River in the Sea (3 page)

Yet she knew of other things that German soldiers did. They hurt, they killed, they stole. But the young men at this camp, it seemed what they did the most was get girls sent away, bellies swelling and heads bare.

Leen felt a hand on her shoulder and saw the red, freckled fingers spread over her arm, the lightest of threats. She froze as the driver smiled at her, his teeth and lips spreading into something more menacing than his shouts. He took a step closer, standing inches away, and half–grunted, half–laughed. An acrid, vinegar taste rose in her mouth and the gatekeeper let out a sob, and Leen heard him cry Minsha’s name again. The driver took his hand away and said something to her and Leen understood it to mean,
Don’t move
. He walked to the gatekeeper, and bending over him, began to speak very rapidly.

He was not a friend. He was not a mascot. 

It was then that the real fear began, the simultaneous heat and cold of it, the absolute rush of thought and adrenaline that flowed from the recognition that what was happening was true and severe and horrific. What would they do to her? Leen began to shake. She tried to stop it by clenching her hands into fists but she could not stop and she heard a crackle and realized she was still holding the packet of salt. Should she give it to them? Her head felt light and hot and it began to fill with the words
I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m brave, I’m ready, I’m brave, I must try to be brave.
She could run. Less than 100 meters away were several potato heaps. Naïvely, she thought about taking a chance, hoping they could not see which one she crawled into. The soldiers had no idea that the heaps of potatoes dotting the fields in late summer and fall were nothing more than tents held up by wire and wood, hollowed out and filled with food and blankets, easy hiding spots for men and boys when the
razzia
signal came:
they are coming, hide yourself
. She thought,
I must try to be brave.
All the boys have to be brave.

“Are you
gek, famke
?” the driver asked, still smiling, using Frisian words for “crazy” and “girl.”

The driver moved closer and wiped his face with a soiled handkerchief. He looked at Leen, narrowing his eyes at her. She felt her pulse in her fingertips. Instinctively, she pulled back her shoulders and took two steps back, but her foot slipped again and she lost her footing altogether and she fell, hitting the ground with a thud. Her hands released and the packet of salt fell away as she slid down, her skirt sliding up higher on her waist, and the backs of her calves became slick with the cold mud. The driver stared at her bare legs, then an instant later he shouted and pointed, and Leen looked.

The dog’s hind legs were straight and stacked, one on top of the other, looking relaxed and peaceful, as if the dog was merely taking a nap, catching the last bit of the golden light before dusk. But its side and neck were reddened and bloody, glinting weakly in the light. The dog’s snout was flattened and the tip of its tongue poked out of its mouth, almost puppy–like. Leen looked away, not knowing where to look next. She glanced at the sky. It was just beginning to darken along the edges, blurring the outline of the dike. 

The driver said something to the gatekeeper, his voice now low and calm but firm, exhorting him to do something. The gatekeeper didn’t respond. The driver shook his head and turned and shouted towards the camp. She knew a line of soldiers stood all along the fence, watching. 

Another soldier came running up, carrying a shovel. The driver took it and nodded to him.

Leen clutched her hands back together again, and as the driver came towards her he deliberately stepped on the folded paper, grinding the salt into the mud. He motioned towards the front of the truck, where the gatekeeper still knelt over the dog Minsha. The soldier who had retrieved the shovel stood a few feet away from Leen and stared at her.

She felt the shaking mostly in her legs, behind the kneecaps, the muscles in her thighs spasming as she stood back up. 

The driver gave her a push and Leen jerked forward. Every part of her body quivered. She tried to recite the Lord’s Prayer, but she couldn’t remember how it started, and then she thought about Psalm 23, but the only line that came to her was, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters,” the line she’d always thought described Friesland. 

The driver nudged the gatekeeper, still bent over Minsha, and spoke to him again quickly under his breath, pointing to the soldier who held the shovel. He was blond, like most of the other soldiers, but his hair looked lighter than theirs since it was not slicked down with brilliantine and instead curled over his ears. His eyes were dark, maybe brown, and all around them the skin was dark, not with fatigue or wear, but naturally colored that way, like they had been smudged with the clay soil. It made his eyes seem almost warm. There were others in Wierum with that sallow coloring; several of them were from the islands a few kilometers off the coast, Texel and Ameland and others.

The gatekeeper finally stood up. He took the driver’s handkerchief and wiped his face. Then the driver took the shovel from the light–haired soldier, and the gatekeeper said something in an exasperated tone, as if he was giving in to something. His movements unexpectedly direct and sudden, the gatekeeper grabbed the shovel, and walked over to Leen. He pressed the shovel into her chest, sending another cold wave of fright into her throat. The light–haired soldier started to say something, his voice expressing protest, but the driver said something sharp and cut him off. 

The gatekeeper pointed to Leen and said, “You.” The driver poked her hard in the shoulder and then hopped over the ditch to a spot just outside the barbed wire fence surrounding the perimeter of the camp. He dug the toe of his boot into the soil, dragging his foot, drawing a shape. He pointed to the dog, then at her.

Leen walked with jerky steps to the spot he had drawn. The outline of a large rectangle was faintly visible in the soil. In places the clay looked like it had been wiped flat, the sheen of the mud reflecting flatly in the waning light. In other spots, the thick soles of the driver’s boots made a deep impression. All she could think was,
doeval, doeval
.

“What…” Leen started to say, but couldn’t finish. She knew clearly that she had been ordered to dig a grave. What was going in that grave, the dog or her? But she knew. She’d be shot and buried there, with the dog. Suddenly she remembered what Pater had told her years ago, his eyes somehow both mischievous and serious, a cigarette pointing at her from his yellowed fingers: “First you are God’s child. Then you are Frysk. Finally, perhaps you are Dutch. But never, no matter what happens, are you German.” To all Friesians, little else mattered besides their own land and their own ancient tongue, both existing for centuries before the Netherlands enveloped them into one nation. The Dutch were their countrymen, and they paid the same currency and at times shared the Dutch language, but now Leen was digging Frisian dirt to bury herself and a German dog.

All along the curves of her body felt cold, all the usual places that felt warm: underneath her arms, under the small, bare curve of her new breasts; behind her knees; the creases where her thighs and crotch met. It felt like the air was snaking through her clothes and finding where she could least control her shaking, coming through the wrists of her coat, down the neck of her shirt, and suddenly all she could think about was that if she could just get home, she would beg for a bath, one that she could have herself, no one else dirtying the clean water. She longed for the warmth of the water, to be inside her house on Ternaarderweg, alone in the room where she could cry and scrub herself, ridding herself of the terror, comforted by the voices of her family floating in from the other rooms.

The driver looked at her strangely. He said something in a low voice, although in his German tongue the undertones of severity were there, the guttural throat sounds invading even the soothing words, almost like Frysk.

Leen began to dig. The soil was soft and crumbled into heavy clumps. Each stab at the earth felt awkward and silly, like a bad dancer trying to move too fast. She tried to work a rhythm, but her heart was beating too hard, and she purposefully grunted with each dig at the soil so she could get the shovel as deep into the mud as possible. Her face was wet and everything inside her shook and she wanted to show the soldiers that she was not a weak girl, but could dig a grave as deep and as wide as they wanted it. She would prove something about herself, in this final act, even if these soldiers were not the ones she wished to witness it. 

But with each dig Leen’s muscles gave out. The air seemed to darken with each shovelful of wet earth. The sun was sinking quickly. It was quiet except for the wind and the punch of the shovel slicing into the ground. When it lifted out of the soil, there was a resistant sucking sound, as if the mud fought the separation. 

Leen kept digging. 

Another line from the 23rd Psalm appeared in her head:
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me
. But she did not feel God’s presence at her side, not like the stories she heard from the pulpit sometimes, about people who looked out and calmly saw an angel steadying a boat buffeted by the rough waves of the North Sea. But there was also a monument on the top of the dike, right near the church, paying tribute to fallen sailors, every year a new line engraved, documenting the names of those the angel passed over. Leen repeated the lines in her head anyway, holding little faith, but trying to, in the words she mouthed with quivering lips as the tears and sweat mixed and dripped off her face.

The gatekeeper and the driver stared at her, each face unsmiling and losing shape in the looming dark except for their eyes that seemed to create their own light as they watched her dig the grave.

Her shoulders ached. She shortened her strokes so that she worked faster, and a small dark pile of earth, its outline the only thing visible in the near–gone light, grew slowly to her right. 

“
Acht!”
 

Leen jumped. The light–haired soldier was holding another shovel and looking down. She had thrown mud all along his waist and the top part of his legs. She braced her shoulders and waited for the burst of pain, but instead of hitting her the soldier put the lamp down and walked away, muttering under his breath and still holding the shovel, reaching down as he brushed away the mud. The gatekeeper motioned towards the grave, telling her to keep going. His voice faded away and he turned away for a moment, covering his face.

Leen could hardly feel herself moving anymore. Her bladder was full and she concentrated on keeping the shovel steady and her muscles from shaking, just as long as she kept digging. But instead of clearing her mind she found that the thoughts kept coming in increasing speed, jumping to images of her small sister, how it seemed Mem and Pater had tried to make up for their grief over losing Wopke by putting the best of themselves into Renske, with her bright eyes and a lightness about her that seemed evident by the soft curl of her brown hair, a curl none of the other children had. Leen noticed that the gatekeeper worked his mouth like an old man, sucking his lips and releasing them, his lower chin jutting out, as if he didn’t have teeth, and that his voice was scratchy from smoking. That was how Tine sounded when Wopke died. After the accident Tine’s quiet timidity was replaced by her constant sniffles and choking struggles to quell her sobs, voice cracking underneath every word. When Tine cried she sounded just like Mem.

Mem. This, this would break her. And already she was so broken.

More than anything Leen missed her mother’s singing. Once, Wopke had surprised Mem and taken her red wash–worn hands and led her through the song Mem used to surprise each of them with, and Mem had played along, her face rosy and the words of the ditty interrupted by embarrassed giggles. “
Klap us in je handjes, bly bly bly, op je boze bolletjes dy dy dy
!” she would sing, taking a moment to stop and grab the hands of one of her children, clapping them together and waving them in the air, following the rhythm. Whenever she sang the final line, “
Zo varen de schepjes voorby, hy hy
!”, she’d run her fingers up Leen’s neck to her cheek, then give a kiss. Mem knew just where Leen was most ticklish, a space right at the back of her neck. She’d never seen Mem laugh so hard, when Wopke had worked Mem’s hands through the motions, tickling her right at the end, sending Mem shrieking. That was six years ago. 

Leen dug and dug. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the hot orange tip of a cigarette the driver smoked as he leaned back on his haunches, his back to her now. To him she was already a dead body. She longed to smoke, to stop, to be warm. She could always find Pater by the smell of tobacco. The only interruption to the constant cigarette smoke streaming from Pater’s mouth and ochre–tipped nostrils was during church. 

The other way to find Pater was by the sound of his tapping feet and fingers, the rhythm always quick and upbeat, as he was less bound by mood or worry. He called her “
ús
Leen,” our Leen. When he taught her to drive, he’d said, “You’re quite good at this. And don’t tell your Mem,” and kissed her on the forehead, blowing smoke into her hair.

But it was Issac who had given Leen her first smoke. He’d laughed at her sputters and coughs, and his reaction was a joyful surprise to her, and kind; after the accident it was as if something essential was ripped away, taking away the lightness Wopke had brought out in him, leaving behind a black, gaping hole, and Issac’s sharper self scabbed over it. Yet on that day Issac had patiently taught her how to lay the tobacco down in a thin line in the middle of the filmy wrapping paper, then lick the edge and roll it up quick, all with one hand. Issac was a curious mix of their parents, carrying Pater’s facility and ambition but also Mem’s trepidation, rendering him quiet and acerbic at times, and at others, surprisingly open; Mem always said Issac was the most tender–hearted of all her children. He was the only one of them who could dance, but he only moved his feet when the mood struck him just so. And now, that was never.