Hunger Journeys (17 page)

Here was the train. They crouched and darted between the cars. Albert lifted her and bundled her into the cattle car. “Make sure your friend is here. Close the door and stay inside, in case we must move suddenly,” he said, his breath coming quickly, his
mind already on his next task. “I must go. We must man the guns.”

As he turned to go, Sofie emerged from the straw. “There you are,” Albert said, relief in his voice. “Stay in the car, both of you. And close the door,” he shouted as he ran.

Lena could hear many feet running on the strip of earth beside the track.

She knew that the train was armed, had felt the bedlam of shooting and being shot at the night before. Anti-aircraft guns—guns that could shoot at planes. Now she could hear the planes too. Sofie was blubbering again.

Moments ago I was cold, Lena thought. I wanted fire, hot water. And moments before that, I was transported by a bit of glass and a sweet scent. Terror does not mix with cold. Or with romance, come to that.

Then all such thoughts left her as terror took a deeper hold.

The plane was shooting at them. It was broad daylight, a sunny day, and the plane was shooting at them. They were in a train. A great big train that sat still along a stretch of track. And the plane was shooting at them. The sound was worse than it had been the night before. It tore through Lena’s skull; it wrapped itself around her heart; it squeezed her lungs.

“You’re hurting me,” gasped Sofie through her snotty tears. And Lena looked down to find her hand digging into Sofie’s arm so deeply that the first segment of her fingers was all but invisible. She released her hold.

And as she did so, she heard a different sound, deeper, a sound that entered the body through the flesh. The train shook violently, and both girls screamed. They had been hit. Metal tore, wood splintered—at least that was what it sounded like to Lena. She reared her head, but it wasn’t their car. Not yet.

It would be their car next. “Why not? She could feel the antiaircraft guns on the train shooting back, the tremor each time a gun was fired, but the answering shots kept coming. Lena’s hands were on the door and she was wrenching it open.

“Well, are you coming, or are you going to stay here to get blown up?”

“But Albert said …”

“I don’t care what he said. We could be struck at any moment.” And she bent her knees and jumped. It was a long way down with no platform, and the ground was frozen solid, hard as concrete. She landed on her hip instead of her feet, and rolled over several times before she could stop herself. Above her, Sofie crouched in the doorway. Farther up, Lena saw the grey underside of the low-flying plane; she even saw the gun aiming out the bottom at the front. Sofie jumped, and together they dashed through the rotting stubble to a row of low brush lining the field. Together they dove into the brush, wiggled forward and lay there, faces to the ground, long after the plane had stopped shooting, its whining roar fading to nothing and birdsong taking its place.

The sun was low in the sky when they crept from the field, shivering. Cold had retreated in the face of death, but now, as night came on, it loomed as the worse enemy. Lena and Sofie stood looking up at the door to their car. It was open, as they had left it, but it was far above them. “I’ll boost you,” Lena said, “and then you can pull me up.”

“I … I don’t know if I can,” Sofie said. “I’m so tired, so cold and so hungry. We just spent the afternoon hiding from the good guys,” she added.

“I know,” Lena said. “It’s weird.”

“What are you doing?” Albert’s voice came from behind them. “I told you to stay in the car.”

“We could have been blown up,” Lena said. “It was safer out.”

Albert was silent. Then he said, “Listen, it’s unlikely more planes will come now. We’re going to make a fire while it’s still light. We’ll heat some water and some food. Warm ourselves.”

Soon there were groups of soldiers all the way along the train, bunched around tiny fires, heating pots of water and soup. The fires could be out in a moment, dowsed if need be. And Lena had never been gladder of a bit of warmth in her life. Since Sofie had revealed their presence earlier, there was no need to hide now, and Sofie was at her chatty best. The other young man, Uli, joined them, and he and Sofie flirted with each other as if they would never have another chance. As the light grew dim, they slipped away from the fire and spread a blanket on the ground away from everyone. Albert and Lena gazed after them.

“She is not worried about kissing the enemy,” Albert said.

“No,” Lena said. “What could she be thinking?”

“Maybe she just wants a bit of joy in a hard day, a bit of fun.”

“That kind of fun costs a lot,” Lena said, but her eyes locked with Albert’s, and her mind snapped back to Sofie’s lips on his. What had that felt like? she wondered, holding her wrist up to her mouth, feeling her own warm pulse with her lips and catching the faint scent of roses.

“I will help you find the people you are seeking,” Albert said later on, as the day wound down and soldiers began to douse their fires and slip away into the cars.

Lena knew they had passed through cities: Amersfoort, Apeldoorn, Deventer. All were between Utrecht and Almelo, and all were on the route straight east to Germany. The train travelled only at night and trundled slowly through country and city alike, stopping only to fix damage to the track. By morning they would reach Almelo, and there the train would stop.

“You have to stay with the train,” Lena said.

“We will spend two days in Almelo. Maybe more. We will take on cattle and other supplies that will travel east with us.”

“Oh,” Lena said, thinking of the people starving in the west while good Dutch food moved east.

Albert must have been thinking too, for he said nothing more.

Their fire had burned down to ash. Albert poured the remains of his tea over the ashes and poked at them with a stick. Lena rose to her feet and waited. She looked to where Sofie and Uli twined around each other on their blanket, but
she could see little more than shadows. Albert looked too and gave a small smile.

What if she went and got a blanket of her own and invited Albert with her into the dark? He would not hesitate, she knew. The notion warmed her more than tea or fire could. She thought back to Albert’s coat around her body. It was a towering sin to imagine Albert’s body in place of that coat. Yet she did. She was, right that second. She imagined his hands on her bare skin. The imagining was almost past bearing, as if her skin would rise up in response.

Albert’s hand on her arm made her jump and let out a small scream. His touch prickled all the way up her arms, all over her body.

“Lost in your thoughts?” he said, smiling.

She shook her head fiercely and forced herself to smile back.

Together they walked to the car. Lena was silent as Albert boosted her up and followed her inside. She cleared a path to the back, then turned and spoke again at last, bringing the topic back to their imminent arrival in Almelo. “Well, we will be all right on our own. We can find the way.”

“I would like to help you,” Albert said, the muscles in his neck tightening under his collar.

Lena knelt and began arranging her blankets for sleep. She reached out a pair of fingers and touched the snowdrops where they lay on top of her bag, wilted but shining white in the dark. How wonderful it would be to accept Albert’s help. She gritted her teeth. If it weren’t for this—she pushed the word
damned
out of her mind—terrible war …

“I know, Albert. You are kind,” Lena said, gazing up at him over her shoulder. “I … I need to sleep.”

His hand came out of the dark and brushed a strand of
hair from her forehead. She remained still while he stood for a moment, waiting until he turned and left the car. At last, Lena pulled the blankets around herself, curled up in the straw and gradually drifted off.

It was cold in the straw. Lena spun up out of a light sleep, shivering. She turned and twisted, shoving straw and a blanket under her legs and her back. She had ended up right on the icy floor. She thought for a moment about her warm bed, with Margriet’s warm length—or Bep’s short one—next to her. Her teeth clanked together involuntarily.

The straw near the door rustled. She sat up.

“Lena. Are you there?” It was Albert. What was he doing in the car? Was he coming to her? If he did, what would she do? Lena felt a rush of excitement blended with dread. Behind her, she heard more rustling and a small moan.

“Sofie?” she whispered. “Sofie?”

“It’s all right, Lena.” That was Albert, closer now.

She heard Uli’s voice, a murmur. And Sofie’s giggle.

A hand touched her shoulder and she started. “Ah, here you are,” Albert’s voice said. “Are you all right? I brought you an extra blanket.”

Lena widened her eyes into the pitch black, but she saw nothing. A bundle of thick, rough wool was thrust into her hands. She gulped but held her silence.

“I won’t go far,” he said. “I want to keep an eye …”

Even though she didn’t want to think about it, Lena knew what he meant,
who
he meant. He wanted to make sure that Uli didn’t … that he didn’t … For a moment, Lena let herself
imagine what Sofie was doing with that man, then she pushed the thought away. It was not possible they would be together like that. Not all night! Not right next to her!

She jumped as Albert’s hand touched her arm, alarmed at the heat it sent right through her.

“There you are!” he said again. “I’ll be nearby. You sleep now.”

And despite the proximity of Sofie’s and Uli’s entwined bodies, despite her own desire for the man watching over her from so near, Lena eventually did sleep. She awoke several times more in the darkness, but the train was creeping along again, with all its familiar sound and motion, and it lulled her back to sleep, wrapped in the extra blanket. She heard no more moans or giggles. No guns shot at them that night. Aside from the cold, nothing disturbed her slumber, not even dreams—which she had feared—until the train rattled and banged to a stop, long, long before it should.

The train had stopped many times during its two-night journey. Men rode on the front of it, checking for damage to the rails. By the fires the previous afternoon, Uli had gone on and on about the Dutch Resistance and what a mess they made of the tracks. He hadn’t been blaming them exactly, but he hadn’t been honouring them either. Lena had had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting out, “Well, you
are
the enemy, aren’t you? And
your
trains are filled with
our
food.”

This time, though, they were so close. And this time, the damage was very bad, as Albert and Uli reported when they returned from investigating. It would take the rest of the night to mend, and they could not travel by day.

A part of Lena felt elated at the offer of another day with the train, another day before they had to face whatever awaited them in Almelo, another day with Albert. The two men went off to help with the daunting task of mending the rails, and Sofie and Lena curled up together, bundled against the cold. As they lay there—whispering one minute, silent the next—Sofie’s breathing deepened and lengthened into sleep, and Lena found herself reliving each moment she and Albert had spent together. She held her wrist to her nose and inhaled, only the faintest hint of roses now. She imagined herself a German wallpaperer’s wife. It did not feel like so dreadful a fate: a nice little house in a small town; children—two girls, she thought, and a boy …

Someone was grabbing her, shaking her. “What?” Lena shouted. “Leave me alone!” She rose to her knees and fought free of the hands that held her arms.

“Hey! Watch it!” Sofie shouted right back. “It’s just me, you idiot. You’re sleeping the day away. And you’re going to miss breakfast.”

Lena had to apologize after that, and listen to a good bit of teasing. What dream had she been so keen on that she would fight to stay asleep?

Albert and Uli smiled as they passed out cups of something hot, along with old bread and hunks of cheese. The four were gathered around a small fire, just as they had been the night before, though the countryside had changed. The fields of stubble were gone, and the landscape was more heavily treed and not nearly so flat.