Hunger Journeys (31 page)

“Oh, they’re angry with you. Very angry. There was a great deal of talk about respect, or lack of it. ‘Brazen,’ Vrouw Wijman said. She should turn us both out into the street. You, apparently, are most likely no better than I am, off with some man. She just hopes he has the good grace to be Dutch!”

Something occurred to Lena.

“What did Annie say?”

Sofie reflected for a moment. “Not too much, come to think of it. She laughed at her mother when she started going on about Dutch men and Germans. She made some sort of joke, I think. And then she went off to bed.”

“That’s where I should go too, Sofie. Thank you so much for helping me. When you opened that door, I was about to shout out for help, and I hate to think what would have happened then!”

The two girls smiled at each other again. Looking into Sofie’s face, Lena wondered if she suspected that there had been more to Lena’s evening than she was letting on. Maybe. Maybe not. “Good night, Sofie,” she said, crawling out from among the blankets and gulping the last of the tea. “Could you hang my wet clothes in the lean-to for me? I’ll throw your nightdress down the stairs in a moment.”

And up the stairs she went in the dark, clutching the brick. The door to the big bedroom was closed, she thought, but she could not quite tell for sure. At the top of the stairs, she shucked off the thin nightdress, dropped it over the banister and stood for a moment, cold though she was, to watch the thin white fabric float down in the darkness.

Then she went into the small back bedroom, pulled on her own nightdress and crawled into bed. She had not asked Sofie if
Annie had gone out because she knew that Sofie was not supposed to know, and it seemed that, indeed, Sofie had not known. Lena could not imagine how Annie had escaped once she, herself, had made her obvious exit. But apparently she had. The bed was empty.

As the brick warmed her frozen toes, Lena sent off one of her prayers, hoping simply that Annie was having a dryer night than she. And sometime later, when she was certain Sofie was asleep, she crept down the stairs, freezing her toes all over again, made her way back out to the lean-to and unlocked the door. After that, sleep came, fast and deep.

“It’s morning, Lena,” Annie was saying. “And you’re wanted downstairs!”

Lena’s eyelids were glued together, and her mind was foggy. She was wanted. She was pretty sure that was bad. But Annie was here. That was good! She sat up abruptly and squeezed shut her sleep-stuck eyelids as Annie rolled up the blackout paper, letting light stream in through the small window.

Annie sat down beside her on the bed. “They’re furious with you, but they have no idea,” she whispered hastily. “They’ve seen your wet things and the messed-up bicycle, so they’ve started making up a story themselves. Just go along with it!”

Lena put her hand on Annie’s arm. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said as she swung her legs out of bed.

“And you know what else is safe?” Annie said. “Your packages. They were dry inside the oilcloth. You’re a hero!”

Lena was glad to hear it, but she was not thinking about heroics. She was thinking about what awaited her downstairs.

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.