The Interpreter from Java

by Alfred Birney

  Betrayed by my family

  Out of necessity, my sisters Ella and Ina took waitressing jobs at one of the big restaurants on Simpang. But I soon found out that, besides serving food and drink, they were working as hostesses for Japanese soldiers. I was outraged and complained to Mama about their scandalous behaviour. ‘What has it got to do with you?’ she replied furiously. ‘Your sisters are years older than you. They need to earn money and you have no say in the matter! We all have to survive, whatever it takes.’

  I took Ina aside and confronted her about what she was doing. She all but exploded and slapped me in the face. This sent me into such a rage that I punched her on the jaw, so hard that she reeled back and hit the wall. Blood began to pour from her mouth. Shaken, she found herself a chair, sat down and burst into tears.

  ‘How could you hit me so hard?’ she asked, dazed.

  ‘Remember how you, Ella, Jacob and Karel beat me, kicked me and humiliated me since I was a child?’ I answered. ‘This is my revenge! I have been hit once too often and I am not a little boy any more. When the rage takes me, I no longer see the difference between a man and a woman. I hit back as hard as I can. You and Ella are collaborating with the Japs. And I will make you both pay!’

  My family’s behaviour filled me with shame. I noticed that Jacob and Karel were also going out of their way to be on friendly terms with influential Japs. A few months later, Ella even brought a Japanese airman home with her, an officer by the name of Kamei. It was all I could do to keep my animosity under control. But then I remembered the ancient Chinese wisdom passed on to me by my own mother: ‘In certain cases, treat your enemy as a friend. Let him feel victorious. Wait for his moments of weakness, then strike.’

  I played along with the Jap and before long I was holding entire conversations with him about his role as a bomber pilot and his acts of so-called heroism in his ‘flying cigar’. All the while I was wondering how this path of feigned friendship might lead my sister’s slant-eyed lover straight to hell.

  One evening I was cycling near the pasar at Kembang Kuning. From the direction of the Chinese cemetery in Simo Kwagean, I saw a long column of trucks approaching. It turned onto Kembang Kuning heading for the docks. The trucks were loaded with cylindrical rattan baskets used to transport pigs, but these baskets held prisoners of war. Out of curiosity, I cycled in the direction the column had come from and discovered a POW camp on the other side of the cemetery. I rode on to Aunty Kiep’s house and asked her if I could stay the night. By this time it was eleven o’clock and the curfew had begun.

  Aunty Kiep told me that the prisoners held at the camp beyond the cemetery were Australian soldiers who had fought at Wonokromo Bridge during the Japanese invasion. Some had already been beheaded with samurai swords and lay buried nearby.

  ‘Arend, if you saw a column of trucks loaded with pig baskets, it means the soldiers are being transported to the docks. If you want to know more, go and see Uncle Soen first thing in the morning and he will give you the addresses of his Chinese friends at the docks. They might be able to tell you what is happening to those poor Australian soldiers. But your aunty is afraid that they will be thrown into the sea, baskets and all, for the sharks to eat.’

  I cycled over to Uncle Soen’s the next morning. He sent me to see a friend of his, a Chinese ferryman who lived in the neighbourhood of Ujung and belonged to the same Chinese political organization as my uncle. ‘What your aunt told you is true,’ the ferryman said. ‘For two nights now I have seen columns of trucks, piled high with pig baskets here in Ujung. The baskets are opened on the quayside and the prisoners are thrown into the sea. As you know, these waters are swarming with tiger sharks. These atrocities are committed after curfew to keep them from the locals, but everyone in these parts knows what is going on. In the morning, the sea where they dump the prisoners is still red with blood. Sometimes swollen limbs float to the surface, for even the sharks cannot dispose of so many bodies. Fear and hatred of the Japs runs deep among the people here. Almost all of us long for the Belandas to return or the Allied troops to arrive.’

  Dutch prisoners of war were also falling foul of the Japanese bushidō. Another POW camp was located on the former fairground on Cannaplein, near the district of Tambaksari. One day, a dozen prisoners – most of them sailors with the Dutch Royal Navy – were found guilty of passive resistance and sentenced to be beheaded. Another dozen were tied to posts and bayonetted to death by Japanese soldiers. Among them was Hendrik Karssen, a sailor who died with a cry of ‘Long live the Queen!’ When the war was over, a minesweeper was named in honour of that brave Indo boy.

  At night, far past the curfew, many Indonesians who still sympathized with the Belandas managed to sneak past the Japanese patrols and throw food parcels over the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp.

  It was at this time that I met Mrs Thea Bürer, whose husband was a prisoner of war in Burma. She lived on Trompstraat, opposite my half-sister Nonnie and her family. As she was part German, Thea Bürer had been spared the internment camp. She had three children to take care of and also gave refuge to Olga Wetzel and her sister. These two ladies taught me to dance. We soundproofed the dining room windows with rags, cranked up the old gramophone and played foxtrots on ebonite discs.

  Women ‘fortunate’ enough to stay out of the camps had trouble finding work. Many felt compelled to sell their favours to Japanese officers now and then. Like my sisters, Thea Bürer began working as a waitress but soon became a call girl. My neighbour Mary Scheffer met the same fate. Her husband, who worked for Royal Dutch Indies Airways, had been evacuated to Australia and she had been left to take care of her two young daughters alone.

  I was a boy of seventeen and fell madly in love with Olga Wetzel, who was six years my elder. Much to the annoyance of Thea Bürer and my family, Olga strung me along for a while and expected me to spoil her with all kinds of treats and the loving ways I had learned from Emmy. But this soon made me feel like a gigolo and I gave her up. What I wanted was to be part of the resistance.

  Torture

  Karel warned me to keep a low profile and not to cycle around the city so much. He was worried that Lim Tan Ko-Ko and his boss Oei Boen Pong were on to me. His warning came too late. My Javanese friends had assigned me to keep watch on those two traitors, but in my heedlessness the tables had been turned: they now had me in their sights. One evening near Pasar Besar, I spotted Oei Boen Pong standing on the other side of the street, hands in pockets. He was staring straight at me and I failed to notice four Kenpeitai men closing in. They kicked me to the ground and dragged me off to their headquarters in the former Palace of Justice, across from the government building on Pasar Besar. There, in a blacked-out room, they tied a cable around my wrists and strung me up on a pulley until I was hanging with my feet ten inches off the floor. A thug with a baseball bat hit me in the stomach, then on my ribs, back and legs. I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was lying in a cell. The face of my brother Karel appeared before me. ‘Scrap the words “fear” and “afraid” from your vocabulary,’ I heard him say. ‘They can beat you as hard as they want, it won’t kill you.’

  Two Japs laid me on a plank and bound me with lengths of thick rope. One shoved a funnel in my mouth and the other began to fill it with water from a bucket. I had no choice but to swallow and I could feel my stomach swell. Then they stamped hard on my stomach, forcing the water out through my ears, nose, mouth and anus. This torture was repeated four times until I was bleeding from the anus. Eventually they untied the ropes and booted me into a corner of the cell. ‘Where have you hidden your weapons?’ the interrogator asked, half in Japanese, half in Malay. ‘Who are your friends? Who were you spying for?’ Every question was delivered with a kick.

  I was racked with pain. The whole room was spinning, but I said nothing.

  I do not know how many days and nights I spent in that cell. It was so dark, I could not tell day from night. An officer came in with a tray of food. He made it clear th
at this was my last meal and that I was to be beheaded at half past one that afternoon. I could not eat, all I could do was groan from the pain. The door closed behind him and opened again later. Two Japs grabbed hold of me and helped me out to the duty officer’s desk. I was overjoyed to see Uncle Soen sitting there.

  ‘Arend, I have come for you,’ he said. ‘Your freedom has been bought. Do not ask me how.’

  The duty officer apologized for any inconvenience I had suffered.

  ‘Bakeiro,’ I mumbled.

  He was so angry I had called him an idiot that he immediately drew his samurai sword. Uncle Soen and another Jap stepped in to separate us. Muttering to himself, Uncle Soen dragged me outside. On Pasar Besar, he flagged down a becak, because I could hardly walk. He thought it better not to take me straight home, afraid Mama would break down when she saw the state I was in. I was caked in blood and thanks to the water torture I stank of piss and shit.

  Uncle Soen took me to Aunty Kiep in the Chinese district of Simo Kwagean. She burst into tears when she saw me. Carefully she undressed me, washed me and rubbed me with herbal oil, while Uncle Soen went next door to fetch me some clean clothes. Aunty Kiep let me lie on the divan and, sobbing all the while, brewed up a herbal remedy for me. She suspected that I was suffering from internal bleeding. Her potion did me good almost as soon as I drank it.

  My uncle explained that he had been told of my arrest by an acquaintance who had seen it happen. He had then called on all kinds of influential figures in the Chinese community until he had collected enough money to bribe a number of senior Kenpeitai officers. He told me I had been held in that building for four days.

  Christened as a Protestant

  Around six weeks later, I had more or less recovered from my ordeal, apart from severe pain in my guts every now and then. I played hide and seek from Mama, inventing one excuse after another, and occasionally visited Pah Tjillih on the sly. His healing powers were able to rid me of my pain for a while.

  One day, Mama said, ‘Arend, I have decided to have us all christened in the Protestant church on Bubutan. We have an appointment with Reverend Laloe this coming Sunday. You, Ella, Poppy and I will be christened. My hope is that this will help you grow into a good, strong, God-fearing boy.’

  Scenes from my Sunday school education ran through my mind like a film. The Protestant teachers who had caned or whipped me whenever I stuttered over a psalm, a hymn or a passage from the Bible. How my brothers had accompanied me to school to have a little word with those abusive teachers. How Jacob had let his fists do the talking and put an abrupt end to Mr Claproth’s Protestant bullying. But Mama’s word was law, and in mid-June 1943 we took our places in the front row of the Protestant church on Bubutan. During the service we had to go up one by one and kneel at the font so that Reverend Laloe could christen us. After the service, we were ushered into the vestry, where the minister gave us a long talk.

  Reverend Laloe was a marvellous man, a Minahasan who hailed from Celebes. Strangely enough, I felt like a new man after the christening, as if God was closer to me than ever before. Mama impressed upon me that I should pray frequently, because it was only through God that I could expect miracles. She had always followed the teachings of Confucius, passed down from generation to generation as part of the Chinese tradition. But her dealings with Christians had led her to immerse herself in the Malay Bible, and what she read there had changed her mind. Her sister and brother, Aunty Kiep and Uncle Soen, respected her decision to follow a new path but they remained disciples of Confucius. Our family were never ones to waste words on matters of faith.

  After the service and our talk with Reverend Laloe, I went for a walk and struck up conversations with Chinese and Indonesians about the latest news. The Allies seemed to be making headway in the Solomon Islands and in Burma. Mulling this over, I dropped in to see Karel on Jalan Kranggan. As a rule, my brother showed no interest at all in how the war was progressing. That afternoon, I found his wife Wiesje alone and I could see from her face that she had been crying. She called my brother a bastard and told me he was having an affair with a white Indo woman called Marietje Mertz, whose husband, an officer on a merchant ship, had been taken prisoner.

  ‘Why hasn’t she been interned, like all the other white Indo women?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Marietje lives near Pasar Besar. A nanny looks after her children, a blonde girl by the name of Ciska Wagner. She comes from a German family and must be about your age… Arend please, try to talk your brother round. Persuade him to come back to me.’

  My Indonesian contacts gave me directions to Marietje Mertz’s house. In the narrow side street off Pasar Besar, I knocked on her front door. A sweet blonde girl opened it. I asked to see my brother. The girl introduced herself and let me in, but not before she had given me a long, meaningful look. Karel was surprised to see me. I told him to go back to Wiesje. Tempers flared and Karel growled that his little brother should watch his big mouth.

  A few evenings later, I found myself back at Pasar Besar. Out for a stroll, I wound up in a fight with two Japanese soldiers. They were blind drunk, bawling and slurring as they staggered around. One of them bumped into me and started yelling. I yelled back and they began to hit me. I kicked them to the ground and passers-by warned me to make myself scarce. I ran to Marietje’s house and, when Ciska opened the door, I asked her if I could spend the night so that I could go and see my Madurese friends in Dapuan district the next day. No sooner had she let me in than Karel appeared and, without a word, began to beat me. Ciska tried to explain the situation but Karel would not stop. I exploded in fury and went mata gelap, punching and kicking him till he fell. Marietje came running in to separate us, but I knocked her to the ground as well. Ciska cried out that I would kill her if I didn’t stop. ‘The days when you could treat me as your little brother are gone for good,’ I sneered at Karel. ‘Never again will I let you humiliate me! Senjata makan tuan! From now on, I hit back!’

  Soon after this, I fell out with Jacob too. He had married a girl called Ietje and came round to ask Mama for a kapok mattress for their spare bedroom. I was sitting there talking to Uncle Soen. Mama had already given me her spare mattress, but Jacob was having none of it.

  ‘Give me Arend’s mattress. What does he want with a mattress? Let him sleep on the wooden divan. That’s good enough for him.’

  No sooner had he said these words than he walked over and punched me in the face. I fell to the floor. His wedding ring had left a deep gash in my forehead. Half-dazed, I got to my feet and went to attack him, but Mama stopped me. I grabbed a teapot and hurled it at Jacob’s head. It missed by a hair. Then I rushed into my bedroom and grabbed my father’s old fighting knife. Uncle Soen came after me, took hold of my right hand and squeezed it with that mysterious power of his. I fell to one knee, almost unable to move. ‘Arend,’ he said, ‘this is no way to act. Heed my words. Remember that you have me to thank for your life, twice over. If you harm your brother, God will punish you. Get a grip on yourself…’ His embrace calmed me down.

  ‘Why do my brothers keep hitting me?’ I asked.

  No one answered.

  Resistance

  Much to my delight, I ran into Ciska a couple of times on Pasar Besar, when she was out walking with Marietje’s children. It turned out that Ciska and her sister lived in Dapuan too, albeit in wretched conditions. When she had a day off, I would invite her to our house and she was allowed to stay overnight. Mama doted on her, spoiling her with tasty meals and Chinese biscuits. Ciska was Catholic and always wore her rosary beads around her neck. Little did I know that her rosary would save my life one day.

  Towards the end of the year, air-raid sirens in the night announced that the Allies were closing in. Their Flying Fortresses were caught in the searchlights but flew so high that the Japanese anti-aircraft shells could not reach them. By this time, I had been pressganged into sentry duty with a tonarigumi group, patrolling the local neighbourhood of Undaan Ku
lon to combat thieves, looters and the like. Anyone who refused duty was labelled a spy by the Kenpeitai. When curfew began, I had to pin on a white armband with Japanese characters and head out armed with a takeyari. My patrol consisted mainly of Indonesian lads roughly my own age. They came from the kampong of Undaan, beyond Heemskerkstraat and Trompstraat. Needless to say, they were always banging on about Merdeka, their dream of an independent Indonesia. Those boys hated Belandas with a vengeance, so even though they saw me as one of them I was in hostile company. My secret hope was that the Allies would make their presence felt and soon.

  Christmas was ruined by the presence of that slant-eyed devil Kamei, who was even permitted to spend the night in Ella’s room. As the youngest member of the family and the only one loyal to the House of Orange, I had no desire to get into a political argument with Jacob and Karel, so I told Mama that I was going to stay with Aunty Kiep. Instead I cycled on to Gubeng district, where my friend Ernst Motta lived.

  Ernst and his mother had a house on the fringes of Gubeng, with a wonderful view of the southern railway. On nights when curfew was approaching and I was unable to make it home without being blown to bits by the Japs, I sometimes stayed at the Mottas’. Ernst’s mother suspected that he and I were up to something but asked no questions, though I could tell she was often afraid. Their Italian papers had saved them from internment, just as my Chinese ID had saved me. The Mottas pinned the Italian tricolour to their clothing, just as I wore the badge of the Chinese flag given to me by Jacob.

  Shortly after midnight, the sirens began to wail and the low drone of engines filled the air. Mrs Motta retired to her bedroom. Ernst and I went out into the garden and hid among the bushes with a pair of binoculars. We spotted three Consolidated-Vultee Liberator bombers, lit up by searchlight beams. The planes came under heavy fire but were out of range of the Japanese anti-aircraft guns. Small red, green and yellow fireballs suddenly shot up from various directions: tracer bullets. We had no idea what this meant. More bombers flew over and we clearly saw one or two making a bombing run. Flashes of light appeared on the southern horizon, followed by massive explosions from the direction of Wonokromo, where the Batavian Petroleum Company had its installations.