by Isabel Wolff
Peter stared at them, shock in his eyes. ‘Dead?’ he whispered to my mother.
She nodded, then looked away.
Suddenly an officer barked an order, and now we were being herded out of the station towards big trucks that were covered in tarpaulin. The soldiers yelled at us to climb in. The motionless bodies and a knapsack were left behind on the platform.
The truck started off and once again we were riding along in a darkened interior, not knowing where we were going, completely hidden from human eyes. Here and there the tarpaulin was torn, and I caught glimpses of fine houses in residential streets. Then the truck drew to a halt, the cover was raised and we were ordered out. We were in a long, wide avenue. My mother handed Sofie to Ina while Corrie carried Saskia.
‘This is Laan Trivelli,’ Corrie said. ‘I’ve been here before.’
On our right was a canal with a bridge and the soldiers prodded us towards it.
As we inched forward, I was able to see where it was that we were going. Ahead of us, beyond the bridge, was a gate. It was like the one in Tjihapit, but was taller and wider, the watchtowers on either side of it much higher. As we passed through it, I saw a guardhouse. It had a verandah on which stood a long rack, full of guns.
As we shuffled forward, three emaciated women in heavily patched clothes came towards us. In a loud voice, one of them told us that we had arrived at Camp Tjideng.
Suddenly we became aware of a commotion.
‘What’s going on?’ Kirsten asked.
A few feet ahead of us another barang inspection was being carried out, but this time the officer in charge of it was behaving like a madman. If people didn’t open their bags immediately he would slap them. If a suitcase had a lock that didn’t work he’d kick it, and its contents would spill onto the road. He wore the uniform of an officer, but on his feet were bedroom slippers.
Our turn came. My mother gathered our bags together and put them on the table. She then bowed, a few seconds too late it seemed, for as she straightened up the officer leaned forward and gave her a blow on the head that knocked her to her knees.
Peter gasped and rushed forward. ‘Leave her alone!’ he screamed. ‘Leave my mum alone!’
I lunged for him and dragged him to one side. ‘Be quiet,’ I whispered as Mum got to her feet, ‘or he’ll hit her again!’
We waited there while Mum went silently, mute and white-faced, through the inspection; then she rejoined us, still shaken, and we walked on.
‘So this is Tjideng,’ I said. It was as though we had passed through the very portals of hell.
Peter was tugging at my arm. ‘Look!’
Following his gaze I saw, beside the gate, a large cage on stilts. From inside it peered out, two pairs of quizzical, dark brown eyes.
‘Look girls – monkeys,’ I heard Corrie say cheerfully.
Suddenly the creatures began to screech. They hurled themselves at the bars, making the cage rock. The twins shrieked in terror, then began crying. Corrie tried to comfort them.
‘Why do they have monkeys?’ Peter asked me.
I shuddered. ‘Don’t know.’
Now we saw that the avenue, Laan Trivelli, stretched all the way ahead of us, flanked by an avenue of broad-canopied trees. A group of women had gathered nearby and were staring at us. As we trudged by they called out, ‘Dirty Tjihapiters!’ and ‘Fatsos!’
We were too shocked at their appearance to take offence. The expression ‘just skin and bones’ sprang to mind. Most were barefoot, but some wore rough wooden sandals, tied on with string, or with strips of old tyres. Others wore what looked like tea towels round their breasts, and many had wound bandanas around their shaved heads.
A tall, gaunt-looking woman in a heavily patched yellow dress approached us. She wore an armband and clearly had some sort of official role.
‘Good afternoon,’ she began as we gathered round. ‘My name is Mrs Cornelisse and I’m your hancho, or group leader. It’s my job to help you settle in. Those six houses there have just been cleared for you.’ She pointed to a row of villas nearby.
My mother’s jaw slackened. ‘Six houses?’ she echoed. ‘For five hundred people?’
Ignoring her, Mrs Cornelisse explained that the man who’d inspected our luggage was the commandant, Lieutenant Sonei, and that we should keep away from him as he could be nasty. My mother nodded feelingly. Mrs Cornelisse then told us that the building on the left of the gate was the camp office. The big villa on the right of the gate, she added, was Sonei’s. My heart sank to know that our accommodation was so close to the living quarters of this monster.
Mrs Cornelisse led us to our house. It was a large bungalow with the usual verandah, covered walkways, and red-tiled roof. Once, it would have been considered attractive, but now the door and window frames were shattered and the front garden was a patch of bare earth. We went inside. Kirsten, Ina, Corrie and the twins came with us, as well as Greta, her oma, Shirin and Ilse.
The living room was already crammed with women and children, the bedrooms taken, but my mother found three floor spaces in the dining room, beneath the open window.
‘Please take no more than fifty centimetres!’ Mrs Cornelisse shouted. ‘No more than fifty centimetres per person!’ Once we had put down our things she summoned us all into the front yard. There she explained that we needed to choose two people to go to the dapur with a basin big enough to hold fifty litres of food. There was a frenzied search for one, and a metal washtub was found. Mrs Moonen and Shirin agreed to go and returned an hour later with the heavy tub, which they had struggled to carry. The sago porridge that it contained was enough to provide each person with just one cup of food. The porridge tasted like wallpaper paste, but we were so famished that not a speck was left. There were also some tiny lumps of translucent grey bread.
That evening Mrs Cornelisse stood in the front garden again, raised her megaphone, and summoned us to tenko – our first in Tjideng.
We came out of the house and began to line up a little further down the road, opposite a large building, on the front of which the words ‘Juliana School’ could be seen. The young woman standing on my right told me that it was no longer a school – it was the camp hospital.
‘But it’s where you go to die, not to get better,’ she added cheerily. Judging by her emaciated body, and the tea towel tied round her chest, she’d clearly been in Tjideng a long time.
Mrs Cornelisse carefully ticked off all our names on her list, but I noticed that she kept casting anxious glances at Sonei’s villa.
As we stood looking down the wide, deserted street, a high-pitched noise could suddenly be heard. It reminded me of the sound that the bees had made as they swarmed towards us that day. It was growing louder and louder; and now I was amazed to see a seemingly endless stream of women and children pour onto Laan Trivelli. They came by the hundreds from the streets to the left and right. In Tjihapit, tenko had taken place in groups throughout the day. Here it seemed to be done in one vast gathering, along what we now knew to be Tjideng’s main road.
As I gaped at the sea of people surging towards us, a sudden jolt ran down the length of my spine. I gripped Mum’s arm so hard that she yelped.
‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded crossly.
I pointed to three distant figures. My mother followed my gaze, shielding her eyes against the sinking sun. I heard her gasp.
‘Is it?’ she murmured. ‘It is …’ A euphoric smile lit up her weary face. ‘It’s Irene! But oh, she’s so thin, Klara; I wouldn’t have known her.’ I wondered, with our own altered appearance, how easily Irene would have recognised us. ‘There’s Susan,’ my mother added happily. ‘But her hair’s short. And there’s darling Flora.’ My mother’s eyes shone with tears. ‘My God, Klara – they’re safe and they’re here!’ She turned to Peter. ‘We’ve spotted the Jochens,’ she told him excitedly. ‘Let me lift you up, darling, so that you can see them.’
‘Sssshhhh!’ said Mrs Cornelisse into her megaphone. ‘Qu
iet now, everyone!’
Behind us the huge gate had swung open. A phalanx of soldiers strode towards us, led by Sonei.
Mrs Cornelisse raised her megaphone again. ‘Kiotsukete!’ she shouted. ‘Ker-ei!’ We all bowed. After we had spent what felt like an age at thirty degrees, the order ‘Naore!’ rang out and we straightened up. Then the endless counting began, out loud.
‘Ichi! Ni! San! Shi! Go!’
Sometimes a column had to be counted twice or even three times, before Sonei was satisfied.
‘Roku! Shichi! Hachi! Kyu! Ju!’
Sonei was running up and down the rows, clutching his whip, his sword bouncing against his leg. He was immaculately dressed, but on his feet were those strange slippers, which made a ‘sluff-sluff’ sound as he raced around. He was followed by Mrs Cornelisse, who now had to go forward and call the next group to order. So a wave of megaphoned Kiotsuketes and Kereis echoed all the way down Laan Trivelli, and were gradually drowned out by the resumed chatter of the women and children around us.
I could still see Flora and longed to run to her. But we had to stay in our lines until every one of the prisoners – several thousand – had been counted, and this took more than two hours. During this time I speculated with my mother as to how long the Jochens had been in Tjideng, and where Wil might be.
‘Perhaps he’s in a camp with Daddy,’ Peter suggested.
‘Perhaps he is,’ Mum agreed, though I saw her face cloud. We still had no idea where our father was.
The young woman who’d spoken to me earlier introduced herself as May. She said that she was living in the house next door to ours, and that she’d been in Tjideng from the start of the occupation. Her fair hair had been bleached by the sun; her skin was the colour of tea from having spent so much time outside.
I asked May how many people there were in the camp. She explained that there were over ten thousand of us, adding that until a year before there had been only two and a half thousand, in a much bigger area. But Sonei had repeatedly reduced the camp in size.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘The smaller the camp, the easier for him to keep an eye on us,’ May answered. ‘One tip – when you bow you must put your little fingers on the side seams of your skirt, like this …’ She demonstrated. ‘If you don’t, Sonei will thrash the daylights out of you or get his clippers out. Isn’t that right, Louisa?’ she said to the red-haired woman standing next to her.
‘Dead right,’ Louisa confirmed. ‘The man’s a fiend. In his last camp he tore people’s hair out by the roots.’ She pointed to the gate. ‘You saw the monkey cage?’ I nodded. ‘One of the women in this camp gave those apes to Sonei, hoping to get favours from him. He placed the cage inside the camp as “entertainment”. Sometimes he starves them for a week then lets them out – for “fun”,’ Louisa added contemptuously. ‘But the creatures terrify everyone. They’ve bitten several of the children.’
My mother put her arms around Peter and me. ‘How horrible,’ she murmured.
‘Oh, they’re nasty things,’ Louisa continued. ‘Mrs Ament – she was the camp head then – complained to Sonei about them. He listened to her very carefully.’ She paused. ‘Then he opened the cage, grabbed one of the monkeys and smashed its head against the wall; there was blood everywhere. He said he’d done it to punish Mrs Ament for her “ingratitude” for the “entertainment” that the monkeys provided.’ She shuddered. ‘She was lucky that Sonei didn’t kill her too. Once, he beheaded a woman at tenko.’
My mother, horrified that Peter and I were hearing of such brutality, murmured that Sonei must be mad.
‘He is mad,’ May agreed. ‘He’s a lunatic – a real one – just wait until the next full moon! That’s when he puts on his steel-capped boots and things get really scary.’
We watched Sonei lead his soldiers back to the gate, which seemed to signal the end of tenko. Everyone sighed with relief and our group broke ranks. I wanted to run to Flora, but it was dark, and my mother said that we had to get back to the house. She promised that we would find Flora and her family the next day.
Inside the house, the floor was a sea of mattresses covered by ghostly mosquito netting. Mum had managed to hang a kelambu from the ceiling; it just covered Peter, herself and me. As ‘Lights out!’ was heard we lay under it, cocooned together. They both fell asleep, but I lay awake, comforted by their breathing and by the wonderful knowledge that I had found Flora again.
FOURTEEN
On the beach, Honor’s face was slack with shock. ‘You had a little brother?’ she said weakly.
I nodded. ‘Ted. His name was Ted. He was five.’
She blinked, bewildered. ‘How can I have known you for fifteen years, and not known that?’
‘Because no one knows,’ I answered. ‘Not you. Not Nina. I’ve never told anyone.’
‘Surely you’ve told Rick?’ I shook my head. ‘My God …’ In Honor’s eyes was a blend of compassion and astonishment. ‘But … what happened?’
‘It was August,’ I began quietly. ‘We were here with my mother and her new boyfriend: this man, Clive. I hated him being on our family holiday, and wanted to get away from him. So I went rock-pooling with Ted. He hadn’t wanted to come with me, but I made him, which makes me feel even worse about what happened …’ I exhaled painfully. ‘As we walked across the sand we met a boy and girl, about the same age as us, who were making this huge hole.’ I looked across to the patch of sand where they’d been digging. I half expected to see them there. ‘The girl had a “J” on her shirt,’ I went on. ‘I don’t know why, but that detail really stuck in my mind. She was tall and thin like me, with dark hair, except that hers was very long; mine was short in those days. Her brother was sandy-haired and stocky, and Ted and I chatted to them about this big tunnel that they were digging; then we left them and went on the rocks. But the tide was coming up.’
‘Oh, Jenni,’ Honor murmured.
‘We went a long way – too far, almost to Trennick.’ I nodded into the distance. ‘But we were enjoying ourselves, catching fish and shrimps, and it was very sunny and then …’ I paused. ‘We heard the bell.’
‘The bell?’
‘The woman who ran the tea hut always rang a bell at six to let everyone know she was closing. Our mother had told us to come back when we heard it. Ted said that he could hear it, but I pretended I couldn’t, because I didn’t want to go back. But –’ my fingers clenched around the tissue – ‘when I saw how close the waves were, I said we should go back, and so I started for the beach … I thought Ted was following me.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Eventually I reached the sand, and I had another look at the tunnel; it was huge by then. After that I walked on, looking for shells; and as I glanced up I saw my mother in the distance, looking for us. So I waved, and she waved back with a relieved smile. Then I remember her smile fading; she started running towards me; she was shouting frantically at someone behind me. As I turned, I could hear a dog barking. Then I saw Ted. He was some way away, but he was very visible because of his red swimming trunks. He was standing on a rock, and there was this dog snapping at him, and Ted was screaming.’
Honor’s eyes were full of anguish. ‘Did the dog bite him?’
‘No. I don’t think it was going to – it was just excited; it had been on the beach all day, chasing balls. I think its ball must have gone on the rocks near to Ted and it just wanted Ted to throw it. But he was terrified of dogs. My mother had seen what was happening, and she was running towards him, trying to call the dog off. She was shouting at it to get away from him, but that only seemed to make it bark more. Just as she got near to it, it jumped up.’ I swallowed. ‘And Ted disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘In that instant I knew where he’d been standing. Just there … He’d been standing by that gully, then the dog had startled him and he’d lost his footing. My mother was scrambling over the rocks in her bare feet. She was still screaming at the dog to get away, not rea
lising that by then it had already gone, because its owners were calling it.’
‘Didn’t they realise what had happened?’
‘I don’t think they had any idea, because I saw them walking towards the slipway with all their stuff. My mother dropped down into the gully and lifted Ted up, then she carried him over the rocks – her feet were bleeding – while I tried to help. As she laid Ted on the sand I could see a swelling on the side of his face. His eyes were closed. There was spit on his lips, like sea-foam, and my mother kept saying his name, over and over, and stroking his face, but he wasn’t responding. Then her boyfriend ran down to us and when he saw how Ted was he yelled that he’d call an ambulance from the hotel; he raced up the beach again. In the meantime people had gathered round. They all had this strange expression on their faces, as though they were very upset, but also fascinated.’
‘Oh, Jen,’ Honor whispered.
‘A woman came up to us, and said she was a nurse: as she examined Ted, Mum explained, through her sobs, what had happened and said that she thought he was concussed. The woman said that he was breathing okay, but that we had to get him to hospital as soon as possible. So my mother picked Ted up and carried him up the beach. The girl and boy who’d been digging were just staring at us, in shock. Within a few minutes I heard a siren, and the ambulance drove onto the field behind the hut – that was the closest it could get to the beach. Two ambulance men jumped out and ran down to us and gave Ted first aid; then they laid him on a stretcher and my mother followed them to the ambulance and waited while they lifted Ted in. I started to get in too but Mum told me that I wasn’t to come – I think she didn’t want me to see Ted in such a bad way. But as her boyfriend got in, my mother said that she needed someone to look after me. The woman who ran the tea hut said that she would. She told Mum that she’d take me to the hotel, and that she wouldn’t leave my side until Mum came back, however long that might be. Mum thanked her and told me to go with her.’ I inhaled. ‘The woman asked me my name, then told me that hers was Jane; which I’d forgotten – until today,’ I added quietly. ‘I remember now – it’s all coming back to me in perfect detail. As the ambulance doors shut, Jane put her arm round my shoulder and drew me away.’