by Jan Terlouw
Something had come between them—between Michiel and Dirk, and between Erica and Jack. It was no longer a question of guilt, not after what Dirk had said. No one—not if they were being reasonable at least—could have said that either Jack or Dirk had done anything wrong. Certainly not Jack. He’d been in too much of a state to know much about anything. And as for Dirk… Michiel thought Dirk actually deserved a medal for his bravery. And yet now his father’s death stood between them. Everything that seems beautiful and noble and heroic about war, Michiel thought bitterly, gets spoilt, one way or another. Father was right: there’s nothing romantic about war.
After hearing Jack and Dirk’s stories, Michiel and Erica apologized for running away and agreed that the whole disaster wasn’t their fault, that Dirk had done the right thing and that, if anyone was guilty, it was whoever had stolen the parachute. No, not guilty, more like irresponsible, unthinking—although he should at least have come forward when the hostages were taken and informed the Germans that there’d been a parachute wrapped around the body. They told Dirk to stop feeling guilty. They even made jokes about Jack spying on courting couples from the air. But still…
It’s going to take time, thought Erica. But I’ll get used to the idea. Jack’s still the same man, after all. He hasn’t done anything wrong. So that’s alright then!
And the brother and sister went on supplying their two older friends with food.
“But you know something? Keeping rabbits is a whole lot easier,” said Michiel.
13
Even in times of darkness, famine and danger, the clock still goes on ticking. January went by. February went by. The stream of starving people from the west became wider and moved more slowly. They were weak and thin. The strongest ones, the young men, had either been dragged off to Germany, or had gone into hiding. No new mayor was appointed. Mrs Van Beusekom went on living with her children in the mayor’s house, which every night was filled with hollow-eyed, stumbling, exhausted souls. Michiel went on thinking about the betrayal. He’d been through it all a thousand times. A thousand times, he came back to Schafter. And a thousand times, he still wasn’t certain.
One Sunday afternoon, he went out for a walk with Uncle Ben. They strolled through the fields, where the winter rye was growing nice and green. They ambled past the meadows, where the young cows, the yearlings, didn’t seem troubled by the gusts of March wind.
“The buds are swelling,” said Uncle Ben, snapping a twig from an elder bush. “Spring is on its way. It’s about time. The people in the big cities have suffered such bitterly cold weather this winter. There’s no coal left. Masses of trees in the parks have been felled. The wooden sheds have been torn down. People did whatever they could to get a fire going, so they could warm their chilled bones and cook their tulip-bulb soup.”
“Tulip-bulb soup?”
“Oh yes, tulip bulbs have become quite the delicacy. Remember the story of the siege of Leiden, back in the 1500s? People ate dogs and cats and rats. They came pretty close to eating their mayor. It’s not yet come to that, but it’s not far off.”
“You’re not wrong,” said Michiel. He was only too well aware that people were hungry. Few had been as involved as him with the starving masses passing through the village.
“When do you think the war will be over?” he asked.
Uncle Ben shrugged. “I know a fortune-teller who’s predicted the definite date of Hitler’s surrender four times already. But the facts always prove her predictions wrong.”
“Everyone says it can’t go on much longer. They say the Allies are heading straight for Berlin, and so are the Russians.”
“Don’t start rejoicing too soon,” said Uncle Ben. “Have you heard about what happened in the Ardennes?”
“In the Ardennes? No, what?”
“On 16th December the German troops, supported by a Panzer division under General Von Manteuffel, launched a powerful offensive in Belgium, in the Ardennes. The Allies were taken by complete surprise. They had no idea the Krauts were still that strong. Luckily, it failed, because the Germans couldn’t take Bastogne. Who knows what would have happened otherwise? And don’t forget their big weapons, the V1s and V2s. There are more and more of those terrible rockets raining down on London. People say they’re developing other secret weapons too, but who knows for sure?”
“Don’t the Americans have any secret weapons?”
“No idea. Let’s hope so.”
For a while, they were silent.
So Uncle Ben thinks the war could go on for a long time, thought Michiel. A long time for Schafter and his pals to get up to their nasty tricks.
“I wish,” he said, thinking aloud, “that I knew a way to find out if someone is a traitor.”
“A traitor? Who?”
“Someone here in the village.”
“So who did he betray?”
“Oh, that’s beside the point,” said Michiel.
“I once had to deal with something like that,” Uncle Ben told him.
“Really? What happened?”
“The man was in the same resistance group as me, but I didn’t trust him. So, accidentally on purpose, I left a note lying around where I knew he’d find it. The note said where a Jewish family were hiding. And—surprise, surprise!—the next day there was a raid on that house.”
“What happened to the Jewish family?” asked Michiel.
“There was no Jewish family, of course. I’d chosen a house where I knew the residents were pro-German. But I had my answer.”
“So what did you do?”
Now it was Uncle Ben’s turn to smile and say, “That’s beside the point.”
The idea appealed to Michiel. He must be able to do something similar with Schafter. But how was he going to get a note to him? He could just post it in his letter box. If he hung around until Schafter left the house, he’d be able to do it without being noticed. Schafter lived alone, so that wasn’t a problem.
What should the note say, though? Dear Mr Schafter, I wish to inform you that Mrs X has Jews in her house. Yours sincerely, Michiel van Beusekom. No, of course not.
What, then?
To start with, there was no need for him to sign it. An anonymous letter. If Schafter ignored it, then there was no harm done. But whose house could he get the Nazis to raid? He didn’t know for certain that anyone in the village was pro-German, except for Schafter himself.
“How do you know for definite if someone’s collaborating with the Germans?” he said.
“Hmm,” said Uncle Ben, “that’s a tricky one. Didn’t you say there’s a man called Schafter in the village who’s been acting suspiciously?”
“That’s right,” said Michiel, “but I don’t know for sure.” He wanted to keep his cards close to his chest. “Imagine if he really was sheltering Jews in his house. I’d never forgive myself.”
“Hmm,” said Uncle Ben again.
He thought for a moment.
“It doesn’t have to be Jews, of course,” he said then. “You could come up with something else. Like, say, that there are weapons hidden in that Green Cross building by your house. That’s empty, isn’t it? Let them raid that building.”
Michiel had never thought his uncle was a fool, but now he was starting to believe he was a genius.
“Excellent,” he said. “I’ll send the man I suspect an anonymous letter and we’ll see what happens.”
Uncle Ben gave him a sidelong glance.
“Hey, my young friend,” he said, “I don’t want to stick my nose into your business, but aren’t you perhaps getting too involved in things that you’re too young for?”
“I’m not a child,” said Michiel indignantly. “I’m sixteen.”
“Well, blow me down,” said Uncle Ben. “What an old man! Hey, look, you’re already going grey at the temples. Or is it just fluffy little baby hairs?”
That was good enough reason for Michiel to give a nearby tree trunk a hard kick and, as a result, his uncle, who was walking und
erneath it, got a shower of drips and drops on his head.
When Michiel got home, he went straight to work. After a few failed attempts, he got the following message down on paper, disguising his handwriting:
The occupier needs to know that there are weapons hidden in the Green Cross building.
E
The E was to make it more believable. It didn’t really mean anything. He wanted Uncle Ben to read the note, but, as usual, his uncle had somewhere else to be. It was probably for the best. The less other people knew about you, the safer you were.
The next morning, he made his way to Schafter’s house. He was planning to hide behind some bushes about a hundred yards from the house and wait. But he was in luck. As he passed the grocer’s, he saw Schafter inside the shop. Good. Now he needed to walk on quickly, before the man finished his shopping. At Schafter’s house, he stopped and looked around. He didn’t see anyone he knew, just the usual crowds filling the road. He dashed through the gate and slipped the note into the letter box. Even if a neighbour had spotted him, it wouldn’t be a problem. No one spoke to Schafter. Everyone avoided him as if he had some kind of infectious disease.
After that, it was a case of waiting to see what happened. For the first twenty-four hours, Michiel could hardly take his eyes off the Green Cross building. When he was at home, he kept wandering over to the window to see if anything was happening. But no. The building was as lonely and abandoned as ever, and it stayed that way all week. Not one German bothered even to glance at it.
I’m still none the wiser, thought Michiel. Either Schafter isn’t a traitor, or he saw through the ruse and he’s not falling for it.
Uncle Ben came by another day and asked how Michiel’s plan had gone.
“A complete failure,” said the young would-be trapper, and left it at that.
Another week passed, in which nothing much happened, just the usual misery of the starving people passing through and a failed bombing of the barracks (the bombs all landed in a field). And then, fifteen days after Michiel had put the note in Schafter’s letter box, that all changed. They came one afternoon. A truck stopped in front of the building, and five soldiers got out. They kicked open the door and went inside. Michiel saw it all from the living room.
“What are you looking at?” his mother asked.
“A raid on the Green Cross building.”
Mrs Van Beusekom came to look.
“What on earth are they doing there? That place has been empty for three years.”
“No idea,” said Michiel, but he looked so triumphant that his mother was a little startled.
The soldiers stayed for half an hour. Then they got back into the truck and drove off, leaving the door ajar.
I’ll go and see Dirk tomorrow, thought Michiel. He hadn’t told his friend anything about the trap. He’d wanted to wait until it had worked. Well, now it had. There could be no doubt that Schafter was a traitor to his country. Dirk would have to decide how to settle the score with him.
The village of De Vlank had an aid committee, set up by a number of enterprising ladies with the aim of offering assistance to the most needy cases that passed through the village. If someone collapsed and couldn’t go on, they were admitted to an emergency hospital with six beds, and lovingly nursed back to health for a few days. It was actually Erica who did most of the work. When she’d signed up, the committee had already been in existence for a while, but she had time, was young and strong and knew a thing or two about nursing, so she quickly became one of its mainstays. In return, she had taken bandages for Jack from the committee’s limited supplies that winter, which had come in handy.
The committee had also turned the village hall into a “hotel”. Straw was laid on the floor and anyone without shelter could sleep there. Erica spent every evening at the village hall, from seven o’clock until just before eight. Together with a small team of first-aiders, she pricked blisters, bandaged sores and put plasters on wounds. Michiel often went to meet her. That had two advantages. Firstly, the dynamo torch could stay at home for longer and, secondly, Erica didn’t have to walk back in the dark on her own.
Later, when Michiel thought back to the war, it was often the village hall that came to mind: the first-aiders applying bandages by candlelight, and the murmurs of voices in the darkness. The room had a very special atmosphere. There was so much grief and misery, and yet also a feeling of safety, security for just one night, of friendship and common purpose.
The small stage, where Erica did her work, was illuminated. Otherwise the room was dark, and the rustling of straw was the only sign of people. The minister usually came by at about quarter to eight. He walked down the central aisle towards the light, carefully, so as not to tread on any outstretched hands. With his head bowed, he stood in the light, surrounded by wounds and blisters, and read a few lines from a pocket Bible. And then he spoke a brief word to his invisible congregation.
“Hello, everyone, I can’t see you, but I know, I can feel, that you’re there. We have such great need of one another at times like these…”
Michiel often went a little earlier so that he could listen to the minister. He rarely went to church, but there, in that room, it was different. The minister didn’t talk over people’s heads; he actually spoke to them. And the strange thing was that the people almost seemed to reply with their breathing and their rustling.
Michiel was always surprised that no one ever called out from the darkness: “Hey, you, take your pious sermons and clear off.” And no one ever said: “I’m a Catholic, so I don’t want to listen to some Protestant preacher.” Quite the opposite, in fact. They took hold of his hand or his sleeve and said: “Thank you, Minister, how kind of you to come.”
There was once a man who asked him for a page from the Bible, just one page. “I’ve always been an atheist,” he said, “but now I want to carry something of God with me.”
Michiel couldn’t quite understand it, but he’d always had the feeling that the people in that village hall were contented. Why exactly was that? Was it because they were so exhausted from walking and could now stretch out their weary legs on the straw? Was it because all of them had it bad? They were hungry. They were far from home. The next day they would have to plod onwards again, diving out of the way as planes approached, wondering yet again if they would find shelter that night. It was strange. His father had been right when he said that war meant hunger, tears, hardship, fear, pain—and yet… In that village hall, Michiel felt that you could also learn from war, that this war had taught him something that would stand him in good stead for the rest of his life.
On the evening of the day the Green Cross building was searched, Michiel was about to go and meet Erica when the doorbell rang. He opened the door, expecting another refugee, but found Schafter standing there in front of him.
“H-Hello there, Schafter, come on in,” he stammered.
“No,” replied Schafter.
“What can I do for you then?”
“You can listen to me,” said Schafter. “You put a note through my door. I don’t know what you were thinking, but I don’t like it. This afternoon the Green Cross building was raided. Apparently they didn’t find anything.”
“I put a note in your letter box? Where did you get that idea?”
“I know you did.”
“Huh? How?”
“That’s none of your business. You probably suspect me of being a traitor. Well, I don’t suspect you of the same, so I’m not surprised that there weren’t any weapons hidden in that building. But let me assure you that I’ve never told any secrets to the Germans.”
“But… but the raid on the Green Cross building. Why did it happen, then?”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” said Schafter. “You’re going to draw conclusions now. The wrong conclusions. I don’t know why there was a raid on that building. But I do know one thing: I threw your stupid note in the fire and I didn’t tell anyone about it. Not a soul. Got it?”
“No… Um, yes,” floundered Michiel.
“Goodbye then.”
Schafter angrily turned and disappeared into the night.
Instead of going to meet Erica, Michiel went to his room in the attic to think it over. He sat there on the edge of his bed for a while, staring into the darkness. Yet again, he was baffled. How did Schafter know he’d put the note through his door? No one knew about that, did they? Even Uncle Ben hadn’t known he was talking about Schafter. He was certain that he’d seen Schafter at the grocer’s. The neighbours? Had a passer-by noticed him? He’d taken a good look around, though, and seen no one. He could have been mistaken, of course, but it was so unlikely. No one spoke to Schafter any more. He couldn’t imagine Schafter taking the note around the neighbourhood either, to ask if anyone had seen who’d delivered it. It wasn’t that kind of letter.
Was he really that much of an idiot? Everything he did went wrong. Why did it always have to happen to him, Michiel? Hadn’t everyone always said his lips were shut tighter than a clam? Hadn’t his father and mother said that he could keep a secret even when he was only four years old? Hadn’t Erica always accused him of never telling her anything? So why was everything he did so completely transparent to everyone? Well, to Schafter at least. Did the man have second sight? Was he psychic?
His trap had failed—that was obvious. As long as there were so many question marks remaining, he couldn’t tell Dirk with any certainty that Schafter was the traitor. In a very grumpy mood, he stomped back downstairs.
“Who was that at the door just now?” his mother asked.
“Santa Claus,” Michiel snapped.
“Hey, Michiel…”
“I’m sorry, Mum. It was someone looking for a place to sleep. I sent him to the village hall.”
Lying came so easily to him these days. It was almost second nature.