God's Callgirl Read Online Free

life went on in its adapted way. I got used to the sight of German soldiers patrolling the streets with threatening guns held tight, ready for use. They were usually young men dreamingof home, who didn’t relish the vilification thrown at them by daring and outspoken people.
    My Aunt Rita screamed at two of them one day, in a fit of fury, when she accompanied my mother and me to the shops down the street. Her husband was Jewish, and she knew many Jews who had been deported by the Germans and never been heard of since. Aunt Rita had to be dragged away smartly by my suddenly forceful mother. We were all glad to reach the alley behind our house and so avoid coming face to face with the men she had insulted from a distance. Aunt Rita ended up sobbing. Her husband, a carpet salesman, was lucky enough to escape deportation and after the war they lived in Amsterdam.
    People sometimes became hungry during the war. The occupying forces would commandeer the pig from your backyard if they got to hear about it, and your vegetables as well. And before them, it was the government who wanted your food to feed the army. Food in the shops was rationed. Each household received coupons dictating how much we could buy of any one thing. Prices were outrageous and black marketeering was rife. I grew up in an atmosphere where children witnessed the importance of subterfuge; where people felt free to talk among themselves in hushed tones, but appeared to know nothing when asked a direct question. The cheerful butcher with round red cheeks brought us pieces of meat that would get him hanged if anyone found out about it, but he went away with shoes that my father had mended for him and a dress for his wife that my mother had sewn the night before.
    War made some people enterprising, including me. We all participated in knocking coal off the back of the coal truck. Stealing turnips from the farmers was not allowed, but if you weren’t caught you didn’t get into trouble. Many a daywe children sat in a row on the brick walls of our houses, chomping raw turnips and swedes originally destined for the cows. Things would not really improve until several years after the war was over.
    Four children were born to our family during that anxious time;‘God’s blessing’ did not stop coming just because a war was on. In fact, God didn’t seem to notice in the slightest.
    My papa was so very handsome, especially in his military uniform, and my mama had a romantic heart. She sang Richard Tauber’s songs along with him when he came on the radio. She sang that he was her heart’s delight. And where he was, she longed to be. She was always breathless with joy to sing songs like that. There is a family photograph taken by a professional photographer of my father wearing his uniform. I have never seen anything more dashing.
    In one family photo of my gorgeously handsome dad, my proud prim mother, my younger sister Liesbet and my little baby brother Adrian, the camera catches me as I do a fake whistle. My father taught me how to whistle but I had learned to be careful. Once, when we were sheltering in the cellar under the stairs, I had whistled a perfect imitation of the bomb that seemed to be coming straight for us. I was only four and not afraid of what I could not imagine—unlike my parents, who were holding their breath. My father had lunged at me and closed his hands over my throat—a very effective silencer.
    Towards the end of the war my father donned his uniform once more to join the Allied Forces, returning regularly on leave, complete with a truck and a rifle. In those months he was the hero of the neighbourhood. He never had to go to the front line, not only because he was a family man, but because it was understood how difficult it was for him, having all but his immediate family in Germany.
    My father brought the truck home whenever he could, sometimes against the rules, because he was an adventurous man who loved to surprise his wife and children.