After Germany invaded Poland, my father read the newspapers with greater fervor. He’d drop the tightly coiled paper on the table, and Edwin and I would scoop it up to read what little details there were about Russia and Germany dividing up Poland. We secretly wanted to be part of the army, but were confused why the Germans would do such a thing with the Bolshevik Russians everyone at camp had talked so poorly about. We read about England going to rations and evacuating cities, about Germany bombing Scapa Flow naval base in Scotland, and the British air attacks on the German navy. My father and Uncle Martin had charted and been practicing our escape plan for months.
“What will happen to them if war begins?” our mother kept asking. The question radiated from her. “We should send the boys somewhere.”
“Drika, where?” my father asked. “We don’t have any family to send them to.”
We had no extended family. My father’s parents were dead and he had no siblings. My mother’s parents were gone as well, her only two distant cousins killed during the Great War, and talk of any of that lot had been veiled and avoided. As for friends, owning the factory in town came with wealth and privilege, but everyone saw us as employers, acquaintances at best, and we had no one we could send our own to for protection, for keepsake. That was the unspoken trade for our fortune.
If the Germans decided to cross the Rhine into Holland, my mother, Edwin, and I would board the Lighthouse Lady and work our way along the coast, sneaking through the North Sea to northern England, away from any cities. My father would stay behind to shut down the factory and come later with his banking and business books on his own boat. We drilled on what to take and where to meet. My uncle and father stocked the hulls of their boats with food and spare clothing. They told us we were not to discuss our plans with anyone else, not even Ludo or Hilda. It was imperative to our safety that we remain quiet. But every time we went through the plan, I secretly played out my own amendment of sprinting to get Hilda, and the two of us going to gather up Ludo. If I was going, they were coming with me.
Holland was promised neutrality by the German government. However, all along, the Dutch people seemed to intuit that Hitler would eventually invade our country. It was a case of proximity. Either out of fear or denial, our government didn’t properly prepare for any war, and when the sense of an impending German invasion mounted, they started to scramble, drafting as many men as possible into the army.
“The boys are too young to get drafted,” I heard my father say through the heating ducts.
My mother’s reply was unclear.
“I know, but everything we worked for is at stake here,” he said. “The factory, the house, all of it.”
On April 9, 1940, when the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway, they set up a sea blockade around Denmark that stretched to the Frisian Islands north of Delfzijl. Uncle Martin had been working his way back from a North Sea fishing trip when a German navy ship stopped him, checked his papers, and searched his ship. They set up a naval blockade, and from what he could gather, it covered the escape route we had mapped out to England.
I remember sitting with my parents after we found this out. They were side by side, holding hands, which I always found comforting.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
I think I only ever wanted us to be together, for the war to pass us by and everything to be a smooth sheet of ice for us to glide over.
“I don’t know,” my father said.
My mother took her finger and traced small circles on the inside of his wrist.
“You know,” my father said, softly, as if to himself, “on April twentieth, the Führer’s birthday, merchants decorate their store windows with oil paintings of Hitler looking sternly into the distance. They use these large red wax candles to illuminate the paintings like he were a new god to worship.”
A second plan was then made. My father’s factory was finishing the giant Volkswagen order; he would have it shipped to Rotterdam via train and then to Germany in early May by steamer. He would finish the order and see it to Rotterdam in person, where he would look for a boat that could take us to England.
Three weeks later, on May 9, the lights were finally done and ready to be loaded onto the train. Our father took me and Edwin with him, and if he could find a boat, he would wire for our mother to join us. We would leave and wait out whatever would happen in England.
“I’m not going without Hilda and Ludo,” I said.
“They can’t come with us.”
“Sure they can. Buy them tickets.”
“They have their families. Look. We’ll be back soon. Think of it as a vacation.”
“Then can I come later with Mother?” Edwin asked. He had started a canvas painting and didn’t want to leave it. The paint was expensive and he used it only when he had a sketch he loved and felt worthy of the materials.
“No. I want you to come with me. You’ll want to see the shipment off. It will give you an idea of the whole process.”
“I already have a good idea, and I have something here I want to work on.”
“What? A drawing? Come on. You’ll miss your whole life if you keep your nose in a sketchpad.”
Edwin pulled at the sleeve of his shirt, a habit used when he was hurt or angry. He looked straight at my father and almost snapped, “I’m capturing life.”
“You don’t want to go to camp. You don’t want to go to the city with me. You probably just want to paint all over your skin and go to the sea. Draw the waves all day.”
“That would be no different than tinkering with lights all the time.”
“Edwin,” my mother said.
“That tinkering with lights created a secure life for us. A place for this family in the world. Your painting can wait. Your friends can wait. That’s the end of it,” my father said. “You’ll come with me and see how the lights travel. And besides. Mr. Gunnelburg may be in Rotterdam, and if he is I’d like you boys to tell him how much you enjoyed the camp. It was his idea. It would be helpful to me.”
“Is that why you’re really taking them, Hans?” my mother said.
“No. They wanted to travel with me last time. This will be good for them. And might be our way out.”
We rode in the passenger train while my mother stayed behind and saw to the loading of the shipment on the cargo train several hours afterward.
The train stopped in Amsterdam, where we had a three-hour stopover.
“Edwin. I want to make up for forcing you to come,” my father said. “Follow me.”
We walked out of the train station, passed the canals full of riverboats tied stem to stern, storefronts with diamond traders from Antwerp, and narrow brownstone homes with iron balconies built wall-to-wall with one another. I saw a smutty flyer for a dancing girls show on the ground and when my father and brother weren’t looking I bent down to snatch it up and folded it into my pants pocket. As we walked that day I kept pulling it out to sneak a peek of the pencil drawing of the woman with leggings up to her thighs, a flowing camisole with a hooked line of cleavage, long black hair, and plum-colored lips.
I kept my fingers pinched on the flyer in my pocket. The pad of my thumb traced the flat line of the woman’s image, desperately imagining the contours.