Winter's End, page 20
Zoe detected something more in Evi’s voice. “I see,” she murmured.
“But how can you be sure, Evi,” Mila said, “that this Beekhof family will take you in? For them it means another mouth to feed, and who knows how long it may be until – even if the barge can be rescued…?”
Evi’s voice was firm. “Mevrouw Beekhof is a kind woman. She likes me. She will understand.”
A short silence.
Zoe placed a hand on Mila’s wrist. “Evi has been through the gates of Hell today, Mila. I think we need to do as she asks.”
Mila took a moment, then sighed softly. “Where, precisely, is this farm?”
. . .
It was dark, but Evi clearly knew the way. She guided Mila to a near-hidden driveway just off the main road. A long, graveled driveway them led them to a modest structure. Zoe could see a dim light inside, but the farmhouse was otherwise dark.
“Come,” she said to Evi. “I will take you to the door. Mila?”
“There is no point in overwhelming the family, Zoe. You go. I will wait.”
Evi did not wait. She hurried to the door, knocked urgently. Zoe heard a dog barking.
“Slowly, Evi,” Zoe whispered. “We do not wish to alarm them…”
“Who is there?” she heard after a moment.
“It is Evi,” the girl said, leaning into the door. “Evi Strobel.”
Another moment.
The door slowly opened. A woman stood against the light, a wary-looking Shepherd huffing at her feet. She looked between the two women. “Evi…?”
Evi began to cry.
The Shepherd quieted, bounded through the doorway, and nudged his snout under Evi’s hand.
The woman looked at Zoe, seemed to take her measure. Then she turned to Evi and opened her arms wide.
MILA
It was well past the dinner hour when Mila returned home. She parked the Daimler in its place in the garage, wondering what, if anything, could be done to rescue the ill-fated Strobel barge and bring it home. Everything Evi owned in the world was aboard it…
The front door was open when Mila tried it. She would just have soon gone straight to her room, but she was not surprised to hear her father call out.
“Mila, is that you?”
Sighing, she hung her coat on a peg and walked into the dining room, relieved to see that only her parents sat at the half-cleared table.
“Good evening, Mother…Father…”
“There are leftovers in the kitchen,” her mother said mildly. “We missed you, Mila.”
“Thank you. I am not very hungry. Father, I hope you do not mind that I took the Daimler. I had some errands…”
Her father peered at her, then nodded stiffly. “Urgent errands, I expect.”
Mila shrugged.
“There was a telephone call for you from Franz Becker. You remember the Obersturmfuhrer? He wanted to know if you received the Deitrich recording he went to great lengths to procure for you.”
Mila swallowed her distaste. “I did, father. Please thank him for me when you speak to him next.”
“I will not,” he said, holding a spoon over his ice cream. “You will be courteous enough to telephone him yourself and convey your thanks. You can reach him at his headquarters in the Stadsplein.”
“All right, Father,” she worked to keep her voice neutral. “But I am quite tired. If there is nothing else –”
“But there is.”
Mila waited.
Her father cut a swath through the mound of ice cream. “It was reported to me that you have been seen more than once near a certain plumbing office near the Bloemendaal.”
She worked to keep from looking startled. Was she being followed?
A protracted pause. “Is there water leaking somewhere in your wing of the house, Mila?”
“No, Father.”
He reached for a bowl of chocolate sauce. “Then I can think of no reason for you to be conversing with a plumber,” he said, pouring the sauce over his dessert in a thin but even stream. “Especially a plumber who is suspected of having ties to the Resistance.”
. . .
She had escaped to her bedroom and kicked off her shoes when a knock sounded at her door.
“I have brought you a sandwich,” Reit said. “And I took Hondje for a walk before supper.”
Mila smiled at the woman of indeterminate age who had been with the family for as far back as she could remember. “You are so good to us, Reit.. Heel erg bedankt. I am grateful.”
She watched the maid retreat, locked the bedroom door behind her, and settled in the confines of her closet. Once, twice, she keyed in the digits, but there was no response from Pieter.
It was late, she told herself. He could be anywhere…
She began undressing, slowly, deliberately. But her heart was racing nonetheless.
EVI
Despite the late hour, Mevrouw Beekhof insisted on preparing a light supper for Evi. She disappeared into the kitchen, and came back moments later, her arms full and her expression questioning,
At the wooden dining room table, she handed Evi a plate containing a slab of bread, a small chunk of Gouda cheese, and a dollop of canned tomatoes.
Evi looked around the table. A single lantern burned on the sideboard, casting odd shadows on their faces…Meneer Beekhof, with whom she had rarely exchanged a word, dark-haired, bearded, imposing…Willem, who seemed to be growing inches by the day, awkward, fidgeting in his seat…Mevrouw, patient and waiting…and Jacob, dear Jacob, his brows knit together, leaning forward, searching her face.
Taking a breath, halting now and then to force back tears, Evi told her story – the baby Mam had rescued from a cave, her insistence on taking him to safety…the Germans boarding the barge, Mam falling into the sea…and finally Alette, at the marketplace in Vlaardingen, who had taken her in and helped her to contact her friends.
“Perhaps I should not have come here,” she finished, looking down at her lap. But in the next moment, to her surprise, she felt Meneer Beekhof’s big hand close over hers, saw Mevrouw rise and come around the table.
Willem sat, his blue eyes wide, as his mother reached to embrace her, and Jacob, a white-knuckled fist to his mouth, glared silently, fire in his eyes.
“You did right, Evi…”
“Bastard Nazis…”
“Eat, Evi, eat….”
She could not make out all of their jumbled words. But there was no mistaking the warmth behind them. She breathed deeply, for the first time, she realized, since Mam had screamed at her to jump.
“I have hot soup as well,” Mevrouw said, bustling in the from the kitchen with a huge kettle, which she set in the middle of the table. “Willem! The bowls!”
The boy jumped up to set spoons, linen napkins, and blue Delft bowls at each place. He had barely settled back in his seat when Mevrouw clasped her hands in front of her and glanced meaningfully around the table.
One by one, they followed suit.
“Willem,” she said. “You may say grace.”
The boy fidgeted, looked around as if for help, seemed to realize that none was forthcoming. He glanced at the folded newspaper on the sideboard as though for inspiration, and bowed his head.
“Lord, we thank you on this sixteenth day of February,” he began, “for food and family, for keeping Evi safe, and for keeping the Germans from our door.”
Evi looked up, eyes wide. A sound escaped before she could stop it.
Mevrouw looked up. “What is it, Evi?”
She looked around the table in the flickering light.
“It is my birthday,” she whispered, shaken to the core. “Today is my seventeenth birthday…”
ZOE
Zoe stopped short as she neared the hospital. A green German Kubelwagen jeep was parked at the entrance, the driver sitting tall and straight.
She hopped off Daan’s bicycle, locked it to a stand to one side of the building, and considered.
It was not likely the driver’s German passenger was there for medical attention. It could only mean her cousin was being hassled once again by the SS officer demanding lists of staff and patients.
She shuddered, wondering how long it might be before the he demanded a tour of the place. Could the troops he brought in see through the façade on the hospital’s fifth floor?
The trappings of renovation remained in place – the jumble of furniture, ladders and paint, even the few live ‘workmen’ who could be called from the sanctuary on a moment’s notice.
But why, a cunning German might ask, was the hospital spending precious guilders on renovation when bread and heating oil were scarce?
Zoe shuddered and pulled her scarf close, glancing again at the Kubelwagen. She was debating whether to push through the hospital doors when a tall figure in an immaculate German uniform stepped out and hopped into the back seat. He leaned forward to speak to the driver and the vehicle roared to life and sped off.
Zoe nodded once to the expressionless guard, and made her way into the lobby.
. . .
Gerritt was, as she expected, pacing in his second-floor office.
“It’s no good, Zoe,” he said. “We cannot keep up this charade for much longer. The Germans are intent on finding people who have eluded them, and they will not rest until they have exhausted every avenue to find them.”
She nodded, touching her cousin’s shoulder. “Sit, Gerritt. I know. We need to talk.”
It was as though he never heard her. “They are looking now specifically for Aaron Bernheim, a Jewish physician from Berlin who has been with us for months,” he said. “And for the escaped German called Kurt Schneider, who is high on their list of Reich deserters.”
MILA
The headline in Amsterdam’s De Telegraaf sent a shiver through her spine. ‘Haarlem caregivers shot.’
‘Four elderly Dutch care givers,’ Mila read, ‘volunteers who routinely transport Haarlem patients for their doctor visits, were lined up and shot in an alley off the Rembrandtsplein on Tuesday by a squad of SS enforcers.
‘The incident was the second in a string of random shootings carried out under direct orders from Hitler, sources say, in retaliation for Dutch Resistance sabotage efforts that took the lives of more than a hundred German soldiers…’
Sitting at the breakfast table, Mila crushed the paper to her lap. There was no mention on the front page of the attempted assassination of Dutch Police Captain Reimar de Boer.
Straightening the paper, she scanned the inside pages, looking for an update on de Boer’s condition or on any progress by Amsterdam authorities to identify the attempted assassin…but there was nothing. Not a single word. Why not?
Het Parool, the underground paper, was rather more forthcoming, reporting that the assassination of eight Dutch nationals was almost certainly in retaliation for the blatant assault on de Boer – and that Amsterdam Police were attempting to tie local Resistance cell leaders to the failed assassination.
Mila crushed both papers beneath her elbows, worry churning in her gut. She had not been able to contact Pieter since her return from Vlaardingen with Evi and Zoe – not on the wireless concealed in her bedroom closet, nor by telephone to his desk in the plumber’s office. She was shaken to realize she had no idea where he lived.
She heard the hall telephone ring, but ignored it, until Reit brought the instrument to her.
“For you, Missen.”
Mila took it. “This is Mila Brouwer,” she said formally.
“Ah, Vermissen Brouwer – Mila, may I? This is Obersturmfuhrer Franz Becker! I am so sorry to have missed your call!”
At her father’s insistence, she had dialed the German headquarters to thank the man for the Deitrich recording. She had been happy to find him out and leave a message. But she was not surprised that the portly Becker wanted more.
“You talked about the German stage, if I recall correctly,” he said in his curious mix of German and Dutch. “While I cannot promise a rendition of Lily Marleen, it pleases me to say there is an entertainment by German performers planned on Saturday next at our headquarters here in Haarlem.”
“I see,” she said, already searching for a reasonable way out.
The German did not wait for an answer. “If you are willing, Mila – may I call you Mila? I will bring a car for you that evening at seven. There will, of course, be a dinner served afterward…”
It was days away, Mila thought with relief, glad for the time to look for an excuse. “That sounds wunderbar, Obersturmfuher,” she simpered at last. “I shall await the date with pleasure. Danke schön.”
“Goed - as will I,” said Becker. She could almost see his heels click together. “Unt if I may…for you, it is Franz.”
Mila ended the call and rose to dispose of the morning’s Het Parool before it caught her father’s eye. She called out to Hondje, who came running.
The dog’s tail wagged furiously at the sight of the leash, and the poor thing waited less than patiently as Mila donned a coat in the hallway and tied a scarf around her head.
A walk might be the best thing for both of them, Mila thought, fastening the leash and following Hondje out the front door. It would give her time to think – first about how she might gracefully bow out of the unwanted rendezvous with Becker – and second, by far the more important, how she might determine if Pieter was safe.
EVI
Evi lay sleepless on the sofa in the darkness of the Beekhof’s sitting room. Otto snored softly on the rug below, freckled snout resting on his front paws. She listened to the pop and crackle in the hearth and peered out the window into the starless night, feeling so much more than she could ever put words to.
She was mortified and wretched to have blurted out that the sixteenth of February was her birthday. Truly, given everything she had been through in the last few days, she had not given the date a thought until Willem mentioned it – and moments after the Beekhofs had saved her from homelessness.
She was embarrassed about dissolving into tears over it, but it was the first time in her life that she had had a birthday without Mam at the center of it – and the realization filled her with sorrow that birthdays would never be the same again.
Still, as they ate, there had been birthday songs and heartfelt wishes for Evi’s health and happiness. She was still not sure, even after Mevreouw handed her a nightgown and robe and prepared a bed for her on the sofa, that she would ever be worthy of their graciousness.
She had turned seventeen, she understood now, with a heavier heart than she could ever have imagined.
Jacob, watching Mervouw bring the blankets, had rushed to volunteer his bedroom. “Evi should have it,” he insisted. “She needs it far more than I do.”
But Evi had asserted just as strongly that she could fit much more easily on the sofa than he, and when she held her ground, he retreated.
“If you change your mind,” he had said, backing down the hallway. “One word and the bedroom is yours…”
“Thank you, Jacob, but I will not change my mind,” she vowed, helping with the sheets and blankets. In moments they had all retreated down the hall, leaving her in the uneasy quiet.
She imagined Jacob in his bed, eyes wide open, hands behind his head, longing, she hoped, to be as near to her as she longed to be near him.
She imagined Willem, lost in the sort of adolescent dreams that she could barely remember.
She thought of the Beekhof elders, of their faith and generosity, curled, perhaps in each other’s arms, sheltering one another from the frenzied world in ways she could only guess at.
And as the last of the moonlight drained from the sky, and she could no longer battle the insistence of sleep, she closed her eyes and saw the yellow barge bobbing somewhere in the cold North Sea – forever guarded, she wished with all her heart, by the ghosts of her mother and the poor, sick baby, Jacob Rood.
ZOE
Zoe met her cousin’s gaze. “Gerritt, you’ve been kind and patient throughout this whole ordeal,” she said, “and resourceful, hiding these fugitives behind the semblance of a faked renovation.”
“Ja, but I am increasingly worried as my German friend becomes more demanding,” he told her. “I am not all certain, should he send in troops to search, that they would not simply bully their way past our little subterfuge.”
Zoe pressed her lips together. “I have been wondering the very same thing,” she said.
Gerritt sighed. “The fifth floor seemed like the best option, Zoe, because it is light by day, which is at least a more normal way for people to live.”
He paused. “But the prospect that a German search party might find it fills me with something very close to terror.”
As it should, Zoe understood. Gerritt’s own life would then be in jeopardy…
“Also,” she said, “there is no escape route, Gerritt - nowhere for the fugitives to run. They would be sitting ducks should the Germans find them…”
When he spoke, Gerritt’s voice was firm. “That is something that has nagged at me from the start,” he resumed his pace.
Finally, he sat. “There is another option,” he said. “The basement. It is where we housed our pathology lab until the power was cut, and we were forced to move it. It still houses the morgue. I rejected it as a hiding place because it is below street level. There is little natural light, to speak of, and space is limited. But there is a doorway there that leads to the ambulance bay outside.”
“Zoe pondered it. “The morgue. I can see your reluctance, cousin. It would be a difficult space for anyone to inhabit…”
Gerritt nodded.
“Also,” he said, “there is a small sub-basement. It was used for storage at one time, I think, but now it is mostly empty. There is a short staircase leading down to it from the morgue that also empties into the ambulance bay – and since the sub-basement is not a part of the elevator system, it might more easily escape notice.”
“That’s perfect,” Zoe said. “A search party cannot find what is not there.”
Gerritt was quiet, but Zoe plowed ahead.
“We would need to be careful about moving the refugees,” she said. “On gurneys, perhaps, a few at a time, as though they are headed for the morgue...If we manage it right, with no undue sense of urgency, it should not alert staff on any of the other floors.”
