Hunger Journeys (3 page)

Piet looked at her and grinned. “Yes, let’s,” he said. “Vondel-park, here we come!”

Vondelpark. Lena’s joy slipped a little. Couldn’t they go west instead, to the fields? No. It was all right. She could go there. The park was only a few blocks away, and the streets were almost completely deserted. They saw several people out
scrounging like they were, but no soldiers, which was a good thing, because collecting wood was forbidden. Since Tuesday’s mad panic, the soldiers’ presence had not been quite as strong as before. Lena couldn’t help hoping. Surely the British had to come soon.

She tugged on her brother’s arm and smiled a hopeful smile at him as they crossed the broad canal. Minutes later, they were there, facing the sign that announced, as similar signs did on all entrances to all parks in the Netherlands,
For Jews Forbidden.
The sign had been new just three years before, but now it hung crooked and faded.

There, the excitement and determination Lena had been clinging to evaporated, replaced with a sickness in the back of her throat. She let go of her brother and tried to fight down the nausea, along with the memory that had brought it upon her.

She did not succeed.

The war had taken so much, but the worst thing, Lena thought—the very worst—was what the war had done to her one and only friendship.

Lena had not been blessed with friends in her life. Until Sarah. Sarah had come to Amsterdam partway through the last year of elementary school, almost six years ago. Her family had moved from Germany. Lena had given that no thought at first, but soon she understood. Germany had become a bad place for Jews by then. Many Jewish families had fled, and Sarah’s was one of them.

Sarah had been assigned a seat next to Lena’s. Lena helped Sarah with her Dutch, Sarah helped Lena with her math, and
the two girls became friends. Sarah, her father, mother and sisters lived with a cousin’s family in a three-bedroom apartment much like Lena’s own. Even in that crowded environment, Lena remembered the warmth of Sarah’s mother’s welcome after school, the delicious snacks, the laughter over homework and games, and the delight of lying in the sun in the park on weekend afternoons, talking and talking and talking.

Pushing aside the memory of what happened later at the entrance to that same park, Lena thought back to the shock she received the one time she had brought Sarah to her own home.

She had not expected her own parents to be as welcoming as Mevrouw Cohen, but neither had she expected rudeness. Mother and Father were both in the kitchen drinking tea when the two girls arrived. Lena had known Sarah only a few days, and she had not yet told her parents about her new friend.

“Mother, Father, this is Sarah Cohen,” she said, smiling as she introduced a real friend to her parents for the first time in her life. Her smile froze as she watched their eyes, all four eyes—could that be fear she saw in them?—travel over Sarah’s body, while their lips set in thin lines.

Mother managed to speak first, twisting those thin lips into a shadow of a smile. “Hello, Sarah,” she said, but she looked at her husband as she spoke.

“Hello, Mevrouw Berg,” Sarah said.

Lena watched in horror as tears formed in the corners of Sarah’s eyes.

“Ah,” Father said, “a German accent. Have you only just arrived in Nederland?”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “I … I …” She turned to Lena. “I’m sorry, Lena. I forgot. I’m expected at home.” And she almost ran from the room. A moment later, Lena heard the front door close.

Lena turned to follow, but Father grasped her arm. “It’s best if she goes, Lena,” he said. “You don’t want Jewish friends right now, especially not those who can’t even stay in their own country. Nederland’s got enough Jews of its own.”

Lena stared at her father. He had made a comment or two about Jews before, but never anything like this. “But, Father, she’s not—”

“There are a lot of problems in Europe right now,” Father said, “and the Jews are no small part of it.”

Lena turned to Mother, only to catch her nodding. “It’s not good for our family to be mixed up with them,” she said.

At that, Lena ran into her room and slammed the door. Father wrenched the door open instantly and ordered her out again. Pretending meekness, she walked back into her room and left the door ajar, as instructed. No children behind closed doors in Father’s house. Lena curled up on her bed, huddled against the wall and wept.

Lena pushed the memory from her mind, straightened her body and followed her brother past the dangling sign and into the travesty that Vondelpark had become.

The ground was beaten down by countless feet, by truck tires, by years of occupation and neglect. Ponds and waterways were dried up or scummy with rotting vegetation. Not a swan or a duck to be seen. Dinner for someone, Lena thought, and saliva rushed into her mouth as she thought of a roasted duck on the table.

Some trees remained, but matted brown grass and scuffed-up dirt were all that was left where flowers should have grown. A city’s rubble might receive a moment’s grace from the first light
of day, but that same light revealed the park as it truly was: stark and dying.

Lena and Piet did not speak of it. They did not meet each other’s eyes. They passed that first site of devastation and made their way deeper into the park. It took them half an hour to collect a small armload of wood each, taking low branches that they convinced themselves had no more life in them and part of a tumbledown fence.

Sweaty, filthy and exhausted, they stopped for a rest once they had their wood in a heap, and Piet chose that moment to share his latest news.

“The Germans launched a new weapon yesterday.”

Lena looked at him. What was this? He seemed excited somehow, as if he were telling her something good. “What sort of weapon?” she asked.

“A rocket. There’s never been anything like it before. I heard it on the radio last night. They can shoot it all the way to England!”

Lena tried to ignore his expression. “Where do they shoot it from?”

“The west. From the dunes near The Hague. The rockets are huge. They carry them on train cars.”

“Piet,” Lena said slowly, searching for the right words, “they sound like terrible things, these rockets. I thought we were about to win this war, and now you say the Germans have new weapons that come straight out of comic books. And”—she paused—“you seem excited, somehow.”

Piet’s voice rose. “How could I be excited? These rockets are killing machines, and the Germans are happy to use them. How can you say that to me?”

Lena didn’t answer, but she felt a small tug of satisfaction. Her brother was not so perfect. Typical boy—obsessed with the
enemy’s weapons, no matter the destruction they caused! She breathed deeply. “Let’s go home, Piet,” she said.

They emerged from the park, walking well apart, one behind the other, dawn now past. The city was coming to life. They were almost over the canal and about to turn north toward home when the alarm sounded.

“Halt!” a voice shouted. A German voice.

Lena glanced back and saw the soldier. He was close enough that she could make out his face, distorted with anger. He broke into a run.

But Lena and Piet were already running. Even as she was turning to look behind her, her legs were pumping. Wood clutched to her chest, she took off, with Piet matching her stride for stride.

“Halt!” the soldier shouted again, this time breathlessly.

People on the sidewalk stepped aside to let Piet and Lena pass, ignoring the soldier’s shouted order to “Stop them!” Moments later they skidded around the curve to the right and stopped. They were in their own street now: the Hoofdweg. Wide and bare, it offered nowhere to hide.

“Here,” a voice called, quietly, urgently. A door was open, and a man beckoned. Feet pounded behind them, just out of sight around the corner.

Lena almost fell over her brother as she pushed to get the door closed behind her in time. All three froze in a strange tableau: waiting, listening. A moment passed, no more, before they heard the soldier’s boots pound round the corner. Another moment and the feet, soldier attached, had passed them by.

Deep breaths all round.

The man was kind but nervous, with a scraggly face and a sweater full of holes. He smiled and offered them bread. Piet
shook his head fiercely at that, then tried to give the man their biggest piece of wood. The man shook his head right back, though not as fiercely, and pushed the wood into Piet’s arms. As soon as they were sure the soldier was gone, Piet and Lena thanked him again and made their way home.

They did not tell Father or Mother about the German soldier, but they received angry words nonetheless for coming home in broad daylight with arms full of illegal wood. What were they trying to do—get the whole family arrested?

Piet disappeared out the door soon after, and Lena settled down to steal an hour with a book before someone claimed her. Had she and Piet returned bonded by the chase, she wondered, or pushed apart by their strange conversation about those terrible rockets? She could not tell. She hoped they would not have to return to that particular park for a long, long time.

Lena had Sunday dinner on the table at the stroke of six, just as she was supposed to. She had hardly set eyes on her brother since their dash home the day before. Now, her jaw clenched and her shoulders raised themselves up around her ears as she waited for him to come through the door and join them for the most important meal of the week.

“God bless this food and drink,” Father said, without warning as usual, and everyone’s heads tilted forward obediently, eyes squeezed shut, hands clasped.

The front door clicked open and then closed. Lena breathed a sigh of relief as Piet slid into his chair just as Father firmly voiced the next line of the prayer. Peeking through her lashes, she saw Father’s eyes snap open and glare for an instant at his son, while
Mother’s worried gaze fixed on her husband. Piet’s eyes remained closed. He looked calm as calm. Lena admired that, but she hated it too. Maybe it was all right that he didn’t care about Father, but what about her? What about what his absence had put her through? Didn’t he care about that? She knew exactly what he was thinking: that he was going to help save people—he and Mr. Walstra. What did a missed prayer matter to him?

Lena opened her eyes again to find Piet looking at her. He smiled. She snatched her eyes away.

“How do you manage to cook food so it’s raw and burnt at the same time?” Margriet said.

Tears pricked at Lena’s eyes. When had her older sister grown so mean?

“I think it’s tasty,” Bep said, reaching for Lena’s hand.

It was all Lena could do to hold still and let Bep’s fingers rest on top of hers. She looked over at her little sister and managed a small smile.

Despite the crunchy bits, Father ate eagerly as always. Greedily, Lena thought. She fixed her eyes on her own bowl and tried not to flinch as he slurped at each spoonful. She fought to stop her teeth from gritting as she listened to her father mash his dinner around in his mouth.

“Your mother’s got news for you all,” Father said between bites.

Mother’s head reared up and she stared at her husband. “I don’t …” she said to him. “I didn’t …”