Page 14 of Winter's End
But her seatmate was relentless. “They are saying the power may be cut altogether. Have you heard?”
The prospect had hung over the city for weeks. “I hope not.”
A short pause, then Fiona leaned in. “But they say the Allies are getting close. My sister’s brother-in-law has a son in the Dutch Air Force. He told them as much, just this morning.”
That rumor, too, continued to pass from ear to ear, but there was little evidence on which to pin their hopes. “We can only pray he isright,” Zoe said, leaning back in her seat as the engine noise ramped up finally, and the bus lumbered out of the station.
...
Enschede, for all its distance from Amsterdam, had been bombed by the Germans a year earlier – a fright that had roiled Zoe’s stomach for days until she was able to contact her parents. But she saw little evidence of the destruction here on the walk from the bus depot to her parents’ house.
Patches of green defied the cold, and gable-roofed houses that had been there for generations wore an air of quiet resignation. Everything seemed the same, and all of it somehow different, but Zoe found her smile growing wider with every step she took, and her mother’s happy cry when she came to the door filled her with unbridled joy.
“Henk, Henk,” her mother bellowed. “It’s Zoe. Zoe is here!”
Still basking in her mother’s embrace, Zoe felt her father’s arms come around them both. The three of them stood together in the narrow entryway until her father finally broke away.
“Food, Emma, food! The girl is wasting away! Look how skinny she is!”
Zoe laughed. “Not so much! And you, Papa. Are you well?’
His bald spot had widened, Zoe saw, and the paunch that had once lay over his belt buckle had all but disappeared – and her mother’s rounded cheeks now verged on hollow. But her eyes were bright and, altogether, they looked well. Zoe bubbled with an excitement that verged on tears.
She ate her mother’s spinach and potato pie, the vegetables harvested from their own garden, and relished every bite of the sausages her father had wrested from the butcher in exchange for a few machine tools.
“I thought the other night about Frau Didi –” she began.
Mam shook her head. “We have never heard a word. The house remains empty.”
They ate in silence for a moment.
Zoe told them as little as possible about her work with the Resistance, and steered clear of making promises she could not keep about staying out of harm’s way.
She toured what was left of her parents’ winter garden, and accepted the sack of potatoes and beets that Papa packed for her with care. Sooner than she wished, before the sun set so that she could get home before curfew, there were aching goodbyes and more hugs and more kisses at the door.
...
The bus to Haarlem was not as full as it had been on the morning run. She chose a seat midway down the aisle and hoped the companion seat would stay empty. Love, fear, hope, despair – emotions she had worked so hard to control all day now bobbed and collided within her. She wished for nothing more, in the two-hour ride home, than to close her eyes, perhaps nap for a bit, and try to recapture the calm she needed to do what she must do every day.
The empty seat next to her was, happily, still unoccupied when the motor came to life. Zoe leaned back in her seat and adjusted her bag and the precious sack of vegetables at her feet. Her last conscious thought was of her father’s regret that he could not drive her to the bus station. His eight-year-old Volkswagen still sat behind the house, but of course there was no petrol to purchase even if there had been extra funds.
She was reflecting on that, her eyes heavy, when the bus lurched to a stop, pitching her forward so abruptly that her head hit the seat in front of her. Parcels flew out of overhead bins. People jostled and shouted.
The bus crept forward, pulling to the curb, and everything went quiet until the doors screeched open, the lights flickered on, and two Gestapo officers – she thought she recognized the Gestapo insignias – stepped up into the interior.
“Ach tung!”the larger of the two shouted, his face a menacing red. “Stay in your seats and be silent.” He moved forward, followed closely by his smaller cohort, took a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket, and read.
“Johan Gruber… Gerda Gruber...Stand,bitte, at once.”
The ‘please’ was token only, Zoe realized, because the two clearly meant business. They advanced up the aisle, looming larger as they neared. Passengers cowered in their seats.
“Johan Gruber…. Gerda Gruber,” the German said again. “We know you are aboardzisvehicle. Stand up and identify yourselves or we begin to hurt others until you do.”
There was faint murmuring, a craning of necks. Zoe sat frozen in her seat.
With no warning, the larger Nazi reached for the passenger just across the aisle from her. He yanked the man up out of his seat, held him with his left hand as though he were a rag doll, and with his right hand punched him squarely in the face.
The man, barely conscious, from what Zoe could see, grunted, and sank into his seat. For an instant, the silence was palpable.
