5. The Girl

Gryt said more than once that it was going to come to a bad end. The word is going to get around, she said, that we have a Jewish girl on the place. And then we’ll be right back in the soup, she added bitterly.

Since this morning she must’ve been saying that she was right. But he was sure it wasn’t the girl’s fault. They hadn’t come for her or for anybody in hiding. It was true that, since the girl had come, Germ was gone more often, but that was because of his trips to De Lemmer where her parents were in hiding. They were cooped up in a loft, in a small space behind a false wall. Germ had to take food over there regularly because they weren’t fed enough, though they were charged plenty for room and board.

Germ had also participated in transporting weapons and in a hold-up of a ration card distribution center. Gryt did not know that and it was best that way. She already had trouble sleeping whenever she knew that Germ wasn’t home.

Weeks later he heard the girl tell about that distribution center raid. She made a slip of the tongue, for Germ apparently hadn’t wanted his dad to know about it either.

Later that evening when they stood together in the yard, he said to her: “I don’t want Germ to get involved in everything. Tell him that. Tell him to be careful.”

“Do I have to tell him that?” she had asked in surprise.

She had been with them a number of weeks already and he still did not know how Germ happened to have come in contact with her.

The prudish schoolteacher bothered himself about it too. “This cannot really be allowed. If everybody starts moving around on their own accord, the whole business is going to turn into chaos. Your son just picked up that girl. He should’ve consulted the organization. Or did you give him permission to take her home with him?”

The talk irritated him. He said: “No, that’s not necessary here.”

“Your son may do what he wants, I take it.”

“Right.”

“So he just came home with her one night.”

“It was at dusk. They just loomed up from behind the reeds in the scow, each pulling an oar, nice as can be.”

That’s exactly what had happened. It had been a very quiet summer evening. They could hear the jays on the other side of the lake. He had not heard the scow come, that’s how quietly they moved. Germ could punt without making any noise. When they were poaching he could even fool the ducks. He snuck up on them so quietly that he could often down two and sometimes even three in one shot.

He had been out with Kuiken that day, a fisherman from the Follegeast side of the lake. Together they could set out so many trammel nets that they could shut off whole areas of the lake. That day they caught several hundred pounds of pike and perch. He remembered it well because among the fish had been quite a few pike-perch, which he hardly ever caught on his side of the lake.

He had sat down to relax on top of the cistern that night, and Gryt joined him with a few nets that had to be mended. She was better at knitting and mending nets than he was. One of the men in hiding lay in the grass next to the shed. He had just said to Willem that it was so hard to get cotton for a new trap. Germ must have heard that. He groped behind the mast bench and held up a couple of skeins of silk.

“Will silk be okay, boss?”

He knew of course that silk would be a lot better than the coarse cotton. But silk was hard to get anywhere.

“Where did you get that, Germ?”

And then, strangely enough, he noticed the girl for the first time. She got up after Germ had pulled the bow of the scow on shore. She didn’t trust herself much in that worn-out old boat.

Germ said: “There’s always stuff available in De Lemmer.”

They inspected the silk and agreed that it was of prewar quality. He estimated that there was enough for two traps, a nice job for Gryt.

“This is worth a fortune, old man. You can give me fifty pounds of fish to take along tomorrow.”

It was worth it to him.

Germ said he knew a man in De Lemmer who took the fish to Amsterdam and sold it there for a huge profit on the black market.

Then Germ announced that he had brought a guest along, and he pointed to the girl who stood next to the scow on the grass, looking around self-consciously. Germ motioned for her to come. She came shyly to him and shook his hand. Gryt put down the fish trap and stood up. The girl shook her hand too and said that her name was Mirjam. Germ asked Gryt where she could sleep.

“What’s going on, Germ?” Gryt wanted to know.

“Well, nothing special. She wasn’t allowed outside anymore in De Lemmer, and it’s not easy always to be cooped up, right?”

“In De Lemmer they have Feldgendarmerie and those scoundrels are dangerous,” said Willem. “They patrol the roads day and night and stop everybody.”

He told Gryt to warm up the coffee and he himself hauled the cane chair out of the house. While he was carrying that through the hallway, Gryt, who was standing by the kerosene burner, said: “This is going to be trouble. You’ve got to speak up now.”

He set the chair next to the cistern and asked the girl to sit down. Germ had sat down on the far end of the cistern and was talking to Willem. The boy paid no attention to the girl. He was of course a bit embarrassed about it; he had never brought a girl home before. Gryt and he didn’t even know that he had a girlfriend.

He noticed that the girl felt very uncomfortable. He said to her: “Why don’t you help me a minute; I want to wind this up into a ball.” He put a skein across her hands, and he told Germ to get a jacket because the girl was shivering in the evening air.

The girl said: “I’m not cold, but it is so quiet here and there’s so much space.”

Willem said that she’d get used to that just like he had. He said: “It’s a quiet evening. It’s not often this way.”

Germ explained to the girl that in the wintertime the water would often get up to the threshold of the house and that last winter they had to build a sod embankment to hold the water back.

The girl stared across the meadows where a few cows were grazing in the upcoming dew. And then at the mist that was coming up out of the lake, slowly creeping closer.

He himself had never quite got used to it either. There was too much water and too much grass here. He liked the peat puddles with hedgerows of alders and willows between.

The haze from the lake always brought with it the smell of manure and cow sweat that he couldn’t stand. He preferred the musty smell of peat and mud.

“Here’s some coffee,” Gryt said stiffly.

She put the cups on the cistern and took her chair inside.

He gave the girl one of the cups. “Drink it while it’s still warm.”

Her long fingers trembled a little and sometimes her mouth quivered.

She was a good-looking girl, a bit dark-skinned, with sharp facial features.

She looked at Germ, who had his back toward her and was talking to Willem.

He said: “If you like lots of space, you’ll not be disappointed here. You’re free to roam where you want, but don’t get too close to the road. When you see the police boat heading this way, get lost for a while. The officer has a pair of binoculars and he loves to aim it our way. Don’t worry too much about anything else. The grocer has his regular times and Boonstra, the eel merchant, comes only when we ask him to. And Gryt knows the day the bakery man comes. You’ll get used to the routine.”

The girl said: “It’ll take me a while to get used to it. There’s so much space here.”

“A nervous wreck,” Gryt said later.