“She starts out with the usual ‘hope you are well’s’ and then tells me that we are over. Finished.”
“No . . . why?”
“She has read all the things in the newspapers and said she’s disappointed in me,” he said. “She said she could understand me fighting but couldn’t see how I could guard women and children. Didn’t mind me getting shot at, but can’t tolerate my standing guard.”
He deserved better. “I could not imagine one of our women turning her back on a man fighting for his country,” I said. “I can understand leaving him only if he did not fight for his country.”
It was another example of how our women were superior to British women. I would stress this point another day. But this was a time for understanding.
“Yes . . . exactly. She doesn’t think I’m the man I was. Of course I’m not; who would be?”
“She doesn’t understand you.”
“Not at all.”
“Have you told her about . . . everything?”
“Not much . . . I’m not proud . . . getting transferred . . . no . . . I didn’t explain that to her.”
“She has no idea what you’ve been through. You’re better off without her.”
“Better off?”
“This was her chance to show her loyalty. How long did it last? She turned away at the first sign of hardship.”
“She must have somebody else. I would wager anything.”
He needed compassion. I put down my buckets and came close, closer, and hugged him, feeling the rifle and its steely mechanisms across his back.
He pulled back and shuffled the pages of the letter until he got to the end. “Look. . . . Read the last line.”
I read aloud: “Best of luck in the future.”
“Can you believe that? Like I was some stranger who was trying to find work. Best of luck? Best of luck stayin’ alive? Best of luck fighting a war . . . living without her? What future? What future do I have?”
He asked as if I was supposed to answer, but I had no idea of anybody’s future.
“What future?” he asked again.
“Here . . . let me look.” I studied the note.
I tilted my head from side to side, taking time to show I was considering a response. “She writes in a pleasant hand.”
He leaned his head back so I could see his moist eyes, and I wished I could take back the last remark. He put the letter back in his tunic and dragged his nose across his sleeve.
“After all I’ve gone through . . . now what?” he asked.
“You’re asking me?”
“You’re a woman . . .”
What could I tell him? No, I’m not heartsore she broke it off? It was the best news I had heard in a long time. I was so happy I had to force myself not to show it.
I had two empty buckets and had to get to the pump. But when I tried to step around him, he stopped me.
“Can you stay a little longer? I don’t want to be alone.”
“All right.” I put down the buckets again.
“I don’t think your mother will mind.”
“You talked?” I pretended ignorance.
“We did . . . handsome woman . . . delicate features,” he said.
“Delicate? She’s made of iron.” I was offended; I was the one who was delicate. He did not sense my offense. “I thought she hated you.”
“I’m looking into some things for her.”
I waited.
“Fine, but don’t tell her I told you. . . . She wants me to ask around for information on your uncle Sarel,” he said. “And then she wants me to find a way to get her over to the Joiners’ camp.”
“She wants to go there?”
“Very much.”
“Why?”
“It seems she wants to find your uncle.”
“And . . .”
“And she wants to kill him.”
“She said that? She told you? Why would she tell a British guard something like that?”
“Because she wants me to help her do it.”
I STUDIED MOEDER AFTER Maples’s remark, trying to sense murderous intent. I knew she could generate the necessary rage, and she also had the ability to craft a plan. She had withdrawn from us for some time, I realized now, but had done so in a clever way that we didn’t notice. By giving me more rein to walk whenever I chose, and easing back on some of Willem’s rules, she earned more private time for herself. Loosening her hold on us was a way of gaining separation while staying in the same place.
But morally? She was absolutely devout, but “righteous vengeance” was a term I had heard her use several times, as if laying out a biblical excuse. She might consider it her “bounden duty,” as she used to say, to cleanse the family name. I thought of the way Willem and Klaas had made wild plans to kill guards. They were just boys at play, but Moeder would be an actual threat. She might have been listening to their plans while pretending to ignore them at the time. I shuddered at the risk she took in not only telling Maples but enlisting his help.
I couldn’t ask or even hint that I knew. She was pulling back and hardening over with a shell, and I suspected her of working through options in her mind with the same tenacity that Willem chewed his riempies.
She needed my help. Not with her plans for Oom Sarel, but in avoiding a family disaster. I did not care what happened to him. I had no respect for the man. Tante Hannah would be freed by his absence—whatever the cause. But I feared an attempt would only get Moeder in trouble and leave Willem and me in this camp on our own. Then I would have to be Willem’s mother and someday have to explain it all to Vader and Schalk. How could I take over? I didn’t even know how to cook.
I needed to draw her out, to occupy her mind. I could not talk about the men, it would fuel her anger. Family was out of the question. The past? The future? No topic seemed safe.
Someone was playing the concertina again, another dirge, slow and mournful. Even muted by canvas, it came from close enough that we could follow the melody, but it was still far enough away that it seemed carried by wind from a distance. Once again, a few bars of light dance music were added, as if the concertina were playing itself just for a moment to remind everyone that it was not only an instrument of mourning.
“Would it be all right if I tried to find who is playing?” I asked Moeder. Maybe I could persade whoever it was to play something joyful.
She did not consent but did not forbid; she might not have even heard me. By the time I stood and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, the music was finished and there was no point.
“I wish we could hear more,” I said.
She looked up.
“Ma, do you think you could play the concertina?”
The question breached her wall of thoughts; her expression softened.
“I don’t know . . . maybe . . . once I figured it out.”
“I miss your playing the organ. . . . You play so wonderfully.”
At times I saw her fingers move as if dancing upon invisible keys.
“What is it like when you play music, Ma?”
“No . . . Lettie . . .”
“You can remember songs even without the music, can’t you?”
“Um-hmm.”
“You could play even without the keys in front of you, can’t you?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Could you play one with your fingers in the air and hum the notes?”