flowery animal scent that hung almost visible on the cold air.
He followed her and then stopped, his senses overwhelmed, just inside the kitchen door. He had been greedily inhaling Marijke’s scent, but now this was obliterated by rich aromas of cooking. The warm air in the room was laden with the smells of meat, of baking apples, of bread, and something he didn’t recognize — something spiced and sweet. A delicious spasm of hunger went through him, and he had to swallow saliva hurriedly so as not to dribble like a child. The table was laid with the Maartenses’ best china, each piece rimmed with a narrow band of gold glaze as delicate as lace. At the centre of the table two candles burned in a branched holder wreathed in holly, the berry clusters brighter than droplets of blood. The tree stood at the far end of the room on a chest covered with an old Turkish rug. Its branches were hung with slender twists of glass, like icicles, and frosted red and amber globes that glowed with blurred, reflected flames. To Dart’s eyes, still tearful from the cold, the room seemed filled with threads of light like drifting cobwebs spun from gold.
Marijke stood the lamp on the dresser and lifted her arms in a gesture that was almost apologetic. “Happy Christmas, Ernst.” She said it in a way that suggested she had done all this only for him, and it was inadequate.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “You . . . This is all so beautiful. Thank you for inviting me.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. You had to be here. Take your coat off. Come to the stove and warm yourself up.”
They stood side by side. She lifted the lid from the bigger pan. “We’re having a sort of British Christmas dinner. I think the chicken should be roasted, but it was an old bird and would have been too tough. So we’re stewing it with vegetables and some herbs from the garden. Does that sound all right? It looks all right, I think. It’s been cooking for hours.”
She spoke more quickly than he was used to. It occurred to him that she might be as nervous as he was.
“It smells incredible,” he said.
“Good. And in here, look, is this thing that we found in the supply drop.”
; She lifted the other lid, releasing a cloud of vapour. Dart peered in and saw something the size of a baby’s head wrapped in white cloth.
“Apparently it’s a traditional English Christmas pudding. Christiaan says you’re supposed to steam it. For ages and ages. It smells nice, though, doesn’t it? I think it’s got some kind of alcohol in it.”
“Ah. Yes. Rum, perhaps. I’ve had it before. The English have something they call custard with it. Yellow.”
All of a sudden the heat and the smell of food and her irresistible nearness and the effort of talking made him so giddy that he thought he might black out, or fall against her and hold her. He went to the table and leaned heavily on it.
She turned and looked at him. “Ernst? Are you all right? You look terribly pale.”
He made a huge effort to repel the darkness swarming into the edges of his vision. “I’m fine. Just the change in temperature, I think.” He turned a chair so that it faced her and sat down.
“Would you like coffee? There was some in the drop.”
“Yes, thank you. Coffee would be good. Christiaan is here?”
“Yes, of course. He is still upstairs.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “With Oma,” she added quickly. “She’s not well.”
Oma. He had forgotten she existed. Not good. His world was melting, spilling over the limits of his concentration.
“Your grandmother’s sick? What’s wrong with her?”
She kept her back to him, fussing with the coffeepot, moving things on the stove.
“Exhaustion, mainly. She’s been in Loenen, with her cousin’s family. She came back yesterday and had to walk almost all the way. She should have stayed there, I told her. But there was a child born who died and she thought she shouldn’t. She’s caught a chill, but I think she’ll be well enough to have dinner with us.”
Then the door opened and Tamar came in, rubbing his hands together and grinning. Dart stood and Tamar embraced him, slapping Dart’s back.
