Hunger Journeys (9 page)

The man took the papers and laughed. “I do not understand you,” he said.

“We go for food,” Margriet said this time, her voice loud and clear but shaking.

The men nudged each other and spoke German in low voices. All Dutch children learned German in high school, and Lena was getting good at it after more than four years, but she could not make out what they were saying to each other. One looked over and she felt his eyes on her body, even in her loose jacket and long skirt. She resisted the urge to pull her jacket further around herself. Two others were looking at Margriet even more brazenly.

Then the German who had already spoken to them said, “Go,” papers held out to them, the word followed by a guffaw. Margriet grasped the papers and gave Lena a small push. “Go!” she hissed, terror in her voice, and the man roared with laughter.

They were off, toiling to push the heavy bicycles with their wooden wheels and linen baggage up the rise of the bridge. Lena was aware of weakness in her muscles and lack of fuel in her body as bile made its way up her throat. She retched and stood up to pedal harder. The Germans laughed and shouted behind them. Lena retched again. Then they were over the rise, and they could coast.

They left the main roads as quickly as they could, and soon they were riding through countryside. The sun was hidden behind clouds. The fields were brown, farms tumbled; they rode around enormous craters from bombs. Why here? Of course: the railway passed nearby. Dutch railway workers remained on
strike, all of them in hiding or under arrest, but the Germans had seized control of the trains. Now the trains in the Netherlands served only the enemy; they had become British targets.

The fields were mostly empty, but Lena did see a skinny cow in the distance, halfway out of sight behind a small, uncared-for farmhouse. No chickens, though. She had been searching for chickens, she realized, and dreaming of eggs, but chickenfeed was good for humans too, so Dutch chickens had gone early into the soup pot. They would be taking no eggs home that day.

The two girls rode on, seeking a more prosperous-looking establishment. It started to rain. Margriet had been riding in front, but her pace was slowing. Lena pulled up alongside her. “Stop a minute,” Margriet said. Lena put her foot down, bringing her bicycle to a halt. Her hair was soaked, and strands had pulled out of her pigtails and were plastered to her face. She stared at her handlebars.

“That farm with the cow seems like the best one so far,” Margriet said at last.

Lena raised her eyes to her sister’s. Margriet’s expression was grim.

“I don’t want to do it,” Margriet said. “It’s begging. Look at us. We’re pathetic, coming to the country to grovel for scraps. And who knows what we might find on these farms?”

Lena said nothing. She wheeled her bicycle around and started off back the way they had come, rainwater running down her neck and into her eyes, her mind whirling. How could Father make them do this? Her sister was terrified and humiliated, and she herself felt as if she might throw up at any moment.

It took a long time to get back to the farm with the skinny cow. And once they were there, no one answered the front door, no matter how hard and long Margriet pounded.

“Let’s try the back,” Lena whispered when Margriet had stopped pounding and leaned her forehead against the door. She would much rather flee. But where to?

The two girls set off around the house to the attached barn, where the back door had to be. As they turned the corner, they could see the door standing open, steam billowing out over the muddy ground. Margriet picked her way up to the doorway and looked in. Lena, right behind her, peered over her shoulder. A bony woman was doing laundry, turning the crank on a mangle over a washtub, some sort of grey fabric squeezing out between the rollers. Two small children played nearby.

Margriet’s voice was tentative at first, and the woman did not look up. The small boy stopped what he was doing, stared and poked his sister so she too stared, but they did not speak.

Margriet cleared her throat. “Mevrouw,” she said. Lena flinched at the sound of her sister’s shrill, frightened voice competing with the grinding of the mangle. It worked, though. The mangle stopped. The woman looked. She looked and she was upon them.

“I know who you are,” she said as she strode across the room, the children attaching themselves to her thighs as she passed. “City girls after food. Never done a moment’s work in your life, either of you—bones nicely tucked away inside your flesh—and you come to me for food.”

Margriet stumbled backwards a step, throwing Lena off balance, but when the woman paused for breath, she jumped in, “Mevrouw, we—”

But the woman had no intention of letting her speak. “My men are gone,” she said, “taken a year ago and more, husband and son. They’re in a German labour camp. Or they’re dead. I’ve heard not a word. Not one word. They promised to leave one
man at home on the farms. But not here; not for me. I’m left with the infants and the farm.”

Margriet tried again. “But, mevrouw, we aren’t asking for a handout. We have things to trade.”

The woman’s grin was ugly, revealing rotting teeth, gaps where the teeth had fallen out altogether and not a trace of happiness. “And those things you have, can I eat them? Can I feed them to my children? Do cows like them? I have no need of things, girl. Like you, like all of us in this Godforsaken land, it’s food I’m after. My cow is too hungry to give milk. My body is too hungry to work for more than an hour at a time. And where is the end to it? I think you know as well as I do where the end is.” She looked down to ensure that her children’s eyes were not upon her face, raised her right hand and drew her finger across her throat.

Margriet was already backing away, Lena matching her stride for stride. “Thank you, mevrouw. I wish you well,” she said, and the two girls turned and ran.

Margriet’s shoulders heaved as they pulled their bicycles off the fence where they had leaned them and wheeled back onto the road. Lena could tell that her sister was struggling with tears, but she herself felt dry inside. Yes, her belly ached, but she had never turned to tears as easily as her sister did.

She mounted her bicycle and pedalled in pursuit of her sister, who seemed to have got herself under control. They rode in silence for a long time, hungrier and thirstier with every moment that passed. They were not alone on the roads. Now and again, they came upon local people journeying here or there, and more often, others like themselves. City girls and city women. And once in a while, a city boy or a city man.

They passed several farms with people already lined up in the yards, waiting for handouts. No wonder the woman had
been so frustrated. Lena and Margriet probably hadn’t even been the first of the day. She was alone and desperate, and one after another, people arrived to take from her, but no one arrived to give. The ache travelled up Lena’s body and settled deep behind her eyes. Still, though, no tears.

They rode a long way down a narrow road with a canal on the right. At last, on the other side of the canal, Lena saw a farmhouse that looked promising, smoke pouring enticingly from its chimney and no journeyers gathering outside. “Margriet,” she called, “let’s go there.” And she pointed.

At the next crossroads they turned and crossed the canal on a narrow wooden bridge. They had not seen any cityfolk for a time, just one old man on foot pulling a cart and a girl on a distant road riding a bicycle. The rain had turned to drizzle a while ago, and now it had stopped, although the sky remained grey. Lena did not know what time it was, but the day was wearing on. They would not make it back to Amsterdam by nightfall. And if they did not get something to eat and drink soon, they would not be able to continue at all. She fought off surges of anger at her father, who had told Mother not to pack them food for the trip.

“They’re going to the country to
get
food,” he had stated. “They don’t need to take food away with them.”

The two girls rode down a long avenue lined by trees. The trees were tall and leafless, waving in the strong wind, majestic. Those trees were exactly the same as they would be without a war on. Lena wanted to stop and hug one, to ask its secrets. She tilted her head far back as she rode and almost came to grief in a big pothole. Then they were in the yard, which was bare but tidy. They leaned their bicycles against a fence and, this time, went straight round to the back of the house. Front doors, it turned out, were just for show in the country.

The back door of this house was closed, as was the huge barn door nearby. They saw no chickens or cows or any other livestock. Margriet knocked, putting effort into it. And they waited. Silence stretched on, and then they heard footsteps and the door creaked open. A woman stood in front of them.

The woman looked at them. “Ah,” she said. “For some reason, I don’t see many of you here. They’re calling them hunger journeys, aren’t they? This, what you’re doing.”

Lena listened to the words, the kindness in them, and felt tears spring into her eyes. I will not cry, she willed, and felt a tear spill over.

“Yes, mevrouw,” Margriet said, “and we have linen to trade for food … if you have any to spare, that is. We know it’s hard in the country too.”

“Oh, not so hard as all that,” the woman said. “Come in, girls. Come in. I’m Vrouw Hoorn. Not mevrouw. No need for those city titles here. You come from Amsterdam, I think. Did you leave this morning?”

Peering out from behind her sister, Lena nodded and another tear spilled from her eye.

“You have come far,” the woman said.

They passed through the spacious entryway, the area that joined house to barn, where Lena glimpsed signs of laundry, just as she had at the other farm, and into an enormous kitchen. It was warm in that room, and the warmth and the smell of food brought more tears to Lena’s eyes. A real fire burned in a big black stove. A lamp cast golden light over a round table set for a meal. And beyond the table, near the stove, an elderly man sat in a wingback chair. He looked across at them and smiled, but he did not rise.

“Meneer,” Lena said respectfully.

His smile broadened. “Visitors,” he said. “Welcome!”

“That’s my father,” the woman said, “Boer Bruin.” She hurried to set out two more bowls and mugs, two spoons. “It is simple food,” she said, “but nourishing. We have a bit of meat and some potatoes.”

Lena sat, and the next hour passed in a blur. They talked and ate and ate and talked until sleep crept among them. Margriet fell silent. Lena put down her spoon. Voices slowed almost to gibberish, and food ceased to matter at all.

Their hosts bundled them away into a big bed beneath a thick comforter, warm bricks at their feet, and they slept.

They woke up to sunlight streaming into the room and the woman’s voice urging them to rise. “If you plan to arrive home today, you must go soon.”

Breakfast was porridge with milk and a teaspoon of honey, washed down with big mugs of weak, milky tea. Tea!

“I’ve looked at your bicycles, and although I don’t want to take your things, I believe I must if we’re to fit much food in those bags of yours,” Vrouw Hoorn said as they scraped their bowls clean. “Your mother filled them right up.”

An hour later, they were on their way. Deep inside, along with the sips of tea and the taste of porridge with creamy milk and honey, Lena tucked away that lovely feeling of human warmth.

They rode back the way they had come, but in the sunshine now and with full bellies. Margriet rode alongside Lena and chattered at her. Lena wanted to cherish what had happened, not blather on about it. Also, she had something particular on her mind.

There was that cow again. Lena had been watching for her. She pushed down on the brake with her foot. “Stop, Margriet. We’re back at the other farm. I just need to do something.”

“What are you talking about?” Margriet said. “We’ve got nothing to—Hey!”

Lena had pulled a bulky parcel from the top of one of the bags strung across the back of her bicycle.

“You’re not going to give them food!”

“I am. I spoke to Vrouw Hoorn about it, and she put this parcel together for them.” Lena looked at Margriet’s outraged face. “Oh, come on, Margriet. They’re hungrier than we are.”

Margriet fell silent at that, but she stayed by her bicycle. Lena found the back door closed this time. She paused to summon her courage. It took only a moment for the woman to answer her knock. And there were the two children, attached to her thighs again.

“You,” she said. “How dare you—”

“No, mevrouw. No. I brought you this.” Lena held out the parcel. “Some beef. And potatoes. And a jar of milk.”

The woman’s brow furrowed. She held out her hand.

The larger of the two children stepped forward and spoke. “Is it food? Is it really food?”

The woman pushed him away. She let the door open wider, holding the parcel in her hands.

At last she looked up and met Lena’s eyes. “Well,” she said, “I …”

“I am only the delivery person,” Lena said. “I thought perhaps you could make use of it.”

“Yes,” the woman said. “You … you … you better go.”