Tales from the Fountain Pen (2 page)

With a shock I see that the soldier is back and has pulled out a gun and is pointing it at Siepie. I look at my friend. She’s in danger, but does not look worried. She continues to stare out the window at the gathering twilight, as if unaware of what’s happening. She is calm. So very calm it scares me, more than the soldier with the gun.

The
Oberst
comes in and the soldier whispers something then points the gun again at my friend.

“
Fr
ä
ulein
,” the superior in the long, black, leather coat says, “you will show me your pen.” His voice is filled with menace. Siepie turns around slowly, reaches into her bag and hands the man…my pen!

I recognize it the moment the man unscrews the cap and gets ink on his hand. The pen always leaks when it’s almost empty.

It doesn’t stop him, though; he takes apart the whole pen while Siepie looks on without any show of emotion. I on the other hand can barely contain the rage I am feeling. I don’t know who to be more angry at, the German or my best friend.

Once he is satisfied that the pen does not contain—what, a secret message?—he none-too-carefully hands the pen back to Siepie. I watch her calmly screw it back together, adding to the ink stain from earlier on her hand.

“You pass, this time,” the man snarls. “But we are watching you.” He points at Siepie, who continues to fiddle with the pen, paying the man little attention.

“And you,
Fräulein
, choose your friends more carefully or it will go badly for you.” He now points at me and gives me a look somewhere between a smile and a snarl. I get the impression that was meant as “fatherly” advice, but it sends shivers of revulsion through my body.

With a clang the door slides shut on our compartment and the men stomp off to harass some other poor passenger.

We sit quietly for some time, not speaking or even looking at each other. If Siepie is scared, she’s hiding it well. Could they really have thought my small and delicate friend with the too-big glasses would be working for the resistance? She has always been the quieter one of us two, the more delicate and sickly one. Surely not, they must be mistaken.

“What was that all about?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

The train is now moving again and I can see the German soldier and his superior conferring with others on the road, just inside the railway crossing gates, which are still down. Perhaps they think themselves so superior that no train would dare run them over. They have everyone so cowed, especially after what they did to Rotterdam. I hate them.

“They must have thought I was someone else. Maybe they thought I was carrying a secret message in my pen.” Siepie leans in close and starts to laugh, almost hysterically. She laughs so hard that she ends up crying.

Great, uncontrollable sobs shake her small frame. I go to sit next to her and put my arm around her shoulders. I pull her close and wait for the fear to stop shaking her. She certainly played it cool with those Germans. I had no idea she was so scared.

“Wait, I have some chocolate left in my bag,” I say, and pull the half-bar of Droste out of my satchel. I break it in half and we each eat our piece quietly as I watch my friend collect herself.

“Thanks. I needed that.”

“Sure. Anything you want to tell me?” I ask again.

“No. You’re a good friend, Maggie.” She leans over and puts her hand on my arm. “You’re a good friend.”

Her words and gesture leave me with an eerie sense of foreboding.

“Almost our stop!” She jumps up and pulls on her coat. “Still damp.” She makes a face and I nod. My coat is damp too; it will make for a cold walk home.

I hope my brother will be there to walk with me. He has to be careful not to be spotted and taken for a single man, or the Germans will take him and send him to work in their factories.

“You lucky girl, Maggie,” Siepie says, and points out the window. I stoop down and see Theo, my brother, waiting on the platform.

“You’ll walk with us, won’t you?”

“No. I have to stop off at the butcher’s and pick up something for our dinner. Mother is sick and Papa won’t be home till late.”

“We can go with you and wait,” I offer.

“You’re a good friend.” There is that expression again. “I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll get Hendrik to walk me home,” she says with a wink.

“Good luck. Many girls have tried that trick,” I tease as we jump onto the platform like little kids do. “From what I hear, Hendrik has his eye on someone else.”

“You wish,” Siepie says, and dashes off on her errand, with my fountain pen.

“What’s with her?” Theo asks.

“Not sure. She got searched on the train,” I say. “Well, actually, my pen from her bag got searched.”

“What?” my brother asks.

“I don’t understand it either, but I have her new fountain pen,” I say, and then proceed to tell him all that has happened.

“Sounds to me like she’s a courier,” Theo says wisely.

“That’s dangerous work,” I say softly.

Many of the windows we pass already have the blackout curtains drawn. It makes the street look cold and the houses un-lived in. No children are out playing one last game in the twilight before dinner; even dogs are kept inside.

I put the pen down and stretch. Clearly I have sat for some time scribbling this long-buried memory from the pen. I read what I’ve written. Very little is familiar to me, and I realize with sadness all those secrets my mother kept inside her, or in her pen. She didn’t seem particularly burdened by secrets in her life. Her motto was “Why bother with what’s been. It’s best to enjoy the day and look to the future.” A good motto, I suppose, but she was such a complex and vibrant woman, that I can’t help wondering what experiences shaped her.

I know the pen will tell me, but I need some time to steel myself. Living two lives at once, which is the closest way I can describe this experience, is overwhelming, to say the least.

Even before the nib touches the paper again I am transported back to the darkened village, walking as my teenage mother and her brother. It feels cold and damp. The kind of cold that settles in your bones and makes you shiver.

We enter our house silently. I notice the brick duplex as if for the first time, though I have lived here all my life.

Before closing the door I hear a faint coughing coming from next door; it must be Siepie’s mother, sick at home. I briefly wonder if I should make some broth to take next door.

“Well, it’s about time you showed up.” My mother stands in the doorway to the kitchen with her arms crossed, and a scowl on her face. She’s a stern, short and stout woman.

“The train got searched again. They almost took Siepie!” I say, cutting her off before she can comment on the smell clinging to my coat. “It was really scary!” I add, hanging up my coat and putting my damp shoes by the coal stove in the living room. I hope she remembered to put the bed warmer between the sheets today, as there’s no heating in the attic bedroom and I get really cold up there. My sister stares at me with a funny look on her face.

“So, who was he?” she smirks. “You’ve been mooning over Hendrik again, haven’t you? That’s why you’re late.”

Why did God give me a mean older sister? And almost immediately, in answer, I hear the thought in my head,
Because he gave you a kind older brother.

“Well?” my sister says, primping her skirt and plucking invisible lint off her sweater.

“Oh, do be quiet, Betty,” I say forcefully, but quickly check my temper when I hear my father’s key in the lock. He hates it when we argue, and I don’t want to worry him. Not now that the war has him so frightened. He is always so glad to be home with all of us safe. I don’t want to do anything that might upset him.

“I have homework to do,” I say instead, and take my satchel to the dining table. I pull out my books and paper and look for my pen, which I know won’t be there. Siepie still has it. Instead I find her new one.

I unscrew it to see if has any ink in it, and find it does not.

Theo sits down next to me and puts his index finger to his lips, then takes the pen. He seems to know what he’s looking for as he deftly uses a pin from my mother’s pincushion to feel around inside the barrel of the pen.

I quickly glance behind me to see if my sister notices what we are doing, but she is reading a book and ignoring us. Just in case, though, I stand up and reach for the inkwell on the sideboard, effectively blocking Theo from her view.

My eyes grow wide when I see Theo extracting a small piece of paper from the barrel, almost the same color as the pen.

“What does it say?” I whisper as quietly as I can.

Theo unfolds the paper and holds it up for me to see, but both sides are empty. I was sure it would have a secret message on it.

We both look disappointed and stare at the little colored scrap a minute longer.

I wonder if they used red cabbage juice or perhaps beet juice to color the paper. Then a thought occurs to me, something long forgotten from a science class about hidden messages and heat.

“Hold it over the candle,” I say quietly.

Theo understands and holds the paper carefully over the heat from the flame. Before our eyes a message does appear. FRIDAY 13.00. It must be important to someone.

“I’ll put it back,” Theo says. I nod. Siepie must have known—why else would she have swapped pens?

“Dangerous stuff,” my brother says and screws the pen back together again before handing it to me. I chew my lip and nod.

A knock at the front door startles me.

“Someone get the door and someone set the table for dinner.” My mother’s voice comes from the kitchen, mingled with the familiar scent of overcooked vegetables. “And ask who it is before you open the door!”

Theo gets up, but I stop him.

“No, I’ll get it,” I say, and hold up the pen.

He nods.

“Hendrik? What brings you here, after dark?” I say with what I hope is a sly smile.

“Hi, Maggie. I just walked Siepie home and she asked me to return your pen that she borrowed earlier,” he explains. He acts as if it really was a simple pen borrowing and nothing more.

“Why didn’t she come to return it?” I ask, taking back my pen.

“She caught a chill and her mother needs her help,” the most handsome boy in our village calmly explains.

“Hmmm,” I say. “I think she’ll probably want her new pen back. It seemed important…to her.”

Now Hendrik smiles sheepishly.

“Yes, that pen is important,” he says, “to her.”

He takes Siepie’s pen and turns to leave.

“Hendrik?” I say, but hesitate to finish what I want to say.

“Yes, Maggie?” I can just make out his bright blue eyes by the thin strip of light that escapes from inside the house. He looks worried for a moment.

“Oh, nothing,” I say, chickening out.

“Right.” He turns to go again.

“Hendrik…just…be careful.”

“Always.” He gives me his most devastating smile and disappears into the darkness.

Through the flutter of butterflies in my stomach I detect that sense of foreboding, growing. I shall have to be more careful around my friends from now on. Two of them have just used me as a courier and I didn’t even know it.

The ink stops flowing, nothing more of this memory will come out of the pen. Perhaps another time I shall learn what happened to my mother’s friends.

I have avoided the siren’s call all day and only now on the cusp of twilight do I have the courage to go where the pen wishes to take me. It is, however, a fleeting courage. With some trepidation I unscrew the cap on the old pen.

Why I should feel this much fear I cannot say. Perhaps I feel every time I uncap the pen I am Pandora releasing a multitude of horrors, not necessarily upon the world, but upon myself. Will hope remain behind in the pen once I’ve set free all those memories, or will my life become overly burdened and perhaps irreparably harmed by my mother’s stories? Was that why she kept them secret; hidden in her pen?

Before I can lose myself in these contemplations the pen pulls me in, faster than before. I find myself in the dark, and disoriented.

Where am I—or rather, where is my mother?

Slowly my eyes adjust.

I am outside. The breeze is cold, but not unbearably so. Stars shine brightly overhead, but I see no sign of the moon. Perhaps that is why I am out this night. But what am I doing here on a deserted back road surrounded by farmland?

“Are you coming?” the familiar voice of my brother whispers. “We don’t want to get caught by a patrol.”

“Oh, right. I was just admiring the stars,” I say, and look at my brother. His face is almost hidden by the dark; I can barely make out his features.

He takes my arm and we walk along the empty road toward a structure in the distance. Of course: the Adema farm. I am taking my brother to the farm to hide him from the Germans.

But, wait. This is not the way to the Adema farm. Are we going even further away?

Just then, Theo puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close.

“Patrol, act married,” he hisses in my ear.

“Right.” I remember what our plan was now.

I snuggle against his shoulder. My left hand is in my pocket and I can feel our mother’s wedding band on my ring finger. Everything has been set up to give the appearance of a married couple.

“Halt,” a gruff voice behind us calls out.

We stop and slowly turn around to find a small German military vehicle with its headlights shuttered.

Fear spreads from the pit of my stomach through my whole body. This is no ordinary patrol. These are people on a special mission, I’m sure of it. There are twice as many soldiers on the vehicle as normal and they have a Gestapo member with them.

They are after somebody big and I only hope it’s not us. It can’t be us. There is no possible way they could be after us.

“Who are you and why are you out after curfew?” the man in the long leather coat purrs malevolently. He’s a Dutch man who’s joined the enemy. How I hate those.

“I’m Theo Hooghiemstra and this is my wife, Maggie. We received word that my mother is dying and we have traveled for most of the day and half the night to get to her,” Theo says smoothly.