Lena mounted her bicycle and followed Margriet north in the dark. The roads were treacherous places in broad daylight, and in the dark a wheel could get caught much more easily in one of the many potholes or snag on one of the hundreds of loose cobblestones, sending the rider toppling to the ground or straight into a canal. Lena rode slowly, hoping for the best. She heard Margriet some distance ahead of her, wooden tires loud on the stones, and pedalled a little faster to catch up. She shuddered at the thought of being alone on the streets at this hour, or even worse, being discovered. They rode straight north as far as they could on the Hoofdweg and then veered northwest. Eventually the sky began to lighten, but the bridge loomed into view before the sun did.
The two girls stopped and wheeled their bicycles into a narrow alley. The sun in the sky would signal the end of curfew, and they had to wait longer still or the Germans would know they had broken the rules. Lena looked over her shoulder as she stepped into the building’s shadow. She could make out the concrete barrier, the dark blots of German soldiers and the larger blot of a tank. Fear made her gag, her slight breakfast trying to push itself back up her throat.
“We left too early,” she whispered a moment later.
Margriet just shrugged her shoulders. Lena stared at her. She could actually see her shaking.
The longer they waited, the harder it got to step back out into the road, into full view of the soldiers. Margriet’s teeth started to chatter, and Lena thought it was from terror rather than the frosty morning.
She pushed her own terror deep down inside herself. She knew that the Germans might take the bicycles and send the girls packing. The Germans had been confiscating bicycles for years now, taking them for their own use. And they could also deny passage out of the city if they wished. It all depended on the whims of the men ahead of them on that bridge.
At last, in full daylight, Lena mounted her bicycle. Show no fear, she thought. Smile at them and show no fear.
“We have to go,” she said, and Margriet nodded and pedalled off ahead of her. When they reached the foot of the bridge, Lena put her foot down on the brake and watched Margriet approach the soldiers. Margriet had stopped just ahead, so she had to push her heavy bicycle up the incline while the men watched. Lena had to push hers even farther. Tension built in Lena as she waited for someone, anyone, to speak.
Then came “Where are you going?” in German.
Father had coached Lena and Margriet on their response, but Margriet seemed frozen, lips pressed together, as Lena came up beside her. When the pause had gone on far too long, Lena choked out, “We go for food,” in German as instructed, and Margriet managed to pull their papers from her pocket and hand them over.
The man took the papers and laughed. “I do not understand you,” he said.
“We go for food,” Margriet said this time, her voice loud and clear but shaking.
The men nudged each other and spoke German in low voices. All Dutch children learned German in high school, and Lena was getting good at it after more than four years, but she could not make out what they were saying to each other. One looked over and she felt his eyes on her body, even in her loose jacket and long skirt. She resisted the urge to pull her jacket further around herself. Two others were looking at Margriet even more brazenly.
Then the German who had already spoken to them said, “Go,” papers held out to them, the word followed by a guffaw. Margriet grasped the papers and gave Lena a small push. “Go!” she hissed, terror in her voice, and the man roared with laughter.
They were off, toiling to push the heavy bicycles with their wooden wheels and linen baggage up the rise of the bridge. Lena was aware of weakness in her muscles and lack of fuel in her body as bile made its way up her throat. She retched and stood up to pedal harder. The Germans laughed and shouted behind them. Lena retched again. Then they were over the rise, and they could coast.
They left the main roads as quickly as they could, and soon they were riding through countryside. The sun was hidden behind clouds. The fields were brown, farms tumbled; they rode around enormous craters from bombs. Why here? Of course: the railway passed nearby. Dutch railway workers remained on strike, all of them in hiding or under arrest, but the Germans had seized control of the trains. Now the trains in the Netherlands served only the enemy; they had become British targets.
The fields were mostly empty, but Lena did see a skinny cow in the distance, halfway out of sight behind a small, uncared-for farmhouse. No chickens, though. She had been searching for chickens, she realized, and dreaming of eggs, but chickenfeed was good for humans too, so Dutch chickens had gone early into the soup pot. They would be taking no eggs home that day.
The two girls rode on, seeking a more prosperous-looking establishment. It started to rain. Margriet had been riding in front, but her pace was slowing. Lena pulled up alongside her. “Stop a minute,” Margriet said. Lena put her foot down, bringing her bicycle to a halt. Her hair was soaked, and strands had pulled out of her pigtails and were plastered to her face. She stared at her handlebars.
“That farm with the cow seems like the best one so far,” Margriet said at last.
Lena raised her eyes to her sister’s. Margriet’s expression was grim.
“I don’t want to do it,” Margriet said. “It’s begging. Look at us. We’re pathetic, coming to the country to grovel for scraps. And who knows what we might find on these farms?”
Lena said nothing. She wheeled her bicycle around and started off back the way they had come, rainwater running down her neck and into her eyes, her mind whirling. How could Father make them do this? Her sister was terrified and humiliated, and she herself felt as if she might throw up at any moment.
It took a long time to get back to the farm with the skinny cow. And once they were there, no one answered the front door, no matter how hard and long Margriet pounded.
“Let’s try the back,” Lena whispered when Margriet had stopped pounding and leaned her forehead against the door. She would much rather flee. But where to?
The two girls set off around the house to the attached barn, where the back door had to be. As they turned the corner, they could see the door standing open, steam billowing out over the muddy ground. Margriet picked her way up to the doorway and looked in. Lena, right behind her, peered over her shoulder. A bony woman was doing laundry, turning the crank on a mangle over a washtub, some sort of grey fabric squeezing out between the rollers. Two small children played nearby.
Margriet’s voice was tentative at first, and the woman did not look up. The small boy stopped what he was doing, stared and poked his sister so she too stared, but they did not speak.
Margriet cleared her throat. “Mevrouw,” she said. Lena flinched at the sound of her sister’s shrill, frightened voice competing with the grinding of the mangle. It worked, though. The mangle stopped. The woman looked. She looked and she was upon them.
“I know who you are,” she said as she strode across the room, the children attaching themselves to her thighs as she passed. “City girls after food. Never done a moment’s work in your life, either of you—bones nicely tucked away inside your flesh—and you come to me for food.”
Margriet stumbled backwards a step, throwing Lena off balance, but when the woman paused for breath, she jumped in, “Mevrouw, we—”
But the woman had no intention of letting her speak. “My men are gone,” she said, “taken a year ago and more, husband and son. They’re in a German labour camp. Or they’re dead. I’ve heard not a word. Not one word. They promised to leave one man at home on the farms. But not here; not for me. I’m left with the infants and the farm.”
Margriet tried again. “But, mevrouw, we aren’t asking for a handout. We have things to trade.”
The woman’s grin was ugly, revealing rotting teeth, gaps where the teeth had fallen out altogether and not a trace of happiness. “And those things you have, can I eat them? Can I feed them to my children? Do cows like them? I have no need of things, gi
rl. Like you, like all of us in this Godforsaken land, it’s food I’m after. My cow is too hungry to give milk. My body is too hungry to work for more than an hour at a time. And where is the end to it? I think you know as well as I do where the end is.” She looked down to ensure that her children’s eyes were not upon her face, raised her right hand and drew her finger across her throat.
Margriet was already backing away, Lena matching her stride for stride. “Thank you, mevrouw. I wish you well,” she said, and the two girls turned and ran.
Margriet’s shoulders heaved as they pulled their bicycles off the fence where they had leaned them and wheeled back onto the road. Lena could tell that her sister was struggling with tears, but she herself felt dry inside. Yes, her belly ached, but she had never turned to tears as easily as her sister did.
She mounted her bicycle and pedalled in pursuit of her sister, who seemed to have got herself under control. They rode in silence for a long time, hungrier and thirstier with every moment that passed. They were not alone on the roads. Now and again, they came upon local people journeying here or there, and more often, others like themselves. City girls and city women. And once in a while, a city boy or a city man.
They passed several farms with people already lined up in the yards, waiting for handouts. No wonder the woman had been so frustrated. Lena and Margriet probably hadn’t even been the first of the day. She was alone and desperate, and one after another, people arrived to take from her, but no one arrived to give. The ache travelled up Lena’s body and settled deep behind her eyes. Still, though, no tears.
They rode a long way down a narrow road with a canal on the right. At last, on the other side of the canal, Lena saw a farmhouse that looked promising, smoke pouring enticingly from its chimney and no journeyers gathering outside. “Margriet,” she called, “let’s go there.” And she pointed.
At the next crossroads they turned and crossed the canal on a narrow wooden bridge. They had not seen any cityfolk for a time, just one old man on foot pulling a cart and a girl on a distant road riding a bicycle. The rain had turned to drizzle a while ago, and now it had stopped, although the sky remained grey. Lena did not know what time it was, but the day was wearing on. They would not make it back to Amsterdam by nightfall. And if they did not get something to eat and drink soon, they would not be able to continue at all. She fought off surges of anger at her father, who had told Mother not to pack them food for the trip.
“They’re going to the country to get food,” he had stated. “They don’t need to take food away with them.”
The two girls rode down a long avenue lined by trees. The trees were tall and leafless, waving in the strong wind, majestic. Those trees were exactly the same as they would be without a war on. Lena wanted to stop and hug one, to ask its secrets. She tilted her head far back as she rode and almost came to grief in a big pothole. Then they were in the yard, which was bare but tidy. They leaned their bicycles against a fence and, this time, went straight round to the back of the house. Front doors, it turned out, were just for show in the country.
The back door of this house was closed, as was the huge barn door nearby. They saw no chickens or cows or any other livestock. Margriet knocked, putting effort into it. And they waited. Silence stretched on, and then they heard footsteps and the door creaked open. A woman stood in front of them.
The woman looked at them. “Ah,” she said. “For some reason, I don’t see many of you here. They’re calling them hunger journeys, aren’t they? This, what you’re doing.”
Lena listened to the words, the kindness in them, and felt tears spring into her eyes. I will not cry, she willed, and felt a tear spill over.
“Yes, mevrouw,” Margriet said, “and we have linen to trade for food … if you have any to spare, that is. We know it’s hard in the country too.”
“Oh, not so hard as all that,” the woman said. “Come in, girls. Come in. I’m Vrouw Hoorn. Not mevrouw. No need for those city titles here. You come from Amsterdam, I think. Did you leave this morning?”
Peering out from behind her sister, Lena nodded and another tear spilled from her eye.
“You have come far,” the woman said.
They passed through the spacious entryway, the area that joined house to barn, where Lena glimpsed signs of laundry, just as she had at the other farm, and into an enormous kitchen. It was warm in that room, and the warmth and the smell of food brought more tears to Lena’s eyes. A real fire burned in a big black stove. A lamp cast golden light over a round table set for a meal. And beyond the table, near the stove, an elderly man sat in a wingback chair. He looked across at them and smiled, but he did not rise.
“Meneer,” Lena said respectfully.
His smile broadened. “Visitors,” he said. “Welcome!”
“That’s my father,” the woman said, “Boer Bruin.” She hurried to set out two more bowls and mugs, two spoons. “It is simple food,” she said, “but nourishing. We have a bit of meat and some potatoes.”
Lena sat, and the next hour passed in a blur. They talked and ate and ate and talked until sleep crept among them. Margriet fell silent. Lena put down her spoon. Voices slowed almost to gibberish, and food ceased to matter at all.
Their hosts bundled them away into a big bed beneath a thick comforter, warm bricks at their feet, and they slept.
They woke up to sunlight streaming into the room and the woman’s voice urging them to rise. “If you plan to arrive home today, you must go soon.”
Breakfast was porridge with milk and a teaspoon of honey, washed down with big mugs of weak, milky tea. Tea!
“I’ve looked at your bicycles, and although I don’t want to take your things, I believe I must if we’re to fit much food in those bags of yours,” Vrouw Hoorn said as they scraped their bowls clean. “Your mother filled them right up.”
An hour later, they were on their way. Deep inside, along with the sips of tea and the taste of porridge with creamy milk and honey, Lena tucked away that lovely feeling of human warmth.
They rode back the way they had come, but in the sunshine now and with full bellies. Margriet rode alongside Lena and chattered at her. Lena wanted to cherish what had happened, not blather on about it. Also, she had something particular on her mind.
There was that cow again. Lena had been watching for her. She pushed down on the brake with her foot. “Stop, Margriet. We’re back at the other farm. I just need to do something.”
“What are you talking about?” Margriet said. “We’ve got nothing to—Hey!”
Lena had pulled a bulky parcel from the top of one of the bags strung across the back of her bicycle.
“You’re not going to give them food!”
“I am. I spoke to Vrouw Hoorn about it, and she put this parcel together for them.” Lena looked at Margriet’s outraged face. “Oh, come on, Margriet. They’re hungrier than we are.”
Margriet fell silent at that, but she stayed by her bicycle. Lena found the back door closed this time. She paused to summon her courage. It took only a moment for the woman to answer her knock. And there were the two children, attached to her thighs again.
“You,” she said. “How dare you—”
“No, mevrouw. No. I brought you this.” Lena held out the parcel. “Some beef. And potatoes. And a jar of milk.”
The woman’s brow furrowed. She held out her hand.
The larger of the two children stepped forward and spoke. “Is it food? Is it really food?”
The woman pushed him away. She let the door open wider, holding the parcel in her hands.
At last she looked up and met Lena’s eyes. “Well,” she said, “I …”
“I am only the delivery person,” Lena said. “I thought perhaps you could make use of it.”
“Yes,” the woman said. “You … you … you better go.”
Lena smiled as best she could and turned and walked away. She did not really understand the woman’s response, but she felt better than she had in a long time. Margri
et was pacing by the bicycles. As soon as she set eyes on Lena, she mounted hers and pedalled off. “What would Father say?” she called over her shoulder as Lena rushed to catch up.
“Who cares?” Lena shouted back with a rush of fierce joy. Not me, she thought, and pedalled a little faster.
Curfew was approaching by the time they reached the Hembrug once again and faced a new set of German soldiers. The man who stepped forward smiled warmly and took their papers politely, or so it seemed. But then he passed the papers to one of his companions and strolled behind the two girls and their bicycles. Lena turned her head, struggling to hold her position. Casually, he flipped up a canvas flap and pulled out a parcel wrapped in cloth.
“What have we here?” he asked.
Did he want an answer?
Before Lena could decide, words spilled out of Margriet’s mouth in stilted German. “Our mother is sick. This is for her, to help her—”
A raised hand silenced her. “Bicycles were to be turned in, and trips out of the city”—he paused—“for any purpose are forbidden.” He paused again, meeting the other men’s eyes with a slow grin. “Even sick mothers.”
“But, Officer—” Lena started.
Again the raised hand. “You will leave this bicycle with us, its various parcels too.” He put his hands on the handlebars, right up against Lena’s, and she snatched her fingers free. “You may go,” he said. “And you may take the other bicycle. Just be sure you turn it in once you’re home. We have made a note of it.” At that, the man who held the girls’ papers jotted something in a notebook and handed the papers back.
Teeth gritted, tears barely in check, Lena mounted Mar-griet’s bicycle behind her sister, and they coasted down the remaining stretch of bridge with her on the seat and Margriet standing on the pedals. She reminded herself that they still had the food Margriet carried and they still had one bicycle, but the tears seeped out from under her lids just the same.
Hunger Journeys Page 6