Page 9 of Winter's End
She focused her gaze on the worn carpet, wondering suddenly what had become of the three of them once they had been moved from the barge?
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and blew out a thin stream of air. This was how it was now, Mam in danger and herself helpless, making do in this old yellow barge with its cramped spaces and its tiny shower, on this busy river with its creaky drawbridges and the vast North Sea beyond.
If there is a God,she tapped her pencil on the table,please let the Allies come soon…
ZOE
There had been air raids again the evening before, and grenades whistling, but tonight,lieve god, it was still and quiet at three o’clock in the morning. Zoe could see her breath, and smell the mist that rolled in over the river bank.
She pulled her coat close around her, counting the scant handful of stars strewn high in the inky darkness. It was a night perfect for their purpose.
She tapped one foot against the gravel, mostly out of sight on a flat strip of land below the level of the river, anxious as always during these wee hour transfers. Narrowing her eyes and peering into the distance, she could make out no human shapes.
She turned, checking in every direction, and waited.
Finally, the sound of a motor idling, movement she sensed before she saw it. She strained to see human forms emerging – one, then a second, bent low and moving fast.
“Zoe?”
The taller of the two figures reached her, his eyes sweeping the landscape. She had met him before – Johan Steegen, a history professorwho had narrowly survived the bombing of Rotterdam and now owned an auto repair shop in Haarlem.
“Johan, yes.”
“This is Max Leibmann, the concert pianist,” he whispered, as the second figure came into view. “World-esteemed, but a German Jew hunted by his countrymen.”
Zoe studied the gray-bearded Leibmann, whose recordings had come with her from her dorm room in Amsterdam to her small apartment in Haarlem. “It is a pleasure to meet you,Meneer.”
“Arrogant pigs, these Nazis,” Leibmann whispered. “They have no respect for the artists whose music lies deep in the bedrock of Germany.”
Zoe nearly smiled, surprised to encounter a Jewish escapee with some fight apparently left in him.
She turned to look around them, then back at the older man, who was bareheaded and wearing a light trench coat. “We need to be quick and quiet,” she said, handing him a dark woolen scarf. “Our walk will be less than two kilometers, moving well below this berm, mostly unseen from either the river or the roadway. But it well past curfew. We must be very alert and try to stay out of sight.”
“Godspeed,” Johan Steegen said, melting back into the night.
Zoe took the older man’s hand and helped him down a short slope. Scanning the landscape once again, she tucked her arm into his and led him slowly forward.
Zoe broke the uneasy silence. “You have new identification papers,ja?”
“I received them this morning in Amsterdam. They say I am known as Claude Zeller, a Swiss national. A bank clerk.”
Zoe wondered if the originals were among the ID papers she had pilfered from a coat rack in Haarlem.
“Then I shall call you Herr Zeller. That is who you are now – and that is how you must be known, at least until you reach your destination.”
Another silence, deep, thoughtful, their footsteps crunching gravel.
Zoe’s gaze again swept the landscape as far as she could see. German troops were mostly off duty and sound asleep at this time of night, and the river front was quiet – but there were sometimes a few soldiers, mostly noisy and drunk, still roaming the streets.
“You have family waiting for you in Belgium, Herr Zeller?”
“In France,” the man answered. “My wife left Germany in 1939, entirely at my urging. I stayed to finish a concert tour, and then the Nazi crackdown came, and it became impossible for me to leave.”
Zoe could not imagine how the old man had remained so long in hiding. “Now,lieve god,it is near the end of your journey. Your wife will be overjoyed to see you.”
“Alevai,” he murmured. “It is a Yiddish expression. It means, ‘may it be so.’”
“Indeed,” Zoe said. “We will do our best to make it happen. But best, in the meantime, to keep Yiddish expressions to yourself.”
