Thief of Glory (24 page)

In their lives before camp, my sisters had lived like beautiful china dolls, pampered and exhibited accordingly by Elsbeth. Now their legs were streaked with dirt, their knees scabbed, and they wore tattered dresses far too small for their growing bodies. They knelt in dirt to search for snails and squealed in delight on the rare occasion they found a frog for our boiling pot. Even so, when Elsbeth could, she insisted on brushing their hair every morning and lectured them if they allowed their faces to be dirty.

Georgie was unable to find his own group of boys as friends and made sure that when I was in sight, he disappeared. It felt to me like a justification of my hatred for him, as in a large part he earned the dislike of those he tried to befriend. He wasn’t alone, however, for he had Dr. Kloet, a man in the mirror image of Georgie. While it didn’t appear that he suffered physically, Georgie no longer had the arrogant swagger of an American boy whose father was the big boss of an oil refinery. It’s an easy assumption that he was fearful and lonely, yet he could have eased both afflictions if he had joined our collective defiance
of the Japanese by sharing chores and food and hymns. Perhaps, had any of us reached out to him, he might have reciprocated. Instead, we enjoyed ignoring him and making it obvious we were ignoring him.

So, happily without him, we roamed and made the best of our prison. Part of my own routine was a fake marble game with Laura, Pietje, Aniek, and Nikki, played along one of the walls that formed protection around Nakahara’s private garden. As often as possible, Laura and I would peek through the holes that we had once formed with the handles of wooden spoons.

Our amusement consisted of watching Pietje mainly lose marble games to kids in their own little gangs on each street. I was Pietje’s banker, supplying him with an ample number to distribute among the camp through his losses. I had managed to establish an unspoken agreement. A day or two after Pietje lost his marbles, I would be allowed the chance to win them back again, which invariably I did. It wasn’t as much of a thrill as earning marbles that weren’t mine in the first place, but it was a way to pass the time. Occasionally, something out of the ordinary would feed new rumors, eagerly passed along and discussed in minutia as a welcome change from conversations that often revolved around the first meal a woman would cook and eat once the war was over. In innocence, I contributed to a rumor that swept through the kitchen lines with delicious self-righteousness and indignant speculation.

Through the holes in the garden wall, we could see that Nakahara was growing his own vegetables and using some of the produce to feed a pig penned in the corner. But this was not news worthy of passing along. The squealing and grunting of the fat sow already had reached us, tormenting us with visions of bacon and cured ham. Also, the women responsible for cooking his meals daily entered the garden for vegetables and were able to report the bounty with expected degrees of frustration and hatred.

These same women confirmed that Nakahara was keeping American Red Cross parcels for himself, storing them in stacks in one of the unused rooms of his residence. These parcels contained bandages and ointments and disinfectants and painkillers that would have alleviated so much suffering in camp. The parcels also contained soap and chocolate bars and powdered milk and tins of food.

Nakahara’s cooks reported that Nakahara made no effort to hide the opened parcels, eating chocolate as they took away the dishes after his meal. They saw him give soap and tins of food to soldiers as rewards. They also saw him load the medicines into larger boxes to sell outside of the camp. Because Nakahara was the ultimate authority at this camp, he had no reason to hide this from them and would even smile, they said, when he noticed them staring at the items that rightfully belonged to the families of camp.

From day to day, our view of the private area did not change. We could see the pig, and often, we saw Dutch women weeding and picking vegetables under the guard of Japanese soldiers who were there to keep them from eating from the garden. Occasionally, we saw Nakahara snoozing in a chaise lounge in the shade of the banyan near the center of his garden, his monster guard dog on the ground beside him, tongue out and panting, head on paws, one eye open. In the middle of one afternoon, however, when I peeked through a spy hole in the wall, what I saw shocked me: the back of a woman in a silk robe crossed my small circle of vision, then moved toward Nakahara in the chaise lounge. Her identity was obscured by a towel wrapped around her head and the robe covering all of her body. I did see Nakahara sit up and smile at her and that her skin was white on her shoulders as she began to pull the robe away.

I saw nothing else because Pietje tapped my shoulder.

Soldiers.

I straightened and shouted automatically.
“Kiotske!”

Pietje shouted,
“Kere!”

We had to wait in a bowing position until they passed by.

“Naore!”
Laura said, and we all relaxed. Farther down the street, another boy yelled
“Kiotske!”
to warn all those around him, and then came
“Kere!”

When I looked again through the peephole, the chaise lounge was empty.

What I’d witnessed was so astounding that I immediately had to tell someone, who was Pietje and Laura and Nikki and Aniek, and what I’d seen gave us such an air of self-importance that we first stopped at Dr. Eikenboom’s table to tell her. Enough of our conversation reached Dr. Kloet that he broke in with questions that were overheard by some of the women in line. By supper, women I did not know were coming up to me in small groups and asking for an eyewitness account and then walking away to speculate on the identity of the woman in the robe. Not one of those women, however, would answer my own questions about why a woman in a robe would have been in the garden with Nakahara or why the woman had so much of her skin exposed or where they could have gone.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized how much of a mistake my lack of discretion had been. When our little gang wandered over to the garden wall as part of our routine, our spy holes had been plugged with fresh concrete. Until then, it had never occurred to me that the mystery visitor would hear the rumor about herself and report it to Nakahara, thus securing her identity. I should have known, however. After all, someone had denounced Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg and their intent to defy Nakahara about the teahouse. Thus, I feared that Nakahara would know it had come from me, but after a day or two had passed without incident, I relaxed. That was my second mistake.

A few mornings after that, as I was crawling out of the drainage ditch with supplies left for me by Adi, I was met by Nakahara on the other side of the
bush, waiting for me. Laura had been standing guard, and if soldiers happened nearby, she was to yell Pietje’s name, as if calling him to come and play dolls with her. Once every few weeks, she’d been forced to use this ploy. The first time, we had both been terrified, but after our system had worked then and every time since, much of our fear of using the tunnel to the outside had disappeared.

I crawled from beneath the bush as I always did, headfirst, but then I saw boots. Army boots. I saw legs of soldiers. And beyond those legs, I saw Nakahara’s dog with Laura’s arm in its teeth. I saw Nakahara with a triumphant grin as he made eye contact with me. He and the soldiers had been waiting.

Nakahara shook his head as if he were addressing a naughty boy. He put his left forefinger to his lips and made a shushing sound, and with his other hand, he opened and closed his thumb and fingers as if they were the jaws of his guard dog.

I understood. I remembered when the dog had attacked me and clamped down on my arm. Nakahara had screamed and our translator had made it clear.
“This dog will kill you at my command.”

Now, Nakahara’s smile was more frightening than his screaming. He was a man in control and savoring revenge.

I crawled out, and he motioned for me to stand. As I did, he barked a command at his soldiers. One of them kicked aside the bushes and found the cloth bag that held the day’s supplies of sulfa and ointments for Dr. Eikenboom. The soldier gave that bag to Nakahara, who looked inside and grunted acknowledgment.

Nakahara gazed upon me again like a lazy lizard in the sun. Then he gave a quick stream of Japanese that I didn’t understand. A soldier on each side of me grasped each of my arms and lifted me.

My instinct was to kick and struggle, but Laura’s eyes were wide with
terror because of the dog clamped to her arm. Nakahara had made it clear if I made any noise, he would order the dog to tear into her arm. Or worse.

If Nakahara was trying to scare me as well, he was failing. I felt my rage build. My eyes locked on the sword in the scabbard on Nakahara’s belt. I could feel myself pulling the sword loose and impaling Nakahara with a joy I knew I would never regret, even if it cost me my life.

His eyes narrowed, as if he understood the depth of my anger. But he smiled again, with an exquisiteness of someone who had planned to enjoy the first moments of torture. He calmly spoke more Japanese. While I was still in the air, another soldier grabbed at the waistband of my shorts. It took me several moments to comprehend. The soldier was looking for my marble pouches and found the first one almost immediately. Often enough, others had seen me reach for it, so it wasn’t a camp secret.

But Nakahara barked at him, so the soldier kept searching until he pulled the other one loose from my shorts. Then he squeezed out the two marbles—my precious china marble with the dragon and the far more precious marble that my father had given me with the tiny statue inside.

The soldier walked across to Nakahara and gave him both marbles. Nakahara rolled both of them across his open palm so that he knew I saw them in his full possession.

He spoke to his dog, and it released Laura.

Then Nakahara said,
“Kere!”

Laura and I bowed. He laughed as the soldiers walked away, and just before they turned around the corner of the nearest house, Nakahara called out in a mocking voice,
“Naore!”

Now, I realized, I was a personal enemy of the commander, who knew me well enough to know the one punishment that would hurt and haunt me. But it wasn’t enough, for he and the soldiers marched to the medical tent and, in
front of all the women in both lines, Nakahara dumped the confiscated supplies onto Dr. Eikenboom’s table. She was standing, so he punched her to the ground and kicked hard and repeatedly enough to break her ribs, an act that I knew was directly my fault.

Only one person could have confirmed to Nakahara my story about using the peephole to see a Dutch woman in a robe in his private garden. Someone who heard me tell Dr. Eikenboom about it himself. The same man who knew about my pouch with the china marble and where I kept it hidden at all times. The same man, of course, who had lusted after that marble and felt he’d been made a fool over his desire to win it from me.

The round-faced, well-fed Dr. Kloet.

T
HIRTY
-O
NE

Dr. Eikenboom struggled to push away a wet cloth in my mother’s hands. “Elsbeth,” she said, “you have used too much. I’m not the only one in this camp who needs this.” She rested in a tattered armchair in the schoolhouse hallway, just outside the large closet that was her residence. The beating she’d received had been so bad it had taken her four days to be able to leave her bed. During that time, Sophie and Laura had tended to her in one shift, and my mother and I in another.

Elsbeth held the wet cloth above a pan where it had been soaking. The pan of lukewarm water also had pieces of torn leaves from the hibiscus plant. We’d harvested the leaves from the area of camp that Dr. Eikenboom had set aside just to grow the flowers. A vegetable garden would have been unthinkable, as the crops would not have served more than a handful of people. But it was understood that medicinal plants would be useful for everyone in the camp, and the patch had flourished under careful tending.

The largest percentage of the garden held hibiscus plants because of all of its uses. Tea made from the leaves was not only a natural diuretic that relieved swellings of the limbs, but it also contained vitamin C and many minerals. More importantly, the slimy water that was produced by soaking leaves was a natural disinfectant, and Dr. Eikenboom prescribed it for those with skin diseases. Like everything in camp, however, it was a limited resource.

My mother dipped the cloth into the pan and admonished Dr. Eikenboom. “You need to look out for yourself first. Until you recover, we are down to one doctor. If something happens to you, it won’t make a difference how
much extra hibiscus is left for the others, because we need you far more than the camp needs the hibiscus.”

Elsbeth squeezed drippings from the cloth onto Dr. Eikenboom’s nearer arm and cleaned the skin.

“Dr. Kloet,” I said with loud derision. I was holding my book,
Ivanhoe
, that Pietje had stored in his bag the day the soldiers had arrived at our house. I’d been reading it to Dr. Eikenboom, and we were at chapter fifteen. “We’d be better off without him.”