by Isabel Wolff
Edda had been in a camp called Kampong Makassar. She told us that Miss Broek and Miss Vries had been there too. ‘But Miss Vries is so thin now,’ she confided. ‘She cries all the time because her fiancé was killed in an air raid.’
One day my mother, Peter and I saw another familiar figure. We returned to our house to see Marleen Dekker unrolling her mattress in a corner of the living room. We hadn’t even known that she was in Tjideng.
My mother was taken aback, but went up to her straight away and greeted her. Mrs Dekker ignored her – she clearly hadn’t forgotten my mother’s scolding her for being snobbish about Jaya and Peter’s friendship on that April day.
‘So she bears grudges,’ my mother whispered as we walked away. Before long we would discover that Mrs Dekker was the type not just to bear a grudge, but to take revenge.
We learned that she had been in Tjideng for a year, on Moesi Weg, but had made herself so unpopular with the other women in her house – they called her ‘Queen Marleen’ – that her group leader had suggested she be moved. And so, a few days after we’d arrived, Mrs Dekker appeared in our house. Her son wasn’t with her and someone told us that he’d been put on the latest boys’ transport a month before.
‘I feel sorry for her, Klara,’ my mother said. ‘She must be very worried about Herman; but I do wish that she’d gone anywhere else. I won’t let it affect me though,’ she went on. ‘I’m just happy that Irene and the girls are here.’
Whenever we could, Peter and I would spend time with Susan and Flora. We’d all close our eyes and pretend that we were back at the plantation, gazing at the mountains. In Tjideng our eyes just hit the gedek.
Flora and I were both on sweeping duty, and sometimes we’d go for a walk while pretending to work. We’d go to the western side of the camp, and peer through the rolls of barbed wire at the outside world. Often people would notice us and stare. I’d usually see shock on their faces, because we were so thin, and dirty, and looked like boys because by then Irene had cropped our hair. But sometimes I’d see satisfied smiles at our degradation; they were glad to see the privileged Dutch colonials brought low. But something else amazed me.
‘Why aren’t they thin like us?’ I asked Flora.
She shrugged. ‘I suppose they have more food than we do.’
‘So … are the Japs starving us,’ I asked. ‘On purpose?’ Flora pursed her lips. ‘Some people say that they are. But I don’t know.’
In Tjideng, time seemed to stand still. I felt as if we were always waiting; waiting to be counted, waiting to go to work, waiting to be fed our meagre rations, or to go to bed. In our spare time my mother and Irene took turns to teach us, just as they’d taken turns to look after us when we were at school. We used to write on a tile with a piece of lead, or draw marks in the dust with a stick. Sometimes Corrie joined us for ‘lessons’ while Ina and Kirsten watched the twins. We also played games. For the boys it was Jacks, played with bits of bone; for the girls it was hopscotch, using white stones to mark out the squares, or we played noughts and crosses in the dirt, with our fingers.
Tenko was sometimes up to three or four times a day, because Sonei would call us out, without warning, at any time. At full moon he’d call us out in the middle of the night. Mothers would bring a blanket for their children to lie on, and if they saw Sonei coming they’d quickly rouse them and make them stand. But tenko wasn’t the worst thing about Tjideng; the worst thing about Tjideng was the gate. We called it ‘de Poort’, and were terrified of it, because that’s where all the bad things happened. The gate was where the punishments took place – usually head-shavings and beatings. Sometimes women were made to kneel with a length of split bamboo behind their knees, which cut off the blood supply to their legs; or they were suspended by their wrists, which were tied behind their backs, their feet barely scraping the ground. For serious ‘crimes’ women were tied to a chair, in the sun, with no food or water, sometimes for days. Most women didn’t survive, rapidly succumbing to dehydration and sunstroke. So to us, the gate was a place of hell. We had come into Tjideng through it and knew that we would leave through it, most probably dead we believed as the months went by.
By February 1945 people were dying in large numbers, not just from malnutrition, but from dysentery, pellagra, whooping cough and beriberi. Death became so common that we no longer even remarked on it. I might play with a child only to be told, two days later, that the child was ‘no longer alive’. In the ‘real’ world, such an event would be shocking. But I wasn’t shocked because in Tjideng, death was a normal occurrence. There was even a work party that made bamboo coffins: Sonei seemed perversely proud of this.
Peter wanted to play with the other children, but our mother now made him stay in the house because she was increasingly worried that he’d blurt out his age.
‘If anyone asks you, you must take a year off it,’ she whispered to him. ‘Do you understand?’ He nodded. ‘And, Klara, you must never ever tell anyone how old your brother is. Do you promise me?’
‘I do.’ I laid my hand on my chest. ‘I solemnly promise that I will never, ever tell anyone Peter’s age.’
For weeks nothing was said about any further transports and I began to believe that it would never happen. Then in March 1945, the axe fell. We learned that all the boys of ten and over, being a ‘danger to women’ were to be transferred out of the camp.
Mrs Cornelisse came to see my mother, holding a clipboard. ‘Our records show that your son, Peter, will be ten on the eighth of April,’ she began. ‘Is that correct, Mrs Bennink?’
I saw a muscle clench at the corner of my mother’s mouth. ‘No,’ she answered calmly. ‘He’ll be nine.’ She added that when they’d gone to Garut to register, the official had mistakenly recorded Peter’s year of birth as 1935 instead of 1936. ‘I wrote to the authorities about it,’ she went on coolly. ‘But they clearly didn’t correct it. He’ll be nine on that day,’ she repeated firmly.
Mrs Cornelisse said that she would look into it and went away.
Peter, for his part, was confused. ‘I’d like to go to the men’s camp,’ he whispered to me, ‘because then I’ll see Daddy again.’
‘We don’t even know where Dad is,’ I reminded him, ‘let alone whether you’d be sent to the same place. In any case, Mummy doesn’t want you to go.’
‘But I—’
‘Peter,’ I interrupted, ‘we both promised Daddy that we’d do whatever Mum said, with no argument. You’d better not break that promise because he’ll be very upset with you.’
So Peter agreed to do what our mother asked.
On 8 April, Mum made a point of celebrating Peter’s birthday – as far as it was possible to celebrate anything in Tjideng. She gave him a bread roll that she’d saved, and we picked some red hibiscus flowers and arranged them in a jar. We sang Happy Birthday, and did nine birthday claps. Later that day, Mrs Cornelisse returned. She told Mum that as she’d been unable to clarify Peter’s date of birth, she was going to remove his name from the list.
My mother received this news calmly, as though it was only what she had expected. Inside, though, she was elated. But her euphoria was to be short-lived. Two days later she got a letter saying that Peter Hans Bennink would be transported to a men’s camp on 15 April. She ran to Mrs Cornelisse who told her that she’d have to discuss it with the camp leader, Mrs Nicholson. So my mother went to the camp office, taking with her, Peter and me.
Mrs Nicholson was sitting behind a small desk, going through a list of names; just visible in the adjacent office was Lieutenant Kochi, another officer, who was almost as hated as Sonei. Kochi, engrossed in some paperwork, took no notice of us.
My mother’s face was very pale. ‘My son is nine,’ she told Mrs Nicholson. She stood behind Peter, her hands on his shoulders. ‘Look how small he is.’
‘Most of the boys are small,’ Mrs Nicholson remarked.
‘True, but don’t you think I’d remember when I’d given birth to my own child? In any c
ase why has the decision been reversed?’
Mrs Nicholson hesitated. ‘I’d rather not say.’
‘I want to know,’ my mother demanded. ‘I have the right to know.’
Mrs Nicholson stared at her before answering. ‘All right … It’s because, since the original decision was made, we’ve received reliable information that Peter is ten.’
My mother blinked. ‘From who?’
Mrs Nicholson bit her lower lip. ‘A few days ago, Marleen Dekker came to see me. She’d overheard your conversations with Mrs Cornelisse. She told me that her family had visited you on Peter’s sixth birthday, and that this was four years ago.’
My mother’s face flushed. ‘Mrs Dekker is mistaken. She and her family did visit us, but it was Peter’s fifth birthday that day.’
‘Why would she be wrong?’ Mrs Nicholson asked.
‘Because she’s erratic and confused. I’m sure it’s only due to the pressures of camp life, and it’s very sad, but it means that her word can’t be trusted.’
I was suddenly aware that Lieutenant Kochi was looking at us.
‘Peter,’ said Mrs Nicholson. ‘How old are you?’
Peter reddened, then glanced up at my mother. Her fingers tightened on his shoulders. ‘I’m … nine.’
Lieutenant Kochi came into the room and we all bowed. In Malay, he said that he was tired of listening to us squabbling. He would establish the truth – ‘with help from the girl’, he added, gesturing to me.
My mother looked stricken. ‘I don’t want my daughter to be questioned,’ she said to Mrs Nicholson. ‘Please, tell Lieutenant Kochi not to talk to her.’
‘I don’t have the authority,’ Mrs Nicholson responded. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bennink.’
My mother bowed to Kochi again. Then, averting her eyes from his face, she implored him, in Malay, to let me go. ‘She’s just a child,’ she pleaded, her voice breaking. ‘She’s very young – only twelve. Please, Lieutenant Kochi, I respectfully, and in the name of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor beg you not to …’ But by then I was being led out of the office by Lieutenant Kochi. He marched me across the courtyard into the guardhouse.
I was taken past the rack of rifles into a bare room at the back of the building. It had only a table with two chairs, no windows. What light there was filtered in through the gaps in the bamboo, casting slatted shadows onto the dusty floor. Seeing discarded cigarette ends, I felt sick to think of the use to which they might have been put. Some women, I knew, had had bamboo pins pushed under their nails, or had had their toenails pulled off with pliers.
Kochi sat behind the table. I stood in front of him. My breath grew shallow. My knees trembled.
‘How old is your brother?’
‘My brother.’ I answered falteringly, ‘… is nine.’
‘How old is your brother?’
‘My brother is nine.’
‘On what date was your brother born?’
‘On 8 April 1936.’ Maybe Kochi wouldn’t understand ‘1936’, I fretted, because I knew that the Japanese calendar was different from ours.
‘How old is your brother?’
‘My brother is nine.’
Kochi must have asked me two hundred times, sometimes pausing for a minute, or even two minutes, between each time of asking. I stood there, terrified to show any emotion, staring at a corner of the table. Then another soldier came into the room – a man with round glasses, named Sergeant Asako. The two men conferred together in Japanese; then Asako questioned me too, in Malay, but I said the same thing over and over.
‘You are not telling us the truth,’ Sergeant Asako insisted. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one. ‘So now we will try something else.’
I don’t know how much longer I spent in the guardhouse. I was aware that the room was getting darker and colder as the sun began to set. Then, finally, after the line of questioning had taken a different and darker turn, my ordeal was over. They jerked me to my feet, gave me a message for my mother and pushed me out of the room.
I was fighting back tears as I walked out. I dreaded seeing my mother, but there she was; she must have been watching for me from the front of our house. She ran to me, her face twisted with anguish.
‘What did they do to you?’ she whimpered as she helped me away. ‘What did they do to you, my darling? Tell me,’ she wept, as she looked at my arms and legs for signs of injury. ‘Please, Klara. I’m your mother; tell me what they did so that I can comfort you.’
But my mother was the one person in the world that I couldn’t tell. We got back to the house and now, in a voice I barely recognised as my own, I gave her the message.
‘Tomorrow morning?’ she repeated faintly. ‘Peter has to be at the gate tomorrow morning?’ I nodded. ‘So they’ve brought the transport forward?’
‘Yes.’
Her face filled with terror and despair. Then a different expression came into her eyes. ‘So you told them his age.’
‘No.’
‘You must have done.’
I tried to swallow but my mouth had gone dry. ‘I promised you that I wouldn’t tell anyone and I didn’t. You have to believe me, Mummy.’ She didn’t answer. But now, accepting that there was nothing to be done, she opened Peter’s case. Into it she put some malaria pills, a blanket, the few clothes that he still possessed and his bear, inside which she left the cherished photo of my father. She packed a small saucepan, a plate, cup and spoon. Then she took down our kelambu, ripped it in half and out of it made a new net for Peter, stitching it with thread that she’d pulled out of a dress. When it was finished she showed him how to hang it up, and how to tie it, then she packed it. She sewed up the remainder and the three of us lay beneath it, curled together, for one last night.
I couldn’t sleep. Peter was awake too; I could see his eyes, shining in the darkness. Our mother, exhausted by anxiety, had drifted off.
‘I’m sorry, Pietje,’ I whispered.
‘What for?’ he whispered back.
‘For every mean thing I’ve ever said to you, or done to you.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he murmured. ‘Anyway, I can’t even remember.’
‘I bossed you around, and quarrelled with you, and called you names.’
‘Well … you didn’t mean it. Anyway the war’s going to be over soon, and Daddy and I will come back, then we’ll all go home to Tempat Sungai.’
Then we talked about the plantation. We remembered the day the bees came and how bravely Suliman had dealt with them. We talked about Sweetie and Ferdi. Then we shared other memories – our father squirting us with the hose on hot days; our mother’s pink and white orchids in their pots; our games with Flora and Jaya; the panther padding past; the bats swooping out of the Indian fig tree at dusk.
The following morning we rose at first light. Peter got dressed, and rolled up his mattress. Then he opened his case, took out his jacket and put it on. It was the first time he’d worn it in nearly two years, but it still fitted him because he’d hardly grown.
My mother smiled at him. ‘You look so smart.’
‘I need to,’ he replied, ‘because I’ll be seeing Daddy. I shall run to him.’
My mother nodded, unable to speak. She did up the gold buttons, then we picked up his things and went outside. As we came out of the house we saw small solemn groups walking down Laan Trivelli. Each group was clustered around a little boy. Some women and girls were already in tears. I glanced at my mother; her face was pale, but her eyes were dry.
Irene, Susan and Flora fell in step with us as we walked to the gate. There, a large truck was waiting, its engine running: the smell of petrol hung in the air. Boys were being herded into a line-up. Some were wearing their school backpacks; others carried worn-looking soft toys. Mrs Nicholson shouted out names and numbers from her list and, as the boys answered, the guards hurried them onto the truck.
Lekas! Lekas!
All too soon, it was Peter’s turn. His arms went round my mother, and h
e leaned into her as she held him tightly.
‘This is just another part of the adventure,’ she promised him, ‘but we’ll all be together again very soon.’ She kissed him, then laid her cheek against his. ‘I love you, Pietje,’ she whispered. ‘Goodbye, my darling. Goodbye for now.’
I put my arms round my brother. ‘Bye, Peter. I love you too.’
Irene, Susan and Flora all hugged him, then my mother kissed Peter once more, handed him his case, and he stepped forward into the line. As he climbed onto the vehicle, Irene put her arm round my mother – they were both crying – then the tailgate slammed shut. Some boys were weeping, but Peter, in his smart jacket, was smiling and waving as the truck moved off, through the gate, out of sight.
SIXTEEN
On Saturday evening I re-read what I’d written. I thought of Peter leaving his mother and sister, not knowing whether he’d ever see them again, and tears sprang to my eyes. But they had been able to say goodbye, and express their love, I reflected enviously. And at least Klara wasn’t to blame for what happened to her brother, whereas I … I closed the document, and tried to pull myself together. After a few moments I looked at my e-mails. The first was from Nina.
Jenni, a card will be on its way soon, but Jon and I just wanted to thank you and Rick for the beautiful silver frame – we’ve already put our favourite wedding photo in it. Speaking of which, a few snaps from the day are attached. We had a great honeymoon, with lots of sunshine and wonderful food, very little of which I felt like eating – as Hons will by now have explained. It’s still early days, but I can’t help thinking that you and she would make lovely godmothers … Speaking of godparents, I hear you’re in Cornwall with my godfather’s mum – Klara’s a remarkable person. Enjoy being there and see you soon! N x
Godmother … I impulsively clicked to a number of baby-wear sites and looked at pink and blue blankets, and babygros and tiny hats and shoes. Like Honor, I had to fight the urge to buy something straight away.