River in the Sea

by Tina Boscha

  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.”

  “But,” Leen started to say, wanting to say, But I killed the dog.

  Mem talked over her. “This is gek. Everyone get up and get ready for bed. Tine, don’t worry about Renske, I’ll get her.”

  “What about Pater? Issac?” Leen protested. She had to stay up, had to make sure they got home. If anything she could at least do that.

  “They’re out, what can we do?” Mem stood up with sharp energy, as if it was morning and already she had too much to do.

  Something in Mem’s voice told Leen not to ask anything more, to just obey. Her father and brother were out somewhere in Wierum, planning something about the truck and those soldiers. There was no way she could sleep, but she got up anyway. As she mounted the steps she once more remembered Pater’s kick, sending a flush to her face. The shame of his kick, of how she had stalled, of everything that had happened, connected and became one thing that settled hotly into her cheeks, her hands, her chest. Her leg still hurt and the handkerchief was still there, stuck against the dried blood. She left it there as she put on her nightgown and washed her face, bumping into Tine. “Excuse me,” Leen said, not knowing what else to say. Mem brought Renske to bed and Leen knew that all night, she would listen to Renske’s breath, and even if she were alone, she would not dare to move. There would be no eavesdropping, no grasping at the white door. Tonight she’d stare at the black windows and listen for the soft sounds of doors carefully opened and closed, of Pater’s voice talking low to Mem, delivering plans and secrets.

  7.

  Sometime in the night a light sleep overtook her, and when Leen awoke to the normal kitchen sounds of plates being set on the table, Pater’s coughing, and scraping chairs, she was surprised. She did not remember drifting off. She did remember peculiar, swirling dreams. Nothing in them made much sense; they were the kind of dreams that mixed thought and fear, and as she put her feet on the cold floor, she remembered dreaming of her walk with Pater on the dike, and that in the background, there had been clanging sounds, like something metal dropped from a high distance. She had also dreamed of Jan Fokke, his bloody chin and bruised cheeks lit up against the black interior of the soldier’s truck. Sitting on the edge of the cold bed, Leen felt her heart beat evenly, then suddenly speed up, drowning her in a bewildered, twitching dread.

  Downstairs, Pater and Issac were at the breakfast table. Both of their faces looked drawn, but their cheeks were flushed and their eyes burned brightly against their red–rimmed eyelids. Leen wanted to ask where they had gone last night, when did they come back, to tell her everything that was thickening the morning silence, but she knew better. No one said much of anything anyway. Pater and Issac each ate a large plate of fried eggs and bread with butter, and in between bites, they gulped black coffee while Mem stepped around Renske and fussed in the kitchen. Tine made sandwiches with thick slices of bacon and stiff bread and wrapped them in newsprint.

  Leen was certain they were furious with her. The sensation had settled into the atmosphere and became a new element, a new particle of the air. What was worse than their anger was that Leen could not blame them; she had no defense of herself. She was the catalyst, the first spark that was now a growing fire, and her guilt rose up in her throat and filled her mouth like a tidal flood.

  Pater stood up. Just before he left the room, he said, “See if you can get some salt today.”

  Leen nodded, saying nothing of the amount she’d taken the day before, or what Mrs. Deinum had given her.

  Across the table, Issac ate the last bits of his breakfast. Leen noticed his hands were covered with grease and streaks of rust. Still, Leen did not ask.

  When Leen returned from the Deinum’s late that afternoon, she was surprised to find a freshly gutted pig hung up by its hind legs in the barn’s rafters, already bled and skinned. Tine had two platters and a towel in her hands. Pater stood on a ladder, holding a long, curved knife, and Issac was covering a bucket. The air smelled of blood and hay and sweat and despite the oncoming winter, it was warm. The pig swayed back and forth to some unknown tremor beneath their feet.

  The pig itself did not surprise Leen; she’d seen several just like it hanging in the barn, awaiting the filleting and frying and storing so they’d have meat through the winter. It was just the timing of it. They had already done the preparations for the oncoming season, and she didn’t know why today, of all days, Pater and Mem felt the need to do more.

  “Come,” Pater said, “we have much to do.”

  Leen pulled the salt out of her pocket, the paper now bunched and wrinkled. She’d stolen another handful that morning, making her larceny the first task of the day.

  “Here,” she said as she handed the salt to her father, trying to keep her voice meek. “Is it enough?”

  Pater wiped his hands, still stained with blood, on a kerchief he pulled from his front pocket. He lit a cigarette. “Plenty,” he said, surprised, bobbing his hand up and down to assess the weight. He gave Leen a look. “Careful,” he said.

  She wanted to take the salt out of his hands and tell him how hard it had been to make herself steal, again, knowing that every time she acted rashly something terrible happened. What she didn’t understand was that everything they were doing, the pig, the secret glances, the clan
ging in the night, seemed to have little to do with surrendering.

  And pettily, despite the gravity of her errors, she wanted to be thanked for getting the salt. But she heard no marker of acknowledgement in Pater’s tone. She knew that in Pater’s eyes, she had done as she was told, and parents did not have to thank their children for obeying them. She put her hands back in her pockets and her fingers brushed against the smaller packet of salt Mrs. Deinum had given her, flattened after a day’s time in the same skirt. She started to withdraw it, then stopped, removing only an empty hand.

  Mem came to the doorway and announced she’d put out some things for supper. “Let’s get some food inside us before the work,” she said.

  On the kitchen table there were small slices of unleavened rye bread and a bowl of boiled eggs, along with a pan full of fried potatoes and glasses of milk. They ate standing. Pater did not even start with a prayer. Mem fixed him a plate and handed it to him, and everyone else arranged their own food. In minutes Pater was finished. He wiped his hands vigorously against each other, and Leen heard the scraping of his calluses. Sometimes on the nights after he and Mem would peel apples and druggevisk he would take the paring knife and smoothly slice them off.

  Once, Leen had asked, “Don’t you feel anything?”

  “Come here,” Pater said, holding out the knife. “Poke the tip in.”

  “Nee!” she squealed, but the lure and fascination of what if, of trying something dangerous just to see, like lighting matches or poking blisters until they popped, was too great. She took the knife and gingerly poked at a hard lump. When Pater didn’t flinch, she poked deeper.

  “Hey now, watch it!” Pater exclaimed. He took a little bit of newspaper and dabbed at the spot of blood. “My own daughter, stabbing me!”

  “Well, that’s your own fault, you told her to,” Mem had said, laughing.

  Leen went upstairs with a stack of pans and stood where the little white door was open to the eaves of the barn. Issac called to her to see if she was ready. Her job was to deliver the racks of bacon and ribs, each freshly cut by Pater, and carry the meat down to Mem and Tine in the kitchen, where they salted and fried and stored the finished product. Leen leaned against the open door and balanced herself. She held an enamel tray and pushed the door open further, and Issac dumped in a large piece of pork. The meat was jagged and torn in spots, a contrast from Pater’s usual fine cuts Mem was always so pleased with. It was not like him to rush.