The Journey Back (17 page)

“When’s the next time, you think?” I swallowed. “I don’t know.” He turned around, took my hand. “You’re not mad at me for yelling at you when you first came, are you?”

“No, Johan. Of course not.”

“Because I wouldn’t want that. I like it, Annie, even when you come for just one day.” Hopefully he looked at me. “You think in a few weeks?”

“I’ll try.” I didn’t meet his eyes. “If you can’t, you can’t. There’s still the whole summer. No school then, eh?” He squeezed my hand.

“You’re upset, I can see that. Don’t think any more about what Dientje said last night. Makes no difference that you go back to Father and Mother or what-fancy house or what-where you are. We’ll always love each other. We’ve gone through too much together, Annie.” He stopped, then said carefully, “Don’t worry about friends, either. You’ll get them, a nice gift like you.” From the left, far away still, the bus. We stood, Johan and I, close. Bigger, the bus. Here it was. My free hand shot up.

Johan’s voice was toneless. “You get on now.” But he was still holding my hand.

The door opened. , “Go, go.”

My hand … I put one foot on the step. ‘

“See you soon, Annie. Tell your father and mother to bring you next time and stay for the day. Maybe they’d like that.”

The door closed. “Remember me to them. Bye, Annie, bye. care of yourself.”

I looked out the glass part of the door. He was striding down the road, his head high.

I sat down, looked out. Trees, dandelions, daisies. A year ago Sini and I had been here, on this road, on our way back to Winterswijk. Not a bad year, the first one. Just a little difficult. I had said goodbye to so many people—the Oostervelds, Sini, Rachd. There was Mother now.

She cared about me. Just couldn’t admit it-wasn’t that kind of person.

Maybe later she would come straight out and tell me, when she had known me longer. Then I’d be sure. “You’re not going back to Ussdo for a long time,” she’d say the minute I came in. “I want you home.” I’d ask her about the summer. I had promised Johan I would. I didn’t want to spend all my vacations in Ussdo though. Gloomily I stared out the window. What about Walcheren? The first reeds would be up already. And the dikes were sturdy again. I could climb on one, all the way to the top, and look and look. Water, sailboats, sea gulls, sky … But I could see land, too.

Hawthorn hedges, gardens, pinks, yellows. And the’ people, all back, wearing their costumes-pretty ones, long skirts, colorful blouses, lace caps. I could even hear some if the men and women practicing. The annual band concert was coming up. Listen … music: a clarinet, a trombone-new instruments, replacing those that had been washed into the North Sea.

Waicheren. Had wanted to go there for so long. I could even go by myself, couldn’t I … when I was old enough. Only fourteen next month.

And on the bus went, while in the ruins of Nuremberg, Hitler’s closest friends and helpers were still on trial. S many crimes, horrible ones.

Deaths. Millions. In so many ways. And places. But other crimes as well, not only deaths, ones you couldn’t even see. In Winterswijk the baker would be on his way to Mrs. Menko’s with a fresh loaf of bread. She’d give away the rest of yesterday’s, which she would hardly have touched, but not until he had rung her bell, and she was sure she had a new loaf.

“I know it’s crazy, but it makes me feel safe.” She still couldn’t talk about what had happened to her.

Only cry. “Does everyone have to go through it personally before people will stop wars? Please, plea.” On, past woods where signs warned people to. stay out-land mines. And on, while in Amsterdam the barrel organ went. from street to street, a dog next to it carrying a cup.

Coins plopping in.. “Thank you.” And the man kept on turning the:

wheel, quicker, releasing more ting-tingly music. “Thank you, thank you.” On, and on, on, while another railroad bridge somewhere in Holland had just been repaired, and across it, kc-ctmnk, kc-chunk, went another train, decorated, and crowded with officials wearing suits that were no longer worn-out and patched. Those old suits were on scarecrows now, out in the fields. There, the bus just passed one. Cap, jacket-looking like a farmer from a distance. Through a mist of tears, more things flashed by. Had trouble seeing them. Johan. What was he doing now? Home? No, plowing probably. The potatoes … Just as he had all the other springs since he was eleven. “I began work early in life, Annie, not like most other kids. I did play soccer though, a couple of times. You should’re seen me. I could’ve become a real good player. Damned if it isn’t true.

If I could have played more often.

But that’s the way it was, with Pa sick all the time. Did I ever tell you I did very well in school? Could have become a teacher -that’s how well. But Annie, you know what I really wanted to be? A vet. I’ve got a special feeling for animals, I guess you can say.” Furrows now, in his field. The soil soft, crumbly. “C’mon, horse, come. We’ve got to move on.”

Me, too. Move on, go places, see things. Maybe Johan was thinking about something pleasant now, too. The secret, Johan, the tractor.

Please, Johan, think about that. Please. I couldn’t see anything now, too many tears. Later, I’d tell him about it; where I had been, what I had seen. “That island, Johan, Walcheren. I stood on top of the dike …

looked .”.. miles of water straight ahead of me. Far away, it was darker. Could be land. A boat. Anything

“Later, Johan, later.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Johanna Reiss was Dom and brought up in Holland. After she was graduated from college, she taught elementary school for several years before coming to the United States to live. Her first book for children, The Upstairs Roam, was a Newbery Honor Book, an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book’, and a Jane Addams Peace Associafon Honor Book, and it won the Jewish Book Council Juvenile Book Award and the Buxtehuder Bulle, a prestigious German children’s book award. Mrs. Reiss writes that soon after she had finished The Upstairs Room, she found “there was still something I wanted to say, something that was as meaningful to me as the story I had told in the first book, the story of a war. “The fighting has stopped’; “Peace treaty signed,” newspapers announce at the conclusion of every war. From a political point of view, the war is over, but in another sense it has not really ended. People are fragile. They are strong, too, but wars leave emotional scars that take a long time to heal, generations perhaps. I know this to be true of myself, and of others. And out of those feelings came The ]oumey Back, a story of the aftermath of the Second World War.”

Though Mrs. Reiss lives with her daughters in New York City, they make frequent visits to Holland to visit Mrs. Reiss’s sisters, Rachel and Sini, and Johan and Dientje Oosterveld.