River in the Sea

by Tina Boscha

  “What’s the matter there, Leentje?” Mrs. Boonstra asked. “You seem so sad.”

  Leen rearranged herself on her chair. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

  “Well, whatever it is, push it away!” she said. “With our breakfast coffee it’s over. For good. Now, let’s make some soup, hm? That sounds lekker to me. Put it on early for the best taste. Some bolle, some cheese, some soup. A nice dinner. We still must eat, ja?”

  Leen was in charge of making the meatballs. She worked quickly as she rolled clumps of ground beef between her palms into uniform balls, collecting a little pile until the beef was gone. She finished in the few minutes it took the water to reach a boil, sending bits of chopped onion to the surface and then back down to the bottom of the pot, and just as Mrs. Boonstra took the plate of meatballs and dropped them into the hot broth Mr. Boonstra walked in.

  Mrs. Boonstra rushed to him with a smile, asking, “Is it over? Are they all surrendered?” but her words and smile faded out as fast as they had formed, like the steam of a handprint on glass. Standing at the doorway he looked like winter.

  Leen sat down. She braced for the words, expecting them to hit her like a punch. Pater, dead. Confirmed. Finally.

  Mr. Boonstra began to cry before he spoke. He slapped himself lightly, right across the cheek, to gain enough composure to speak the words. Leen felt the spike of emotion in her chest, traveling above her heart to her collarbone. This was no false alarm, no Minne at the door.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Issac, something’s happened to Issac.”

  “What?” Mrs. Boonstra asked. She was the only one to respond. Leen was still trying to convince herself that he had said Issac. Issac, not Pater.

  He spoke fast, gesturing to no one. “We’d dug some foxholes into the side of the dike, down near Ee. There was a group of soldiers moving out and they looked suspicious. Moving too slow. And Issac popped his head up, to take a look, and there was a sniper. We never saw him. He was hidden on a roof, laying there, watching us the whole time.” He paused to take a breath. He shut his eyes tightly. “He got Issac. He shot him. He’s dead. I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

  Leen heard gasp after gasp and she blinked once, again, more, more, again, staring at Mr. Boonstra. His words stunned her, everyone, and she could not say anything because suddenly she was convinced she was dreaming and that none of this was real. The only thing she knew was true was the spike of fear in her chest. It had turned into a spear.

  The air broke open. There was a bellowing, so deep and so low that Leen thought it was an animal.

  It was Mem.

  When Leen found herself with the wind hard on her face and the light lowering over the water, she finally understood where she was. But how long had it been now, a half hour? Ten minutes? Sixty? No. It couldn’t have been long since Mr. Boonstra told them that Issac had been shot, saying with the deepest, most painful regret in his voice that her brother had been shot in the head, killed instantly. Yet all she could see were the images of Tine’s white face, Mem’s gaping, howling mouth, of Renske asking, “What? What?” over and over again, as if they were far in the past. It was like she had seen it all as a witness. She had watched it through a veil that separated her from her family falling apart all around her, Mr. Boonstra covering his face with his large hand to hide that he was crying, and Mrs. Boonstra rushing to Mem and cupping her face and holding her by the shoulders, repeating something in a voice meant to be soothing but instead far too high–pitched.

  Leen understood that her memories, that scene she could not erase, was real. But that was separate from Issac’s death. Which is why she needed to see it. So she’d gotten up, without saying a word, and left, pulling a coat off a hook by the door and slipping it on. The sleeves were far too long and it hung on her. She’d give it back to Mr. Boonstra later and then of all things she thought of Maatje and her blouse, how she’d had nothing she could use to cover up. Once outside Leen thought, it’s not even very cold. But she kept the coat on. She heard the door clicking shut behind her, a silence after the sounds of crying, words, exhales and inhales, yells. No one stopped her or called her name.

  Walking on the dike, Leen watched her feet move, each step forward a step towards Ee. How did they know to keep moving? Her feet were in command of her; the rest of her following. She hugged the coat around her and kept the sleeves long, covering her hands. The nighttime cold was sliding in, a layer at a time, but it felt good; right.

  She walked.

  Would he be there? What happened to bodies? Leen didn’t know. Where was Pater’s? What if they had to bury two bodies? She wiped her face. She tried to remember about Wopke. He had been kept cold, that much she remembered. Cold, ice cold. The wind blew on her face and on her neck and swam around her ankles and it could have been that night in October, that third Saturday. Wopke had been buried fast. He hadn’t looked good and so he’d been covered. The casket was always cold. Leen had wanted to see her brother but she only had to ask once to be told no and her answer was watching Pater’s face twist into something she’d never seen before. He looked like she had hit him or pierced the soft spot underneath a callous, and he’d told her plainly, “Nee, poppie, you don’t want to see your brother.” And he’d walked away and Leen had wanted to ask why. It took her years to understand Pater’s answer, not until after the airmen had washed up out of the North Sea three years later, laying twenty feet from the shoreline, uncovered by the water. Three pilots, two Canadian and one English, had been shot down and drifted to the Frisian shore, an unlikely burial place. When they’d been found Leen had stood with Mem and her sisters while Issac followed Pater, who, along with other men, crowded around the bodies and wrapped them hurriedly in blankets before rushing them onto the back of a truck. As they deposited the last corpse, the blanket around his feet came loose, showing pale, puffy skin interrupted by pockets of pink. Mem covered Renske’s eyes with her hand but Leen saw everything. Later Leen heard that two of the men still had their tags, but the third didn’t, and he was so badly decomposed that he was buried only with the epitaph: “Known Unto God.”

  That was before, though, when she’d been little, when Mem tried to cover her eyes too. She had to see Issac. She wanted to see the foxhole, she wanted to see his body slumped, she wanted to know for sure. She needed facts, blood, bone, skin, muscle. She could handle the blood. She’d seen blood on Jan Fokke’s face and blood on her skirt and blood on a dog she’d killed herself and she’d seen pollen worked into fabric from two bodies pressed close and it all was the same now. Everything about the faces in Mrs. Boonstra’s kitchen looked like they could float right out of her mind, just drift away and she’d never remember, and it’d be a shock to think that yes, her brother Issac was dead. Too. She’d have to say that, both my brothers, they are gone. One killed before the war, one killed at the end of it. Frames. Like bookends, far too neat. Borders, on a map. And Pater?

  She walked, her feet getting heavier but her pace still fast. The sounds in Mrs. Boonstra’s house, those would not float away. She would always hear Mr. Boonstra’s voice: “He got Issac.”

  She kept walking towards Ee.

  She didn’t know what to look for. The foxhole would be hidden, obviously. She might not be able to see it from the path on top of the dike. She stopped and looked around. Would a sniper shoot her too? She didn’t think so. She wasn’t wearing a uniform. She was a girl. A young woman. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t kill her. They’d do something else.

  From the top of the dike she could see the edges of the islands, where the Germans had just been. She could see the tops of roofs, smoke from chimneys trailing softly into the gray sky. No one was out. Everyone was inside or elsewhere or hiding from her. The world was quiet except for the water and the wind and her breath and the occasional sound of her klompen knocking together. They made a dull clunk and it reminded her of a church bell.

  They would ring bells for him, she thought. They would ring bells for Issac. What would the
burial be like, since he was Resistance? Now that the war was over the funeral might be something. It might really be something.

  She shook her head hard, like a bee had flown by and scared her. She wanted to rid herself of the thought and the image. First, the foxhole, she thought. That’s all I want to see right now.

  Ee. How far away was Ee? Seven kilometers? Eight, maybe nine? Was she going the right way? Leen wasn’t sure, and she should’ve stopped to think, to review in her mind. She’d simply set out walking. She kept up her pace, barely forming the thoughts before she convinced herself that she was not heading the wrong way to Ternaard. Did Mr. Deinum know? He’d liked Issac. Had he been there, too? Was Klaus, his son, back? Yes, she’d gone the other, correct way instead. East. If she turned around to look she’d see the church steeple behind her. It was visible a long way off, a tiny point. The sunset hid behind clouds.

  There was another set of footsteps. If it was Mr. Boonstra she knew she could outrun him. It wouldn’t be long before she was there. She saw a new steeple in the distance and that was probably it. Ee’s church. Once she was close she’d start climbing down the dike and she’d look for it there.

  How much blood? His face would be covered with it. Her heart began to race. She let out a whimper. They would keep him cold, ice his body down before it was time. If Renske asked she would let her see him, no matter what, she thought. Renske shouldn’t have to wonder. She hadn’t seen the airmen. This was her brother. She would need to know. She’d want to know how he died.

  The hand grasped her shoulder but she didn’t jump. The footsteps had been getting closer to her but she never planned on turning around. If it was a soldier, if it was an old woman, she didn’t care. Leen stopped and the person took two more steps.

  “Leen.” It was Jakob.

  His face was red all over. His eyes looked smaller, tired. “Is he still there?” she demanded. “I want to go there. I want to see it.” He blinked at her and said nothing. “Do you understand me? I want to see where it happened, I want to see the foxhole. I want to see my broer.”

  Jakob nodded. “He’s not there now, but I can take you to it. And then I have to bring you home.”

  Leen turned and resumed walking. He walked next to her now, his posture hunched over and his hands in his pockets and Leen crossed her arms over her chest again, pressing against the lining of the coat sleeves.

  Only a few minutes passed before Jakob took her elbow and said, “Here,” leading her off the path. Leen started to slip on the dry grass so Jakob said, “Go sideways,” and she did, and they walked ten more meters, going forward and down and then Jakob said, “There.”

  She had not really thought of what a foxhole would look like and so when she saw it, all she could think was, It’s just a hole. A stupid hole in the ground. She must’ve said it aloud.

  “See how it’s dug,” Jakob said, pointing. He was educational, explanatory, and that was exactly what Leen wanted. No one else would give her the details, and this was something she had to know. “You dig it into the side and you can lean into it. It doesn’t go straight down.”

  She noticed what he said but she was already past it. She was looking at the grass all around it, or what grass there was left. Even though it was dusk now she saw how much the grass was flattened, by bodies, feet, shovels. There had been activity there. There had been men there, several. Issac was only one of them. That day, that same day he’d been there, his heart beating, his brow intact. Earlier that day, he was alive. He’d given her cigarettes, a whole pack. He’d been so excited at the commotion and he’d said no more fighting and he’d given her an entire pack.

  Dark. Between the grass it was so dark but it was mud, it was dirt. She couldn’t see any blood.

  “I need to take you home now,” Jakob said. “Come on, you should go home.”

  Leen stared. That was it. This strange hole dug into the side of the dike, that was where her brother had been shot.

  “It’s so small,” she said. “How did he fit in it?”

  “You’re meant to lean,” Jakob said. “We had to dig it quickly, anyway. So you just fit your side into it. Knee and shoulder.”

  She took a step forward.

  “Come on,” Jakob said. “Let me take you home.”

  Leen looked at him.

  “Was there blood?” But she didn’t wait for the answer. More steps and bending down and she was in it. Up close she saw small clumps of dirt and grass, a distinct footprint. She leaned her head against the ground. It was cold against her face, like the wind scraping across the back of her neck. She had hoped it would still be warm from his body.

  Jakob was telling her that she should go, please let him take her home. Leen adjusted herself and she fit, she fit right in the spot, knee and shoulder, just as he said. She pressed her head against the mud and grass and behind her was the entire sea. All that water, all those underwater rivers. She took a breath and pushed a sleeve up and put her hand flat on the grass and this was when she first cried. She cried from high in her throat, from the space behind her nose and eyes. She knew there was more, so much more left, but it was not ready to be exhumed. Not yet.

  Jakob moved closer and she was prepared to fight him off, to punch and claw at his face, if he tried to move her. But instead he sat down, to her side and behind so she couldn’t see him. He was silent and that was good. She cried and made all the terrible sounds she’d been holding in. She didn’t care if Jakob heard. The bellowing that she heard now, rolling out over the water, over the wind, it was her own.

  22.

  Leen answered the door only to find no one there, again, but wrapped inside a tea towel were two jars of canned beans, a loaf of warm bread, and fried fish. Someone else had brought by breakfast, and there’d be more for dinner, food just like the kind they ate at home, except the flavor was always a note different, accounting for different pans and hands. No one ever waited from the sidewalk to see if she or Tine retrieved the food from the doorstep, and Leen never found a note saying where to return the plates and platters. But that didn’t matter. They’d wash the dinnerware, rinsing twice, and leave them on the counter during the after–funeral gathering. At the end of the night each piece would be gone, taken by its rightful owner. There was no need for any formal thank you. It was just how things were done.

  She stared at the kitchen counter. Her shirt was untucked and her legs bare underneath her skirt. Her lips were cracked along the inside edge and the bottoms of her feet were brown with dust from the unswept floor. Her knee ached even though the scrapes had fallen away, leaving behind new, fragile skin, and the bruises had completely faded.

  She decided she should open the jar of beans and eat straight from it, using no plate, just a fork, warmed slightly from the bread. She wasn’t hungry and even though she’d smoked too much already, hand–rolling one after the other to keep intact the pack Issac had given her, she wanted another. She uncapped the jar and took a forkful, quelling the craving to smoke to avoid another connection to Issac, of the quiet upstairs except for the shock of Mem’s wails, of how when she’d last seen Renske that morning her baby sister looked at her and asked, “How many more days until the funeral?”

  “Two,” Leen answered.

  “How many days has he been dead?”

  “Two.”

  And that was all Renske had asked. She ate her oatmeal, plain, with no fruit or milk, thinning it with fat tears that dropped with every bite.

  Today, May 6, the surrender papers were finally signed, dated for the 5th. Today was the end of the war. Issac would be buried the 8th. They couldn’t wait any longer. The bodies were kept cold but even then, the inevitable decay set in, you could see a change. It was time. They hadn’t waited that long for Wopke.

  Leen shut her eyes, trying to stop her thoughts. Maybe she should eat a piece of fish, its greasy coating already sliding off. You need to eat, she told herself. Someone in this house has to eat. The door opened, the door where the food was dropped of
f, the door only polite company and soldiers knocked on. Leen didn’t bother looking up. It was probably Mrs. Boonstra again. Lately whenever Leen saw her neighbor she had pins in her mouth. She had looked in their meager closets and said, her tone soft, that they needed new clothes for the funeral. It was for a Resistance man, she said. She took items out of their closets and pinned away inches from the bodice of Mem’s best dress. Yesterday, on her way out, she slung over her arm days’ of ironing from the laundry pile that had not moved from the kitchen table since that horrendous afternoon.

  The footsteps crossed the threshold and then stopped. They were far too tentative to be Mrs. Boonstra. Minne? Leen turned. She blinked once, then again. She had never seen a man look so forlorn.

  “Poppie,” Pater said.

  Leen stopped breathing, holding her breath until her chest heaved into a sob. “Oh,” she said. She covered her mouth. “Oh!” she gasped. The air exited her lungs and nose in serrated gasps. All this time she’d imagined shouting and running and leaping and doors blasting open and feet pounding down the stairs but now all she could do was walk gracelessly to her father to burrow her head into his chest, her head weaving in sobs so deep their origin felt underwater.

  He put his arms around her and squeezed. “Poppie, leafe poppie,” he said. His voice trembled. He put a hand against her hair and her sobs were like her feet on the dike, moving of their own free will.

  “You’re home,” Leen said.

  He pulled her away to look at her. His face was gaunt and his eyes looked deeper set, enveloped by more folds of wrinkles, but they were still his warm eyes. “Famke, I am so glad to see you,” he said softly.

  “Where were you? Why were you gone so long?”

  “Shh,” he said.

  “How did you get home? Are you hungry?” She was flooded with questions but there was one she did not ask. Do you know, Pater? Do you know Issac is dead?