River in the Sea

by Tina Boscha

  “I told you to get home,” Arnold said. He rubbed his face in exhaustion. He must have witnessed this scene many times before, ever since the beginning of the war. “Leentje, you know what’s going to happen. Go.”

  She tried to run home, but her knees couldn’t take it. She had to slow down, but every attempt at stopping only made her start running again. Each time her klompen met the hard wet bricks of the street twinges of pain burned up her bones to her kneecaps. She didn’t care that she was saying aloud, “No, no, no!”

  Issac was right. And Minne? That stupid, stupid girl, she thought.

  Both of them.

  18.

  Issac sat in his typical spot on the edge of the pew. He sat so straight his shoulders didn’t touch the backrest, and Leen couldn’t stop herself from stealing glances at him. Until he walked into their kitchen that morning, she hadn’t seen him days, as he had mobilized with the rest of the Frisian Resistance. Finally, Wierum was cleared of its men, except not in the way the German army had planned.

  Even in church, Issac was watchful. At least once Leen caught him raising eyebrows at another congregant, also wearing the blue coverall uniform with the stitched armband. She wanted to finger the heavy canvas, even try it on in secret. She pictured herself wearing it while hiding in corners, waiting in doorways, passing secret signals, listening for a truck coming through in a quiet gear, then springing out. The crispness of the uniform would not chafe her skin as she leapt out, hands wrapped around the cool handle of a gun, taking prisoners of war.

  At least this is what she thought Resistance men did. For the past eight days the L.O. had been on duty and she had no idea where Issac was or when he would return. The last two nights they had gone to Mrs. Boonstra’s house to listen to her illegal radio, a relic with huge knobs she had managed to hide away like many others did after the radio ban two years prior. Once the whirring of the generator was steady, Mrs. Boonstra, Leen, her mother and her sisters crowded at the table to listen to the reports where they heard the latest city to fall, waiting for the names to grow more familiar: Ternaard, Meppel, Ee, Oosternijkerk, Wierum. With every bit of terrible news – prisoners forced to run with the soldiers, raids and deaths of Resistance officers – there was another bit of good news. The Allieds freed one more village, dot by dot on the map, working their way closer with the help of the L.O. It was strange to believe Issac was part of that.

  And then, that morning, Issac walked into the house dressed as the soldier he’d become. He was clean–shaven. Over what basin, using what pitcher, had he shaved his face? Washed his hands? Was it really safe enough for him to be home for kerk? When she saw him, Mem’s eyes immediately filled with tears. His face was soft when he kissed her on the forehead, and whispered, “Hello, moeder, who ist mei dei?”

  Mem did not answer. As she had done over six years ago, she reached up and slapped Issac’s face. He shut his eyes but held still. Then Mem took his hand and pressed it to her cheek and held it.

  Leen watched all of this, frozen. She was glad to see him, filled with relief, yet frightened of him too. She wanted to poke him in the arm, pinch his shoulder, nudge him, bug him like she used to. She wondered if he knew about Minne, about what had happened at the café, if he’d heard how Leen had run, how she’d left Minne there. Now, with the hopes and anticipation at their very highest, Leen wanted to grab her brother’s elbow, tell him, “Sorry,” and hope that would be enough for each of them to let it go. Instead, they tiptoed around each other that morning as they readied themselves for church, avoiding eyes, avoiding words.

  Staring at Issac’s uniform, Leen was too immersed in her thoughts to pay attention to the sermon, nor did she hear the rumbling.

  Someone shouted, “Canadians!”

  The air shifted with a whompf. Everyone turned their heads to the left and adjusted their hips in a collective lean towards the direction of the sound. Leen watched a man get up, right there in the middle of the sermon, to look out the window. It was unreal, as unreal as the talking when the Dominie announced the jailbreak. Then another person shouted, “Canadians! Canadian tanks!”

  The congregation moved as a single mass, rushing to the windows that pulled them to the sound like a magnet. Boys scrambled inside the bay of the windows, pushing them open even further, leaning out the sills. Leen took Mem’s hand and put it through her elbow and Tine did the same. She pushed forward with her toes and ahead of her Issac hoisted Renske onto his shoulders.

  “Is it true?” Mem asked, echoing the question asked by quaking voices behind her, and in front, as the Dominie called from the pulpit, “Canadians? Have they come?”

  At that moment Leen saw a shadow pass over the window and for a half–second it was silent as everyone saw the shadow take shape, and then there were shouts, and when the next Canadian half–track followed with a man’s khaki–sleeved arm waving from the side of it, Leen’s voice joined. A tingle traveled down her neck, down her spine, down every strand of hair, into every cell.

  The mass broke; everyone pushed out, the energy suddenly pulsing, every Wierumer’s heart pumping blood to legs. That was the benediction; the church was empty in less than a minute. Leen pulled Mem to take her with the running mass, forming again to see the rolling line of strange, massive vehicles with tires up front and tank tracks in the rear. She stared in awe and when Mem cried to her, “Leentje, Leentje, look at it!” it finally hit.

  They were liberated. All the towns and villages announced, forming an envied list; now Wierum was on it. The Allieds were there. They were free.

  Leen threw her arms around Mem and found herself crying. Soldiers shouted at them, “Hello! Hello!” and she shouted back, “Hoi! Hoi Canadians!” Something hit her foot and when she looked down she saw a wrapped butterscotch candy. Another dropped as she reached for it.

  “Candy! They are throwing candy!” Renske shouted from her perch atop Issac’s shoulders. He bounced her and jumped and she shrieked at the joy. He yelled, no words, just shouts, and Leen let go of her mother and grabbed his arm. To her relief he did not shrug off her touch, but kept shouting, and Leen linked her arm through his and joined him. Neither of them could form intelligible words but still he did not let go, and the three of them bounced and shouted, “Hello! Hello! Thank you Canadians, we are free!”

  “Tine!” Renske cried. Leen searched for Tine’s face amid the sea of shifting smiles and eyes shut in rapture, no one keeping still, and finally she found her, looking dazzled. Leen pushed through the crowd to her, took her hand, and found Mem, now holding onto Mrs. Boonstra’s elbow as if she might drown if she let go. Someone started singing De âlde Friezen, their anthem, and the words were infectious. They all sang along, the words something Leen never remembered learning but always knew. “Klink dan en daverje fier yn it rûn, dyn âlde eare, o Fryske grûn,” she sang, as loudly as she could. The crowd’s collected voice roared into the chorus, singing of the pride and honor of their ancient Frisian ground. The anthem was their hymn, church now outside, the Canadians their Dominie. They wore khaki brown uniforms and they beamed and Leen held her hands up as they threw out bags of sweets. Everyone’s face looked the same, a great relief breaking through the invisible veil of fear and weariness.

  Someone started running, then all of them were, following the tanks down Ternaarderweg, the sound of the sea drowned out by the rumbling half–tracks, singing voices, laughs, shouts, the beat of klompen on the bricks, Leen’s knee weak but holding underneath her.

  She and her family ran with the tanks, stopping in front of their house, everyone doing the same, forming an immediate audience for the impromptu parade. Tine ran inside the house and returned with the orange kerchiefs.

  “I don’t have enough,” Tine said. Leen didn’t tell her what she had done with hers. What did it matter now? She took one and ripped it in half and waved it back and forth, snapping it in the air.

  Mr. Boonstra, also in his blue coverall, crossed over and kissed Mem on the cheek. “The war is ov
er!” he shouted, and he put his arms around Mem and started to dance, and Mem shook her head at first but then she joined him, doing a dance the old timers knew, the moves a clever mix of stomps and turns and kicks. The wood soles of the klompen drummed the beat of the song.

  “Mem is dancing!” Renske said.

  “I know!” Leen swung Renske around. “So are we!”

  Suddenly Mem pushed away. “Nee, nee,” she said, her smile fading.

  Mr. Boonstra put his arm around her mother. It made Leen bristle, even though the way he pulled her in, close to his shoulder, not his hip, was a brother’s touch. Still, she had never seen Mem stand so close to another man besides her father.

  “Aafke, hey,” Mr. Boonstra said, his voice a baritone. “You’ll be dancing with your man soon.”

  Mem nodded, then collapsed, letting Mr. Boonstra hold her up. But with her free hand, she still waved her orange kerchief.

  Leen turned away. Everywhere she looked there was a smile. Everywhere she heard laughter and Issac, standing in front of her, still sang and shouted. For one moment her joy wavered. Then she thought of Pater. Wherever he was, he’d want her to savor this moment. She could hear him say it: Leentje, pay attention to this! Enjoy it, poppie!

  Jakob walked towards them. She thought he’d come for Issac, but aside from clapping his hand on his shoulder and shouting something and nodding furiously, he walked up to her. “We are liberated!” he said.

  On impulse, Leen grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him. Tine shouted her name with a giggle and Issac groaned, “Ah, ver skrikelik!”

  Jakob swung her around and laughed. “We are liberated!” he said again. They kissed once more and then Jakob turned to Issac, flushing red, and Issac smacked him on the arm. Leen laughed too, willing herself not to look at her mother. Yes, it was real.

  They were liberated. The war was, unofficially, over.

  One less thing to wait for.

  The next day arrived, enough time for the shock and the highest levels of joy to wear off, and the need to do something, to tidy up the messiness of liberation, took over. That and the need for a good road. The half–tracks had grooved deep ruts into the bricks, crumbling the road in minutes. The fact that Blaskowitz hadn’t yet officially surrendered and that the Germans hadn’t exited the islands didn’t seem to hinder the sudden appearance of cars and motorcycles that hadn’t seen daylight in five years. Leen had no idea that so many people had hid away their autos, and she had no idea how they did it. Their truck was still torn apart on the barn floor.

  By mid–morning crowds were outside with shovels and pitchforks and rickety and creaking wheelbarrows, and when Issac appeared in the kitchen wearing his blue coverall again and holding all the gear he could carry, everyone followed when he said, “Come on, everyone’s already out there.” Even Mem worked outside, poking at the ground with an old rake, wearing a strained smile on her face.

  Leen worked in a line, shoveling up chunks of the road, broken bricks and crumbling dirt, and loading them into the wheelbarrows and carts. A Canadian truck came through and unloaded new bricks, and as soon as a section was cleared, a new group began to lay down the pieces of the new road, the colors so much brighter and redder than the old. She watched the men and a handful of women putting down new brick. They argued playfully with each other over the patterns created by the interplay of old and new, snatching individual pieces that featured a particular grain or color, even though it wouldn’t take long for the bricks to dull and the road would look like it used to, old and worn and familiar. Everyone around her was energized by the work, and Leen felt it too, her muscles awakening as they lifted heavy shovelfuls and flung them easily into the wheelbarrow. She spied Jakob Hoffman ahead of her, wearing the coverall too, the armband always spotless, and more than once his shovelful of dirt and bricks missed the wheelbarrow. She imagined working next to him, teasing him while showing off.

  Now and then Tine left to fill pitchers of water for everyone, doing what she felt she could do best. Mem helped Renske, who used her hands and a garden trowel and never once complained. Issac worked alongside them for a little while, but then he moved up near Jakob. Soon there was a group of men all in blue, and Leen wondered if they were pulled to one another like schoolgirls, or if there was a reason they always formed a rank. She started to edge her way up the line when shouts broke out amid the conversations and the singing. At first Leen didn’t pay attention, distracted by trying to get close. She figured it was someone like her brother or Jakob or another blue–backed man horsing with another. There were more. Leen paused, trying to make out the words, but they’d been out for two hours now and the voices around her never stopped. People yelled to one another every few seconds, delivering directions, telling jokes, but here the shouting was different, and it kept growing more frantic. “Hey! Hey!” she heard. “Hold him up!”

  “What is going on?” Leen asked Tine, who had found her with a glass of water. She took the water but didn’t drink from it. She laid down her shovel and strained to see over the shoulders in front of her.

  “I don’t believe it,” Tine said, her mouth dropping into an O. “They’ve found him!”

  “Really?” Leen grabbed Tine’s arm. She pushed the man in front of her, spilling the water, and he grunted in reply. “Tine, did they?!” Wings beat inside her chest. “Is it really him?” she screeched, unable to control her voice. This was how it would happen; this was it – in the one moment when it was not at the forefront of her mind. Yes! She looked at Tine’s face and nearly started to jump up and down, needing to move and at the same time waiting for someone to yank her forward and say, “Look, there is your father!”

  “Leen, Leentje, nee, nee, shhh, shhh,” Tine said. She held Leen’s face with both hands. Leen tried to shake them off but Tine wouldn’t let go. “Stop it. It’s not Pater. It’s Jan Fokke. They found him. They found Jan Fokke.”

  “Oh,” Leen said too quickly. She put a hand over Tine’s and tried to smile. “Really, is it him?” She stopped smiling. It felt like something fell away from her mouth, something solid that fell and shattered on the ground.

  Of course. She picked up his name in the choir of voices surrounding her, heard the whispers from the crowd that didn’t rush forward but hung back to spread the word among themselves and into the wind, where it would dissolve and become part of what everyone simply knew. Jan Fokke was found alive, dirty and bewildered, far too thin and so weak he needed two sets of arms to support him. But he was alive.

  Tine hugged her. Her eyes were wet. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know, I know. I know exactly what you mean,” she added, even though Leen had said nothing more.

  19.

  Leen told the others she was going out for silk.

  Bright swaths of aqua, orange, yellow, and scarlet decorated the open fields. The L.O. had secretly stockpiled parachutes for the Allied forces, keeping them hidden just as the boys stayed hidden during harvest, inside hollowed-out pyramids of that season’s crop, stowed in plain sight. Everyone wanted the silk now, for new shirts with cuffs and collars that didn’t scratch or show a stain from two wearers ago. Leen knew what color blouse she would have: red.

  Truthfully, it wasn’t the silk that drew her out. It was the itch to get out, to touch something, to hear something, anything to placate the restlessness that boiled inside her. At home, she dug her fingernails into her palms, into other fingers, little traitors all part of the same hand.

  She set out alone on her bicycle, following the familiar lanes towards Dokkum. With a scissors in her pocket and an empty bag over her shoulder, she rode slowly, scanning the striped fields. There was no need to hurry, now that the camp was no longer occupied by German soldiers.

  The Canadians stayed there now, filling it with sepia uniforms instead of gray. They had taken down the German flags, the red swastika ripped into shreds and strewn across the grass like bits of stamen withered and dying. It was a beautiful day, fitting of the occasion, wi
th a warm breeze and new blossoms. Daffodils were always the first to open, and pots of yellow blooms atop green tubular stalks waved from doorsteps and flowerbeds along every street. Just beyond the German camp – Leen couldn’t help but still think of it that way – an entire field of daffodils bloomed, a beautiful gold block set off against the green of the scattered trees and the bright blue sky.

  Men milled about, leaning against poles, tents, each other, just like the Germans had, but the mood was entirely different. They appeared fed and well–stocked. They smiled and waved. Leen couldn’t help worrying that the scene might change in an instant and it would be back to the way it was before, the way it had been mere days ago, even though the soldiers had been so lacking in supplies that they stole hens and asked politely for a lytse bit of cooking oil. It was no wonder Jan Fokke had returned as skin and bones, barely able to walk.

  Issac reported it was believed he’d been kept at the camp, dressed as a German soldier, right under their noses. He’d been discovered in a ditch just inside Wierum, crouching, and someone had spotted him and first thought it was a soldier trying to hide out. Those were the first shouts Leen had heard. While working some L.O. had run close, ordering any weapons down, but then Jan Fokke raised his head. He hadn’t said anything, just looked at the men running to him and waited. They hoisted him out of the ditch and Issac said his smell was so bad that the men nearly threw up. Jan Fokke hadn’t bathed, that much was clear, and probably had soiled himself more than once. Before they took him to his mother they washed him down as best they could and dressed him in a fresh L.O. uniform, burning the rags he’d been wearing. He didn’t speak at all until his mother laid eyes on him and shrieked, nearly fainting. “Moeder,” he said. When Mem had heard that, she cried.