by Jan Terlouw
Michiel could feel the letter under his jumper. It seemed to weigh a ton. But the cow was bellowing away. He thought the field belonged to Puttestein, and he couldn’t simply abandon the animal to its fate. So, off to Puttestein’s farm. Where all the menfolk were out. Mrs Puttestein was the only one at home and she had a bad leg. Michiel discussed the situation with her and then, in a foul mood, he went off on his bike to tell the butcher. Trying to patch up the cow would, of course, be pointless.
And so the hours went by. It was ten past three by the time Michiel set off for Bertus’s for the third time. He was barely halfway there when he overtook another cyclist. To his horror, he saw that it was Schafter.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the mayor’s boy, Michiel.”
“Afternoon, Schafter.”
“Where are you off to in such a hurry? Is there a fire somewhere?”
Schafter was not to be trusted. Everyone knew that. He hung around at the barracks, sometimes ate with the German soldiers in their mess, did odd jobs for them, and he was suspected of having reported the Jews who were caught at Van Hunen’s place last year. They’d been transported to Germany. As was Van Hunen. No one had heard anything from them since. And so Michiel quickly replied, “I have to go and see Councillor Van Kleiweg in Lagezande.”
“Well, that’s handy. That’s where I’m going. We can cycle there together.”
Deep inside, Michiel muttered all the nasty words he knew. Look where all his efforts had got him. Now he had to go to Lagezande instead of to Bertus’s. And what on earth could he say to Van Kleiweg? Michiel wasn’t entirely sure that the councillor could be trusted either. As Schafter rattled on about this and that, Michiel racked his brains to come up with a good excuse for not going to Lagezande after all. He drew a blank.
“Did you hear about that raid on the rations office in Lagezande yesterday evening?” asked Schafter.
“Yes. People were talking about it this morning,” said Michiel suspiciously.
“‘People’? Who exactly?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some visitors, or something.”
“So your father’s sent you with a message for Councillor Van Kleiweg, has he?”
“No, I’m off to play poker with him. What do you think?” snapped Michiel.
“Hey, I was just asking,” said Schafter, not at all put off by Michiel’s tone.
A quarter of an hour later, they arrived at the house of the councillor, who answered the door himself and greeted them with a friendly smile. “Come on in,” he said.
“No, thank you,” Michiel replied. “My father just sent me to tell you that the waterworks meeting is on Tuesday next week, at the usual time.”
“Oh, thank you, Michiel. Tuesday at four. Tell your father I’ll be there.”
“Will do. Bye, then.”
“I just need five minutes here,” said Schafter. “If you wait a moment, I’ll ride back with you.”
But Michiel wasn’t in the mood for more of Schafter’s questions.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m in a real hurry. Another time I’d be happy to.”
As fast as he could, he rode back to De Vlank. The letter was still rustling under his jumper. But he didn’t dare to go straight to Bertus’s now. First he had to straighten out his story about the waterworks meeting. He hadn’t completely made it up, as he’d heard his father mention that there’d be a meeting next week. Once again he seriously considered telling his father the whole story.
No, he decided, I won’t say anything unless it’s absolutely necessary. So that’s just going to mean a bit more work.
Luckily, his father was at home.
“Father, I need to go to Lagezande,” said Michiel, lying shamelessly. “I heard you saying something this morning about a waterworks committee meeting, didn’t I? Do you want me to give Councillor Van Kleiweg a message?”
“Oh, yes, please,” the mayor replied in surprise. “Good thinking. Would you tell him that the meeting is next week on Wednesday, at the usual time?”
“At four?”
“Yes. Thanks, son.”
“Bye.”
“So why are you off to Lagezande?”
Michiel mumbled something about wanting to “buy a chicken for a woman from Amsterdam who’s staying over at Thingy’s place” before slipping out of his father’s office. Good, now his father couldn’t ask any more questions. It was annoying that he’d have to go back to Lagezande, though. He’d hoped that he’d got the right day. Waterworks meetings were usually on Tuesdays, he thought. Blast it, and he was only one day out. Hup, back on the bike. And, of course, he bumped into Schafter again on the way. The man looked puzzled, but Michiel just raised his hand and quickly cycled on.
Now that nosey parker is going to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out why I’ve been cycling back and forth, he thought. Well, the man wasn’t a mind reader. But he had a keen pair of eyes in his head, and that was worth remembering.
Michiel told Van Kleiweg that he’d made a mistake and the meeting was on Wednesday. Then he quickly cycled home, so he’d be back before dark. Bertus would just have to wait until the next day. For safety’s sake, he hid the letter in the nesting box again, hoping there was nothing urgent in it. Michiel felt absolutely terrible. Dirk was in prison, and Michiel hadn’t even managed to carry out one simple task. All that cycling had worn him out too.
As usual, a bunch of strangers came trickling in. Uncle Ben had left, and Erica hogged the torch for half an hour to brush her stupid hair, and Jochem kept sniffing every couple of minutes and…
Ugh, what an awful day.
4
The next day, though, was even worse.
As early as possible, Michiel was out on his bike. This time he got to Bertus’s farm without any problems. There was no sign of anyone out in the yard, just the dog on its chain, barking away as if its tail were on fire. Michiel went inside. No one there. Where were Bertus and his wife, Jannechien? All the doors were open, so someone must be around.
“Hello?” he yelled at the top of his voice. Bertus wouldn’t hear him, but maybe Jannechien would.
He headed back outside. Wait a moment, was that the clanking of buckets he could hear coming from the barn? Yes, Jannechien was in the tumbledown barn, lugging a couple of buckets that looked too heavy for her. She’d been feeding the pigs.
“Hello, Jannechien.”
“The mayor’s lad Michiel! Have you brought news about Bertus?”
“About Bertus?”
She sighed and put down the buckets.
“Well, I thought maybe the mayor might know what they’ve done with him.”
“Done with Bertus?”
“So you hadn’t even heard that they took Bertus away yesterday?”
“Who? The Krauts?”
“Of course. Who else?”
“Why? What did he do?”
Little Jannechien actually stamped her foot in fury.
“Nothing. That’s what he’d done. He was feeding the pigs, just like me now. They turned everything upside down and inside out. They even searched his clothes. But they found nothing. Nothing at all.”
“But they still took him away?”
“Yes. The swines. I let Kees off his chain. He went straight for one of their throats. The others had to whack the daft beast with their rifle butts until he let go. It’s a wonder they didn’t shoot him dead.”
Michiel felt perfectly miserable.
“Was this yesterday afternoon, Jannechien?”
“Yes, about half-past four.”
Michiel thought about it. It had to be a coincidence. There was no way Schafter could have guessed. When had he seen him for the second time? Around four? So he couldn’t have had anything to do with it.
“Hey, Jannechien, did you see if they went to any other farms? Or did they just have it in for you?”
“Just us, I think. They came driving straight here in those nasty trucks of theirs. And I’ll tell you this, Michiel, if Bertus did a
nything—I don’t know anything about it—but if he did something, then someone gave him away.”
Michiel gasped. “How do you know?”
“Yesterday evening, after he’d gone, I was all shaken up, so I cycled over to my sister’s, you know, the one who’s married to Endik den Otter. They live up that way, on the corner of the main road and Driekusmanswegje.”
“Yes, yes, I know who you mean.”
“Well, I get there, in a complete state, like I said, and I tell them about Bertus being taken away, and my sister says, ‘Goodness me, was that at about half-four? I saw them in two trucks, turning on to Driekusmanswegje. If I’d known they were going to your place!’ ‘Yes, what would you have done?’ I asked. ‘Well, I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose,’ she said.”
“You said someone had given him away, Jannechien. What does that have to do with someone giving him away?”
“Oh yes, my sister said they stopped on the main road first, and one of the men was talking to someone from round here, and when they’d finished talking, they turned up Driekusmanswegje and headed straight to our place. And that man had shown them the way.”
“Who was it, the man they were talking to?”
“Oh, what’s his name again? That pasty-faced chap. Always going around on his bike.”
“You mean Schafter?”
“That’s it. Schafter. You know, people say he’s no good.”
Michiel didn’t reply. Somehow he felt guilty, but how could Schafter have known anything? Even if he’d realized that the visit to Councillor Van Kleiweg was a sham, he still couldn’t have known it was anything to do with Bertus. He had to get away, so that he could think about things more calmly.
“I need to get going, Jannechien. I hope they let Bertus go soon.”
“Will you tell your father? Isn’t there something he can do?”
“Of course I’ll tell him. But, to be honest, I doubt there’s much he can do about it. Bye, Jannechien. All the best.”
Luckily, she hadn’t asked Michiel why he’d come. He quickly cycled away.
After a while, he stopped and sat down and leant against a tree to think. He needed to get everything straight in his mind. Dirk had told him about the raid and given him a letter for Bertus. He’d hidden the letter. No one could possibly have seen it. The raid went wrong. One man was shot dead, one got away, Dirk was caught. Michiel tried to take the letter to Bertus the next morning but everything conspired to keep him away. He was such an idiot—he should just have walked when his tyre broke. Schafter could have realized that he was making up a story for Van Kleiweg, and then he saw him cycling towards Lagezande for the second time at four o’clock. At half-past four, Schafter showed two German trucks the way to Bertus’s house. No, there couldn’t be any connection.
Then Michiel realized what must have happened. Dirk must have cracked. They must have tortured him until he gave them Bertus’s name. And Schafter had simply pointed out the way when they’d asked him where Bertus lived. Of course, that was what it must have been. He broke out in a cold sweat when he thought about what they must have done to Dirk to get the information out of him. Dirk wasn’t the kind of man to blab everything he knew after just a bit of pressure.
And then another thought occurred to him, one that scared him even more. If Dirk had given them Bertus’s name, then maybe he’d also told them that Michiel had a letter for Bertus. That was what the Krauts had been after, of course. The letter. They clearly thought it would have been delivered by half-past four. They didn’t know Michiel was such a bungler. But that probably meant they were waiting for him at home. Then they’d catch both Michiel and the letter at the same time.
That couldn’t be allowed to happen. Michiel took out the blank envelope. He would destroy it, rip it into a thousand tiny pieces and bury them in the sand. Should he read the letter first? No. Then he couldn’t give anything away if they caught him. He had to get rid of the letter. Decisively, he ripped it in two. And then he tore the halves in two again.
Wait a moment. What if it said something really important? Something that urgently needed to be done? Of course it said something important. Why would Dirk have gone to the trouble of writing it otherwise? Bertus couldn’t do whatever it said in the letter now. And so it dawned on Michiel that he would have to do it instead. What a terrifying thought.
For what must have been five minutes, he sat there with the four pieces of paper in his hands. If he read the letter, he would definitely be involved with the resistance. If he didn’t read it… ah, but it was too late for that now. When he’d accepted the letter from Dirk, he’d signed on the dotted line.
He took the four pieces of the letter from what was left of the envelope, smoothed them out and pieced them back together. This is what it said:
If you’re reading this, the Germans have got their hands on me. I’m writing to you because there’s someone who needs help. Do you remember that dogfight above De Vlank, three weeks ago, when a British plane was shot down? The pilot jumped out with his parachute. The Germans looked for him, but couldn’t find him. I had more luck, though, and managed to track him down. His leg and shoulder were injured, and I took him with me. The shoulder wound’s been taken care of and a doctor put the leg in plaster. The next problem was finding somewhere to hide him. You remember that forestry work I did back in ’41–’42? We planted a lot of young trees in Dagdaler Wood. So I dug out a hiding place there, under the ground. There are four plots of young trees, each about three acres. The hiding place is in the middle of the north-eastern section. The entrance is surrounded now by a thick clump of spruce saplings. If you don’t know it’s there, it’s impossible to find. Anyway, that’s where the pilot is hidden. I take food to him every other day. He can’t walk, so he’s going to starve if you don’t take him anything. Be careful though. He has a gun and he’s very suspicious. Talking to him isn’t easy, as he doesn’t speak any Dutch—and I’m afraid your English probably isn’t much better than mine. No one else knows about the hiding place, so take care.
WL.
Michiel had no idea what “WL” might stand for. He read the letter three times before tearing it into tiny pieces, which he buried under a slab of moss. Even though his stomach was in a knot, he suddenly felt perfectly calm. Alright, so now he had a British pilot to take care of. That kind of thing could earn you the death penalty. The question was: how much had Dirk given away? As little as possible, he was sure of that. Maybe he’d only given them Bertus’s name and said nothing about Michiel. He had to go home, carefully, and try to find out if the Germans had come for him. No, wait a moment, it was still early. First he should go and visit the pilot. The man hadn’t had anything to eat yesterday and probably not the day before either. Right, so he needed some food. From home? Not a good idea. From the Van de Werfs, then. They liked him there, and it wasn’t far. He hopped onto his bike.
Mrs Van de Werf was cleaning the bakehouse. They’d used it all summer, but since it had got colder, they were eating inside the main farmhouse again. Now the bakehouse had to be cleaned and tidied up for the winter.
“Hello, Michiel,” said Mrs Van de Werf.
“Hello, Mrs Van de Werf. Nice weather today, eh?”
“It certainly is! You’re growing up fast, lad. You want to watch out that the Krauts don’t nab you. How old are you now?”
“Almost sixteen.”
“Yes, you take care. They got my nephew in Oosterwolde last week and sent him to Germany. To work in a factory, they said. He’s seventeen, but still… They’re taking them younger and younger.”
“I’ll try to keep out of their way.”
“And what can I do for you? I imagine you’re here for food again, eh?”
“Yes, please, if possible.”
“So what would you like?”
“Would a bit of ham be asking too much?”
“Well, since it’s you…”
They went inside together. There were some hams, pieces of bacon, and sausages ha
nging in the chimney. Mrs Van de Werf took a ham off the hook and cut some slices for Michiel.
“There you go.”
“Thanks so much, Mrs Van de Werf.”
Michiel paid and was about to leave.
“Would you like a bit of bread and cheese?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say no,” replied Michiel.
She cut and buttered two thick slices of bread, slipped some cheese between them, and presented the sandwich to Michiel, a treat for which someone in Amsterdam would gladly have paid a fortune.
“Thanks, I’ll eat it on the way home,” said Michiel. “I really should get going.”
“Run along, then. Bye, Michiel.”
Once he was out of sight of the farmhouse, Michiel opened up the paper that was wrapped around the ham and packed up the sandwich too. Then he set course for Dagdaler Wood.
The north-eastern section. It wouldn’t be hard to find. The problem was not being seen. When he was nearby, he hid his bike in the bushes and continued on foot. The wood was motionless in the autumn sunshine. Not a leaf moved. No woodcutters’ axes penetrated the silence. There were no cars, so there was no sound of traffic. Only a few twittering birds revealed their presence.
Michiel looked around cautiously as he approached the young trees. How on earth was he going to get through there? The spruce saplings were tightly packed together, so tightly that at first he had no idea how to get to the middle. Wait a moment, there were fewer branches close to the ground. He’d have to try crawling between the trunks.