A short true story by Marja Rogers Binnendijk

Utrecht, December 1944.

‘Waarom moet ik weg?’ she asked.
‘Because we haven’t enough to eat. There’ll be food where you are going and you’ll become strong and you’ll be able to walk and run again.’
‘I don’t walk because I’m just tired,’ said the child. ‘Opa doesn’t want me to go.’

The mother held the child on her lap, feeling the small hands digging into her armpits for warmth. Iced flower patterns covered the windows. It was bitterly cold in the room and layers of clothing were not enough. The mother drew the blanket tighter around the two of them.

‘Pappa and I and Oma don’t want you to go either. But it’s for the best. You have to be brave.’
‘Why can’t you go too?’
‘Because only children are going and I have to look after Pappa and Oma and Opa.’

Pappa was their secret. She could not even tell her best friend who lived across the street. Pappa came down from his hiding place in the afternoon and only then would they burn a little coal to make it warm. He had to walk very softly and whisper in case someone heard him. Some evenings he would bring her to bed and tell her a story. After a while her mother would come in and say, ‘Jo, it’s time. Come now. ‘

The child would hear them walk up the two flights of stairs to the attic. She knew what would happen then. First a pile of coal would be scraped away, then the lino was lifted under which a small square of floorboards had been cut. Her father would pull this up and lower himself onto a mattress in the small cavity above a cupboard from the room below. Her mother would hand him a candle, matches, water and his medicine.

‘Take your medicine, Jo.’
‘It gives me headaches and terrible dreams.
‘Better than coughing and getting caught,’ her mother replied.

Then she would close up, replace the lino and scatter the coals.

Two months ago the child had still been able to go out and walk behind the potato wagons, picking up potatoes which had rolled off into the gutter. Her mother saved them until they had a saucepan full. One day she was crossing a bridge when a group of boys in brown uniforms surrounded her. They yelled at her and asked her if she was a Jew. She shook her head not really knowing what they meant. They made her empty her pockets and threw the potatoes into the water, then ran off. Her grandfather swore when she told them.

‘Am I a Jew?’ she asked.
‘No. You’re not. Those wretched people are worse off then us,’ said her mother.

One day she saw a dead horse in a street. A large crowd was slicing bits out of the dead animal. A pool of blood ran down the gutter. She had started to cry.
A man said, ‘go home, child.’

Another day while wandering through the streets, she stopped at the gate of a garrison. Two soldiers were standing just inside. One of them said in German, ‘how old are you?’
She answered that she was seven.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Wait there,’ he said. He whispered something to the other one and went into the guardhouse. He came back with a large sausage curled up with the ends tied.
‘Take this,’ he said and handed it to her through the gate.

Her grandfather, grandmother and mother were amazed when she showed it to them.
‘No, we not going to eat that. Not from them,’ said her mother.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said her grandfather and they ate it when her father came down. Then they were all sick afterwards. Her mother said it had been too rich.

Before she became tired she used to go with Opa to the soup kitchen, which used to be her old school, to pick up their daily rations of soup. Her mother who was fainting several times a day, said the soup was mainly water.

Even if the child could walk, there were no potato wagons around any longer and all the sticks and branches she used to gather for heating were now buried under the snow.

‘When do I have to go?’ she asked.
‘Tomorrow,’ said her mother.
‘She can have my ration,’ said Opa. ‘I’ll find something else.’
‘Pa,’ said her mother. ‘There is nothing else. The soup keeps us alive but it’s not enough for the child. The underground can’t help with the food. I’m just glad they supply us with the cough medicine.’
‘Besides,’ the child heard. ‘I can’t take the risk of them coming here again. Next time they might find him and we’ll all be taken away. At least she will be safe.’

The child remembered when they came. It was the one time her father had decided to retire a bit later. The front door bell rang, followed by banging, then shouting for them to open up. From her bed the child saw her mother frantically rushing her father up the stairs to the attic. Her grandfather called out that they were coming.
Her grandmother was crying. ‘They’re bashing down the door.’

She learned later that her mother had accidentally left the key under the lino while hurrying her father into his hide-out. Shift the coal again, up with the lino, pick the key up, replace the lino, scatter the coal and run downstairs.
‘I’m coming,’ cried her mother. ‘I’m coming. I couldn’t find the key.’
Four of them followed her mother up to the first landing. The child heard the man screaming in German at her mother. ‘Where is he? Where is the man?’

From her bed through the open door, the child watched the soldier hold his rifle against her mother’s stomach. ‘
Search the house,’ he ordered the other three.
‘Please be careful,’ said her mother.
‘Careful? Careful?’ he yelled while pushing her further against the wall. The grandfather moved to her side.
‘Where is he?’ He yelled again.
‘He’s not here. He left a few months ago and didn’t come back.  I don’t know where he is.’
‘You’re lying.’
The man bent over the child’s bed. He spoke Dutch. His voice soft, no longer yelling. ‘Darling, where is your pappa?’

There was silence. She could see her grandparents and mother behind him. Her grandfather held her mother’s hand. The man turned around waving them away.
‘Back,’ he snarled.
‘He left,’ the child said. ‘He went away and didn’t come back.’

The bed bounced as the man hit the side of it with his hand. She saw her grandfather make a move to go to her but her mother stopped him. Instead she looked at the child and mouthed shhh while patting her hand downward.
They waited. She in her bed, the mother in front of her parents while the search went on. Banging walls and floors with their rifles.

After they left, her mother said, ‘Jo must have been so frightened. He must have heard them. But we can’t let him out. Sometimes they come back.’
She walks with her mother towards the centre of Utrecht. Her mother carries her small case. The clogs she is wearing replaced her last shoes when she outgrew them. Every so often they stop to rest and to scrape the snow from the bottom of her clogs.

They arrive at what once had been a department store. Two trucks parked outside have large red crosses on them. Her mother says goodbye and she is left with other children. Some are crying. Someone places a string around her neck with her nametag. Then they are bundled into the trucks and as they drive away she sees the familiar figure of her grandfather running behind the truck waving and waving, his hat in his hand.

It takes them two days to do the 150 kilometre trip. The night is spent in a large shed with rows of camp beds. They are given soup. The child wets her bed in the night.

They are annoyed with her and she hears them say, ‘Her name is Marja Binnendijk. She wearing all the clothes she owns. She’s wet throughout. Her case only holds soap, some underwear and a toothbrush. We’ll have to leave her like that.’

The trucks finally stop in a small village. They are crowded into a school hall with many other people. A hand rests on her shoulder and a man says, ‘you come with us.’

She walks with the man and his wife. The man carries their baby girl. After a short time the wife takes the baby and he carries the child.

She’s never seen such a small house. She can touch the roof on one side. They enter a large kitchen at the back of the house. The stove is burning and it’s warm. She can smell food. Close to the stove is a small table with four chairs. A cot stands against the wall.

‘You’re a bed-wetter so you’ll have to sleep in here. We sleep in there,’ the woman says and points to the adjoining room, which is the parlour. In the middle stands a large oak table covered with a heavy cloth and around it six chairs. It takes up most of the space. One wall has cupboard doors, behind which are two double beds. The opposite wall has a fireplace, which isn’t used. Wooden dowels with cured meats and bacon hang from the ceiling. Two windows covered with white lace curtains look out to the front of the house.

‘It might be too small for her,’ says the woman looking at the cot.
The man shrugs his shoulders and sits down at the table and motions to the child to sit. The child can’t remember seeing so much food.
‘Only a little today,’ the woman smiles. ‘We’ve been told. Otherwise you’ll get sick.’

She likes the life. There’s a big farm next door. There are no other children around. The baby girl is too young to play with. She makes friends with the people from the large farm next door. In no time she is speaking in dialect.

She watches the woman comb her long black hair at the kitchen table. ‘If you have lice you’re healthy,’ she tells the child.

The man works in the peat fields but has his own land behind the house where he grows wheat, potatoes and vegetables. He never talks when they eat. He stacks his plate with a mountain of potatoes, leaving little room for a few vegetables and a small piece of spek.

Sometimes she sits on the wooden rails of the pig pen and watches two enormous pigs slosh around their sour smelling pen. Her job is to feed the chickens but she is scared of the tethered goat she has to pass. The child doesn’t like the goat’s milk which is bitter and smells.

Once in a while the man drags a large can out from under the toilet seat in the shed and spreads it on his land. ‘To make things grow,’ he tells her.

On Sunday morning they go to church and afterwards visit the woman’s parents. They also live in a very small house. They throw clean sand over the stone floors after they have been swept. The child thinks this is very funny. The old man tells her he has thirty- two grandchildren and she can be number thirty- three.

Spring is over. She’s had one letter from home. She sometimes wishes she could sleep with her legs straight. But she is still wetting at night.

May 1945

The family and the child are in a bunker behind the house. She’s frightened. The baby girl is crying. The child holds her hands on her ears to drown out the sound of guns. A burning smell invades the shelter. People with white bands around their sleeves keep coming in with news. ‘They are blowing up the bridge. They are getting closer. Stay here. The men are being rounded up.’

The woman cries while they sit and wait for two days.

Then it’s over and they are free. The child collects a box of beautiful empty brass bullet shells. She’s not allowed stray too far from the house because of the land mines. A card arrives to say that she has a sister.

It’s summer and she’s going home.
She’s given a straw hat with a green ribbon and a pup as a goodbye present.
She waves at them from the truck and cries while the woman, the man and the little girl wave back.
This time the trip is much quicker. The dog vomits over her legs.

Back in Utrecht they ask, ‘do you know where you live?’
She nods. She walks along the familiar streets, carrying her case and the dog.
She rings the doorbell and hears her mother shout, ‘It’s Marja. She’s home.’

They hug and kiss her. Her father lifts her up. Opa says she has grown. They laugh when they hear her speak in dialect. She’s shown her new sister and is disappointed that she is so small.
Her mother removes her hat and stares in horror. ‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘She has lice.’

She never sees her beautiful hat and dog again.

******

Marja Binnendijk was born in Utrecht. She endured the occupation of the Netherlands and the dreadful winter of 1944.
With her parents and younger sister, she immigrated to Australia in 1951. After staying in Bathurst and Nelson Bay immigrant camps, the family settled in Collaroy, Sydney.
After high school she landed an office job while attending Julian Ashton art school at night.

She married young, had three children and started writing. When the children had left home she studied art for a while with Joshua Smith. She worked in family café businesses, made several trips back to Holland and lived in Den Haag for six months.

The last four years have been spent completing a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing. At present she is writing a crime novel set in the Netherlands.