Page 5

Evi knew as well as Mam that the Dutch Army had been ill-prepared against the Germans from the start, clinging to some idea of neutrality and taking orders from the queen who fled to London the day after the Germans breached their border.

“I don’t think so, Evi,” Mam said. “The Dutch army does not need or want your service.”

“The police then.”

Mam threw up her hands. “Evi, half the Dutch police force is collaborating with the Germans. You know that. That is how they survive.”

“Not all of them,” she argued, though of course it was impossible to know which half could be trusted.

Silence.

Evi tried her most persuasive voice. “Mam, I’m young. I’m healthy. I learn fast. There must be more I can do.”

Lotte reached for her. “We will see, Evi. Let me think about it. For now, pray this will be over soon, that the Allies are near to ending it… ”

If only , Evi thought. Mam was right. Ever since Normandy, there had been constant speculation that liberation would come soon. But the months rolled by, and hope along with them, and still it was at best a dream.

“There is tea,” Mam said into the silence, a hand on Evi’s cheek. “I found some in the market place at Leiden when I delivered the Het Parool . “

Evi sighed, reminded of the German schnellboats – afraid to think what might happen to Mam if they found stacks of the verboden newspapers onboard the barge.

Before she could answer, Mam leaned toward her and put a finger to her lips. “I will give some thought to what you might do for the Council. Meanwhile, if all goes well, a guest will be delivered tonight for safekeeping.”

Evi turned and went back to her homework, but the algebra equations swam before her eyes. She put her hands under her arms to warm them. It was cold on the barge, even before the cutback of power had rendered the heater mostly useless. She pulled one of Mam’s crocheted blankets across her lap.

How she missed the house they had lived in before the Germans came – the spacious rooms, the big porcelain bathtub, the brick fireplace smudged a deep, smoky black in the winter time. Another blow dealt by this war, the move to the barge after Papa left.

Cheaper to live in, Mam had said, with a hold big enough for hiding refugees and reason to be navigating up and down the coast when she needed to.

Evi studied the worn-thin braided rug that lay under the coffee table and over the hatch in the floorboards.

Once, she recalled, they had harbored a whole family in the hold – an anxious young mam, a dark-bearded papa, and their child, a thin little boy with huge blue eyes who had been well-schooled in the need for quiet.

She remembered the day she came home from school with a small packet of candy corn – a rare prize she had won in a spelling competition. She had clambered down the narrow ladder to share the sweets with little Johann, only to find the hold empty of all of them.

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 professor who 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.”

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 piano lessons, 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. But I screamed. 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. ”