Hunger Journeys (26 page)

“This will take us there,” Annie said, “as long as you don’t mind a bit of a windy route.”

Lena did not mind. As they walked, she filtered out the signs of war; she filtered out the dread, the horror of what had happened the week before, the shame she could still feel sometimes on her body where that man had stared at her bare legs. Be gone, she shouted to it inside her head. It was a beautiful spring day. She was out for a walk with a lovely little boy and a rather puzzling girl, off on a visit.

She wanted to walk fast—to feel the muscles in her legs, feel her lungs expand—and get to Sofie’s house sooner than soon, but Bennie was slow and cried if they tried to put him in the wagon, and Annie was the slowest of the three.

“I thought you wanted to come,” Lena said at last, trying to keep her voice friendly.

Annie stopped. “I did want to come,” she said. “Though I didn’t know where we were going. I needed … Oh, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

“All right,” Lena said, curious but relieved somehow. And she grasped Bennie’s hand and continued on her way. Annie
entered into the spirit of the thing, taking Bennie’s other hand in hers. They walked along the narrow path, the wagon bumping along behind, a giggling child swinging in between.

At first it seemed that no one was home. The front walk was cluttered and dirty, and the back door went unanswered. Lena remembered Meneer Klaassen leading the way through the lovely garden, still buried in snow when she and Sofie had first arrived in Almelo almost a month ago, and the kind welcome that had followed. Nothing felt the same now.

She raised her fist and knocked again. This time, she heard footsteps and stepped back as the door swung open.

“Mevrouw Klaassen,” Lena said, beaming, “is Sofie here?”

Janneke Klaassen did not smile back. “No, Sofie is not here. Three days she’s been gone. And good riddance,” she said.

Lena’s heart pounded, and she could not get her breath down her throat. “But … but, mevrouw, where has she gone?” she managed to stammer after a long moment.

Mevrouw Klaassen stared at her through cold, cold eyes. “Do I care where she has gone? A mof lover like that? And she slept in my own son’s bed! Her filthy skin on his sheets. She’d have had that man in the bed right with her if I’d turned my back for a moment more.” The woman almost spat in distaste on the word
man,
her long nose and upper lip constricting around the sounds, lengthening them, packing them full of hate.

Lena felt as if ice water were running over her skin, inside and out. What had Sofie done? Mevrouw Klaassen’s hatred spilled over her, clearly meant not for Sofie alone, but for her
too. What did this woman know? This was precisely what she had predicted back on the train. Fear filled her, not only for her friend’s safety, but for her own.

And all she could do was stand there, staring.

At last, Annie stepped forward. “Thank you for telling us, Mevrouw Klaassen. That must have been very painful for you,” she said.

The woman’s gaze shifted to Annie and the small boy half hidden behind her. Her brows pulled together.

“We’ll go now,” Annie said firmly, her hand on Lena’s arm. “We wish you well, you and Meneer Klaassen. I hope your sons come home to you soon.”

They walked in silence until they were back on the path beside the river. Bennie seemed to have absorbed some of what had happened, and he rode in the wagon without complaint. Annie pulled the wagon and Lena followed the two of them, her mind tumbling with thoughts, her body stiff with dread.

Obviously, the Klaassens had caught Sofie with Uli and sent her away. Or had they? Maybe she had gone on her own. Maybe she was long gone to Germany. Maybe Lena would never see her again. But surely she wouldn’t leave without a word. Unless she didn’t want to endanger Lena. Round and round Lena’s thoughts went. Sofie was gone. No. She couldn’t be gone. But then, where was she? She must be gone.

So caught up in her thoughts was she that Annie had to put out a hand to keep her from crashing into the wagon when they stopped. Lena drew her mind back to the present and looked at the girl before her.

“Let’s stop here a bit,” Annie said. “I’ve been wanting a chance to talk with you. Let’s sit down on the grass, just for a minute. Just for one minute.”

Lena had no desire to sit with this strange girl. She wanted her friend. But she walked off the path and sat down on the damp grass on the riverbank, pulling Bennie down beside her.

“No!” he said, and he was up, a stick that Lena had not noticed before in his hand, playing happily near the water.

Annie plunked herself down beside her. “I need help,” she said.

“Help?” Lena echoed. What could Annie possibly need help with? She never did anything. And surely Sofie’s fate was the concern of the moment, not help for Annie.

“I’ve seen what you’ve been through since you’ve been with us, and I feel like I can trust you.”

“Trust me for what?” This was getting stranger and stranger.

“I am a bicycle courier,” Annie said.

Lena took her eyes off Bennie for a moment and stared at the other girl. She had never heard of a bicycle courier.

Annie paused. Then she said, “I work for the Dutch Resistance.”

Lena’s mouth fell open. “You’re joking,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly …”

“Exactly,” Annie replied. “Who better than someone who ‘couldn’t possibly’?”

“But you’re always just sitting around. You don’t do anything!”

“Well, haven’t you noticed that I often go out and ‘do nothing’ there?”

Lena thought about it. Annie did disappear regularly, but she had always seen it as aimless wandering. “But that’s dangerous!” she said, her voice rising.

Again, Annie paused. “Yes,” she said, “it is, but it is helping. It is saving people’s lives.”

Lena looked at her, fear grasping her insides and squeezing them. Why was this girl telling her? You didn’t tell stuff like that. You kept it secret. That was safer. And even more, she wondered, why was she telling her now? “Does your mother know?” she asked. “Your father? And why are you telling me this when you’ve just been told that my friend is a traitor?”

Annie rose to her feet. “What do you think?” She stood over Lena, her fists clenched. “My mother is a selfish woman. She wants food and comfort, status if she can get it—which she can’t, having thrown her lot in with a lowly butcher—and her curtains as white as she can get them. And Father? This war means nothing to him either, except insofar as it restricts him. Father works and works, and once in a while he goes after a girl.”

Lena’s eyes widened.

“Oh, don’t think you’re the first.” She paused, as if thinking. “Though it has been a long time since one turned up at the door offering to move in. Years.” Annie’s smile was ugly.

“Anyway,” she said, her anger gone in a moment as she sank back down at Lena’s side and smiled at Bennie, who had stopped playing and was staring at them, “Mother and Father would not be the people to tell. I thought, though, that you might be different, that you might want to help …” Her voice tailed off, and she was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “And what I saw just now … I saw that you care about your friend. I saw your fear and your shock, and I saw that you care. That’s who we need: people who care.”

No, Lena thought, her mind clear and certain. She cared about Sofie. She cared about Bennie and Bep and Piet. And Nynke. But total strangers? It was not her job to care about total strangers.

She did not want to help.

She had gone to the country with Margriet to get food. She had crossed the Netherlands in a cattle car, fighting off the advances of a man who, though the enemy, seemed to want to protect her. She had spent a month in a house where no one loved her, except perhaps for one small boy, and where, though food was more plentiful than at home, she was expected to help slaughter animals. And where a man watched and waited. Just now, having failed to help her first friend two years earlier, she seemed to have lost her second, however misguided that friend might be.

And Annie was asking her to risk her life for people she had never even met. Would never meet. She did not want to help. She wanted to go home. She would take her greedy father and her bitter, starving mother and her absent brother over these people any day.

“What … what is it that you would want me to do?” she asked, her voice low.

“First, just ride with me. I will show you the route. Then you will take it over.”

“Why? Why don’t you do it?”

“I already have a route, and they think it’s too risky for me to take on another.”

“They?” Lena echoed.

“Yes, they. The leaders.”

Lena thought for a minute. Bennie came and gave her a new stick he had found. She thanked him and held the stick in her lap. “Who was doing it before?”

“A man.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was taken by the Germans.”

Lena shifted, and the stick fell off her lap. “Taken? You want me to become a courier because a man was taken? I can’t do that! I know what happens to—”

“Don’t you care about anyone other than yourself? I thought you did.”

Lena stared at her. Could this girl really be only fifteen? She thought for a moment. “What about Bennie?”

Bennie looked up at the sound of his name and grinned.

Annie’s brows knit. Then she said, “He could go with you,” her voice animated. “He’d be a perfect cover! And we have a bicycle with a child seat.”

Once again Lena could do nothing but stare while her mind roamed. Annie was willing to put her brother at risk. She wasn’t sure whether that showed courage or carelessness.

Her own brother came to mind, and the neighbour with the radio. That was what Piet had hoped for, she knew: to get involved. And she was pretty sure that his wishes had been granted, that that was what had clammed him up. Still, Piet was doing what he had always longed to do. She had never felt such a longing, not for one second.

And when she had had the chance to do one tiny thing—to ride through the city to the Jewish Quarter and greet Sarah after she was forced to move—she had stayed away. She
had
been called upon to do something, small though it was, and she had resisted. She had failed. How could anyone think she had something to offer now?

Bennie slid his hand into hers and pulled. “Play,” he said, his smile bright.

And that smile brought other images into Lena’s mind, images that changed her. The words
Rachel. June 12–Sept 17, 1943. RIP
carved into a wooden wall. A tiny baby, captive on
the very train that had taken Lena where she had thought she wanted to go. A baby who barely made it past three months, who never got to smile and say, “Play!” who never rode in a wagon or made a drum from a pot and a wooden spoon.

Another child came to Lena’s mind then as well. Nynke. What if Nynke was starving and no one offered her food? What if she was taken away and no stranger stepped forward to help her?

I’ve left my sister all alone, Lena thought, and she said, “I’ll do it.” There the words were, spoken. “Yes. I’ll do it.” And there they were again, meant.

They talked just a little more then.

Lena had a thought and pulled her identity card out of her pocket. “I’m worried about this,” she said.

Annie took it and stared. “Aubrey Schulze?” she said at last, looking up. “This is the worst forgery I’ve ever seen.”

Lena waited.

After another moment, Annie said, “Leave it with me. Our people can do better. Do you want to be yourself again?”

Lena nodded.

After that, Annie led the way toward home, the wagon bumping along behind her, its cargo singing softly to himself. Lena lagged behind them both. She had a great deal to think about.

Annie was first through the kitchen door, Bennie at her heels. Lena was still inside the lean-to, unlacing her shoes, in no hurry to re-enter her workaday life in the Wijman household, when Annie reappeared in the doorway, her face alight with surprise and excitement.

Lena stood and stared at this new Annie. Then her eyes took in the figure behind her.

“Sofie!” For a moment she felt nothing but joy, and she saw joy in her friend’s face as well as they flung themselves into each other’s arms.