Thief of Glory (23 page)

The only time I left the house and my vigil over Jasmijn was when Sophie came to see how our family was doing. I allowed Sophie to hug me, but Laura stared at me in a daze. The next morning, Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg would face Nakahara with their message of defiance, and Laura was trying to be brave about her own fears. We were both aware that today might be the last time for Sophie to hug either of us.

I waited about an hour after the siren sounded for curfew. Then I safely snuck to the bush that hid our pipeline to freedom, and I cried only a little as Jasmijn and I made our final journey together beneath the fence. On the other side, I found a spot in deep shadows to lean against the banyan that once held the python. With Jasmijn cradled against my chest, I let the night sounds settle around me. Frogs in high pitches and bullfrogs in low pitches. The occasional screech from trees outside of town. The tropical heat was a blanket, and I whispered lullabies to Jasmijn, grateful for each minute that Adi did not arrive.

I had no way to track time, but eventually, I fell asleep. It was only the rustling of brush that woke me, and I saw Adi kneeling as he prepared to crawl through the vegetation to the entrance to the drainage pipe.

“Adi,” I whispered.

He groaned with fright.

“It’s me—Jeremiah.”

Adi backed away. He had a bag in his arms.

“Jeremiah?”

“Over here,” I said.

Adi came forward. He set the day’s supplies on the ground.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Light your candle,” I said.

He did. The glow showed Jasmijn’s tranquil face. It also showed the twisted turn of his upper lip that made him an outcast in his own world.

“My sister,” I said. “Jasmijn.”

“She’s so beautiful.” He saw that her hair was dark. “She’s one of us.”

“Yes.”

In the candlelight, he reached over and lightly stroked her cheek. I could not help it. I shuddered with grief.

He drew his hand back as if he’d touched the flame of his candle. “I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” I said. I took his hand and brought it back to her face. He stroked her cheek again, as if lost in the perfection of her face.

“Don’t let her wake,” he said, a grunt escaping his mouth as he tried to form words. “Sometimes the little ones see my mouth and they don’t understand I am not a monster …”

In that moment, I wanted to hug him as Sophie had hugged me earlier in my grief, but that was impossible. Adi would have misinterpreted my compassion as pity.

“Remember how you’ve found me insulin?” I said to Adi. “It was for her. But she doesn’t need it anymore.”

He looked at me. And understood.

“My brother,” he said, “I am so sorry.”

“Will you truly be my brother?” I asked. “Will you find a grave for her and
a cross? Beneath her shirt, I’ve written a note with her name and her date of birth and today’s date for the cross.”

“I will,” he said. “As God is my witness. You honor me with this.”

“Tell me what it costs,” I said. “I will leave you the money when I leave a list.”

“This is not something that a brother does for money,” he answered, and it was an answer that gave me certainty that I could trust Jasmijn to him.

I tried to thank him, but I could not control my shuddering anymore and became incoherent.

Adi blew out the candle. He knelt and took Jasmijn from my arms and walked away into the darkness, leaving me with the night sounds beneath the banyan.

T
WENTY
-N
INE

I could not permit myself the luxury of solitude for my grief much past dawn, because I could not fail to be there for the usual roll call after the wailing of sirens took our family out to the street with all the other women and children of camp.

In line, waiting for the soldier to appear who would do the count for our block, I first heard the news: Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg had been taken away by guards the evening before, and no one knew where they were.

With the deadline less than an hour away, I heard the whispers up and down the line.
“Who will face Nakahara now? Who will go to him and tell him that we will not give up our girls for the teahouse?”

With sisters too young to be affected by the teahouse, my fears were for Sophie and Laura. During roll call, it was impossible to go a street over to see Laura, but as soon as the soldier had satisfied himself that everyone on our block was accounted for—Jasmijn’s death certificate had reduced it by one—I dashed between two houses on a familiar shortcut to find her.

Laura was sitting on the porch of the house, back to the wall, arms wrapped around her knees.

“I’ve heard,” I said as I sat beside her.

“He said they will be released when the teahouse girls are brought to him,” Laura answered. “What is there to do?”

I grappled with the answer that had already been decided. Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg had said that if necessary, they would sacrifice their lives in telling Nakahara of the camp’s refusal to give him teahouse girls. How had anything changed? That was a logical answer for Laura.

Yet only the day before, too many adults had tried to comfort me with logic.
“It’s a mercy that Jasmijn is in heaven. This camp has too many hardships, and the poor child was in so much pain so much of the time.”

The heart is not engineered for logic, because the heart is not engineered.

I knew the answer to give Laura because Sophie had given me the best answer the day before. She had held me and whispered,
“I’m sorry for you, Jeremiah. I don’t think anyone can understand how much it hurts. I wish I could carry your pain for you. I’m so sorry for you.”

“Laura,” I said, “I don’t know what there is to do. I wish I knew. And I’m so sorry for you.”

We might have remained on the porch all day, each in our own private griefs, but in the next minutes, Mrs. Bakker, the block representative, stepped into the middle of the street and called in a voice that was surprisingly loud.

“Ieder een er uit! Ieder een er uit!”

Everybody out! Everybody out!

All the houses began to discharge the adult women as if the sirens had wailed again for roll call. When the women got to the streets, instead of forming lines, they began to march down the street toward Nakahara’s residence.

We began to follow, and Mrs. Bakker noticed.

“Stay behind,” she said. “No children.”

“It’s my grandmother,” Laura said. “I will not stay behind.”

“And I will fight anyone who tries to stop Laura,” I said.

Any other time, this open rebellion would have earned spankings and forcible removal. Laura and I knew it, and Mrs. Bakker knew it. However, Mrs. Bakker only said, “I will deal with your disrespect later.”

The women from the other blocks streamed in from all streets to converge on the stretch of cobblestone in front of the Nakahara residence. He was inside, no doubt, waiting for the deadline to come and go so that he could send his soldiers to gather some teahouse girls. Or perhaps he expected that with
Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg captive, the camp’s resolve to defy him would collapse.

Hundreds upon hundreds of women gathering in front of his residence spoke otherwise. Soldiers scurried up and down the street, pointing their rifles, but the fear was obvious on their faces. With no orders, they were uncertain about what to do. Several bolted into the Nakahara residence.

The women formed orderly lines up and down the street. There were too many for the customary roll call formation of one line on each side of the street, so when all the movement had stopped, the women stood four lines deep on each side, with enough space between the lines for the women to bow.

Laura and I took spots at the front line where we had a clear view of what might happen.

Soldiers continued to walk up and down the center of the street, yet each woman remained motionless. And silent. It was an eerie tension-filled bubble of time.

Then, down the center of the street walked the woman who intended to replace Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg in defiance of Nakahara. Laura grabbed my wrist in an unspoken gesture of support.

It was Elsbeth. Head bowed. Plodding step by step. Wearing a faded dress with a dotted pattern and walking in bare feet.

Much, much later I would understand what had driven her, an attempt at redemption for an act that I would never fully comprehend. But in this moment, I could only question whether my eyes were deceiving me. Out of all the women in this camp, it seemed impossible to me that my mother—who in her despondency over the last weeks had rarely left our cramped room and in so doing had become as invisible as the dead thrown onto the wagon—would have made a decision not only to face Nakahara’s wrath but to put herself at the center of attention.

“Moeder!” I ran out to her, uncaring that it put me squarely on the same stage of attention.

“No, Jeremiah,” she said in a dull voice. “It must be done.”

“He will kill you,” I said. “Please, don’t.”

“If he does, you will take care of the family as you have always done. Go.”

I pulled on her hand. She reacted by slapping me across the face with her other hand.

“I am your mother,” she said. There was sudden strength in her voice. “Do as I say.”

I backed away, blinking with the same disbelief that had overwhelmed me upon seeing her walking alone down the center of the street. I stumbled back to Laura.

I felt a woman’s hand on my shoulder. From the line behind me. I pushed it away. I looked straight ahead. I would not let my eyes follow my mother to the steps of the Nakahara residence. In the silence, however, the sound of the closing door betrayed me, and I knew she was inside.

Time remained suspended. Even the soldiers stopped the nervous patrolling of the center of the street. When screams came from inside the house, every woman stood like a statue. Except the woman behind me, who must have anticipated what I would do, for her arms grabbed me and prevented me from running to the house. No matter how much I squirmed, I could not move. As the unseen beating inside the residence continued, I was enveloped in the peculiar smell of that woman’s unwashed body, her hand around my mouth to keep me from screaming. What little shaking of my head I was able to accomplish showed me that while some of the women were watching our struggle, all of them maintained the discipline of formation.

When the screams stopped, so did my struggle. But the woman behind me did not let go.

The door opened. Nakahara stepped outside.

“Kiotske!” Attention!

It was an unnecessary command. All the women had been standing at attention from the moment they had formed into lines.

“Kere!” Bow!

Only then did the woman behind me let go of my body.

In the moments that followed, there remained total silence. Total obedience. All these hundreds of women crisply bent forward at the waist and held position. Although I raged inside, I, too, bent forward.

Five minutes passed. Maybe ten minutes. The older women must have been in agony, because I felt horrible strain on my back. Some groaning began to break the silence. When the moment came that Nakahara was satisfied that he had proven he was in control, the final order came.

“Naore!” At ease!

Perhaps this was when he intended to speak to all the women through an interpreter, but when the women straightened, he discovered how mistaken he was in believing he had managed to quell the revolt by taking away its leaders and beating the woman who had replaced them.

When the women straightened, they pulled out weapons that had been hidden in their clothing and held them at chest level. Not a word was spoken. From my position at the front line, I saw the resolute determination on the face of the women who stood facing me across the street.

No translation was needed because no one spoke. Nakahara faced knitting needles and scissors and forks and paring knives and wooden spoons and the jagged necks of broken bottles. The soldiers formed tiny circles in the center of the streets, backs to each other, rifles pointed outward.

Had a single shot been fired, there is no doubt that the entire group of steadfastly disciplined women would have become an unstoppable mob, releasing its fury on the dozens of soldiers, who would have been overwhelmed by
hundreds and hundreds of women seething with hatred at the daily roll calls and the reduced rations and the misery inflicted upon their children.

Nakahara broke the silence and shouted in Japanese. It took several moments, then the translation came. “No teahouse deadline. Volunteers only.”

We knew it was defeat for Nakahara, because there would be no volunteers. Mrs. Bakker took a step forward and spoke in a moderate tone that was still clearly heard up and down the street.

“We will not leave until Mrs. Jansen and Mrs. Schoonenburg and Mrs. Prins join us.”

Nakahara shouted again, and the translation came again. “No teahouse deadline. Volunteers only.”

He turned quickly and retreated to the house, leaving his soldiers in their tight circles to face the women. Within minutes, the door opened again. Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg framed my mother as they stepped outside, supporting her as they helped her walk to their freedom.

This time, when I tried to break from the line to race past the soldiers toward my mother, no one held me back.

T
HIRTY

As Elsbeth recovered from the beating that Nakahara had given her, Sophie had taken it upon herself to nurse her, and they became like mother and daughter. During those weeks, one day to the next had the numbing effect of making everything seem unchanged. The siren wailed each morning, and families stumbled to the streets for roll call. Mothers tried to comfort children who cried from hunger, and women and girls over sixteen carried out the duties of camp routine. Rice and stale bread were served at every lunch and dinner. Sirens wailed for end-of-day roll call and then wailed again to impose curfew.