Hunger Journeys

by Maggie De Vries

  As Lena washed windows that Thursday morning, while Bennie played nearby and Sofie scrubbed the floor, she almost wondered if she could relax where Wijman was concerned. Drudgery, she could handle. After all, she had been raised to it. But Resistance work? Lena gritted her teeth and rubbed a little harder.

  While Wijman and Vrouw Wijman were eating their noon dinner that day, Sofie scrubbed at a pot that Lena had burned, Annie read in a chair she had pulled over beside the stove and Lena kept Bennie entertained on the floor near Annie’s feet. A second parcel would go off to Amsterdam in a few days. She relaxed into imaginings of her mother’s excitement over a bit of butter and some flour.

  Then Annie looked up from her book. “Lena and I are going to take Bennie out for a ride this afternoon,” she said, tossing her hair out of her eyes.

  Sofie turned around from the sink, her expression startled.

  “A ride?” That was Vrouw Wijman.

  “Yes, a bicycle ride. He’ll love it!”

  Vrouw Wijman stared at her daughter.

  Lena watched the exchange and then shocked herself by joining in. “We had such fun on Saturday, the three of us!” she said. “We thought, Wouldn’t it be nice to get out into the country?” She looked at Sofie and added impulsively, “I wish you could come, Sofie. It would do you so much good to get out of the house!”

  Vrouw Wijman turned her gaze on Lena. Her husband looked up from his plate. “Sofie knows she’s not going anywhere,” he said. “The rest of them, why not? No need for them to stay cooped up here.”

  And that was the end of it. Bennie wriggled with excitement, their quiet game forgotten. Lena stood up to help Sofie at the sink.

  “You never told me,” Sofie whispered. “Why are you keeping secrets?”

  Annie elbowed in, dishtowel in hand. “I’ll dry,” she said.

  “They don’t need you there, Sofie,” Vrouw Wijman said. “You can spend the afternoon polishing silver. You know where the things are.”

  Twenty minutes later, Bennie was strapped into the child seat and Lena was pedalling after Annie right across the market square, illegal ration cards weighing like a lead brick inside her clothes. They passed two SS officers leaning on a car and talking. Lena waited for them to shout, “Halt!” but they did not. On the girls went, along the northeast side of the canal that ended in the square. They crossed a bridge over another canal, and town turned to country. Lena was flooded with something that could only be called joy. This was even better than Sunday’s walk along the River Aa. The road along the canal stretched forever in front of them, green fields on their right. Train tracks followed the canal on the other side, but not the same ones that had brought their train to Almelo. Lena felt the sun on her shoulder. They were cycling northwest.

  The breeze blew her hair away behind her. Bennie laughed and held on to her waist.

  Her hunger journey with her sister flitted into her mind and out again. Maybe it was the comparatively full stomach, maybe it was the signs of spring, but this ride had fun about it. That ride had not.

  Annie looked back over her shoulder, and Lena grinned. Annie grinned back. “Not so bad, eh?” she shouted.

  Too soon, Annie turned onto a dirt track leading to a farm. She pulled to a stop off to one side. “Make a note of these trees,” she said. “There’s no sign.”

  Lena looked at her blankly.

  “For next time,” Annie said. “Come on, Lena. Think!”

  Lena started at the words next time. She had forgotten about next time, about this time, even about the war. She was not pleased to be brought back.

  “I’ll wait for you here,” Annie said.

  Lena opened her mouth to protest, but she changed her mind.

  “Fine,” she said, and remounted. The bicycle wobbled as she adjusted to Bennie’s weight and the rough ground. Tension flooded through her as she approached the farmhouse. It was rundown, hardly looked lived in, but she dismounted, wheeled right up to the door and knocked. Almost instantly, the door opened. A man, a very tall man, looked down at her.

  “Hello, Elsa. What do you have for me today?” he said.

  Lena stood, frozen. Then she said, “Oh, yes,” and dug through the layers of her clothing to unearth the ration cards. She handed them over.

  “Thank you, Elsa,” he said as he took them. His smile was warm. “See you next week.” And he closed the door, gently, in her face.

  Lena could see Annie’s relief from the moment she turned the bend in the track and the other girl came into view. “Did you …? Did it …?” she asked, wheeling her bicycle forward as Lena slowed to a stop.

  “Yes, yes. It all went fine. Now let’s go,” Lena said. And it had gone fine. She felt a small blush of pride and exhilaration. It had gone fine. The ride home, she discovered, could be even better than the ride away.

  The week flew by.

  The second food packet, this time with no beef, went off with Bosse on Monday. He had made it safely to Amsterdam and back, and insisted that all had gone well, though to Lena he looked more worn than he had, as if he had returned from a dark place.

  He brought no note from her family. Her father had answered the door, he said, taken the packet and said a curt thank you. That was all. Bosse hadn’t seen anyone else. Lena stamped down the hurt as she placed the new packet in his hands. Thanks or no, she was glad that he was willing to go again. And almost glad that she had other things to think about.

  Twice that week, Lena took Bennie on short rides in response to his incessant begging. Each time she felt happier, more confident. She rode by SS officers without a second glance. After all, she had nothing to hide on those occasions. She and Annie shocked both the Wijmans with their sudden friendship, and Annie pleased her mother, although Lena knew that was no part of her intent, by playing more with Bennie and lifting a dishtowel now and again. She felt the glow too, it seemed, of a genuine connection with another human being.

  Lena continued to regret leaving Sofie alone each time, but she grew used to her reproachful looks. After all, it wasn’t Lena’s fault that Sofie was living like a prisoner in the Wijmans’ house. In fact, it was thanks to Lena that Sofie had any place to stay at all.

  Thursday came again. Annie handed over the envelope, and Lena made her announcement at lunch. A bicycle ride, despite the drizzle. Bennie perked up immediately. He didn’t mind a bit of rain. And Vrouw Wijman didn’t even glance out the window. It was fine with her.

  Lena had been tense all morning, despite her newfound confidence and her joy in last week’s ride. She knew that the risks were great, and that they extended beyond her to Sofie and the whole Wijman family, especially to the little boy who held up his arms with such excitement to be placed in his special seat. She pushed the tension aside. These risks were not taken without reason. This was how you helped people. This was what people did. It was a war.

  I sound like Piet, she thought, and smiled.

  The second ride was not as nice as the previous week’s because of the rain, but it was no more eventful. Lena arrived home ready to burst. Despite the mountains of potatoes and sugar beets that she had peeled and chopped, the hours scrubbing floors and looking after Bennie, she discovered that she had never felt truly useful before this day. Not once. She and Bennie practically danced into the house, drawing a grumpy comment from Vrouw Wijman, a sad look from Sofie, who was washing pots, and a warning look from Annie, who was in her customary posture at the kitchen table, hair in eyes, book in hand.

  The next Thursday morning, Annie put something else into Lena’s hand, a matchbox. “They want you to take this as well this time,” she said as Lena’s fingers closed around the small object. “It’s a matchbox, and here is a box of cigarettes to go with it. There’re only two in there, so you can put the matchbox in with them. Then if you’re stopped, they probably won’t look inside. And here are the ration cards. Hide them well. You don’t want them to find both, or else they’ll search the cigarette packet more closely.”

&nb
sp; “But I don’t smoke,” Lena said weakly. Annie laughed. “Don’t be silly,” she said.

  That was the day they were stopped. It was a sunny afternoon, almost April. Everywhere the land was greening, ducks were swimming, birds were flying. And Lena was flying too, filled with joy despite the matchbox and her dangerous task.

  The officer had parked his car on a crossroad out of sight, and he only stepped into Lena’s view as she drew close. “Halt!” he called to her, and she had no choice but to put her foot on the brake, brought to earth in a moment.

  “Where are you off to today?” he asked as he took the forged identity card that she held out to him in steady fingers.

  “Just a ride,” she said quietly, hoping her voice didn’t shake. “Just taking my little brother for a ride.” She surprised herself by calling Bennie her brother. Would he ruin everything?

  “Hello, little guy,” the officer said. “Having fun?”

  Lena waited for Bennie to shout, “Bad guy!” or make machine-gun noises, but he just grinned widely. “Ride!” he said.

  The officer flipped open Lena’s identity card and glanced at the picture and the stamp. “Lena Berg,” he said, glancing up and meeting her eyes. Lena tried not to think about her face, about all the ways in which it could give her away. A muscle in her cheek twitched.

  “Hold your coat open,” the officer said.

  She did, feeling the bulge at her waistband where the ration cards were tucked. Would he notice?

  He pulled off his gloves, shoved them in his pocket and went carefully through each of hers. Eventually, as she knew they would, his fingers found the cigarette packet, and then he had it out, in his hand, and was looking at her. Her heart raced, her throat dried up, her hands gripped tighter at her coat.

  “A smoker,” he said as he opened the packet and peered inside. “Cigarettes are hard to come by nowadays. You must be connected!” Was his look suspicious now? She couldn’t tell. Then he reached two fingers into the packet and removed one of the cigarettes. “One for you. One for me,” he said, and her heart, beating so rapidly a moment before, stopped.

  Please don’t smoke it now, she begged inside her head. Please don’t smoke it now. If he did, he would need a light. She waited for those fingers to turn the packet upside down and shake out the box of matches.

  They did not. He tucked the cigarette into his pocket and finished searching hers. There was nothing but her identity card and the cigarette packet. He handed them back to her, and she let go of her coat and took them. The ration cards remained undiscovered.

  “Off with you, then,” he said.

  And she went. The tall, thin man at the farmhouse door was surprised when she asked him a question as she handed over her cargo, but he was happy enough to direct her to another way back to Almelo. Lena was not prepared to chance running into that officer again, ever.

  Her exhilaration surprised her. In bed that night, she did not stop chattering to Annie until she pulled the blanket over her head and moaned.

  “Sleep!” she begged.

  Lena tossed and turned for a long time, and she would have done so for longer still had she known what was in store for her.

  Four days later, Annie woke Lena at dawn and told her that she was to make an extra trip that very day, in the morning. And she was to go without Bennie.

  The day before was Easter Sunday, the first of April, and the weather had turned cold and wet. After breakfast, Lena bundled up.

  “Where are you going?” Vrouw Wijman asked.

  “I’m going out for a bit,” Lena said. “I need to see if Bosse is back from Amsterdam.”

  “Ride?” Bennie shouted. “Ride!”

  “No, Bennie,” Lena said. “It’s too wet for you. And I’m not going far. We’ll go together later.”

  She pried his fingers off her coat and settled him with an ancient wooden puzzle, the pattern almost entirely worn off. Sofie watched her throughout but said nothing.

  “I’d best not find out you’re off with some young man, like your friend here,” Vrouw Wijman said, but there was little force behind her words.

  Lena went through to the lean-to, shutting the kitchen door firmly behind her, hoping no one would notice that she was taking her bicycle to go such a short distance.

  The rain hit her sideways as she pushed the bicycle out into the lane, and the ground was slick and muddy underfoot. She wrapped her scarf around her head and lower face and set off. The wind was stronger still in the open country along the canal, and it was all she could do to keep from being driven off the road right into the water. The weather took all her concentration, distracting her from her worries about what was to come. She arrived at the farmhouse damp and shivering.

  The elderly man who had greeted her on each of the previous occasions came to the door when she knocked and ushered her inside.

  “Welcome, Elsa,” he said. “Please join us.” And he led her through to a small room off the kitchen, where two other men sat with a girl at a small table.

  “Annie … ah, I mean Ria!” Lena said. In her surprise, she had forgotten to use Annie’s false name. The men looked at her sternly, but Annie just grinned.

  “Hi, Elsa,” Annie said.

  If Annie was already here, why had Lena needed to come at all? What was being asked of her? Lena smiled at everyone as best she could and took the seat that was offered to her. The conversation resumed.

  “The liberators are going to arrive any day. We must be ready for them,” said one of the men. “They may need our help to drive the Germans out.”

  He sounded as if shooting a few Germans would give him great pleasure.

  “All right. Let’s tell these girls what we want from them.” The man who had answered the door turned to Annie and Lena. His gaze was warm and a little sad, as if he wished he had something else to say. Lena wished he had something else to say as well. “Arms,” he said. “We are going to ask you to carry arms.”

  Lena’s stomach turned right over, badly destabilizing its contents. She swallowed.

  The man did not appear to notice her discomfort. “There was an arms drop last night,” he said, “not far from here.” He unfolded a large map on the table. “I can’t give you this map, so you must learn it. Do you understand?”

  Lena understood nothing, and she was by no means sure that she was going to do what he was asking of her, but she peered obediently at the map.

  “The drop was here.” He pointed at a spot a little to the north of them. “And it was collected last night and stored in a well right here.” He pointed to a spot just a bit closer. “And we expect our liberators to come from here.” He pointed on the map to the south. “They are going to meet opposition, and German soldiers may well try to loot and murder as they flee. We must be ready to support the arriving troops and to send the enemy packing. We need you to carry guns and grenades from here to here.” His finger jabbed down at the map in two spots. They meant nothing to Lena.

  Another man at the table leaned forward. “This is not something you can do in broad daylight,” he said. “Just before curfew is best. You will dress in a nurse’s uniform. We have new identity cards for you that say you are nurses. You will be travelling for an emergency—a birth, I think. If you meet up with Germans, you will talk your way out of it. You will not let them search you.” Lena didn’t think that he really believed they could pull that off, but she granted that she might have a better chance than any of these men.

  “When must this happen?” she asked, hoping he would say in a week, in a month, never …

  “Tonight,” he said.

  Tonight? Lena felt herself nod. I am going to carry arms, she said inside her head. Tonight. It did not sound real to her at all. She felt a strange calm, a funny floaty feeling.

  Alongside Annie, she studied the map.

  “You can ride out from town just as you have been doing,” he said, “but continue on past this house. You’ll need to cross the canal here, but then get off that road i
mmediately. Here is your pickup point. You’ll stow the arms about yourselves and carry on. You’ll skirt Wierden on the west side.”

  He went on talking, but Lena wasn’t listening. She was staring at the map and remembering. Wierden. She had walked that road! She felt a small boost of confidence. She would be cycling at least one familiar road tonight. And she had made that other journey successfully. Why not this one?

  She paid careful attention as he showed the drop-off point, and she noted with relief that the ride home from there would not be long. It was all in her head, clear as clear. Between the two of them, they were sure to find their way.

  “I think that Elsa should go first,” Annie said. “I don’t mind going after curfew.”

  Go first?

  “What do you mean?” Lena said. “We’re doing this together, aren’t we?”

  The man who hadn’t spoken yet laughed. “Well, that wouldn’t make much sense, would it? If you go together and they catch one of you, they catch both. This way, if they catch one, the other will probably get through. And one young nurse on the road is more believable than two. Even better, Annie will take a different route.”

  “But you showed Ria the same route.”

  “No. She learned her route before you got here,” the man said, an extra measure of patience slowing his speech.

  Annie turned to Lena. “You can do it, Elsa. You’ll be fine! We’ll go over everything together ahead of time.”

  Lena wanted to slap the other girl.

  She felt trapped as she never had before, despite all she had been through in the last two months. Tonight, she was going to be forced to ride right into danger in the dead of night with illegal weapons in her bag.

  And it was all Annie’s fault. Every bit of it.

  The meeting wrapped up quickly then, and Lena was ushered to the door, a nurse’s uniform in her bag, a new identity card in her pocket. They had kept the old card, as it would not do for her to be stopped with two different identity cards on her person. They must have copied her photograph somehow—the new card looked just as real as the old one did.