Free River in the Sea by Tina Boscha Page A

stolen today, she’d have the nerve. 
    Minutes passed. At this rate Arnold would ask her to give up her table for someone who would pay for a greasy frikandel or a cool pint of beer. Her neck itched. She thought about sliding the wad of salt unto the table, thinking someone might approach her. Maybe she should just go home. It was just a silly cigarette. She could get one from Issac later that night. The extra salt, some of it anyway, should be given over to Pater.
    She could not make herself leave.
    She didn’t know if her own selfishness or not wanting to come home too early kept her in her seat. Maybe it was spotting Jakob Hoffman, and imagining getting his attention so that he’d abandon his tablemates and walk over, bend his head low to hear her whisper, then silently hand her his nearly full pouch of tobacco. Maybe he would sit with her and they’d smoke together, just the two of them. And if he asked, she would tell him exactly what happened, how she’d killed the dog. He would love to hear it, she thought. He would smile at her and lean across the table while she told the true story behind her bravery.
    Five minutes of staring at the tabletop passed before Leen chose to make a move rather than agonizing any longer. And just as it was at the Deinum’s, when Mrs. Deinum appeared in the doorway moments after Leen had withdrawn her overflowing hand from the bin, the second she motioned to Jakob, two soldiers stepped into the café with Jan Fokke behind them.
    Jan Fokke was the half–crazy man who lurked on Wierum’s streets. He liked to pretend to give village children coins but instead placed in their open palms a ball of his own brown spit before running away, shrieking with laughter. It appeared he was meant to be with the soldiers, as he sat next to the uniformed men at the bar, which immediately cleared two stools each to the right and left of them. Jan Fokke – no one ever called him anything except his full name – was a little off in the head, as Pater sometimes said, but Leen was still afraid of him, even though she no longer fell for his promises of nickels. It was rumored he used to run through the streets of Wierum at night without any clothes on, before the curfew.
    In the short moment Leen had caught the soldier’s faces, ashen like their uniforms, she hadn’t recognized them, but they were too far away and now the soldiers’ backs were to her. She didn’t want to know if one was the gatekeeper or the driver or the one with the sallow eyes, and yet simultaneously she wanted to see their faces plainly. But to do that risked exposing herself.
    She never should have come. She’d been taught this lesson from her earliest days: one sin begat another. A tiny snowball could grow so powerful you could not stop it.
    The air’s weight changed and Leen looked to see that Jakob was gone, as were his tablemates. They must have slipped out the back door that Arnold had built exclusively for that purpose. It was barely visible amid the dark walls and anyone seated there automatically moved aside in situations like this, the doorknob a lever at the base of the door, released by a surreptitious press of a boot. It was not the same as a false wall but it was fast, especially with soldiers facing the bar and ordering two beers. Jan Fokke leaned close to them, pushing a pile of some type of paper towards them and gesturing emphatically.
    When the soldiers had entered, the entire café went quiet, and then in a collective effort not to draw attention to themselves, everyone began to talk quietly and pretend that things were normal. The soldiers turned and looked over their shoulders, taking inventory. Perhaps they were looking for faces they knew, familiar men with whom they’d formed tentative friendships. She saw their eyes scan her, and the only relief she felt now was that the gatekeeper did not recognize her. He had cried over Minsha so much he had barely seen her, but she remembered his filthy hat and his