Father glared at him. “Enough of that talk, young man. Finish up your dinner.” His gaze took in the whole table then. “All of you.”
Bep disengaged herself from Mother’s arm and went back to her place, but her glow did not diminish. Mother went back to eating silently. And Father wolfed the rest of his food and left the table.
After dinner, when Lena and Margriet were left alone to clean up, Margriet dropped the dishtowel suddenly and leaned her head against the wall. Lena stared at her.
“Are you sick?” she asked.
Margriet ground out her response through tears. “No, I’m not sick,” she said. “I’m tired. Tired of this house. These people. I’m nineteen years old. I’m finished school. I should be off living my life, not starving slowly in this house, with them …” she trailed off.
“But you … you …” Lena was too stunned to form a reply.
“And now there’s going to be a baby.” Margriet picked up the dishtowel again and dried fiercely, stacking the plates together violently.
Lena flinched at each clank.
After that, it was as if Mother’s pregnancy had never been. Even Bep seemed to realize that she shouldn’t mention it if Father was around. Father was angry at Mother for getting pregnant. Lena had realized that immediately. He had forced her to announce it as some sort of punishment, but now he didn’t want to hear about it.
The news had frightened Lena. Babies were so vulnerable. And Mother seemed so weak and tired.
And it had unsettled her. She was almost seventeen—almost a woman herself—but she didn’t know how babies were made, or how they got out of their mothers and into the world. She had a vague idea, but it all seemed so dreadful and unlikely that she had tried not to think about it until now.
September’s midway point came and went.
On September 17, the British and the Americans failed once again to penetrate the Netherlands north of the Rhine. Maastricht, the southeasternmost portion of the country, had been liberated the week before. Piet vibrated with excitement as he shook Lena awake and pestered her until she joined him outside to watch the planes pass overhead. Dozens and dozens of them crossed from west to east, their heavy hum almost drowning out his cries to her to “Look, look!” All up and down the street, people rushed outside. Piet shouted his report to her of an upcoming battle at Arnhem, something to do with bridging the Rhine.
Planes or no planes, Lena’s doubts were a match for her brother’s excitement, for the crowd’s. She planned never again to have her hopes dashed as they had been two weeks before. The news that spread in the latter days of September confirmed her doubts. The battle at Arnhem had been a rather spectacular failure, apparently. She watched her brother’s disappointment and congratulated herself on her own cynicism. This time it had kept her safe.
Now, Piet said, the Dutch leaders had issued orders from the safety of London, to which they had retreated four years earlier, when the Netherlands was first occupied. (“Cowards,” Father had said at the time.) Dutch railway workers were to go on strike. They were no longer to help the enemy by operating the trains. That meant thousands of railway workers would have to go into hiding.
Lena felt the emptiness in her own eyes as her brother rattled on. What did she care about railway strikes? What did she care about anything, for that matter?
Annoyance flushed through her; she looked at Piet and slowly, deliberately, raised her shoulders and let them drop.
Piet’s eyes flashed at her.
“We’ll never be free if everyone just gives in like that!” he said, almost shouting.
“Like what?” Lena said.
He opened his mouth but seemed to find no words. After that, he was absent even more, if that was possible. He spent his time talking or running errands with that man, Meneer Walstra, Lena knew, or running errands for him. He didn’t bother to tell Lena for days that in response to the strike of the railway workers, the Nazis had shut down all transportation in the country, including shipping.
When he did tell her, he was brusque about it. “Prepare to be hungry,” he finished, and turned away.
The rest of the family was more and more absent as well, even when they were right there in the house.
Margriet was kept busy lining up for less and less food, ordering Lena around in the kitchen and cleaning everywhere else. She was lucky to bring home any food at all. It turned out that contrary to what Piet had said, food in the country could help those in the city, and people were starting to go in search of it, so many people that the dangerous trips got a name: hunger journeys. “Journeys,” Margriet scoffed when she heard of it. “Begging, I’d call it.” And she got up earlier and earlier to be closer to the front of the endless lines.
Piet often didn’t come home until hours after school was dismissed, using the house just for eating and sleeping. Father shouted at him sometimes about homework, but Piet did not appear to be bothered by a bit of shouting.
As her belly began to jut out from her shrinking body, Mother fussed over ration books and guilders and gave orders that were mostly ignored.
Father did mysterious things at his desk, or went on unexplained outings. Pretending to work, Lena thought. She had long ago stopped worrying that Father would be picked up by the SS and shipped off to Germany. He was over the age limit, for one thing. She knew of other men too old and boys too young who were taken despite their ages, but Father somehow seemed immune.
She had also stopped wondering how he managed to bring home money. Before the war he had been some sort of businessman, though exactly what he did had always been a bit unclear. Since the start of the war, money had become scarcer and scarcer, but he still managed to get his hands on some. Lena suspected him of involvement with the black market. But whatever he was up to, he wasn’t very good at it, judging by the worry lines that sprouted and spread on Mother’s face.
Bep was different from the rest of the family. She was more present than ever, begging for help on homework from her first year of school, or more often, idle and underfoot, as the colder weather made the courtyard uncomfortable and no one made time to spend with her. Shooing her away, Lena sometimes felt stirrings of guilt or moments of compassion, but she went right on shooing.
As for Lena herself, she kept busy with school, with following orders from her parents and her older sister, mostly in the kitchen, and stealing what time she could to disappear into a corner and read. Regularly, she got shouted at when her corner turned out to be next on Margriet’s “to clean” list.
Books were not easy to come by, so she was reduced to rereading, but this still gave her imagination other worlds to occupy. Lately, it had been romance and adventure in Paris; a young man had fallen in love with her, and she was resisting his attentions, which grew stronger with her efforts. He wrote her letters that made her whole body turn liquid, but she would not give in. Ever!
CHAPTER THREE
“Lena!”
She looked up, startled, met Margriet’s eyes and jumped to her feet to put a meal on the table, once again torn from the world in the pages of her book.
Dinnertime again.
Lena found it more and more difficult to be bothered with the tasks that were required of her. The war kept shoving itself in her way, insisting somehow that she pay attention. Putting supper on the table and keeping up in school just didn’t seem to matter much. She tried to escape into her books, which she now knew almost by heart; she tried to let dinner conversation float over her; she tried to stay out of Piet’s way, to avoid his latest news.
But today, the Germans had burned the port of Amsterdam, part of their retaliation for the ongoing railway strike. The Bergs had all seen the clouds of black smoke just hours before, and despite Father’s insistence that Piet stay in the house, he had rushed off on foot to see the damage for himself.
Now, at the dinner table, he was so wound up he could not swallow. “Father, you should have seen it,” he said, his voice high pitched, his face red. “The
y’re destroying everything. Our whole infrastructure.”
Lena stared. Infrastructure? Since when had Piet talked like that?
“The wharfs were burnt, and the water was black with oil and soot. A ship was on its side, half submerged. The cranes were twisted metal. What do they expect us to do once this war’s over?” He stopped then, as if waiting for a response. “Father?”
But Father shovelled in bite after bite, his silence as solid as a wall.
Mother huffed a breath. “Eat your supper before it gets cold, Piet,” she said. “You’re too young to involve yourself with such things.”
Lena simply refused to listen. With everyone’s bowls empty, she stood to clear the table and wash the dishes, taking no pleasure in the warm water. Then she fetched her math book out of her bag. It was an ancient object, its pages yellowed and threatening to tear under the slightest touch. She sat at the kitchen table, turned the delicate pages to find her place and sank into a reverie.
Lena had never excelled at school, and math had always been her worst subject, until Sarah Cohen came along. Sarah had a head for numbers, and she remained calm even when Lena cried out in frustration.
Lena stared at her math book. Sarah hadn’t been at school for a long, long time.
She and Sarah had been best friends for just over a year when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. They were nearing the end of the first class of high school. School was cancelled for several days, and the two girls had not seen each other. When they came together again, Lena was breathless in anticipation of discussing the events of the previous days. Sarah’s smile was small that day, her responses brief. After school, Lena linked her arm through her friend’s, eager to enter the warm, busy hub that was Sarah’s home, but Sarah disengaged herself.
“I have to go,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And that was all.
Lena had watched her walk away, her fear at this seeming abandonment greater than any fear she had felt at reports of German parachutists and bombers. The Nazi threat simply did not feel real to her. Sarah’s behaviour did.
In time, however, things seemed to get back to normal between the two girls. Sarah invited Lena to her house again, and it was almost as nice as before. The first class ended. Amsterdam changed: more and more soldiers in the streets, not quite as much to buy in the stores, nighttime blackouts to adjust to and cope with. For Lena, the summer of 1940 was not as idyllic as the summer of 1939 had been, but she still loved her afternoons, after her chores were done, at Sarah’s house or in Vondelpark. The two girls swam at a nearby pool several times a week. They cycled everywhere together, and Lena, at least, paid little attention to the war. Surely it would be over soon.
Then came the second class. The war continued, but it still felt remote to Lena. Occasionally, Sarah seemed different somehow, and she wasn’t always willing to have Lena over to her house, but they still had fun together. Lena still shared all her secrets. Well, all her secrets except for one: Father. Father did not say much to her about her Jewish friend, but on several occasions, he had insisted she stay home when she planned to go out. And once he said to her, “No good will come of this friendship. That girl’s family is using you, a good Christian Dutch girl.” Lena had no idea what he meant, only that it was wrong and it made her sick. How did he even know that she and Sarah were still friends?
Then, one night at the dinner table early in the new year, the cold outside bitter, the snow deep, Father spoke again. “They all have to register.”
Lena looked over at him.
“The Jews,” he said. “Those friends of yours will have to register. And if they are here illegally, they’ll be sent back to Germany, where they belong.” He took another bite of chicken, not bothering to close his mouth as he chewed.
Lena saw her mother stiffen. Her look across the table was almost reproachful, as if she did not approve of her husband’s attitude. Still, not a word did she speak.
Lena asked Sarah about the registration the next day, but Sarah wouldn’t meet her eyes, and afterward, Lena realized that she hadn’t answered, not really. Lena never knew whether the Cohens registered or not, though she thought they must have. She heard about the arrests of Jews in February and arrived at school in a terror the next day, afraid that Sarah’s father and her father’s cousin were among the men taken. But Sarah gave her head a sharp shake when Lena asked her about it. Mr. Cohen, it seemed, was still free, at least for the moment.
All that following summer, Lena had felt the friendship slipping away. She had hoped that the new school year would help them to renew their bond, but when they started the third class in September, Sarah still seemed distant.
One afternoon, Lena gathered her courage and suggested a walk to the park after school. Relief flooded her when Sarah agreed. Maybe now everything would be just as it was.
The day was balmy, and Sarah seemed almost cheerful. The two girls walked arm in arm, swinging along, forcing others—for the sidewalks were busy that day—to move aside. There was the park entrance ahead, visible well before they got there. The trees, towering in full leaf above the low stone wall, were just starting to turn colour. The grass was a beckoning carpet. Lena saw the white swoop of swans’ necks on the lake, and she was sure that ducks would be waddling in the grass and paddling in the water. She wished she had something to feed them. Lena loved ducks and swans.
Then she noticed a small group of people near the entrance to the park. Some of the joy inside her stilled. Agitation was in the air, fear even—fear and anger. Sarah withdrew her arm and stopped, and in that moment, Lena saw two soldiers standing nearby. They looked tense, ready. Lena continued her approach. She could feel Sarah behind her and sensed her caution. The people stepped aside to let them see.
The sign was fresh; the holes in the wall and the screws were brand new, the letters crisp and black. For Jews Forbidden. When Lena collected herself enough to turn around, Sarah was gone.
Three years had gone by since that day. So much had happened since then—much worse things, even. Lena bundled her math homework back into her bag. Without Sarah’s help, she didn’t understand the questions anyway.
The next morning, she and Piet walked to school together as they always did, dropping Bep off on the way, but they didn’t speak to each other. Those walks had been more and more silent lately, once they left their chatty little sister behind.
They passed several groups of soldiers, one of them harassing a young couple. Lena looked the other way and mumbled the prayer that had become habit for her: “Please let this war end before the baby comes.”
She had little faith in her prayers.
The school looked battered—holes in the pavement in front not mended, several of the trees in the yard reduced to stumps—but boys and girls were streaming through the big front doors as they had for decades. Lena and Piet joined the throngs and were immediately parted from each other. Lena trudged up the stairs to her first class of the day.
The bell rang just as she took her seat at the back, but several others darted in after her. At the front of the room stood the dreaded Juffrouw Westenberg.
“Now,” Juffrouw said, “you are in school. It is two minutes past nine, so you three”—she pointed out three boys, one by one—“are late.” And she took her attendance clipboard and marked them down.
Lena didn’t know how they dared. Juffrouw Westenberg was the most frightening teacher at the school. Lena opened her book to the first lesson and tried to look like the most studious student in the room. The novel she usually snuck open in her lap awaited her attention in her pocket.
Half an hour later, a new girl showed up.
The boys stared. The girls stared too. The new girl was skinny, bony, no hint of breasts under the threadbare blouse that hung off her, no hint of hips under the straight skirt that had to be pinned in the back to stay on. But her brows arched just so, and her lips were full and almost looked as if they bore a hint of rouge. Her hair, a shining dark brown, hun
g in heavy waves halfway down her back. Every other head of hair in the room was blond or mousy brown, and every other girl wore her hair (usually dull, lifeless and desperately in need of a wash) cut to shoulder-length or shorter and pulled back somehow, or tucked under a bit of cloth.
“I’m Sofie Vogel,” the girl announced as she strode to the back of the room, grabbed a desk and a chair from the corner and pushed them into the gap beside Lena’s desk. The boy on the other side shuffled over to make space.
Sofie was a warm, bright light in a room full of mud grey moths.
Lena forgot the lesson on her desk and the novel in her pocket. Her spine straightened. She touched the fingertips of one hand to the fingertips of the other and felt something, a flicker.
“Hi, I’m Sofie.”
Lena’s lips twitched into a small smile. She raised her eyes and turned her head. “And you are …?”
Lena jumped. The girl was talking to her! “Me? I’m, ah … I’m Lena,” she said.
The boy who had moved aside, Willem, leaned over and spoke in a stage whisper.
“Don’t bother with her. She’s some sort of halfwit,” he whispered. “I’m Willem. I’m who you need to know around here.”
Sofie arched a brow a little higher, but she did not turn her eyes away from Lena’s.
“Is that so?” she said. “Thank you for telling me.”
For a moment, Willem stayed still. Then he sat back in his chair.
“Boys and girls,” Juffrouw said, “I would like you to join me in welcoming Sofie Vogel to our class. She is, I understand, quite a star at Latin.”
Sofie grinned and shook her head. “Never could see the point of learning dead languages,” she said lightly.
“That is not the report I have. There will be no hiding of lights under bushels in my classroom.”
“Well, then, let it shine!” Sofie said, and Lena wondered if she might launch into Latin on the spot.
Hunger Journeys Page 3
