Thief of Glory (15 page)

“We will not let them win,” Mrs. Altink said. “Do you hear me?”

Her cheekbones were pushing hard against skin that was drawn tight from lack of food. Her hair was limp with grease. But she had the eyes of a warrior.

“They can take our homes and our husbands,” she said. “They can take our health. But we are Dutch. We will not let them take our spirit. Don’t for a moment believe that you were at fault for what happened yesterday. When you assume you deserve the evil that someone else inflicts upon you, then you are choosing to be a victim. Do not give someone else that power over you.”

Her intensity took so much willpower that after I nodded, she blinked back tears and whispered, more to herself than to me, “Do not cry.”

This was something the children heard again and again from all the mothers.
Do not cry.

The Dutch would not let the Japanese soldiers see our children cry. We were too proud.

“Do not cry,” she repeated. “We will not let them win.”

I took my place in line for Moeder, while Mrs. Altink returned to her and put an arm around her shoulders to keep a blanket in place for the half hour or so it took me to near the front of the line.

There, Dr. Kloet noticed my presence. He waved me forward.

I believe that had Mrs. Altink not been so fierce with me, I would have succumbed to the temptation to cut in front of the others still standing in front of my spot in the line. My earlier sense of defeat would have meant total surrender. When there is no point in even trying, what would it matter to push others aside and take only for yourself?

Instead, as he waved repeatedly, I pretended not to notice and tried not to feel scorn for Dr. Kloet’s lack of political sense. I had been in school. I had seen the teacher’s pets and disliked them for the fawning and the acceptance of favors from the teachers who did not understand how it was for the boys. Yes, there was a certain duplicity to this. I had no hesitation bilking the man for whatever food I could take from him in marble games at the end of the day. But it was different to take something here, for that would be like taking from the women and children who had paid their time to stand in line.

To step forward now would cost my mother the acceptance and grace that had so recently been extended to her. It would have given Nakahara victory.

When, finally, I was in front of Dr. Eikenboom, Mrs. Altink led Elsbeth forward.

I stepped away, my duty finished.

But Dr. Eikenboom would have nothing of it.

“Look at your leg,” she said to me.

I glanced down. I was wearing shorts, and my legs were streaked with dirt. Two scratches, courtesy of the claws of Nakahara’s killer dog, traveled from my knee to my ankles. In places, the scratches were wide enough and deep enough to have torn through the skin.

I shrugged.

“No,” she said. “Remember what happened to your mother?”

Dr. Eikenboom called over to Dr. Kloet, just as a few weeks earlier she’d done for my mother; vital medicine would not be dispensed without a joint agreement. “We need sulfa for Jeremiah. If we give him a little now, we won’t need a lot later.”

Dr. Kloet was just grumpy enough at how I’d ignored his waves to walk over and make a show of deciding whether to agree with Dr. Eikenboom. He looked at the red scratches on my leg.

“Same thing as your mother, I suppose.”

“No,” I said. “She scraped her leg in the kitchen. This came from a dog.”

A strange expression crossed his face, an expression that would not make sense to me until much, much later, when it was far too late to make a difference for what I should have also realized in that moment. Dr. Kloet was a blunderer in social situations, but not stupid, as I would also learn much, much later, when it was far too late to make a difference.

“A dog?” he asked.

“Yesterday. At roll call.”

He blinked several times, putting together the stories he must have already heard about the previous afternoon. Most certainly, he would have helped Dr. Eikenboom treat Sophie after the beating.

“Fine then,” he said and walked back to his desk.

“Dr. Eikenboom,” I said, “will she be all right? The woman from yesterday.”

Dr. Eikenboom knelt and made sure we were at eye level. “That is in God’s hands. But whatever happens, she made the choice.”

The tears that had failed me during the night now threatened to roll down my face. I blinked back the tears.

“Yes,” I said. “We will not let them win.”

Do not cry.

E
IGHTEEN

Naturally, I had questions about why Laura’s grandmother Sophie was in camp. Hadn’t she—and Laura—escaped by ship just before the Japanese invasion? This meant that I also had questions, naturally, about Laura. But these were questions I felt I had no choice but to keep to myself, especially because of the gravity of the beating I had witnessed.

I doubted I could comprehend how badly Nakahara had hurt Laura’s grandmother, given that Nakahara’s single kick to Elsbeth had penetrated the muscles so deeply she could barely walk that morning, let alone take her turn at kitchen duties.

Do not cry. We will not let them win.

I was determined that the Prins family, represented by me, would not let them win. Thus, I made my way to the kitchen to present myself for duties in Elsbeth’s place.

The overnight storm had blown rain under the tin-covered roof, drenching the firewood and turning the dirt floors into mud. Someone had begun the fire in the stove, and because of the wet firewood, smoke hung shoulder high beneath the tin roof.

The women who had already gathered were sitting at a table, drinking tea before starting their duties. These were the women who heard rumors first because of their contact with the drivers who brought in supplies, the ones who had known ahead of the rest of camp, for example, that the dogs would be taken to prevent rabies. My mother would have been near or among them if she’d been able to help with duties. I was content to listen to their conversation as I waited for one of them to address me; one simply did not
interrupt elders. It would have been nice, however, to have a cup of tea in my hand.

Mrs. Aafjes held court, and her voice was distinctive above the rest. She was a large, intimidating woman who wore men’s clothes—a loose, faded black shirt and ragged pants—and she was the mother to four children. Her face was ruddy from sun exposure, and she had a fascinating mole on the side of her nose.

“If someday these animals ever try to take us away from our children, I say that’s when we make our last stand,” she said. “Every one of us. Then the world will remember how we refused to surrender. Like Masada. That’s a far kinder fate for our children than leaving them with these fiends.”

“Take us away from our children?” someone asked.

Mrs. Aafjes leaned forward like she was going to speak confidentially, but the large-boned woman could have been heard in a cattle stampede. “The man who brings the bread. He said he’s heard that the Japanese need more workers in Borneo. He says they might start taking women from camp and leaving the children behind.”

“No,” another woman wailed.

It seemed like Mrs. Aafjes savored the drama and the news she was delivering. “It’s just a rumor, mind you. Still, if it happened, I say we gather ourselves in a group to choose our own deaths, just as the Jews did on the mountaintop. They knew if the Romans caught them alive that—”

The woman beside her tugged on her elbow and pointed at me. “Not in front of the boy.”

Mrs. Aafjes turned her nose and her mole toward me and glared. “Yes?”

I tried not to stare at the mole as I spoke. “My mother is Elsbeth Prins, and she cannot help keep the fires burning. So I am here instead.”

Without rice, we starved. To cook rice, we needed boiling water. Vats and vats of it. This required constant fire in the stoves that were inefficiently leaky in the best of conditions.

“That will not be possible,” she said. “Children are no longer permitted in the kitchen. Those are the rules.”

“Yes,” I said. “I must. I am not a child.”

“Last month,” she said, scolding me, “you didn’t have to endure the tragedy that still gives me nightmares. A little girl, only three, tripped one of the women holding a vat of cooked rice, just before we drained the water.”

The women had to lift these large vats of boiling water with bamboo poles. In the first months, it had been a task that required two women for two bamboo poles. Since then, as everyone in camp grew weaker, it had become a complicated task that required four women.

“That boiling water,” Mrs. Aafjes pronounced, “spilled on the child and her mother.”

She continued her glare. “It burned both of them, and both were dead two days later. So no more children in the kitchen. We don’t want to have to see something like that again. A horrible, horrible thing for me. I can still hear the screams.”

“I know how to split wood,” I said. “I know how to wash dishes. I know how to stay away from boiling water. If my mother cannot be here, I will work in her place.”

The woman beside her—the one who had interrupted the story about the Romans and the Jews—tugged again on Mrs. Aafjes’s sleeve and whispered in her ear.

Mrs. Aafjes looked at me with new recognition. “You’re the one the dog attacked at roll call.”

I knew what that meant. I was the one whose mother fainted and drew a beating for Laura’s grandmother.

“I am here to work in my mother’s place,” I said.

“I now understand why,” she said. Her mole twitched as the moralistic tendencies of the Dutch triumphed within her. My work, I knew she believed,
would serve as a payment for Sophie’s sacrifice. “Very well then. If you chop off a foot, don’t come running to me.”

I searched for the driest logs in the pile. As I labored to split off small enough pieces to fit into the stove, I was so absorbed in the task that I did not know Laura had entered my life again until I heard her speak in a dull voice.

“I was told I could find you in the kitchen.”

I turned and looked into the face of Laura. I had dreamed when one day I saw her again, I would be in fine clothes, driving a fine car, somewhere in Amsterdam. She would see me in the car and regret until her dying day how she had spurned me by sending an empty envelope in response to my beautiful sonnet.

“I’ve been asked to deliver a message to you,” she said.

I was spattered in mud, smelling of smoke. I became more aware of how distasteful I looked in that moment than I had in months. That was the impact Laura’s appearance had on me. It was the same horse’s kick in the belly reaction that I’d had the first time I’d seen her. This time, however, I let it make me feel angry and churlish. With her in front of me, so beautiful despite the near rags that served as a dress, and the knots in her long hair, and with her facial expression and dull voice so obviously indicative of her disinterest in me, I honed in on the vivid disappointment I felt after that empty envelope had arrived.

“They were right, then, weren’t they? This is where I am.” I turned my attention back to the firewood. My goal was to say it in such a way that it hurt her as much as I felt hurt.

I succeeded. When I glanced back to see if she had remained, I found her staring at me with near hatred.

“Go away,” I said.

“Believe me, I will. I didn’t want to look for you, but my oma sent me because she wants to talk to you. So I had no choice.”

I should have asked how Sophie was doing. I should have apologized that it was my fault that I hadn’t done enough to stop Nakahara. Instead, I nodded without looking at her. I had every right to be angry, didn’t I? I’d poured my heart into a sonnet that Ivanhoe himself would have been proud to have given to Rowena. Yet Laura had made a deliberate point of insulting me with her reply of an empty envelope. And her current attitude that made it clear she thought I was dung to be scraped off her shoe.

“I have wanted to be able to speak to your oma,” I said. I did not know if I would be able to thank Sophie in a way that made sense. How do you express happiness to someone for paying such a large price to save someone you love? “But not with you there. So I will go to the hospital as soon as I can.”

“She’s not in the hospital,” Laura said. “The doctors said that they didn’t want her to catch an infection. She’s at the house where they put us.”

I didn’t know which house Sophie had been forced to choose for their living quarters. The influx of newcomers had nearly doubled our population. Where families had once been able to keep a room all to themselves, now they had to share with another family of strangers. In our house, my decision to take such a small room, where five bodies asleep filled all the space on the floor, had paid off, and we’d been able to keep our privacy.

“Send someone else to get me then,” I said, keeping my back to her. This was her chance to ask why I was so mad, and then when I explained, she could apologize and beg forgiveness for her betrayal.

When I didn’t get a response, I turned my head to see why she was silent. But she was gone.