Thief of Glory (11 page)

With a tired smile, she closed the Bible and left Aniek’s question untouched. Food was the primary focus of our lives. We were all fed from a central kitchen at specific times of the day and strictly rationed to a ball of rice, a vegetable usually impossible to identify, and a fragment of meat.

As well, all healthy adults were expected to contribute help in the camp. Mother’s shift in the kitchen began in only a few minutes.

When we returned to our room, Elsbeth opened her suitcase that was filled with better currency than money. As she handed me four cigarettes, I took note of the fact that her previous self-absorption in choosing the contents of her suitcase was proving to be better for our family than the choices anyone else had made, except, perhaps, for my father’s cod-liver oil.

Outside of the fence that surrounded our sixteen square blocks of residential imprisonment, life had not changed for the native Indonesians, whose impoverished lives had always fueled resentment against the untouchable wealth of the Dutch. Now, however, the Indonesians had something we wanted. Freedom.

For the first weeks of internment, a barbed wire fence, eight feet tall with horizontal strands only inches apart, had served the purpose of confining the Dutch women and children. Japanese soldiers patrolled its perimeter to discourage outside contact, but nothing prevented us from standing near the wire and wistfully observing the natives in their daily lives. When this constant staring eventually irked the natives, they would hurl sticks at the fence that occasionally would make it through the barbed strands. Sometimes they threw larger objects, including garbage, over the eight-foot-high barrier. This led to the addition of vertical bamboo strips woven into the strands of wire, effectively forming a curtain that isolated us from the world.

The new barrier made the Japanese soldiers relax their vigilance on perimeter patrols, which, we soon discovered, made it possible to trade more frequently.

It was a simple system.

One of us, usually a child, would find a trading spot along the fence, push aside the vertical bamboo slats, and hold out our empty hand and wiggle our fingers. Like birds pouncing on a worm, it took only minutes, sometimes seconds, to hear the voice of a native on the other side. Then the negotiating
would begin, and once an agreement was made, the transaction would occur. The system was rarely abused because the incentive was too great for both sides. The natives were so poor that many wore only loincloths, so our fabric was of high value to them. Their food, ranging from canned milk to bananas that we could see in trees on the other side of the wire, was of high value to us.

I had lied to my mother about understanding the patrol patterns of the Japanese soldiers. Instead, I positioned Aniek along the fence in one direction, and Nikki an equal distance the other direction, and their job was to call out if a soldier approached. It was near foolproof, and over the next weeks, we supplemented our rationed food with whatever I could barter with the natives.

One day, as I pushed aside the bamboo matting and stuck my hand out in the open air of freedom on the other side, Nikki called to me.

“Look, a chicken!”

I pulled my hand back with the four cigarettes I held and dashed toward her. A chicken! Sure enough, almost hidden in a bush and pecking at insects we could not see on the ground beneath it, was a fine copper-colored hen.

“Hey!” called a voice of disappointed outrage behind us. I glanced back. A brown hand was sticking through the fence from the other side, holding out a banana. That was an offer I would have scorned. For four cigarettes? Hah.

“How did it get here?” Nikki asked.

“Don’t know. Don’t care. A chicken!” This would be a feast for our family. We’d build a tiny fire and cook it slowly in small pieces, hoping no one would discover the rare smell of roasting meat.

“Who does it belong to?” she asked.

“To the person who catches it.” I glanced up and down the fence again. “Stay here. Remember to whistle if you see a soldier.”

I knelt. The chicken cocked its head and stared at me and blinked. I was the child who’d snatched a snake by the neck as a four-year-old. I made a confident quick thrust of my hand and missed.

The chicken clucked with disapproval and backed away, to the other side of the bush and into the open. I scurried forward in a half crouch, but the chicken easily outdistanced me to another bush, just inside the fence line.

When I reached that bush, I was stunned to see that the chicken had disappeared. I knelt for a closer look and felt my knees slope away from me. I pushed aside the lower part of the shrubbery and discovered how the chicken had disappeared.

It was a concrete pipe. A wide concrete pipe, its entrance completely covered by the bush. I heard clucks of disapproval fade as the chicken receded deeper and deeper into it. I pushed my head inside and saw light at the other end. This meant that the pipe could take me beneath the fence and into the Indonesian world.

This was such a magnificent discovery that I decided not even to mention it to Nikki. Someday, I realized, I might have need of something like this. But it would only stay in existence if the Japanese didn’t know about it. Which meant if I wanted to keep it secret, I had to keep it to myself.

I went back to my spot on the fence and managed to trade those four cigarettes for two cans of condensed milk plus the original banana. We were so hungry that on our return to our room, we scraped the inside of the banana peel until it was translucent. Later, I returned to the pipe with blocks of wood and stuffed them into the opening so that no more chickens could appear and betray its existence.

With the contents of that suitcase keeping us relatively well fed, and with a mother who took joy in her children, our lives were generally happy. It lasted until the morning our black puppy with the lop ear did not wake with the rest of us.

Coacoa had died while we slept.

T
HIRTEEN

At my request, Elsbeth first lifted and carried away Nikki as she slept, then returned for Aniek. I had been the one responsible for bringing Coacoa into Pietje’s world, and I would not shirk the burden that came with taking Coacoa out of Pietje’s life. I had no choice but to remain beneath the mosquito netting and watch my little brother’s innocent face as he slept, dreading what would happen when he opened his eyes.

I wasn’t going to try to explain why the puppy was dead. Elsbeth had suggested that Coacoa might have eaten something that poisoned him or that because Coacoa didn’t get enough food, it was just his time to die. I had begged her not to tell this to Pietje, for then he would blame himself for not taking good enough care of the puppy.

Pietje woke, and when he saw me, he gave me his quiet smile. Then, as he did each morning, he reached for Coacoa to shake him awake. I found the courage to tell Pietje the horrible news.

“I am so sorry, Pietje,” I said. “Coacoa died.”

I’d been expecting sobbing and disbelief. Instead, Pietje pronounced calmly, “He’s not dead. He’s asleep.”

He lifted the puppy’s underfed body and kissed Coacoa’s nose, singing, “Wake up. Wake up. The sun is up.”

“Pietje,” I said, my throat thick with the tears I so badly needed to cry. “Coacoa won’t wake up.”

“I know my own puppy,” Pietje said. “He’s asleep. That’s all. Please hold him. I need to get dressed.”

Pietje passed me the puppy’s body. For a moment, because of Pietje’s certainty, I almost believed it. In the tropical heat, Coacoa was still warm.

I spoke as Pietje finished dressing. “We can have a funeral. Moeder said she would read a Bible story and then we will pray over Coacoa and bury him. She also said she would pay for some chocolate and that you could eat it all by yourself without sharing.”

“Moeder is silly sometimes, isn’t she?” Pietje said. He reached for Coacoa. “We always share our food. And Coacoa is just asleep.”

Pietje crossed the threshold of our door frame, cradling Coacoa. He glanced back at me. I was rooted as I tried to absorb his reaction.

“What are you waiting for?” Pietje asked. “We can’t let Coacoa sleep all day.”

I stood and followed.

It was a day with no clouds and a breeze that carried the stench of the sewage away from our house. Within a week of arriving at the Jappenkamp, the flushing mechanism on the toilet in our house had snapped, and we’d been forced to rig it so the lever was in a permanently open position. A bucket of water poured into the bowl sent the contents into the septic system, but after a few weeks, the septic had overflowed. Now we squatted over buckets that had to be carried and emptied into a large hole dug near the center of the former neighborhood, and the odor hung over the entire camp in a stench that seemed like oil clinging to our skins. Today, though, the breeze brought in the perfume of flowers from the gardens outside the bamboo curtain that separated us from the world.

As we walked, I did not see my mother or Aniek or Nikki. Boys and girls played games with marbles and sticks while the women labored according to their assigned duties. Pietje kept kissing Coacoa’s nose as we passed several blocks of houses. We neared the houses where the camp commander and his
soldiers stayed, and when we rounded the corner of one block, I saw the commander on the street, walking toward us.

“Pietje,” I hissed. I pulled at his shoulder to bring him to a halt. “Commander Shizuka.”

I stood ramrod straight and shouted a single word.
“Kiotske!”

I would have been obligated to yell the Japanese word for attention even if it had been the lowest-ranking soldier.

All the children playing nearby immediately jumped to attention. We had all seen what happened when a woman or child forgot to pay sufficient respect or attention to any soldier or officer. If a child failed, the woman received a beating. If the woman failed, she was punished in the same way.

“Pietje,” I whispered, arms straight at my side. “Put Coacoa at your feet. Do you want Moeder to get a beating?”

Pietje set the puppy’s body on the road.

As Commander Shizuka came closer, I continued to follow protocol, as I had been the one to first give warning to everyone in earshot.

“Kere!”
I shouted.

This was the signal to bow from the waist down, at a minimum ninety degree angle, arms straight back. It was unthinkable to make eye contact. Only equals could do that, and it had taken many beatings for the strong and independent Dutch women to conform. Already decades had passed since Dutch women could stand for election and vote, but as Dutch men often ruefully chuckled, they had been in control for centuries before that.

Pietje and I held our bow. Shizuka’s black leather boots came into my view, and my stomach clutched with horror and dread when those boots stopped.

I dared not look at the commander. He had full authority over life and death in this camp, and there was no one over him to amend his decisions. As a result, we were intensely aware of his presence when he wandered among us.
I could not hold my breath, as bowing took too much effort, but it still felt like I was not breathing.

Shizuka had the habit of men in power throughout history who were small in stature; he did not walk but strutted. He also smelled of cologne, a distinct lavender that I suspected was instead perfume, and grew his hair longer than his soldiers and held it in place with scentless grease. Mrs. Vriend had reported the source of a horizontal scar across his left cheek as a sword duel. The rumors said he had twenty sets of uniforms in his closets and changed three to five times per day, which I believed because of their crisp appearance.

The boots moved closer, now almost beneath our heads. I knew Pietje would say nothing. He was justly terrified of the man and had seen Shizuka slap an elderly woman for not bowing correctly, then slap a mother because her little girl had failed to hold a bow long enough.

One of the boots nudged Coacoa’s still body.

Another nudge, closer to a kick.

Pietje fell to his knees and put his hands out to protect Coacoa. I envisioned soldiers dragging Elsbeth into the street and holding her as Shizuka beat her across the face. But I dared not speak because it would make her punishment worse.

I heard a snort of laughter, then a few Japanese words. Such was the concentration of my fear that I memorized the sounds of the words. Later that day, I searched for Mrs. Vriend, who translated them but would not believe that I’d heard correctly, not if Pietje had dared cover the puppy to protect it and Shizuka had let that action go unpunished.

Soon it will be gone.

I watched the boots withdraw, and once I was certain that Shizuka was far enough away, I yelled out the third command.
“Naore!”

This was the signal that we could all resume our activities.
Kiotske. Kere.
Naore.
Every child old enough to walk had practiced again and again how to respond to those words. Then I heard a shout from around the nearest corner as someone else saw the commander and gave the obligatory alert.
“Kiotske!”