Hunger Journeys (5 page)

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, hung 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.

Juffrouw Westenberg smiled slightly. “Watch your attitude, Juffrouw Vogel,” she said. “I will overlook your joking and your tardiness because it is your first day, but after this, I will accept no more of either.”

Teacher and student regarded each other.

At last, Sofie laughed. “Of course, Juffrouw,” she said. “Respect and punctuality. You have my word!”

The teacher scanned the classroom, raised her hand to her mouth and coughed. “See to it,” she said.

Lena wasn’t sure why Sofie behaved as she did, but her own habit of reading under the table ceased the moment the newcomer entered the classroom. And her delight when Sofie stuck by her at the end of the day was indescribable.

When Juffrouw Westenberg dismissed them, Lena tidied her few things into her bag slowly, hardly breathing as she waited to see what Sofie would do.

Willem paused by the door. “Hey, Sofie,” he said, in that casual, gruff teenage-boy way, “want to walk with us?”

“No, thanks,” Sofie said, glancing in his direction. “I’m waiting for Lena.”

Lena stared at them both. Her heart soared and then plummeted, preparing itself for disappointment. What could possibly possess this new girl to choose her as a friend?

Willem shrugged. “Your loss,” he said. He looked at Lena. “A big loss, actually!”

But Sofie had stopped paying attention to him. “Come on, Lena,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

And there it was: the start of something new. Eager though she was, Lena hesitated a moment. After what had happened with Sarah, she wasn’t sure she deserved a new friend.

Things changed between Lena and Sarah after the outing that ended in front of that terrible sign. Lena had grown less eager to reach out, less willing to go to Sarah’s house. After all, she told herself, they didn’t really want her there anymore. And if she and Sarah didn’t go to Sarah’s house, where could they go? Parks were forbidden them, as were most other public places. So she did nothing to counter Sarah’s averted gaze. Then, only a month later, she went to school one day and found Sarah gone, along with all the other Jewish children.

“They’ll have their own schools now,” Father had said at the dinner table that night, though Lena had not asked.

She had said not one word.

“As they should,” he’d added.

In the months that followed, Lena had summoned her courage twice, only twice. The first time, a few days after Sarah disappeared from school, the two girls had spent an awkward hour together at Sarah’s apartment. Sarah had hardly said a word.

She doesn’t want to see me, Lena had told herself. And the months had passed.

In May 1942, all the Jews were ordered to wear the yellow stars. Every time Lena saw a person with the star fixed on her dress or his jacket or her sweater, she felt a small kick low in her
belly. And at last, one glorious late-June day when the third class was over, she had forced herself to pay Sarah a second visit.

It took everything she had to raise her hand and knock on Sarah’s door. Moments later, the door swung open and Mevrouw Cohen stood there. Lena noticed that she didn’t have to look up to meet her eyes. She must have grown; after all, she was fourteen and a half. Then she took in Mevrouw Cohen’s sweater, and there was the yellow star. On her friend’s mother! The kick in her belly was a jolt now. She almost recoiled. Mevrouw Cohen did smile, but there was no joy in it, just a sort of sad kindness.

Behind her, Lena sensed chaos in the house. Then Sarah was there, looking out past her mother, no kindness in her gaze, sad or otherwise. “Go away,” she said sharply. “What are you doing here? Just go.” And she was gone from her mother’s side.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Mevrouw Cohen said. “I’m afraid it’s too late. We’re packing up,” she added. “Moving. You’d best be going.”

And Lena went. She rode her bicycle past Sarah’s building in August and saw strangers on the front step.

Somehow, when she got home, Piet knew where she had been. He was twelve by then, and starting to pay attention. He suggested a visit to the Jewish Quarter, where the Cohens almost certainly were housed, and she responded with shame and anger from the very deepest part of herself.

“What are you doing watching where I’m going?” she said once she had calmed down enough to speak. “Did you follow me?”

“But don’t you want to see your friend?” he said, curiously focused in the face of his older sister’s wrath.

“I’ll see her if I want, but you … you just mind your own business,” Lena said, horrified at herself, at the fear that snaked through her.

Then, there was Father behind them. “You stay away from those Jews,” he said, looking at Lena and Piet hard. “They’ve brought this upon themselves, and I won’t have my children mixed up in it.”

Lena stared back at him. Could it be that she was just like her father? Was that why she was so afraid? She should go. She should. Just to prove she wasn’t the same as him.