Free The Journey Back by Johanna Reiss Page B

flies around; that, I didn’t like. Johan had finished with his cow. He emptied the pail into the jug. Steaming, the milk rushed through the strainer, leaving foam that fizzed around, then slowly dissolved. The sky was becoming a little darker, less red. “Soon we’d all be sitting in the kitchen with the door open, to let in the last of the light. Opoe was already there, cutting bread for supper. She’d hold the loaf against her bosom and carve. Just before the knife touched the apron, she’d stop and break the slice off. A minute later she’d add a piece of wood to the stove, so the water would boil for tea-and my egg. She’d take four knives from the drawer, wipe the oilcloth on the table, get out the cups … Noiselessly I left the gate. I had to go inside and see for myself.
    The four days were over. They had gone so fast I felt as if I had just come. Johan’s rye was still not all gathered into sheaves. I could have gone to the fields again with him and Dientje, woven another basket, picked more cornflowers, selected more straws for binding the rye.
    Slowly I pedaled away.
    Far behind me, from the stable, came mooir sounds. The cow had calved-a girl. “Did just told her,” Johan had said. And we had hug he Closer, I could hear voices, three of them, calling goodbye, telling me to be careful, to say hello Sini, Rachel, Father, and to come back. Then could no longer hear them. But when I turin around to look, they were still there. The fields again, practically bare now. A fe birds were flying over the stubble, looking fi spilled grain. When they saw a kernel, the swooped down, pecked at it. Flapping winl against the gray sky, the only sounds. Last field. the turn. Funny, I had not said anything to them about Father, that he was always out. Not on bus inc either, Rachel said, not at night, not when it w: pitch-dark. “How could he see?”
    Besides, h wouldn’t take a bath every day, she said, not cows.
    Where did he go then? 9.
    “I think I’m all set.” Sini picked up her bag an looked around the room to make sure she had nothing behind. She turned to Father and Rachel
    I’ll be fine,” she assured them again. “Don’t worry.” Quickly she ran down the stairs. I followed her. A second later we closed the back door behind us.
    Already we were halfway to the railroad crossing, but the gate was down.
    Good. A freight train was coming. Noisily the two cars sped by. We crossed the tracks. Did Sini notice how fancy the Misterstraat looked compared to when we first came home? Pieces of glass taken from picture frames had been installed in the boards across this store windows, some so large that several people could see in at once. And read the signs that said what you could buy now and what would b coming soon. Or, as in the shoe store see a real shoe. But, no, Sini was in too much of a hurry to get to that city she was going to, to become a nurse-Ensehede, where so much was happening that she wouldn’t know what to choose from first.
    Listen to her carry on. The minute I got out of bed this morning, she began again, just as she had yesterdar and the day before.
    “Three movie houses, not only Fred week as you have here. Concerts, restaurants., duse to Johan and Dientje.. lots of places to to dance …
    I’m so excited.”
    We passed the marketplace, and on the left, caf& The sign
    “Nightly Dances” was gone, pulled down by the proprietor the day the Canadian soldiers left. “Thank God,” people had said, “at last we can get a good night’s sleep again. All that noise …” How could they have thought that? It had been music, pleasant music.
    They should have stayed, those soldiers. Then maybe Sini would have, too. “Come on, Annie.”
    Yes, yes, I was trying to walk fast.
    “Let’s wait here.”
    We had reached the edge of town. And it had taken us hardly any time.
    Sini pulled a mirror from her bag. She looked closely at her face, dabbing at the lipstick a soldier had given her. Rachel had