Hunger Journeys (19 page)

It took longer than ever to fall asleep that night. And when the train rattled to a stop long before daylight, Lena could almost have wept. Without looking outside, she knew they had not reached their destination.

“The damage is quite bad,” Albert said to all of them minutes later when he swung himself into the car. “It will take some time to fix—maybe an hour, maybe more. And we are right outside Almelo. Less than an hour’s walk. Perhaps this is the time to go. We can slip away in the dark. Uli and I can rejoin the train as
it arrives in the station, departure and arrival unnoticed. What do you think?”

Lena was glad that in the darkness she did not have to meet his eyes.

She did not want to walk off into the dark with two German soldiers, but she could not bear the thought of waiting one more hour, of being stuck in that car for another minute, and she could not imagine herself and Sofie striking out through the countryside in almost pitch dark all on their own. Besides, they couldn’t exactly beat the men off with sticks.

“Perhaps,” she said.

Albert’s relief was obvious in his voice. “I have been meaning to give you these,” he said. “Where’s your hand?”

Lena reached toward him and felt him place two stiff pieces of paper into her palm. “Our identity cards,” she said, the shock like ice in her belly. “How did you get them?”

“It was not too difficult,” he said. “They were just sitting on the corner of his desk.”

Lena grasped the cards, imagining his bravery in stealing them for her and Sofie. Before he even knew them. The ice melted.

“I knew you might need them,” he added.

Lena lifted the top card to her face and peered at it. Aubrey Schulze. It was hard to imagine that it would be any use. It could well turn out to be dangerous. Still, she tucked it away. “Thank you, Albert,” she said. She would give Sofie hers at the first opportunity.

It was time to prepare to leave the train.

It was not going to be easy walking through open country in cracked shoes full of holes, but they would have to manage. At least Lena’s shoes fitted her feet—her father had come up with shoes for all of them the previous winter, from one of his mysterious
sources—but the soles were almost worn through, and the toe on the right shoe had peeled back. Long walks on the streets of Amsterdam had been difficult enough, but here the snow presented a far greater challenge.

Albert and Uli spoke together quietly when Uli and Sofie emerged blinking and dishevelled from the straw. Lena did not want to meet Sofie’s eyes, but Sofie came right to her and pulled her away from the men. “I love him, Lena, and he loves me,” she said. Even in the dark, her eyes peered out, large and red.

“You hardly know him,” Lena said. “And he—”

Sofie broke in. “I
do
know him. Just as you know Albert, even though you won’t let him touch you.” She paused. “There’s a lot of comfort in letting a man touch you, Lena. A man who cares about you.”

“You don’t know these men, Sofie,” Lena whispered, shocked at how harsh her voice was. “They … they are not good. You don’t know what they’ve done.”

A small voice in Lena’s mind tried to remind her how unaware she herself had been before she saw the engraving on the wall and heard Albert’s story, but she silenced it. Sofie should know better. That was all.

“They
are
good men, Lena. You know they are. They just happen to be on the wrong side. They can’t help it!”

Lena opened her mouth to tell her, but she could not form the words. She could not share Rachel’s death or Albert’s story about the brave man, nor did she wish to bring Sarah back into her mind’s eye. Instead, she said, “You were raised as I was. How can you play with your fate like that? Ignore everything that you were taught?”

“Oh, Lena, just for one minute think about who was doing the teaching. Are you so eager to follow your father’s rules? I’m
not playing with my fate. I am trying to survive, to snatch a little bit of hope, of warmth, right here in hell. We don’t need to wait for hell, Lena. It is all around us. And if I can find a bit of love here … well, then, I’m going to grab hold and not let go.”

“Ladies.” It was Uli. “Are you arguing? Don’t be angry with her, Lena. She needs you. Now, Albert and I have talked, and we are going to walk you to the town. It is a good distance and it is dark, and there may be men about. We will walk with you and protect you, and when we come to town, you will go on without us.”

The sun was not quite up in the east and only a bit of light had managed to dribble over the horizon when they closed the cattle-car door for the last time. Lena hoped and prayed that the next occupants would not be prisoners, that no more words would need to be scratched into the wood, no more misery contained by the wooden walls. No. Surely the next occupants would be cattle. She drew a breath of relief. Of course they would. Uli and Albert were to help load the train with cattle right here in Almelo.

With her hand above her on the wooden door, she said a few silent words of prayer for Rachel and her mother. She breathed deep and added a prayer for Sarah.

She gave Albert a curt nod, and they set off. Nothing had changed, she told herself. She was letting the men guide them because she had no choice, but it did not mean that she accepted what they had done. She thought of the snowdrops ground under her heel and wished that Albert had seen them. Then he would know.

The two girls had managed to bundle the blankets into their satchels along with their few clothes. Albert carried Lena’s, and Uli carried Sofie’s. They slipped between the cars to walk on
the side of the train away from the doors. The sergeant might not care about the two stowaways skulking off into town, but he would not take kindly to two of his men accompanying them.

The train had stopped amid fields and farmhouses, which were dreary in the early light and the harsh cold. They walked alongside the train until they were close to the front, and then they veered off across a field. The track joined another one just ahead and curved to the right, so they could rejoin it almost immediately and be out of sight of the train.

Crossing the open space was exhausting; Lena broke through the icy surface with every step and had to bite her lip to keep from crying out in frustration. After a short distance, Albert noticed and adapted his stride so she could use his footprints. But that was awkward: snow found its way inside her shoes, and accepting Albert’s assistance galled her at every step. Sofie whined, even though Uli was practically carrying her. They were going to a town where they knew no one, except maybe a certain friend of an uncle. And their only protection was from enemy soldiers whose company would soon become a curse rather than a blessing.

Baby Nynke swam into Lena’s mind, gazing up at her from a bundle of blankets in her arms. Bep joined the baby, looking at her with big, hungry, accusing eyes. Could it only be three days since Lena had slid her suitcase out from under the bed and slipped out the door? Three days since the soldier had asked to see their identity cards on the train? The journey might have been short in time, but it was long in every other way. Lena tried to imagine a package of food making its way back along the route they had come. Such a thing could not be possible.

Had she left her family to starve?

“Are you stuck?”

She looked up. Albert was standing just ahead, on the other side of the long heap of snow that lined the train track. She looked down at her feet. She must have stopped walking, she supposed.

“No,” she called. “I’m all right.” And she scrambled onward and accepted Albert’s hand to pull her over that last bit of snow. It was a relief to feel a wooden tie, solid beneath her feet. She would worry about packages of food later; for now, she let her hungry family slide from her thoughts.

The open track stretched straight before them. At first, they saw no sign of human occupation except for the track itself and a few farmhouses far off on both sides. Uli kept his arm around Sofie, and she leaned into him, even as she took the awkward steps that the spacing of the railway ties required.

Lena stayed a few paces behind, her back stiff. Albert matched his steps to hers, but at least he made no attempt to touch her.

“It might be nice to walk like that,” he said once, his eyes on the couple in front of them.

Lena had no answer for him.

He fell silent again. After about ten minutes, Lena made out a church spire and a few buildings. Was that Almelo? It didn’t look big enough.

No, Albert informed her without her having to ask the question, that was Wierden. But Almelo was not far beyond.

“Well, we can’t walk right through the centre of town with two soldiers,” Lena said, aware of her bitter tone.

“We’re not leaving you here,” Uli said, turning his head to look back at her. “It’s still a long way. Look, we can skirt the town.”

Paces ahead, a country road crossed the tracks at an angle. If they took the road off to the right, it would bypass Wierden,
and then Almelo would be straight ahead, Uli assured them. “And it’s early yet,” he went on. “No one’s about.”

No guarantee of that, Lena knew, but Sofie clung to Uli so tightly and both Albert and Uli seemed so determined that Lena found herself bending to their will.

They turned onto the road.

It was a relief to be off the track. The road had been used often enough since the last snowfall that walking was easy, and any farmhouses were set well back, so Lena felt reasonably confident that no one would see them in the early morning light.

After fifteen minutes on that road, though, they reached a crossroads. They would turn left and follow a wider road, which Lena could see immediately would just barely skirt Wierden on its way to the much larger Almelo, still out of sight in the distance.

The time had come to take their bags and part.

Uli and Sofie had stopped, and Uli was speaking urgently when Lena and Albert came up to them.

“It is a bar where the German officers go,” he was saying. “One of the men told me that we could meet you there. You can come tonight. It will be easy for you to come in unseen. We will be together one more time!”

Sofie swung around and looked at Lena. “You hear what he says? One more time. They have done so much for us.”

Lena stared back. She didn’t know what expression her face wore, only that she felt a weight on her belly of anger and fear. It had been over, this strange and unsettling association between two Dutch girls and two German men. The men were about to take their own path to rejoin the train. Sofie would put her bad behaviour behind her. She and Lena would walk forward together. And now, these men had connived another way to
get at them, to bring them danger, to keep Sofie hooked on her German soldier.

“We don’t even know where we’re going to sleep tonight. How can we …?”

“Let us say that we will try, Lena. Please!”

“That is all you can do, either of you. Do say that you will try.” That was Albert, his voice pleading.

Uli squeezed Sofie’s waist. “Think what it would be to sit around a table instead of crouching in a cattle car or by the tracks, to sip Schnaps or beer instead of stale water. It will be a real date!” He grinned down into Sofie’s face.

Albert put his hand on Lena’s wrist and pulled her aside. “I know what you are thinking,” he said. “I saw the flowers, crushed. I thought of that baby, Rachel, all night. How many babies did I send to their deaths? I cannot know. I was following orders—”

Lena wrested her arm free.

“I know I am responsible still. I feel responsible. That is why I told you the story of that man. You are the first I’ve told.”

Lena looked and looked into his eyes. No matter how deep her gaze, how steady his, she could not know his heart. Then a thought occurred to her. He had not been forced to tell her the story. He could have pretended never to have been party to any transports, any killing. She would never have known.

She looked from his eyes to Sofie’s and back.

Her heart softened, just a little.

“Thank you for helping us,” she whispered, and she saw Albert’s heart leap into his eyes. “We will try to meet you tonight,” she said then, to all of them. “Now give us our bags. We must go. We must find people who will take us in.”

Sofie grasped Uli’s neck, and he swung her right off the ground. Part of Lena wanted to smile indulgently at their joy
in such a small thing as a promised hour. The other part of her knew that it was no small thing at all.

“We will try,” she said again, this time directly to Albert, “but we may fail. We will not come if the risk seems too great.”

“We wish no risk for you, my love,” he said. “You must come only if it is safe.”

Lena started at the word
love,
hating the tremor it sent through her. “Give me my bag,” she said sharply. “And I will pry my friend away from her man.” As her fingers grasped the satchel’s handle, Albert’s fingers slid over top of them. Lena willed herself to pull her hand away, but instead she found herself standing perfectly still as he caressed her hand. She did not acknowledge it, but she felt it. Enemy or not, all the way through her body she felt it.

“Sofie, get down and pick up your bag. We must be in the town before the day begins.”

“Why?” Sofie said. “What difference does it make?”

“We don’t want them to know how we got here,” Lena said, her voice sharper still. “It might make a very big difference indeed.”

The parting was hurried: a noisy kiss between Uli and Sofie, a small smile from Albert and a cool gaze from Lena. When she noticed that she had set her bag down and was running the fingers of her left hand over the fingers of her right where he had touched them, she snatched her hand away.

The road was rough and icy; tank treads had torn up the earth. But trees grew along the way, their branches bare now, but not sacrificed to feed fires. They passed by Wierden quickly, houses on their left, fields on their right. It seemed a pretty town, still and silent in the dawn.

“The people here must be better off,” Lena said. “I can feel it.”