The Interpreter from Java

by Alfred Birney

  ‘Ah, what are you on about? You didn’t have to live through the war! And if I were you, I’d be glad of it.’

  ‘That war of yours filled our house for thirteen years! Till Child Services came and got us out of there.’

  ‘Oh, and I suppose the war never got a mention at that children’s home in Voorschoten?’

  ‘Of course it did. The head there gave us that “you lot never lived through the war” schtick often enough. We weren’t allowed to have problems, never mind cause any. We were supposed to be happy, because we hadn’t lived through the war. We were raised by war children, so what right did we have to complain? Phil and I never complained, by the way, at least not when we were younger. Remember how you used to lay our duffel coats on top of the blankets because the winters were so cold? We were eight and you had us dragging those bloody great sacks of coal through the snow and I had to get up at the crack of dawn to stoke the fire while you and Pa were still in bed. And if I turned up my nose at a meal it was all because I hadn’t lived through that war of yours.’

  ‘That was your father! He was the one always on about the war! Like the only war was in Indonesia and nothing happened here. But those Huns got more vicious as the war went on, more likely to put you up against a wall and gun you down for no reason. And Jews were still being carted off, though we had no idea where to, of course – we had other things to worry about.’

  ‘An entire section of the population is dragged off just like that and no one has an inkling?’

  ‘We thought they were being put to work in Germany!’

  ‘Men, women and children? A kid at a lathe, making warheads?’

  ‘How were we supposed to know about the death camps? Why would we even think something like that? Gas chambers! That’s not something that enters your head, is it? Well then! And in the summer, and the summer was scorching one year, we had to gather wood in the forest to stock up for winter. Try that instead of lugging a few sacks of coal.’

  ‘I never complained. I only wanted to remind you. You never seem to remember a thing when it comes to us.’

  ‘Would you rather have sat there in the cold, you daft lump? So what if it snowed? A little snow never hurt anyone… Those filthy Huns laid landmines in the woods, so you had to watch your step when you gathered firewood. That’s a damn sight worse than slipping in the snow with a coal sack on your shoulders. And sometimes we’d queue for hours for a bit of bread and the Germans would come along and take it all for the top brass and put a sign in the window: SOLD OUT!

  ‘That said, we never went hungry at home, ’cause my father kept on trading shoes with the local farmers, so we always had beans, peas and barley, though the pickings got very slim that last year. But by then there were the rumours that liberation was on the way. There was fighting over by the canal and a few bombs were dropped. One morning, we heard an awful racket and peeked out to see the Huns goose-stepping past like prisoners of war with their hands clasped behind their heads…’

  ‘Was that soldier among them? The German boy who cried about his family in the shop when he came to pick up his boots?’

  ‘… and there were Allied tanks, and people put flags out and there was cheering and singing ’cause Limburg and Brabant had been liberated. Up north, they had to wait. The likes of The Hague and Amsterdam still had the Hunger Winter to get through. The Tommies took it in turns to lodge with us. If the soldiers needed a rest, they got a week off. They brought their own sleeping bags and food, cigarettes and, best of all, chocolate. We couldn’t speak any English so it was all nodding and pointing and waving your arms about, but they were nice, the Tommies. They’d fix a lamp for you, stuff like that, and they were always listening to the radio, but after a week they were on the march again and sometimes we’d get one back and he’d be sobbing his heart out ’cause he’d lost a pal of his.’

  ‘And his other pal was busy shagging the woman next door, I bet.’

  ‘Oh, give over! And what of it? Some of those lads were proper handsome.’

  ‘And did you ever see that soldier, the German boy who was crying in your workshop?’

  ‘Who? Oh, that boy… They shot him most likely, I don’t know. How would I know that? The Brits and the Americans were much nicer, and yes they got off with the prettiest girls, and I was pretty all right, so my father made me stay indoors. When they’d all gone, you saw girls in the family way here and there, and I thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t one of them. I was seventeen when the liberators left and at last I was allowed out with Our Jan to the Sunday night dances. The Brits had brought all kinds of new dances over with them, so us Dutch yokels finally learned a decent move or two. That’s how I met Peter van der Hurk, at Drouwen’s dance hall, up by the bridge, knocked down years ago. There was live music, dance bands that played foxtrots and waltzes and tangoes and rumbas and God knows what else, and Peter came up and asked me to dance and we agreed to meet the week after and before we knew it we were going out together. After the dance, we’d take a walk in the park. He always wore plus-fours and with his hair cut short he wasn’t much of a looker but I was soft on him anyway. Then one night he told me he wanted to be a priest. He was going away to a seminary and we sat and cried on a bench in the park and then he left and I never saw him again. But by the end of the week I’d forgotten all about him and I fell for a musician, an accordion player, but he had wandering hands so I dumped him. That’s the way it was back then. You could be sitting on a park bench kissing in the dark and a priest would jump out from nowhere and shine a torch in your face and start bellowing at you: “How old are you?” and “What are you doing out at this time of night?” and “Get yourself home this minute!” I was still only seventeen and my mother sent me down to the dairy every week to fetch ice cream. There was a sawmill next to the dairy and the lads used to shout, “Hey, milkmaid!” ’cause I had a nice pair of tits on me, or they’d say I had false teeth because they were so white, and when I got mad and bared my teeth at them they’d shout, “Blow me, them fangs of hers are real after all!” And then a nice lad came up to me and said, “Don’t let it bother you, they’re only having a bit of fun.” And I was soft on him from then on. One day he asked me out to the pictures, there was a love story on, and after we went dancing. His name was Tom so I called him Tommy, ’cause it sounded more British. And a friend of mine would cover for me whenever I went to see him. Sandy hair he had, and blue eyes with nice dark lashes. Nice teeth too, thank goodness, ’cause in those days I wouldn’t even look at a boy who didn’t have a decent set of teeth. After five months or so, Tommy was called up for military service, just like my brother Jan. And that bastard Jan told my parents I was seeing Tommy and that he worked in a factory that made coat hangers. Tommy lived in a poky terraced house with his mother. She was from Amsterdam and his father was dead and buried. No brothers or sisters. The factory was his uncle’s. My parents looked down on Tommy for making coat hangers – thought he wasn’t good enough. I didn’t care what they thought and I kept on seeing him. By then he had his uniform and he was stationed at the barracks, same rank as Our Jan, but still not good enough for my parents. Whenever Tommy got off on leave, we dreamed of a future together and he was already talking about emigrating to New Zealand or Australia. Lots of folk went there after the war: they married, got a job, got rich, built a house, bought a big car and had children in a paradise where the sun always shone, even in winter. That’s what Tommy wanted too. My mother thought it was all a pipedream. “How’s things with your coat hanger?” she used to say when I got home. “And keep your knickers on or you’ll end up in the family way!” That was all she said. Not much of a talker, my mother.’

  ‘I can’t say I remember anything much your mother said. Apart from that one time. We were staying with Gran during the summer holidays and they took us swimming in the lake at De Peel. Gran was soaking her feet at the water’s edge. She slipped and as she fell backwards into the water she shouted, “Ooh, there goes Granny! Ooh, there goes Granny!�
� The only words I ever remember her saying. “Ooh, there goes Granny!” And your father barely said a word. In the workshop he would tell me what to do sometimes, but the rest of his life was one big mime. Every morning he’d grin and tap a boiled egg on his forehead. The rest of the time he’d look at us like we were strange because we couldn’t see the funny side of his gags. Or maybe ’cause we looked too foreign.’

  ‘Ah, but on his deathbed he said to me: “Where are the children?” He asked after you. You especially.’

  ‘Well, I never saw the good man again after our last visit, not at our house, and certainly not at the children’s home. Did he have an emotional bone in his body?’

  ‘Oh, don’t ask me. He grew up in children’s homes himself and I doubt anyone ever came to visit him. He was just a quiet man, a tradesman, always busy in the workshop. When Our Jan was sent off to the Indies, I had to take over from him and deliver the repaired shoes to the customers and extract money from the ones that hadn’t paid. On market day I helped at the stall and my mother ran the shop. We loaded up the car at six in the morning, the market started at seven and it was done by two. If business was slack, he’d let me go home as long as I was back in time to load up the car again. Boxes full of heels, for ladies and gents, nails, glue and goodness knows what else. My parents were in a state when Our Jan had to go to the Indies, ’cause he was their only son. But they were happy as Larry when Tommy was shipped off. I didn’t know what to do with myself, ’cause Tommy had to serve eighteen months to two years in that stinking place. I cursed the rotten war that lay behind us and now our boys were being sent off on the warpath themselves in that filthy, ape-infested country. A year we’d been going out together, when he set off with his big duffel bag one grey day in November. Me and a girlfriend of mine took the train to Roermond to see our boys off at the station. The place was packed with soldiers, some with a girl, some without. “Good-bye-ee, I have to leave you…” was the song at the time. Hugs, kisses, tears, the train comes, time to board and “Good-bye-ee, I’ll be true…”’

  ‘You didn’t exactly hang about…’

  ‘Oh, what do you know about life?’

  ‘Don’t mind me. Lugging coal is all I’m good for.’

  ‘In the beginning you write to each other of course – passionate love letters. You stay at home moping and your mother keeps nagging you to go out to the dance hall with the other girls instead of sitting at home like an old widow waiting to die. And I’d say, “No, I’m saving myself for Tommy.” “The coat hanger?” she’d say. “Where’s the future in that?”’

  ‘Did you ever hope he’d take a bullet to the head?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. Things like that don’t cross your mind.’

  ‘Or that his tank would hit a mine? The wouldn’t be as bad, that’s just providence. An Indonesian who blows your brains out is a bastard responsible for his own actions, but a landmine just lies and waits for the Almighty to point the finger. Isn’t that how people think?’

  ‘Well, if you think that’s how people think then you’ve got more of a screw loose than I thought. That’s not how people think. That’s how you think! You think like that!’

  ‘Okay, Ma. But if you didn’t want me to bad-mouth the Almighty, you should never have sent me to that stupid church.’

  ‘I didn’t want to, not for a minute. That was your father. He insisted you were christened.’

  ‘What a nightmare that was! Nana was still a baby, but I was six or seven and there we stood, all five of us with that Indo father of ours. It’s a miracle he managed to brave the stony faces of those gruesome parishioners. Or at least act like he did… There was a photo. Did you know that? For some reason, I see that scene in 360-degree vision. I see us, the whole family gathered at the font or whatever it’s called and at the same time I see those pews full of people in their starched Sunday best. Maybe there were two photos. Black-and-white. Enlarged. Burned to a crisp by that German wife of Pa’s. What a nutjob she was. Pa used to give her a Nazi salute if she ordered him about. In the worst possible taste, of course, but he was clearly kidding. His Hausfrau begged to differ and planned her exit to perfection. Teutonic efficiency. First she went to a souvenir shop and bought one of those little Dutch flags. Then she arranged for a removal van to arrive as soon as Pa had gone to work. Before she closed the door of that twelfth-floor flat in Delft behind her one last time, she went to the toilet. She stuffed all the photos of him she could find down the toilet bowl and set them alight, including the negatives. Then she took a dump. And as a finishing touch, she planted that little Dutch flag in her turd. Part of the photographic record of my childhood ended up incinerated and covered in shit.’

  ‘What the…?’

  ‘I kid you not. That German matron fought back harder than you ever did.’

  ‘Oh, so now you think I’m weak?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

  ‘Well, that’s what it sounds like.’

  ‘I wish things had been different, Ma. I remember a lot of the photos Pa took. Like the one in the church. Well, maybe he didn’t take that one himself. But you saw the Christian hordes in those pews, their long faces looking down on that Indo family with a brown father and a white mother while the vicar sprinkled our foreheads with water. Poor Nana took a ducking. She was still a baby and the vicar held her under. That water was ice cold. The church was ice cold. The people were ice cold. I felt the cold, and being christened only made me feel colder.’

  ‘Yes, and that father of yours was ice cold too.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me you were warm?’

  ‘Oh, bugger off back to whatever planet you came from, you little prick.’

  ‘Did your Tommy come back alive? The forgotten army – isn’t that what they’re called nowadays? The lads who came back from that forgotten war in the Indies? At least 6,000 died over there. The figures vary, depending on the latest publications. Did you know it’s mainly Americans who write books about the Dutch colonial war these days? Why do you think that is? No one up to the task here in Holland? Anyway, back to Tommy.’

  ‘Tommy. Yes, Tommy! Well, the trip back from seeing him off at Roermond station was sad. I remember thinking, that bloody war destroyed everything. Then came Liberation and we were happy for a while and now this. But life went on and Tommy and I wrote each other passionate letters. Then one day, after three months of having no fun at all, I thought to myself, “Am I going to spend two years waiting around like this?” I started going to the pictures again, and to dances and that kind of thing. I kept writing to Tommy – he was somewhere on Celebes I think. I had promised to be faithful and not to go out dancing ’cause he was over there in the jungle and couldn’t stand the thought of me waltzing around in someone else’s arms. Well, his cousin happened to see me at a dance and she wrote and told him I’d been dancing a lot with this one fella. Tommy was angry and disappointed over there in the jungle and my mother was pleased that, after six months of writing and writing and writing, I’d finally put Tommy behind me. I felt free again. And I got to know someone else. That was Nico. He was studying to be a councillor.’

  ‘Studying to be councillor? Don’t they get elected?’

  ‘Well, something like that. In any case, he was handsome and he had brains. And he used to sing me love songs. In the park, mind, ’cause you could only bring a boyfriend home if there was an engagement in the offing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Oh, Nico only lasted a month or two and then there was Jan, and then another Jan, and another Jan after that. I thought about Tommy sometimes, but he was still mad at me. In Holland we were rebuilding the country with a vengeance and over there they were still at war and of course that was another world to me. There were plenty of jobs going in those days and I started work at a bookbinder’s and then at a place where they made stockings, as an assistant to the manager, one of those drippy bachelor types. That was 1948 and then Annie van Asseldonck comes to me and sa
ys, “Oh, An, I’ve got a bunch of lovely pictures of servicemen out in the Indies who want to correspond with Dutch girls. Anything here you fancy?” I took a look and that same evening I sat and wrote a letter to your father. He was a handsome man, best looking of the whole bunch! My parents found out and they were shocked at me writing to a coloured man. They thought people in the Indies lived in huts and ran around in grass skirts or with a fig leaf to cover their privates – yes, that’s how people in Helmond thought back then. Even Amsterdam was a foreign country to them. My parents went once and once was enough. We had one Indo family in Helmond but they were very brown, they were different, and that’s why my parents were against me writing. But I was interested in the Indies – to me it was all very exotic. And so I kept on writing. My parents found out that I was having his letters delivered to another address and then they said all right then, you might as well have them sent here… But Arto’s letters became fewer and farther between. And some letters he’d sign Arto and others Arend and of course my parents thought that was fishy. When I was cleaning out the cupboard one day, I found a whole stack of letters my mother had intercepted and hidden away. I made a big scene about it – I was nearly twenty after all – but if only I had listened to her, ’cause my dear mother and my good father were very fond of me and if only I’d listened I could’ve had my Tommy back, but the more my parents were against it the more stubborn I became. And one day Tommy did come back from the Indies, alive and well. It was a Saturday evening and I was over at a girlfriend’s house and I was very nervous about seeing Tommy again. Arto was in the Indies – little did I know he’d come to Holland. And would you believe it, I saw Tommy again at the dance and it was just like before he went off to the Indies! He walked me home and he was all set to call and pick me up the following week. There was to be a big party for the soldiers who had returned from the Indies. I put on a lovely dress and sat there waiting for Tommy that evening. It was the first time a boy had come to the house to pick me up – quite something in those days! My mother thought it was better than me corresponding with that shady character from Surabaya, and my father was pleased too. So I waited and waited and waited but Tommy didn’t turn up. And then Mies, my very own sister, the evil little cow, piped up and said she’d told Tommy that I’d been writing to a boy from the Indies for ages and that his name was Arto and that he was coming to Holland and that I’d probably leave Tommy in the lurch again. Nowadays the little bitch swears she can’t remember a thing about it. Cool as you like. “Oh, I’ve forgotten all about that,” she says. Well, my world just about caved in ’cause I really did love Tommy – I knew for certain as soon as I clapped eyes on him again! I never got to go to the party and after that I never saw Tommy ever again! And later I heard he’d emigrated to New Zealand with another woman. Broke my heart, that did. Can you imagine?’