by Isabel Wolff
The medical staff handed out tiny quantities of bread and lentils, from their emergency supplies. But there was nothing to cook them on because Sonei had confiscated all the anglos. So we ground them up with a rock, mixed them with water and ate them with our tiny piece of grey bread.
My mother looked at her lentils. ‘We are now Stone Age people,’ she observed quietly. ‘This is what they have done to us.’
The three days felt like three weeks. But at last Sonei gave the order for the dapur to reopen. While that happened we waited on our beds, too weak to do anything else. I had found a piece of card and was fanning myself with it, but my mother told me to stop, as even this small exertion would waste precious calories.
‘When can I see Flora?’ I asked her. We’d been unable to see each other during the ‘hunger days’ and I’d missed her.
‘After we’ve eaten,’ my mother answered wearily.
When Mrs Cornelisse’s megaphoned voice once again summoned the food carriers to the kitchen, my mother and Kirsten hurried off with the tub. When they returned my mother seemed upset, but she wouldn’t say why; I knew that she was worrying about Peter, from whom we still hadn’t heard. She gave me my cup of porridge then, as soon as we’d finished, she told me that she’d seen Susan.
‘Did you tell her that I’m going to go over there?’
‘Yes. I did tell her … but …’
‘But what? What’s the matter, Mum?’
She put her hand on mine. ‘Klara,’ she said gently. ‘Flora’s ill.’
A warmth rose in my chest. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘Because I was worried that you wouldn’t eat.’
I stood up. ‘I must go and see her.’
‘I don’t think you should,’ I heard my mother say, but I was already halfway across the front yard. As I got to the gate I saw Irene and Susan, with two other women, hurrying up the road, carrying Flora on a stretcher. Flora had got too hungry, I told myself. She just needed some extra food; I would give her some of mine. But as she was carried past us towards the hospital, I saw that her skin was grey, and that her body was twisted in pain beneath the thin sheet. It wasn’t hunger that had done this to her. In distress, I ran back to my mother, and asked her what had.
She explained that the previous night, Flora and Lena had found some cakes of bunkil in an outhouse and had eaten some. Bunkil was animal feed, made of flaked soya beans.
‘Why would that have hurt Flora?’ I demanded. ‘Soya beans are good.’
My mother explained that bunkil, though fine for animals, can be poisonous to humans. Lena had eaten only a little and would recover, but Flora was very ill. I asked my mother if I could go into the hospital to be with her, but she said that Flora was too unwell. I must just wait, and pray that she would get better.
I prayed morning, noon and night, stopping only when Susan came by to give us news. By the end of the first day Flora was barely conscious; by the end of the second day she had slipped into a coma. On the afternoon of the third day, my mother and I were inside our net, dozing. I heard a tokeh, and began to count its croaks, hoping against hope to hear seven, but it stopped at six. I’d have to start all over again. One … two … three … I opened my eyes and saw Susan standing on the other side of our kelambu. In my half-asleep state I thought she was an angel.
I sat up, my heart pounding. ‘How is she? How’s Flora?’
Susan didn’t answer. She knelt down beside me. ‘The doctors did everything they could,’ she whispered through the net. ‘They did their very best for her – they tried so hard to make her better … I’m sorry, Klara.’
As if in a dream, my mother and I went with Susan to Ampasiet Weg where we found Irene, cradling Flora’s china doll, Lottie. The doll’s face was wet with her tears.
‘I didn’t know,’ Irene sobbed. ‘I didn’t know that the bunkil was there or that she would ever have eaten it!’ She clasped the doll to her, rocking back and forth.
The next morning we all stood beside Flora’s small bamboo coffin as it was loaded onto a truck with five others; then the gate was opened and the vehicle drove out, towards the cemetery.
My mother and Susan were crying, heads bowed. Irene was standing a little way in front of us, staring at the gate. I stood beside her.
‘She was my best friend,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll never like anyone as much as I liked Flora.’
A tear slid down Irene’s cheek. ‘You’ll have other friends, Klara.’ She swallowed. ‘But please, don’t forget Flora.’
‘I won’t,’ I vowed. ‘I’ll never, ever, forget her.’
For the next few weeks we hardly saw Irene and Susan. Then one day Irene came to our house. She told me that she wanted to give me something of Flora’s as a keepsake.
‘It’s just a small thing,’ she said as she handed it to me.
It felt heavy in my palm. ‘Thank you,’ I managed to whisper, as, in the saddest possible way, the lizard became mine.
By the end of May, thanks to a very brave woman named Henny, who had smuggled in a radio, we knew that Hitler was dead and that Holland had been liberated. We knew that victory had been declared in Europe, and that the Allies had retaken the Philippines and Borneo and many of the Pacific islands. A new mood took hold in the camp. Everyone whispered of freedom, not ‘if’, but ‘when’.
In early June my mother and I were overjoyed to receive a card from Peter. It was from Tjimahi and had been written two months before. He’d ticked the usual prescribed phrases stating that he was ‘enjoying excellent health’, had ‘good fresh food’ and was being ‘treated well’ by the Forces of Nippon. In his twenty-five ‘free’ words he’d managed to convey that he was ‘fine’, but that he ‘still missed Daddy and Wil’. At the end, he’d added, ‘Herman’s been kind’.
Anxiety clouded my mother’s face. ‘So Daddy isn’t in Tjimahi. Poor Peter – he was so sure that he was going to see him. Wil isn’t there either. I must go and tell Irene.’
‘Mum, Herman is there. Shouldn’t we tell Mrs Dekker?’
My mother stared at me. ‘I am not prepared to,’ she said. ‘If it weren’t for that hateful woman, Peter wouldn’t be there.’ I felt a pang of guilt. My mother chewed her lip. ‘But I suppose we should, in all conscience, pass that on. But you can tell her, Klara.’
‘I will.’
After Peter had been taken away, my mother had been unable even to look at Mrs Dekker. Summoning all her self-control, she’d ignored her, fearing that if she didn’t, she might strike her. But Marleen Dekker hadn’t liked being ignored.
‘My son had to go, Anneke!’ she’d shouted after her. ‘Why should you have got away with those lies about yours?’
Now, while Mum hurried to see Irene, I went to look for Marleen. Unlike my mother, I didn’t blame Marleen for Peter being transported; I knew that he’d been transported because of me. And after the war, when everything was all right again, I would tell my mother what had happened in the guardhouse that day, and she would not only understand, she would forgive me, and it would all be forgotten. That was my plan.
I found Mrs Dekker in her usual space in a corner of the living room. She was lying down, and through the kelambu I could see that her feet and ankles were swollen with the beginnings of hunger oedema. ‘Mrs Dekker …’
She pushed herself upright. ‘Yes?’ she said warily.
‘Mrs Dekker, we’ve just had a card from my brother. He’s in Tjimahi, and he says that your Herman’s there too. I expect you know that already, but just in case you didn’t, I thought I ought to tell you.’
She opened the net, staring at me, clearly surprised at my friendly tone. ‘I did know,’ she said faintly. ‘But … thank you.’
‘Peter said that Herman’s being kind to him.’
Mrs Dekker smiled. ‘Good. I’m glad to hear that – he is a kind boy. If Herman sends me news of Peter, I’ll tell you, Klara.’
‘Thank you Mrs Dekker.’ I walked away but, on an impulse, turned back. ‘Mrs Dekker, I jus
t want to say that it’s not your fault that Peter was transported.’
She didn’t answer for a moment, fiddling with the collar of her shabby dress. ‘I shouldn’t have done what I did,’ she said softly. ‘I feel bad about it, but I was … angry.’
‘It’s all right. I just want you to know that I don’t blame you.’
She looked puzzled. ‘Well … I’m glad. Thank you, Klara.’
In a while my mother returned from seeing Irene. She sat on her mattress, took out a grubby card that she had been saving, and began to write. ‘It’s so good to know where Peter is, Klara.’ She gave me a radiant smile. ‘And to be able to send him a card is just wonderful after all our worry.’
‘Are you going to tell him about Flora?’
‘No. It’ll make him too sad. We’ll tell him when he’s safely back with us, which, let’s pray, won’t be long now.’
‘I do pray for that.’ My mother could have had no idea how fervently. One afternoon towards the end of June, Louisa ran into the house.
‘Sonei’s gone!’ she screamed. ‘He’s gone. Sonei has GONE!!!’ As we gathered round, Louisa explained that it was to do with the coming end of the war. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
Ina sniffed. ‘I don’t believe it. Our hopes have been dashed often enough before.’
As for the war supposedly ending, we had no idea whether or not this was true, because our radio had been discovered. Henny, who had smuggled it in, had been tied to the chair. We’d managed to get a little water to her when the guards weren’t looking. Even so, she’d died on the evening of the fourth day.
‘It wasn’t a punishment,’ Kirsten had said angrily. ‘It was an execution.’
A few days after this, Greta’s grandmother, Mrs Moonen, hurried into the house. ‘I’ve just seen a new officer by the gate,’ she said breathlessly. ‘He’s called Sakai and he’s Sonei’s replacement. Someone told me that Sonei’s been made a captain and has been transferred: that’s why we haven’t seen him – because he really has gone!’
A cry of unadulterated joy went up.
That night there were celebrations throughout Tjideng. Some women wept with happiness; others were so euphoric that they decided to go gedekking. They went to the northwest corner, right away from the gate. We heard afterwards that they’d been in such a happy frame of mind that they didn’t trade in the terrified silence that they would normally have done, but in an abandoned way, with conversation and laughter. Then the laughter had abruptly stopped.
We learned that while the women were still at the gedek, Sonei, who had been in town celebrating his promotion, returned and caught them by surprise. At gunpoint he marched five of them back to the guardhouse, where he beat them, then locked them in the interrogation room.
The next day the group leaders went through the camp with their megaphones and ordered all last night’s gedekkers to report to the gate. No one came out of the houses. During evening tenko, one of the guards, a Korean called Oohara, advised Louisa to get volunteers to come out in order to appease Sonei, who was becoming ‘gila’ – crazy.
We went out into the front yard to see what was happening. At first we saw a dozen women standing at the gate, but were told that Sonei had said it wasn’t enough. Within an hour there were seventy, but he was still not satisfied. By midnight five hundred women stood there in the moonlight, motionless and silent. They were prepared to suffer for something they had not done, in order to save those who had.
Sonei, in his metal-tipped boots, strode up and down the rows. He stopped in front of one woman, pulled her out of the line then began to slap and punch her. He picked out five others. With his guards, he marched these six women to the house opposite ours that served as the air-raid building. He made them line up on the verandah where, in the light from the one electric bulb that hung from it, I could see their terrified faces. I could hear the monkeys screaming, as if they knew that something bad was happening.
‘What’s he going to do?’ Mum murmured.
‘I don’t know,’ Louisa answered. ‘But it’s going to be bad.’
Sonei started haranguing the women in broken Malay. He called them ‘ungrateful sluts’ who had dared to disobey the ‘divine will’ of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor. He pushed the nearest woman onto her knees. She crouched down and covered her head with her hands, but he began to beat her with the butt of his rifle.
‘Our Father,’ I heard Ina murmur, ‘which art in Heaven …’
As other women joined in the prayer, Sonei rained down his blows. We could hear them thudding against her body. Twice the woman staggered to her feet, but this only seemed to enrage him all the more. He threw her onto a chair, and took a knife out of his belt. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled back her head. The blade glinted as he held it to her throat.
‘My God,’ Kirsten breathed.
‘… and deliver us from evil.’
Sonei sawed at the woman’s scalp. As blood streamed down her cheeks there were screams and gasps. I covered my face with my hands.
My mother was sobbing. ‘If there’s nothing we can do, surely we shouldn’t watch.’
‘Yes, we should,’ Louisa shot back. ‘Because soon the war’s going to end and then we’ll tell the whole world what this devil did! We must watch – and remember!’
‘How could we ever forget?’ Kirsten wept as the woman fell to the floor for the final time.
Sonei beat and shaved the other women too. Then he ran down the front steps of the building. As he headed off towards the dapur we all rushed forward to take the injured women to hospital. While we were doing this, Sonei was pushing over the drums containing the following morning’s breakfast. Once the food was oozing over the ground he went back to his villa, his work done.
This infamous night was Sonei’s swansong. He left Tjideng before the sun came up. We never saw him again.
The next day the new officer, Lieutenant Sakai, took over. Almost immediately the atmosphere in the camp improved. We now had tenko only once a day, and over the next few weeks the rations increased, though not enough to prevent people from dying.
In mid-August Mrs Dekker came to find me, walking with difficulty. She was holding a card. ‘I’ve heard from Herman. He says that Peter’s fine.’
I could have kissed her. ‘Thank you, Mrs Dekker. I’ll tell my mother.’
‘It’s taken two months to get here,’ she explained. ‘He wrote it on 16 June. But I’m worried because in his free words he used the words, “I am going”.’ As she showed the card to me my euphoria died. Aku pergi. ‘I think he was trying to warn me that they might be transported again,’ Marleen said. ‘Let’s hope not,’ she added anxiously.
‘Yes.’ I imagined Peter struggling to breathe in an overcrowded train.
Mrs Dekker sighed. ‘This war is horrible, isn’t it?’
‘Horrible,’ I murmured.
‘But the end is coming – very soon, they say.’
‘I pray for it, Mrs Dekker.’
What we couldn’t have known was that the end had already come, a week before. In a final act of cruelty, we hadn’t been told.
One morning in late August we assembled on Laan Trivelli in the usual way. To my surprise we weren’t made to line up and Mrs Cornelisse told us that we didn’t have to bow. Then Lieutenant Sakai, standing on a stage, started to talk. Sounding subdued, he told us, through the translator, that this would be our last ever tenko. A bewildered murmur rippled through the crowd. Sakai told us that the Emperor had ordered the cessation of hostilities.
‘A new type of bomb was dropped on my country,’ he went on. ‘It has resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims. His Imperial Majesty has therefore decided to end the war. You are now free.’
We stood there, a crowd of emaciated women and children, and stared at Sakai. A new kind of bomb had been dropped on Japan and had killed hundreds of thousands of people? We could not begin to understand this. We understood only tenko and beatings and filthy latrines; we understo
od bedbugs and bamboo coffins, and fifty centimetres. We remained silent, too stunned to speak. Then, a murmur started among us. A growing elation took hold. Someone started to sing the ‘Wilhelmus’, hesitantly at first, then with more strength; and now, with a gathering passion, others joined in. Someone brought out a Dutch flag; how she’d concealed it I had no idea, but there it was, being openly waved – proof that the war really was over. A few British women were singing ‘God Save the King’! Ina was crying; Corrie was kissing the twins and twirling them. They were laughing, heads thrown back.
My mother gripped my arm. She was smiling but her eyes glittered with tears. ‘Klara, we’re going to go and find Peter. We’ll go to Tjimahi, right now – this very minute. And after we’ve found him we’re going to find Daddy – they’ll be so glad to see us! Come, my darling – we must go!’ She hurried off towards the gate. As I followed her, I fretted that we should at least go back to the house and get our things; then I remembered that we didn’t have any things. And how would we travel given that we had no money? Nor were we strong enough to undertake a journey – my mother weighed forty kilos and could barely walk, added to which we had no idea where Peter or my father were. If Peter had been transported again, then God knew where he might be.
I was about to try and reason with my mother when Sakai spoke again: we all turned to look at him.
‘Ladies,’ he said, ‘for the time being you must stay inside the camp. It is too dangerous for you out there – if you leave, you could be killed.’
Here was more startling and bewildering news. The war with Japan was over, so if the Japanese no longer wanted to kill us, then who did?
Irene and Susan came through the crowd towards us. My mother told them of her plans to leave.
‘Annie, please stay,’ Irene insisted quietly. ‘For the moment at least.’ She put her hand on my mother’s arm.
‘But I want my son and my husband.’ My mother was crying. ‘The war’s over and now I want them back – I want them!’
‘Of course you do.’ Irene touched my mother’s face. ‘But, Annie, it’s not safe to look for them now …’