Beauty Is a Wound (10 page)

Inside again, a few women, afraid of careless errors, quickly taught their children the orders. Their shouts of
Keirei!
and
Naore!
made Dewi Ayu double up with laughter.

“You are way more vicious than the Japanese!” she exclaimed.

And the mothers had to laugh too.

There wasn’t much entertainment to be had. Dewi Ayu’s instinct as a former teacher trainee emerged, and she gathered a number of small children, setting up a small school in an unused corner of the hall, and instructing the children in reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and geography. At night she recounted folk tales and Bible stories, and acted out the
wayang
episodes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata that she had heard from the natives, as well as story lines from the many books she had read. The children liked her because her stories were never dry or boring. She’d regale them until it was time to return to their mothers and sleep.

The Japanese had demanded that the cells be kept clean, so the women organized themselves into small work groups, nominating a leader for each and developing a rotating schedule for the tasks to be done. They took turns cooking in the communal kitchen, filling the water troughs, washing tools and equipment, cleaning the yard, and carrying sacks of rice and potatoes and burnt wood and other things from the trucks to the warehouse. Despite her youth, Dewi Ayu was chosen as the head of her group. She was already mature enough to lead, and had nobody to distract her. In addition to her small school, she’d also found a doctor and they started a hospital without beds or medicine. A few women requested a pastor, but the men were in a different prison, so Dewi Ayu found a nun and for her that was good enough. “As long as nobody wants to get married, we don’t need a pastor,” she said confidently. “All we really need is someone to give sermons and lead the prayers.”

But not everything went so smoothly. The little boys grew wild, ganging up with their friends from the same block and insulting one another. Fights between the children were easier to come across than an irate Japanese soldier. Their mothers felt forced to take an equally tough approach, hitting their children even though it seemed to make no difference. The Japanese had absolutely no intention of arbitrating or stopping these scuffles, quite the opposite; they instigated fights as if it was a new game for them.

Food was another problem. The rations they were given were not nearly enough for the thousands of prisoners. They were on a strict starvation diet, getting only salted rice porridge for breakfast. Lunch was whatever could be scavenged or later, the vegetables that they had planted themselves behind the cells. At night they got one slice of plain white bread. There was never any meat, and they had already hunted most of the animals in Bloedenkamp to extinction. First the mice—even though at the start nobody wanted to eat them, soon there were almost none left in the delta—and then the lizards and geckos disappeared. Then the frogs vanished. Sometimes the kids went fishing, but they weren’t allowed to go too far and had to be satisfied with fish as small as a baby’s pinky finger, or with tadpoles. The most luxurious thing was when they once found some bananas, but those were for the babies, and the women were left to fight over the peels.

Babies started to die, and then the old people. Sickness also killed young mothers, children, young girls—anyone might die at any moment. The field behind the cells turned into a cemetery.

Dewi Ayu was friendly with a young woman named Ola van Rijk. The girls had known each other for a long time. Ola’s father also owned a cocoa plantation and they often visited one another’s houses. Ola was two years younger than she was and was being held along with her mother and her younger sister. One afternoon, Dewi Ayu found her with tears streaming down her face.

“Mother is dying,” she said.

Dewi Ayu went to see. Indeed it seemed to be true. Madam van Rijk was suffering from a severe fever, quite pale and shivering. It seemed that there was nothing to be done, but Dewi Ayu told Ola to go find the commandant and ask for medicine and food from the soldiers’ rations. Ola quaked in fear at approaching the Japanese.

“Go, or your mother will die,” said Dewi Ayu.

She finally left while Dewi Ayu applied cold compresses to the sick woman’s forehead and tried to entertain Ola’s little sister. After about ten minutes Ola returned without any medicine, just crying harder. “Let her die,” she said sobbing. “What did you say?!” asked Dewi Ayu. Ola shook her head weakly while wiping away her tears with her sleeve. “There’s no way,” she said shortly. “The commandant would only give me medicine if I agreed to sleep with him.”

“Let me talk to him,” Dewi Ayu said, enraged. The commandant was in his office, sitting in his chair, staring absently at his iced coffee on the table and listening to radio static. She barged right in without knocking. The man turned, surprised by her nerve, his face showing the anger of someone who does not play around. But before he could explode, Dewi Ayu stepped forward, separated from him only by the width of the table. “I will take the place of the previous girl, Commandant. You can sleep with me, but give her mother medicine and a doctor.
And a doctor
!”

“Medicine and a doctor?” He already knew a few Malay phrases. This young girl was very pretty, no older than seventeen or eighteen, maybe still a virgin, and she was offering herself to him just for some fever medicine and a doctor. His anger evaporated at receiving such an extraordinary blessing on such a boring afternoon. He smiled, cunning and predatory, feeling like a lucky old man indeed, and walked around the table while Dewi Ayu waited with her typical composure. With one caress the commandant touched her whole face, his fingers creeping like a lizard over her nose and her lips, pausing at her chin to raise her face higher. His fingers continued their journey, traveling down her neck with rough hands that were too accustomed to holding a samurai sword, sweeping along the curve of her collarbone, and exploring the collar of her dress.

His hands pushed underneath the fabric and Dewi Ayu was a little startled, but the man was already grabbing her left breast, and after that he began to move much faster. The commandant opened Dewi Ayu’s dress as efficiently as he examined his troops, and then he was squeezing her chest, and kissed her neck with a greedy lust, his hands moving this way and that as if he regretted being born with only two of them.

“Be quick, Commandant, if you’re not, the woman will die.”

The commandant seemed to agree with that analysis and without saying another word he yanked at Dewi Ayu, lifted her up, and after first setting aside his cup of coffee and the transistor radio, laid her out on top of the table. He quickly stripped the girl naked, undressed himself, and then pounced onto her body like a cat onto a fish. “Don’t forget, Commandant, medicine and a doctor,” she said for reassurance. “Yeah, yeah, medicine and a doctor,” replied the commandant. Then, without beating around the bush, the Japanese man set upon her fiercely. Dewi Ayu closed her eyes, because whatever the circumstances, this was still the first time a man had taken her: she trembled a little bit, but she survived the horror. Then she couldn’t really keep her eyes closed, the commandant was shaking her body so wildly, pounding her without pause, and rocking her from left to right. The one thing she managed was dodging if he tried to kiss her on the lips. The game ended in an explosion and the commandant rolled over next to Dewi Ayu, sprawled out heaving deep and ragged breaths.

“So, how about it Commandant?” asked Dewi Ayu.

“It was amazing, like an earthquake,” he replied.

“I mean the medicine and the doctor.”

Five minutes later Dewi Ayu was happy to get a native doctor, with round glasses and a kind demeanor, and gave thanks that she wouldn’t have to do much business with the Japanese ever again. She brought him to the cell where the van Rijk family was staying and in the doorway she met Ola who immediately asked her, “You did it?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God!” screamed the girl, crying uncontrollably. As the doctor rushed to the sick woman, Dewi Ayu tried to comfort her. “It was nothing. Just think of it like I took a shit through the front hole.”

Looking up the doctor pronounced, “This woman is already dead.”

Ever since that they lived as a trio, like a little family: Dewi Ayu, Ola, and the young Gerda, who was just nine years old. Ola and Gerda’s father had been drafted and had gone to war just like Ted, but they had not yet heard news as to whether he was still alive, captured, or dead. Their first Easter and Christmas in the camp passed, without eggs or a Christmas tree and without any candles, which had all been used up already. They tried to survive together, comforting one another and facing sickness and death. Dewi Ayu forbid little Gerda to steal anything from anybody, as the other children were doing. She wracked her brains trying to figure out what they were going to eat every day. The cows no longer grazed around the delta and the leeches were already gone.

One day Dewi Ayu saw a baby crocodile at the edge of the delta, and knowing that the only thing you really need to avoid with a crocodile on shore is its tail, she bludgeoned its head with a large stone. The unfortunate beast was wounded but it wasn’t dead. It flicked its tail back and forth, and began moving toward the river. Taking a sharpened bamboo spike that was usually used to tether the ferryboat’s ropes, with one reckless jab that she herself didn’t imagine would be powerful enough, Dewi Ayu pierced the baby crocodile’s eye and then its stomach. The creature died an agonizing death. Before its mother and friends could come for it, Dewi Ayu dragged the baby crocodile into the camp by its tail. Now they could really celebrate, with crocodile meat soup! Many people praised her bravery and shared their thanks.

“There are still lots of them in the river,” she said casually, “if you guys want more.”

Ever since she was little she had been taught to fear nothing. Her grandfather had taken her boar hunting with the tough guys a few times. She had even been at Mr. Willie’s side when he was rammed by the wild boar that crippled him for life. She knew how to deal with a boar: zigzag, don’t run in a straight line, because a boar doesn’t know how to turn. The tough guys had taught her that, just as they had taught her how to face a crocodile, what to do if a python suddenly coiled around her or if a viper bit her, how to face down an
ajak
, and what to do if a leech was sucking her blood. She had never actually been threatened by any of those creatures until she had come to Bloedenkamp, but the lessons she learned from the tough guys were always in the back of her mind.

They also taught her mantras to get rid of evil spirits and to guard her safety. She never used them, but it made her happy to know that she could. She knew a Javanese merchant who came on foot from a mountain more than one hundred kilometers away just to sell the Dutch fruit from her garden. It took her four days to get there. She usually spent a night in the warehouse, and Dewi Ayu’s grandmother would give her dinner and a cup of hot coffee, and the next day she would depart on another four-day journey home. In addition to money, sometimes she brought back some hand-me-down clothing. She was never afraid of any kind of jungle beast and Dewi Ayu knew why, it was because she recited mantras.

But Dewi Ayu also didn’t really believe in them, just as she was always confused about the point of praying. Still, while she didn’t believe in prayer, and never did it herself, she’d say to Gerda, “Pray that America wins the war.”

The gossip about America’s victory and Germany’s defeat was spreading by word of mouth throughout the camp. It comforted them a bit, no matter how elusive that hope might be, but the days continued to follow one another, as did the weeks, and the months. Finally the second Christmas arrived, and Dewi Ayu celebrated it that year just to entertain Gerda. She broke a branch from a banyan tree growing in front of the camp’s gate, decorated it with paper ornaments, sang
Jingle Bells
, and felt very happy to have Ola and Gerda, for a moment forgetting how miserable it was to spend all one’s days in a prison camp.

They started to discuss their plans for when the war was over, however it might end, once they were finally free. Dewi Ayu said she would return to her home, set everything in order, and live just as she had before. Maybe not truly just like before, because maybe the natives would form their own republic and resist the old ways, but she would return to her home and live there. She would be pleased if Ola and Gerda could join her. But Ola thought rationally that maybe the Japanese had already stolen the house and sold it to someone. Or maybe the natives had, and now it belonged to them.

“We can buy it back,” said Dewi Ayu. She told them the secret of the treasure she had left there, even though she didn’t say exactly where it was stored. “Even if the Japanese have already bombed it and all that’s left is a heap of tiles, we can buy it back.” Gerda was really happy to hear such a tale. She was now eleven years old, but she had wasted away and her body hadn’t developed at all in the past two years. But everyone was in the same boat, shrunken and skinny. Dewi Ayu was sure she had lost ten or fifteen kilos of flesh off her body.

“And that’s enough for fifty bowls of soup,” she said with a small laugh.

The real insanity began after almost two full years in the camp, when the Japanese soldiers began making a list of all the women who were between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight. Dewi Ayu was already eighteen, almost nineteen. Ola was seventeen. At first they thought the list meant they’d be assigned to harder forced labor, until one morning a few military trucks arrived across the river and a handful of army officers boarded the ferry heading for Bloedenkamp. They had already come a number of times, for inspections or to give new rules and orders, and this time the order was to round up all those women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight years old. Chaos immediately descended, as the women realized that they were about to be separated from their friends and family.