River in the Sea (10 page)

The barn’s side door slammed shut, vibrating through the floorboards.

“Doeval
,” Mem said. She slid onto the floor next to Tine. Renske tried to whisper and Mem clamped her hand over Renske’s mouth and she immediately went quiet. Her first
razzia
was when she was still a baby. Renske was born into a war. Leen reached over and touched Renske on the leg. Renske’s eyes followed the movement of her fingers, from floor to skin to mouth, her only acknowledgement.

They were quiet. Leen could only hear breath and heartbeats. She imagined crawling into the hallway, to the small white door that led to the barn’s shallow eaves. If she had ever been clever, she would have found a gun and hidden it there, amid some hay or hanging inside an old leather pouch on a nail just above the door. The gun would’ve been a German one, stolen boldly through the Resistance, during one of their raids when they dressed in German uniforms and broke into SS offices in Leeuwarden, Friesland’s capital. She could reach out and silently, smoothly, grab the gun, and from her sniper’s spot, shoot a single bullet in the gatekeeper’s head. He would still be falling to the floor, the blood barely gathering at his mortal wound, as she shifted the gun and her eyes over an inch, maybe two, to release the second bullet into the thick soldier’s heart. Ears ringing, shocked and glad, Pater would look up and see his middle daughter, Leentje, holding the gun that saved them, all of them.

With these thoughts the adrenaline began to surge, bringing with it the sweat that pooled in the same places when she biked past the camp and arrived wet and shaking in Dokkum. She sat up straight, causing the floor to groan as it shifted with her.

In reply voices rumbled below. Leen couldn’t make out any of them, not even Pater’s, just the low registers of male voices. She waited for shouts. 

Mem hunched over Renske, shutting her eyes tight. She began to mouth words. Leen felt it too. This was the moment when something would happen. She braced.

No shouts.

Mem started whispering as she pressed her face close to Renske’s. Her words were composed more of breath than voice, and small clouds of Renske’s soft hair burst and fell with each of Mem’s exhales. Mem prayed like this during every
razzia
. She used Psalm 91, substituting names for
you
in the lines
You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.
Leen made out Wopke’s name, then Issac’s, and she knew Mem was praying to keep her one remaining son. Then she heard Mem whisper,
Oenze
. She glanced at her sisters and her mother, all silent, all of them with their faces down. She looked at the door. 

She stood up.

“Leentje!” Mem’s voice cracked.

Leen opened the door and walked carefully on the floorboards, knowing exactly where to step to avoid the creaks, the balls of her feet burning as she pressed them so hard on the floor the friction caused the heat to build into a sear. She turned the cold knob of the little white door, pulling slightly but knowing the door would stick. Shit. It was cold in the hallway, caught between the illusory safety of the bedroom behind her and the half–door in front of her. It was like being trapped in the truck, too much space around her. 

Leen stared at the door’s white paint. Behind her she heard Tine’s breathing, low and fast. Leen’s hands were sweating and slick but she pulled on the doorknob anyway, just a little at a time. The door started to release, but then it scraped against the frame. She let go. She carefully kneeled on the cold wood, avoiding the new spot that started to creak a few years ago. She put her head on her knees and listened to the muffled voices and Mem’s weight shifting in the bedroom. Now Leen prayed:
Please
.

Out of the low idling of voices, a syllable burst out loudly. Leen jerked. She couldn’t tell what the word was, or who spoke it. 

And then the familiar sound of the barn doors closing reverberated through the second floor and Pater’s voice was distinct as he called out, “
Komme
, I’ll all right!” One set of footsteps echoed in the kitchen, and when Leen ran downstairs, Pater was there. Mem, Tine and Renske were close behind her. Everybody was moving fast, except for Pater. He looked drained.

“What did they want?” Leen asked. Mem pushed past her and clutched Pater. “Are you okay? Are you all right?”

Pater slumped into a chair and began rolling a cigarette. He crumpled a paper and let it drop to the ground, then rolled another. He coughed heavily and bent over to get through the spasm, keeping the cigarette in one hand while the other covered his mouth. He spit into his handkerchief. Then Pater brought the cigarette to his lips, and it was the first time Leen had ever seen his hand shake.

“It wasn’t a
razzia
,” Pater finally said. 

“What?” Mem said.

“They want me to go with them to help clean up in Huesden. They’re rounding up men and boys to do it.”

“Oh,” Leen said. She did not know what to say, what to feel, but felt like she should speak. “I heard of the bombing this afternoon, from Mr. Deinum.” She had to convince herself that it was still the same day, that all of this, the bombing, the salt, Jan Fokke, the soldiers in the barn, this had all happened. It was not yet six o’clock.

Pater nodded. “Allied soldiers liberated Huesden. So the Krauts bombed it on their retreat.” He shook his head. “Cowards.”

“What about Issac?” Mem asked. She did not ask more about Huesden. She no longer kept track like she used to, when they listened to the radio nightly after the war first began. After the electricity was cut off, Pater sometimes rigged up their small generator to listen in secret, but finally the generator broke and was too difficult to repair, and the radio had disappeared from view, a risky item to have anyway since they were banned altogether.

Pater didn’t directly answer Mem’s question. “They want us to clean up the damage. I’m sure there will be a round–up too if they are settling for a stiff old man like me.”

“What do they mean, clean?” Mem demanded. For the second time in a month, Leen watched her mother take Pater’s cigarette and drag on it deeply.

“They want Dutch laborers to go in and clean up the bricks and wood and to sort the things they could use. Of course they don’t have enough men of their own, or vehicles either. So the Dutch autos are on duty. To clean up the Krauts’ mess,” Pater answered, wiping his face with the clean side of his handkerchief. 

Tine filled the teakettle, her usual contribution. As she lit the stove, Mem fished inside a cabinet, reaching high up behind a false backing and pulled out a small flask. The whole time, Renske held onto Mem’s legs.

Then Pater said, “I said that our truck did not run very well, that it wouldn’t make it past Dokkum.”

Leen’s face went cold. Without turning around, standing very still, Mem asked, “Why our truck?” Then she said under her breath, “We never should have kept it.” At the start of the war everyone was required to register their vehicles, but most simply hid them. Although the De Graafs did not comply with most of the SS demands, Pater did, however, register the truck, saying it was too old and run–down looking that the soldiers would leave it alone. 

Pater shook his head. He did not look at Leen when he said, “They knew I was lying because they knew the truck. One said he inspected it personally himself.” So it wasn’t the two at the café, but that didn’t matter. She had led the driver right to her home.

Leen sank, heavy, to the floor. The dog, the awful soldier with that cold face and trailing hand. It was practically a map. She risked a glance at Pater. He was leaning back, mouth open, lost in a cloud of smoke. Tine started to sit down next to her but the kettle’s whistle blew and it startled them both. Leen stayed low, feet pointed in, knees up, hands clasped behind them. That morning, she had felt like she could fill the width of Ternaarderweg when she walked the length of it. Now she wanted to fold herself small, into a tiny piece of paper. Then she could be thrown away, and offer no more trouble.

I should’ve hit the brake,
she thought.
I should’ve slammed it.
The truck would’ve stopped with a suffocating shudder and the dog would’ve run back to the gatekeeper’s side, who would’ve swatted it across the snout for running off. Leen would’ve been waved on, maybe shouted at, and there wouldn’t have been any notice taken of the truck, and of course that one simple action, that simple act of control, meant the soldiers would not have been at their house minutes before, demanding that same truck and the labor of her father and her brother, who still had not returned from his hiding place.

Leen could feel the draft sliding along the floorboards as she watched Tine put the teacups on the table. Mem opened the flask and poured some of the liquor into each. “Do you go tonight?” Mem asked. She drank straight from the cup before Tine could pour in the hot water.

“Go?” Leen asked. When Pater answered, he spoke directly to Mem.

“They said we can decide in three days’ time. By Thursday. They’ll come by and see what we think. But we all know it’s not really a choice. And three days probably means two.”

Mem dropped her teacup. It shattered on the floor and a shard ricocheted right into Leen’s shin, and she began to bleed. “
Blixen
!” Mem yelled, and Renske began to cry.

 “Here,” Pater said, reaching out for Renske. Mem passed her to him and crouched on the floor to pick up the broken pieces. Tine bent down to help. Leen watched the blood slowly roll down her leg.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice a balloon losing air, her throat rising and tightening.

“You didn’t drop it, what are you sorry for?” Mem said, looking up. Her face was pink and her lips curled in as she held her breath. When Leen didn’t answer, too crippled with guilt to say anything more, Mem went back to picking the slivers of porcelain off the floor and cupping them in the palm of her hand.

Pater finally looked at Leen. His face was grim. Shifting Renske to one side of his lap, cradling her like he used to when Leen was young, he dug into his pocket and pulled out another handkerchief and threw it to her. Leen pressed the handkerchief to her leg and flinched as she felt the shard’s point move in deeper. 

Issac appeared in the doorway, a quiet apparition. 

“There you are,” Mem said, and rushed over to him, hand held out to the side, protecting Issac from the broken cup. His face was red and lips dark, nearly blue. 

Pater asked him, “You okay?” 

Issac nodded. “Fuel ran out,” he said, holding up a spitting lantern.

“You’re freezing. I’ll go get you a blanket,” Tine said.

“
Nee
,” Pater said. “Issac and I need to go.”

“Where?” Leen and Mem both cried out. Mem never took her eyes off Issac.

“Here,” Pater said, holding out a creased cigarette, “to warm you up.” Issac took it, and standing next to Pater in the dim kitchen light, all Leen could make out were tiny orange bombs going off against the grey.

Issac took two drags and then Pater eased Renske off his lap and said, “Okay, Issac, let’s go for a walk.” Tine handed Issac a cup of tea and he drank it in one swallow, wincing when he tasted the liquor. Together Issac and Pater walked into the barn and then Leen heard the door slam once again. Leen listened for the quiet echo of their
klompen
on the street. She heard nothing and realized they were probably walking without any shoes at all. Their feet would be so cold. Her mouth started to throb. She’d been clenching her jaws. She wished she could follow them.

“Is it curfew time?” Renske asked.

No one answered. Curfew began in one hour. Leen didn’t have to ask to know that Pater and Issac wouldn’t be back before then.

“It’s dark out, that means it’s curfew time,” Renske said. Her voice took on a higher, whining pitch.

Leen’s leg began to throb in unison with her jaw.

“Not yet, sweetie,” Tine said, looking at Renske with a weak grin.

“Pater and Issac need to come back,” Renske said.

Mem sat down in Pater’s chair, crossing her arms and staring vacantly. “That
lyts famke
is six years old. Six and she worries about curfew.”

“Shhh,” Tine said. Leen knew Tine meant this for Renske, but all of them were quiet. Again Tine said, “Shhhh.”

The clock ticked in the living room, and the four of them waited. Mem sat on the davenport with a stack of newspapers on her lap and some unpeeled
druggevisk
, but her knife lay at her feet. Tine had gotten her knitting basket and feverishly knit on another pair of socks. Renske lay curled on a blanket with another draped over her, asleep. No one had made any move to put her to bed properly, and she was still in her day dress and worn woolen socks. 

Leen held onto her empty teacup. It had been empty for hours, the warmth in her stomach from the whiskey faded. But she didn’t want to move. She still had the feeling that whatever movement she made, it would call attention to her, allow the set jaws and deeply grooved foreheads of her mother and older sister to turn to her and finally open, finally unleash.

The clock chimed ten times.

Mem picked up her knife and began to open the paper–wrapped pack of brined and dried fish. Its pungent scent immediately filled the air, smelling of the sea and sun and grass. Mem picked up one of the shriveled flounder and began poking at the tail, bending it and trying to find a loose piece where she could begin peeling back the papery skin. After a minute, she had the entire thing peeled and started cutting pieces of the jerky and passing them to Tine and Leen, wedging slivers between her lips and chewing while she cut another.

As she chewed, Mem’s wrinkles looked deeper, the skin sagging around her mouth. Out of nowhere, she spoke. Her voice was surprisingly strong and Leen jumped in surprise. Then she braced. But what Mem said was not the rebuke she expected.

“Nobody gets away with having a truck and a house like this and a grown boy still around, not in a war. Not this long.” She shook her head, the set of her mouth exposing her bitterness. “I just knew our time would come.”