River in the Sea (24 page)

Maybe he’d ask for it to be quick. This was not above Pater. He was human, Leen reminded herself. He was strong but it would be normal for him to ask for it to be quick. A single bullet to the heart. Cutting everything off and he’d fall with grace and she hoped that this image would haunt the soldiers as they waved the rifles back and forth, shooting until every man was on the ground and there were no shouts or sounds at all, just a pungent, choking smell and soft curls of smoke.

“
Nee
,” she said out loud. “No!” She cried out at the ghost of the massacre, the images of her mind overlaid against the empty courtyard. She shouted to Pater’s fallen body, to all the bodies, at the soldiers grunting as they loaded the bodies back onto the trucks, swearing when they stained their uniforms with blood.

“
Doeval
,” she said, wiping her face. She was still alone. She clanged the locked gate. Picking up her bike, she held it next to her, remembering suddenly what Mrs. Deinum said.
You don’t know anything
. There was no way to know if Pater was part of it, not until they got official word once the identities were determined. How would they find out? Was there some kind of list? Some kind of notice, just like the notices in the paper at the beginning of the war, instructing the time and place everyone must report to surrender horses, radios, gold? She could see the execution so clearly it made her keen but Leen couldn’t imagine what this list looked like. Was it a sheet of typed paper, a single title at the top followed by a date? Was Pater’s name just another entry in a list of names, towards the top of the Ds?  De Graaf, Oenze. Who would make the list? Who would type it? Who filed it away?  She shook her head and swung her leg over the bike. Mrs. Deinum’s voice, forceful in its delivery, echoed again:
You don’t know anything
. 

No, I don’t
, she thought bitterly, and somehow this thought energized her to pull on the orange kerchief still tied to the seat, frantically plucking at the knot, whose hard edges had taken on a skim of dirt and grime, until it came loose. She whipped the kerchief in the air to hear its snap and then tied it around her neck. She pushed on the pedals, banging her ankle against one but refusing to wince, and her body tensed up to keep going, not stopping until she was back at the Deinum house. She’d wait there until Mr. Deinum returned. He knew so much, every day full of information.

“Leen, you should be home!” Mrs. Deinum exclaimed. “Why–”

“Where is Mr. Deinum? I need to see him.”

“He’s at Mr. Schaap’s, but Leen, you really should go home–”

Leen turned around and left. Outside the butcher shop she struggled to get off the bike without tripping over herself. Her body wanted to get inside, but everything worked at a different speed, hand quicker than elbows, ankles turning too fast for her knees to bend. She felt herself on the verge of crying again, the kind of tears that accompanied words in such a hurry to get out that they joined speech in a kind of high–pitched hiss. She entered Mr. Schaap’s butcher shop, feeling clumsy, showing no control whatsoever, but not caring. “Mr. Deinum!” she cried out.

But as soon as she stepped inside the doorway, she stopped cold. The air she pushed out of her lungs and mouth was interrupted by the sudden urge to cut off all breath. Of all the people she expected to see at Mr. Schaap’s front counter, Jakob Hoffman was not one of them. 

Nor was her brother Issac. 

Jakob was in his blue coverall. When he saw her he looked at Issac and then looked away from her eyes, tapping at the counter in a meaningless attempt to look busy. Issac wore a familiar shirt, a blue with a slight stripe, and had he been standing on the right instead of the left, he might have had a chance to take off the same white armband that wrapped Jakob’s arm. But instead his eyes directed Leen straight to what she knew he didn’t want her to see. The armband was expertly sewn and fit well, just above the elbow. His hand reached up and then it fell. Unlike Jakob, he looked straight at Leen. His face was not angry, the look he usually reserved for her. He stared so openly she knew he was pleading with her:
please, please don’t tell Mem
.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt–” she stammered, looking into Mr. Deinum’s kind face, noticing the armband on his sleeve too. Mr. Schaap looked puzzled. All four of them there were Resistance. Only three of them made sense. But Issac? The L.O. stole, they infiltrated, they hid, they bombed. They participated in danger; every act was designed around it. They retaliated. And they were killed. Issac knew all along he shouldn’t be part of it, despite the bravery, despite the need for men. Pater had ordered him to stay out of trouble in his absence. What was more troubling than joining the L.O.? They’d lost Wopke, and if Pater was one of those men? “Oh God,” she said aloud. “Issac… No, you can’t… Wait–” She shook her head, trying to scatter every thought.

“
Famke
, you know about what happened today?” Mr. Schaap said softly. 

“She does,” Mr. Deinum said, nodding at the counter.

She looked at him, staring past Issac. Jakob’s face was still turned away from her. She nodded. “I wanted to ask you how we could find out…” She couldn’t finish her sentence, again. The hot rush of tears returned and a new kind of prickling heat crashed up her spine to her neck and she tried to mumble something about not knowing what to do. Finally she asked, “Do you know if he’s dead?”

The four of them were silent. Finally Jakob looked at her with a mixture of sympathy and discomfort. Issac answered with a shake of his head: No. 

She took a breath with all of her chest and before the next she turned around and ran out the door. She had to get home. Again she flung off the kerchief, this time dropping it on the ground, leaving it behind for someone else to take and do with it whatever he wished.

15.

Leen did not set out the plate for him. They were down to four now, four plates, four cups, four knives, four forks. She knew Issac would not come home for dinner.

Her brother was gone and there was no word from him and yet not Mem, not Tine, not even Renske, asked where he might be, not after Mrs. Boonstra came by to tell the news of the massacre, saying very little besides that her husband would stop by later. Her face was drawn.

If her sisters or mother had asked, Leen would have told them. If God meant for them to know, then they would ask. Really, Issac was leaving her in this predicament. He left it in her hands when he looked at her that way at Mr. Schaap’s. Just as procuring their family’s meals had been in her hands. But this, this she could not take care of. She could not lessen anyone’s worry. She wondered, if she had simply found out Issac’s secret with no other event attached, without the massacre, would he have come home? Or would he have avoided the house, expecting her to tell?

But no one asked. It occurred to Leen that no one really knew what Issac did during the day, what work there was for him.

After Mrs. Boonstra left, Mem went upstairs to her room, Tine trailing her, only to return a minute later, wiping her face. She said nothing else besides, “She wants to be alone. What did you start for dinner?”

At the table, Renske gazed at Tine, then Leen, then back again. Leen said, “We might as well eat while the food is hot.” She picked up her fork and used it to cut a boiled potato in half.

“We should pray,” Tine said, her head in her hands. “Renske, fold your hands. Let’s all pray together. She began reciting the Lord’s prayer, resting her forehead in her palms. Leen joined her, Renske last, as they recited together: “
Ús Heit yn ‘e himel, lit jo namme hillige wurde, lit jo keninkryk komme, lit jo wil dien wurde op ierde likegoed as yn ‘e himel
…”

Leen tried to eat. Her middle was twisted and cramped. “When is Mr. Boonstra coming,” she finally said.

 “
Ik wyt it net,”
Tine said. “But when he does, I don’t want him to see Mem.”

“There have been, there have been shootings all over. In a few places, some German soldiers protested. They were shot too. Their bodies were left, usually.” Mr. Boonstra chose his words carefully. Tine had invited him into the living room, but when he declined, stating he would only be there a few minutes, she hadn’t pressed. Leen had sent Renske upstairs to Mem, so it was only the three of them, each of them standing in the kitchen, no tea offered, not even water, and, Leen presumed, each of them feeling the same mix of awkwardness and worry. This was not how neighbors usually talked.

“How can we know?” Leen asked. Tine turned her head to look at her, her expression a mixture of confusion and hurt and then she slowly nodded, turning the thought over and agreeing that yes, it had to be said.

Mr. Boonstra lit a cigarette. He exhaled, staring at the burning tip. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Everyone who can is working on getting the identities, getting the bodies.”

“So this means nothing, then,” Tine said. Her voice was a note lower than Leen had ever heard her speak. In the presence of authority figures, most often men, she usually faded into the background, a wallflower who emerged only to pour from a kettle or a bottle. Tonight she stood rigid and straight like a chess piece. “It means that Pater could very well still be in hiding.”

“And it could mean… it could mean something else,” Leen said. 

“Leentje,” Tine said. 

Mr. Boonstra looked at each of them. Leen wanted to see his eyes, but as soon as she met his gaze she looked away, seeing just much how he hated being there, the one to come and tell them the next–to–worst news there was:
Your father may be dead, and I have no idea
.

“Anything is possible. Word has been sent through the regular channels,” he said, meaning through the L.O., “but everyone is being extra careful right now, given the fragility of all situations. I suppose you should all sit tight for a little while.”

“Sit tight?” Tine repeated.

Mr. Boonstra winced. His thick brows gathered into a knot on his forehead. Leen could see what he would look like when he was an old man, his face a system of points and ridges covered by a full head of white hair. Pater’s hair was thin – she stopped. 

“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have said that. But, it doesn’t hurt, does it? To think something good.” He drew on his cigarette. “The fact of the matter is that the North is still riddled with Germans. They are holding on to us for dear life.” He let out a gruff laugh. “What do they want – all the cows and the fields?” 

“Where is Issac?” Tine asked suddenly. She stood even straighter, alarmed. “I haven’t seen him, we need to tell him–”

“He’s with Jakob Hoffman,” Leen blurted out. She couldn’t say the truth, not with Mr. Boonstra there. And it wasn’t quite a lie. She glanced at Mr. Boonstra. Very subtly he shook his head at her. No, not now. So Mr. Boonstra had known her brother’s secret. Leen wasn’t sure how she felt about this mutual cover–up, her sudden relinquishment of her earlier convictions. Who was protecting whom, and what for?

“I will come by again tomorrow,” Mr. Boonstra said, safe words that allowed him out of both the door and the situation. “Go be with your mother, okay? This night will be hard for her.” He left then, and no one walked him to the door. No one replied to anything he said.

 “Let’s bring her a plate,” Tine said, her voice somewhere between calm and blunt. “She needs to eat.”

Leen retrieved the silverware and rolled it into an old tea towel while Tine fixed a plate of food. Now that they had it, they centered their conversations and activities around eating. It was distracting in the way they needed. Tine carried the plate while Leen took a mug of tea cut with brandy. They did not have to go far. They found Mem sitting on the second bottom step, Renske’s head in her lap. Mem had both hands over Renske’s ears. “I didn’t want her to hear anything that man said,” she said.

Tine handed her the plate. Leen sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall. Tine followed. “You need to eat, Mem,” Tine said. Renske didn’t move. She rolled the bottom edge of Mem’s dress between her fingers.

“We’ll sit with you,” Leen added. She pushed the mug closer to Mem, who ate only half of her food, but drained the mug dry.

Leen heard a sharp smack. Despite the omnipresent hope that interpreted any nighttime sound as the signal of Pater’s return, Leen knew something had been struck, an object, something flat and hard.

She heard it again. She sat up. There was an exasperated groan. It sounded like Mem. 

Leen tried to decipher the time but it was too dark. There was once a time when she could tell within minutes what time it was, noting the edges of light around the paper on the windows. But her body had not had a normal night’s rest for weeks and she could not tell if it was five a.m. or two or if she had been sleeping for longer than an hour. 

Tine’s breath was rhythmic, as was Renske’s. Neither of them stirred when Leen heard the sound again, the strike and another vexed sigh.

The floor chilled the bare pads of her feet as she stood up and quietly tiptoed to the door. She rubbed her eyes, trying to hurry their adjustment to the dark. She felt for the door handle, cautiously turning it all the way before she pulled it open and stepped out of the room. She took two soft steps, intending to listen more to decipher where Mem was, and just what it was she was doing, but on her third step her right foot found only empty space and she fell straight down. In the smallest second she worried her fall would never end but then her left knee banged on the wood her foot had sought, while her other foot felt another floor much lower than it should be. “
Blixen
, ow, oh
doeval
,” she said, seething as her leg buckled and her shin hit another hard edge, sharp and raw.

She reached out with her hands, her eyes still unable to take in fully where she was. Her palms felt the floorboards, the line where they abutted to the next, and then there was the rough wooden edge rising above her thigh. Her first thought was that she had missed a step, but she had barely left her room, how could she be at the stairs? Her hands traced a gap in the floor. Her fingers found the edges that had scraped her calves and her eyes followed, noticing the different planes, outlined in black shadow. She heard a groan from the bedroom behind her and she said in a hissing whisper, “Go back to sleep, I fell,” even though her leg was caught underneath the floor that Leen had always depended on being there.