“Go home” was their unanimous reply. The shadow men talked about the other things they missed as they finished their bread and potatoes, and about the food they hungered for.
“I heard that the Allies are giving out cigarettes,” one of them said. “I’d give anything for a smoke.”
At dawn, one of the shadow men offered to milk Lena’s cow for her. “I grew up on a farm in Friesland,” he said. “Milking her reminds me of home.” He stroked the cow’s shoulder as if greeting an old friend before straddling the milking stool. “Shall I let her out to graze when I’m finished?” he asked.
“No, she has to stay inside the barn again today. Three cows were killed in a neighboring village by a stray Nazi rocket. And with the Allies moving closer, there’s always the danger of falling shrapnel from aerial battles overhead.”
“Someone might steal your cow for food, too,” another shadow said.
“Yes, there is that.”
Lena gave her daughters some of the milk to drink with their breakfast. They looked thin and shadowlike, too. Wim and Ans had been plump and rosy-cheeked when they were their age. Before the war. When life was gentle and good. When food was plentiful. “I think we’ll take the rest of the milk into town this morning,” she told the girls, “and see what we can trade it for.”
Little Elizabeth, whom they’d nicknamed Bep, bounced with excitement at the prospect of a trip into the village. She was four years old and full of life and energy. “May I wear a bow in my hair?” she asked.
“Yes, why not? You’ll look so pretty.” Lena brushed Bep’s long, dark hair after breakfast and tied a bright bow in it. It fell naturally into thick curls. “Do you want one, too?” she asked Maaike.
She shook her head. At eleven years old she was no longer interested in girlish bows. Lena braided Maaike’s straw-blonde hair—the same color as her own—into a thick braid that fell nearly to her waist.
When it was time to go, Lena fetched her broken-down bicycle from the barn. The rubber tires were long gone, replaced with clunky wooden wheels that Pieter had made. In peacetime her bicycle would be considered a piece of junk—and it was—but at least the Nazis wouldn’t confiscate it. She lifted little Bep onto the handlebars, and Maaike climbed onto the board Pieter had attached to the rear fender. Lena tied the two containers of milk to her body, hidden beneath her sweater and apron, and set off on the three-mile trip into the village.
The pastures between her farm and the town looked tired and pale this morning, like an invalid who’d lain in bed too long. More fenceposts were missing, and several more trees had disappeared, chopped down for fuel this past winter. They were calling that long, endless season the “Hunger Winter.” With the railroad workers on strike, food had become so scarce in the cities that hundreds of starving people had staggered out to Lena’s farm every week from Leiden or even Den Hague to beg for food. Her little nation would have much rebuilding to do once the war finally ended. But Lena suspected that the hardest task would be repairing the discord and mistrust among neighbors and even families. For the past five years, no one had known whom they could trust or who might sell their secrets to the Nazis to feed their starving children. She and Pieter had known, when they’d hidden Jews and onderduikers, that if they were discovered, they would be arrested and imprisoned.
Lena was nearly to town when she heard the glorious cacophony of church bells ringing in the distance. She slowed to a halt as joy leaped in her heart. “Listen, girls! Do you hear the bells?”
“But it isn’t Sunday, Mama,” Bep said.
“I know. It means the Netherlands is free! We’re free!” Her breath caught in her throat. She was saying the words but could barely comprehend that they were true.
“Does that mean the soldiers will go away?” Maaike asked.
“Yes, they will be gone for good. The Netherlands will be free again!” She couldn’t imagine it. Lena wondered if Maaike even remembered a time when Nazi soldiers and their roaring motorcycles weren’t a common sight. She had been six years old when they’d invaded the Netherlands. Little Bep was too young to remember freedom at all.
Lena picked up her pace as she pedaled the last mile into town. The village square and the street in front of her father’s church were packed with rejoicing people as if it were Easter Sunday. The church bells clamored so loudly they could probably be heard all the way out to her farm. Lena’s friends and the neighbors she had known all her life were laughing and embracing each other, their faces streaming with tears of joy. Her cousin Truus pushed through the crowd and hugged Lena tightly, the milk cans clanking as the women rocked in place. “Isn’t it wonderful, Lena? We’re free! The Nazis are gone at last!”