River in the Sea

by Tina Boscha

  “NO!” Jan Fokke yelled.

  Leen watched in horror as Jan Fokke stood up. Sit back down, she thought, please. Jan took the stack of pamphlets and screamed “Fifty!” and threw it at the soldier’s faces. Arnold, who had been standing against the wall behind the bar, came forward. “Jan, easy now,” Leen heard him say.

  It was too late. The knowledge that she was going to witness something terrible grew apparent in a physical way, by a slow pain that crept across her chest, then rolled back so that it felt like someone was tying up her heart and lungs into a tight package. The feeling was all too familiar.

  The gatekeeper stood up and grabbed Jan Fokke by the collar, the bones in his hands standing out, and then the larger one stood and pushed the thin soldier aside, seamlessly taking the hold on Jan Fokke’s neck and tightening it. Jan Fokke immediately began to groan and choke, both sounds emerging from deep within his body, wet and echoing.

  “Let him go,” Arnold said in Deutsch.

  “Sei still!” the gatekeeper shouted, his voice fractured and dry. “Shut up!”

  Jan Fokke pushed at the hands around his neck and Leen imagined running forward and prying those hands off, just so she could stop hearing Jan Fokke fighting for breath. A cool sweat moistened her skin, chilling behind her ears, along her eyebrows, in between her breasts, the underside of her thighs where she pressed them against the chair, rooted. No one moved. No one smoked. No one dared take a drink. The air started to clear except for the thin lines of smoke streaming from untouched cigarettes.

  Then Jan Fokke jerked to the side, and as the soldier yanked him back, his leg swung out and his klompke kicked hard into the choking soldier’s knee, wood slamming into bone.

  He immediately let go of Jan Fokke and doubled over and his groans replaced Jan Fokke’s. A stray laugh echoed into the café but stopped as quickly as it began. Jan Fokke started to yell “Fifty!” again, unaware of both the stupidity and cleverness of what he had done. Leen watched as Arnold tried to motion to Jan Fokke to run and she could tell that Arnold did not want to say it out loud. Jan Fokke looked at him, confused. Then someone yelled out, “Run, run away now!”

  Jan Fokke looked to the crowd and Arnold suddenly pushed him and the gatekeeper, acting as if he too was a bystander, said, “Hey!” and then, mercifully, something must have clicked. Jan Fokke turned and clumsily ran toward the door.

  The soldier who had been kicked was still bent over, clutching his knee. He yelled something to his mate, his voice echoing like a bull’s in the static air, and the other soldier answered in a high–pitched voice that broke up the air into pieces. The injured soldier answered with a roar and stood up, his deep red face twisting into an angry grimace, and begin to run, limping, after Jan. The gatekeeper followed, his strides surprisingly fast.

  Leen’s blood pumped in hectic beats, each one a radiating pain against her ribs. She could shout to them, holding up the bag of salt. “You can have this if you let him alone,” she would offer, allowing the gatekeeper to recognize her. But she couldn’t make herself do it, too afraid.

  There were shouts. Arnold ran to the door, still partially open. A gust of wind swung it open all the way and the hinges rasped loudly. Arnold reached out to grab it, and someone else stood up, someone close, and Arnold stepped out, then another. In no time there was a crowd and Leen followed, hanging back, feeling she had no other choice, her eyes spilling and face wet, magnifying the cold air blowing against her cheeks once she was outside.

  The broad–shouldered soldier clutched Jan Fokke’s hair. He breathed heavily but didn’t yell, didn’t say a single word as he pulled Jan towards him, throwing Jan off–balance. His feet slid out of his splintered, gray klompen. The soldier punched Jan’s head and the cracking sound was like kindling. Jan fell forward onto a knee and the soldier struck again, catching Jan in the back of the head, bringing his other knee to the ground with a smack. At this the soldier grinned. Arnold was standing close, yelling in bits of German, High Holland, and Frysk, desperate words that all meant the same thing: “Stop!” The gatekeeper pushed him away, and it should’ve been ridiculous for him to do so since Arnold was a big man, with meaty hands and a bullish temper, but instead Arnold backed down and stopped yelling. Then Leen saw that the soldier had a gun. His hand was on it.

  The beating didn’t stop. Leen saw a flash of a leather boot and closed her eyes but she could still hear the boot connect with Jan’s ribs with a muffled, solid thump. Jan screamed and it forced Leen to open her eyes. Slowly, like a clumsy toddler, he rose to his knees and put his hands above his head, making the most awful sounds Leen had ever heard, ferocious and pained like a child but with the volume and intensity of a man. She’d heard a sound like that only once before, from Issac when he returned home hours after the accident in Ternaard, where he, a new driver at 13, gunned the truck too fast in reverse, never seeing Wopke standing between the truck’s bed and the stone wall of the alley, crushing him. Once home, Mem had grabbed Issac and slapped him across the face, and then pulled him to her and sobbed, and Issac let out the strangest, most terrible sound Leen had ever heard. He sounded like an animal, wounded and in terror, with no way to reason out what was happening, how it had gotten itself hurt.

  Jan Fokke’s pathetic sounds did not inspire pity in the soldier. He kicked Jan in the mouth and blood flooded his face from his nose down, running off his chin and dripping too fast into a steady line that formed another deep red stain on the ground. Leen gasped.

  “Idiot!” the soldier yelled. “Dummkopf, idiot!”

  “Enough now,” the gatekeeper finally said, grasping the other’s elbow. “Enough.” Leen wondered if it was her instead of Jan Fokke if he would have shown the same mercy. She hated that part of her was glad it wasn’t her, hated that somehow she knew Jan Fokke had taken her place. Pater was right: had the wind been different.

  The soldier stood up, breathless. He shook his head side to side. “Nein,” he said, shaking a red finger. “Go,” he rumbled to Jan. He pointed to their truck. It was parked in front of a nearby row of houses. The tires were caked with mud. He repeated himself, harsher yet. “Schnell, der verdammte schweinehund!”

  The thoughts rang inside Leen’s head again: why didn’t she go home, why was she watching this awful thing. But they were drowned out by the gatekeeper also pointing to the heavy, gray truck while the other jerked Jan Fokke up by the elbow until he staggered up, bleeding from the nose and mouth and clutching his side. He made a strange mewing sound that diminished as he got farther away, held up by the collar as he pitched and lurched into the truck’s bed, landing with a bang on his side.

  There was no way Leen could have prevented what had happened; she knew this. But the fact got lost in her hysteria over watching the soldiers climb into the front and driving away, Jan Fokke staring meekly back at the crowd, everyone sick at the sight, sick at themselves for watching.

  Leen turned to the bricks of the café and covered her mouth. Arnold shouted, “Go home,” and upon hearing these words, she left her bike there and began to walk. On her third step she broke into a run. She was not the only one. On another day, it might have made her laugh to see grown men’s faces straining as their old legs lumbered, running awkwardly in the daylight, but now, it only made her run faster. No one looked at anyone else. There was no air in her lungs no matter how hard she tried to breathe. She choked on emerging sobs.

  “Jan Fokke,” Leen sputtered as she found Pater in the barn. She’d have to confess about being at the café but then it occurred to her, far too late, that she needed to find Issac, to warn him, even as she realized the razzia signal must have been sent long ago. “They took him away. Issac, where is he? Is he hiding–”

  “Shhh, famke, shhh, yes, Issac is gone,” Pater said. He wiped Leen’s face with his bare hand. “What is this about Jan Fokke? They have taken him? Who?”

  “Soldiers, the gatekeeper was there, in the café,” Leen said. “They beat him. Jan’s face, it was so bloody, an
d I couldn’t–”

  Pater’s face went still. “Soldiers,” he said. “How many?”

  His words became clairvoyant. Tires sounded against the street and an engine revved outside the barn, then cut off. Footsteps ground against the cold bricks of the short driveway and Leen looked right into Pater’s eyes as two fists knocked on the door.

  6.

  “Inside,” Pater mouthed, pointing towards the door that led to the back hallway.

  Leen froze, frantic with too many thoughts. The knocks were unfamiliar. There were four of them – loud, dull blasts, created from closed fists. Leen had always been told that if you were passing the signal on the run, you were supposed to tap, and soldiers didn’t announce themselves during a raid. She must’ve missed the other signals, quick flashes of light at the window, signals she’d sent herself, positioning the mirror and lamp to bounce the light into the houses across the street. How could there be a razzia, this late in the war? There was nothing left to hide, just their old radio, and she hadn’t seen that in months –

  “Leentje! Now!” Pater hissed. “Klompen off and go inside, get everyone upstairs, NOW.”

  They were at the door. Both of the soldiers, they had seen her. They had dumped Jan Fokke and they were there for her. “They are here for me, I should stay–”

  There was another knock, one single blast that shook the door, and Pater pushed her and said, “Now. Get the others. They won’t knock anymore.” Renske’s tired cry floated through the thin wall. Pater cringed. He shook a hand towards the kitchen, willing Renske to be quiet.

  “I’ll go to the cellar,” Leen choked.

  Pater reached out and shoved her. He turned her around, his arms strong and surprising, and she felt a hard kick on her rear and Leen stumbled, turning back to see Pater’s angry, red face. She heard creaking doors as she slipped her feet out of the loud klompen and ran silently into the house, leaving her father behind.

  Inside, Mem stood motionless in the hallway, her face white, both hands clutching a half–finished mitten dangling off her worn knitting needles. She looked at Leen’s stocking feet.

  “Soldiers,” Leen whispered. She held up two fingers near her hot face, the force of Pater’s kick still with her.

  Mem’s eyes widened, and without a word, she turned towards the stairs. Her left knee popped and her hands fumbled, and Leen reached out past Mem’s hip and caught the mess of yarn and needles before it clattered to the floor.

  Upstairs, Tine was waiting with Renske in their room, where they always went to wait it out. She must have heard the knocks and gone immediately, not waiting for any confirmation. More than once Tine had called out “Razzia!” when it had only been a flash of silverware reflecting against the windowpane.

  Leen stood in the doorway, trying to listen to the voices underneath her. Renske whimpered in Tine’s arms, and Mem sat heavily on the bed. Tine clumsily stroked Renske’s cheeks to quiet her. Tine’s eyes were pressed tightly and her hand shook. Mem took Renske from her. The four of them had sat through razzias more times than they could count. They’d listened as soldiers raided the cellar, the kitchen, come through every room upstairs, usually ignoring them as they went through drawers, looking for jewelry, or taunting them as they let a Delft figurine fall off a dresser and shatter. Now, they didn’t even wave their guns as they did in the beginning of the war. They mostly wanted oil, flour, wood for a fire, and their necessity made them almost polite.

  But Leen knew this was not that kind of razzia. One of the soldiers had blood on his boots, and the other had a memory and a gun. There was a girl in Wierum who had been bragging too much about killing one of their dogs and they’d found her. But it was Pater downstairs, in the barn, alone. They would take him away, throw him in the back of the truck. It was supposed to be her. It ought to be her. First Jan Fokke, now Pater. And Issac? Where was Issac?

  “They’re here for me,” Leen breathed.

  “Sit,” Mem said. Downstairs, in the hallway, she had seemed lost, but she’d regained her authority. Leen could see it in her mouth, a set of hard lines. Worried.

  “I should go down,” Leen said, trying to be brave, but suddenly Mem was at her side. Still holding Renske, Mem grabbed Leen at the top of her shoulder, pinching on each side of the muscle, and dragged her into the room and Leen gave up, the nerves screaming up the side of her neck. She sank down against the side of the bed and tried to stem the fresh set of tears but failed.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” Mem hissed.

  Tine surprised Leen by sliding down next to her and putting both her arms around Leen. Normally dead silent during the raids, she whispered, “Do you really think they are here for you?” Leen leaned into her sister and nodded. Of course they were. But Pater had sent her away with a kick. Of course Pater would offer himself first. He’d said it at Wopke’s funeral, when Mr. Boonstra had taken his hand. “You’re supposed to die before your children,” Pater had said solemnly, and then his face shattered and he cried then, clutching Mr. Boonstra’s fingers.

  Leen shut her eyes. They came back. Pater was right. Mem was right. She was stupid. So very, very stupid.

  She flung Tine’s arm away and pushed away from the bed. “Leentje!” Mem warned but Leen ignored her. She leaned forward on both hands, looking around the room. How were they protected there? The door was ajar and it looked thin, brittle as twigs. The soldiers could agree to Pater. They could take him. But it’d be worse, effective in the most horrible way, if they ignored a father’s plea and took the girl anyway. She needed to flee. She needed to get to a potato heap, even the narrow, deep hole Pater had dug in the backyard the first summer of the war, when curfews began far before the sun had even begun to set, still high in the sky at 9 o’clock. Pater had lined the dugout with wood and tarpaper, the top a thick, snug–fitting door that grew over with grass and moss. Leen and Tine had played there often before they grew too big and too disinterested. Leen hadn’t been to the dugout in well over a year, and she didn’t know if she could even find the lip of the door to lift it up. The roots of the surrounding grass might have already tangled it shut.

  Downstairs there was a slam, maybe a door, but it didn’t sound like wood. Several sets of footsteps wove together underneath her. All at once, Leen’s core felt empty, and then instantly it filled with a new, deeper kind of terror. The knowledge that her father was there, alone, with little defense, consumed her from the inside out. She leaned back against the bed, overcome, Tine at her side.

  “Shhhh!” Mem said. No one had spoken. She jumped as if someone had snuck up behind her, and the bed shook behind Leen’s back, and the movement brought back the hot imprint of Mem’s searing pinch and Pater’s shoving kick to her backside.

  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, shocke
d 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.