Tales from the Fountain Pen

by E. Lynn Hooghiemstra

  “Oh, I see.” My mother looks at me in that stern way she has, making me feel small and wrong. “And what did you promise him in return?”

  She taps her foot impatiently when I don’t answer fast enough.

  “Nothing!” I say a little too loudly, which only makes me seem more guilty in her eyes. “Nothing, I swear.”

  “We don’t swear in this house. And you had better be telling me the truth, young lady. The consequences of lying will be harsh and I won’t tolerate a collaborator in this house.”

  I leave the kitchen feeling a total rat. I shouldn’t have accepted the bread and I should have told Siepie a firm “No.” How I wish this stupid, horrible war were over. When will the Allies come to liberate us?

  With a heavy heart I pick up the old sweater and start taking it apart, trying hard not to waste anything and avoiding Betty’s smug look.

  Father has finished his newspaper and slowly tears the pages into wide strips, then crumples them into tight wads so we can burn them later this evening and have more moments of heat without using up our small supply of coal.

  Maybe I should share some of that bread with Siepie? I’m sure she and her family would love some. But then, would they reject it because of where it came from? I would feel awful if Siepie’s mother got mad at me too and refused the bread. Besides, would my mother even let me? She might not want the neighbors to know we have bread given to us by a German soldier.

  The pen lifts from the paper. It’s nearly empty and I find I too need a moment to replenish my energy. In my own kitchen I pull out a loaf of fresh bread to make a sandwich, but find myself pausing. A memory comes flooding back of the pleasure my mother used to take in going to a bakery and purchasing a loaf, fresh from the ovens, cooling on the slatted wooden shelves behind the counter. It was always the same kind of bread too: a light whole wheat. She’d ask the shop girl to slice it in the machine before bagging it while she would count out exact change for the bread. Then she’d take it home and take the small end piece, spread it with butter and slowly, quietly eat it, savoring every bite. Then with a contented sigh as if she’d just consumed the most precious of delicacies, she would continue with her day.

  My sandwich now doesn’t seem quite so ordinary, and I take my time in preparing it. I eat it slowly and try to savor every bite as I’d seen my mother do. For a moment I imagine she’s there with me in the kitchen. I imagine I can even catch a faint hint of her favorite perfume, Chanel No.5.

  It takes me quite some time to return to the fountain pen on my desk and the remaining blank pages, but finally curiosity compels me.

  It is late, well after curfew, and I am in Siepie’s home. The front room is cold, colder than ours, and lit only by a small oil lamp set on a table between two easy chairs. Siepie’s mother sits in one of them with a blanket pulled up to her chest, squinting at her knitting. She’ll ruin her eyes in this poor light.

  Siepie’s father isn’t home yet. He often has to work late at the rail-yard and sometimes doesn’t come home at all. Instead he’ll sleep a few hours in the station office. Well hidden from any German patrols, of course, as they don’t allow people to sleep in the station waiting room.

  Siepie silently lights a candle and motions for me to follow her up to her bedroom. I’m holding a small ball of blue yarn in my hand and I know we’re going up to find her red yarn, and to talk in secret.

  Her room is even colder than downstairs and I wonder how they are coping. Her little brother is in the big bed downstairs in the back room and now and then I hear him coughing. This cold can’t be helping his frail lungs. How will they all survive the coming winter?

  “Well?” Siepie asks. “Have you found out anything?”

  I suck in my lower lip and think where to begin. Johann had quite a lot to say after he got home from the camp. Especially after I encouraged him. I feel ashamed and don’t want to say anything, but I know I must. I know that what I did was for the greater good.

  In my mind’s eye I still see the happy grin on his face after I let him kiss me.

  We were upstairs, I was getting a cardigan to put on over my sweater, and he had just returned. I could taste cigarette smoke on his lips, but I didn’t stop him. Oh, why does he have to be the enemy?

  “Well?” Siepie asks impatiently.

  I nod and take a steadying breath. I decide not to tell her about the bread…or the kiss.

  “He told me,” I say with as steady a voice as I can manage, “the invasion is planned for next month. They’re waiting on extra equipment. The factories in the Ruhr area are working around the clock building tanks and aircraft. And they plan to load a lot of troops from here, using the Waddenzee to confuse Churchill.”

  An involuntary shudder runs through me.

  “Are you cold?” Siepie asks.

  “Yes,” I lie, not wanting to admit my revulsion at what I’ve done.

  “You’ve done well. That’s very valuable information.” Siepie pats my arm to show her approval and understanding, but she can’t possibly know what I’m feeling inside.

  Without waiting for her to give me the red yarn I make my excuses and leave quickly. It almost feels warmer outside than in Siepie’s house, but I find myself shivering uncontrollably; not from the cold. Before I am able to open my own front door I throw up my meager dinner, which consisted of a fried egg and a slice of that bread.

  With shaking hands I open the front door and go straight to the kitchen. There I fill up a pan with water to heat for a hot water bottle to take up to bed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Betty asks when she finds me in the kitchen.

  “Cold,” I say through chattering teeth.

  “Are you sick?” she asks with disgust. “If you are, I don’t want to share the bed with you.”

  “No, just cold,” I manage to say through clenched teeth. I do feel sick, but I know the cause: loathing and disgust.

  Now I’m a collaborator. What will happen to me? Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe nobody will find out. Maybe one kiss is not the end of the world.

  Conflicting thoughts run through my head and I end up spilling some of the hot water over my hand as I try to pour it into the stainless steel bottle. It soaks the wool and knitted sleeve and scalds my hand.

  “Ouch!” I cry and shake the water off my hand, tears flooding my eyes.

  “Clumsy!” Betty says and takes the bottle from me. I watch her screw the top on and strip off the wet cover. “Hold your hand under cold water, dummy, you don’t want it to blister, do you?”

  I silently comply, letting the cold water flow over my hand while hot tears run down my cheeks. I feel like a little kid. How could I have been so stupid?

  Tomorrow I shall tell Johann “no more,” and I shall tell Siepie the same. It’s too dangerous.

  With my hand wrapped in a piece of flannel with ointment, the hot water bottle in a fresh, dry sleeve under my arm, I warily climb the steep stairs to the cold little attic room I share with my sister. I can hear the soldier’s voices coming from Theo’s room and feel a fresh wave of nausea rising.

  I close the door to my room behind me and without even taking off my clothes I slip under the covers, clutching the hot water bottle as if it’s my most treasured possession.

  The pen lifts and I find tears slowly dropping onto the paper as I relive my mother’s anguish. I remember asking my mother once if she knew how to speak German, to which she tersely said: “Yes, but I won’t ever speak it again.” Was that because of what happened with Johann?

  Before dawn the next day I am at my desk to meet my mother again and to relive her life. I unscrew the cap of the old pen, top off the ink bladder and touch the tip to the paper, allowing myself to be transported back to her village in the north of the Netherlands during the war. I hope she’s all right and I will the pen to write faster despite the pain in my hand from writing the day before.

  I can’t tell how much time has passed when I find myself outside on a cold morning. I’m huddle
d into the collar of my old coat, a scarf wrapped around my neck and my hands firmly in my pockets.

  It looks like I am near the center of the village: I can see the train station some way up the road. It looks like a train is being loaded with supplies and people. No, they’re soldiers. Is the war over?

  No, it can’t be. People walking past me have downcast eyes and a hungry, almost haunted look about them. That’s not how I imagine a liberated people would look. Besides, I don’t feel much joy inside either.

  I seem rooted to the ground under my feet as I watch the train being loaded in the distance.

  With an effort I turn my head to see where I am and find myself in front of the boarded-up butcher’s shop.

  “It’s no use standing around waiting for Hendrik, my dear.” The kindly voice of Mrs. Jansen startles me. “Just because the soldiers are leaving doesn’t mean they’ll let him go from wherever they’re holding him.” She gives me a sad little smile.

  I try to think of something appropriate to say. “Maybe soon,” is all I manage.

  “Yes, maybe soon all this will be over and we’ll have our boys back.” She turns, but not before I see her eyes well up. Of course, her son, Jan, is in hiding too, just like Theo. Jan went into hiding a few months before my brother. He had to, as he’d been handing out anti-German leaflets in Leeuwarden.

  Where Hendrik is brash and bold, Jan sometimes is just plain stupid. He figured he would be safe if all he did was quietly hand out little notes urging people to resist the occupiers.

  The first time he got picked up he got off with a warning, but the second time he got severely beaten. Just a few days after that he went into hiding. That was almost two years ago. Theo’s been in hiding for over a year now and we’ve not heard from him in all that time. I miss him.

  I turn to go home but instead find myself face to face with Johann, who seizes the opportunity to grab me and kiss me. I struggle fiercely and once I break free I run as fast as I can, his boisterous laughter ringing in my ears.

  Now the whole village will know and brand me a traitor. How could he do that to me? After that one kiss a few weeks back I never encouraged him again, even though he brought bread every day for a week. I made sure to tell him no, in his language and mine.

  I never told anyone about that first kiss either, but now it will be all over Bergum in a matter of hours.

  Hot tears stream down my face as I keep running for home. My heel catches on a loose paving stone and I stumble but don’t fall. I can see our house and then I miss my step up the curb, my ankle twists and I go sprawling. Pain radiates out from my skinned knees, the palms of my hands and my right ankle. Oh, please, don’t let it be broken, especially not now that the doctor doesn’t have the materials to make plaster casts anymore.

  I lie there on the sidewalk gathering my nerves to attempt standing. My muscles feel shaky and I can’t stop crying.

  “Maggie!” I hear Siepie’s voice, full of concern, and I can see her shape through a haze of tears, coming toward me. “Maggie, what happened? Are you hurt?”

  She clumsily tries to haul me up into a sitting position but it’s just too much for her small size. It makes me giggle a little through my tears. Just enough to let me pull myself together, and with an effort I manage to sit up on the curb. Siepie sits next to me and I notice she’s not wearing a coat. She must have seen me fall and come running out of her house. I wonder why my sister isn’t out here too, but I already know the answer to that.

  “What happened?” Siepie asks again.

  “Oh, great,” I cry, examining my knees and avoiding her question. “I hope I can mend those holes in my stockings.” I’m wearing my last halfway decent pair of wool stockings; they’ve already been darned in a few places and are a little too short. If my legs grow any longer, mended knees will show under my skirt. “I wish I could wear trousers, it would be warmer too,” I complain.

  Siepie nods understandingly, but is still waiting for an answer as to why her normally athletic friend went sprawling.

  “I’m doomed,” I say, drying my eyes with my handkerchief. My hands shake and the palms are red and raw. I pick a tiny pebble out of my left palm, which immediately starts bleeding.

  “Give me that,” Siepie says, almost as if scolding a child. She takes my hand and pulls out her own handkerchief and ties it round my hand.

  “Ouch, not so tight,” I cry.

  “Don’t fuss,” Siepie scolds. “You want the bleeding to stop, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say, compliantly.

  “Good. Now tell me why you think you’re doomed,” she says, and takes my damp handkerchief from me. She folds it and then presses it in turn to each of my skinned knees, mopping up the worst of the blood. “The soldiers have left your house. Surely that’s good, right?”

  “Yes, except one of them decided to kiss me on his way to the station. Just out there, in the middle of the street for everyone to see!”

  Siepie nods pensively before she says: “And what did you do?”

  “What?” I ask, afraid she’s accusing me of something.

  “What did you do? Come on, Maggie, your response is what’s important here and what people will remember.”

  “I tried to push him away,” I say.

  “So, you struggled?” Siepie asks.

  “Yes,” I say, a tiny feeling of relief budding in my chest. “Yes, I did. I struggled. I’m sure I must have bruises on my arms where he held me.”

  “Good, that’s excellent, Maggie,” Siepie says, and stands up. “You are far from doomed. Now, go inside and get cleaned up.”

  I comply, wondering when my friend became such a mother hen.

  Leaning on Siepie, I limp to my front door. My ankle’s not broken, but it certainly hurts a lot.

  “Who did this to you?” my mother asks as Siepie helps me into the front room where I drop into my father’s easy chair.

  “Nobody, I twisted my ankle and fell,” I say, wincing as I move my injured ankle up onto a dining chair Siepie’s brought over.

  “I’ll come back later, after dinner,” Siepie says, and she slips out of the room before I can say anything.

  I tell my mother why I was running home and she eyes me with more than a hint of suspicion, then decides that my pain must be real and goes to the kitchen. She comes back a minute later with a cold, vinegar-soaked rag and wraps it around my ankle. Then she fetches a bowl of warm water and some iodine to clean out and treat my many scrapes. It will sting, I know, as my mother is not the gentlest of nurses.

  I clench my teeth and shut my eyes tight, wishing it were my father tending me, but he’s at work.

  “There, all done,” my mother says, and awkwardly squeezes my arm and smiles at me.

  Her unusual display of maternal affection leaves me a little bewildered.

  “Do you think my stockings can be mended?” I ask softly.

  “Probably, but it won’t look very nice on a pretty young lady,” she answers.

  “Mother?” I say, surprised at this softening of her tone towards me.

  “Maggie, you’re a proper young woman now and it won’t do to walk around in rags,” she says.

  “But with the rationing it’s almost impossible to find stockings,” I say.

  “Good thing I hoarded some.” My mother actually winks at me and for a moment I see the impish young girl my father must have fallen in love with.

  How could she say I’m a proper young women now when I came in with skinned knees like a little girl?

  “Why does it smell like vinegar in here?” Betty comes in, sees me in Papa’s chair with rags and bandages and sniffs disapprovingly. I suppress a giggle at the face she makes.

  “I guess I’ll have to clean Theo’s room by myself,” she says haughtily. “I don’t see why I can’t have that room then.”

  “Maybe because right now I don’t know if I can even make it up one set of stairs, let alone two,” I say and point to my sprained ankle.

  “You
should be more careful,” Betty snorts. “Haste makes waste.” And she strides out of the room again. So much for sympathy.

  At least I won’t have to share a bed with her anymore. But…I stop when I realize that Johann and his fellow soldier have slept in that room for the past few months.

  Now I wish I could help clean up that room. I wish I could douse it in lye and scrub it till it gleams so no trace of those soldiers remains.

  Before I don’t have time to get too worried about Theo’s room, I hear my father’s key in the lock. He rushes into the front room before even taking off his hat.

  “Maggie! Oh, Maggie, what have they done to you?” He rushes over and clumsily embraces me. “I heard what happened from Trijntje at the newsstand, she said you had been accosted by a German soldier.” He takes a hurried breath. “But this looks more like you were attacked and beaten.”

  “No, no, Papa,” I say, clasping his cold, strong hands. “It’s not like that. These cuts are from when I ran home and tripped. I was clumsy because I was upset and I twisted my ankle.”

  “They didn’t hurt you then?” His eyes search mine.

  “Not really. Just a bruise or two from where he held me.”

  “He did hurt you then! That bastard. Trijntje said you fought him off with the fierceness of a tigress!”

  I smile. Maybe I’m not so doomed after all.

  “Yes, Papa, I struggled fiercely,” I say and let him pull me close into a proper embrace. I can smell machine oil and the cold outside on his coat. His cheek feels rough and cold against mine but I don’t mind.

  “How about a nice cup of tea?” my mother comes into the room again with the tea tray.

  “Tea?” I ask, surprised.

  “I was able to trade for some with Mrs. Sietsma,” my mother says proudly. “If we’re careful it might last till the end of the war,” she adds as a little joke. She hands me a cup of hot, real tea and pats me on the shoulder.

  “Why is she being so nice to me?” I whisper to my father.

  He grins and whispers back: “You’ve proved that you’re not a collaborator.”

  My eyes grow wide. “She thought…?” I can’t even finish the sentence.