Angels' Den back at the Beje. Was it possible they
112. Corrie ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels' Den
Angels' Den back at the Beje. Was it possible they were safe, even with the Gestapo guarding the house? And then her mind wandered again to the doctor's words earlier in the day: "I hope I've done the right thing reporting your pleurisy." Had he?
Corrie didn't have to wait long to find out. Two nights later the key rattled in the lock of the cell door. It was the prison matron again. "ten Boom, Cornelia, get up and bring your things. No talking," she barked.
Secretly, Corrie slipped the four gospel booklets into her coat pocket, pulled her hat from the peg, and followed the matron. This time, though, they did not turn right to head down the hallway, but they turned left. Corrie's heart sank. They were headed farther inside the prison. About five hundred feet along the hallway, the matron stopped, found another key on her ring, and opened a cell door. Without even needing to be told, Corrie stepped inside. The layout of the cell was the same as the one she had just left, but the cell was different in two ways. There were no other prisoners in the cell, and the cell had a window. The window was high up on the wall and covered with bars, but it was a window nonetheless. In this cell, Corrie would have fresh air and sunlight. She decided she would drag her cot over to the outside wall in the morning and climb up and look out the window. Before she went to sleep, Corrie scratched a mark on the wall beside her cot and wrote the date, March 6, 1944. Somehow, she felt it was important not to lose track of time.
The Clocks at the Beje Are Safe 113
The next morning Corrie was so weak she was unable to stand up at all. She lay on the cot and looked at the sky through the twenty-eight tiny Squares the bars formed across the window. Mealtime came, and a guard peered in through the food slot. Corrie waved her hand slightly. The guard grunted and flung the slice of bread at her through the small opening. The bread landed near the cot, and Corrie picked it up from the filthy floor and hungrily gulped it down. Then she waited, wondering what would happen next. An hour or so later, a trolley squeaked down the hallway and stopped outside her cell door. It was a medical attendant with foul-tasting medicine for Corrie to take. The attendant was wearing a prisoner's uniform, and Corrie knew she was what the other prisoners referred to as a "trusty," a fellow prisoner who got to help run some of the things in the prison. Trusties cooked the soup, swept the floors, and dispensed medicine. In return they were given extra privileges by the guards. Corrie felt sure the trusty would know a lot about what was going on in the prison.
After swallowing the wretched medicine, Corrie begged of the trusty, "Have you heard anything of the ten Booms or the van Woerdens?"
"Save your breath, woman," snarled the trusty. "You don't think I can talk to you and keep my job do you?" She glared at Corrie and then slammed the cell door shut.
Corrie lay down again on the cot. "So prison is just like the outside," she said aloud to herself.