Hunger Journeys (32 page)

And as Lena stood, frozen, the screams of fear and pain subsided, and the crowd’s joyful noise turned to rage. She sensed rather than saw the scuffle on the far side of the tank. She heard a single gunshot.

The lone German soldier who had thrown the grenade must be dead.

After that, Lena was surprised to see how quickly the crowd moved on, despite the burnt-out tank and the wounded and dead in their midst. The crowd surged around the blackened tank, seeking the liberators, and Lena surged right along with it, although she wished she had Annie or Sofie at her side, and the sickness did not leave her for a long, long time. It was blended with fear. She sensed that the attack had set the people on edge, brought out in them a large measure of fury to temper their joy. They could turn into a mob in a moment.

But another tank arrived, and then another. Tank after tank of Canadians, making their way toward her. The mood of the crowd shifted back to joy, and a lightness entered Lena’s step. This was freedom. Five years of war and she had just witnessed her first violence, her first death. And now she was walking forward, celebration pushing out what she had just seen. The images would return, over and over again, for the rest of Lena’s life. But for now the war was over. The Canadians had come!

Soldiers walked alongside the tanks, filthy and exhausted, but jubilant. One, a man barely older than she was, with his hair hanging in his face and a scrubby beard trying to exert itself on his chin, grinned at her. Lena grinned back. Next thing she knew, he had stepped away from the tank and taken her hands in his. She found herself spun round in a dance for two, the first of her life.

“You are free!” he said in English. “And very pretty,” he added.

Lena laughed into his face, pushing what she had recently witnessed out of her mind. “We are free,” she exclaimed in English as well, “thanks to you!”

She thought of Sofie. Sofie would not stop at dancing: she would be kissing them too!

Then Albert entered her mind, unbidden. These men had arrived to free her from the likes of Albert, but shouldn’t the first dance of her life have been with him?

Lena heard singing and shouts and the roar of the tanks. The air was fresh and cool, but not cold. Many of the soldiers had orange flowers woven into the netting on their helmets. The dreary, war-worn town had sprung to life. Joy filled the air and joy spilled through Lena’s body.

How she would have loved to share this with Sofie! Perhaps she would make her way back to the house and share the news. Maybe Sofie could even sneak out. After all, no one would know her in this crowd. Surely she had no need to stay hidden now that they were free!

Then a different kind of shout filtered through to Lena. Someone was screaming. More than someone. “Whores!
Moffen meiden!
”

Lena turned and stared.

Two men and a woman were up on some sort of a stage, right in the centre of the market square. And they had a girl up there, a girl who had been stripped down to her grey, drooping underwear. Lena saw the girl try to wrap herself in her own arms, but two men grabbed them and spread them wide. Three other young women huddled miserably behind her.

Lena’s stomach lurched. One of the men was Meneer Klaassen. Then her own hands flew to her face.

The girl was Sofie.

Meneer Klaassen was spitting in her face and brandishing something in his hand. Nothing in her head but horror, Lena fought her way forward through the crowd.

“Meneer Klaassen,” she cried, “what are you doing? We’re free!”

He didn’t even turn. But his wife did. “No thanks to sluts like this one,” she said, speaking not just to Lena but to the growing crowd, who jeered in confirmation of her words. “We took her in and she was off with the Nazis. Letting them in between her legs in exchange for this and that. Look at her.” And she pinched the pale bare flesh at Sofie’s waist. “She’s grown fatter. If whores like this had their way, Hitler would rule the world, and Holland would be under water.”

Lena stared up at them, unable to take in what she was hearing. Sofie bent her head, and their eyes met. After less than a moment, Lena wrenched her gaze away; the mixture of humiliation and terror in Sofie’s face was too much for her.

Something fell to the ground at Sofie’s feet. Lena stared. It was hair. A big chunk of dark brown hair. Another chunk fell. Meneer Klaassen was shaving Sofie’s head. Lena grabbed the edge of the stage. Bodies pressed against her from behind. They reeked of sweat. Sweat and hate, she thought, and her stomach turned over again. Lena tried to turn her head away from everyone, and she vomited a thin stream of yellow bile onto the edge of the stage. Through all the jeers, the insults, the distant music, she could hear Sofie crying quietly—not resisting, not begging for mercy, not denying their accusations, just crying.

“Go slink off somewhere now. You won’t be able to hide your shame. And don’t think you’ll be back with Wijman. He’ll be done with you after today. We’ll not be keeping traitors among us here in Almelo.”

Lena looked up as Sofie stumbled to her knees. Not meeting Lena’s eyes, she slithered off the stage and dropped to the ground. Lena had her coat off and wrapped around her friend without even knowing she was doing it. She pulled off her scarf as well and put it over Sofie’s head. Sofie reached up and pulled the two ends close under her chin. Even in her misery, she wanted to cover her scalp. Lena tucked her arm round her friend and began to fight through the crowd. A few called insults as the two girls passed, but their attention was distracted by the degradation of the next woman who had somehow betrayed them.

Lena took Sofie straight to the Almelo House grounds, away from the crowds, where they could sit and talk. But Sofie wanted to talk about only one thing: Uli. “I know he’ll come for me,” she said, her voice barely audible through her tears. She looked up. “And what about Albert? Don’t you believe he’ll come for you?”

“I don’t want him to,” Lena said. “If he does, I want to be far away. And you should too.”

“I want to wait.”

“How are you going to wait? They won’t have you here. Where will you live?”

Sofie crumpled again, sobbing, her scarf slipping to reveal the ugly stubble that covered her scalp.

For a long time, Lena sat and watched her cry. As she watched, she thought about the charred corpse in the tank, the smiling man that he had been, and the dead and wounded on the ground. She thought about the stage, the miserable women and the nastiness of the crowd. And she thought about Albert, raising a scented wrist to her nostrils. Did she want him to come for her?

Then all of it, every bit, was swept away, and Sarah was there, with her in her mind. What would liberation mean for her? Lena’s shoulders sank. A thick sticky darkness filled her
chest. Sarah had been gone for years. Lena was almost certain that she was dead. And that was past imagining.

Determined, she swallowed, straightened her shoulders and blinked, bringing herself back to the patch of grass and her weeping friend.

“Sofie,” she said, “why did you go out? Why didn’t you stay in the house?”

“I didn’t go out,” she said through her tears. “They took me. The Klaassens. They came for me. And Vrouw Wijman let them.”

Lena had to do a lot more thinking after that. Her plan, weak though it was, had been all she had. She had planned to take Sofie back to the Wijmans’ and beg for their mercy. Now she knew: there would be no mercy. None at all.

In the end, she took Sofie to the only hiding place she could think of: the home of the cow. It took a little doing to remember the way, but at last they were on the path down the side of the house, the shed door ajar in front of them. Lena hoped that the shed had remained unused since she and Wijman had taken the cow away to her fate, and her hopes were realized. She pushed on the heavy wooden door until it opened far enough to admit them, and the two girls stepped inside.

The reek of old manure was almost worse than the fresh, ripe smell had been, and no comforting animal warmth welcomed them, but an abandoned shed was a safe shed, and Lena was relieved.

A search turned up a tattered horse blanket on a hook on the back wall and a bit of fresh straw in a corner. “Back to sleeping in straw,” Sofie said, and Lena noted the attempt at humour. A good sign.

“I’ll bring you another blanket,” Lena said, “and food and water.”

“How long must I stay here?” Sofie asked, her voice small.

Lena looked at her. “Until the war is over,” she said shortly.

“But it is over now,” Sofie said.

“Only here,” Lena said. “Not everywhere.” And she walked out of the shed.

How long would it take, she wondered, for all of the Netherlands to be free? How long before they could leave this place and go back home to Amsterdam? However long it took, that was how long Sofie would have to remain hidden. She sent off a prayer: Please let the war be over, really over, soon.

The walk back to the Wijmans’ was a thoughtful one. What if the Wijmans knew somehow that she had seen Sofie? How would she keep Sofie’s hiding place a secret? She could only hope that the Klaassens had not returned, and that if they did see the Wijmans again, they would be too ashamed to tell what they had done to Sofie. That would mean they wouldn’t mention seeing Lena either. Even in her most desperate fantasy, though, she couldn’t imagine the zeal she had seen on the platform turning to shame in a single hour.

Vrouw Wijman greeted her at the door. “What have you done with her?” she asked. “The little slut,” she added.

Lena’s gut constricted. Vrouw Wijman moved her arm aside and let Lena pass. She walked through the lean-to, stepped up into the kitchen and stopped. Her desperate fantasy resolved itself into nothing.

Mevrouw and Meneer Klaassen were sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea.

Lena gazed at the three adults and composed herself. Calm
seeped into her, all of her: torso, limbs, skull, face. Her heart slowed to a normal pace. She opened her mouth.

“I tried to help her,” she said. “I tried. But people followed us, and they pulled her away. They took her. I don’t know where. What did they do to her?” Her brow wrinkled. A tear slid down her cheek. She marvelled at herself. “You are cruel, cruel people,” she said, speaking the truth now. And she marched through the kitchen and into the alcove that had become Sofie’s, letting the curtain swing shut behind her.

She collapsed onto the bed, and the next thing she knew, the curtain was shoved aside and Bennie was on the bed with her, burrowing into her arms. Real tears flowed then. And she did not hear what was exchanged at the kitchen table while she wept.

The story came out at dinner that night, everyone sitting down together now that Sofie was gone. The Klaassens had left in a huff when Vrouw Wijman resisted turning Lena into the street. Lena figured that she had Bennie to thank for that.

Vrouw Wijman reported to her husband what the Klaassens had told her, and Lena repeated her own story about the people taking Sofie away. She felt the same calm again and was rewarded with the same convincing tears.

“We’ve got to find her,” she said as they all stared at her. “What have they done to her?”

She saw doubt in their faces, even Annie’s. And then Annie spoke. “I’ll help you look for her,” she said.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Vrouw Wijman said. “She may have been good with the silver polish, but she was a bad girl and we’re well rid of her.”

“Yes,” her husband said. “You will stay in the house tonight, both of you.” And he looked at Lena in a way that she did not like.

If only she could run away too, to stay in the shed with Sofie and wait, but she could not. This house was their source of food. They could not both go into hiding.

She got up and started to wash the dishes, her thoughts tumbling. Annie joined her. As Lena reached for a plate, Annie thrust her hand out at the same time. She touched Lena’s wrist. Lena turned and met her eyes. Annie’s brows thrust upward in a question. Lena gave a single nod.

“I’ll help you with that,” Annie said loudly, brightly, as she lifted a platter into the dishwater. Lena knew that she did not mean the platter.