by Mal Peet
Dart’s voice edged a shade closer to hysteria. “You let this shitstorm happen, and now you’re telling me I can’t use the farm anymore? You’re telling me I can’t use the only safe bloody station I’ve got? No, no! You can’t do that. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Dart! Calm down, for God’s sake. I know the risks you run. I do everything I can to protect you.”
“Everything except let me use the only place I feel safe!”
Tamar wanted to reach out and hold him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Look,” he said, “you and me, we always knew the risks we were running. You said last night that you felt you were living on borrowed time. I feel the same way. But . . . but I have to think about Marijke. I can’t keep putting her at risk. It’s not . . . fair.”
It was a feeble word. Childish. It brought an ugly smile to Dart’s face.
“Fair, huh? All right, Commandant. Let’s talk about what’s fair. Let’s talk about me stuck here all winter in this freezing shithole full of nutcases. Except for when I get to take a little stroll into town in order to play cat and mouse with the bloody Gestapo. Let’s talk about me in this . . . this tomb, sending your long-winded so-called reports when my fingers are so stiff with cold that I can’t even feel the bloody key.”
“Dart, I —”
“And now let’s talk about you, shall we? Where are you all this time? You’re tucked up in Marijke’s nice warm bed with a belly full of food and your hand on her —”
“Shut up. Shut up! This conversation stops, right now.”
But it didn’t.
“And you know what? She deserves better.”
“Dart, I’m warning you . . .” Tamar couldn’t finish the sentence. He was dismayed to see that Dart’s eyes were filling with tears.
“She deserves better. That’s what’s so damn well unfair. You’re a death candidate, and you know it. So am I. And she deserves something better than either of us.”
Tamar stared, finally speechless. Dart’s last three words hung in the air like smoke.
My God, Tamar thought. Oh, my God.
Oskar didn’t return from Apeldoorn until well after dark. He dismounted stiffly from the bike when he was in sight of the bungalows and flashed his torch four times, then went in.
“It looks bad,” he told them. “Seems they’ve brought men to the Apeldoorn jail from all over. Definitely from Deventer and Zwolle. A woman says she saw a truck with prisoners in the back, and one of them was her brother-in-law, and she’s sure he’s been held in Groningen for the last six months.”
Koop said, “How many? Any idea?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out. There were around fifty in Apeldoorn already, we know that. So I reckon a hundred guys, maybe more.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Willy murmured.
“What else?” Koop asked.
“Well, I got this secondhand, but, according to someone who knows a nurse at the hospital, all hell broke loose there first thing this morning. A military ambulance with motorcycle escorts came screaming in. The Germans herded all the Dutch staff into the canteen and shut them in, under guard. Then they emptied a ward and stuck a couple of heavies on the door. No one except the German doctors have been allowed in. Also, the operating theatre was in use this morning, but for what nobody knows. And, listen to this, that pig Schongarth was at the hospital twice today.”
“Rauter,” Eddy said. “Has to be.”
Koop rounded on him. “Don’t talk crap. The son of a bitch had more holes in him than a Swiss cheese. I looked at him. He was finished.”
“The driver, then,” Wim said. “Or the other guy.”
“Oh, come on.” Koop was exasperated now. “We emptied two magazines apiece into that car. We killed those bastards twice over. Must have done.”
“So what are you saying, Koop? That Schongarth went to the hospital twice and spent two hours visiting a corpse?”
Koop shrugged and turned away.
“There’s something else,” Oskar said. “Something I really don’t like the sound of. I knew I wasn’t going to get out of town before the curfew, so I went to my aunt Anna’s house for a couple of hours, to wait till it was good and dark. I was just getting ready to leave when a boy turns up. God knows how he knew I was there. Anyway, this kid lives with his grandparents right opposite the prison. He tells me that at about six o’clock, three buses — buses, mind — pulled into the yard. SS men driving them. They parked the buses up and disappeared. That’s it.”
A lengthy silence.
Eventually Willy said, “A hundred men. Three buses. Is anyone thinking what I’m thinking?”
“They wouldn’t, would they?” Eddy said. “Not all of them.”
“Hey,” Koop said. “What are you on about? If they were seriously thinking about shooting everyone in the prison, why the buses? They’d do it in the yard. They’d round up half the town and make them watch. No, it’s not that. Anyway, a hundred guys or more? I don’t think so. It’s going to be something else.”
“I’ll tell you why the buses,” Willy said. “They’re going to take them down to where we shot Rauter. That’s where they’ll do it. And you know it.” He stood up. “They’ll do it tomorrow. That’s why they’ve brought the buses there tonight. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going outside.”
“What for?” That was Koop.
“I’m going to either throw up or pray. Probably both.”
Willy was halfway to the back door when Koop called his name.
“Willy? Instead of whingeing to God, why don’t you do something useful?”
“Like what?”
“Go get the Bren.”
“What?”
“Go get the Bren gun. I reckon you may be right about tomorrow. But I’m not going to sit here wringing my hands while it happens. And nor are you.”
Schongarth’s orderly woke him, cautiously, at six forty-five for breakfast. Coffee, brandy, a sweet pastry, and the death list. Blearily Schongarth added the numbers up three times, getting three different results. But since each one was more than two hundred and forty-three he didn’t give a damn. He’d done it. He thanked God and tipped the brandy into his coffee.
While it was still dark, a hundred and fifty men from Rauter’s security forces began arriving at the lonely stretch of road near De Woeste Hoeve. They sealed off the area and posted guards at the inn and at the few cottages in the vicinity. They set up checkpoints on the road, north and south. Then they waited, chilled by the damp morning air. At a quarter to eight the three buses, along with two trucks, arrived from Apeldoorn. These contained a total of one hundred and sixteen captives, all of whom knew what was going to be done to them.
At almost the same time, the Amsterdam candidates were shot to death in the garden of a tea shop close to the Amstel River. There had been a short delay while members of the security police used their fists and rifle butts to assemble a satisfactory number of spectators.
Simultaneously, but without the benefit of spectators, the Amersfoort prisoners died on the rifle range outside the camp. Munt’s hastily assembled thirty-eight men and boys were executed on the sand dunes near Scheveningen with the morning light in their eyes and their backs to the grey and level sea.
Koop’s plan, if you could call it that, was for Willy, Eddy, and himself to cycle across the heath carrying the dismantled Bren gun and two Stens. Then they’d try to take up a position overlooking the place where they’d ambushed Rauter’s car. If Willy was right about what the Germans were planning, the three of them would open fire on the execution squad. The Bren was ideal for the job. It was unlikely they’d be close enough to hit anything with the Stens, but they’d make a lot of noise. With any luck, at least some of the prisoners might escape in the mayhem that ought to result. It was crude, it was desperate, and it was terrifyingly dangerous, but no one had a better idea; doing nothing was not an option.
And at first it seemed that luck was with them. By nine o’clock they�
�d taken up a good position just east of the road without encountering a single German. But that was because by then most of the Germans had gone.
Oscar Gerbig, head of the Apeldoorn security police, had been put in charge of the executions at De Woeste Hoeve. It was a big job, and he had approached it methodically. The prisoners would be shot in five batches of twenty and one of sixteen. They would be lined up on one side of the road, with their hands tied behind their backs — to prevent embracing and so forth — and shot by a forty-strong firing squad drawn up on the opposite side. One of the benefits of this arrangement was that five of the six groups would have to walk to their deaths past the bodies of their fellow terrorists. Before giving the order to fire, Gerbig would read out the reasons for the execution. A Dutch collaborator called Slagter would translate.
Gerbig had not, however, anticipated the singing.
At five minutes to eight, he gave the signal for the first twenty prisoners to be marched up. As the bus door was pulled open and the men stumbled out, there came a chorus of song, ragged at first, but then swelling and steadying as the prisoners in the other vehicles found their voices. Gerbig recognized the tune. The condemned men were singing a hymn by Martin Luther.
“A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing . . .”
They continued singing as they were lined up to face the rifles. Gerbig had to raise his voice to make himself heard. Slagter’s translation was inaudible. Irritated, Gerbig shrugged and gave the order to fire. The echoes of the volley were quickly snuffed out by the moist air.
It took about five minutes to kill each group, since some of the men needed finishing off with pistols. Only one tried to make a run for it: that was Jan Thijssen, the national leader of the Raad van Verzet, the Council of Resistance. He was easily retrieved. Weakened by torture and hunger, he managed only a few metres of the hopeless distance to the trees.
It was all done, and the hymn long silenced, by eight thirty. Gerbig got his men to arrange the bodies in an orderly line; it stretched an impressive distance. On a post at the head of the row, Gerbig had a notice put up: THIS IS WHAT WE DO WITH TERRORISTS AND SABOTEURS. He left a squad of men with the bodies, and for the next hour or so they stopped all travellers along the road and forced them to read the notice and view the massacre. The display was still taking place when Koop and his companions slithered on their bellies to the edge of the tree cover and gazed at the road.
None of them was able to speak for some time. Then, muttering something the others couldn’t make out, Koop took out his binoculars. He tracked slowly along the line of corpses, counting aloud, pausing occasionally to utter a string of obscenities. He’d got to forty-something when Eddy lowered his face into his hands and began to moan. Without taking his eyes from the road, Willy said softly, “May God forgive us. But I don’t think He will.” Then he rolled over onto his side, away from the others, and curled up like a child seeking sleep. But he turned his head fast enough when he heard the familiar sound of a Sten gun being cocked.
“Tamar! What —”
He looked so bad that Willy clammed up. An older, sicker version of the man who had fallen from the sky five months earlier. He was braced against the trunk of a silver birch, as though he could not trust his legs to support him. His Sten was aimed at a point halfway between himself and the three other men. Willy noticed that his hands were dirty, as if he had been digging in the ground with his fingers. His eyes were puffy and red-rimmed and they were fixed on Koop. When he spoke, his voice was peculiarly unemotional.
“Let me save you the trouble, de Vries. There are one hundred and sixteen bodies. And that’s not all. By now there’ll have been mass executions in The Hague and Amsterdam and Amersfoort. Is there any good reason why I don’t shoot all three of you bastards right now?”
Koop turned onto his back and leaned up on his elbows. His right hand was not far from his own gun. He stared coldly at Tamar for a couple of seconds, then said, “Yeah. You haven’t got the guts.”
Willy flinched. He tried to speak, but his mouth went dry when Tamar levelled the Sten at Koop’s chest. He closed his eyes, waiting for the stuttering bark of the gun.
Instead he heard Tamar say, “You’re wrong, as usual. It’s true I don’t have the stomach for killing that you do. But the blood of those men is all over your hands. I want to kill you. I’d really like to kill you.”
“Yeah,” Koop said, “but like I said, you haven’t got the guts.”
It seemed to Willy that Tamar became, in an instant, a different and far more dangerous animal. He moved so fast that he seemed powered by an explosive force. He covered the short distance between himself and Koop faster than Willy could blink, and kicked Koop hard between the legs. Koop’s arms flapped madly and he fell back, his open mouth sucking in air. The hoarse gasping was cut off when Tamar put one knee on Koop’s chest and slid the muzzle of his gun into Koop’s mouth.
“Tamar! Please God, don’t!” Eddy cried. His voice was high-pitched.
Willy felt his heart jump in his chest and was shocked to realize that what he felt was a sort of grim joy that punishment was here at last. He couldn’t breathe, waiting for the dreadful thing that was about to happen to Koop.
But Tamar didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he took his left hand from the gun and pulled a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. Then he removed the muzzle of the Sten from Koop’s mouth and shoved the paper in. Koop’s eyes bulged. His face was grey as ash.
Tamar said, “A list, Koop. The names of seventy-four of the people down there on the road. You’ll recognize some of them. I don’t know who the others were, not yet. When I do, I’ll be sure to tell you. I know where to find you.”
He stood up, looking very tired again. Willy stared at Koop’s wet glaring eyes in his colourless face, the list jammed in his mouth; heard him gagging on the paper. Willy thought that it would have been better if Tamar had shot him. This was worse.
“Go back to your hole,” Tamar said. “Stay there until you hear from me. You are not to get involved in further actions of any sort. These are direct orders from Amsterdam. Got that? As far as I am concerned, your group no longer exists.”
He eased the cocking lever of his Sten into the safety position and slung the weapon over his shoulder. He turned his back on the three men and retreated into the gloom beneath the pines. He had made no attempt to separate Koop or Eddy from their guns. When he was out of sight, Koop spat the list of the dead onto the ground.
When Trixie woke up, Rosa was still asleep in her eiderdown nest beside the bed, but Marijke had gone. There was birdsong and a milky light not strong enough to throw shadows. She found Marijke in the washhouse, stooped over the sink. When Marijke noticed her, she straightened up, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and forced a smile. Her eyes were watery.
“Marijke? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m fine. Just felt a bit sick.” She rested her back against the sink and sniffed, twice.
“Are you ill?”
“No, really. It’s nothing.”
Trixie stood in the doorway, arms folded, watching Marijke’s face. “How long has this been going on?”
“Oh, just a day or two. I feel fine most of the time.”
Trixie knew. She just knew; it made sense of things. “Marijke? Marijke, are you pregnant?”
Marijke looked down at the floor but couldn’t see it because her eyes were full of tears. “Yes,” she said.
Trixie walked over to Marijke and put her arms around her. After a while she said, “Why are you crying?”
Marijke said, “Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.”
Marijke rested her cheek on the other woman’s shoulder. The light from the window dazzled her through her tears.
“Yes, you do,” she said. “You’re crying because you’re thinking what I’m thinking. That this
is a terrible world to bring a child into. That this child’s father is likely to be dead before it’s born, that this child is going to grow up not knowing who its father was or what he did, and that I’m damned stupid to be pregnant.”
“Marijke, please. Don’t. I wasn’t thinking that at all.”
Marijke got control of her breathing. She went to the outside door where a towel hung on a hook and dried her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m okay. Really. I’ll make us some tea. We still have some left.”
She took the big water jug from the draining board and went to the pump. “When do you think he’ll be back?”
“Soon,” Trixie said. “Later today, certainly.”
“Perhaps.”
Trixie hardened her voice a little. “No, not perhaps. He will be back.”
“But that’s what I’m going to think every time now, isn’t it? Every time he’s not here, I’m going to think I may already have said good-bye to him. I may have already touched him for the last time. How am I going to stand it?”
Trixie didn’t offer an answer. She knew from experience that there wasn’t one.
Marijke tried to find things to do. She made several trips with the wheelbarrow, bringing into the yard the slices of the ash tree that she and Tamar had sawn two weeks ago. The task almost exhausted her. Later she walked around the yard and the buildings, touching and moving things for no reason. Behind the house she discovered that bracken had sent new growth up through the soil: nubbly green shoots, curled like the necks of violins. Or like little green sea horses. The white sky was hung with shifting grey veils.
She went to the vegetable garden, where Oma’s grave was. It had been the only place where Tamar had been able to dig deep enough into the frozen ground. She remembered the grim labour of it, Tamar stubbornly hacking the narrow pit out of the hardened soil until he was chest-deep and too exhausted to dig deeper. They had covered the mound with stones pulled from the collapsing garden wall. Now thin green plant tendrils grew among those stones. She thought about pulling them out but decided not to.
