Terlouw Winter in Wartime

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78269-177-8
Verlag: Pushkin Children's Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

An award-winning children's classic. A gripping story about the horrors and dilemmas of war As the Second World War approaches its end, the Netherlands is still under Nazi control and any acts of resistance are punishable by death. But when fifteen-year-old Michiel is asked to take care of a British Spitfire pilot he doesn't think twice. He joins the secret struggle against the Nazis, working every day to end the occupation and protect those in danger from it, knowing all the time that spies are everywhere and one loose word could cost him his life... Winter in Wartime is a thrilling, powerful and inspiring adventure story, based on the author's own experiences as a child in Nazi-occupied Holland. Jan Terlouw was born in the Netherlands in 1931. He worked as a nuclear physicist in countries across the world before entering politics as a representative of the Dutch D66 party in 1971. Alongside his political career he has written many successful children's books, including Winter in Wartime which was based on his own memories of the Nazi occupation. It won the Golden Pen Prize for the best Dutch children's book in 1973 and has since been adapted for film and stage.

Jan Terlouw was born in the Netherlands in 1931. He worked as a nuclear physicist in countries across the world before entering politics as a representative of the Dutch D66 party in 1971. Alongside his political career he has written many successful children's books, including Winter in Wartime which was based on his own memories of the Nazi occupation. It won the Golden Pen Prize for the best Dutch children's book in 1973 and has since been adapted for film and stage.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Terlouw, Jan

Weitere Mitwirkende

Watkinson, Laura

Leseproben

1

It was such a dark, dark night.

Step by step, holding out one hand in front of him, Michiel made his way along the cycle path at the side of the track. In his other hand, he was carrying a cotton bag with two bottles of milk inside.

New moon, and really cloudy too, he thought. But I must be somewhere near Van Ommen’s farm by now. He peered to the right but, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see anything. Next time I’m not going unless I can take the dynamo torch. Erica can just make sure she’s home by half-past seven. This isn’t going to end well.

He was soon proved right. Even though he was walking so very slowly and carefully, the bag still smashed into one of the posts that were meant to stop the farmers’ carts driving onto the cycle path. Blast it! Carefully, he felt the bag. Wet! One of the bottles was broken. What a waste of precious milk. In a foul mood, and even more cautiously than before, he started walking again. Goodness, it was so dark that he could hardly see anything at all. He was only about five hundred yards from home and knew the way like the back of his hand. Even so, being inside before eight was going to be a challenge.

Wait a minute, though—he could see the vaguest shimmer of light over there. Yes, that was right, the Bogaards’ place. They weren’t too careful about the blackout. But they didn’t have much more to hide than the light of a candle anyway. He knew there were no other posts until the road now, though, and once he was there it would be easier. There were more houses, and a little light usually managed to escape somehow or other. Oh yuck, there was milk dripping into his clog. Was that footsteps he could hear? Not likely, it was on the stroke of eight. And everyone had to be inside their houses by then. He could feel a different surface beneath his feet. The main road. Now he had to turn right and just be careful not to end up in the ditch. Yes, it was easier now, as he’d expected. Very, very dimly, he could see the outline of the houses. The De Ruiters’ house, Miss Doeven’s, the Zomers’, the blacksmith’s, the Green Cross building. He was almost home.

Then, just in front of him, an electric torch flashed on, shining right into his eyes. He nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Es ist after eight o’clock,” said a voice. “Now you are my prisoner. Was ist das in your hand? A grenade?”

“Turn that bloody torch off, Dirk,” said Michiel. “Why’d you want to go and startle me like that?”

He’d recognized the voice, even with the fake German accent. It was their neighbours’ son. Dirk Knopper was fond of silly jokes—or at least his idea of a joke. He was twenty-one years old and he wasn’t scared of anything.

“A bit of a fright, eh? It’ll toughen you up,” he said. “Anyway, it’s true. It’s gone eight. If a German comes along, he’ll shoot you dead as a threat to the German Reich. Heil Hitler!”

“Ssh! Don’t go yelling that name around.”

“What’s the problem?” Dirk said casually. “Our occupiers like hearing Hitler’s name, don’t they?”

They walked on together. Dirk shielded the torch with his hand, so that only a little light slipped through, but it still seemed like broad daylight to Michiel. He could see the roadside clearly now, which felt like a luxury.

“Hey, how did you get hold of that torch? Not to mention the batteries.”

“Stole it from the Krauts.”

“Yeah, a likely story,” scoffed Michiel.

“No, really. You know we’ve got two officers billeted with us, right? Well, the other day, one of them—the fat one, you know—had a cardboard box in his room with what must have been about ten of these torches in there. Well, I say his room, but I mean our room, of course. And so I… liberated one.”

“You just went wandering into his room?”

“Yeah, of course. I always pop in when they’re not around, just to check it out. No trouble at all. The only person I have to watch out for is my dad. He’s such a coward. If he knew I had this torch, he wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink tonight. But he can’t sleep anyway, because of Rinus de Raat. Right, there’s my place. Bye, Michiel. Can you find your own way from here?”

“Yes, I’ll manage. Bye!”

His clogs crunching on the gravel, Michiel walked through the front garden. He was glad Dirk hadn’t noticed the broken bottle. He’d never have heard the last of it.

Inside the house, the carbide lamp was still burning away brightly. It was always like that early in the evening, when Father had just recently filled it. That was a nasty job, because of the smell. But once the metal pot was closed and the flame was burning, the smell went away and the lamp gave off about as much light as an electric one. Unfortunately, though, as the evening went on, the light grew weaker and by half-past nine only a tiny blue flame remained, just enough to stop you from tripping over the furniture.

Michiel would have liked to read in the evenings. There was plenty of light all day long, but he had no time then. At night, when he did have time—no light. He’d discovered eighteen yellowing books by Jules Verne in his father’s bookcase, and he was longing to read them. At the beginning of the evening, you could read if you were within a couple of yards of the lamp, but later on you could only make out the words by holding the book right up to the little blue flame. It wouldn’t have been fair to hog the light though, particularly not when there were guests—and there were nearly always guests.

The front room was packed tonight too. In addition to Mother, Father, Erica and Jochem, Michiel saw at least ten other people. Glancing around, he didn’t recognize any of them, except for Uncle Ben. Mother introduced him to everyone. There was a married couple, Mr and Mrs Van der Heiden, who told Michiel he’d sat on their laps when he was little. They came from Vlaardingen, so it was possible, as that was where he’d been born. Then there was a very old lady with wrinkles, who said she was his Aunt Gerdien and demanded a kiss from him. He didn’t even know he had an Aunt Gerdien. Mother explained that she was a very distant cousin of Father’s, and that Father had last seen the good woman twenty years ago. Only she didn’t quite put it that way. Then there were two unfamiliar ladies who remarked on how very tall he’d grown, plus a smug little man who had the nerve to call him “lad” even though Michiel was almost sixteen, and a few others. Except for the “lad” fellow, they all seemed to know exactly who he was.

“They’ve done their homework,” muttered Michiel.

All the visitors came from the west of the country, the famine having driven them to the east and the north. It was early winter 1944–45, and there was a war on. That meant there was barely anything left to eat in the big cities. There was no transport either, so everyone had to walk. Sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds of miles. They made their way along the roads with handcarts, prams, bikes without proper tyres, and all kinds of other strange contraptions. There was a curfew too, so by eight o’clock the streets had to be empty. That made it essential to have friends and acquaintances who lived somewhere along the route. Michiel’s parents had previously had no idea they knew so many people—or rather, that so many people knew them.

Night after night, at around seven o’clock, the bell would ring and keep ringing for the next hour. Some stranger would be standing there on the doorstep, beaming at them and exclaiming, “Hello! How are you? You remember me, don’t you? Miep, from The Hague. I’ve thought about you so often.” It would have been amusing if it weren’t so very sad. Miep would turn out to be a lady who’d been introduced to Father and Mother as Mrs Van Druten on one occasion at the home of a mutual acquaintance. However, when you saw that Miep was malnourished and exhausted, and heard that she’d walked all the way from The Hague in a pair of worn-out gym shoes, just to fetch a few potatoes from Overijssel for her daughter’s children, then you said, “Of course, Aunt Miep! Come on in. How are you?” and you gave her a bowl of pea soup and a chair by the lamp, and a bed for the night, or at least a mattress on the floor.

When Michiel had said hello to everyone, he asked his mother to come into the kitchen with him, lighting the way with the torch. It worked like a bicycle dynamo, and was powered by manually pumping the handle, which produced a fairly decent beam of light, but also tired out your thumb. “I’m sorry, Mother. I broke a bottle.”

“Oh, Michiel. Couldn’t you have been a bit more careful?”

Michiel stopped using the torch and lifted the blackout blind. The darkness was as black as ink.

“Well, there’s no moon tonight, see, and I didn’t have the torch,” he said apologetically. He lowered the blind and began pumping the torch again, so that they had a little light.

His mother was already regretting her remark. She stroked Michiel’s hair.

He’s doing a man’s work, she thought. Going out in the pitch darkness all on his own to fetch milk, which I’d be...