Page 10 of Winter's End
They moved on in silence, the dim lights of the barges and houseboats moored along the river coming into view.
“What is your profession by day, if I may?” the old man asked.
“I’m a veterinarian, “Zoe said.
“A veterinarian?” He reared back. “So young!”
Zoe shrugged, a finger to her lips. “A protégé, my parents called me.”
“Where are they, your parents?”
“In Enschede,” she said. “That is where I grew up.”
He nodded.
“May I ask why you do this?” he said after a moment. “Why do you risk your life to help an old Jewish piano player escape the Nazi purge?”
Zoe debated. Not a question often asked anymore, by her comrades or by those who were escaping.
“I had a child minder when I was young,” she said. “My parents are both physicians. They worked long hours, odd hours sometimes, and so I went after school and sometimes in the night to Frau Didi, who lived just across the road from our home. Like you, she was a pianist, Frau Didi, though not nearly as proficient, of course. She gave pianolessons, and she sang when she talked, and she baked the most wonderful butter cake.”
The sweet, spicy smell of Frau Didi’s kitchen was real and deep-seated in her memory.
“One morning when I was home on a break from university, I woke to a great ruckus. From our front window, I saw two burly SS men carry Frau Didi down the front steps of her home and throw her into the back of an SS van.”
“Ah, she was a Jew, your child minder…”
Zoe nodded, alert to any sound or movement. “And proud. I did not hear her scream, not even once as the door of the van slammed shut and the two SS men, cool as could be, got into the van and drove away. ButIscreamed. I screamed as I crossed the road and watched the truck drive out of sight. I screamed at the sight of Frau Didi’s blue front door, gaping open on its hinges.”
She paused a moment, the memory of the moment etched into her gut.
“Alas, we are not safe anywhere,” the old man murmured.
Zoe shook her head. “I knew that night I would never see her again,” she said. “I can only imagine where they took her.”
She paused, again sweeping the landscape, moving closer to the shoreline.
“I went back to school, and finished my studies. But I always knew that when the time came, I would fight on the side of the Resistance.”
The old man was silent.
“You were passed to my employer in Amsterdam this morning, yes?”
The old man nodded. “Somehow, God help us, a man wearing a German uniform took me across the border into Rotterdam. It was just before dawn, during a change of the guard. I have never been so frightened in my life.”
Zoe nodded. Amarechaussee,no doubt – a Dutch Resistance fighter wearing the stolen uniform of the Royal Dutch Military Police to help make such passages possible. They were thankfully growing in numbers these days, under the unwary watch of the Nazis.
The path before them narrowed and more lights came into view as they approached a line of cargo-carrying barges.
“Stay close,” whispered Zoe. “We will soon enter theBlijjde Tiding.It means, literally,Happy Tidings. It is the name the owner chose for the barge.”
She hoisted herself down, knocked twice, and held a hand out to help the old man.
“Godzijdank,”Lotte Strobel said, holding the door wide. “Thanks be to God. Welcome.”
“Lotte, this is – Claude Zeller,” Zoe said in the semi-darkness. “Herr Zeller, this is Lotte Strobel.”
Lotte clasped the man’s hands.
