A Way Through the Sea (20 page)

Peter wasn’t sure if that was the answer yet to his question, so he kept still. Elise sat there, too, knotting her fingers.

“I was the studious one,” he continued. “The clever one, the one who could figure. A lot like you, Peter. And in some ways, like you, too, Elise. So I ended up in the bank—counting.” He looked down at his hands. They were scratched and bruised. Peter’s and Elise’s hands weren’t very pretty either, with all the blisters. They hurt like fire now that Peter thought of them. Elise’s hair was tangled like spaghetti, too, but somehow none of that mattered.

“It’s not that I regret it, it’s just...” He turned around and faced Peter and Elise. His eyes were brimming with tears now, and Peter still didn’t know what had happened to Uncle Morten. “Your uncle was captured on the beach last night,” he said finally. His voice cracked. “We had everyone loaded on the boat except Mr. Lumby and the people who were supposed to come in the Mercedes. We didn’t know what had happened to them, but we couldn’t wait any longer. Morten decided to take one last look for them, and he took the rowboat back to the beach. A German patrol—they had a dog—came down the beach just then. Morten didn’t have a chance to run or anything. There was just no chance.”

“But what did you do, Dad?” Peter said, stunned.

“We couldn’t do anything, except head out of there as fast as we could. We had to take a zigzag, roundabout course. I’m still not sure why no one caught us before we reached Sweden. We kept going all the way over, and the engine was making a funny noise. I’m surprised we didn’t run you kids over out there rowing around.”

“But what will happen to Uncle Morten now?” asked Elise.

“I don’t know, Elise. First he’ll probably stay in a prison somewhere in Denmark. Maybe Vestre Prison, in Copenhagen. They’ll try to force information out of him. But I doubt if the Germans will learn much from him.”

Peter squirmed in his chair at the thought of his uncle in a prison, a prison with Nazi guards. “Is there any chance he’ll get out, Dad?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t tell you, because I don’t know.”

Then Elise jumped up suddenly. “Mom!” she cried. “Where was Mom during all this?”

“That’s the other thing,” explained Mr. Andersen. “Apparently all sorts of things happened after I left with the first car. I was surprised—and upset—to find your mother in the second car, riding with old Mrs. Clemmensen. But we got them untangled, and Mrs. Clemmensen finally got in the boat somehow. I told your mom to wait in the truck, to wait for me so we could drive back home together.”

“But you never got back to the car!” said Elise, horrified.

“She would have figured it out, I know,” he said. But even he looked a bit worried. “She’s going to be out of her mind at home, though, even if she is all right. I’ll tell you this.” He looked at Elise and pointed down for emphasis. “I’m going to make sure she never has to go through this kind of thing again. And you, too.”

That was all they talked about the rest of the day: Mom, how worried she would be, and getting home as soon as they could. They had to wait until it was dark again, a terribly long time. Then there was a second goodbye with the Melchiors, who would stay in Sweden for the rest of the war, however much longer it lasted. Peter’s father had to leave the
Anna Marie
over in Sweden, too, and Mr. Melchior was left in charge of finding a place for it, someone who could care for it for a few months. It was no use, said Mr. Andersen, taking it right back to Denmark.

“How could we explain coming back in that boat,” he asked, “especially if the Nazis figured out who it belonged to?”

When night fell again, the three Andersens ended up getting a ride back over in a Swedish boat, one of the boats tied up right next to the
Anna Marie.
As they retraced their route back toward home, Peter sat in the corner of the dark wheelhouse, staring out the window. Elise was quiet, too, until one of the three Swedish fishermen on the boat came up to speak to the man steering. They spoke for a moment in low tones, pulled a chart from a rack overhead, and briefly turned a flashlight on to study it. Peter and Elise both stared at the man’s face, lit up for a moment in the light. Peter started to sputter.

“You’re the man in the woods!” Peter was finally able to say, above the clatter of the boat engine.

“You’ve met this man before?” asked Mr. Andersen.

“A few months ago,” explained Elise. “In the woods. By accident, and he was with Uncle Morten.”

Finally the Swedish man remembered, and he smiled slightly.

“Oh, yes, you must be Morten’s niece and nephew,” said the man, looking up from his chart, “the ones who came crashing through the woods that day.” Then his expression clouded over. “I heard what happened to your uncle, your brother. I’m sorry.” He turned away from Peter and Elise, and looked back out the window toward the darkness of Sweden. Then he stepped out of the wheelhouse, leaving them alone again.

“Do you remember what Uncle Morten called him?” Peter asked his sister.

“Olaf, I think,” she answered. Neither of them said anything else for a time.

Mr. Andersen didn’t ask how they had met Olaf, but after a while he looked at his two quiet children again. Both of them were staring out the window at the dark waves. “Aren’t you tired?” he asked them.

“Not really,” answered Peter. Somehow he wasn’t. Or if his body was tired, his mind wouldn’t let go. Too many pictures were flashing through. The escape. The row over. The soldiers. The running. His mom. Captain Knut’s rescue. His father in Sweden. The story about Uncle Morten. And now seeing Olaf. Everything jumbled together, and Peter couldn’t tell where one picture started and the other ended. He thought about things he wished he had done, and still wanted to do, and he thought of what his uncle had told him about being a Christian. And then he had seen a new side of his dad, a dad he had missed before.

Henrik? It was as if Peter and Elise had lost a friend, but not really. There would be another time, after the war, Peter hoped, when Henrik and his family would come back.
I could even take care of their place until then. Or someone could rent it.
Lots of other Danes would do the same for the Jewish Danes they knew. It was just what friends did.

He looked over at his sister. In the darkness he could make out her face but not much else. She had her nose pressed against the glass, looking out, probably thinking some of the same things.

They made it back to Denmark an hour later and found a dark beach, close to the same beach where Uncle Morten was captured. With the boat’s engine shut off, Olaf quietly pulled the line of a small boat they had dragged behind them, like a dog on a leash. He motioned with his hand and barely whispered. “In you go,” he said. “You’re almost home.”

Without a word, the four of them stepped carefully into the little boat. Peter and Elise perched in the back end, Mr. Andersen in the front, Olaf in the middle. They slipped away from the larger fishing boat, and Olaf rowed quietly up to within a few yards of the shore.

As they were about to get out of the little boat, Mr. Andersen tried to thank the Swede, but he just shook his head.

“No, you don’t thank me,” said the Swede. “Your brother would have done the same thing for me.”

So without another word, Mr. Andersen helped Elise and Peter slip over the side, and waded the last few steps through icy water to home. Olaf nodded at Elise and Peter, pulled hard on his oars, and shot back to his boat.

This time, Peter was glad there was no one to meet them. Cold, tired, and wet, they hiked back through the woods, found a thickly covered place, and dozed until the morning light gave them permission to hike the last few miles home. Peter’s Swedish shoes never dried, and they made squishy noises all the way.

“You know what, kids?” Mr. Andersen finally broke the silence as they turned onto a busier street. He was in between Elise and Peter, and he had his arms around both their shoulders. Morning traffic was starting to stir around the old city, and they could see the buildings of the old section of town. Elise just looked up at him sleepily. Then he reached around and mussed her hair, the way he used to do when she was little. She smiled weakly. “Your mom is going to need a day’s worth of hugs when we get home.”

She did. It was even more emotional when they walked back into their apartment than it had been in Sweden. The hugs, the kisses. In between more hugs, Mrs. Andersen explained how she had sneaked through the bushes the night before to find everyone on the beach gone. Everyone, fortunately, including the German patrol. The only thing for her to do had been to drive carefully home and wait. Grandfather had stayed there with her.

When Grandfather heard the whole story, though, he was hit hard by the news about Uncle Morten. For over an hour, he just sat completely still in Peter’s favorite stuffed chair in their living room, staring straight ahead. Mr. Andersen, who had explained everything to him, came over and put his hand on his father’s shoulder.

“Dad, believe me. There was nothing we could do.”

Grandfather’s eyes flashed with anger, but not at his son. “Maybe not, Arne, but I should have been there.” He let out his breath. “And I wasn’t.” Then he got up and started to pace around the apartment.

“Maybe we can find a way to get him out,” suggested Peter as his grandfather brushed by. Peter looked around, making sure no one else heard them. “Maybe if we prayed, something would happen, Grandpa. I... I prayed when we were running away with Henrik.”

His grandfather stopped and stared at Peter. He looked like he was surprised to hear his grandson talk about prayer. Then a smile spread over his face, and he nodded. He took Peter by the arm as they walked into the hallway.

“Yes, maybe something would happen,” he said. “So let’s be sure to do that. But how—"

Elise came down the hall just then, looking for Peter and her grandfather. “Grandfather? Have you been down to the boathouse?” she asked. “Henrik may have let his pigeon go by now.”

“The pigeon,” said her grandfather. “Oh, yes.” He gave Peter a wink, his way of telling him that he would not forget what they had started to talk about. “I mean, no, I haven’t been down there today, but you two could run down and check.”

Peter and Elise didn’t need any more encouragement. They raced all the way down to the boathouse.

“Maybe Number One is waiting already,” said Elise as they pushed open the boathouse door.

Actually, the bird wasn’t really waiting, but he was doing his daily strutting routine, bobbing his head, marching in place, and generally making a lot of noise. Elise cornered him inside the cage.

“Come on, give me the message,” said Peter as he unclipped the capsule. The bird didn’t struggle much, only pedaled his legs a little, like a bird on a bicycle. Peter had to smile. The homing pigeon seemed to know he was carrying something important, after all that time in the basket. “Thanks, Number One,” Peter told the bird as Elise gently tossed him back to the others, to his water dish and to his food.

Nervously, Peter unscrewed the halves of the tiny capsule and hurried to pull out the scrap of paper. It was wrinkled, the back of a candy wrapper. Henrik had obviously worked hard to write in small, neat letters on it. Peter squinted and moved over to the sunlight coming in through the tiny window.

“Let me see,” said Elise, and she crowded over to take a look.

“Safe in Sweden,” Peter read aloud. “Thanks to you both. Please take care of Number One until I get back. Your friend always, Henrik.”

Below that, Henrik had added something else.
A Bible verse?
thought Peter.
This was really from Henrik?
Peter looked closer. It was his friend’s handwriting, for sure.

“There’s something else,” he said.

Elise took the note; it was her turn to read aloud. “Isaiah forty three,” she said, looking up at Peter. “From the Bible?”

“Of course it’s from the Bible,” said Peter, just as puzzled as his sister. “Read it.”

“Isaiah forty three. `This is what the Lord says, he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters...’ “

Then she looked up, and they both knew what Henrik had meant. About the way through the sea, and about who had made it for them. Without a word, she handed the candy wrapper back over to Peter, who stuffed it into his pants pocket. Closing the door of the shed behind them, they walked down the street toward home. But Peter had one more thing he had to do.

“You go ahead, Elise,” he told his sister. “I have to do something.”

“Sure,” she replied and headed in the direction of home.

“Oh, hey, Elise, I forgot to tell you.”

“Yeah?” She looked back, and Peter realized then that they had changed a lot over the last few days. Even though they had their little fights, he and his sister had always gotten along pretty well. But now there was something extra, and they both knew it.

“I forgot to tell you thanks for sticking up for me, when Keld and Jesper were after me the other day.”

“No problem,” she said easily, with a little smile. “Seeyou at home.” She turned and trotted off down the street, leaving Peter by the pier.

“Thanks,” he said again, under his breath. Peter looked out at the boats and the place where the
Anna Marie
used to tie up. He had saved a corner of the crusty bread roll Captain Knut had given them back in Sweden. He pulled it out of his coat pocket, crushed it in his hand, and tossed the crumbs as hard as he could out into the harbor.

Epilogue

There are many true stories of the rescue of Danish Jews during World War II, even though this one uses fictional characters. In the space of just a few days, thousands of men, women, and children were hidden in Danish homes, and the Danish people helped them to escape. The rescue of the Jews was a bright spot in the dark year of 1943; out of about seven thousand Danish Jews, only a few hundred were captured. It made the German leader, Hitler, furious.