Page 86 of Winter’s End

“You did right, Evi…”

“Bastard Nazis…”

“Eat, Evi, eat….”

She could not make out all of their jumbled words. But there was no mistaking the warmth behind them. She breathed deeply, for the first time, she realized, since Mam had screamed at her to jump.

“I have hot soup as well,”Mevrouwsaid, bustling in the from the kitchen with a huge kettle, which she set in the middle of the table. “Willem! The bowls!”

The boy jumped up to set spoons, linen napkins, and blue Delft bowls at each place. He had barely settled back in his seat when Mevrouw clasped her hands in front of her and glanced meaningfully around the table.

One by one, they followed suit.

“Willem,” she said. “You may say grace.”

The boy fidgeted, looked around as if for help, seemed to realize that none was forthcoming. He glanced at the folded newspaper on the sideboard as though for inspiration, and bowed his head.

“Lord, we thank you on this sixteenth day of February,” he began, “for food and family, for keeping Evi safe, and for keeping the Germans from our door.”

Evi looked up, eyes wide. A sound escaped before she could stop it.

Mevrouwlooked up. “What is it, Evi?”

She looked around the table in the flickering light.

“It is my birthday,” she whispered, shaken to the core. “Today is my seventeenth birthday…”

ZOE

Zoe stopped short as she neared the hospital. A green German Kubelwagen jeep was parked at the entrance, the driver sitting tall and straight.

She hopped off Daan’s bicycle, locked it to a stand to one side of the building, and considered.

It was not likely the driver’s German passenger was there for medical attention. It could only mean her cousin was being hassled once again by the SS officer demanding lists of staff and patients.

She shuddered, wondering how long it might be before the he demanded a tour of the place. Could the troops he brought in see through the façade on the hospital’s fifth floor?

The trappings of renovation remained in place – the jumble of furniture, ladders and paint, even the few live ‘workmen’ who could be called from the sanctuary on a moment’s notice.

But why, a cunning German might ask, was the hospital spending precious guilders on renovation when bread and heating oil were scarce?

Zoe shuddered and pulled her scarf close, glancing again at the Kubelwagen. She was debating whether to push through the hospital doors when a tall figure in an immaculate German uniform stepped out and hopped into the back seat. He leaned forward to speak to the driver and the vehicle roared to life and sped off.

Zoe nodded once to the expressionless guard, and made her way into the lobby.

...

Gerritt was, as she expected, pacing in his second-floor office.

“It’s no good, Zoe,” he said. “We cannot keep up this charade for much longer. The Germans are intent on finding people who have eluded them, and they will not rest until they have exhausted every avenue to find them.”

She nodded, touching her cousin’s shoulder. “Sit, Gerritt. I know. We need to talk.”

It was as though he never heard her. “They are looking now specifically for Aaron Bernheim, a Jewish physician from Berlin who has been with us for months,” he said. “And for the escaped German called Kurt Schneider, who is high on their list of Reich deserters.”

MILA

The headline in Amsterdam’sDe Telegraafsent a shiver through her spine. ‘Haarlem caregivers shot.’