Thief of Glory (22 page)

The night after the python attack was the only night I had to break curfew again. I crawled underneath the fence to the outside and found Adi waiting.
My currency for him was only a small jar of gin that he could trade for some coconuts and vegetables for our family. It had seemed wise to stretch out the remaining supply of Bols by dividing it this way. But to Adi’s surprise and delight, I also had money for him to purchase medical supplies.

During this meeting, Adi and I agreed on the system that Dr. Eikenboom had suggested. The foundation to it was that as a middleman, he would be able to take a consistent profit. I showed him where to find the drainage pipe hidden on his side of the fence. In the mornings, with enough sunlight filtering through the bushes covering both ends of the pipe for me to see that it was clear of snakes, I would crawl through. On the other end, just inside the pipe, I would leave a list of items for Adi to obtain, along with the necessary goods or money for his exchanges.

He would make sure that no one observed him as he took the list and goods from the pipe, and then he would wander around town to barter with people who had been exposed to Adi’s appearance long enough to look past it. In the evening, Adi put his spoils inside the end of the pipe, and I would retrieve them the next morning when I brought a new list and goods and money. This meant that Laura and I would need to go to the drainage pipe only once a day and that neither of us needed to dye our skins with betel nut juice to go into town ourselves. Laura would play dolls on the ground near the bush that hid the drainage pipe. She watched for soldiers and let me know if it was safe to come out.

The system seemed like it depended on trust, but it didn’t. Adi knew that if I returned the following morning and the goods weren’t in place, there would be no list and no goods or money waiting for him until he delivered on the previous list. The first time he wasn’t able to find what I needed, he had been waiting in the vegetation at the end of the pipe the next day so he could explain why. By the following morning, what I needed was there.

It was a good system. Adi, as it turned out, was an adept trader, and he
procured the insulin that Jasmijn needed to survive. Within days, she became healthy again, and as I held her, her eyes would search my face and she would respond to my smiles. My sisters took turns trying to teach her the names of different parts of the body—elbow, hand, nose, ear, fingers—giggling and singing, although we all knew it would be a while before Jasmijn would be old enough to talk. Now, at least, we could look forward to that day.

Yet while it seemed Dr. Eikenboom had solved one crisis facing the camp, Nakahara’s determination was growing to find the girls he needed for his teahouse.

Sophie met that challenge in her straightforward way. She wanted Laura to be part of the conversation so that her granddaughter would be aware of this injustice and could stand bravely alongside her grandmother. By then, Sophie had become like my own grandmother, so I was with Laura, at the kitchen, when Sophie met with Mrs. Bakker and the other block representatives.

About twenty women were gathered around the tables and huge vats that later would be filled with more water and rice.

“Tomorrow,” Sophie said to all of them, “Nakahara wants us to present him the young women for his teahouse.”

“It’s against the Geneva Convention rules,” Mrs. Bakker said. About Sophie’s age, she was a mother of four boys, all in the men’s work camps, and had the habitual expression of a woman sucking on tart lemon candies. This had been Mrs. Bakker’s standard response in private conversations with Sophie, which is why Sophie wanted a broader audience.

“And it’s against the Geneva Convention rules for him to withhold our Red Cross supplies,” Sophie said. “But we know he’s doing it.”

“We
think
he’s doing it,” Mrs. Bakker said. It was hot, even in the shade of the tin roof. The armpits of her dress were damp. “There’s no proof. Surely he knows we need those supplies.”

Mrs. Bakker, Sophie had explained to Laura and me, liked life with her head in sand, her big bloomers puffed out like the hind end of an ostrich.

“I have a woman who says she wants her daughter to go to the teahouse,” one block representative said, utter exhaustion on her thin face. “So does the daughter. They say she will get fed well and won’t have to work.”

Sophie turned over a vat and stood on it so that she could see every woman and they her. She looked them in the eyes as necessary.

“Think about this,” Sophie said. “Stop and really think about this. Are we going to agree to be pimps for our enemy? If we allow even one woman to send her daughter to the soldiers, that is what we have collectively become. When the war is over—and it
will
end sooner or later—do you want to leave this camp and have that on your conscience forever? Do we want even one of our daughters spending the rest of her life not only remembering how those animals treated her, but remembering that we allowed it to begin and allowed it to continue?”

“They might kill us if we resist,” the woman said.

Sophie stepped down from the vat. She turned over another vat beside the first one, then motioned for Laura to stand on it beside her. She put her arms on Laura’s shoulders and addressed the women again.

“And you think the shame of handing daughters over to be deflowered is better than living with that shame?” Her voice rose. Sophie was furious. Not at the woman who radiated exhaustion but at the situation.

“These are our children!” Sophie looked from woman to woman. “If one of your children was drowning, wouldn’t you rush into the water even if you couldn’t swim? If a lion attacked one of your children, you would face it with a broom or your bare hands, would you not? And would not that lion flee to discover how savage you would be in driving it away?”

I saw many of the women stand straighter as if saying, Yes, they would attack a lion. Yes, it would flee.

“Tomorrow morning, Nakahara expects one of us to bring him the girls at his deadline of nine o’clock.” Sophie spoke clearly, her voice radiating strength. “I will be the one to go to his office and tell him that we refuse to grant his request.”

No one spoke. I assumed they were thinking, as I was, that Sophie would receive a savage beating for her defiance against Nakahara.

“If I don’t return,” Sophie continued, “it is up to the rest of you to be leaders for all the women. We must hide all of the girls that meet his age requirements. We cannot give him those girls.”

“And if the soldiers come to get those girls?” Mrs. Bakker asked. Serious as this situation was, I had difficulty getting the image out of my head of this old woman bent forward with her head in the sand and her bloomers exposed.

Sophie stepped down and reached for one of the stirring spoons. She stepped onto the vat again so that everyone could see as she tossed it to Mrs. Bakker. “If the soldiers come to get those girls, you will have this to defend yourself.”

“A spoon against a rifle!”

“No, all of us with any kind of weapon. We have table knives and paring knives and scissors and forks. There are three thousand women and only a couple hundred soldiers. Nakahara might be willing to kill one woman, but would he kill us all? And are his soldiers willing to shoot us down for him?”

Sophie scanned the women’s faces and met as many eyes as she could. “Every woman in this camp must choose this moment to stand up against Nakahara. If we don’t stop him here, who knows what he will ask for next.”

She put her hands back on Laura’s shoulders. “And who knows if the next girls he wants will even be of age.”

Again, silence. One of the women stepped forward and turned a vat over. She found her balance on it and, at Sophie’s side, faced the women.

“I will stand with her,” Mrs. Schoonenburg said. Normally, when she
preached to us, she was strong and confident, a pastor’s wife whom we depended on as if she were the pastor herself. But now, her voice was trembling. “I will go with her tomorrow to Nakahara, and I will face his rage with her.” She gulped for air and struggled to continue speaking. “When Paul and Peter were asked to deny the Christ, they suffered beatings and imprisonment. When the first Christians in Rome were told to deny their Lord, they went into the arenas and sang hymns as wild animals advanced on them to tear them apart. If we give Nakahara our girls, we will be denying our Lord as surely as if we put the nails in His hands. And if tomorrow I die, when I enter heaven, it will not be with shame, and I will be able to look my Lord in the eyes and tell Him that I followed Him even unto death.”

“I will stand with her!” another shouted.

“And I!”

“And I!”

Then someone shouted, “We will stand with her!” It became an echo affirmed by all, repeated and repeated and repeated.

Sophie began to shudder as she, too, released her emotions. Then she began singing, so softly that it took me a few moments to realize it. “A wretch like me … was blind, but now I see …”

Mrs. Bakker, at the front, heard it too. She moved up and stood beside Sophie, then took Sophie’s hand and joined in. “ ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved …”

The ostrich was out of the sand, and her voice carried to the others. Like a flame touched to dry grass, it took only seconds for all to lift their voices, reaching out, hand to hand, many weeping as they sang.

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we’d first begun …”

As these women began to sing the final chorus, I saw Nikki running toward me. Her face was pinched with grief.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound …”

Nikki darted among the women and reached me at Sophie’s side. I, too, was singing.

“I once was lost, but now am found …”

Nikki pulled my hand and stood on her tiptoes so she could speak into my ear and so I could hear her above this wonderful hymn of hope, poured out to their Lord by women so sad and afraid and resolute.

“Was blind, but now I see …”

“Jeremiah, Jeremiah,” she said. “Come home. Jasmijn won’t wake up.”

T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

Each day, dozens of bodies were prayed over by immediate family members or by Mrs. Schoonenburg before being removed from camp. There was no dignity in wrapping the bodies in blankets, and no remembrance stones were left to mark a loved one’s passing.

Stone-faced mothers dressed their children’s bodies in their finest clothing, then let someone else take the child away. At least it spared her the final image of her child being stacked beside other bodies in a death wagon.

When a mother died, the children often responded with incomprehension, their reactions ranging from hysterics to denial. Sometimes a little boy or girl would refuse to let go of the mother’s hand in a futile attempt to prevent the body from being removed.

Elsbeth, Nikki, Aniek, and Pietje and I had placed our hope in my obtaining insulin for our little Jasmijn, but it hadn’t saved her. While we weren’t alone in our grief, we each faced the loss independently. I responded with a determination that Jasmijn would not be added to the bodies on the wagon, and I told Dr. Eikenboom of my decision as she filled out the death certificate.

Jasmijn’s soul had been gone only an hour or so, and she truly looked asleep.

Dr. Eikenboom shook her head. “But soldiers would see the freshly dug soil of a grave plot. Or a neighbor would know and others would hear about it. It wouldn’t be allowed because if you were able to bury your sister, others would want the same privilege.”

The tip of a small feather from her pillow extended from the edge of Jasmijn’s lips. Her mouth had not dried out, and the feather was still wet and bedraggled. I pulled it out.

“I will take her to Adi,” I said.

“Adi? The boy who does our trading in town?”

“I will ask him to take our little sister and provide her a grave. After the war, we will be able to visit her.”

“Jeremiah,” Dr. Eikenboom said, “Mrs. Schoonenburg will join you and perform a funeral ceremony and you can say good-bye to Jasmijn that way. That is how it must be done.”

I don’t know what she thought she saw in my eyes, because her expression changed and a sad smile formed on her lips. “That is not how it must be done. I think your suggestion is a beautiful idea. I trust you not to get caught.”

Pietje nodded. Aniek and Nikki came to a telepathic agreement and both nodded too. Their faces were blotched with grief and exhaustion. They had spent the last hour singing to Jasmijn, not songs to teach her what to call finger or nose, but hymns of comfort to her still body.

“Now,” Dr. Eikenboom said, “we need to see to your mother.” She knelt beside Elsbeth, who pushed her away. This, at least, told us that Elsbeth still heard and understood what was happening around her.

Dr. Eikenboom rose. “Please do your best to make sure that your mother eats what you give her. She needs rest.”

“Yes,” I said.

When Dr. Eikenboom left, we placed Jasmijn in the family bed and sang her lullabies, as if she were still with us. I glanced over at Elsbeth once, and she was managing a small smile as tears were rolling down her face. That gave me a burst of joy because it told me that perhaps our mother was breaking through her hard shell.

I knew what was ahead of me for the rest of the day. Mrs. Schoonenburg would lead us through a funeral, and I would promise to be responsible for taking Jasmijn out of the house. Mrs. Schoonenburg would assume I meant the wagon, then would leave us alone. I would spend the day with Jasmijn, and
after curfew, I would hold my little sister to my chest and crawl through the drainage pipe. Then I would wait on the other side in the darkness for Adi to arrive with the items on the list that I’d left for him before Sophie had called together the block representatives. It wouldn’t matter to me if my vigil took all night.

The funeral came and went. With the knowledge that she would join Sophie the next morning to face Nakahara, Mrs. Schoonenburg had a powerful presence to her that illuminated her prayers over Jasmijn, as if she were already in the fire—like Daniel’s friends with the angel—and singing praise to God.