Meanwhile Jacob never gave me a moment’s rest. He no longer allowed me to take a siesta in the afternoon. The dusty attic above the garage was full of junk and Jacob tied thick ropes around a beam and hung rings from them so that Karel could teach me gymnastics. Jacob had me working with barbells of up to 45 pounds. With padding strapped to my body, I had to learn to fight Karel. Months passed before I was able to fend off his rapid-fire blows and kicks. Jacob also suspended a heavy jute sack from the beam, filled with sawdust and sand. When he hit it, that dead weight would dance around on the end of its rope; no matter how I pummelled away with my fists, it hung there still as could be.
The death of my father
Papa had already bowed out of the legal profession and he also began to withdraw from family life. He moved into the pavilion of a large club house somewhere on Embong Malang. That’s how we lost our driver, Petro. Perhaps Papa found my mother’s sharp criticism of his lifestyle hard to take. The man was addicted to alcohol and gambling. If I had an afternoon off school and went to visit him, he had to get out of bed first and brush his teeth. He rinsed his mouth with whisky.
Oh, so my nocturnal tendencies run in the family… Atavism, huh? Except for the whisky. The hard stuff from Scotland brings out a strange aggression in me. In that respect, I take after you.
We had to find a smaller house and moved to 144 Arjuno Boulevard. There I made a lot of new friends: Dutch, German, Indo boys, Javanese and Ambonese, a right old mix. We shared the garden with another Indo family, who lived in a pavilion in the grounds. It was cramped and money was tight, but it was a warm and happy place to live. We had a Chinese lodger, Kwee Lian Bo. He studied architecture and was a great help to me with my mechanical engineering studies.
Little by little, Mama began to break it to me that Papa was going from bad to worse. It began with his business interests. The dry cleaner’s on Simpang went bankrupt, and he had to sell off his cargo ships and eight of his cars to pay off his gambling debts. Even his stamp collection, worth millions of guilders, had to be auctioned off. The one thing he managed to hold onto was his Model T.
Papa’s old ailment, diabetes, began to get the better of him. When he still lived with us, Mama used to patch him up with herbal remedies but over at the clubhouse pavilion he was at the mercy of his private doctors and those Westerners did little more than send him to hospital. Mama, Jacob, Karel, Ella, Ina and I became regular visitors at Darmo Infirmary.
One September afternoon, I found myself at Papa’s bedside with George Nolan. ‘Arend,’ Papa said, ‘this is your cousin George. From now on, he will be your guardian. I have made financial arrangements with him regarding your further studies. Listen carefully to what George has to say and follow his instructions to the letter. One day, when you are older, you will understand. You are the youngest of the five and the eyes of the Nolan family are upon you. Ella and Ina are useless – I’ve seen more brains in a pig’s backside. Karel is not worth a farthing – he knows how to charm the ladies and nothing else. I have left those three nothing in my will. Jacob is brave and knows how to handle himself, and so I have put his financial affairs in order. But of course my primary concern is your mother.’
My visit over, I waited for my cousin George in the hall of the hospital’s side pavilion. ‘Arend,’ he said when he came out of Papa’s room, ‘your father is not long for this world. A few weeks at most. He senses the end is near. At times he is lucid, but his mental faculties come and go. It is a blessing that he still remembers you. At times he doesn’t even recognize your brothers and sisters! But all this aside, Arend, you have heard and understood your father’s words. Do your level best at school. You will soon be fourteen and if, when you are sixteen, I can see that you have given the best possible account of yourself, you will receive a splendid motorcycle from me as a present.’
Cousin George – son of my uncle Louis Nolan, a wealthy planter – gave me a firm handshake. From under the brim of his white hat, he looked me deep in the eyes, a look of sympathy. I got on my bike and, feeling downhearted, I cycled home without calling in on my playmates.
One Monday, three days before my fourteenth birthday, I was working at the lathe in the school workshop when I clearly saw my father’s face appear in the wire screen in front of me. He spoke to me, but I could not understand his words. I called out to him and my classmates stopped what they were doing and looked at me in surprise. At that moment our Chinese lodger Kwee Lian Bo came dashing into the workshop. He shouted over to me that my father had died and that my sisters were waiting for me in the headmaster’s office. The teachers helped me out of my overalls and took me to the washrooms where I had to put on my Sunday best. I was given the rest of the week off school.
Three days later my father was buried in a solemn service at the European section of the General Cemetery on Kembang Kuning. Almost every Sunday I visited his grave, which was marked by a large headstone made of Italian Bianco Carrara marble. I filled the vases with fresh flowers and begged God to forgive my father for all the sins he had committed in his life. Mama was sometimes at her wits’ end, as even after his death many of my father’s possessions had to be auctioned off to settle his debts. Cousin George compensated Mama for all of the financial losses.
Jayabaya and Nostradamus
A year after Papa’s death we had to move again. This time it was to a larger house, but without a garden, located on Pasar Besar Wetan Gang IV. Eventually, Mama also had to sell the hunting rifles and all our other valuables. But we were able to hang onto the twelve large Chinese vases we owned, and they came with us to our new address.
Unfortunately, I saw Cousin George less frequently than I would have liked and my brother Jacob took over as my guardian. It was a role he relished. One Saturday afternoon when I was fifteen, I came back from doing Swedish gymnastics at school: this consisted of exercises on the wall bars and the rings, vaulting and rope climbing. I had the babu fill a tub in the bathroom. Having locked the door, I soaped my body and lay soaking in the cold water. The heat was stifling that day and I fell asleep. Half an hour later, Jacob came home from the office and began hammering on the bathroom door. I jolted awake, climbed out of the tub, dried myself and pulled on my underpants. Again Jacob pounded on the door. I opened it and before I knew what was happening, my brother had grabbed me by the throat and dragged me outside. He hit me hard, again and again, then kicked me to the ground. I curled into a ball and asked him what in God’s name was wrong with him.
‘Shut your face, you filthy dog!’ he yelled, landing kicks wherever he could. Mama, Ella and the babus came running to see what all the fuss was about and ordered him to stop.
‘What has the boy done wrong?’ my mother asked.
‘That animal has been wanking off in the bathroom!’ Jacob ranted. ‘He was still in there when I got home. I will not stand for Arend wanking off. A good thrashing is what he needs.’
I scrambled to my feet and asked Jacob what ‘wanking off’ meant. Again he turned white with rage and punched me full in the face. Unable to bear it any longer, Mama came and stood between us, and Jacob relented at last. Everything went black and I fainted. Babu Tenie fetched wet cloths and wiped the blood from my face, while Kokkie Tas held my head in her lap.
‘Why did you hit me so hard?’
‘Because you won’t stop lying!’ Jacob screamed.
That evening he came to my room, dragged me across the hall and made me sit at his desk. He pulled a thick volume from his bookcase and shoved it under my nose. ‘This is a book about venereal diseases, written in the American language,’ he said. ‘And here is a dictionary. Take a good long look. The photos of the diseases are in colour. When I said “wanking” I meant playing with your dick. If something comes out, you can end up with a nasty disease. It will sap you of all your strength and you will become a mollusc, a shrimp! Sit here and keep reading till I tell you to stop. Understand?’
From that day on, I had to report to him twice a week to read that bo
ok on venereal diseases. He never told me how to behave with girls or women. All I knew was that Karel played guitar for them, which made me think I should learn to play guitar too. Luckily, Jacob also had books about planes in his room. He had bought Hutchinson’s War Pictorial, while I saved my pennies to buy second-hand copies of magazines like Flight and The Aeroplane. Jacob also bought new magazines so that we could follow the war in Europe. Karel listened to the radio. We knew the Germans had occupied the Netherlands and that Japan was threatening to do the same to the Indies.
One day I read a newspaper ad placed by the Dutch Royal Navy, calling on boys aged fourteen and over to sign up for military service. Like many of my friends, I was eager to enlist. But Mama refused to give her permission and had Jacob put me right.
‘Arend, if you join the Navy, you are going to have to fight. And that would break Mama’s heart. You are her anak mas remember, the apple of her eye. She needs you by her side and that is why I cannot give you permission. Mama wants you to be an engineer when you grow up. And less of your whining about how she hits you. It’s how all of us were raised, your brothers too. The lash toughens us up. Would you rather be spineless? Well then, stop making a big deal of it! You are a boy of fifteen, do you honestly think you can take on the Japs? Don’t make me laugh, man. You have a Chinese mother and we are registered as Chinese. That is all there is to it! If our father had recognized us as his own, we would have been European and it would have been our war too. But he didn’t and it’s not! So you, me and Karel are going to keep our heads down if those Japs invade. Understand?’
For the sake of keeping the peace, I nodded.
‘You know the story of King Jayabaya, don’t you?’ he continued. ‘No? Sometimes I wonder why we waste good money on that school of yours. Jayabaya was Java’s own Nostradamus. You must know who Nostradamus was… no? Thick as two short planks, you are! Nostradamus was a French chemist who had the gift of second sight. He foretold Napoleon, Communism, Hitler and the World Wars. Around the year 900, our Jayabaya ruled one of the Hindu kingdoms here on Java and he had the gift of prophecy too. Using seven dishes of food as an allegory, he predicted the seven ages in which seven great kingdoms would succeed one another. The last of these were the seafaring nations, first the Belandas and then the Japanese, who will plunge Java into ruin. Both nations will eventually be driven out, after which the kings of Java will take power once again. Every Javanese knows this. And, since we live among the Javanese, we need to know it too. Sudah al! End of story! There is no sense in fighting, all we have to do is wait. The only fighting you need to do is on Karel’s battlefield.’
By Karel’s battlefield, Jacob meant the patch of waste ground by Queen Emma School, where people fought to settle their differences. There, Karel demonstrated his lightning-fast technique with the sia and I saw him break the wrists of fearsome opponents. There were tough fighters among those boys and they came from all races: Indos, Madurese, Javanese, Bugis, Makassar, Manadonese, Ambonese and Timorese. Among them was one Radèn Soekaton, a Madurese boy of noble birth. He was an expert in pencak silat and could leap clean over his opponents, both forwards and backwards. He later became one of my closest allies. If he was around when I got into a fight, he would throw himself into the fray to help me. But it didn’t take much to make him mata gelap and, blinded by the dark mist of rage, he could easily pick a fight with the wrong guy.
If I came home a loser, I could expect a thrashing from Karel and Jacob, who would then make me pound away at the punchbag. If I won, they would give me a guilder each. My mother would give me a guilder too, and Ella and Ina would give me fifty cents apiece. Despite all the beatings and humiliations, I had a wonderful childhood in the Indies. Until the war began.
II
SAMURAI
From Baldy’s memoirs
Bombs land on our house
I was a schoolboy in class 2D of the Architecture department when the Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbor. It was December 1941. The United States declared war on Japan, and the Netherlands followed suit. The Dutch declaration was read out to us by the headmaster. Needless to say, this pretty much put an end to our studies. All citizens of German and Japanese origin, including any mixed blood descendants, were arrested and carted off to internment camps. Among them were German and Japanese classmates I never saw again. A Dutch boy from our school was called up to serve with the Dutch Royal Navy and became a gunner on the Surabaya, a coastal defence ship. He was killed when Japanese planes bombed Surabaya’s docks at Tanjung Perak.
Through the school governors, I signed up for the Air Defence Service. Equipped with transmitters and receivers, I was regularly posted in the airport district of Darmo with orders to report back by radio and telephone. Thanks to Jacob’s books and magazines, I was adept at recognizing aircraft. Air Defence supplied me with binoculars and a .36 calibre Colt revolver, and I wore a green khaki uniform and beret. The Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, known to everyone as the KNIL, was not exactly a force to be reckoned with and reinforcements came in the shape of Australian soldiers, who showed far greater bravery in taking on the Japanese invaders.
Ads appeared in the local papers calling for youngsters aged fourteen and over to train as aircraft engineers with the KNIL’s air force. My mother and my self-appointed guardian Jacob refused to let me join up. At the time Willem Nolan, a cousin and my father’s namesake, came to see us occasionally. On his final visit he turned to me and said, ‘Arend, I am now serving with the KNIL and soon I will be fighting the Japanese. Be thankful that you have not been recognized as a Nolan and that you bear your mother’s name. Lay low here, under her roof. I do not think I will survive this war.’ He embraced me and I never saw him again. He died as a prisoner of war working on the Burma Railway and his body lies buried in Thailand.
In early February 1942, the sirens on the school roof began to wail. Through my binoculars, I saw nine Japanese Zero fighters coming in low. Above them were fifteen Mitsubishi Bettys on a bombing run. I was sent to the forge and told to open a valve that would release the carbide gas from the boiler and cause a massive explosion if the fighters sprayed the place with bullets. I heard the rattle of machine-gun fire and 110-pound anti-personnel bombs began to fall. Before I could get the job done, the roof of the boiler house was blown clean off. Everyone dived for cover and when the all-clear sounded we began shifting rubble. We had to dig out students trapped in makeshift shelters and pinned by fallen trees.
Classes were cancelled and as I was getting on my bike to cycle home, a Javanese neighbour called to me from outside the gate. He told me that our house on Pasar Besar Wetan Gang IV, close to the power company buildings, had been hit. The front of the house had been reduced to rubble and police were patrolling to prevent looting. They let me through. Our antique Chinese vases, each one over three feet tall, lay in pieces. My room was wrecked and the bomb blast had ripped through the kitchen. The interior of the dining room was gutted and the back walls were riddled with machine-gun bullets.
I cried out for revenge. A policeman calmed me and told me to go to the Central Civic Hospital on Simpang, but the chaos in the streets made it impossible to get there. A Javanese neighbour, whose home was also in ruins, let me stay with his family on Baliwerti, around half a mile from our house. There I was given a warm welcome and a small room with a balai-balai, a simple bed made of bamboo. In the courtyard was a well where I was able to wash.
The next day I cycled to the hospital in search of my family. My mother and Ella were in a mild state of shock. Ina had injuries to her right arm and her left leg. One of our babus had suffered a head wound. When they were discharged after a stay of several days, Ina joined my brother Karel in temporary accommodation in Surabaya. Jacob arranged for me to be evacuated along with Mama, Ella, Poppy, Kokkie Tas and Babu Tenie. We were to go to Blitar, around 80 miles south, the place where I had been nursed back to health as a baby. I packed my wicker suitcase, took my leave of the Javanese family on Baliwerti, an
d left my bike behind. My mother waited for me at the hospital and from there we walked to Gubeng station. The train was full to overflowing, the day hot, the journey long.
In Blitar we were met by Aunty Mien and other members of Mama’s family. I was confounded by the loving embraces I received from those Chinese women: a far cry from the beatings and punishing garden training sessions I was used to, not to mention the endless fights with my brothers and sisters. I was given a room at the back with a balai-balai, and a rickety table and chair. I wandered out of Aunty Mien’s kampong house to the end of the street and found myself looking into a deep ravine. I wondered how Karel and Ina were doing, for we knew that the Betty bombers – ‘flying cigars’ us schoolboys called them – were continuing their raids on Surabaya. I had only one thought: to fight for Queen and Country.
The next morning I decided to explore the neighbourhood. Invading Japanese troops were flooding into Blitar and were hailed with loud cheers by the Indonesian population. Indos were nowhere to be seen. They stayed indoors. Uncle Soen warned me not to confide in anyone. The Indonesians saw the Japanese as liberators from their Dutch oppressors, and Indonesian political parties were quick to seek Japanese support. Uncle Soen told me the Japanese were arresting every Dutch citizen they could find – men, women and children – and putting them in internment camps, but Indos were still being allowed to work and move freely. The Indonesians spat at the white Dutch internees when they were marched from their camp to their workplace and back. The Japanese looked on and laughed.
To kill time, I took language lessons, arranged by an acquaintance of Aunty Mien’s. A Chinese girl taught me Ching Iem, a local Cantonese dialect with characters to match.
One morning I went to the pasar with Ella and Poppy. Japanese soldiers with bayonets fixed to their rifles had rounded up a crowd of people in the town square. In their midst was a ten-year-old boy, all skin and bones, who had stolen from a market stall to still his hunger and was awaiting punishment. The boy was made to place the hand he had stolen with on a wooden block. The Japanese soldiers forced everyone to watch; I was hit with a rifle butt when I looked the other way. An officer drew his samurai sword and hacked off the boy’s hand. Any Javanese onlookers who tried to help the boy were beaten senseless by the butts of Japanese guns. Through an interpreter, the officer made it clear that the same fate awaited anyone who was caught stealing. A buzz of contemptuous indignation ran through the crowd. Were they still so happy with their Japanese liberators? That evening I walked to the end of the street and spent hours staring across the ravine.
The Interpreter from Java Page 10