Page 44 of Winter's End
“I was detained at a check point myself last night – for more than an hour. I was terrified.Godjizdank, I was not transporting food.”
She paced the small office, worried again about the contents of the bag she had been forced to leave behind with the German guards.
“Is someone with Jozef’s wife?”
“Yes,” Leela nodded. “Several of the other wives. But that is little comfort, I am afraid. She is already fearing the worst.”
Zoe threw her head back, frustrated. “I do not know what to say, Leela. I feel it is my fault for asking…”
Leela spoke through tears. “There is nothing to say, Zoe. You are not to blame. We knew the risk when we agreed to empty that train.”
She laid a hand on Zoe’s arm. “We understand the risk we face just trying to live through this horror, every minute of every day.”
Zoe felt her own tears spring.
A moment of silence, then Leela’s ragged sigh. “But there is reason to be proud, Zoe. Our mission was accomplished. There will be food on Dutch tables this Christmas.”
MILA
In a fit of restlessness at four in the morning, leaning against the skirts in her bedroom closet as the shrill of air raid sirens blared in the background, she learned from Pieter that more than sixty highly placed officers of the German Reich had been killed in the Cinema explosion.
She searched her conscience for a shred of remorse, but she was unable to find one – only pride in what she had accomplished, and thankfulness that the German officer had been out for a smoke, and that he knew her, as a Brouwer, to be a friend of the Reich. She was begrudgingly thankful for the endless dinners she had sat through.
She still did not remember much of the aftermath of the blast, but she knew without doubt she would do it again if she had the chance.
Still, it was time, she knew, as she lay there hours later, curled around Hondje’s warm body, for her to get out of her bedroom and face her father.
Sighing, she threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. She had skirted the truth more than once of late. But she could not recall outright lying to her father since the summer day when she was nine,when she denied demolishing the raspberry kuchen Reit had left cooling on the kitchen sill.
She remembered praying, her blue eyes wide, that there was no jam on her chin as she told the outrageous fib – and her father had decided to accept her denial. Perhaps, he had said, some hungry itinerant had found it.
To this day, Mila could not fathom which had been the worst of her punishment; the stomach ache she had endured for more than a day, or the guilt she felt over the shameless lie she had told.
In any case, she had not lied to him again…obscured the truth, she admitted, moving to open the heavy satin draperies to the sunny day outside. Worse, she would continue to do so if that was it took to thwart his alliance with the Reich.
She blinked in brilliance and turned toward her dressing room. It was time to face her father’s questions. She shuddered to think of the outcome.
EVI
The yuletide holidays had been difficult at best since the war took over their lives, but this Christmas Eve was the saddest Evi could remember. There was no tree, no gaily be-ribboned garlands, only a single, scrawny wreath Mam had fashioned from greenery at the edge of the woods.
They had both been glued toRadio Oranjeof late,fearful of new tortures the Germans would rain down upon the Dutch in punishment for their dual humiliation – two successful Resistance offensives that not only took the lives of Reich officers but that embarrassed Herr Hitler who, it was said, was even now planning retaliation.
Worse, there was little encouraging news on the Allied front. This morning there had been reports that improved weather conditions helped the Allies launch air attacks on German supply lines. But what that meant for those who waited and prayed for liberation was still impossible to know.
To boot, Evi had heard from Sophie yesterday that the father of little Annemarie Haan, the freckled little redhead who had followed her to school one day, was missing – presumably detained, perhaps even murdered by the Nazis after his part in looting food from the demolished train.
Evi had never met the little girl’s father, but she knew the heartbreak of losing her own papa, and she said a little prayer, useless as it likely was, for the poor man’s safe deliverance.
She sat up, aware of a curious aroma wafting from the kitchen – a tantalizing smell not unlike the aroma of fresh-baked bread, as Mam used the last of Mila’s flour and jam to prepare some version of Christmas kuchen.
“There,” Mam said into the evening gloom, setting the still-warm pastry on the table.
Evi breathed in the yeasty aroma and rounded the table, inspecting it from every angle. There was no hint of cinnamon, no dusting of sugar, and surely no raisins or pecans. But the cake rested on Mam’s favorite Christmas platter, a reasonable cousin of the original.
She smiled. “Mam, that is the best of all possible Christmas gifts. I will forever remember it.Danke je.”
Mam blinked away tears. “That is not all, Evi.” She hurried off into her sleeping berth, returning moments later with a small package wrapped in re-salvaged tissue.
