Sixty blades of grass, p.1
Sixty Blades of Grass, page 1
Sixty Blades of Grass
Elizabeth Millane
Copyright © 2023 Elizabeth Millane
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The right of Elizabeth Millane to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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First published in 2023 by Bloodhound Books.
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Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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www.bloodhoundbooks.com
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Print ISBN: 978-1-5040-8631-8
Contents
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Rika’s Diary
Part I
1. Rika Paints
Rika’s Diary
2. Rachel and Rika
Rika’s Diary
3. Maxim Meets with the Germans
Rika’s Diary
4. A Contact for Rika
Rika’s Diary
5. The Train Station
Rika’s Diary
6. Home
7. A Concert with Rika and Adriaan
Rika’s Diary
8. After the Concert
9. Maxim and his Grief
10. Concert Aftermath
Rika’s Diary
11. Crazy Business
Rika’s Diary
12. The Dentist
13. Fooling Them All
Rika’s Diary
14. Candlesticks
15. Beer Hall
16. Maxim and the Colonel
17. A Closet
Rika’s Diary
18. The Paintings have Gone
19. The Colonel Visits
20. An Engagement
21. Maxim Offers Bettina
Rika’s Diary
22. Rings for Rika and Adriaan
Rika’s Diary
23. Visitors
24. Maxim and Bettina
25. Rika Dreams with Liesbeth and Amie
Rika’s Diary
26. Babies and Rika
27. A Nazi, Two Whores, a Driver, and a Spy
Rika’s Diary
28. Rika and the Airmen
Rika’s Diary
29. The Last Train
30. Caught
Part II
31. Prison
32. Maxim Goes into Hiding
33. Interrogation
34. Invasion
35. Friendship
36. Straw
37. Dreaming
38. Facing Reality and Hoping Anyway
39. The Water Runs Red
40. Giving Up
41. Where Do the Souls Go?
42. Shut Up
43. Executions
44. Hope
45. I Lose Bep
46. Discovered
47. Liesbeth's Story
48. Cigarettes
49. A Memorial for Adriaan
50. Ben
51. A Farm
52. The Truck Ride
53. The Fairies Are Gone
54. A Chicken Coop
55. Natzweiler Prison Camp
56. A Long Road
57. Dreams
Note from the Author
Acknowledgments
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A note from the publisher
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For Ria, Albin and Lieschen
Rika’s Diary
My life lingered only in reality dreams.
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Sometimes I feel I am too young for all of this, working in secret, terrified and yet exhilarated. I am a girl really, seventeen, and if I succeed, it’s because I focus so much, like an adult would, on all the tasks they give me. It’s a heady feeling to know that I may make a difference, but a brutal feeling to feel hunted, and I feel hunted so much of the time.
I guess I was lured by the romance of doing something bold and brave, something no one else could do, they said. At first, they asked me only to fetch refreshments for small meetings. I brought what I could buy with their meager funds; apples, bread, tea, beer filched from home. Once served, they let me stay, sitting on the floor, listening to them speak in passionate bursts about plans. In the dim light, I knew their voices more than their features. People came and went, bringing in documents, departing with others, no words of goodbye or farewell. No one used a name, and I didn’t offer mine. I sat and thought, soon there will be a job for me.
And then there was. We need to know about the transports. You, you are an artist. You paint! Put everything in code. Numbers are everything.
What do I do if I am caught?
Lie!
Part One
Chapter 1
Rika Paints
Rika
Amsterdam Central Train Station
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The clouds tumble over and into themselves in the gray winter sky as I scurry through the rubble strewn field next to the rail yard. I am freezing. Cold gusts of wind find gaps in my coat and force loose strands of hair from my scarf, sending them waving around my face. One fine strand catches in the corner of my mouth and I try to work it free with my tongue, but it won’t go away and I have to stop and dig my finger around my cheeks, gagging, until the slender torment is gone, brushed away by my fingertips, carried by the wind. My shoes crunch on the hard ground and jar my teeth. I put my tongue between them, bruising it. Moments later, I catch my toe on the debris from the bombing and fall to my knees, my art supplies crashing down at my side, my knees stinging with scrapes. “Stront,” I mutter and get to my feet again.
At the top of a slight rise, I stop to catch my breath and survey the scene before me. It is one I have painted before. How many times will I need to paint it again?
I trip again over a loose brick, remnants of an explosion in the rail yard during the invasion. Fucking Germans. It feels good to swear, like a burp. I do it again, and with the burp, my stomach rises. I want to vomit, but I press on, to the location where I will get the best view.
I take a deep breath and grit my teeth. I just know I’m going to get caught one of these days. I just know it. It’s so obvious what I’m doing. For one thing, it’s too early in the morning for anyone to be here. Stupid Resistance. Only they could dream up a task like this. I am an idiot, a fool to accept this assignment. It’s going to get me killed.
I stop and turn around, slowly. Am I being watched? Does anyone suspect what I am about to do? My breath comes in bursts. My heart pounds. I can hear it in my ears.
To slow my racing heart, I rehearse my lie under my breath in a cadence with my footsteps. I am not spying. I am an artist. I practice my craft here, among the weeds and flowers of the abandoned rail yard. Of course the Germans will believe me! Why wouldn’t they?
But I am not convinced. Don’t make a wish a promise.
I stamp my feet hard to get the feeling back in my toes and search for the best vantage point. Breathe, Rika, I tell myself. I cannot shake this feeling of being watched.
This assignment never gets easier. It’s actually harder, every time I walk in here to paint. More dangerous. If someone spots me once, so what? But every week I am here, sometimes twice. The odds aren’t good. Someone is going to notice.
I catch a sob. Can’t someone else do it, just once? But no, it has to be me every time. I raise my fist to the sky and shake it. Fucking Germans and the Resistance!
I stop, freeze in my tracks. I can leave. Turn around, get out of this rail yard. What’s stopping me? I don’t need this. I’ll tell my Resistance group I am done. It’s too dangerous for me! Let someone else do it!
Then I hear the distant clank of a railcar. The sound drives deep in my bones. It’s a call to duty, a call to action. This is the reason I am here, in this godforsaken place. Fighting the Germans, the only way I can.
You have to do this, Rika. You know you do.
I square my shoulders, take a deep breath, and continue my march. Don’t give in to the fear now. Don’t you dare, I tell myself. Fear is a luxury. Get it done and get out of here.
I glance around again. There’s no one else in this section of the rail yard. Only me, alone, for today, for now. I teeter on a loose brick and march on.
Here’s the place. I drop my gear, bang my campstool down, rub my hands together. It’s time to begin.
Unscrewing the cap on the jar of water I have brought to rinse my brushes, I set the jar on a level spot on the ground. I sit down, wobble a little, curse, sit harder on the stool to drill the legs into the ground. I pick up cakes of paint and lay out the pans of color onto my molded pallet. From my rucksack I withdraw a sheet of paper, tape the corners to a stiff board to flatten it.
The paper is a disgrace. It won’t absorb the colors like it should. It’s nothing like the fine paper reams I used before the Germans invaded. I can’t get good
I shrug. What does it matter? These paintings aren’t meant to be masterpieces.
I cup my stiff, cold hands together and blow to warm them in their gloves, the fingertips cut off to enable me to handle the brush better. I rest the board on my lap, take in the scene before me, select a brush, dip it in the water and choose a color. With a deep sigh that the wind carries away, I begin to paint.
The dried grasses, the wilted and frozen wildflowers, and fire nettles rustle all around. Above me, in the great stretch of Dutch sky, the clouds continue to churn, spitting occasional rain on my painting. Below the tumult, the train station bustles. I hear shouts, the screech of the wheels on the iron tracks, the roar of vans and buses, the murmur of moving people. I strain to see it all, counting to myself as I watch our Jews shuffle along in long lines, lugging large suitcases and clutching children’s hands, scrambling onto waiting trains. I recognize some of the soldiers by the way they move, the way they wield their guns. I catch my breath when I see the butt of a rifle brought down and a person fall. The shout and crack I hear a second later. I continue to paint, counting again and again the people and the number of trains.
My task is to document, in code, how many Jews are taken, and which direction the train takes, but I must convey more; I have to show that the violence is escalating, that the Jews are resisting the transport. I am possibly their last witness, the last person in Holland to see them. Their last voice. This painting is the last thing the Resistance may learn about their departure on this transport.
I sweep every detail I can onto the paper, but my paint on the canvas shows something altogether different. Blades of grass appear, clusters of withered wildflowers, pebbles, and soil. There is turmoil over the ground, swirling, dark, menacing clouds, not the cold gray ones that hang over me. These clouds document that there has been violence, the Germans are beating Jews into submission, but the captured Jews are resisting the “relocation.” The sun withers behind the clouds, the last rays of light illuminating the stalks of poppies and cornflowers amidst a sheen of new grass. The watercolors dry fast in the cold, dry wind.
I view the painting a moment and my heart hurts as I count hundreds of my captive Jewish countrymen, gone today. What are the Germans doing to them? Where are they going? Will we find them again? Can any of the information in these paintings save them?
More detail to add; I count the transport cars and soldiers. I note the time it took to load their prisoners. All goes on the canvas. A slash of orange means they used cattle cars on this transport. Cattle cars to transport human beings.
I glance at my watch. Almost time to hide the painting under a piece of rubble, mark it with a cake of paint. Another underground fighter will retrieve it later. My findings will be added to the information we have from other transport witnesses. Maybe all of it will lead us to these lost countrymen, so we can return them to Dutch soil, to their home again.
The whistle shrills, trains lurch, the cars clatter together, and I note the time with a few dots of rubble.
“Farewell!” I whisper to the passengers, my breath catching in my throat. Sadness descends on me, as it always does at this point in the assignment. I can’t move for a moment. The weight of what I have witnessed pushing me down onto the campstool. I breathe bastaards, and paint, on the left-hand side of the canvas, a golden leafless stem, bending as the train travels, to the east.
Then the rain, which has been spattering intermittently, starts in earnest. Time to hide the painting, go to Rachel’s house, my Jewish friend. She hasn’t answered any of my notes or calls. She might be gone on a transport already. Hurry, hurry, I tell myself, shaking off my lethargy and sadness. Get out of here. It’s time to see Rachel.
I fold the canvas, open the rucksack, and tuck away the damp brushes, the moist pans and paint spattered pallet. I pick up the jar and toss the dirty water behind me.
“ACHTUNG!”
Rika’s Diary
Rachel is my best friend. So what if she is Jewish? We Dutch don’t care, or most of us don’t. Rachel and her family are revered in Holland. Her father is a great surgeon, her mother from a great ancestral family, famous for her hospitality and generosity to causes.
Rachel is a musician, a violinist, really famous already.
It makes me furious, the way they’ve been treated. As if they’re a tasty tidbit for the Germans! The Germans are playing cat and mouse with them and have been since the occupation. Can’t Rachel and her family see it?
First, the German Reichskommissar, who controls all of Holland, assured them that due to their prominent standing, they were protected. But Papa didn’t believe it. He went to see them. “Leave!” he pleaded, standing on their threshold. He begged them: “I can get you on a boat to England.”
But they have stayed, even though their friends disappeared. Last month the Reichskommissar became elusive about their status, and still they stayed. Of course, they were all humiliated when Rachel’s fiancé, Rolf, called off the engagement because she is Jewish. And then Rachel’s instructor refused to teach her any longer, telling her he has time only for true artists, ones with promise, with a future – well, only then did Rachel understand that she has no future in Holland. But it is all too late. I cry for her, every night.
Chapter 2
Rachel and Rika
Rika
Amsterdam
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I’ve run from the tram and need to catch my breath on the steps of Rachel’s house. Is she still here, or have the Germans come and taken her away? How stupid was I to come here? Will I be caught? I tremble and look up and down the avenue. Has the German officer who found me painting followed me? Damn! Have I led him to her?
Among the German soldiers in the rail yard was an officer; I could tell by his peaked hat. Blue eyes. Olive skin. I’d thrown the dirty paint water over his pants. How long had he been there watching me paint? What did he suspect?
I prayed he bought my story. After I apologized, again and again, for ruining his pants, the lie rose to my lips and I found myself explaining what had brought me to the rail yard. I gestured at the weeds and dried flowers on the ground, telling him some were rare, a challenge to paint. I unfolded the painting to show him, then crouched by the actual plant I’d rendered, fingering the brittle leaves. I babbled on about how my instructors always wanted me to find something unique in nature. The rail yard was undisturbed, I said, I could concentrate well there. My heart had pounded so hard I could barely hear what I said. I hoped my face looked as I had rehearsed – bland, innocent, open. Eyes wide. Behind my chatter I prayed he would believe me. He had to believe me.
