by Derek Hansen
Jan and Lita could not have been happier. The twins were already nearly as big as boys twice their age and had twice their energy. Their world was a wonderland, a gigantic playground that held no terrors for them. Even at the age of five they would run off to the villages to play with their Sundanese friends. Yet they still managed to wear Lita out, and she was always grateful when Levi finished her morning school and came to help her with Annemieke.
Jan adored all his children and the twins often went with him when he did his rounds of the estate in his Land Rover. But Annemieke was his weakness. He would crouch over her tiny crib, shake her rattles and talk baby talk until Lita would laugh and say she hardly knew who was the greater child. On the rare occasions that Annemieke was upset or in the grip of some childhood fever, Jan would become as helpless as a baby and mope around the house. He always wore his emotions for the world to see. Lita maintained she had four children. Three that she had given birth to and one she’d married.
Fortunately for Jan, Annemieke was rarely sick and hardly ever cried. What was there for her to cry about? She was born into paradise and a loving family. When she was old enough to walk, and the twins were at school, she took their place in the Land Rover when Jan did his rounds. Levi always accompanied Annemieke on these outings to watch over her.
Wherever they went, people would gather around the tiny child to marvel at her blonde hair, her big blue eyes and skin of softest olive. She’d wander into the homes of the villagers and climb on knees and everyone she touched felt somehow blessed. They called her adik, little sister, and there was not a home where little sister was not welcome.
But angels are not necessarily always meek and mild. From the very beginning, Annemieke stood up for herself. If the boys needed a ball and took hers, she would go after them until she had it back. If, on the other hand, they asked if they could borrow it, she would give them the ball without hesitation. When the boys fought she would come to the rescue and throw herself upon whichever brother was winning. She’d push and pull hair and pummel their backs and arms until they’d stop fighting. It got so that whenever Tom or Pieter was copping a hiding from the other he’d call out to Annemieke for help. And she would come without hesitation, fists flying. It was ludicrous, of course, the baby Annemieke trying to do battle with the giants who were her brothers. But it would force them to cease hostilities as, inevitably, they cracked up with laughter. Naturally, stories of how Annemieke tamed her wild brothers would make their way back to the people of the villages via the servants, and they adored their little sister all the more.
Whenever she came to visit them the men would hold the flat of their hands towards her, and encourage her to punch it as hard as she could. Annemieke always obliged them, and the men would pretend to reel back with the force. They showed her how to make a proper fist, how to set her feet, and how to put her weight into each punch.
‘This is how you will keep your brothers under control,’ they said, ‘and one day your husband.’
Annemieke loved this game and she would run up to the men shouting, ‘Hold out hand! Hold out hand!’
One day when Tom and Pieter were playing soccer with the village boys, their rough and tumble play became a little too rough and escalated into a fight. It was nothing more than a normal playground incident where tempers are inflamed, the issue resolved by the superior force, and play resumed as normal. But on this occasion, the twins had chosen opponents who were at least three years older with muscles that had hardened with their greater maturity. The twins realised their mistake but pride demanded that they give a good account of themselves. They traded punches before moving in close to try and wrestle their opponents to the ground. They overlooked the fact that Annemieke was acting ball boy behind their goal. They never considered her or her likely reaction.
Annemieke could see that Tom and Pieter were in for a hiding, and couldn’t stand by and let that happen. She rushed to their help as fast as her little legs could carry her. One of the village boys felt a punch strike his backside and threw his fist blindly behind him. It caught Annemieke on the side of her head and she dropped like a stone. The combatants heard their audience cry out and stopped to see what had happened.
‘Annemieke!’ Tom cried and rushed to her side.
The boy who had hit her was devastated.
‘I’m sorry. I did not know it was little sister,’ he protested.
‘My dad will kill you for this!’ Pieter hissed, and the poor boy from the village suddenly realised the full extent of the trouble he was in.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. He bent down over Annemieke who, with Tom’s help was sitting up. ‘I am sorry little sister. I didn’t mean to hit you.’
Annemieke looked up through her tears at the boy who had hit her so unbelievably hard.
‘Hold out hand!’ she ordered.
She staggered to her feet. The boy held out his hand. He had no idea why. Annemieke set her feet as she’d been taught and punched his hand with all her might.
Of course the boy wasn’t hurt. He reeled back from surprise then had the wit to fall over and pretend to be hurt. It still took the audience a second or two to catch up before someone laughed. They all laughed. Tom and Pieter swelled with pride at her courage and hugged her. They let the boy who had hit her pick her up and hold her, so he could wipe away her tears and once more say sorry.
That night the story swept the villages, and nobody laughed more than the men who had taught her how to punch.
Annemieke was going on three when the Netherlands Embassy rang. Jan was in his study writing up his accounts.
‘There is a man here who wishes to speak with you,’ the Secretary said. ‘He will not go away.’
Jan was impatient. He was always impatient when he worked on his accounts. Paperwork bored him, yet his sense of discipline forced him to keep his books up to date.
‘Who is it?’ he demanded.
‘The man calls himself Andi Sose.’
‘Never heard of him. The name means nothing to me.’
‘He says he is your friend and that he saved your life.’
‘Saved my life? How? What does he do, this man?’
‘He said to tell you that he is a Bugis pirate. He said …’
But Jan no longer listened. His mind raced back to his voyage on board the pinisi, to his friend the captain, to the unfortunate One-Eye and the treachery of the cook. To the debt he still owed.
‘Jan? Jan? Are you there?’
‘Yes, I am here. Would you please let me speak to the captain?’
‘Pak Jan?’ His voice was tentative, but Jan recognised it immediately and felt a flood of shame.
‘My friend, forgive me, it has been too long.’
‘There is nothing to forgive, Bapak. It seems that God and your father’s wisdom have stood by you. This makes me very happy. You keep in good health?’
Jan exchanged patient pleasantries with Andi Sose and the more he listened the more he became aware of a hesitation in his voice that had nothing to with his unfamiliarity with the phone. His old friend was in trouble and needed his help. But offering help was a matter of extreme delicacy, given the formidable pride of the Bugis. It was not something that could be done over the phone.
‘I would like you to come and visit me and meet my family,’ Jan said. ‘We have many years to talk about. Let me speak once more with the Secretary.’
Jan guessed rightly that Andi was penniless. He arranged for the Secretary to advance the old man enough money for the train to Bandung, for new shoes and clothes, and for meals along the way. He hung up and gazed out of the window at Annemieke trying to climb on the back of the old black labrador bitch. He wondered what on earth he could do with an old Buginese pirate on a tea plantation in the middle of West Java.
‘They sold my ship from beneath me.’ Andi seemed philosophical about this and appeared to harbour no grudge towards the owners. He was not the first skipper to be dismissed this way. Sometimes the captain
and his crew were lucky and were transferred along with their boat to the new owners, accepting whatever wages and incentives were offered. Andi had been a good captain and his pinisi had always been profitable. He hoped that fate would allow him to stay with his boat until he could no longer sail. But fate is no more a bound servant of the deserving than it is of any other mortal.
Jan had had no difficulty picking Andi out from the crowd on the station platform. Self-confidence is firmly inscribed in the genetic code of the Bugis, and for centuries the people of the archipelago knew them as men to fear. The crowd parted before him as he strode in his rolling seaman’s gait towards Jan. He’d grown a drooping moustache, and hunger had robbed his bones of their meat and left his cheeks hollow. Yet his face was as familiar to Jan as it had been almost twenty years earlier.
‘The agent for the company paid us the money we were owed and I said goodbye to my home of forty years. The new crew was waiting on the dock. We left with just our clothes. Of course we looked for other ships who would hire us. But nobody hires Bugis except Bugis. And why would Bugis come to Jakarta to hire crew? The men looked to me as their captain to help them find a boat. It took time, but we walked the docks everyday, looking for pinisi that had lost men overboard. Gradually I found ships for all my men until only Daeng—the man you called One-Eye—and myself were left.
‘One day a pinisi came in and I recognised the captain. He was a man I knew well, a good man. He had a full crew but he was prepared to take on one of us. Pak Jan, only God and myself know how much my heart craved to join this ship. But how could I take this work and leave my friend Daeng behind? Who would hire this man whose face was split in two, who could no longer speak? Who would hire a man with one eye over a man with two? I could not leave Daeng alone ashore. He hated and feared dry land and was only happy with the sea beneath him. Only my friend, the captain, would take him. So be it, I thought. Let them take him!’
Jan could not look at his friend, fearing to see the tears of a beaten man. But Andi still had the capacity to surprise.
‘Daeng was overjoyed and his joy reached out to me. A man does not have to speak to show his appreciation, my friend. I knew then, as God also knows, that I did the right thing. It was my chance to return the loyalty Daeng had shown me and I had not flinched. Bugis men are proud men, Pak, and I was very proud.’
It was true. Even now, Jan observed, the memory of the event caused Andi’s chest to swell and his chin to rise. Tears were not easily drawn from this man.
‘One year had passed. Now I was alone. I watched the pinisi come and go and wished with all my heart that I could go with them. I would have gone as cook, as forward hand, as helmsman. I would have gone as cabin boy. But captains of ships are not eager to hire other captains and this is easy to understand. And nobody came to Jakarta to hire a captain. Then one day I saw you, Pak. You came down to the docks and took away a cargo. You had changed, but not so much that this old captain could not recognise you. One month ago, correct?’
‘You are quite correct. I went to collect some artifacts from Kalimantan. Why did you not speak to me then?’
‘Pak, I was in clothes unfit for any man to wear. I was not clean. I relied on the generosity of visiting ships for my meals and for what clothes they could spare. Perhaps this is one reason why your embassy was unwilling to admit me. I could not approach you as a beggar. What would you have thought of me then?’
Jan smiled. Even if he had not recognised his friend on the platform at Bandung, he could not have missed him. He had stood out like a bride among prostitutes in his brand new trousers, shiny sandals and shirt that still bore the creases from the packaging. Andi had waited until the train had drawn into the station before he had changed.
‘One day a long time ago you offered me a job on your pinisi which I was glad to accept.’ Jan took his time to make sure he expressed himself correctly. ‘Perhaps, in return, you will do me the honour of accepting my offer of work on my plantation?’
‘I accept with gratitude but conditionally. I must warn you, Pak, my intention is to work my way home to Ujung Pandang, to the pandanus cape. Perhaps there I will find my ship. Is that acceptable?’
Jan had to smile once more. Andi Sose was letting Jan know that he would not impose for one second longer than was necessary.
‘Very acceptable,’ Jan said, and took his friend’s hand to close the deal. Just what Andi would do was a total mystery to him. But he knew a man could not be captain of a pinisi for forty years without acquiring some skills which would be useful, even to a tea plantation owner.
Jan was right. Andi had a way with engines and machinery that came from years of breathing life into exhausted diesels, keeping his boat afloat and crew alive in waters that were regularly swept by tropical cyclones. He repaired the Land Rover, the village trucks, broken bicycles, leaky pumps, the washing machine and refrigerator. He kept the generator working so well they became accustomed to it not breaking down during meal times.
They gave Andi a one-room house of his own behind the servants’ quarters. But in the evenings he would stroll around to the main house, sit on a chair on the verandah, and tell seafaring stories to the boys when they were home and to Annemieke when they weren’t. Annemieke was absolutely fascinated by the old captain. She’d hang off his moustache until her grip on his whiskers was all that supported her, giggling helplessly while he just laughed. When she tried to poke her fingers in his eyes he’d tickle her until she begged him to stop. It seemed that he would let her do anything to him. One day, in the excitement of the game, she punched him to see what would happen. He smacked her. She hadn’t known that men had places that little girls shouldn’t punch. This was a revelation to Annemieke. The smack was genuine and it hurt. Yet she understood that she had upset her new friend and what she had done wasn’t funny. Andi walked away before she could say she was sorry.
Levi witnessed the smack and horrified word spread among the servants until it reached Lita.
‘About time!’ she said.
That night Annemieke went missing. After a frantic search Jan found her in Andi’s hut, curled up asleep on the floor next to her new friend. How else does a three year old say sorry? Jan gently picked her up and returned her to her bed. He smiled as he thought of the old sea captain asleep on the floor, his clothes neatly folded on the bed. He realised Andi had never known the feel of a soft western bed and was too old to change his ways.
Like her brothers, Annemieke had no fear of animals. But she had an advantage over the twins which the people in the villages would discuss at length. Animals had no fear of her. She was calm and serene and seemingly unintimidating so animals trusted her. Dogs could not resist rubbing up against her and she let them, even the mangy, scrawny dogs that hung around the villages. Cats trotted up to her to be patted and pampered. She even charmed the normally shy birds out of the trees to feed them bread soaked in honey and water.
The villagers would shake their heads in wonder to see her sitting on the lawn surrounded by dozens of brightly coloured birds. For centuries birds had been a supplement to their diet, and they were as wary of human contact as any birds could be. The villagers went home to their tiny houses and made feeding troughs, which they fixed on top of long bamboo poles so the birds could feed safely. They set them in the grass at the side of the house where Annemieke sat and soon the gardens were filled with birdsong from dawn till dusk. This was the idyllic world in which Annemieke spent her early years.
But there was a void in her day. When her father did the morning rounds of the plantation, her brothers and Levi were at school and her mother busy with housework, she was alone. Her new friend Andi helped fill the gap.
When the village dogs came down to pay their respects, Andi tied tin cans on a piece of string, made a noose and showed Annemieke how to slip it over a dog’s tail and pull it tight. Annemieke was so stunned by the simplicity and potential of the scheme, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. The dogs trotted up
to her full of trust, to rub up against her legs, have her pull their ears, and try to climb on their backs. They were totally unsuspecting until, suddenly, they became aware of the noisy extensions to their tails. What did the dogs do? Those with cans attached tried to outrun them. Those that had escaped the noose chased the cans. Dog chased dog until dog turned on dog, and the cans got dislodged in the ensuing brawl.
Annemieke fell on the ground helpless with laughter. Andi grinned, cleaned up the debris, and explained to her mother how the village dogs had stolen some garbage and then fought over it. Lita didn’t believe a word of his explanation and Andi didn’t expect her to.
Andi taught little sister how to catch butterflies without damaging their wings, and taught all three of the children how to make baskets and fish traps from the leaves of palms. In return the children gave him company and Annemieke, who had the most to be grateful for, stole biscuits for him to feed his sweet tooth.
‘Only two,’ he’d tell her, and pretend to get angry when she brought him three.
Andi spoke Bahasa to Annemieke, and she spoke Bahasa and English to him. Andi already spoke a little English and was keen to learn more. Often Jan would return home for lunch to find Annemieke giving the old sea captain English lessons, and almost crying with laughter every time he got a word wrong. Occasionally Jan would feel envious of their relationship. But once Jan appeared on the scene Andi withdrew and returned to work. He knew better than to come between a father and his child, and Annemieke learned not to protest when he left. Jan had no cause to be anything but grateful for the attention Andi gave his daughter. Indeed, he had reason to bless the day the old man came back into his life.
Of course most parents of small children are reluctant to let them out of their sight for long, and Jan and Lita were no exception. But they soon discovered that whenever Annemieke was out of their sight she was invariably in someone else’s. So they let her wander. Why wouldn’t they? Besides, there was always Andi riding shotgun in the morning, and Levi in the afternoon.
