by Lynn Austin
“What about random Nazi patrols in this area?” the army officer asked.
“We’ll avoid them if we can. The cloudy skies will help tonight. And the snow has all melted, so we won’t leave footprints.”
“Don’t they guard their shipments?” the officer asked. “These robberies have taken place in other post offices.”
“We’re counting on the fact that we’re a sleepy farming village that hasn’t caused much trouble,” Pieter said.
“Aside from some stolen hogs,” one of the men added. Everyone chuckled.
“Well then, are we ready?” the officer asked. He stood as if eager to leave. He slipped his hand into his pocket, and Lena’s breath caught when she saw he had a pistol. If Pieter or the others noticed it, they didn’t say anything. Lena’s heart raced faster.
“I would like to pray before we go,” Pieter said. He pulled his chair away from the table, then knelt in front of it with his hands clasped, his elbows resting on the seat. Lena knelt with everyone else. How strange to pray before going off to commit an armed robbery.
“Lord, this is necessary work,” Pieter began. “We need those cards to feed desperate people. Please protect us tonight, and if it’s Your will, please grant that all will go well and nobody will get hurt.” They ended by reciting the Lord’s Prayer together. Never before had the words “deliver us from evil” held so much meaning for Lena.
Her head whirled as she stood again. Pieter rarely showed affection in front of other people, but he pulled Lena close and kissed her forehead before leaving. “Be safe,” she whispered.
A gust of cold air entered as the door opened and closed behind the men, chilling her. She doused the lamp to save kerosene, even though she knew she would be wide-awake until Pieter returned.
She went upstairs, checking to make sure the children were tucked in tightly beneath their covers. Wim had nearly outgrown his bed, and his stockinged feet stuck out from beneath his blanket. Maaike lay sprawled across the bed as usual, all arms and legs. Pieter had pushed her bed against the wall to keep Bep from falling out, and the little girl was pressed against it, still clutching her doll. Tears filled Lena’s eyes, blurring the room. “Lord . . . ,” she whispered. “Lord, please . . .” She had no other words.
She pulled a blanket from her bed and carried it downstairs to huddle beneath. The war had taught her to pray like never before, and she dropped to her knees beside the kitchen table while she waited.
Lena was still there several hours later when Pieter slipped in through the back door. She looked up at him, biting her lip as tears of relief fell down her cheeks. “You’re still awake?” he asked. He helped her to her feet and into his arms. His coat was cold and wet against her face.
“I’ve been dozing off and on,” she said. “And praying. Where are the others?”
“On their way home. All went well, Lena.”
She squeezed him tightly. “Thank God,” she murmured. She led the way upstairs, trying not to think about what Pieter might be asked to do the next time. And the next.
CHAPTER 37
Ans rode her bicycle across Leiden to the yellow-brick Bureau van Politie to meet Erik as soon as his shift ended. She waited outside, and her heart did a little dance when he walked through the door, looking so handsome in his uniform. “Did you hear the news?” she asked as they started walking toward his apartment. “They’re recalling all former Dutch soldiers, not just the officers.”
“Everyone heard. They’ll be sent to work in factories.”
“Will you be drafted too?”
“No, my work as a police officer is considered essential.” He took Ans’s bike, wheeling it down the street for her. “Maybe some of the newer police recruits will have to go, but I’ve been working for the bureau for nearly five years.”
They crossed the bridge over the Nieuwe Rijn and took back alleyways lined with bicycles to Erik’s street. He leaned her bike against the wall outside his building, and they climbed the steep steps to his one-room apartment on the third floor.
Ans knew how indecent it might look for them to be alone, but there were few places in wartime Leiden where a young couple could go to be together. Eating in restaurants had become too expensive, and Erik felt uncomfortable in Eloise’s elegant town house. Besides, the dating rituals appropriate before the war no longer seemed to matter in these uncertain times. Even so, Ans knew that Erik respected her moral principles, so they’d decided to spend an evening or two together each week at his apartment where they would cook dinner, kiss and hug, and talk about all manner of things to take their minds off the war. Erik would walk Ans back to the town house before curfew.
“It looks like our dinner will be meager tonight,” he said, showing Ans what was left of his bag of rice. She took it from him and poured it into a small pot, then added water to cook it.
“It’s hard to plan meals when you never know what’s going to be available from week to week,” she replied. She struck a match to start the cookstove. “Hooray! At least we have gas tonight.”
“And these are all that’s left of my spices from home.” He held up the nearly empty containers of Indonesian spices. “I won’t be able to get more until the war ends, so I suppose we’ll have to eat Dutch food.” He glanced at her and smiled. Erik lit the other gas burner, drizzled a tiny amount of oil in the pan, then tossed in vegetables. Oil was becoming scarce too.
“I love your spicy food,” Ans said. “I’m going to miss it. And that’s another reason to pray that the war ends soon.” With so many more Dutchmen now being forced to go underground to escape the labor camps, she was glad that Erik was still beside her. But his exemption as a member of the Nazi Party still bothered her. “What about after the war?” she asked aloud. “What will happen to NSB members when the Nazis lose?”
“You mean if they lose. They’re very powerful, Ans. And they’re deeply entrenched all across Europe.”
“Except in Great Britain. They haven’t won there yet.”
“No, but the British are taking such a pounding from the Luftwaffe that they’re certain to give up before long. At least, that’s what the Nazi generals are saying.”
“Erik, if I didn’t believe with all my heart that the Nazis are going to lose, I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. And if I couldn’t keep telling Eloise that we’re certain to win, she would give up living.” Ans opened the cupboard above the stove and took out two dinner plates. “Besides, we aren’t hearing the real news about the war, you know—only what the Nazis want us to hear. And they aren’t telling the truth.” It was the closest she’d ever come to hinting at the foreign radio broadcasts she and Eloise listened to and the news reports from the underground papers.
“I suppose that’s true,” he replied.
Again, Ans’s thoughts returned to the unsettling prospect of Erik being considered a collaborator and a traitor to his people. “So when the Nazis do lose and the Netherlands is free, what will happen to the people who’ve joined the NSB and collaborated with the Nazis?”
“I haven’t collaborated!” He stopped stirring the vegetables and glared at her. He had never directed his anger at her before, and it shocked her. Then his expression softened and he reached to take her into his arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout at you.”
“I know.” But he hadn’t answered her question. Erik had done a lot of things that people in the Resistance would consider collaboration. He’d helped the Nazis put down riots. He’d helped them round up Jews. He’d helped them search for people in hiding. And he hadn’t done anything to stand up to the Nazis or try to stop them. The thought chilled her. She shook her head to displace the image. “Is dinner almost ready?” she asked. “I’m starving!”
In May, the Nazis announced that all private radios would be confiscated. Anyone who failed to hand theirs over to the authorities would be arrested. Eloise still hadn’t fully recovered from her melancholy, and when she and Ans could no longer listen to foreign news stati
ons and report what was happening beyond the Netherlands, she began to spiral down even further. “There’s nothing I can do to fight back,” she said. Ans watched in helpless frustration as Eloise stowed her typewriter in the closet. She hadn’t dressed that morning and was still in her bathrobe, her dark hair uncombed. “You can help me turn this back into a bedroom again, Ans. I won’t be needing an office.”
“Listen, Eloise—”
“My ears are closed to your cheery reassurances, so save your breath.” She went back to bed, refusing breakfast.
Ans stopped Professor Huizenga inside the front door the moment he returned from work that afternoon. “I’m worried about Eloise,” she told him. “I know I need to stay here with her, but I also need to go to Amsterdam tomorrow to deliver the ID cards Max altered.”
“Where is she?”
“She went back to bed today. And she’s been crying a lot, grieving the loss of her work with the newspaper, now that our radio is gone.” The professor started past Ans toward the stairs, but she stopped him. “Eloise seems to be slipping into melancholy again,” she told him. “I wondered . . .” Ans was afraid to overstep her place by voicing her thoughts, but she was desperate to help her friend. “I noticed that Eloise is always stronger when she’s doing something to fight back. And I know she fears losing me now that I’m traveling so often. So I wondered . . . what if she came with me on some of my trips? We could visit an art gallery or attend a concert in Amsterdam like we used to do, and it would provide an excuse for my travels.”
He moved closer, speaking low. “It’s much too dangerous. I want Eloise home, where she’s safe.”
“But she isn’t safe when she’s so despondent. You said yourself that she might harm herself. Remember how happy Eloise was when she and I used to go out and do normal things?”
“It upsets her to see the Nazis everywhere. No, Ans, I can’t—”
“One of the things I’ve been asked to do is to document enemy installations as I travel—equipment and military personnel and things like that. The reports make their way to the Allies so they can plan their bombing raids. The Resistance could use Eloise’s skills of observation. She sees details that I easily miss. And she would be fighting back in a very direct way.”
“I’ll need to think about it.”
She saw his reluctance and fear. “She needs something to do, Professor. Please, let her come to Amsterdam with me tomorrow. I know how much you love her and that you want to protect her. Forgive me for being too blunt, but if you hang on to Eloise too tightly, you could end up losing her in the end.” When he didn’t reply, she let him pass. He would see for himself how low his wife’s spirits were. Surely he would want her to return to normal as badly as Ans did.
Neither he nor Eloise joined the others for dinner. Meta carried a tray up to their room. There was very little to do with the radio gone, so Ans went to her room early. The professor knocked on her bedroom door later that evening. He looked worried and tense, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, his brow furrowed.
“I asked Eloise if she wanted to go with you tomorrow, and she does.” Ans was relieved, but only for a moment. She remembered feeling that she was in over her head when she’d first arrived in Leiden and the professor told her about Eloise’s depression. Now, if Eloise traveled with her, Ans would be responsible for her safety outside their home. They would be doing dangerous work against a ruthless enemy. Yet Ans truly believed that this was the best remedy for Eloise’s melancholy.
“I love her, too, Professor,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can to keep her from harm.”
The train journey was slow and difficult, taking Ans and Eloise twice as long to get to Amsterdam as it had before the war. The coaches were jammed. At three different stations along the way, Nazi soldiers demanded that Ans and Eloise show their ID cards. Each time Ans presented it, her heart raced out of control. The forged cards she carried would save the lives of dozens of Jewish people who needed them but could cost Ans her life if they were discovered.
The view from the train had been greatly altered as well, in the three years since the war began. The Allies had begun regular bombing raids on shipyards and factories, and Ans saw the damage as they approached Amsterdam. But Eloise had seemed resurrected from the dead from the moment they’d left home, alert and energetic, just as Ans had hoped. She’d shown Eloise the military maps that Havik had given her, along with descriptions and photographs of the military equipment they were looking for. “We need to record any troop movements we see and any fortifications the Nazis are building,” she’d told Eloise. They didn’t dare take notes, but Eloise had an amazing memory, and Ans knew she was making a mental note of every Nazi installation, radar base, and fortification she saw. They would add them to the map as soon as they returned home and sketch in all the details, including activity at the port in Amsterdam.
They arrived at the Amsterdam Centraal station and Eloise, who was very familiar with the city, led Ans through the maze of streets and canals to the Amsterdam Royal Zoo to meet her contact. The war had left the beautiful zoo grounds nearly deserted, but they still served as a valid excuse for two women to visit the city. Ans breathed easily for the first time since leaving home once the exchange had been made and she no longer carried the forged ID cards. She longed for a bracing cup of coffee but knew how scarce it was these days.
“Let’s walk to the Hortus Botanicus on our way back,” Eloise said, “and see what those hooligans have done to it.”
Ans agreed, happy to see her friend so alive and animated again. The gardens were a short walk from the zoo, and the spring afternoon was sunny and mild. The gardens were also near the Jewish cultural quarter and the huge Portuguese Synagogue, a landmark since the seventeenth century.
But when they got there, they were both stunned to see that all of the Jewish districts in Amsterdam had been cordoned off, creating ghettos. A loudspeaker blared from a van trolling the streets a block away. They stood still to listen as it approached, and Ans’s outrage grew with every word that spewed out. All Jews must report to the authorities to be transported to Westerbork, the loudspeakers were saying. All houses would be searched, and any Jews found hiding would be sent to the prison camp at Mauthausen.
Eloise grabbed Ans’s arm so tightly she wondered if she would have bruises. “Why are they doing this?” she asked. Ans could only shake her head. It had been one thing to read news of what the Nazis were doing to the Jewish people, but to see proof of it again left her baffled and angry. There was no explanation for such hatred toward innocent men, women, and children. She thought of Miriam’s father and their Jewish landlady, and it renewed Ans’s determination to do whatever she could to help, in spite of the risks.
Eloise spoke very little as they returned to the train station. Once again, she seemed to be taking note of everything they saw on the trip home. The moment they were inside the town house, she turned to Ans and said, “Tell your contact with the underground that we’ll gladly hide more people here. Whole families, even. Herman has lots of distant ‘relatives,’ doesn’t he? And we have a spare bedroom again.” Her gaze was intense, her eyes alive with purpose. “And tell them they’d better hurry.”
Ans followed Eloise upstairs, watching as she pulled out the military maps and quickly sketched in everything she’d seen. Ans added everything she recalled, as well. “I want to go with you again,” Eloise said when they’d finished. “You must help me convince Herman.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said, trying not to smile.
“He thinks I’m like my fine china downstairs, that I need to be protected and kept behind glass, but what good are all of those beautiful things if they never get used? What good is a chest filled with gold that never gets spent? And what good is my life if I selfishly keep it to myself and don’t spend it for others?”
Ans hesitated for a moment before asking the next question. “Is that how your parents felt? Is that why they were willing to die working fo
r the Belgian Resistance?”
Eloise frowned as if the question had made her angry, then closed her eyes. “How did you know I was thinking of them today?”
“I didn’t. I-I—”
“My parents were good Catholics. They believed in God and in prayer. I used to think, A lot of good it did them! They lost everything, including their lives. But I’m starting to see that they didn’t lose their lives—they gave them away. You’ve been doing the same thing, Ans. And I want to do it too.”
“I’m not brave, Eloise. I couldn’t carry documents that could get me killed if God didn’t give me the strength I need.”
“I pray for you every time you go out.”
Ans stared at Eloise in astonishment. “You do? I thought . . .”
“That I didn’t believe in prayer?”
Ans nodded, remembering Eloise’s cynical comments about prayer during the Nazi invasion. “Let’s just say I’ve come to believe that prayer can’t hurt,” she said with a smile. “After all, I have you and Miriam and Avi and their baby to pray for, don’t I?”
Tears filled Ans’s eyes as she drew Eloise into her arms.
CHAPTER 38
JUNE 1943
Miriam sat at the Ver Beeks’ kitchen table, listening as Mr. Ver Beek read from the Psalms as he did every night after dinner. She remembered Avi reading this same psalm to her in their attic hiding place. “. . . hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who are out to destroy me, from my mortal enemies who surround me. . . .” If she closed her eyes, Miriam could almost hear Avi’s deep voice and feel Elisheva nestled in her arms. She wanted to remember and hold them close in her heart for just a brief moment, yet she wanted Mr. Ver Beek to stop. It hurt too much to remember. She feared the pain would kill her when she opened her eyes again and her loved ones were no longer there. After nearly a year, the pain was as fresh as it had been the first day.