Hunger Journeys (15 page)

“I brought you two blankets and some food and water,” Albert said. “And those men will leave you alone. Stay out of sight, though,” he added, his voice a whisper now. “They don’t know you’re the girls from the station. I’ll come when I can.”

Lena’s jaw didn’t want to move, to speak, to seal the bargain, but she forced it, and her words squeaked when they came. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

“It’s Albert,” he said. “And I don’t know your name.”

Lena stared into the dark. “I can’t tell you that,” she said. “You’ve been good to us, but you’re a stranger. You’re a man. And you’re, you’re … Well, even though you’re helping us, you’re …”

“I know,” he said. “I’m the enemy.” He was silent for a moment. “At least call me Albert,” he said. “This train trip will last for two nights or more. You have to call me something.”

“Albert,” Lena said.

“Yes,” he replied, “that sounds much better. Now what am I going to call you?”

But he was gone before she could make up her mind how to reply.

Lena took the bundle that Albert had left them and crawled through the straw to where Sofie huddled at the back of the car.

“It’s all right,” Lena said. “He brought us food and blankets. And water,” she added. Sofie grabbed the bundle from her, and soon they were both wrapped in blankets and gnawing on the first food they had had since breakfast, and the first bread they had had in months.

They were still chewing when the train rumbled to life. With a small lurch, a screech of metal on metal and the strong smell of burning oil, they were on their way.

“To Almelo,” Lena said.

“To Almelo,” Sofie replied.

The sound of rapid fire woke them both. Lena and Sofie were wrapped around each other, inside coats inside blankets. Their teeth had chattered as they lay there trying to sleep. Lena was tired—more tired, she thought, than she had ever been. But how could she sleep on a train going to a place she had never been, to people she had never met, with men poised to kill her in front and behind?

After lying awake in the cold for what felt like hours, she had just been drifting off when the most terrible question occurred to her: What if that man was on the train?
They don’t know you’re the girls from the station,
Albert had said. What had he meant, exactly?

But men must always search the trains. It couldn’t all be because of Lena and Sofie. After all, the officer hadn’t sent anyone after them when they walked out of the station. A bit of vomit on his pant cuffs and he had lost interest. Hadn’t he?

But he could be on the train. Why wouldn’t he be?

Lena twisted away from Sofie and sat up, leaning against the wooden wall, her blanket tight around her. The train creaked and jolted and roared, and the dark seemed darker even than
home, though Lena knew that could not be. She shook from cold and swayed with the motion of the train and thought and thought and thought.

She must have slept, though, because then came the guns. The sound brought her up from where she was lying again with Sofie. The two girls reared up together, blankets falling from their shoulders. The train had stopped, but it shook as if it had turned into a gun itself and was firing. It
was
firing, Lena realized. Anti-aircraft guns. The Tommies were shooting at them, and they were shooting back. The sounds and sensations tangled with each other as if the earth were shattering around them, and light brighter than day sliced through the gaps in the walls behind them, lit the girls and their surroundings for an instant and was gone, only to come again minutes later. The first time, Lena ducked instinctively. Then she realized that the lights were flares dropped by the planes, and that the pilots could not see inside the cars, gaps or no gaps.

They sat, silent, in the mayhem. It went on for hours or a moment. And it stopped. Darkness returned, and silence and stillness settled on the night. Sofie and Lena sat for long minutes tensed for the next flash of light, the next explosion, until without further words they settled back into the straw and into sleep. They hardly noticed when the train rumbled to life once again and began to creep forward through the night.

“Sleep is good, but food is better,” said a voice.

Lena knocked her head on Sofie’s elbow as she sat up abruptly.

“Hey, now! It’s only me. Me and breakfast, that is!” Albert
had cleared the straw from around them without waking them, and he knelt, holding out a canvas sack.

Sofie was sitting up and rubbing her elbow. Lena stared at Albert. He had opened the door, entered the car, created a path to them, shoving aside mountains of straw, and they had slept on, oblivious. Through the gaps in the wooden walls, daylight striped the heaps of straw, turning it gold. The train was still. Her heart beating fast, Lena stood and put her eye against a knothole in the wood. She gasped at what she saw. It was something out of stories and years gone by: a snow-covered wood, trees growing close to the track, leafless branches glittering icy white in the sun. Beneath the trees was a world of wonder—no undergrowth, just white, unblemished snow and grey shadows dancing among the tree trunks. A few rows of rabbit or deer tracks added to the perfection.

She turned and looked at Albert and Sofie. Sofie was wolfing down a piece of bread, but Albert was watching Lena. “It’s a field of stubble on the other side,” he said. “We’re stopped here until dark. Can’t move in the day or the Brits will see us and shoot.”

“They saw us in the dark,” Sofie said through the bread in her mouth.

“In the day, we make a better target,” Albert said. “Believe me.” He tore off a piece of the loaf he held in his hand and held it out to Lena. “I have a bit of cheese too,” he said.

Birds and fairylands forgotten, Lena dropped to her knees and reached for the bread. Albert handed her the cheese, and she took a bite of bread and cheese together.

She looked at Sofie and grinned. “Train travel is looking up,” she said, taking care not to waste her mouthful by spraying food.

Sofie grinned back. “It’s a feast,” she said.

Albert looked back and forth between them. “You are an unusual pair, aren’t you?” he said.

Sofie’s eyes glittered.

Albert reached into his sack. “If bread and cheese has you in hysterics, what will an apple do?” he said, all innocence. “Or what will you do for an apple,” he added, as if he had only just thought of it.

“A kiss,” Sofie cried. “I’ll give you a kiss for an apple.” And she crawled forward on her knees, took Albert’s face in her hands and kissed him right on the lips. She shuffled backwards, apple in hand.

Breathless, Albert turned his gaze on Lena. She saw that he held a second apple. “And you, nameless one? What will you give me for an apple?”

Lena fell back on her haunches, stunned by what had just happened. Why did Sofie have to behave like that? What had happened to the snivelling girl of the night before? And why did he let her kiss him? Even encourage it? It wasn’t Sofie he gazed at …

“I can’t kiss you, Albert. Keep your apple if you must,” Lena said, her voice loud in the cold, straw-filled space. She took her last bite of bread and cheese, willing her mouth to produce enough moisture to choke it down.

“Oh, why are you so stuck up? Kiss him! He deserves it. You know he does. And you’re the one he wants, not me!” Sofie said in Dutch, munching her apple while she spoke.

“I’m not kissing anyone, Sofie. And I don’t know why you—” Lena couldn’t speak anymore because she was fighting back tears, her back turned to them both, furious with herself, with her friend and with that man. She heard mumbling but
didn’t take in any words. Then she heard the door creak open. Boots hit the ground, and the door creak closed again. She kept her back turned, reached behind herself for her blanket, curled up and thought of sleep.

“He left the apple for you,” Sofie said, her voice subdued.

Lena ignored her.

For a long time she lay there, awake but drifting. Nynke came to her, snug in her arms in the kitchen; Bep, her head resting on Lena’s shoulder as they gazed at the baby together; Piet, trying to save the world; and Mother; Father too, and Margriet. Were they growing hungrier? Did any of them give a thought to Lena? Less than twenty-four hours had passed since her departure, but it seemed like so much longer. She thought about Sofie’s impulsive gesture and told herself that it meant nothing. Why did it matter anyway? Could she be jealous? That seemed ridiculous. Frightened?

Sofie was brazen one moment and sick and whimpering the next. She couldn’t be counted upon, not even to stay out of things. And men. Lena did not understand Sofie and men. It was as if Sofie knew something she didn’t. But not just that. Try as she might, Lena could not solve the puzzle that was her friend.

Last, she thought about what scared her most. If that officer was on this train and he found them … they would not escape so easily again. She must talk with Sofie, tell her of the danger.

The thought of talking to Sofie brought that kiss back to mind. Disgust and fury held a brief battle inside Lena’s heart.
Sofie’s warning would have to wait. Lena pulled the blanket tighter, tucked her head down and willed herself to sleep.

It must have worked, because she became gradually aware of light and laughing voices. She opened her eyes and poked her head out to nothing but heaps of yellow straw. She listened. And dread flooded through her.

Sofie was speaking nearby in stilted German. Her voice loud and full. “You come from Worms? Do not people laugh when you tell them you are from Worms?”

“Ja,
and what about some of your towns? All countries have towns with strange names.” The responding voice was young, younger than Albert’s, and at ease with itself.

“Not like that,” Sofie said.

“Albert will have to answer to the captain for bringing a girl on board!” This voice was older, filled with authority, but humour too. It didn’t sound as if the price Albert would have to pay would be too great. Laughing, the man added, “If the rest of us had known, we would have brought girls for ourselves as well.”

“Have you forgotten why we’re here?” said another voice, this one stern. “We are fighting a war. And your
girl
is the enemy.”

Lena sat up in her nest of straw. This was what Albert had been protecting them from: all these men knowing there were girls on the train. In her mind she saw the officer again, heard his oily voice.

“I’m not Albert’s girl. He’s just helping us,” Sofie said. She paused and silence fell. “I mean me,” she finished lamely.

“What are you hiding in that car?” the last man, the stern one, said. “Move aside.” And Lena heard the creaks and thuds of a heavy man swinging himself into the car. Moments later she crouched, her back against the wall, staring up into a broad,
frowning face. “You’ll come with me,” he said. “Both of you.” He leaned down and clamped rough fingers around her wrist, yanking her to her feet. The straw fell aside and Lena saw Sofie sitting in the doorway, dangling her legs, but looking back with her face caught in such a distorted expression—guilt and fear all mixed together—that Lena might have laughed … if she hadn’t been afraid for their lives.

Albert fell in with them as they walked in the train’s shadow, trying to keep up with the angry man. “What’s going on here, Hans?” he said, with barely enough breath to get out the words. Wherever he had come from, he had come fast.

Hans neither turned his head nor spoke. And Albert did not fall back to walk with Lena and Sofie. Lena had no chance to ask him where Hans was taking them, and what might happen once they got there. She looked across the barren fields to her right and saw not a single dwelling, no church spire in the distance, not even a clutch of trees that could hide two frightened girls. She kept walking.

At last they reached the rear of the train. Lena, Sofie and Albert stood outside while Hans stepped up into the car. Lena looked sideways at Albert. Should she lean over and whisper her question? His feet shuffled in the dirt and his body was rigid.

She looked up. A row of windows overlooked them, no blackout in sight. Anyone could be watching. She straightened and turned her gaze to the ground.