River in the Sea (11 page)

“But,” Leen started to say, wanting to say,
But I killed the dog. 

Mem talked over her. “This is
gek.
Everyone get up and get ready for bed. Tine, don’t worry about Renske, I’ll get her.”

“What about Pater? Issac?” Leen protested. She had to stay up, had to make sure they got home. If anything she could at least do that.

“They’re out, what can we do?” Mem stood up with sharp energy, as if it was morning and already she had too much to do.

Something in Mem’s voice told Leen not to ask anything more, to just obey. Her father and brother were out somewhere in Wierum, planning something about the truck and those soldiers. There was no way she could sleep, but she got up anyway. As she mounted the steps she once more remembered Pater’s kick, sending a flush to her face. The shame of his kick, of how she had stalled, of everything that had happened, connected and became one thing that settled hotly into her cheeks, her hands, her chest. Her leg still hurt and the handkerchief was still there, stuck against the dried blood. She left it there as she put on her nightgown and washed her face, bumping into Tine. “Excuse me,” Leen said, not knowing what else to say. Mem brought Renske to bed and Leen knew that all night, she would listen to Renske’s breath, and even if she were alone, she would not dare to move. There would be no eavesdropping, no grasping at the white door. Tonight she’d stare at the black windows and listen for the soft sounds of doors carefully opened and closed, of Pater’s voice talking low to Mem, delivering plans and secrets.

7.

Sometime in the night a light sleep overtook her, and when Leen awoke to the normal kitchen sounds of plates being set on the table, Pater’s coughing, and scraping chairs, she was surprised. She did not remember drifting off. She did remember peculiar, swirling dreams. Nothing in them made much sense; they were the kind of dreams that mixed thought and fear, and as she put her feet on the cold floor, she remembered dreaming of her walk with Pater on the dike, and that in the background, there had been clanging sounds, like something metal dropped from a high distance. She had also dreamed of Jan Fokke, his bloody chin and bruised cheeks lit up against the black interior of the soldier’s truck. Sitting on the edge of the cold bed, Leen felt her heart beat evenly, then suddenly speed up, drowning her in a bewildered, twitching dread.

Downstairs, Pater and Issac were at the breakfast table. Both of their faces looked drawn, but their cheeks were flushed and their eyes burned brightly against their red–rimmed eyelids. Leen wanted to ask where they had gone last night, when did they come back, to tell her everything that was thickening the morning silence, but she knew better. No one said much of anything anyway. Pater and Issac each ate a large plate of fried eggs and bread with butter, and in between bites, they gulped black coffee while Mem stepped around Renske and fussed in the kitchen. Tine made sandwiches with thick slices of bacon and stiff bread and wrapped them in newsprint.

Leen was certain they were furious with her. The sensation had settled into the atmosphere and became a new element, a new particle of the air. What was worse than their anger was that Leen could not blame them; she had no defense of herself. She was the catalyst, the first spark that was now a growing fire, and her guilt rose up in her throat and filled her mouth like a tidal flood. 

Pater stood up. Just before he left the room, he said, “See if you can get some salt today.”

Leen nodded, saying nothing of the amount she’d taken the day before, or what Mrs. Deinum had given her. 

Across the table, Issac ate the last bits of his breakfast. Leen noticed his hands were covered with grease and streaks of rust. Still, Leen did not ask.

When Leen returned from the Deinum’s late that afternoon, she was surprised to find a freshly gutted pig hung up by its hind legs in the barn’s rafters, already bled and skinned. Tine had two platters and a towel in her hands. Pater stood on a ladder, holding a long, curved knife, and Issac was covering a bucket. The air smelled of blood and hay and sweat and despite the oncoming winter, it was warm. The pig swayed back and forth to some unknown tremor beneath their feet.

The pig itself did not surprise Leen; she’d seen several just like it hanging in the barn, awaiting the filleting and frying and storing so they’d have meat through the winter. It was just the timing of it. They had already done the preparations for the oncoming season, and she didn’t know why today, of all days, Pater and Mem felt the need to do more. 

“Come,” Pater said, “we have much to do.”

Leen pulled the salt out of her pocket, the paper now bunched and wrinkled. She’d stolen another handful that morning, making her larceny the first task of the day. 

“Here,” she said as she handed the salt to her father, trying to keep her voice meek. “Is it enough?”

Pater wiped his hands, still stained with blood, on a kerchief he pulled from his front pocket. He lit a cigarette. “Plenty,” he said, surprised, bobbing his hand up and down to assess the weight. He gave Leen a look. “Careful,” he said.

She wanted to take the salt out of his hands and tell him how hard it had been to make herself steal, again, knowing that every time she acted rashly something terrible happened. What she didn’t understand was that everything they were doing, the pig, the secret glances, the clanging in the night, seemed to have little to do with surrendering.

And pettily, despite the gravity of her errors, she wanted to be thanked for getting the salt. But she heard no marker of acknowledgement in Pater’s tone. She knew that in Pater’s eyes, she had done as she was told, and parents did not have to thank their children for obeying them. She put her hands back in her pockets and her fingers brushed against the smaller packet of salt Mrs. Deinum had given her, flattened after a day’s time in the same skirt. She started to withdraw it, then stopped, removing only an empty hand.

Mem came to the doorway and announced she’d put out some things for supper. “Let’s get some food inside us before the work,” she said.

On the kitchen table there were small slices of unleavened rye bread and a bowl of boiled eggs, along with a pan full of fried potatoes and glasses of milk. They ate standing. Pater did not even start with a prayer. Mem fixed him a plate and handed it to him, and everyone else arranged their own food. In minutes Pater was finished. He wiped his hands vigorously against each other, and Leen heard the scraping of his calluses. Sometimes on the nights after he and Mem would peel apples and
druggevisk
he would take the paring knife and smoothly slice them off.

Once, Leen had asked, “Don’t you feel anything?”

“Come here,” Pater said, holding out the knife. “Poke the tip in.”

“
Nee
!” she squealed, but the lure and fascination of
what if
, of trying something dangerous just to see, like lighting matches or poking blisters until they popped, was too great. She took the knife and gingerly poked at a hard lump. When Pater didn’t flinch, she poked deeper. 

“Hey now, watch it!” Pater exclaimed. He took a little bit of newspaper and dabbed at the spot of blood. “My own daughter, stabbing me!”

“Well, that’s your own fault, you told her to,” Mem had said, laughing.

Leen went upstairs with a stack of pans and stood where the little white door was open to the eaves of the barn. Issac called to her to see if she was ready. Her job was to deliver the racks of bacon and ribs, each freshly cut by Pater, and carry the meat down to Mem and Tine in the kitchen, where they salted and fried and stored the finished product. Leen leaned against the open door and balanced herself. She held an enamel tray and pushed the door open further, and Issac dumped in a large piece of pork. The meat was jagged and torn in spots, a contrast from Pater’s usual fine cuts Mem was always so pleased with. It was not like him to rush.

It went like that for an hour: take the meat, go downstairs, go back up. After so many trips her leg began to throb. She ignored it.

In the kitchen, Leen asked Mem, keeping her voice low, “Should I set some of these aside?” The last time they had slaughtered a pig Mem had snuck some of the packages of pan–fried meat, still warm, into old buckets, then instructed Leen and Tine to go to certain households, usually widows or invalids, and deliver them. 

But Mem shook her head. “Oh,
nee, nee,
we need to keep this,” she protested. She turned and rushed down the cellar ladder, one arm loaded with parcels.

“I asked too,” Tine said.

They finished just past 9 o’clock, everyone exhausted. They ate none of the results of their hard work. And to Leen, Pater looked grim instead of pleased at the stacks of meat cooling on the counter. Before she went to bed, she stuffed the folded packet of salt into an old pair of woolen hose and pushed it towards the back of her drawer.

Leen came down for a glass of water before going to bed. Despite being bone tired, she knew she would not sleep. She wore an old nightgown, several years’ old, still fitting around her but inches too short. She padded into the kitchen and found Pater at the kitchen table, smoking, while Mem sat next to him, busily buttering slices of bread and stacking them. Mem said, “You think it’s enough?”

“It’s enough,” Pater answered.

Leen took a risk and sat down at the table. Mem ignored her and began wrapping the stacks of bread; they were probably for Issac and Pater to have for lunch the next day. Her fingers worked quickly, as if she hadn’t just spent hours working. Mem looked determined, her mouth twisted in concentration, her jaw hardened and straight. But her eyes seemed to be elsewhere whenever Leen looked at her. It felt like a cold blanket poured out of them and onto Leen’s shoulders.

“Okay, Oenze, this should be all right, yes?”

“Aafke, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Pater said. He often told Mem to be still, to settle herself. He would hold out his hands at his sides and then move them slowly up and down, like he was telling their old horses
shhh,
calm down
. But tonight the words did not match Pater’s movements. His foot tapped constantly but without a familiar rhythm. His jitteriness reminded Leen of when he saw storm clouds during harvest, and how he would run up and down the field and clap his hands and shout, “Hup! Hup! Hup! Move,
jonges
, before the rain comes!”

Leen’s pulse traveled down her leg to the white bump that had hardened on her shin. She bent down and pressed the ragged end of her fingernail onto the spot. A bright flash of a half moon appeared, then dimmed as the blood surged into the puffy skin, the pain a hot sting that traveled up to her knee. She knew it would hurt.

“What happened to your leg?” Mem asked, pushing the bread aside and finally looking at her.

“I cut myself,” Leen lied.

“Let me see,” Pater said. He bent over and gingerly touched her leg. “There’s something in there. It’s getting infected.” He pulled out a pocket knife. “Aafke, I need some water, please,” he said, his voice matter–of–fact, procedural. “Sit still and don’t flinch,” he said to Leen. He never lied about pain, but his work was quick, and Leen had learned early on not to squirm when he extracted a sliver.

He cleaned the knife and Leen shut her eyes. She felt the sharp tip of the knife, followed by a sudden burst of heat as Pater deftly removed the shard. She held her breath until the heat dissipated and the pain lessened. 

“Good girl,” Pater said, his voice softer now. He took out a handkerchief and pressed it to Leen’s leg. 

“I’m sorry, Pater,” Leen said, exhaling, eyes watering with relief. Finally she’d gotten it out, but it was not the litany she’d imagined. Her voice sounded tinny, a lamb’s weak bleats. She hoped Mem had heard her too, but when she looked up, Mem was gone.

Pater didn’t answer her. He balled the bloody handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

“I mean about last night. And before.” Leen hung her head and pulled her legs to her, pressing the hem of her nightgown to her shin.

“
Acht, leafe
, don’t be sorry,” her father said as he stood up, looking down the hallway where Mem must have quietly gone. “Now go to bed, okay?”

In bed, despite her prediction, Leen fell asleep quickly, tired like an infant who had kept herself up too long with crying and fits. Some time in the night, Leen woke up to the sounds of Pater’s coughs. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. Heavy with sleep, she could barely open her eyes. She heard him whisper, “
Lekker sleape
.” He leaned over and kissed her, then Tine, then Renske, all on the forehead. Then he said, “Good night,
mei leafe famkes
.” By the time he was across the hall, Leen had already returned to sleep.

When Leen woke up, it was quiet. She squinted at the clock, thinking it was probably close to five a.m. She squinted again. It was past seven. The papered windows and the winter dawn made it difficult to tell time, but nevertheless she almost always awoke early on her own, accustomed to an early alarm and to the sounds of Pater in the kitchen, the first one of their family up, always. 

The wind pushed against the walls. The bricks they had warmed in the fire the night before and placed under the covers at the foot of their bed were cold, heavy and flat on the sheets. Water dripped down the inside of the windows and the clammy air seeped into Leen’s bones. Winter was here. She shivered, turning her head. Tine and Renske were still asleep. Leen rubbed her face. She would need to eat fast or she would be late to the Deinum’s.

On the way down the steps, the smell of cigarette smoke penetrated the last of her grogginess. Pater was probably at the kitchen table again, drinking the last of his coffee before he went to work in the barn. Tonight, maybe tomorrow, the soldiers would come.

But when Leen entered the kitchen, she didn’t find Pater, only Mem at the table, still in her clothes from yesterday, slumped over her arms, a cigarette burning in an ashtray, a long line of ash trailing from the tip.