Madonna On the Bridge

by Bert C. Wouters

  “A long time ago, I read about the Pied Piper of Hamelin. By the sound of the flute, he led the rats to their death. However, today their day of revenge arrived, by chasing the enemy from the castle.” Returning to reality, she looked at Manus. “We still need to leave the castle. It is too dangerous to stay here.”

  They left in the middle of the night. Manus looked back one more time, fearing for his artwork. On foot, they walked over dirt roads and pasturelands, occasionally stirring a cow or bird. They hoped to find a meal with the underground family in Eindhoven.

  It rained through the night and by the next morning, they were soaking wet. Gratefully, they arrived at the designated address in Eindhoven and knocked softly on the back door. Frans de Bolder peered through the porthole and recognized the refugees. He opened the door and warmly welcomed the wet visitors. After eating a tasty but meager meal, Manus asked Frans about his dogs.

  “I do not see your friends around. Are they well?” Through his rimmed glasses, Manus saw Frans’ eyes watering over. He shook his head.

  “We had to put them down for lack of food. We hardly have enough to feed ourselves. We want to do what we can to help downed RAF flyers. Three weeks ago, several parachutists ended up in our cornfields.” Manus felt guilty having sat around the table with people who were giving up their last crumbs of food.

  The next day, in the early morning hours, while still dark, Germans arrived at the farmhouse and smashed in the front door with the butts of their rifles. While loudly screaming, “Raus!” they raced through the living quarters and dashed upstairs, barely giving Danya and Manus time to climb through the back window and flee into the fields behind the house.

  The German patrols always started their searches upstairs in the bedrooms. The shepherd dogs that accompanied them ran straight to the warm bed where Manus and Danya had spent the night. The empty warm bed was enough proof the couple had harbored refugees.

  Manus and Danya stayed quiet in the cornfield, where they hid. Then they heard the dreaded machine guns. In cold blood, the Gestapo had executed the family against the back wall of the farmhouse. They wept.

  They waited until night to walk again, even though walking under the protection of the darkness made their journey even more treacherous. They had to remain extremely vigilant for landmines. Danya had already stepped on barbed wire, which caused severe lacerations on her legs.

  Once out of Eindhoven, they were not far from the Belgian border. Manus stopped abruptly and pointed to a weathered sign lying in the grass: “België.” As long as they moved towards the street lights in the distance, they knew they were traveling in the right direction.

  Snow began falling, and cold enveloped them. A young couple pushed a stroller with a child against the strong westerly wind. The girl stopped and pointed skyward; just below the heavy cloud cover, she spotted the V-formations of Allied airplanes moving eastward towards Berlin. A shrieking noise suddenly pierced the air, not farther than a hundred meters from Manus. An errant shell fell on the young couple, instantly killing parents and child. Manus and Danya rushed to the scene. Their maimed bodies lay spread around the bomb crater. Danya broke down in tears and fell into Manus’ arms, sobbing.

  Exhausted and hungry, they arrived in a small town, looking for scraps of food. With the little cash they carried, they had to find someone willing to sell on the black market. On a side street, a brave soul dared to hang the Belgian national flag, which flapped in the wind as the first sign of a nation daring to show its national flag while liberation was imminent.

  Clinging to the running boards of cars and trucks, on bicycles, and on foot, they walked in the direction of the Allied troops—an endless stream of refugees, dragging with them overloaded carts and wagons filled with everything they owned. A woman wearing a heavy overcoat and hat pushed a baby carriage holding a large grandfather clock. A young mother carried a squealing baby while pushing a cartful of cackling chickens. Farmers observed the crowd of refugees shuffling by in despair, unable to offer food. The fields were barren. For months, they had been under orders not to grow food on their farmlands.

  A large black automobile sat in a ditch, perforated with bullet holes. Against a tree, a little boy cried. In the back seat, someone frantically tore strips of a handkerchief to stop the bleeding of a dying mother.

  “It was a Stuka aircraft. Those damned Moffen!” someone cried. People gazed at the sky, watching the British Spitfires chasing the German Stukas as they prayed for an end to the war.

  Their next stop was an old oak tree where they spent the night. The constant wail of air-raid sirens made it impossible to fall asleep. Three Stukas headed straight for them; they rushed into a ditch and watched a bomb hit the village church. The steeple teetered for a moment and then toppled over. Manus shook his head in disbelief.

  Shivering in the morning cold, they moved deeper into the farmlands, still watching for landmines. They followed a lane of tall sycamore trees, their branches forming high arches that shielded them from the warplanes above. In the next town, they noticed people coming outside, talking in excited voices. “When are the Allied Forces coming to liberate us?”

  A hundred meters from the road, they saw a roadside chapel. Danya opened the creaky door that looked ready to fall off its hinges. She immediately saw the statue of the Virgin Mary. They knelt on the little prayer bench, the only piece of furniture there. Danya read the inscription above the figure: “Welcome to the weary traveler. Kneel down to say a Hail Mary, and I will lift your burdens.” Tears trickled down her cheek.

  “This is the first statue of the Virgin I made several years ago,” Manus whispered to Danya. The statue lifted their spirits. Despite the sanctity of the chapel, they decided to spend the night there. By now they were in Belgium.

  The next day, they traveled on, walking toward the town of Merksplas, where heavy artillery broke out during the evening and lasted until early morning. When all fell silent, they gathered pine needles from the nearby woods and made a mattress in a bomb crater. They had heard that bombs never dropped twice in the same place. Exhausted, they fell asleep. Whether it was fear or the need to be together in danger, it was the first time that they had fallen asleep in each other’s arms.

  Later that morning, Manus woke and studied the hand-drawn map to his sister’s home in Schoten, their destination. He realized it would take another three days of walking to get there. On the back of the map, he found a poem by Lord Byron from the Anthology of Love Stories. The rays of the morning sunrise stretched over the rim of the crater until they found Danya, still asleep in a cocoon of pine straw. The beams alighted upon her beauty. Manus sat next to her and in a whisper, he started to read:

  “She walks in beauty, like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies

  Meet in her aspect and her eyes …”

  As he recited the poem, Danya stirred and opened her amber eyes to let the sun’s warming rays caress her face. Manus noticed a flicker of gold sparkle in her eyes, as he had never seen before.

  “Thus mellowed to that tender light

  One shade the more, one ray the less,

  Which waves in every raven tress.”

  He stopped and tenderly stroked her black raven curls that fell over her forehead and then returned to the poem:

  “Or softly lightens o’er her face

  Where thoughts serenely sweet express

  How pure, how dear their dwelling place

  So soft, so calm, the smile that wins, the tints that glow.”

  Now fully awake, Danya smiled at Manus. She did not reach out to him to gather him into the cocoon of her warmth and love. He had waited so long for that moment and wondered if he would ever win her over to be his true love. He finished reading the last line:

  “A heart whose love is innocent!”

  A dark cloud moved over the sun. Manus despaired, knowing that D
anya’s love for him would remain innocent forever.

  “I know the love you have inspired in me belongs to someone else,” Manus told her.

  Exhausted after a long day’s walk, they reached Campina Canal. The moonlight glistened on the rippling waves in the water. Manus pointed to the thick furrows carved by the Brabander horses while towing barges in the canal. They provided the cheap horsepower to transport grain and coal.

  Following the road, sidestepping horse droppings, they heard, “Ack, ack,” as rifle shots rang out. A pigeon fell from the sky a few meters in front of them. They dared not move for fear the Germans would lay claim to the kill. After a while, Manus moved towards the lifeless pigeon, happy to have found food. He quickly tucked it into his satchel and continued to walk along the canal. Cautiously, they approached a barge moored on their side of the canal.

  On the bow of the barge, they read the sign: “Noah’s Ark – River Zoo.” They had no idea what it meant. Precariously balancing over the gangplank, they boarded the barge as a Schipperke dog alerted the owner. Skipper Woody sported a mustache with the ends turned into little question marks. In the middle of his friendly face, he clenched a meerschaum pipe.

  “What are you two doing on my barge?”

  “We are refugees from Holland heading for Antwerp,” Danya spoke first. “We would like a place to sleep tonight. Can we stay on the barge?” Manus had learned that boat people were often willing to provide transportation for the resistance movement in Holland. Without hesitating, the skipper waved them inside to meet his wife. She was a lively and friendly woman, with that particular character trait of having a solution for every problem.

  “We do not have much food. Yesterday we caught some eel in the canal, which I am cooking on the stove.” Manus showed her the pigeon, and at the sight of the meat, she became ecstatic. The skipper examined the ring on the leg of the bird.

  “This pigeon is special. It carries coded messages. These pigeons are war heroes; they fly along waterways to their destination. Let us open up the tiny canister attached to the ring and retrieve the coded message. Yes, the code is in English, destined for the resistance in Holland.” Danya wanted to tell them that she had been a courier for the resistance and also carried these same canisters, delivering them to roadside chapels. She wanted to say more about her dangerous work as a courier with the resistance in Holland, but she remained cautious.

  When Manus again brought up their need to spend the night, the skipper’s wife looked at her husband and nodded in the direction of the zoo on board. Noah’s Ark on the canal was a favorite attraction for children during the war years. For ten cents, they visited this little zoo of small animals: caged mice, rats, gerbils, snakes, beetles, and butterflies.

  “The cage next to the cobra snake is empty. It is the cage where we kept the python. It is large enough for two people to spend the night,” she said. The skipper took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed toward the stern.

  “The Germans will never come here knowing we have cobras on board … they like everything in its cage, not being intimidated by animals.” Manus chuckled, thinking of his rat story.

  After spending a peaceful night on board, Danya awoke abruptly at daybreak, screaming. She pointed to a small hole in the boards where the tongue of the serpent in the next cage flickered through the narrow opening. Danya fled the cage they had slept in and ran off the barge, straight into the horses feeding at the trough. She left it up to Manus to thank the skipper for his hospitality.

  When they found the street where Manus’ sister lived, it was late afternoon. They could not have known how fortunate they were to arrive when the curfew was off. War was still in full swing. Twenty-six tanks lined up under the Linden trees; their turrets pointed at the city of Antwerp. The cannons still smoked from the shells they had rained an hour earlier on the city across the canal. A large tank nearly blocked the entrance to Uckle Avenue where Manus’ sister and family lived.

  Chapter 17

  A Train to Nowhere

  It was a beautiful spring morning in Brasschaat. Today, like every day, he kept his radio on the bookshelf in the study. His favorite place was behind the Book of the Nart Sagas of Circassia. During the war, it was illegal to own or listen to a radio. However, Kadir took his chances; to keep up with his duty as a spy with the Adyghe Intelligence Organization, he had to know what was going on in the world. Listening to the BBC gave him hope that the liberation of Europe was not far off.

  On September 3, 1943, the Allied troops invaded Italy. In January 1944, more good news came when the BBC reported that the Russians had broken the 900-day siege of Leningrad. The Russians sent two hundred and fifty thousand German military to the gulags in Siberia. Despite the optimistic news, most of Western Europe was still under Hitler’s iron grip.

  The arrest of Kadir’s neighbor for listening to the BBC did not deter him from tuning in to the news from London. In case of trouble, he could always count on John Ferrat, his close friend in the royal palace. But had he become too bold?

  He glanced through a crack in the curtains before picking up the newspaper that was delivered to the front door every day. Just as he had feared for some time, he saw two Gestapo agents marching up the driveway, with machine guns drawn. With the butt of their weapons, they banged on the door. As Kadir opened the door, they marched in with machine guns drawn. The men threw Kadir to the ground.

  “Stay facedown with your hands on your head!” Fatima heard the commotion from upstairs and came rushing downstairs to see Kadir on the ground. The agent held a pistol to his head.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” she cried. They handcuffed her and shoved her against the wall. “Stop wailing!” Meanwhile, the other German yanked Kadir from the floor, dislocating his shoulder and causing him sharp pain.

  At gunpoint, the Germans marched the Mandraskits to a waiting truck. One of the two Germans seated himself on the bench opposite them in the back of the truck. Fatima sobbed, and the German poked his machine gun at her chest. He wagged his finger and sternly ordered her again not to wail.

  As the truck rolled over the Albert Canal Bridge, Kadir suspected that their destination was Central Prison in Antwerp where the Germans incarcerated the Jews. This prison was a stopover on the way to the concentration camps in Germany. “Where are we going?” Kadir asked the soldier. He shrugged his shoulders, lighting a cigarette and mumbled.

  “Brussels.” Fatima noticed the deep worry in Kadir’s face.

  When they arrived at the prison, the truck made a sharp turn and came to a jolting halt in front of a three-story building. The guards hurried them into a small office that reeked like mettwurst, a sausage made from pork and garlic. First, the guard demanded that they deposit their jewelry, watches, and money on the table. A body search followed. He handed their clothes back to get dressed and marched them to their cell. It measured 5 x 8 feet, with a two-tiered bunk bed, blanket, and a small table with two stools. A bucket in the corner served as a toilet.

  Fatima sat down on a stool and buried her face in tears. Kadir needed to show her that he was strong under these adverse conditions. He paced up and down to think through how to best deal with the situation.

  “We were forewarned. Our neighbors were already picked up for listening to the radio. Who gave our name to the Gestapo? Wait, we both have the same gardener; it must have been Walter who betrayed us.”

  Although he was a member of the Adyghe Intelligence Network, he had no training in how to handle torture. He was worried that he might crack under pressure. Somehow he had to get in contact with John Ferrat at the royal palace who would be able to secure his release.

  Suddenly, a guard opened the door and pointed his pistol in the direction of the interrogation room. “Sit down!” he yelled. Sergeant Baumgartner opened his dossier and barked at the Mandraskits: “Where is Danya?”

  Kadir had no idea the SS had issued an all-points b
ulletin for his daughter, who was now a fugitive from the Lebensborn Project. The sergeant’s question hit Kadir like a thunderbolt. Had they been arrested because of Danya?

  “I have no idea what Lebensborn means. She is in Holland studying and stays with my sister-in-law.”

  “Are you telling me that you have not spoken to her?”

  “Due to the war, we are not able to stay in touch.”

  “Your sister-in-law died in a bombing raid. Danya’s last address is Castle Lindendale in Mill; she’s living with a sculptor. We know that the Germans arrested her for distributing illegal propaganda material which resulted in the death penalty. She has escaped, but we will find her soon. You must tell me now where we can pick her up.” Baumgartner looked at Kadir, his eyes shooting arrows of frustration.

  Kadir looked him in the eye. “I do not have any knowledge where she is, and if I knew, you would still not get it out of me,” Kadir stated firmly. The sergeant jumped up holding his whip and lashed it across Kadir’s face. His head fell sideways, and he felt a trickle of blood dripping from his eye. The sergeant moved to Fatima.

  “Let me ask you.”

  “I am sorry; I do not know what you are talking about.” Overcome by the terror that a mother feels when faced with news of her daughter’s fate, Fatima sobbed uncontrollably.

  Back in their cell, they saw cockroaches crawling over the walls and bunk beds. Kadir stood guard at the cell door to kill them one by one, but to no avail. The cell walls were made of brick and whitewashed. The only source of light during the daytime came from a small opening in the ceiling. It was the single view they had of the outside world, sometimes blue, more often grey, and rainy. Inmates left their marks on the walls, messages of sadness and despair: “Free Belgium – Down with Hitler – Execution tomorrow.”

  During that rainy evening, the lightbulb in the ceiling flickered, then extinguished for good, leaving them in total darkness. Puddles of water started to form on the floor. Would they be left to drown in their cell?