Hunger Journeys (11 page)

She had stopped shivering now—warmed, it seemed, by her own unhappy memories.

“Then I found the man who helped me. His wife had died and he was quite old, there with three small children. I cooked their supper. I was afraid for what the man might ask in exchange for a bed and food, or for what might happen in the night, but nothing did. And I left early yesterday, but the distance was just too great. I got closer and closer, but never close enough. And the closer to the city, the less people will help, and the more others are begging too.” She had all her clothes on now, except for shoes, and sat crosslegged on the bed, wrapped in a blanket and continuing her story. It was one, Lena knew, that she would not want to share in all its detail with Mother and Father.

“I slept in a shed last night, just the other side of the Hembrug. I got there long after curfew, so I could come no closer. I slept in straw. And it was wet and it was cold and it stank. Then this morning, I woke up and there was a man there. He was opening up one of the bags on my bicycle. I don’t know what I was thinking. I yelled at him. And he looked at me and roared. I swear that he roared. I think he was so hungry that it just came out of him. And I roared back. Or I screamed. Anyway, I told him that he had to go away, that he couldn’t have one bit of my food. And he looked at me. And then he went. He just went. That was when I started to cry and shake. I was crying and shaking when I got to the bridge. The soldiers thought that was really funny. They were the same ones we saw two weeks ago. They remembered me. They remembered that I was supposed to turn in my bicycle. They said that they were going to take it, and I just stood there and cried. I just cried. And in the end, they let me go.”

Margriet had been looking at her lap as she spoke. Now she looked up at Lena. “I think I just need to sleep,” she said. “Can you get me something warm to drink and something to eat and bring it to me here? Tell them I just need to sleep.”

Margriet slept all day, refusing to stir even when Lena came to tell her that supper was ready. She shifted and groaned quietly when Lena crawled into bed at nine o’clock, but she slept on. Lena lay awake for a long time, turning her sister’s story over and over again in her mind, its edges blurring and its shape changing as her own dreams mixed in.

Neither Margriet’s struggle on that journey nor the family’s long, agonizing wait deterred Father. Soon he was sending Margriet in search of food almost weekly. She had to vary her route, leaving the city to the south or the west sometimes, so as not to encounter the same soldiers over and over again.

Father never suggested that Lena go in her place. She was two years younger, after all. And Lena never offered.

Each time Margriet left before dawn on her bicycle, Lena lay in bed battling a mixture of guilt and relief. Next time I’ll offer to go in her place, she would think. But “next time” came and came again and she did not.

She and Sofie talked about it more than once.

“If I could get my hands on a bicycle, we could go together,” Sofie said early one morning as they worked together to pry up one of the few tramway ties left to be found. “I’m dying to get out of this city.”

Lena sat back on her haunches. “You think you are, Sofie, but you have no idea.”

“No idea?” she said, pulling on the piece of wood. “Don’t just sit there. Help me with this.”

Soon they were headed for Sofie’s house, slush freezing their toes through the holes in their shoes, on the alert for soldiers who might confiscate their prize.

“You come to my house and see what it’s like. My stepfather is afraid to set foot outside. If the Germans have another roundup, he might dive—you know, go into hiding—or get taken, and my mother … well, she’s scared, Lena. She’s hungry and she’s scared. She’s … she’s never been good on her own.”

Lena stumbled on something hidden in the snow, and Sofie crashed into her from behind. They stopped to juggle their load.

“If I could get out to the country like you did, maybe I could bring her some food,” Sofie said. “I’m afraid that Father will go, and that something will happen.”

Lena noticed the word
Father.
She also noticed the tiniest hesitation before the word left Sofie’s lips.

That conversation had happened in late November. After that, Lena began to feel guilty about eating the food that Margriet brought home. Bep dragged around, weak, weepy and cranky with fatigue. Both Bep and Mother had developed leaky boils on their bodies that refused to heal. And the skin on Mother’s face and the backs of her hands was translucent. It looked like it would slip right off if you pinched and tugged. Mother looked like an old woman. And the older and sicker she looked, the more her belly seemed like some sort of malignant growth rather than a source of new life. As much as she could, Lena tried not to look at her.

December 6 should have brought Saint Nicholas: treats in wooden shoes, joking poems all round, a delicious meal, fun
for everyone. In 1944, it brought nothing. And they were all too tired and sick and busy to notice, at least in the Berg household. Even Bep, the one among them who might still believe in Saint Nick, did not seem to be aware of any special significance to the day. Innocent childhood was done, Lena supposed.

Then Mother went into the bedroom and returned with new mittens for all. Lena recognized Bep’s old green sweater; too small now and full of holes, it had been sacrificed for the mittens. The Berg family would boast matching hands through the winter. After Mother had distributed the gifts, she still held something in her hands: a tiny sweater. Newborn-sized. As she gazed at it, Lena mumbled one of her prayers to herself.

Perhaps Saint Nicholas had stopped in after all.

Sofie came to pick Lena up for their daily wood-collection rounds. The rainy weather of November had given way to crisp, cold days. The canals boasted a thin film of dirty ice. Lena enjoyed the clear sky and her warm green hands. Sofie reached out and tucked a twist of paper into Lena’s palm.

“Well, it is Saint Nicholas Day!” she said, not meeting Lena’s eyes.

Lena pulled off one ridiculous mitten and unscrewed the bit of paper. It was a poem, but it was not the traditional joking kind usually exchanged on this special day:

Lena finished reading and looked up into Sofie’s face. Surely the girl was not serious! But a glance told her that she was.

“Train tickets? The Nazis run the trains!” Lena said. “We’re not allowed on them. And where would you get train tickets?”

“Leave that to me,” Sofie said, smiling slyly now.

“Thanks for the poem, Sofie,” Lena said, speaking through a stir of panic, “but we can’t go. It’s too dangerous. It’s crazy.”

“Leave it to me!” Sofie said again.

“No, Sofie. No. We just can’t! I can’t. I can’t leave Mother!” Lena said.

“Does your mother need you, or does she need something to eat? People send packages. My neighbour got one all the way from Friesland.”

“I just can’t, Sofie,” Lena said, guilt mixing in with her insistence now.

Well, even if Sofie could get tickets—was that possible?—she couldn’t force Lena to get on a train. She was staying put.

But she did wish that Sofie hadn’t mentioned those packages. It seemed impossible that parcels of food could make it from the country to the city, but Lena didn’t need to hear Sofie’s story to know otherwise. Mother had complained of it more than once: a neighbour with a son in the north receiving parcels and hoarding the contents. As if she could be expected to do anything else!

They collected wood in silence. Sofie seemed to have figured out that she should keep her plans to herself for the time being.

Two weeks later, Piet caught up to Lena one afternoon as she was heading down the block.

“They’re going to try to bribe us,” Piet said. “We have to stop them.”

Lena was bewildered and annoyed. “Who? What are you talking about?” she said as she tried to sidle past her brother. She was due at Sofie’s in a few minutes, and she was eager to get away for a bit.

“The Germans,” Piet said, annoyance in his voice as well. “Who do you think? They’re going to call up all the men again, but this time they’re promising to help their families. They know how desperate everyone is.”

“But you’re not in the age range, Piet. Right? And neither is Father.”

“Is that all you think about? Your own family? They’re calling up all men between sixteen and forty!”

Lena felt a stirring of guilt. How could her brother care so much and she so little? She also felt anger. Why was everyone always putting their stuff onto her? It wasn’t fair. Didn’t she do enough at home already? That was what her war effort amounted to: peeling and cooking sugar beets!

Some of the determination was gone from Piet’s voice when he next spoke. Still, speak he did. “They’re going to poster the city right before Christmas, ordering men up and offering food for their families and exemptions for those who need them. We’re going to be right there after them with our own posters. We’re going to cover theirs up. Tell people the truth.”

“We?” Lena echoed.

“Yes, we,” Piet said. “And ‘we’ could include you. There’s a lot of work to be done, Lena. We’re all needed.”

Lena shivered. Not far from where they stood, a woman and a boy were rooting through a heap of garbage, hoping for something useful or, even better, edible. The one street sign that
she could see was in German, not in Dutch. Stumps stood where trees had been. Barbed wire coiled where there had been gardens. And the canals were frozen solid, but Lena didn’t think she had seen a single person skating. Not one.

Lena took it all in. Then she tried to imagine sneaking around the city with her brother, posters in hand. The very things that made action so necessary also made it deadly. “Piet, I … I have to go,” she said, shoving past him and taking off down the street.

December turned to January with little more than a bone-chilling midnight mass to mark Christmas and nothing whatsoever to mark the new year, except the fact that now it was 1945. The war had entered the second half of the decade. Darkness had tightened like a noose around the days and showed no signs of loosening its grip, despite the fact that the days were growing longer instead of shorter. The cold sank deeper and deeper into everyone’s bones. Food grew scarcer still. Margriet’s journeys grew longer, and she came back with lighter and lighter loads.

Lena had seen the posters Piet warned her of, the coaxing, bribing posters. And she had seen the response, the posters warning men not to go and advising wives to keep their men at home, not to be seduced by lies. She avoided her brother as much as she could; she could not bear the judgment that spilled over her or the guilt that bloomed inside her when the two encountered each other.

Then, one morning when Margriet was away—wasn’t Margriet
always
away?—Father knocked on Lena’s door. “Your
mother needs you,” he said, his voice sharper, higher pitched than usual.