SHADOWMOTHERS

Colophon

Photo cover: | © Fred Limburg
Portrait photo: | Studio JIJ, Amersfoort
Front desig: | Sander Neijnens, Letterbeeld, Tilburg
Book design: | Zinnenprikkelend, Amersfoort
Ebook: | Epublicist, Amersfoort
ISBN: | 978-90-828640-1-4 | sometext
Publisher: | LIMboektoe

Copyright© Helene Fentener van Vlissingen, 2017 - 2018, www.lenalandauer.com
Editor English translation: William Westhead, www.youtube.com/user/billwesthead
Original title: Schaduwmoeders, © Helene Fentener van Vlissingen, 2017

Nothing from this publication may be reproduced and / or published by means of print, photocopy, microfilm, internet, social media or in any way without prior written permission from the publisher.

PART 1

Edith

april 2010

The brutality of the attack dominated the lives of all. Everywhere for a week, in the streets, at home, on the news, the police investigation had raised a growing number of questions, riddles really. Continuous requests for interviews bombarded their lives, all trying to get hold of something. It was as if the media wanted to parade their heads on poles triumphantly across the screen.
The calls continued to seep in through all sorts of electronic devices in a surging wave of buzzes, beeps and giddy ring tones. With no one noticing she had fled the house.

The featureless view from the window of her student room displayed nothing but relentless grey mundanity. People moved mechanically in their daily grind.
With a jerk she turned from the window and sat down on her bed, the flight from home no more than a slap in the face with a cold wet towel. Without the comfort of an unblemished past to lean on, the air was sucked out of her future.

She pressed herself to find Ruben’s face in her memory, but to no avail. The attempt to hear his voice just delivered utter silence. Even in retrospect he didn’t want to live on.
It was her fault, she never tried to bother much. She should have gotten to know him better, done more things with him. It was only during holidays, from time to time, or on weekends she had actually payed him a visit. Ruben had been more like a brother to her. Motherhood conveniently deferred was simply a matter for the future.

A wrenching sadness stabbed pointedly in her stomach at her every move. She tried to imagine the feelings her mother must have had. She knew the boy’s behaviors, moods and ways. It was her mother who would miss him, not her.

Grandmother howled ceaselessly, day after day scolding and raging. This morning her mother had raged in return. An irreversible rolling explosion, a helpless duet filled the house, herself no more than a passing spectator.

Mightily she freed herself from these thoughts and tried to find an explanation for the absurd facts that the police had uncovered. How in the world was it possible that DNA from both the father and son were found at the scene of the attack? He had never known his child. As far as she knew he had never been told. Now the father had died in that school along with his son. The mystery was beyond her.

Edith gently rocked herself in her own embrace, her face buried in her arms. An involuntary feeling emerged that she never would have ventured. The thought that something was finally over and done with gave her a sense of relief. In deep confusion she looked around.

Nina (Penina)

1943-1947

I

There’s a strange self-awareness that you’re there and knowing it. Quietly this thought lingered in her head. If so, then there are two ways to use words; for thinking and for talking. Why are the words you think different? She took a big gasp of air and took off even faster until the swing set nearly tilted over. The swish in her ears gave her a nice tickle. She stopped the swing and leaned backwards far, facing the sky.

The words you speak are also someone else’s. When other people direct them to you they can drill their words deep into your mind. Those words then sound nasty, and are made purposely cruel. You don’t want them to linger, but you cannot throw them away either. You can’t purge them in any way, that’s the trouble. She decided a word laundry is what’s badly needed.

It might be that the troublesome feeling of a mean word disappears if you repeat it often enough to yourself. It will frighten you at first but in time you get accustomed to the sound. The thing is that there are words you can never get used to. These words have creepy faces that look at you in a weird way. They secretly hope you’ll feel miserable every time you hear them.
It started to rain. She jumped off the swing and slipped into the kitchen.

“Mum, I’m not your real daughter, right? How did I come to live here?”
Her mother was stirring at the laundry boiler on the stove. She looked angry, and overheated. It seemed as if she didn’t even want to look at her.
“I’ve told you over and over that you have to stay away from the boiler when it’s cooking!”
Nina took a small step backwards. She got a strange feeling in her head and looked at the kitchen floor. It had been scrubbed clean, but on the sides and in the corners there was yellowish discoloration between the tiles.
Outside the sun had vanished behind thick clouds only to suddenly flop back in place a little later. In the bright light you saw how big steam clouds bulged through the kitchen. The windows were fogged, and heavy drops left thick streaks across the glass.

The woolen collar of her sweater suddenly felt hot in the steamy air. She rubbed her neck and slid her feet so that each foot was placed in a tile with one row between. Soon the splashing in the tank came to a halt. Her mother put the cover on the kettle, dried her hands on the tea towel and turned around. She couldn’t tell if her mother was angry, but she did sense a peculiar sadness.
“Come!” said her mother as she stepped toward her, “We’re going to the living room.”

A bulge started pulsating in her head, a pounding that didn’t want to stop. “Jewish bawler, no mother anymore!” she heard taunting at school. It wasn’t blatant, it was more a hissing from behind. When she tried to walk away they always came after her. Until Annie that was, her girlfriend next to her in school. Annie seized the biggest bully, Fritz, by the scruff of the neck. She was very strong, and Fritz was screaming with his head wrenched back. She held firmly.
“I will not let you go unless you swear you’ll never say that ever again to Nina.” She pulled even harder.
“I swear, I swear!” cried Fritz.
“What are you swearing to?” Annie asked, holding him tightly not caring the least about Fritz’s kicking. “What are you swearing to? Well, what?”
Tears welled in Fritz’s eyes. In the end, he said, “I swear I’ll never say Jewish crybaby again to Nina. Honest!”
Annie still wouldn’t let him go. She stared with furious eyes at the other children before she loosened her grip on Fritz.
“That goes for all of you too, you stupid apes!”
She turned to Nina. “So now the bullying’s over.”
Nina looked at the smudges on Annie’s legs. Annie wiped them off mechanically.
“Come on, let’s get to class,” Annie said.

Annie! It was clear she had older brothers! Nina still felt strange in her head from the harassment and on her way home she had asked, “Why do those children say that?”
“Oh,” said Annie, “don’t worry about it. And you don’t need to hide anymore.”
“But some time ago I had to go in hiding,” said Nina after a while. “We sat at the table when a line of cars drove into our street. My mum quickly brushed my food back into the pan and brought the empty plate to the kitchen. I had to sit upstairs in the big closet behind dad’s good suit. I had to remain frozen and wait until they could come back and fetch me!”
Annie looked at the pebbles on the footpath. The sun had started to shine again, and the clouds seemed less dark.
“Mum later said nothing was going on.” They were almost home.
“Let’s go play at my house!” said Annie.

Nina now reflected on her stay in the locked closet. The stale air had left her throat parched. She wanted to call out, but stopped herself in time. Her eyes teared and her nose felt terribly itchy, but she stopped herself crying and listened for sounds. Sitting in the dark, the house seemed an alien place as if she had never been there before. She heard the voices of strangers. There, alone in the closet, she had decided to ask Mum whether she was her real child.

As she entered the living room with her mother, the space seemed to change. It was much bigger and much brighter than before. She saw how Mum walked wobbly on her legs and opened a drawer. An envelope appeared with two photos in it. One showed a little girl barely able to sit up with one hand at her mouth, eyes large with fright and a neat little bow in her curls. On the backside was written “Penina” and below it, “1937”. The other picture showed a father and a mother in front of a house. The father carried a bulky baby in his arms, and the mother was holding hands with a little girl. On the back was written ‘In front of the house, 1940’. She stared at the images and handed them back. Mum raised the baby photo and pointed at it. “This is you! And this photo was taken in front of the house where you lived.”

The back of her head began to rumble, followed by a soft dark growl. All of the sudden an electric storm rushed through her whole body. She could only fight it by screaming and kicking as hard as she could, but the growl didn’t want to stop. With long squealing howls she cried. Mum holding her firmly. Outside it slowly became dark. Father came in and she felt how he lifted her up and carried her to her room.
Mum came straight behind them and undressed her. She was no longer fighting. Behind her thick eyes an overwhelming calm set in. Her mother laid a cool hand on her head as she sat next to her on the bed, while Dad walked down the stairs. The light in the hallway was still on. When Mum gently rose, the bed squeaked a bit. She saw her glancing over her shoulder as she tiptoed out of the room. The door was left open to let a little light in.
Downstairs Mum and dad moved about. She heard soft but urgent talking. Sleep didn’t sink in right away, not even when it had gone quiet in her head. There was a thought she couldn’t grasp, and an awful feeling stirred in her belly. All of the sudden she knew what she had meant to ask. She should have asked where they had gone, those people in the picture.

II

The beautiful days had come back as if no bad weather had ever existed. Mum told her not to go out on the street. “Promise me!”, she added.
“But can’t I go to Antje to play?”
“No, you don’t go there by yourself. You just wait until Antje comes here to play with you.”
How does that help, she thought angrily. Antje was always busy with the animals at her house. Then she didn’t miss Nina. Well now, she at least had her swing.

Nina loosened her shoelaces and dropped her shoes. She made the swing go higher and higher. The trick was to push off as hard as possible and then sit up completely straight. That way the swing would come up at its highest.
The whizzing of the wind through her hair allowed her to think of words again. The words of thought kept safely in what she felt to be a box within her head. Swinging hard, she felt in the moment, enveloped by a quiet lightness. That box defended her against the feeling of having been forgotten about. Inside she wasn’t alone because there she could talk to herself. In clear words.

She thought ‘hedge’. She was like a hedge. The world is audibly passing it by, it even was possible to peep through it here and there. A conversation remains possible over the hedge, or even through it.
A hedge doesn’t look like a wall. For example, you will never try to wipe the soles of your shoes on a hedge. That makes little sense. And kicking a hedge is also useless. It will wave and rustle as if hit by a storm. The hedge may therefore be stronger than a wall, she imagined. You can break down a wall like that. Hit it really hard with a big hammer and hop, gone with the wall! Just try that with a hedge. A hedge has vigor and even if it loses its life, the branches remain brown and bald firmly attached to the ground for a long time after.
So there are always things that seem similar but still giving you a choice because of their differences. She was a hedge and not a wall. That was a nice thought to keep in the thought box. If the thought was kept there, it wouldn’t fade away.

She had gotten warm. She occasionally pushed her feet gently into the sand to cool down. She noticed how all the small grains started to flow like water. Water!
“Mum! Mummy!”
She ran to the kitchen door but she didn’t see her mother there. She looked at her sandy bare feet and stood on the prickly mat. She now called loudly into the house “Can I play outside with the vat?”
Her mother entered the kitchen and laughed. Together they fetched it out of the barn and then mother carried a big bucket to and fro to fill the vat with water.
“I want to make things flow!” Mother went back into the kitchen and came out with trays of oily paper used for baking those tiny cakes. “They don’t do anything here, because we can’t make cakes at all, now. You can take them to sail on the water! Look, just make sure that no water drips into the trays, or they will sink!” She crouched next to the vat to show her how to float them on the water.

Nina let her boats sail and then searched for things to put in them. The water in the vat was no sea or lake but a river, and the boats had to cross back and forth to carry their loads to the other side. She searched for leaves and blades of grass in the garden. The boats were each given different loads. On the first try one boat became too wet and sank. But now she succeeded to float the ships and make sure that the people on the other side would get what they needed. After the journey the loads were taken from the boats. Then she filled the boats with a tiny pile of sand, because that was what the people on the other side would get in return.
Nina pushed the boats back and forth. In between she continuously dried her fingers to prevent the ships from getting wet inside and sink, like the first boat had. Luckily she had right away saved the people in that boat and let them go home!

In the following hours a growing shadow fell over the tub and gradually she got cold. Mother came out to fetch her and said, “I’ll take you to Antje tomorrow to play.” She stroked Nina’s hair.

III

Father came home later than usual. He had stopped by a friend’s house in the city where he worked. The food was already on the table, but instead of sitting down with her, Dad and Mum went into the kitchen together and closed the door.
Nina heard whispers, loud whispers. She couldn’t quite grab what was being said, but her parents softly screamed, their sentences tumbling over one another. The door opened and now she heard her mother say, “Be careful, for God’s sake! You don’t know how fast it actually goes. It can take weeks before they’re here!”

“What can take weeks? Who will come?” she asked agitated. Her parents didn’t answer.
“Well, what will arrive, will arrive. It isn’t important right now,” her mother said instead.
It very was hard to believe that nothing was going on, the way they had been talking behind the kitchen door. Nina glanced and gathered she shouldn’t ask. Yes, yes, a surprise then! She would stay very alert indeed, as to learn more from conversations elsewhere.

The next day at school turned out to be out of the ordinary as well. The teachers left their classes, to softly talk to one another in the hallway while the children were to continue their work as if nothing was going on.
Today Frits and his brothers left their seats in class empty. Antje said she didn’t know what was going on, but that it was about the war. That it might be over, soon.

Previously she had thought that war was something like the weather when you can’t play outside because it’s raining. Or when Dad has to take the bus because he can’t cycle through the snow. War then is a kind of weather you can’t see, hear or feel.
Yet it couldn’t be so, as people showed a different face when they talked about the war.

When it was about the rain, they would say “Put on a coat because it’s going to rain!”, just to make sure you wouldn’t get wet. But if you weren’t allowed things because of the war, people would be talking in another mood. There was a darkness in the way they spoke. And no one would ever give the warning, “Don’t go outside without a coat, because it’s war!”

Actually, in conversations the war was always there. That was the difference with the weather. When the sun was shining, everyone had quickly forgotten how hard it had rained only hours before. But there was something about the war, nobody would ever forget. Everyone was constantly mentioning this war.
And now for days there were ceaseless whispers that the war was approaching. Very strange indeed, because as long as she could remember, the war had been lurking in the corner to pop out at any given moment. Mostly when you wanted to do something or understand something, then it was there again, that war.

“Mummy, what is a war?” Everyone seemed to know this without further explanation, while she was still grasping in the dark.
There are fewer potatoes. How did that happen? Because of the war.
We had no rice in the last year. Because of the war.
You can’t walk in the street in the evening. Because of the war.
We used to have a radio, now no longer. Because of the war.
She heard people say that sort of thing when they talked about the war.
Often it was about food. Sometimes about things you weren’t allowed, or things that were no longer there. But she herself had no memory of those things. She was too young for that.
A lot of houses were abandoned because of the war. The people who had lived there never returned and nobody could tell if or when that would ever happen.

“You have to promise me that you don’t tell anyone what I am about to explain. You can speak about it here at home, with Dad and me. Other than that, not at school or even with Antje.”

That now was a true setback, as she had hoped to explore the answers further with Antje.
“Do you promise?” mother asked as she looked her in the eye. She saw that her mother wasn’t feeling happy at all, though not angry. She looked solemn, that’s what it is called, she thought quickly. Her mother meant it very deeply.
“Yes,” Nina said and swallowed, “I promise you that I won’t talk to anyone about it.” She returned the solemn look, to show she meant it. Feeling solemn was without doubt part of the war.

Her mother said that a war starts when people from other countries come to play the boss in your country.
“Those strange people act very strict. When they think someone is revolting, they send soldiers with guns to visit their house. You have to let them in, even if you don’t want to. We call these people and their soldiers the enemy.”

“But Mum, why can I not talk to anyone about that? The people I know belong to us and not to the enemy.”
“You never know for sure if someone doesn’t accidentally pass on your words. And then it may happen that the enemy comes to send you to jail.”
“But then you simply tell them that it’s not true.”
“The annoying thing about the enemy is that they don’t care what you say. They just lock you up without listening to what you want to tell them.”
“How mean that is? I think that’s very, very mean!” Nina was completely thrown aback.
“Yes,” said Mum, “it is. War is a mean thing. Very much so.”

IV

The school closed its doors to let soldiers have their quarters in it. Whenever the weather allowed, Nina hung on her swing with her head backwards to scan the sky for airplanes. The first days though, remained quiet. If you listened carefully, you could hear the sound of thumping bombs far away. Everyday mother said she hoped that the war would be over before wintertime arrived.

One Sunday morning, after church, people were whispering frantically. Father told mother he would stay inside for the day, in the back of the room. In the afternoon Nina observed a couple of planes. Cars full of soldiers drove through the streets.
Later that week, Dad came home from work in the morning. The office closed doors for the time being. They were now at home all three together. The cellar door was left open so they could quickly go down the stairs to hide. Mother had a jug of water stationed down there and a basket of apples from the tree in the garden. The thumping of bombs crashing now sounded clearly in the distance. Incessant streams of aircrafts flew over their home.

Father had gone out the door with the wheelbarrow to buy extra food at some farms around the village. On returning he brought carrots, leeks, a cauliflower and some potatoes. Mother spent the whole afternoon washing and cooking the vegetables. The glass pots were filled with the burning hot veggies, sort by sort, to store them in the coolness of the basement.
Father had gone to the barn to look for planks. He would seal the windows with them. Halfway done, he walked with the wheelbarrow to the sawmill in the village. He came back with a fat bunch of lumber.
“It was very busy at the sawmill and planks were more expensive than mtopa,” Dad said, “but I was ahead of the big surge. So I managed to buy enough.”

Nina was allowed to help Dad with the job. While she held a plank on one side, Dad worked through it with the saw. At the point it was almost in half, Dad shouted, “Let go!” and as she stepped back a part dropped to the ground and the job was done. Then to the next and the next. When ready, Dad climbed the kitchen stairs to nail the planks from the top to the bottom of the windows.
As Nina stepped into the house, it was as if night had fallen. Even with the light on it gave her peculiar feeling to be in the living room and the kitchen. The next day Dad fetched a long ladder from the neighbors and completed the job at the upper windows. Nina no longer felt at ease inside. She spent as much time as possible on the swing.

It looked like thunderstorm, or rather, as several storms all at once! Airplanes flew through the air at lightning speed producing a deafening crackle. At the first sound, mother came running out of the house, whisked Nina off the swing and ran inside with her under her arm. Now they were stuck in their dark house. The crackling stopped almost immediately, but she wasn’t allowed to go on her swing for the rest of the day. Instead of playing, she helped Mum to mop the floors and cleaned all the doors in the kitchen with a cloth.
She wanted to go to Antje, but didn’t tell. Her mother would certainly not like it if she went out into the streets now. The thought of that crackling sound gave her an eerie feeling in her stomach. She practiced the new songs she had learned from Mum. That helped a bit against the weird feeling.

The next day soldiers walked in long rows through the village. They heard the stamping of their boots as they walked past. Mother left to peek outside around the corner of the house hoping to see what was going on.
“They don’t look happy…” She wanted to say some else, as all of the sudden the light went out in the room and left them in total darkness. Airplanes now flew at high speed low over their roof. A shot sounded.
“It’s time to go to the cellar,” Dad said. Nina noticed how he tried to keep his voice steady. They crouched in the basement by the light of the candle that mother had put in a glass with a bottom of water. Nina looked at the worried faces of her parents.

In the time to come, the humming and rumbling of aircrafts flying overhead sounded like a monotonous music that gently rocked. This music accompanied everything they did. When they heard shooting in the distance, Mum said she hoped that the people in the aircraft would fly along safely.
It was hard to understand what happened out there while stuck inside the house with the windows boarded up. Nina suppressed her desire to get out by singing the new songs she learned. Occasionally mother sang along.
Father went out briefly to get bread. On his return he tried the light switch every so often to see if the power had returned, so they wouldn’t have to sit in the dark any longer than necessary.

Their relative calm ended with a sudden explosion.
“Those are grenades!” Dad yelled. “Down, now!”
Mother quickly grabbed some things together without forgetting the reading book.
For days they lived the same drill. To the basement, up again, to the basement. The repetition of the drill became boring, especially because nothing actually happened to them. Every evening all non-events hushed back to mtopaity and they could go upstairs to sleep in their own beds.
The biggest surprise came from mtopa things that would disappear without warning. There were days when the taps gave no water. This led to them running out of bread as the bakers could no longer produce and everyone was left wanting.

V

Mum climbed on the dusty attic to fetch suitcases. One big and one small.
“What are they for?” Nina asked.
“To put clothes and stuff in for when we’re made to leave.”
“Are we going on a trip?”
“It may be too dangerous to stay. But nothing’s sure, yet.”

Mum proved to be right. And how! After the former weeks with the noise of the thudding of bombs and grenades and of shooting, far and near, and of power cuts, water, no water, down in the cellar, up again, a command was given to all in the village to leave their houses. Immediately!
They quickly tidied the house and put their luggage in the wheelbarrow. They were ordered to leave the door unlocked, so it would be available for housing soldiers.
Nina felt her eyes get water. She didn’t want to leave. But her mother looked so unhappy that she worked to swallow her tears and not show anything.
“How long do we stay away?” she finally asked, as her father grabbed the wheelbarrow.
“We have no clue!” her mother said curtly and took her firmly by the hand. Thus they walked out of the village joining the crowd of families heading for the city.
It was no easy walk. The wheelbarrow had seemed a perfect solution, but the pushing caused Dad’s back to ache. He then stopped to stretch out and rub his hips. From time to time mother took a turn pushing.
Nina’s feet began to stab. They felt hot and thick. Perhaps she suddenly had outgrown her shoes! Would that be possible?
No one in the crowd uttered a word, so she kept her mouth shut and narrowed her eyes to a crack, to keep from crying. She hadn’t seen Antje anymore. Her house was empty, so she must have left before them.

Their journey ended at an empty school building. Everyone was to find a spot in the abandoned classrooms. Even the corridors were full of people. It had been such a good idea to bring blankets. Not everyone had them.
They found a place and her father or mother guarded their spot at all times, so no one would take anything. Nina found it heartbreaking there were too few blankets to keep the small children warm. But fortunately people regularly came in to bring more blankets and other supplies.

Some people slept in their winter coats. Perhaps unnecessary, as the weather was nice and the nights not even cold. It was weird staying among all these strangers in that class room. Especially in the dark. You would hear snoring, of course, but if you listened well, you could discern still more sounds, especially those of deep sighing and sometimes sniffing and soft sobbing. It never was totally quiet.

Without warning, a bomb rain suddenly fell from the sky. Nina glimpsed past her mother over a sea of crouching backs. Waves of frightened people, she started to think, but the intensity of the noise interrupted her thinking. Hedge, hedge!, it sounded in her head, not the wall!

The school remained intact. For now.
“Our turn will soon come,” people said to each other again and again, realizing there was nowhere to go.
Someone had broken down a door in the hallway. There now gathered a massive crowd, screaming and pushing.
“Only the women and children!” the deep voice of a man rung out.
“Go on!”, Dad told mother. Mum grabbed Nina by the hand and wriggled through the tangle of people. As they moved to the front, she saw that open door led to a cellar. Everyone wanted to enter, but some men firmly blocked the crowd to make sure only women and children would pass on the steps. The cellar had already filled tightly. They would never all fit in!
Her mother noticed it too.
“Leave us be,” she said to the man at the door. He nodded and made sure that they could step aside and not be pushed down by the crowd.

By now the cellar had filled up completely. To prevent a huge quarrel, it was agreed that in turn, per class room, mothers and their children could hide there. But as the next bomb rain started, there was no one prepared to leave the basement. Upstairs people moved the school tables against each other to shelter themselves from flying shards. Just as well, as soon one bomb hit close, shattering all the windows in the building to near dust.

The waiting made the crowd go angry and nervous. Between attacks, bread was occasionally brought by people from the neighborhood. Men, women and sometimes even children, jostled under angry yells to get hold of a loaf. With reason, they all had become very hungry.

The bombing continued, even during the night. In the dark they saw the impacting light up and fire had broken out throughout the city. Inside, glass splinters creaked at your every move and stuck to your clothes. Nina heard men pacing in and out. They called “The Jerries are leaving!”, but now the shooting produced a fierce rattle and a peculiar stench started to spread.

Outside, the rain had finally washed out the dust, but indoors every surface was covered in a thick gray layer of dust full of debris and glass fragments. Nina had never felt this dirty in her life. She longed to scratch herself everywhere, but Mum urged, “If you scratch yourself, the glass shards will break your skin. It will start bleeding and get infected. Try to keep from doing this!”
Now that she could no longer relieve herself from the itching and the story in her reading book was all too familiar to distract her any longer, she felt very hot and bored. All she wanted was to hit anyone hard or pull her own hair. Mother made her join in a hand clasp game and she laughed. But failing to win, her mood dwindled and she started crying, long and loud.

VI

“Now it’s our turn!” Someone shouted in the pitch of the night. She heard people move. Yesterday she had walked past the door of the cellar and peeking in, found it was horrible down there. A few days before she thought it had smelled stale from there, but before long, the smell had changed into an all-pervading stench. She was so glad she didn’t have to stay in that basement, even though it was more dangerous to stay up.

One sunny day, packed with cheerfulness, airplanes arrived overhead. They were flying very low. One of them suddenly produced strange coughing sounds. There was a bang like she had never heard before. People stumbled and fell backwards. They looked up, eyes wide open, to locate the source of the sound.
Outside the clatter of a mass of running feet, approached. People yelled, screamed and cried without ceasing, all at once. The sound swelled. The front door of the school was thrown wide open. The running now sounded throughout the hallway. In minutes the school filled with a crowd, everyone covered with a thick layer of dust. They all looked unnatural with their pale, panting faces and haggard eyes.
Nina learned that a plane had fallen from the sky. With bombs in it. Crashed on the houses. Completely shattered. Everyone dead.

None of the newly arrived people dared to return. Nina observed there would no longer be room for all to sleep. Standing amidst the crowd, there was no air left to breath. She searched her head for words to hang on to, but there was no room left to think. This would never stop again.

Out of nowhere, Dad lifted her up and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

Time seemed to stop all breathing when suddenly a soundless day arrived. Nothing shook, popped, or banged any longer. At the fringe of this silence Nina heard a new sound awakening. A continuous rattle and squeak. The ground began to vibrate.
“Tanks!” was called out around her. Nina tried to grab her thoughts within her foggy head. Were tanks good or not?

“We will be patient and see what comes,” Mum said. Father walked out to have a look. Suddenly the shooting started again. The sound reappeared with a new fierceness and was followed by a bang, just like the one of the plane that had come crashing down.
“The bridge, the bridge! They have blown up the bridge, the felons!”

Nina felt a pang run through her stomach. She felt awful. The noise from outside no longer reached her. A strange whimper pierced through the mist in her head. Her voice seemed to come from outside.
“Mum, I feel so bad.”
Her mother rummaged in a bag and pulled out an apple. “The last one,” she said. She patiently cut off small pieces and offered them in turn, to Nina and Dad. At times she also took a piece herself. The apple led to even more cramps in her stomach, but Nina continued to eat. Slowly the bad feeling faded.

Nina was sitting upright, wide awake. Sleep had left her completely. Dense clouds of smoke were blowing high in the sky and she saw a fire glowing, with ever changing colors; yellow, then dark red, followed by purple. Now and then white stripes shot past the clouds with a light so sharp that she had to squeeze her eyes. On the inside of her eyelids she saw black stripes imprinted as if she had been looking straight into the sun.
She continued to watch until a thick smoke entered the school. Everyone started an unstoppable cough, aggravating at vomiting point. A gentle wind gradually diminished the smoke and Nina got back her breath. Yet she lay awake for hours hearing the coughing rising up and over again. The sound of this forced her to cough along.

VII

“The church is still there!” In the first light of the morning people moved throughout the building. Somewhere in the distance an occasional shot was fired, but in the immediate surroundings all noise had ceased. At the fringe of this quietness Nina heard a rattling and squealing.
“We’re liberated!”, a man exclaimed. People started to collect their belongings.
“They’re going home,” mother said.
“Are we going also?” Nina asked. “Isn’t it dangerous anymore?”
“We’re still not sure about that,” mother said. ‘But it seems that the fighting is over.”
“But that strange noise, isn’t that dangerous?”
“Oh, you mean the tanks! No, our liberators are driving them into the city. It’s a nasty noise, indeed. Try to imagine it’s a happy sound!”
Nina tried to change the noise into a cheerful one. It didn’t work that well. She was still scared. Yet she rejoiced at the thought of leaving for home. Of sleeping in her own bed in the quiet of her room. Of the school reopening its doors and speaking with Antje again after all this time. Such were her happy thoughts along the rattling of the tanks. Going home!

“The wheelbarrow is nowhere to be found. I have checked the most unlikely spots, but nowhere at all!”
“Well,” said mother, “someone else must have taken it.” The parents shared a quick look.
“This someone, probably needed it more than we did,” mother said with a sigh.
She lifted the suitcases up a little, to feel the weight.
“Let’s put the blankets around our shoulders. Then the suitcases won’t be so heavy,” she said.
Starting on the long walk, they looked like people pictured in a Bible story.
The city had turned into mayhem of destructed homes, roads and trees. You will never get that repaired, Nina thought. It was hard to tell if they were on the right track because the city she knew had vanished. The people they encountered along the way, all looked weird. Dusty all over, with dried up marks on their faces from sweat and from tears. There were hills of sand everywhere with wooden crosses on top. Those crosses were constructed sloppily, with crooked nails and cross slats lop-sided on the uprights.

It was difficult to walk through the rubble, it made their progress so terribly slow. Much slower than she had imagined when thinking ‘home!’ The word then told her how they would fly back like fluff on the wind. It turned out to be a long, sad way to their village. From time to time they had to sit down to catch their breath. Finally they reached the border of the town and suddenly it was all quiet in her head. There was space around them, the air was open and free. This now was familiar terrain. They had taken the right road, after all!

Starting through the village they passed the house of Antje. Nothing stirred. They would probably still be on the way back. The whole village looked like it had just been taking a long rest with everyone gone. Many houses were still boarded up. She thought those quiet houses had said goodbye to their residents, maybe forever.

Around the corner people were queuing up at the bakery.
“Shall I wait here for a loaf of bread?” asked Dad. They looked at the suitcases.
“No, let’s go home first,” mother said, “It’s not that far.”
Father was in doubt, while longing for the bread. So was Nina!

“Well,” he said suddenly, “I almost forgot! I still have a bike at home!”
He started laughing so loud that he seemed to get a different face for an instant. Still grinning, he walked on in full step, to return on the bike, heading for the bakery.

VIII

A few days before, Nina had been given a piece of chocolate by the new soldiers. The touch on her tongue gave her the happy thrill of a new taste. The word ‘party’ awoke in her head.

The school was in use again and Nina hoped mtopaity would pick up it’s pace. Not all children had returned. Frits wasn’t there. Some children said his family was on the run. The place next to her in the school bank remained empty. No Antje.
The teacher informed the class that Antje would come back, probably in a few days. Nina felt dizzy and nauseated. In her head a dark, endless emptiness emerged. Antje would never just stay away from school. A vast, inescapable knowledge announced itself. A knowing that something terrible had happened, something undefined. She knew that feeling from a long time ago, but that didn’t help her to understand it’s message.

Nina couldn’t wait for the school day to end. The lesson completely passed her by and when she finally got to go outside, she was the first out of the building. She didn’t feel her feet touch the ground, but that didn’t matter as long as she flew on. She threw open the back door and was startled by her own voice.
“Mummy, what happened to Antje?”
Mother picked her up, held her tight and took her to the living room.
“The teacher didn’t tell?”
“No, only that she will definitely stay away from school for a few days!”

Nina no longer recognized her own sound. It just seemed to squeal through her throat.
“Oh dear girl, how anxious you must be! There’s nothing wrong with Antje herself, but something very bad has happened, indeed.”
Mother gently stroked Nina’s hair and sighed deeply. She said that the mother of Antje was hit by shrapnel while evacuating. It was an instant death.
Nina fought to master her thoughts and words.
“When did you know that, Mum?”
“I only heard it this afternoon.”
Nina paused.
“We have to do something for them, Mum,” she uttered finally.
“So we will. We can cook and occasionally and I can do their laundry together with ours.”
“But what can I do to help?”, Nina asked.
“Well,” Mother said after some consideration, “I think you could be very useful helping to fold the laundry.”

A few days later, in the early morning, Antje walked up the garden path. She hadn’t changed a wink. Nina had expected Antje to look very different, now she didn’t have her mother anymore.
“I would like to go to school together,” Antje said.
Nina nodded and her mother quickly helped her prepare for school.
“Have you already had your breakfast?” mother asked Antje.
“Yes, my aunt is taking care of us now.”
On the way to school Nina told Antje that the teacher said that she would be absent for some days, but not why that was. And that her tummy had played up violently on that message.
“I suddenly farted at this pain and the whole class started laughing at me, just as if nothing bad had happened!”
Suddenly Antje also laughed. “So, you suddenly went from ‘brrrt’? While the whole class listened quietly, you did ‘brrrt’?” She bulged her cheeks imitating the sound.
Nina blushed. “Yes, I couldn’t help it!” Now she had to laugh too, but stopped it immediately.
“I really feel dreadful for what happened. And Mum says I can help to do things for you, like folding the laundry.”
Antje didn’t answer.

“Is she nice, your aunt?” Nina asked after a spell. It took Antje a little time to speak.
‘It’s very strange. Every time Aunt Emma is in the kitchen or laying the table, I think mother will step inside. And when, after a whole day, that still hasn’t happened, I know for sure that she will never return.” Antje looked at something on the horizon. “The craziest thing is that I keep hearing her voice,” she continued softly. “I never used to hear her voice when she wasn’t around, but now she talks in my head all the time. She then says things like ‘Spoons on the left side of the drawer’, or ‘Antje, I’ll turn off your light now!’ as if she’s right around me, like before.”
As Antje uttered those sentences, she sounded just like her mother.

They walked a little slower, Nina pensively, trying to kick away little stones from the path.
“So she isn’t completely gone. She still lives on in your head,” she said without looking at Antje.
“Yes, you can say that,” Antje sighed. “This is why I’m actually happy to go to school again. I don’t think I can hear her voice there, because she was never present while I was at school.”