The door was unlocked, and she hoisted her bike up the stairs and into the hall, hung up her jacket and walked through the kitchen and the little yard behind it to the shed where the group met. The three men were already there, and Jo was pleased to see Lysbet. After a meeting, Lysbet always told her about school, the teachers especially, because most of them were still saying what they believed, not caring if one of the students told the police about them. So far they were all still safe.
The men reached eagerly for the newspapers, and Adrian pulled out a chair for Jo before he started scanning the news. ‘We’ve got twenty minutes,’ he cautioned, ‘and I have some assignments. Not you, Lysbet, you’ve done enough for now.’
‘I can do more,’ she protested, but you didn’t argue with Adrian. He was in charge of them all and the only one in contact with other commanders, and she was just a messenger. Just the same, she looked at Jo as if to say it wasn’t fair to send her home and let Jo stay.
Adrian saw the look and tapped his pencil firmly on the table. ‘Sorry, Lysbet, it’s getting too dangerous for you.’ Both girls started to laugh, and he did to, but he insisted. ‘I know you women are just as brave as we are, but it’s an order. We can't risk your going to prison.’
‘But Jo can stay?’
‘I told you before, until you tell your parents what you’re doing, I’m not going to take any chances with you.’
Jo could see Lysbet knew Adrian wasn’t telling her the truth, she was smart enough for that. How could he expect her to tell her parents, hadn’t he said over and over that you weren’t supposed to?
Lysbet stuck out her tongue at him but he went on, ‘Go home now and stay away until you hear from us. It might not be safe here much longer, and we’ll try to get news to you when there’s a meeting here or someplace else.’
Jo went out to the yard for a moment to talk and say goodnight. ‘Mr Stoffels was arrested last week,’ Lysbet told her. ‘One of the students must have told the police he’s been criticizing the Germans.’
‘How could anyone do that to him! He’s such a wonderful teacher, how could one of you do that?’
‘Don’t say one of us!’
‘No, of course not, I’m sorry. I know there are lots of people who hate the Germans. But the police and the people who work for the city do whatever the Germans tell them to do. What’s even worse is that they’re proud they’re doing such a good job. A good job!’
‘My father always says if you do a job, do it one-hundred percent. Even more if you can. Grownups are stupid sometimes, aren’t they! But he says it’s what made Holland so rich and powerful, and why we have an empire almost as big as England’s and all that. I guess it’s a Dutch thing.’
‘I don’t know, aren’t the Germans like that too? It’s what they’re proudest of, being so efficient and hardworking. Maybe there are people like that everywhere in the world, people who think it doesn’t matter what they’re doing, whether it’s right or wrong, as long as they do what the boss tells them to do and they do their best.’ She was quoting Elsie, but she knew she was right. There might be an excuse for the German soldiers, they had to obey their officers or be sent to prison or shot, but not for the Dutch men who even joined the SS and volunteered to fight the Russians.
‘The worst are those kids in the National Youth,’ Lysbet said. ‘They march around singing Nazi songs, showing-off their uniforms and their badges, and throwing their hands up in the air to salute the way the Germans do. National Youth? Which nation are they living in? Since Mr Stoffels was taken away, no-one talks to them anymore.’
‘My father thinks their parents are even worse, because they should know better. He says there have always been cowards and people who only think of themselves. But there are lots of good people, too, like Mr Stoffels. And like you.’ She was thinking of Kris and Kitty sheltering Tamar and the boys.
‘Thanks for saying that,’ Lysbet said, hugging her. The door behind them opened, and Adrian signaled to Jo. ‘I’m going, I’m going!’ Lysbet called out and dashed off.
‘We’ve got ten minutes, people, so let’s get at it,’ Adrian ordered. ‘This comes down from cell one. All right?’ They nodded, impressed by his serious tone. ‘We’re going to hit them hard. The planning has started all over the country. The idea is to do as much damage as we can, everywhere and on the same night. This is the moment to really hit them. The Russians are harder to beat than the Germans thought. They’re not winning over there in the east, in fact they’re on the edge of losing everything.’
Tommy said, ‘The resistance in France is still strong, but there’s no news from anywhere else.’
‘It’s pretty well wiped-out in Belgium,’ Adrian said, ‘but not here. We can do a lot of damage to their morale and their organization. I wish we had more guns, but what we have will have to do.’
‘Brains help,’ Willem said, and they all laughed.
‘That’s right, and we’re going to use them,’ Adrian said. ‘First of all, we don’t talk about this to anyone. And secondly, we need to make very exact preparations for anything we’re asked to do. And, Jo, thanks for giving my sister my message.’
‘And the rest of us?’ Tommy asked.
‘I’ll be in touch with each one of you as soon as I can, but we can’t all be involved in the same action, you know that. If you’re willing to go it alone, I’ve got the names and addresses of a few people we have to get rid of, collaborators and Germans both.’
Tommy and Willem looked at each other, then at him. ‘Of course we’re willing!’ Tommy exclaimed. ‘Have we been meeting for weeks just to read a newspaper?’
‘I shouldn’t have said that, sorry, guys. All right, we can’t meet here for a while, not until I’m sure it’s still a safe place. I’ll come to you, but for God’s sake, stay away from each other. Jo, tell them at the newspaper you can’t help them any more.’
‘I could help at the nursery,’ she suggested, and he agreed.
Standing up, he put a few newspapers into an inside pocket of his coat and motioned the others to go out before him. Jo went first. There was nobody in the street, and she bumped the bike down the stairs and went away as fast as she could. At the corner where she’d met the two soldiers, she pedaled faster. They were gone long ago, she knew, they wouldn’t stay out long in the cold if they didn’t have to.
Lysbeth had said Mr Stoffels was in prison. He was an old man, maybe forty or even fifty, he would hate being bullied by young policemen, being shouted at or worse. She wondered what he had said that got him into trouble. Maybe about how the Spanish had invaded Holland in the past, and how they had been beaten and forced to leave. Even if they didn’t keep him in prison, she knew the school couldn’t take him back.
She was home just before the curfew started. Elsie and Dirk were reading, huddled in blankets in the cold parlor. As she turned to go upstairs, Elsie asked, ‘Want to go to church with us tonight? It’s a Christmas service, and it’s about all we’re going to be able to do to celebrate this year. Would your parents mind if you go?’
‘Oh, thank you, I’ll ask!’ she answered. Was it really Christmas? Nobody had said, and she hadn't seen anything special anywhere. Perhaps there was a law against it. Maybe she should have presents for them, at least for Elsie. The boys and Dirk wouldn’t expect anything. She could write a poem for Elsie, she’d like that.
‘And tell your parents they must come down to supper tomorrow evening. We’ll make it a party for all of us, because we’re still here safe and well. Tell them that.’
Jo went through the closet, climbed the stairs and pushed the attic door open. Jacoba, already in bed, sat up and waved. David looked up from his book and rubbed his eyes. ‘Good you are back,’ he said. ‘Come and talk to us.’ He pushed some empty plates aside and held up an apple he’d cut in two.
‘The apple is for you and mother,’ she said. ‘I ate downstairs, more than enough. Don’t save food for me, please, father. What are you reading?’
‘Ah, the same books as always.’ He held up his Bible to show her. ‘Every time I read this, I find new things in it. My teachers, how wise they were.’
Leaning over to kiss his cheek, she said, ‘Elsie asked me to go to church with her tonight. It’s for Christmas.’
‘Is it Christmas? An important night for her, of course.’
‘May I? Would that be all right?’
‘Why should it not be? A church or a synagogue, is there a difference? We get close to Him, blessed be His name, whichever way we can.’ He laid his palm on the book in front of him, the Bible he’d been given at his Bar Mitzvah almost forty years before and had looked into every day since. Elsie came up some afternoons to sit and talk to him. He showed her passages he thought would challenge her, and she told him what the apostles had written or, and this he enjoyed even more, she recited one of Jesus’s parables. ‘What a wise man,’ David would say, ‘a credit to his people,’ and they would both laugh. She was saving his life this way too.
‘Go celebrate the birthday,’ he said, and she went downstairs to join Elsie and Dirk, both wearing layers of sweaters, jackets and their heaviest coats. It had snowed again that afternoon, but now the sky was cloudless, the moon glowing and the temperature just below freezing. It was almost midnight, but people were still out skating. ‘Going home from family parties,’ Elsie said, ‘or to church like us.’
Elsie liked Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk, she admitted, because it was so gorgeous. Jo understood what she meant as soon as she walked in. Every wall was painted red, green or blue, there were dozens of pictures and statues and, because there were only a few lamps, hundreds of tall white candles glowed everywhere.
‘It’s too dark for you to see the ceiling,’ Elsie told her, ‘ but that’s decorated too, with flowers and stars. Isn’t it grand?’ She led the way to seats as close as they could get to a round balcony hung from a thick carved wooden column, where the priest would stand to give his sermon. The pews were almost full, except for one where several German policemen were sitting and the one just in front of them. If they noticed they were being isolated, they didn’t show it. Looking at the statue of Jesus slumped against his cross, Jo thought of all the ways there were to make a human being suffer.
A poke from Elsie told her to stand. ‘We haven’t got an organist anymore,’ Elsie whispered, ‘so we have to sing really loud.’ She had a rough voice, but it was in tune, more so than the off-key, dutiful sound Dirk made on Jo’s other side. ‘Kyrie eleison’ they sang and repeated twice more. When they sat down again, Elsie translated, ‘It means Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Those boys had better say it, they’ll need it.’ She tipped her head in the direction of the Germans.
One of the two priests who stood behind the altar, the short one in a simple white smock, came down to the aisle between the pews. In his right hand, he held something that looked like a large silver coffee pot, and he began to swing the chain it hung on so that the pot moved in wide circles, and a sweet-smelling smoke puffed out of the pierced lid. ‘That’s to take our prayers to heaven,’ Elsie explained.
During a long pause, while the older priest disappeared and then appeared suddenly in the balcony, an old man in the front row stood up and began to sing, ‘Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht’. His voice wasn’t steady, but it was loud and cheerful. Jo knew the song, and she looked at Elsie with surprise. Elsie shook her head, her lips pressed shut. ‘Alles schläft, einsam wacht,’ the man sang on alone until, hearing something they knew by heart and had sung every Christmas at home, the Germans joined in, 'Licht in de duistere nacht.' If they noticed that nobody else was singing, it didn’t stop them.
Looking up at the priest, Jo couldn’t imagine what he was thinking, but Elsie said afterwards he was a good man and, if that old man needed to sing that particular song, the priest would say it didn’t mean he was a Nazi, did it? And those young men, they were in church at least, that said something about them. But nobody could make the rest of them sing a German song, even if it was about baby Jesus and the angels.
When they finished the song, and the man in front sat down, the priest began his sermon, ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has been shone.’ Jo felt Elsie’s hand taking hers tightly and heard her whisper admiringly, ‘Listen to that!’
‘For the yoke of their burden and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us, authority rests on his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’
Across the aisle, the Germans sat smiling, listening to a language they didn’t understand or speak beyond what they needed to check identity passes, buy a cup of coffee or woo themselves into some Dutch girl’s bed. If she had a brother, Jo thought, he might have looked like one of them, the one with a yellow fuzz of close-cropped hair and a wind-reddened face. When everybody said amen, she heard his voice, strong and cheerful, and looked away, thinking of Adrian and how he’d said, ‘This is the moment to really hit them.’
‘"Wail,"’ the priest went on, ‘"wail! For the day of the Lord is near. It will come like destruction from the Almighty!"’
‘That’s not for Christmas,’ Elsie muttered, clutching Jo’s hand even tighter. ‘That’s for now!’
‘"I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant and lay low the insolence of tyrants."’ It was as still in the church as if everybody had stopped breathing. ‘"I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place at the wrath of the Lord of Hosts in the day of his fierce anger. Like a hunted gazelle or like sheep with no one to gather them, all will turn to their own people and all will flee to their own lands. Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught will fall by the sword!"’
When he paused again, somebody in the back of the church called out ‘Amen!’ and everybody repeated it, even the Germans. Dirk leaned across Elsie and looked at Jo. ‘Did you understand what he said?’
‘Tell your father,’ Elsie added. ‘He’ll know where that comes from, it’s in his Bible, not ours.’
Jo nodded, yes, of course she would. It was too much to remember, but he would want to know whatever she could tell him, and then he would find the right pages. There was more singing, more standing up and sitting down, kneeling and folding hands and bowing heads, and then people lined up and went to the altar one by one. The priest gave them something Elsie said was a wafer, Jesus’s body, and a sip of wine, his blood, and then they went out into the cold clear air.
There were hundreds of stars. ‘Look,’ a little girl standing behind her on the church steps said, ‘There’s the really bright one, Mama!’ and everybody smiled at everyone else.
Her father was still awake, waiting for her. She sat down near him and yawned, and he did too. ‘He told about the baby being born, of course,’ she said, after she had described the gaudy, almost frivolous church.
‘Oh yes, that’s Isaiah, "Unto us a child is born."’
‘Isaiah the prophet?’
‘Yes, that one, centuries before. They had been waiting for the Messiah for all that time. It’s no surprise they thought he’d finally come, they needed him so badly.’
She told him that what the priest had quoted was not what he had said at any Christmas before tonight. That the Lord was going to punish the wicked, strike them down. Elsie had said Jesus and his disciples never talked that way, but it was what people needed to hear now.
‘Elsie said you’d know what he was quoting.’
‘Are you pleased you went to church?’ She nodded, and he yawned again. ‘Good, so am I. Now go to bed.’
‘I didn’t tell you about the policemen.’
‘Tomorrow.’
In a corner of the
attic where the extra cot was, a curtain around it for privacy, she took off her skirt and jacket and lay down. She could hear her parents murmuring to one another and pictured them lying side by side, half-dressed as she was, in case the SS came.
She had to sleep, there were things to do in the morning. Go and see Mrs Pimentel first. If there were no errands, there might be something else to do. She would see Pam again, his sister. She turned on her side, burrowed her head into the pillow and thought about Adrian. She prayed that nothing would happen to him. He didn’t know how she felt about him, she hardly knew herself, but she did know that she would die if anything happened to him. And, if he died, she wanted to be with him when it happened.
16 Pam, March 1943
In her dream a building was on fire. There was no sound, neither of voices nor from the wild, crackling flames. When she felt a hand on her shoulder, she turned and saw Hans, his face terribly scarred but his eyes bright. He spoke to her but she couldn't hear him. The dream was like a silent movie, real and playacting at the same time. The minute she thought that, the scene disappeared and printed on the blackness in sprawling letters were the words THE END.
Pam woke so suddenly that her legs jerked under the blanket, as if she had stumbled and tried to right herself. The memory of dreaming, not the dream itself, flashed past her inner eyes and was gone. What was it? What had frightened her? She shook her head. It was gone.
Fanny and Sieny were still sleeping, she’d heard them come up just before midnight, heard Fanny say, ‘Do you blame them, the poor kids? I told him off, all right, who did he think he is, coming in here with his damned boots and his gun in his hand!’
Pam had helped them wake up some of the older children, dress them in two or three layers of their warmest clothes, give them bread and milk, then watched Sieny take them across the street and come back alone. She’d gone to bed and slept uneasily, and the other two had sat up with Mrs P bringing the list up-to-date. Why had a soldier come in?
The Time Between Page 18