Thief of Glory (27 page)

A soldier.

Below me, I heard a small warning woof. The dog had stopped directly
below me, panting. But it wasn’t the threat a soldier was. My entire focus zeroed in on the small glow of that cigarette. At each inhalation, it brightened, and it was getting closer. I was trapped. Moving to climb down on the outside of the wall would put me easily in his vision. Dropping down on the inside of the wall would deliver me to Nakahara’s dog.

I remained as motionless as possible. If the dog barked …

The soldier stopped so close to the wall that I could smell the cigarette smoke. He turned to the wall, then urinated and sighed. After a yawn and a stretch, he resumed his patrol, leaving me with only one enemy. Who stood below me, just as motionless as I was.

I cannot pretend that I did not know my actions would be cruel to an innocent animal. The terror it inflicted was terror it had been trained to inflict. I cannot pretend that I underestimated how painful it would be. I’d spent hours earlier enduring the sting of the poison. But this was a camp where a dozen people died each week, often in horrible pain. Cruelty was the reality of this life.

However, I did not know how much suffering my actions would cause.

I fumbled with untying the bags even though they weighed very little without the marbles inside. I squatted, and then just as Georgie had done earlier to me, I shook the bags loose of their contents.

I could only imagine the flight of the caterpillars as they drifted downward to settle on the dog. I had to imagine the first contact on its fur, where the poison of the protective fuzz would have had little effect. I pictured caterpillars landing on its eyes and in its mouth because it had been panting and staring upward.

I’ve since learned from veterinarians what I didn’t understand then. Often a dog will swat at the processionary caterpillar with its paw, where the sensitive skin burns immediately. The dog’s impulse is to lick the paw to ease the pain, which then spreads the poison to its mouth. Because dogs have such powerful
salivation glands, the poison soon reaches the dog’s bloodstream, where it often delivers a severe allergic reaction and lowered blood pressure. But I had inadvertently delivered caterpillars directly into the mouth of Nakahara’s dog. The agony must have been incredible on its tongue and the inside of its cheeks, not to mention its eyes if one had landed there.

All that I could dimly see was that the dog had rolled over. It pawed frantically at its mouth and nose, uttering a piteous, choked whine that haunts me whenever I remember it.

Miserable as I was at my success, I climbed back down and snuck back to the house, where I could join my family in sleeping on our straw mats.

I left behind a dog that was going into convulsions and would die in the arms of Nakahara before morning.

T
HIRTY
-F
IVE

It was fortunate for all of us that two other pine trees in camp began to disgorge lines of caterpillars. In the first light of day, Nakahara had seen the corpses of the caterpillars matted in the dog’s hair where it had rolled over them, so his fury was directed at the dog for not knowing enough to leave the caterpillars alone. We knew this because he’d demanded an explanation from our translator, who had explained to him about the poison the caterpillars contained and then left the house to joyfully pass along the news about the dead dog to anyone who would listen.

It had been my plan to wait to sneak into his house as many days as necessary until hearing Nakahara was drunk, when he went on his rampages. Whenever he did this, all of camp knew. He would stagger down the streets, yelling at his soldiers and threatening them with his waving sword. When he ran out of violent energy, he would disappear into his house, and all of camp would feel an ease of tension.

I found it fortunate that in his grief later that day, Nakahara started to drink himself into the type of oblivion that he usually reserved for a full moon. I had little knowledge of how long a person would be unconscious from alcohol, so in the evening, I didn’t wait long. Instead, I snuck out of the house as soon as I heard the comforting snores of my family.

I was on a righteous mission, a boy like Ivanhoe, fighting to help the poor and downtrodden, and I knew that God would ensure my safety. Where I should have felt fear, exhilaration drove me forward. I would be the knight presenting Red Cross supplies to Dr. Eikenboom, and Laura would adore me even more for my braveness and cunning.

This time when I climbed the wall with my rolled-up straw mat, the bag hanging from my neck was not filled with poisonous caterpillars but with peelings from the kitchen. I stood on the top of the wall with my back pressed to the Dykstra house and surveyed the garden as best I could in the darkness to make sure it was clear below.

Soldiers lived in the Dykstra house. Not once—when the peepholes had been open—had I observed them moving freely in Nakahara’s garden, and I assumed they were as forbidden to enter his private reserve as any of the Dutch women and children. I was not expecting any of them to step into the garden, but I did wonder if Nakahara had posted a sentry to replace his dog. I could see no movement, but I wasn’t in a hurry to make a mistake.

A light breeze during the day had brought relief from the heat and from the stench of the open sewer, and it had picked up in strength with nightfall. The leaves of the solitary banyan in the center of the garden made for rustling that masked any sounds that could have given me cues to whether anyone was hidden in the shadows. But it would also mask any sounds I made.

As I studied the open area below, I took a deep breath and noticed the sweet perfume of the small white flowers of the melati. The rough plaster of the wall of the house at my back was still warm from the day’s heat, adding to the moistness of the skin of my neck. The shrieks of distant monkeys seemed to tunnel directly into my brain. It was the type of moment, I would learn later, that soldiers share when the body is at full alert for fight and the senses are hyper. It’s the knife-edge moment when life on one side of the blade is most vivid because death on the other side of a razor-thin margin is so near.

I blinked a few times. I delivered a silent prayer. Then, using the handholds and toeholds of the outcroppings of mortar, I descended into the private garden. I took a few steps, then froze. The straw mat!

I had left it on top of the wall. What if a soldier saw it there?

I climbed up again, retrieved the mat, and climbed down again. I tucked
it into the back of my shorts and stayed along the wall as I moved toward the rear door of Nakahara’s house. I had to trust that it was unlocked; otherwise, all of what I had planned would fail.

The pig caught my scent and grunted. Geese, I knew, often served as sentries. I’d wondered if pigs were the same, so I’d brought the bag of peelings just in case. I tossed the bag into the enclosure, trusting if it could smell me, it would also smell the scraps.

The grunting ceased.

I moved to the door. I had an extra surge of adrenaline at the thought of Nakahara walking toward it from the other side, awakened from a drunken stupor and wanting fresh night air. I could see his hand reaching for the doorknob as I reached for it from my side, and for a long period of time this fear paralyzed me.

I told myself that I was too far to turn back. I gently turned the doorknob slightly, and it slid easily. But was it bolted on the inside? I pulled, then pulled harder. It remained in place, not even the squeak of a bolt holding it in place. I felt the sag of defeat and let out a deep breath. It wasn’t until I let go of the door handle that I felt it shift and realized how stupid I had been.

I turned the doorknob again, and this time pushed the door instead of pulled. It opened. Here was my Rubicon. I was still not committed to the theft. I could still pull the door shut and sneak back out of the garden and return to the tiny safe haven that was my family lost in their dreams for the night.

I almost succumbed to the temptation to leave. But I remembered Nakahara’s satisfied sneer as he rolled my two marbles in his hand. I remembered how he had kicked and beaten Sophie and Dr. Eikenboom and my mother, and that renewal of cold rage was enough impetus for me to continue.

I had done intelligence work ahead of time, asking the Dutch ladies who cleaned the house and cooked for him to describe the interior for me, so I knew it was designed much like most of the other houses of the camp. The rear of the
house contained rooms on each side of the hallway, and the front of the house had a sitting room and the kitchen and dining room. I’d been told that the Red Cross boxes were in a room ahead on the right-hand side, two doors down the hallway, and opposite the room where Nakahara slept.

Yet as I took the first step into the house and into a soft light, my chest felt like it would explode at the surge of my heart rate. A lamp was on in the sitting room, around the corner from the end of the hallway, so it gave enough glow to show the hallway was clear. But was someone in the sitting room? My mouth open, I listened as intently as I could for any signs that my entry had been detected.

The house remained still. I tiptoed past the doors on each side of the hall. When I reached the final door, I heard irregular snorts, the sound of a man too drunk to sleep soundly. Still, was there a soldier in his sitting room? I dropped to my knees to peek around the corner. The furniture was arranged with the delicacy of balance that I’d seen in the homes of our Dutch friends before the war; it had a woman’s touch. Nice prints on the walls. Doilies on the backs of chairs. A fine rug on hardwood.

It was also empty of anyone to enjoy it, so I crawled across the room to the front door with the intent to unlock it, making it an escape route should I need it. I had been told by the Dutch women that there was a bell on the front door, and I had no intention of triggering it. But if Nakahara caught me, the noise of the bell would be the last of my worries.

With my hand on the lock, I felt, rather than heard, the creak of the floor of the sitting room. I turned my head.

I’d made a huge mistake. The sitting room had not been empty. Rather, from the hallway, I could not see the person in the armchair because that person’s head had not been high enough to be visible.

It was Georgie’s mother. Mrs. Smith. Rising from the armchair. Wearing a silk robe, tied around her waist. A nearly empty glass of red wine was on the
small table beside her, a wine glass that the chair had also screened from my view when I had first looked into the sitting room.

Her expression was unmistakable fury. Muted fury. She had a forefinger to her lips to indicate silence, and she pointed with her other hand to the bedroom door. I understood the message completely. Not a sound.

I complied, trying to grasp the situation. She was the mystery woman I’d seen through the peephole? But she and Dr. Kloet …

Although her robe clung to her in a way that I’d never seen with the big towel robes my mother had worn before the capitulation, I was incapable of giving any realistic imagination to what happened between her and Nakahara or between her and Dr. Kloet. Still I had absorbed enough hints from other sources to know it was not good. Even the story about King David in the Bible said that after he knew Bathsheba, they had a baby, and whatever they’d done that consisted of a man knowing a woman, it was not good.

She motioned for me to rise. I did. Then she walked over to me and leaned in so close that I could smell wine on her breath when she whispered. “Garden.”

She kept a hand on my shoulder as she guided me down the hallway, past the room where Nakahara was snoring, out the door, and back into the night air. She shut the door and pushed me to a spot beneath the banyan tree.

“You stupid, stupid child,” she hissed. Her nails dug into my shoulders. She was holding me there with both hands, looking into my face. “What has possessed you to go into the house?”

I could have asked her the same question, but she had strength I would have never guessed.

“Red Cross boxes,” I said. “They belong to the camp.”

“You thought you could steal them?”

“He is drunk,” I said.

“And he wouldn’t notice in the morning?”

“I would take the boxes from the back.”

“And every woman and child in this camp would suffer.” Her fury was rising, not abating. “Is that what you want?”

“I would take the boxes from the back.”

She slapped my face. “You stupid, stupid child.”

I dared not slap back. At least not with my hands. I said the worst thing I could think of from the Bible. I knew it was a woman who did bad things.

I spat back at her, “Whore of Babylon.”

She slapped me again.

I was glad to see that she didn’t like what I’d said. Since Babylon had been a city in the Bible, it must have been the other word.

I refused to rub my face and give any satisfaction.

“You have no idea what I go through!” she said, leaning in so close I could smell the alcohol again. “No idea I’ve already saved your life once! Nakahara was going to have you shot for the peepholes in the wall, and I convinced him to take your marbles instead.”

As I tried to absorb this new information, an indistinct shout came from Nakahara’s house.

She hissed at me. “If you tell anyone about me, I will make sure that you and your family are destroyed by him. Understand? And from tomorrow on, you will protect my son. Someone hurt him bad and he can hardly walk. But he’s too scared to tell me what happened. You will protect him. Do you understand? Or next time you will lose more than those precious marbles and your mother her precious drawings.”

What was this? My mother had been punished too and had said nothing? I was given no time to grapple with it.

The shouting from inside became louder.

“Do you understand?” As she hissed again, she squeezed my shoulders so hard that it forced a yelp from me. “You tell no one! You protect my son!”