Page 60 of Winter's End
She had spent the evening helping Ilke and her sister put the Mulder’s ransacked apartment back in order, and made her way home, exhausted, half-expecting to find her own apartment similarly ransacked.
To her relief, it was intact, although she knew full well the Gestapo could turn up at any moment – not that they would find anything in her small living space that would be of any value to them.
From her window, she saw a dusting of snow sweep the cobblestones. Resolute, she dressed warmly, buttoned her old grey coat, and wrapped a red wool scarf around her chin and nose.
She was turning the sign on the front door of thekliniekfrom ‘closed’ to ‘open’ when a young girl and her mother came around the corner, a mixed breed, short-haired puppy wrapped in a blanket in the woman’s arms.
The poor pup was constipated, they told her, and her little nose was warm with fever.
Zoe found a clean, white coat, took the pup into an examining room, and took his temperature. She put a few drops of peppermint oil into some cool water to help bring down the fever and applied it to the dog’s paw pads. She inserted a laxative and advised the pair to walk her more frequently – and take longer walks in spite of the cold.
“Food is scarce, I know” she told them, handing over the pup. “But if you can feed her some fruit peelings or potato skins now and then, the fiber will help her, too.”
Her patients gone and room quiet, Zoe faced the pile of paperwork that still needed to be re-filed. But she could not find the drive to begin, or the patience to sit at her desk.
Sighing, she turned the ‘open’ sign back to ‘closed,’ locked the front door, and went out the back, where she unfastened Daan’s bicycle from its mooring and set out for the hospital in Heemstede.
...
Kurt Schneider smiled and waved as she made her way across the makeshift ward.
“Your timing is wonderful,” he said in Dutch, his accent distinctly German. “I was just about to begin a story time.”
He peered at her, seeming to examine her face. “Are you alright?”
“I have had better days,” she sighed. “My employer at the petkliniek– and my very dear friend – was grabbed up by the Gestapo. We have no idea where, or even if…” she could not bring herself to finish the thought.
Kurt sighed. “He works with the Resistance, no doubt…”
Zoe nodded. “Two big Nazi henchmen crashed their way into the petkliniek,” she said. “They tore it apart, but Daan was a careful man. I am certain they found no trace of Resistance activity among his things…but still…”
Kurt’s face was a mask. “Zoe, these Germans will not rest in their search. Please believe me. I know that.” His eyes searched her face. “Are you safe where you live?”
“Who knows? I told them I knew nothing. I do not know if they believed me. They have not invaded my apartment – at least, not yet.”
She saw Gerritt coming toward them. “Zoe, I have been trying to reach you.”
She peered into his anxious face. “What is it?”
Gerrit glanced at Kurt.
“It is fine,” she said. “You know as well as I that he can be trusted.”
Gerritt kept his voice at a whisper. “I had a visitor this morning in my office…a high-ranking German official. He was very polite. Not at all threatening. But he asked for a roster of all our patients – and a complete list of staff.”
Zoe blinked.
“I told him it would take us a day or two to get up-to-date lists together. He told me he would return for them on Friday.”
Could this have something to do with Daan? The explosions…the transfer of food…?
Gerritt looked around the crowded ward. “Every Jewish patient and medical worker we have here is hidden away on this floor, along with the hiding families and children.”
“Ja…”
“I will, of course, provide the officer with accurate lists of the patients and staff on the first four floors of the hospital,” Gerritt said. “There is no one there the Germans want. And let us hope to God this floor is never searched.”
Zoe nodded, keenly aware of the anguish on the face of the storyteller.
