by Jan Terlouw
Uncle Ben gave him a guilty look. “I shall personally ensure the chest is filled again,” he promised.
Michiel nodded. That’ll take you the best part of an hour, he thought, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t offer to do it for his uncle either. If he’d squandered the sticks of last resort, he’d have to suffer the consequences himself.
One by one, the guests rose from their beds. They were given two chewy slices of bread and a bowl of buttermilk porridge. Thanking Mrs Van Beusekom, they went on their way, some heading north, where they hoped to buy a sack of rye or potatoes, and others west, towards home, where their families were waiting for them, their bellies swollen with hunger.
When the family had finished their breakfast too, Uncle Ben asked Michiel if he’d go with him to Van de Bos’s place now. Michiel gave the oak chest a meaningful look and said he had to take a couple of rabbits to Wessels first. Uncle Ben sighed, but then fetched an axe and headed out to the chopping block behind the shed. Michiel fed his thirty rabbits, then chose three of them, weighed them and left to go and see Wessels, determined to get at least fifteen guilders for them.
Michiel hadn’t been to school for months now. Officially, he’d qualified for the fourth year of secondary school in Zwolle, but he couldn’t get there now. The first day after the summer holiday, he’d attempted to go on the train. It had been an interesting journey. At Vlankenerbroek, an aeroplane had circled over the train. The driver had stopped and the passengers had got off and run into the fields, with the British plane speeding low above their heads. The British and American pilots weren’t out to shoot Dutch citizens, though. They just wanted to disable all the German means of transportation.
When the passengers were far enough away, the plane dived low over the engine a few times, riddling it with bullets.
That was the end of the trips to Zwolle. The bike wasn’t an option either, as there were no pneumatic tyres to be found. And going such a long way every day on wooden wheels simply wasn’t practical. Besides, Michiel’s parents thought it was too dangerous.
So, no school for Michiel, they decided. It was one of the very few things they’d decided for their son recently. The war had made Michiel more or less independent. He went out and returned with butter, eggs and bacon. He did jobs for the local farmers. He ran his own little business. He repaired broken wheelbarrows, handcarts and backpacks for the people who passed through from the cities. He knew where some Jewish people were hiding. He was fairly certain who had an illegal wireless. He knew Dirk was a member of the secret underground forces. But Michiel kept all this dangerous information to himself. He’d always been good at keeping quiet and he felt no need to go blabbing about what he knew.
When he returned from Wessels, seventeen guilders better off, he found his neighbour Dirk waiting by the garden gate.
“Morning.”
“I need to speak to you,” said Dirk. “In private.”
“Let’s go to the shed. What’s the problem?”
But Dirk remained silent until they were inside.
“You sure no one can hear us?” he asked.
“Absolutely. There’s no one around. It’s safe here,” said Michiel. “Anyway, everyone in our house can be trusted. So what’s up?”
Dirk was looking a lot more serious than usual.
“Swear you won’t tell anyone.”
“I swear,” said Michiel.
“Tonight,” said Dirk, “three of us are going to make a raid on the rations office in Lagezande.”
Lagezande was a village about four miles away from De Vlank.
Hearing about these secret plans gave Michiel a strange feeling in his stomach, but he acted as if it were all perfectly normal.
“You’re raiding the rations office? What for?”
“Well, you know,” Dirk explained, “there are lots of people in hiding around here. And they obviously don’t get ration cards for bread, sugar, clothes, tobacco and that kind of thing.”
Of course, it was almost impossible to buy anything without a ration card.
“I see,” said Michiel.
“Good,” said Dirk. “So we’re going to raid the rations office, take all the cards, and share them out among the people who are hiding someone in their homes.”
“How are you going to get into the safe?”
“I’m hoping Mr Van Willigenburg will be kind enough to open it for me.”
“Who’s Mr Van Willigenburg?”
“The director. He’s a good chap. I know he’s working late tonight. We’ll go there and force him to open the safe and hand over the new ration cards. I’m counting on him not to resist too much.”
“Who’s we?”
“None of your business.”
Michiel grinned. Dirk was right not to name any names.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I’ve got a letter here. If anything goes wrong, you need to give it to Bertus van Gelder. Will you do that?”
“Bertus? Is he in the resistance too?”
“You ask too many questions. Just give the letter to Bertus. That’s all. OK?”
“Of course I will. But you don’t think anything’s going to go wrong, do you?”
“Probably not, but you never know. Do you have somewhere you can hide the letter?”
“Yes. Give it here.”
Dirk took out an envelope from under his jumper. It was sealed and there was no name or address on it.
“So where are you going to hide it?”
“None of your business.”
It was Dirk’s turn to grin.
“I’ll come back for it tomorrow,” he said.
“OK. Don’t get caught, Dirk.”
“I won’t. Take good care of the letter. Bye, then.”
“Bye.”
Whistling, Dirk left the shed. Michiel opened the door to the chicken coop. He took the straw out of the fourth nesting box from the right. The wooden board at the bottom was loose, so he lifted it and slid the letter underneath. Then he made everything look just as it was before. No one’s ever going to find that, he thought to himself. Then he went up to his bedroom in the attic and, to be on the safe side, he wrote 4R in pencil on the wooden headboard of his bed. Fourth from the Right. Not that he was likely to forget, but just to be sure. There, now that was done. What next? Oh yes, going with Uncle Ben to see Van de Bos.
Downstairs, he found Uncle Ben heading into the front room with an armful of sticks of last resort.
With a twinkle in his eye, Uncle Ben said, “Happy with my work, boss?”
“A first-class job,” Michiel praised him. “Shall we go? You can probably borrow Father’s bike.”
“I’ve already asked him,” replied Uncle Ben. “He said yes. So what kind of state is your bike in?”
“One rubber tyre and a wooden one,” said Michiel cheerfully. “Bumpy, but it works.”
“Jolly good. Then off we go.”
On the way there, Uncle Ben told him about the underground resistance in Utrecht.
“Our most important job is organizing escape routes,” he said.
“From prison? Isn’t that impossible?”
“No, not from prison, although there have been some impressive cases of that too. Escape routes out of the country. British and American planes are shot down almost every day. If the pilots get out alive, they hide and attempt to contact the local underground movement. We do our best to send them to England, by smuggling them out of a harbour at night, or over land, through Spain.”
A plane flew low overhead, making it impossible for them to hear each other for a moment. Then Uncle Ben continued: “Some resistance groups shoot German officers. It’s so irresponsible. All that happens is that the Krauts take prisoners, random civilians, and shoot them dead, without any kind of trial.”
Michiel nodded. One of the councillors in a nearby village had been killed like that, not so long ago.
“And does it often work, getting them out of the countr
y?” he asked.
“Not always. Sadly they sometimes get caught on the way. Then they’re sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. But if a Dutch civilian is found to be helping them, they’re up against the wall, no questions asked. Only after they’ve been tortured until they’ve handed over all their contacts, of course. So you can see why we try to organize it so that the various links in the chain know as little as possible about one another.”
“Are you in much danger yourself?”
“No, not really. My department forges documents. I’m in touch with a few people in hiding who are masters at forgery. If you ask me, they should go into counterfeit money after the war. They’d make a fortune,” said Uncle Ben with a grin.
It wasn’t easy to have a conversation above the rattling of Michiel’s wooden wheel. And then they had to turn right, down a narrow bike path, which meant they could no longer cycle alongside each other. Michiel knew the way, so he went first.
Farmer Van de Bos was prepared to sell Uncle Ben half a sack of rye for a reasonable price. The farmers in the Veluwe didn’t profit from others’ misfortune during the war. Strictly speaking, it was illegal for farmers to sell anything directly to customers, as they were supposed to turn over their entire harvest to the farmers’ union, which was, of course, controlled by the Germans. Van de Bos gave Uncle Ben a suspicious look, but he was with the mayor’s son, and the mayor was one hundred per cent trustworthy, so he didn’t hesitate for long.
“They’re fine people, the local farmers,” said Uncle Ben, as they cycled back.
“Hmm, yes,” said Michiel. “They’re good people now, eh? But before the war, I remember you city folk calling them stupid yokels and such like.”
“Not me. I’ve always had a high opinion of farmers.”
The rest of the day passed by uneventfully. There was some shooting in the distance, by the IJssel, but that was so normal that no one paid any attention. Michiel looked after the chickens and rabbits, took a letter to one of the councillors for his father (the telephones no longer worked) and helped a passing man whose handcart full of potatoes had collapsed. In short, he made himself useful. Deep inside, though, a vague feeling of “I wish it were tomorrow already” was gnawing away at him. That was because of Dirk’s raid. Not that it was so dangerous. Small raids were a regular occurrence, but even so…
Evening came and, as usual, the house filled with vague acquaintances. From nine to ten o’clock, there was a constant drone of aeroplanes in the sky. American bombers, on their way to Germany.
“That’s going to cost the lives of yet more thousands of ordinary civilians,” said Mrs Van Beusekom, with a sigh, but her husband and Erica and Michiel weren’t too concerned.
“It’s their own fault,” said the mayor. “They started this awful war. They were the first to drop bombs on cities—Warsaw and Rotterdam. What goes around comes around.”
“No. It’s absolutely nothing to do with that little girl in Bremen who just got a piece of shrapnel in her leg,” said Mrs Van Beusekom. “War is a terrible thing.”
The image of a little girl with shrapnel in her leg—that reduced them to silence. The droning died away.
The carbide lamp gradually gave up the ghost too. Michiel went outside and peered over at the neighbours’ house. He couldn’t see or hear anything. Dirk must have got home long ago, he thought, trying to reassure himself. He was just about to go back inside when he heard a vehicle approaching. Instinctively, he drew back against the wall. It wasn’t going quickly. It couldn’t, not with those puny beams of light from the blacked-out headlights.
To his horror, Michiel heard it stop at the Knoppers’ house. A torch flashed on. He pressed even more tightly against the wall. It sounded as if some men were walking up Dirk’s garden path. Yes, he could hear them ringing away at the doorbell. And then a boot kicking at the door.
“Aufmachen.”
The Knoppers must have obeyed this order to open the door, as Michiel heard the timid voice of Dirk’s father and some yelling in German that he couldn’t understand. Then the soldiers went inside, and everything was silent.
This is bad. This is really bad, thought Michiel. They must have caught Dirk, or maybe they just know he was involved in the raid. His heart was pounding.
The back door opened a crack and Mr Van Beusekom called out quietly into the night: “Michiel, are you still in the shed?”
“I’m here,” whispered Michiel, who was standing practically next to his father.
His father gasped.
“Sssh.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“They’re searching the Knoppers’ place.”
Michiel’s father listened, but there was nothing to hear, just a dog barking in the distance.
“Where did you get that idea?”
“I just saw them go inside. They were kicking the door.”
“I can’t imagine Knopper would ever dare to take any action against the Germans. Besides, they’ve got German soldiers billeted there. Are they doing a house-to-house search, do you think?”
“No,” said Michiel. “They drove straight to the Knoppers’ place.”
The mayor thought about it. “Is it Dirk they’re after? But he’s got a certificate of exemption from work in Germany, because he’s needed here. Could he be in the resistance, do you think?”
Michiel had to bite the tip of his tongue to stop himself from telling his father about the rations office in Lagezande and about the letter he’d hidden. But he stood and waited in silence, as did his father, both of them deep in thought.
Finally, the Knoppers’ door opened again. The men came out and walked to their car. As far as Michiel and his father could tell, they had no one with them. But in the dim light they saw Mrs Knopper standing in the doorway, and she was wailing: “Don’t shoot him. Please don’t shoot him. He’s our only child.” The car doors slammed and the men drove away.
“I’m going over there,” said the mayor. “Will you tell your mother?”
“Yes, will do.”
Michiel went back inside. The guests had gone to bed, but his mother was still tidying up in the kitchen by the light of a candle. He told her what they’d seen.
“I’ll wait for Father to get back,” he said.
“Fine,” his mother replied. “But go and get ready for bed, eh?”
Michiel felt his way upstairs. As he walked up to the attic, he saw to his surprise that there was a faint light coming from his room.
“Don’t be startled,” said a voice. “It’s just me.”
It was Uncle Ben.
“What on earth are you doing in here?”
“I was just looking for an English dictionary,” whispered Uncle Ben, “and I found one, on your bookshelf. I need to write a note to one of my contacts, but my English is a bit rusty around the edges. Ah, yes, there it is. Dynamiet. Of course, ‘dynamite’. What an idiot. Thanks, Michiel. Goodnight.”
“You can borrow the dictionary if you like. I don’t need it now that I can’t go to school. And my German dictionary’s more use to me now, unfortunately.”
“No need. But thanks anyway.”
Uncle Ben disappeared into the front room on the first floor where he usually slept. Michiel put on his pyjamas and went to wait in the kitchen with his mother. It wasn’t long before his father came back with a worried look on his face.
“Dirk supposedly took part in a raid on the rations office in Lagezande. Got caught, they said, and it seems that one of the other men was shot dead. They searched the Knoppers’ place, not too thoroughly, as far as I could gather, but they didn’t find anything. Knopper and his wife are really shaken up.”
“I can imagine,” sighed Mrs Van Beusekom. “What’s going to happen to Dirk now?”
3
The letter nagged away inside Michiel’s head all night long. Sometimes he dreamt, sometimes he was awake, but the letter was constantly on his mind. That piece of paper might be able to save Dirk. Who would want to be in
Dirk’s shoes now? Being a prisoner of the Germans was anyone’s nightmare—particularly if they thought you knew something and they wanted to get it out of you.
I need to act as normally as possible tomorrow morning, thought Michiel. No one can suspect that I’m doing anything out of the ordinary. No one can see that I’m going to Bertus van Gelder’s. I’ll have to be so careful.
Michiel thought he hadn’t slept a wink, so it was a surprise when morning came. He did all the usual jobs and it was about ten o’clock by the time he secretly took the letter from the nesting box. It wasn’t all that secret though, as he had to chase away a broody chicken, which squawked and flapped as if he were trying to put it—sorry, her—on a spit for roasting. But it didn’t really matter—a cackling chicken wasn’t going to make anyone suspicious. He tucked the letter under his jumper and rode off on his bike. He had a long way to go, as Bertus lived at least five miles into the countryside.
He wouldn’t get to Bertus’s place that day, though, as he ran into all kinds of trouble. It all started with his solid rubber tyre, which came off the wheel. There was a big crack in it, so he couldn’t just put it back on by himself. He headed off to the bicycle repairman. Who wasn’t there. Then to a different repairman. No tyres in stock. Have to repair the old tyre. Got to finish another job first. An hour and a half. Sigh. Back on the bike.
Michiel was still on the main road when he saw a car coming. The villagers of De Vlank were used to paying very close attention when motorized vehicles were nearby, and for good reason, as we shall see. Almost as if the pilot had smelt the car, a plane came roaring through the sky. Michiel reacted immediately. He jumped off his bike and took a flying leap into one of the holes alongside the road that had been dug for this very purpose, large enough to shelter one person. The car stopped and two German soldiers ran for their lives towards a cluster of big trees. Just in time. The pilot dived and fired a burst with his machine guns. Ducking down, Michiel made himself as small as possible. For a moment, his heart stood still as he heard the bullets rattling on the road surface beside him. Then it was over. The sound died away. He peeped over the edge and saw that the car was on fire. The two soldiers were unharmed, but one of the cows in the meadow beside the road had been hit. The poor animal couldn’t stand up and it was bellowing mournfully. Emerging from behind their tree, the soldiers looked at their burning car. Then they shrugged and walked off towards the village.