Thief of Glory (18 page)

I had my eyes on Mrs. Aafjes, the one with a ruddy face and a mole on the side of her nose. There. I saw it again. It looked like she had just used the serving spoon to tamp down the rice she’d put into a cup for another woman who shared her house.

“I heard that Nakahara has put out orders for the Dykstra house to be emptied for soldiers to use,” said a woman in front of me. Houses were named for the designated leader of each house. Families in each house reported to a spokeswoman, who also listened to any complaints. These spokeswomen in turn reported to a block representative, and the block representatives reported to Commander Nakahara via translator. The Dykstra house was closest to Commander Nakahara’s residence. “Nakahara wants to build a walled private garden between the two houses.”

“Where will the families go?” the woman across from her asked. “It’s already too crowded as it is.”

“That’s not the worst of it,” the first woman said. “I hear he wants to make the Dykstra residence into a teahouse.”

“Teahouse!”

A part of my brain wondered why someone would be so horrified at a teahouse, and the other part was focused on Mrs. Aafjes. There! She’d done it again for the next person in line.

“Teahouse,” the first woman confirmed. “And I’ve also heard that Nakahara does crazy things every full moon.”

“Ha! You can’t believe all rumors. It’s probably not even true about the teahouse. What does he expect? Dutch women to line up to keep his soldiers happy?”

I didn’t hear the answer because I’d watched Mrs. Aafjes put rice in a bowl and moved to the front of the line to confront her. I kept my plate behind my back so it would be clear I hadn’t moved forward to get food out of turn.

“I see what you are doing,” I said to Mrs. Aafjes. “I don’t think it’s right.”

She looked down her nose at me. I hoped she could see me past her monstrous mole. It was a strange time for me to notice a fine hair growing from the center of it.

“You get back in line,” she said. She set the bowl down on the table and placed her hands on her hips. “Everybody takes their turn.”

“When I get back in line,” I said, “I’m going to keep watching you. And after I get my rice, I’m going to stand here and keep watching you. Because I know what you are doing, and it’s not fair.”

“You are making no sense,” she hissed. “Stop your rudeness or your family will get nothing. Go back to your mother.”

Sophie, whose face was now showing only faint bruises and no longer needed a sling for her arm, came to the front of the line. “What is happening here?”

I pointed at the woman. “She uses her spoon to press down the rice for people she likes.”

It seemed like such a minor accusation, but around me, it became quiet. Food was so precious that it was like accusing her of robbing a bank.

“Ridiculous,” Mrs. Aafjes said.

“There is one way to find out.” I grabbed the bowl and turned it upside down. The contents held and not a single grain dropped.

Sophie said, “Please take off that apron. I will serve at this position now.”

“I will not,” Mrs. Aafjes said. She lifted her spoon.

“Are you threatening to hit me?” Sophie asked. “Go ahead. Your actions will condemn you.”

Two women moved up beside Sophie. “If you hit her, we will make sure that you go without food for the next week.”

Mrs. Aafjes glared. As she untied her apron, cheers and applause came from behind us.

Then it was interrupted.

“Jeremiah!” There was such a piercing quality to my mother’s voice that I spun around, half expecting to see soldiers at her side dragging her away.

Instead, she was standing out of the line. Alone. With the dirt between her ankles turning dark from water that coursed down her legs.

T
WENTY
-T
WO

To no one’s surprise, Jasmijn Grace Prins was born with a mop of dark hair and soft amber skin. After watching my mother endure twenty hours of labor, I was not allowed to be involved in the delivery itself, no matter how hard I pushed at the women to let me be near as I heard the screams.

Jasmijn’s weight deficiency, Dr. Eikenboom said, could be helped by condensed milk, which would replace the milk that she could not get from my mother, who was recovering slowly from the delivery. Dr. Eikenboom further explained that while fruits and vegetables would help Elsbeth, a baby’s digestive system was not capable of dealing with any of the extra rations that my brother and sisters and I would gladly set aside no matter how pinched we were by our own hunger.

Everyone commented on Jasmijn’s happy nature. When I held her, her beautiful black eyes steadfastly gazed at me with such apparent wisdom that they seemed to contain all the mysteries of the universe. I felt protective as a magnificent love grew for my little sister. I decided that her health—and perhaps her life—depended on my getting the supplies described by Dr. Eikenboom, so I took one of Elsbeth’s sketches from their hiding place and made a list on the back of it. Paper was scarce, but the fear of forgetting something important for Jasmijn drove me. Then I went out to the bush near the small cross that marked Coacoa’s grave. I made sure that I was unobserved as I dug out one of the eight bottles of Bols sloe gin I had stolen from my mother. I planned to go through the drainage ditch that only I knew about, but I would go alone, not wanting Pietje as an extra risk.

It took a slow hour to clear the way to the drainage pipe, pulling out the
chocks of firewood that I’d used to block a chicken from returning, and checking for soldiers each time to make sure it was clear to crawl beneath the bush that had grown over the entrance. When I crawled beneath the bush again, holding the bottle of gin, it was around three in the afternoon. The parrots and warblers filled the air with cheerful notes meant to disguise their desperate pursuits of food, territorial rights, and mates. I was equally desperate as I crawled into the pipe headfirst, far enough for my shoulders to squeeze inside. The light at the far end may have only been twenty or thirty feet away. I knew an Indonesian might decide to take me back to the Jappenkamp for a reward instead of trading my gin for the supplies I wanted, but I was gambling on greed for the other seven bottles to guarantee I could trade with impunity. I was also gambling that there would be no snakes in the drainage pipe, or that if they were in the pipe, my approach would cause them to flee.

What I had not calculated was the effect of the tube of concrete around my body. I had my arms out in front of me, one hand on the bottle, with plenty of room to wiggle forward. But I couldn’t. I began to hyperventilate, rasping in a fear that possessed me like claws of a monster. Sweat ran like thick blood into my eyebrows and dripped onto my cheeks. I wanted to scream in terror but was too frightened to do it only because I thought the sound itself might cause the pipe to collapse on my body and bury me alive.

Somehow I managed to push myself backward, and when I scrambled out from under the bush, all I could do was push my knees to my chest and hold my knees tight with my arms, until all the trembling in my body subsided. The bottle of precious gin was still in the drainage pipe, but the thought of going back in to retrieve it sent my body into more spasms. I knew it was lost to me and to my family. I was a coward, so ashamed that in the evening, when Elsbeth asked me to hold Jasmijn, I refused because I was unworthy of it and asked for Nikki to take my turn.

I could see only one solution. The next morning, in a light rainstorm, I walked a street over and visited Sophie for the second time. Her bruises had completely faded, and the beating had done nothing to diminish her aura of dignity. When I arrived, she was sitting on the porch, beneath an awning. With Laura in a chair beside her. At my approach, Laura stood and walked into the house, a pointed way to ignore me.

“Hello, Mrs. Jansen,” I said.

She pointed at the chair that Laura had vacated. “Please sit. But don’t expect any conversation unless you call me Sophie. I told you, I am a friend.”

The usual noises came from inside the house, sounds of conversation, some crying, occasional clanking of pans. Ten or twelve families lived inside and were sheltering themselves from the rain in the stink of body odors and the mingling of bedbugs and lice. Others also sat under the awning looking for fresh air and relief from the crowding.

“Well,” Sophie said, “there have been interesting conversations in this house about you and Georgie. His mother wants to hunt you down for what you did to his nose. And Georgie keeps saying he did nothing to deserve it.”

“If he wasn’t a sissy,” I said, “he’d find me during the day and we could talk about it. But I noticed he gives me plenty of distance.”

“I wish I could tell people about your broken arm,” Sophie said.

I shook my head otherwise. “I prefer to keep things between me and Georgie.”

“But that’s not why you are here, right?”

I pulled a folded piece of paper from under my shirt where I had kept it away from the rain. “I wrote down a list of things that Dr. Eikenboom says my baby sister needs.”

I caught Sophie’s glance at the pencil sketch on the paper as I had unfolded it. This was one of a train, smoke flattening behind it, looking as if it were
going to rumble off the paper and onto her lap. She made no comment about the sketch but gave her attention to the supplies.

“Jeremiah,” she said, “it looks like many of these things can’t be found inside the camp.”

I nodded, then said, “I would like to ask a question, but it is only a make-believe question because, of course, a boy like me would not have a bottle of Bols gin. But if somehow I could get such a bottle, would you help me with the trading for it for things we
can
find in the camp? Condensed milk. Soap. I don’t think it would do me any good to be caught with the gin, and since you are new to camp, others might believe it actually got here with you.”

This time, when she tried to hide her smile, I could see the slight curving of her lips, as most of the swelling of her face was gone.

“I suspect that you would be able to get Bols gin, and I suspect that some of the mothers here would break another woman’s bones for that gin. So perhaps, yes, some of the items on the list might be found within the camp. But not all—keep that in mind.”

“Thank you,” I said. “If somehow I manage to find a bottle, I will be back in the afternoon. And it will always be our secret, right?”

“Of course.”

I rose.

“Would you mind waiting for a moment as I go inside?” she asked.

I nodded and sat back down.

Sophie limped into the house, taking my list with her. I had assumed she was going to make some immediate inquiries, so I was surprised when Laura returned in Sophie’s place, holding the sheet of paper with my list.

“I suppose,” I said, before I could stop myself, “you were told I would be found on the porch.”

“No,” she answered. “I was told you wrote this list.”

She gave it to me and I took it. Up and down the porch, women in their own chairs were sitting out the drizzle, involved in their own conversations or simply just staring at the gray.

Laura had another piece of paper. This one, too, was folded. She opened it and stared at whatever was written on it. Then she folded it backward in such a way that I could see only the top third, which was the beginning of a letter, dated in February of 1942. Just before the Dutch capitulation.

“Read this,” she said. “Not out loud. I don’t want anyone else to hear.”

I shrugged, not sure, of course, for the reason for the request.

It began with these words.
Dear Laura, you are very beautiful. Someday when there are no parents around, I would like it if we could find a private spot. There is a game called doctor and nurse, and …

I gasped at what followed. Then became outraged and barely coherent.

“This … this … is … horrible.”

“It gets worse,” she said. “That’s why I kept it folded, so you wouldn’t read the rest of it.”

“Who … Who …?”

She took the letter from me, then folded it so that I could only peek at the bottom. Where my name was clearly written: Jeremiah Prins.

“I didn’t—”

“This letter made me feel filthy,” she said. “I was so ashamed that I cried for days. I didn’t dare show it to anyone because they might think that I said something to encourage you to write this. And I didn’t throw it away because I wanted someday to show it to you and make you eat this piece of paper and beg for forgiveness.”

“I didn’t—”

“Oma doesn’t know what was in the letter, and although she has asked many times, I’ve never told her. And I always kept it hidden from her.” She
doubled the folds of the paper so that it compressed into a small square that fit into the palm of her hand.

“All she knew was that after I opened the envelope you had mailed, I was miserable. A few days ago, she told me to ask you to tell me what you had written. I refused. Why would I want to hear this again?” she asked, briefly opening her palm where I could see a glimpse of the paper.

Laura continued. “Except just now when she found me inside, she asked me if the writing of this letter looked like your writing on the list. It doesn’t. That means someone else wrote the mean and nasty letter.”

She took a deep breath. “What was in the letter you sent me?”

My mind was reeling from the contents of the letter in her palm, especially my forged name at the end. I wanted to be acquitted. “I am embarrassed to tell you. It was easier to send than to think I might have to say it in front of you.”

She lifted her hand again and opened her fingers so that the paper was clearly visible. “Would you rather I believed you mailed this, even if the writing looks different than yours?”

Without hesitation, I began. “Memories drift like leaves, blown by winds gentle before a gale heaves.”

I was not going to repeat the next line of my sonnet. Not to her.
Tears grace my cheeks, burning of love unspoken and deeply yearning.