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Thaw: Part 2

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Michael Winter's short story is the tale of a Dutch family coping with the upheavals of German occupation during World War II.

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By MICHAEL WINTER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 9, 2009

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second installment of Tribune staffer Michael Winter's novella about a Dutch family coping with the upheavals of German occupation during World War II. It runs in four parts, publishing each Sunday through Jan. 25. To read the first installment, go to TBO.com, Keyword: Thaw.

Winter is a Tribune page designer whose parenting column, Pop & Circumstance, appears twice a month in Baylife Magazine. His fiction has been published in Modern Short Stories, The Tampa Review, Other Voices and Fourteen Hills.

Thaw, Part II

It came like so many other things during the war: quickly and unexpectedly, although to be truthful, everything at that time was in some way unexpected. We had never expected to be servants in our own hotel. We had never expected our rooms to be filled with an occupying army's soldiers and our banquet hall with their prisoners. Mama and Papa had never expected the war to begin. Once begun, they had not expected it to draw our quiet homeland into its maw. And, after a time, I believe in their hearts they did not expect the war to ever end.

We did not expect Papa to be arrested that winter day.

December had been bleak and frigid. February, warmer and wetter, was somehow worse. The snow fell in big, lazy flakes that built up in great drifts along the leeward sides of buildings and sculpted icy cornices on all the eastern-facing eaves. Under their white blankets, the bombed-out shells of gutted homes resembled icebergs with fantastic hollows and angles carved out of them by the cutting force of the wind. The snow made me think of the confession box, for it seemed the entire city had made amends for its wicked ways and had its soul wiped clean and pure and white by the power of an all-forgiving God.

Those great alabaster dunes had an anesthetizing effect, at least for a few moments. They could lull me to an inner quiet I did not know even in sleep. I would forget. Then I would remember, and that was why this was the worst time for me. After a few moments, I would always remember.

Although February was warmer than December and January, it was still quite cold. And because of the tremendous amount of snow, travel became a thing of careful planning and monumental effort. Only the railroad tracks were kept free of the drifts. Both the bombers and the German engineers saw to that.

It was because of the roads being mostly impassable that Papa was arrested.

Fuel was precious. Our hotel was a sprawling, gloriously ramshackle monument to inefficiency. It had been built in 1891 by a famous Dutch architect whose tastes had run toward neo-rococo designs. The charm of this style of building rested chiefly in its outlandish impracticality.

An unimaginative mind might have called our hotel garish. Indeed, family legend has it that Grandpa called it a glorified blockhouse when he purchased it at a state auction in 1928. But Papa was fiercely proud of her. She was a city landmark and frequented by men of the social aristocracy before the war. It was said she was the inspiration for the new city hall. There was certainly a resemblance, although that latter building had a good deal more bureaucratic sensibility than our hotel.

Although great attention was paid to her elaborate façade, little thought apparently was given to her less tangible qualities, namely insulation. As a result, she was a challenge to keep heated, even in the best of times. Papa had a new furnace installed and coal heaters added to many of the rooms. During warm winters, this was enough to keep the hotel cozy. During cold winters, we closed up the rooms at either end of the hotel and concentrated our efforts on keeping the core of the building warm.

This year, as coal became more and more scarce, room after room was closed off until by February, only the six rooms the Germans occupied, the banquet hall and the kitchen were heated. We no longer slept in the little storeroom. Instead we slept around the big kitchen stove like explorers around the campfire.

And still the fuel dwindled. Papa was gone every day looking for something to burn. With the car buried over its headlights in a snow bank, he had to search on foot. The previous year, before the Allies started bombing the tracks, Papa and I would search along the ties for pieces of coal that had fallen from the coal trains. But we were not permitted near the rail anymore. Instead, Papa would strap on his snowshoes and look for deadwood in the forest. Sometimes he would return with a large fagot strapped to his back. Sometimes he came back with little more than a few gnarled branches, no thicker than a finger. Papa said all the trees were stripped nine feet high of bark and limbs. Everyone was looking for fuel.

We burned the coal. When the coal was gone, we burned the wood Papa found. When the wood was gone, we burned boxes and wrapping paper. We burned brooms and mops. We burned magazines and old newspapers. Finally, we burned the bedsheets and the curtains.

One morning near the end of February, Mama, Pieter, Joop and I sat around the stove in the kitchen, each wrapped in our memories of summer like woolen blankets. Mama's hands were red and cracked from the laundry she washed in the metal tub by the sink. Her hands were long, the fingers shapely and delicate, and I remember thinking what a shame it was those fingers should be raw from lye and bleach. A million years ago, or so it seemed, our family had been well off. Not so well off that we could have paid to stay as guests in a place like our hotel. Mama always got a chuckle out of that irony. But comfortable nevertheless. Now Mama spent her time washing German uniforms and cooking watered-down porridge for the prisoners.

It was midmorning. Papa had gone out on his daily search for something to feed the furnace. The rest of us were playing a game of sorts, although it seemed a current of desperation ran like a frigid river just below the surface of our jocularity.

"When summer arrives, I will fly a blue kite," said Joop.

"When summer arrives, I will fly a blue kite and knit green knickers," said Mama.

"When summer arrives, I will fly a blue kite, knit green knickers and sketch a scarlet cardinal," said Pieter.

"When summer arrives, I will fly a blue kite, knit green knickers, sketch a scarlet cardinal and," I paused, searching for a suitable addition, "and plunder a purple pirate's prized possession."

Joop giggled and clapped his hands, and Mama laughed until tears stood in her eyes. "Oh, Hendrik," she said, "you put us all to shame."

I am not sure how long we sat there, lulled as it were in our fantasies of perpetual summer. It may have been all morning, for we had little else to occupy the hours. What brought us out of our daze was the gradual awareness of a commotion coming from the banquet room. Mama put a finger to her lips to silence us. At first we heard nothing. Then, after nearly a minute of holding our tongues, there came a splintering, ripping noise from the prisoners' room. From our place in the kitchen, it was muffled and indistinct, but even through the walls, the knell of destruction was unmistakable. It sounded as if those haggard Poles and Russians were clawing their way to freedom.

"The prisoners are trying to escape!" Pieter whispered harshly through clenched teeth, wild hope springing up like flames from kindling heaped on glowing coals.

"Hush," Mama said. She cocked her head and waited until the noise was repeated. Mama stood and slung the shirt she had been washing over the clothesline strung across the room. "Wait here," she said and left.

We crowded around the door, Pieter wedged beside me, Joop hovering around our legs.

"Is it a riot, do you suppose?" Pieter asked, his face flushed, his hands clamped white-knuckled around my arm.

"If it were, we would have heard shooting."

"Then what is it, Henk?" asked Joop. He, too, seemed to have been caught up in an almost holiday excitement. At last something had broken our long, monotonous wait for the coming thaw.

"I think the prisoners are pulling down the wall panels in their room to burn in their stove."

At that moment Papa retuned. The front doors swung open; a confetti of snowflakes swept in before him, and there he stood, enameled in ice, bundled like an Arctic explorer with only his eyes poking above the scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth and his fur-lined hat wreathing his head like the petals of a huge, gray flower.

He unclasped his snowshoes and stamped the melting snow from his boots. Under each arm, he cradled what appeared to be shutters torn from their moorings.

"Hendrik, come give me a hand here," he said when he saw us gathered around the far threshold. "I found these in one of the abandoned buildings. They're heavy." He hoisted one in the air. "Solid. They'll burn for hours."

I took them from him while he shrugged out of his coat. The cold radiated off him like a draft from an open window. "It's getting colder out. Coldest day this month. Maybe the snow will stop."

He had no more than hung up his coat when Joop blurted out in a breathless rush, "The prisoners are burning the walls, Papa." Pieter kicked him in the calf, and Joop let out an indignant whoop.

"Hush. We don't know that. Mama is checking."

"What's that you say?" Papa turned, and in the burning intensity of his gaze, all thought of deception evaporated. There was a long, excruciating pause. We stood quaking under his glare.

"I asked you a question. Why do you stand there huddled like quail? What do you mean 'the prisoners are burning the walls'?"

"There were noises coming from the banquet hall," I answered at last. "Mama has gone to check on it."

There was another muted, rending thud, and more: grunts and curses as hands pulled and heaved against the wood. Papa stood perfectly still for a moment, eyes darting back and forth as if he were trying to grasp the full implication of what was happening. Then his jaw clenched, and without another word, he stormed past us and into the hall.

During the three years the Germans had occupied our city I had not known terror. Dread was a familiar thing, vague, unfocused, constant, as close as a third brother to me after all this time. I came to accept it. And eventually I forgot what life was like without it. But until that instant I had not known terror. Now it clamped cold fingers around my throat and squeezed until my eyes bulged and my tongue was a swollen thing behind my teeth.

A small noise escaped me, the squeak of a hinge six rooms away. I held onto the door jam to keep the world from swinging out beneath my feet. The next few minutes passed in a groggy haze, timeless the way dreams are. I could hear my heart galloping in my ears.

Mama and the feldwebel were down the hall talking in low, urgent whispers. The German was a tall, brittle man with white hair and eyes that seemed always on the verge of tears. He was soft-spoken and meticulously polite to everyone. Despite the gulf between us, I saw him through a grandchild's eyes. He had never been anything but kind to us.

Papa stamped up to him and for a moment, I thought he intended to leap upon his back and wrestle him to the ground. Instead, he stormed to within inches of his nose, flushed and shaking with fury. What was the meaning of this?, he shouted. How dare they allow such a thing to happen. This was his home, his livelihood. You are all nothing more than uninvited guests and this, this was how you repay his family's generosity?

The feldwebel absorbed this onslaught with an unflinching, phlegmatic patience. There was nothing he could do, he said. It had been Hauptmann Schmitz's decision. He understood how difficult it must be, but these were difficult times. We all must make sacrifices.

"Sacrifices!" Papa spat.

Mama tried to lay a hand on his shoulder, to draw him away from the German, but he shook her off and poked a quivering finger into the feldwebel's chest. "You, you are the ones who have made these difficult times! Do not talk to me of sacrifices."

"Mr. Hodeffer, please." The feldwebel laid a long hand across Papa's chest and pushed him back. It was not a hard push, but Papa staggered against the far wall.

"Do not make this more difficult on yourself. You do not want to attract the attention of the hauptmann. He will not be so understanding."

"Bring him here! Yes, bring your master here. I will have a word with him. Or is he too busy with his Miss Brackenhouser to hold an audience with a lowly innkeeper?"

"I think for you, Mr. Hodeffer, I can spare a moment."

Papa turned. Mama turned. The feldwebel turned. Pieter, Joop and I turned. The hauptmann stood at the bottom of the far staircase. He was dressed casually, no cap, no coat, white shirt open at the collar. His sleeves were rolled up, and his hands, beautiful and sculpted, more an artist's hands than Pieter's, hung loosely at his side. I did not look at his face. I watched his right hand, for it was there that my father's life now rested.

Next to it, hidden in its leather holster was the hauptmann's pistol. In the time it took to draw a breath, I conjured an intimate knowledge of that gun. I knew how it would look with the officer's manicured fingers wrapped around the grip, knew how it would glow dully in the hall light, knew its weight and balance and how it would sound when the slide was pulled back, when it was fired. I winced, the report already ringing in my ears.

The hauptmann approached Papa. There was nothing casual about his stride. It was slow, assured, businesslike. As he walked, his hand passed back and forth over the holster.

"I am always willing to listen to the concerns of our Dutch brothers. Do you feel we have mistreated you, dear sir?"

The sneer in his voice was like a slap. Mama recoiled, but Papa stood his ground, although his fury had burned down into the low flame of a grumbling indignation.

"The prisoners are destroying the banquet room," he fumed. "They are tearing down the oak paneling for their stove. I cannot have my hotel pulled apart at the seams."

"It was a humanitarian gesture. They have no heat. Cold prisoners are poor workers. Would you let them freeze?"

"They will not freeze. Just this morning I found more fuel, wooden shutters from a deserted building. And there is more to be found. There is no need for this!"

"And I believe there is, Mr. Hodeffer," said the hauptmann. "I have no doubt this was once a marvelous hotel. But," he leaned to his right and, with his right hand, the one I was keeping track of, rapped lightly on the wall, producing a hollow ring.

I was ashamed of that sound. It was as if he had knocked on our souls and found them porous and flimsy. Papa flinched.

"We all know this is a poorly constructed building. So like the Dutch to lavish attention on superficial things like picturesque shutters while neglecting what lies beneath."

The hauptmann leaned close to Papa. My eyes darted away from his hand, up to his face. I could not help it. The German officer's lips pulled back just enough to show a sliver of teeth. It may have been intended as a grin, but there was no goodwill in it. His eyes were flat, black buttons stitched into the fabric of his face. His dark, close-cropped hair was very black against the livid skin of his forehead.

"Burning this place piece by piece is the most generous act I can think of. A gift to the city. Think of it as a type of civic renewal."

My father stood there as if slapped, mouth opened slightly, eyes flickering back and forth as the words took root and wormed their way through the clay walls of his denial. Mama stepped forward and placed a trembling hand on his sleeve. "Herjan," she said.

Papa did not respond. The little muscles of his jaw began to quiver. His eyes were steady now, fixed upon the other man's. Carefully, in the same slow, precise manner I had spoken to Pieter two months earlier in the attic, he said, "You damn Nazi swine."

The hauptmann's sickly grin did not fade. It stayed tacked to his face like a paper mask. He took a step back and raised his arm, and there, clutched in his fist, was his pistol, its long, thin barrel pointing like a dark finger at my father's chest.

"And now, Mr. Hodeffer, I believe I shall have to shoot you." His voice was light and conversational. He may have been ordering soup for dinner.

"No!" Mama screamed. She threw herself between Papa and the German.

"Please, Herr Schmitz. He does not know what he says." She made a motion toward him, as if to lay her hands upon his forearm, but he took another step back and she instead grasped her own hands in a gesture of beseeching.

"He is a broken man. He has seen everything he cares for ripped away from him. Please, I beg of you. Do not kill him for words said in anger. He will apologize."

She turned to Papa, clutching the lapel of his coat. "Tell him, Herjan. Tell him you did not mean it."

"I will not." Still his eyes did not leave the German's. "Go ahead, shoot me. All your authority and solutions come from the barrel of a gun. It is all you people know."

The hauptmann chuckled. "Political posturing. Why do you all insist your final words be some pathetic attempt at profundity? It's really quiet tiresome."

He released the slide on his semiautomatic. It sounded exactly as I imagined. Beside me, Pieter made a sudden dash toward Papa, and before I realized it, I was in motion and we were both tangled in a heap on the floor. He fought under me, screaming and biting and clawing for my eyes. He was a heaving mass of fury bucking under my weight, and it took all my effort to hold him down. His nails drew blood. In our struggle, we grew slick with it, but still I held him down.

"Let me go! Get off, Henk!" He made a tremendous effort and nearly rolled me off, but I grasped him as tightly as I could, my arms locked around his shoulders, holding him to me in a desperate embrace. He spat at me, twisting snakelike, panting and crying and cursing until his breath came in great, wheezing, broken drags. When his struggles had quieted, I glanced up.

They were all staring at us, Mama, Papa, the hauptmann, the feldwebel and also two more German soldiers who must have been drawn by the commotion. Pieter and I had become performers. I lay there stupidly, my brother under me. I had forgotten my next lines.

"Unruly boys," the hauptmann said. I thought I heard admiration in his voice. He spoke Dutch better than we did.

"I would not have thought such passion possible in the children of Holland. There must be some German blood in the small one. He fights like a boar with its foot caught in a noose."

He re-holstered his gun and motioned to the soldiers. "Your husband is under arrest," he said. "He will be taken to the city jail." He spoke a few quick, German words to the guards, and each grabbed one of Papa's arms and began dragging him away.

"What am I being charged with?" he asked. He did not struggle. His voice was flat. All emotion had drained from him. There was not even curiosity in his question, only a weary indifference.

"Your husband shall face charges of interfering with the functions of a military operation," the hauptmann said to my mother. "Quite serious charges." He did not even glance at Papa. For him, my father no longer existed.

The soldiers pulled Papa down the hall and out the door. He did not lift his head as he passed Pieter and me. When he was gone, Mama came to us. Pieter and I stumbled to our feet. I was lightheaded, my balance unsure. Many things were happening, but they flowed on either side of me and I was not touched by them. I found myself back in the kitchen, sitting at the table with Joop wailing at my side and Mama by the door in her coat.

"Are they going to kill Papa?" Joop asked through his tears. "Will they arrest us, too? Don't leave, Mama." He reached out and grasped her sleeve. "They will come for all of us."

"Hush, Joop." She dried his face with a ragged tissue. "I will be fine. I am going to talk to the acting mayor. I will be back soon."

Mama turned to me. "Keep an eye on your brothers. Don't let them do anything stupid."

There was a fierceness in her tone that drew me out of my stupor. She stood there, lost in the folds of an overcoat shiny with age and too big for her. She could have been a beggar woman or a Gypsy. It was not the way I wanted to remember my mother should she not return.

"I'll keep watch over them," I said. Mama nodded, gave Joop a quick, perfunctory hug, and then she, too, was gone.

NEXT WEEK: A mother's sacrifice keeps her family whole but adds yet another layer of frost to the cold winter.

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