CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The days that followed passed more slowly than Lena, even after five years of war, could have ever imagined. Her punishment was a week indoors. She was not to set foot outside for any reason whatsoever.
That it should be this particular week! Even from indoors, she could sense the buzz that was building in the streets; the liberators were on their way, people said, and now she had reason to believe it might be true. Seven months earlier, she had carried marigolds in her arms, joined the throngs at the entrance to her nation’s greatest city and gone home disappointed. She was pretty sure that this time things would be different. Perhaps her dangerous journey of Monday night was helping somehow; surely the burden she had carried had made its way into the proper hands.
The hours and minutes crept by. Bennie begged to go outside to play. It was spring and he was just old enough to enjoy it, but Lena could not take him out. Instead, she moped around the house and snapped at him when he whined.
Any skills in the kitchen that Lena had acquired slipped away from her that week, and everyone complained about the food. Vrouw Wijman shouted at her about grime in the kitchen, and Sofie rushed to do what Lena failed to. On the third occasion, she stood, hands at her sides, as Vrouw Wijman held out the big cast-iron pot and pointed to crusty bits left over after Lena had supposedly scrubbed it.
“Let me,” Sofie said, and she lifted the heavy pot and carried it back to the sink.
Lena’s teeth ground together. “I will do it myself,” she said, and she stepped forward and shoved Sofie aside bodily.
“Lena!” Sofie said. Her face looked soft, open. Lena almost felt a qualm.
Then fingers dug into her arm and she was yanked aside. “No,” Vrouw Wijman said, “you will not. If you cannot get it right the first time, you have no right to step in now.”
After that, the two girls did not speak to each other again for some time—not, in fact, until it was almost too late.
On Wednesday, April 4, news tore through Almelo. The 4th Canadian Armoured Division was south of the city, fighting to cross bridges into town. German machine-gunners and snipers were resisting. By the afternoon, fighting was going on right in the market square. Wijman was in and out all day gathering news, while the rest of them huddled in the kitchen, fear and hope and excitement keeping them all on edge.
By nightfall, the situation was not resolved, and neither Annie nor Lena slept much, tossing and turning, peeking out past the blackout paper into the blackness of the street and whispering to each other.
Lena felt twinges of guilt about Sofie, all alone in her tiny bed downstairs, but she squelched them. She was tired of worrying about Sofie, of being shown up by Sofie. She was tired of feeling guilty.
Annie and Lena both woke up early. It was Thursday, but there were no ration cards to deliver today. Today was a day for much larger events.
Lena lay in bed, eyes closed. Gradually, she grew aware of something going on, of something in the air, a stir. At first, when she focused her mind and tried to detect what it was that had attracted her attention, she heard nothing. But as she sustained her focus, listening with her whole being, sounds set themselves apart. Something was happening in the streets. Something new, not the battle of yesterday.
“Annie,” she breathed, and she found that Annie, next to her, was rigid, listening too. The two girls slipped out of bed, padded downstairs and entered the unused shop. There was no blackout paper in the shop window, as the room was never lit at night.
The first light of day had filtered down to the streets, a pale and colourless light that made the scene into something eerie, the figures into ghosts, not people. Men—many, many men—were walking by the Wijmans’ door. They were soldiers, but they were not marching. They were disordered, dreary, rushing, some hefting bundles. A great many rode laden bicycles. Once in a while, a lucky few passed in an overburdened vehicle. They were German soldiers, and they were headed north. They were going away.
Lena had seen such an exodus once before, last September, and even though that madness had not heralded the Allies’ arrival, hope warmed her. Real hope. The Allies must be close behind, or the Germans would be going the other way, toward the closest route home. They were doing more than going away. They were fleeing.
Lena and Annie watched and watched.
“It’s over,” Lena said at last, right out loud.
Could it be true?
Moments later, Bennie trundled into the room. He gazed outside, his thumb in his mouth. Then his thumb popped out and he spoke. “Bad guys scared,” he said.
And all three of them could see that it was true.
Sofie joined them next, but she stood a little apart. Then the Wijmans. No one asked about breakfast. Not even Bennie. No one moved. They watched and they watched and they watched. And the men walked and they walked and they walked.
Then the streets were empty. Empty in a way they had not been in years. Lena felt it deeply, and she was sure the others did too.
They gathered in the kitchen after that, and Lena laid out some bread and a few remnants of cheese. Sofie laid a fire and boiled water for tea, but Vrouw Wijman took the kettle from the stove and forgot it, the empty teapot standing by. Perhaps there would be real tea soon.
Bread and cheese in hand, Wijman left the house out the back in search of his brother. The others hesitated.
Then Annie said, “Lena, let’s go out. Let’s go and see what has happened.”
“You will do no such thing,” Vrouw Wijman said. “I have no power to keep your father indoors, but the two of you will stay.”
Annie barely paused. “No, Mother,” she said. “We won’t.” Then, “Come, Lena.”
Lena looked at Vrouw Wijman and then at Sofie.
“It’s all right,” Sofie said. “I’ll stay here. Go. Go.”
So they did.
But first Lena said, “A minute. I need a minute.” She ran upstairs, her tread light, as if she were buoyed by air. In Annie’s room, she tugged a comb through her hair, an extra bit of grooming in honour of the approaching troops. She was on her way out of the room when she had a thought. She turned back and knelt beside the bed. Digging into her small suitcase and scattering her few possessions about her on the floor, she unearthed the tiny bottle of perfume, her first romantic gift, removed the lid and turned the mouth against her wrists, first one and then the other. How odd that she felt compelled to put on perfume from her German soldier to welcome the Canadian troops. Yet it felt right. Perhaps one day she would find a way to contact the man who had shepherded her across her country, who had treated her with respect when other men did not. The very first man to fall in love with her.
Back downstairs, Lena let Annie take her hand, and down the front hall they went, out the door and into the street. It was filling rapidly with people, and with the colour orange: flowers and flags. And joy. The mood was different from that mad Tuesday in September, Lena thought, because now, even if they hadn’t admitted it to themselves, they had known for days that their liberators were on their way.
Lena and Annie allowed themselves to be caught up in the press of bodies, which carried them rapidly into the square. The large open space was filling from all directions with excited people, signs of exhaustion and starvation somehow lifted from them, despite their boniness and ragged clothing. Yesterday’s fighting seemed a distant memory.
Shouts rang out in the distance, rang out and gathered volume like a snowball on a downward slope as the sound moved toward them.
The first tank had been spotted. Lena fought forward, letting go of her grip on Annie’s hand as she wriggled her way through the crowd. She had to see it. She had to. And there it was, the metal bulk rolling into view: the first tank. A man was standing on top, the first of their liberators, his legs inside, his helmet already adorned with marigolds, a grin on his unshaven face.
Lena looked around to share her joy with Annie, but Annie was not there. They had lost each other. She scanned the
crowd for a moment, but there was little chance of finding any single person among the thousands, and it was all right. They would meet up again eventually.
She was just turning back toward the tank, which had moved on a bit, and was opening her mouth to add her own cheers to the joyous shouts, when she heard a different sound, a German voice raised in fury.
She felt a lull in the happiness, a flurry of something else in the distance on the other side of the tank. She saw something fly through the air—and right in front of her, the man on the tank and everything around him exploded. Several bodies flew through the air. Where the man had stood a moment ago, a charred corpse now slumped across charred metal. And all around was screaming, wounded and dead bodies. Lena stared, her body and will separate. Nothing would tear her eyes from the smoking ruin in front of her.
Had it happened moments earlier, she would have been bleeding on the ground as well. Men and women with makeshift stretchers rushed into the mayhem. Almost without knowing she was doing it, Lena stepped forward and bent over a woman who lay on her side, clutching her knees up to her chest, but she was pushed aside by others, and she backed away a few steps and stopped.
And as Lena stood, frozen, the screams of fear and pain subsided, and the crowd’s joyful noise turned to rage. She sensed rather than saw the scuffle on the far side of the tank. She heard a single gunshot.
The lone German soldier who had thrown the grenade must be dead.
After that, Lena was surprised to see how quickly the crowd moved on, despite the burnt-out tank and the wounded and dead in their midst. The crowd surged around the blackened tank, seeking the liberators, and Lena surged right along with it, although she wished she had Annie or Sofie at her side, and the sickness did not leave her for a long, long time. It was blended with fear. She sensed that the attack had set the people on edge, brought out in them a large measure of fury to temper their joy. They could turn into a mob in a moment.
But another tank arrived, and then another. Tank after tank of Canadians, making their way toward her. The mood of the crowd shifted back to joy, and a lightness entered Lena’s step. This was freedom. Five years of war and she had just witnessed her first violence, her first death. And now she was walking forward, celebration pushing out what she had just seen. The images would return, over and over again, for the rest of Lena’s life. But for now the war was over. The Canadians had come!
Soldiers walked alongside the tanks, filthy and exhausted, but jubilant. One, a man barely older than she was, with his hair hanging in his face and a scrubby beard trying to exert itself on his chin, grinned at her. Lena grinned back. Next thing she knew, he had stepped away from the tank and taken her hands in his. She found herself spun round in a dance for two, the first of her life.
“You are free!” he said in English. “And very pretty,” he added.
Lena laughed into his face, pushing what she had recently witnessed out of her mind. “We are free,” she exclaimed in English as well, “thanks to you!”
She thought of Sofie. Sofie would not stop at dancing: she would be kissing them too!
Then Albert entered her mind, unbidden. These men had arrived to free her from the likes of Albert, but shouldn’t the first dance of her life have been with him?
Lena heard singing and shouts and the roar of the tanks. The air was fresh and cool, but not cold. Many of the soldiers had orange flowers woven into the netting on their helmets. The dreary, war-worn town had sprung to life. Joy filled the air and joy spilled through Lena’s body.
How she would have loved to share this with Sofie! Perhaps she would make her way back to the house and share the news. Maybe Sofie could even sneak out. After all, no one would know her in this crowd. Surely she had no need to stay hidden now that they were free!
Then a different kind of shout filtered through to Lena. Someone was screaming. More than someone. “Whores! Moffen meiden!”
Lena turned and stared.
Two men and a woman were up on some sort of a stage, right in the centre of the market square. And they had a girl up there, a girl who had been stripped down to her grey, drooping underwear. Lena saw the girl try to wrap herself in her own arms, but two men grabbed them and spread them wide. Three other young women huddled miserably behind her.
Lena’s stomach lurched. One of the men was Meneer Klaassen. Then her own hands flew to her face.
The girl was Sofie.
Meneer Klaassen was spitting in her face and brandishing something in his hand. Nothing in her head but horror, Lena fought her way forward through the crowd.
“Meneer Klaassen,” she cried, “what are you doing? We’re free!”
He didn’t even turn. But his wife did. “No thanks to sluts like this one,” she said, speaking not just to Lena but to the growing crowd, who jeered in confirmation of her words. “We took her in and she was off with the Nazis. Letting them in between her legs in exchange for this and that. Look at her.” And she pinched the pale bare flesh at Sofie’s waist. “She’s grown fatter. If whores like this had their way, Hitler would rule the world, and Holland would be under water.”
Lena stared up at them, unable to take in what she was hearing. Sofie bent her head, and their eyes met. After less than a moment, Lena wrenched her gaze away; the mixture of humiliation and terror in Sofie’s face was too much for her.
Something fell to the ground at Sofie’s feet. Lena stared. It was hair. A big chunk of dark brown hair. Another chunk fell. Meneer Klaassen was shaving Sofie’s head. Lena grabbed the edge of the stage. Bodies pressed against her from behind. They reeked of sweat. Sweat and hate, she thought, and her stomach turned over again. Lena tried to turn her head away from everyone, and she vomited a thin stream of yellow bile onto the edge of the stage. Through all the jeers, the insults, the distant music, she could hear Sofie crying quietly—not resisting, not begging for mercy, not denying their accusations, just crying.
“Go slink off somewhere now. You won’t be able to hide your shame. And don’t think you’ll be back with Wijman. He’ll be done with you after today. We’ll not be keeping traitors among us here in Almelo.”
Lena looked up as Sofie stumbled to her knees. Not meeting Lena’s eyes, she slithered off the stage and dropped to the ground. Lena had her coat off and wrapped around her friend without even knowing she was doing it. She pulled off her scarf as well and put it over Sofie’s head. Sofie reached up and pulled the two ends close under her chin. Even in her misery, she wanted to cover her scalp. Lena tucked her arm round her friend and began to fight through the crowd. A few called insults as the two girls passed, but their attention was distracted by the degradation of the next woman who had somehow betrayed them.
Lena took Sofie straight to the Almelo House grounds, away from the crowds, where they could sit and talk. But Sofie wanted to talk about only one thing: Uli. “I know he’ll come for me,” she said, her voice barely audible through her tears. She looked up. “And what about Albert? Don’t you believe he’ll come for you?”
“I don’t want him to,” Lena said. “If he does, I want to be far away. And you should too.”
“I want to wait.”
“How are you going to wait? They won’t have you here. Where will you live?”
Sofie crumpled again, sobbing, her scarf slipping to reveal the ugly stubble that covered her scalp.
For a long time, Lena sat and watched her cry. As she watched, she thought about the charred corpse in the tank, the smiling man that he had been, and the dead and wounded on the ground. She thought about the stage, the miserable women and the nastiness of the crowd. And she thought about Albert, raising a scented wrist to her nostrils. Did she want him to come for her?
Then all of it, every bit, was swept away, and Sarah was there, with her in her mind. What would liberation mean for her? Lena’s shoulders sank. A thick sticky darkness filled her chest. Sarah had been gone for years. Lena was almost certain that she was dead. And that was past imagining.
Determi
ned, she swallowed, straightened her shoulders and blinked, bringing herself back to the patch of grass and her weeping friend.
“Sofie,” she said, “why did you go out? Why didn’t you stay in the house?”
“I didn’t go out,” she said through her tears. “They took me. The Klaassens. They came for me. And Vrouw Wijman let them.”
Lena had to do a lot more thinking after that. Her plan, weak though it was, had been all she had. She had planned to take Sofie back to the Wijmans’ and beg for their mercy. Now she knew: there would be no mercy. None at all.
In the end, she took Sofie to the only hiding place she could think of: the home of the cow. It took a little doing to remember the way, but at last they were on the path down the side of the house, the shed door ajar in front of them. Lena hoped that the shed had remained unused since she and Wijman had taken the cow away to her fate, and her hopes were realized. She pushed on the heavy wooden door until it opened far enough to admit them, and the two girls stepped inside.
The reek of old manure was almost worse than the fresh, ripe smell had been, and no comforting animal warmth welcomed them, but an abandoned shed was a safe shed, and Lena was relieved.
A search turned up a tattered horse blanket on a hook on the back wall and a bit of fresh straw in a corner. “Back to sleeping in straw,” Sofie said, and Lena noted the attempt at humour. A good sign.
“I’ll bring you another blanket,” Lena said, “and food and water.”
“How long must I stay here?” Sofie asked, her voice small.
Lena looked at her. “Until the war is over,” she said shortly.
“But it is over now,” Sofie said.
“Only here,” Lena said. “Not everywhere.” And she walked out of the shed.
How long would it take, she wondered, for all of the Netherlands to be free? How long before they could leave this place and go back home to Amsterdam? However long it took, that was how long Sofie would have to remain hidden. She sent off a prayer: Please let the war be over, really over, soon.
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