You and your brother and sisters will grow, so the needles and thread and extra sheets will help you make the clothing fit. Don’t throw away the clothes as you outgrow them but take them apart and sew on the extra material. Ask the women in camp to teach you and your sisters how to sew.
Cod-liver oil will give all of you the vitamins you will need, and make sure your mother takes her dosages too. DO NOT trade the cod-liver oil for anything else. It is the same with the mosquito netting. You must keep it and use it.
Use the soap sparingly, but try to stay as clean as possible. When it looks like you are halfway through the supply of soap, use it to wash only your hands and face.
Use the paper and pencils to teach your sisters and brother to read and write; every day, you must have an hour of school and you must be the teacher to them.
Read to them from the Bible every night and pray the way that Jesus taught His disciples to pray. It is okay if you skip the boring parts. I know you hate the begots and begets as much as I did when I was a boy.
Do not open the sealed envelope at the bottom. That is for your mother and she is to read it without telling you what is inside.
I love you and Nikki and Aniek and Pietje more than life.
Your father
The suitcase was filled as the note had promised. Mosquito netting and steel wire and hooks to hang it above us. Needles and thread and scissors and bedsheets for clothing. Half of the suitcase was devoted to jars of cod-liver oil. There were bars of soap, some dishes and cutlery, and a first-aid kit. The family Bible, inscribed to my father and mother on their wedding day. And a large, thick envelope addressed to Elsbeth Prins.
She took it silently and held it in her hands.
“The letter in the suitcase was addressed to you,” she said. “Because he knew that you would take care of your brother and sisters, not me.”
“Where we are now is where we need you,” I said.
She took a deep breath and gave me a wide smile that made me feel as chivalrous as the bravest knight in all of history.
“See,” she said. “There you are, helping me again. I promise I will be the best mother, and I hope you never stop helping me.”
I felt a degree of hypocrisy because I had just made a decision to steal those eight bottles of gin from her suitcase to remove any temptation that might make her stray from her promise.
She held out her arms. That time, we did hug and her soft perfume was the most beautiful smell I had ever experienced. I couldn’t remember a hug like this ever happening. And so began, in the midst of accumulating hardships and struggles, the happiest months of my life.
TWELVE
Later, at the first opportunity, I did steal and bury the eight bottles of gin. Elsbeth was furious at the theft but could complain to no one, because she knew she would get no sympathy. She kept her promise and began each day with a family prayer for my father and half brothers. We had heard no word from them, but neither had any of the other women in camp. Then she read a story from the children’s Bible with the colorful illustrations that fascinated Pietje: the animals in the ark on tossing waves, Moses parting the Red Sea, Elijah calling down fire from heaven. This all seemed a miracle of sorts, that Elsbeth would gather the four of us at her feet and take time to read to us, like she was casting a wide blanket of love no differently than the disciples had cast their nets as fishermen and fishers of men. After a week or more of mornings like this, Pietje asked a question.
“Moeder,” Pietje said, “how come they didn’t fall through the roof?”
“Pietje?” She had just read to us the story about four friends who wanted to take a fifth friend to Jesus for healing, but the house was so crowded that they had to climb onto the roof and let the friend down through it and into the center of the crowd down below.
“In the story, there were five people. Four friends and the lame one. How come they didn’t fall off the roof when they got up there?” He was stroking Coacoa’s neck, who rested happily in his arms, occasional thump of his tail.
Coacoa wasn’t the only pet in camp. Other families, like us, fed their pets by taking a little from each person’s daily portions, and like other families, we felt it well worth the sacrifice for the joy those animals gave us with their unquestioning love and devotion in the grim circumstances.
“Especially the man who was lame. He would roll off the side of the roof if they let go, but if they held him, how could they keep their balance?”
Pietje, it seemed, had no difficulty with the healing itself when Jesus told the man to walk.
Elsbeth gave Pietje’s question serious thought. This, too, was something new, that she would devote time and attention to us. “Pietje, where Jesus lived, the roofs were not pitched like ours. They were flat.”
“Flat? But in a monsoon—”
“Ah,” she said, smiling. “Where Jesus lived, there was very little rain. They did not need roofs built to allow water to roll off.”
Pietje chewed his lower lip. “A flat roof. When they broke a hole in it, did pieces of the roof fall on the people down below?”
“The Bible doesn’t tell us that.”
More lip chewing. “How come they didn’t fall through?”
“Well, Pietje, it must have been a strong enough roof to hold their weight.”
“But if it was strong enough to hold them, how could they make a hole in it big enough to lower their friend?”
“Because …” Elsbeth paused. We were outside, in the shade of a banyan, grateful to be out of the sun, even though it was barely past breakfast. Late in her pregnancy, heat gave her rashes, but she didn’t complain.
“Yes?” He was expectant.
For a moment, her patience cracked. “It’s just the way it is,” she snapped.
Aniek was slow to pick up on her mood change.
“I don’t think the mustard seed is the smallest seed in the world,” Aniek said. Her blond hair shone because Elsbeth had brushed and washed it again that morning. “Jesus said it was. But I’ve seen mustard seeds, and I can find smaller seeds than mustard seeds here in camp. So was Jesus lying, Moeder? Because God is supposed to know everything. And Jesus is God, so Jesus must have lied if He knows everything. But lying is a sin, isn’t it? I thought Jesus never sinned and that’s why He was an innocent sheep and could die on the cross for us.”
I could see the furrows deepening in Elsbeth’s eyebrows, and I wanted to change the subject. I feared she might stop reading us Bible stories and stop asking us to pray for my father. Someday, she might go back to drinking gin and smoking cigarettes and to hours each day of vacancy in her eyes.
“Moeder, I think I can trade some cigarettes for canned milk,” I said. “I have been watching the soldiers. I know when and where I can go to the fence and not get caught.”
“Yes?” Elsbeth studied my face. She trusted me and often treated me like I was an adult equal to her. It was strange but enjoyable, wanting her protection and love, but also wanting to protect her.
Already canned milk was such a luxury that we all knew it was worth the risk involved in it for her. While it was a punishable offense for anyone caught trading with the natives on the other side of the fence, we had discovered that for the most part, the Japanese soldiers were reluctant to punish children. The mothers received their beatings instead.
“I promise,” I said. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”
It would take months and months for that comment to become a lie, and I didn’t know then that those months and months would be the only remaining innocent days of my life.
“Go ahead. Canned milk will be good for all of us. Even for Coacoa.” Coacoa thumped his tail again at the mention of his name.
With a tired smile, she closed the Bible and left Aniek’s question untouched. Food was the primary focus of our lives. We were all fed from a central kitchen at specific times of the day and strictly rationed to a ball of rice, a vegetable usually impossible to identify, and a fragment of mea
t.
As well, all healthy adults were expected to contribute help in the camp. Mother’s shift in the kitchen began in only a few minutes.
When we returned to our room, Elsbeth opened her suitcase that was filled with better currency than money. As she handed me four cigarettes, I took note of the fact that her previous self-absorption in choosing the contents of her suitcase was proving to be better for our family than the choices anyone else had made, except, perhaps, for my father’s cod-liver oil.
Outside of the fence that surrounded our sixteen square blocks of residential imprisonment, life had not changed for the native Indonesians, whose impoverished lives had always fueled resentment against the untouchable wealth of the Dutch. Now, however, the Indonesians had something we wanted. Freedom.
For the first weeks of internment, a barbed wire fence, eight feet tall with horizontal strands only inches apart, had served the purpose of confining the Dutch women and children. Japanese soldiers patrolled its perimeter to discourage outside contact, but nothing prevented us from standing near the wire and wistfully observing the natives in their daily lives. When this constant staring eventually irked the natives, they would hurl sticks at the fence that occasionally would make it through the barbed strands. Sometimes they threw larger objects, including garbage, over the eight-foot-high barrier. This led to the addition of vertical bamboo strips woven into the strands of wire, effectively forming a curtain that isolated us from the world.
The new barrier made the Japanese soldiers relax their vigilance on perimeter patrols, which, we soon discovered, made it possible to trade more frequently.
It was a simple system.
One of us, usually a child, would find a trading spot along the fence, push aside the vertical bamboo slats, and hold out our empty hand and wiggle our fingers. Like birds pouncing on a worm, it took only minutes, sometimes seconds, to hear the voice of a native on the other side. Then the negotiating would begin, and once an agreement was made, the transaction would occur. The system was rarely abused because the incentive was too great for both sides. The natives were so poor that many wore only loincloths, so our fabric was of high value to them. Their food, ranging from canned milk to bananas that we could see in trees on the other side of the wire, was of high value to us.
I had lied to my mother about understanding the patrol patterns of the Japanese soldiers. Instead, I positioned Aniek along the fence in one direction, and Nikki an equal distance the other direction, and their job was to call out if a soldier approached. It was near foolproof, and over the next weeks, we supplemented our rationed food with whatever I could barter with the natives.
One day, as I pushed aside the bamboo matting and stuck my hand out in the open air of freedom on the other side, Nikki called to me.
“Look, a chicken!”
I pulled my hand back with the four cigarettes I held and dashed toward her. A chicken! Sure enough, almost hidden in a bush and pecking at insects we could not see on the ground beneath it, was a fine copper-colored hen.
“Hey!” called a voice of disappointed outrage behind us. I glanced back. A brown hand was sticking through the fence from the other side, holding out a banana. That was an offer I would have scorned. For four cigarettes? Hah.
“How did it get here?” Nikki asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. A chicken!” This would be a feast for our family. We’d build a tiny fire and cook it slowly in small pieces, hoping no one would discover the rare smell of roasting meat.
“Who does it belong to?” she asked.
“To the person who catches it.” I glanced up and down the fence again. “Stay here. Remember to whistle if you see a soldier.”
I knelt. The chicken cocked its head and stared at me and blinked. I was the child who’d snatched a snake by the neck as a four-year-old. I made a confident quick thrust of my hand and missed.
The chicken clucked with disapproval and backed away, to the other side of the bush and into the open. I scurried forward in a half crouch, but the chicken easily outdistanced me to another bush, just inside the fence line.
When I reached that bush, I was stunned to see that the chicken had disappeared. I knelt for a closer look and felt my knees slope away from me. I pushed aside the lower part of the shrubbery and discovered how the chicken had disappeared.
It was a concrete pipe. A wide concrete pipe, its entrance completely covered by the bush. I heard clucks of disapproval fade as the chicken receded deeper and deeper into it. I pushed my head inside and saw light at the other end. This meant that the pipe could take me beneath the fence and into the Indonesian world.
This was such a magnificent discovery that I decided not even to mention it to Nikki. Someday, I realized, I might have need of something like this. But it would only stay in existence if the Japanese didn’t know about it. Which meant if I wanted to keep it secret, I had to keep it to myself.
I went back to my spot on the fence and managed to trade those four cigarettes for two cans of condensed milk plus the original banana. We were so hungry that on our return to our room, we scraped the inside of the banana peel until it was translucent. Later, I returned to the pipe with blocks of wood and stuffed them into the opening so that no more chickens could appear and betray its existence.
With the contents of that suitcase keeping us relatively well fed, and with a mother who took joy in her children, our lives were generally happy. It lasted until the morning our black puppy with the lop ear did not wake with the rest of us.
Coacoa had died while we slept.
THIRTEEN
At my request, Elsbeth first lifted and carried away Nikki as she slept, then returned for Aniek. I had been the one responsible for bringing Coacoa into Pietje’s world, and I would not shirk the burden that came with taking Coacoa out of Pietje’s life. I had no choice but to remain beneath the mosquito netting and watch my little brother’s innocent face as he slept, dreading what would happen when he opened his eyes.
I wasn’t going to try to explain why the puppy was dead. Elsbeth had suggested that Coacoa might have eaten something that poisoned him or that because Coacoa didn’t get enough food, it was just his time to die. I had begged her not to tell this to Pietje, for then he would blame himself for not taking good enough care of the puppy.
Pietje woke, and when he saw me, he gave me his quiet smile. Then, as he did each morning, he reached for Coacoa to shake him awake. I found the courage to tell Pietje the horrible news.
“I am so sorry, Pietje,” I said. “Coacoa died.”
I’d been expecting sobbing and disbelief. Instead, Pietje pronounced calmly, “He’s not dead. He’s asleep.”
He lifted the puppy’s underfed body and kissed Coacoa’s nose, singing, “Wake up. Wake up. The sun is up.”
“Pietje,” I said, my throat thick with the tears I so badly needed to cry. “Coacoa won’t wake up.”
“I know my own puppy,” Pietje said. “He’s asleep. That’s all. Please hold him. I need to get dressed.”
Pietje passed me the puppy’s body. For a moment, because of Pietje’s certainty, I almost believed it. In the tropical heat, Coacoa was still warm.
I spoke as Pietje finished dressing. “We can have a funeral. Moeder said she would read a Bible story and then we will pray over Coacoa and bury him. She also said she would pay for some chocolate and that you could eat it all by yourself without sharing.”
“Moeder is silly sometimes, isn’t she?” Pietje said. He reached for Coacoa. “We always share our food. And Coacoa is just asleep.”
Pietje crossed the threshold of our door frame, cradling Coacoa. He glanced back at me. I was rooted as I tried to absorb his reaction.
“What are you waiting for?” Pietje asked. “We can’t let Coacoa sleep all day.”
I stood and followed.
It was a day with no clouds and a breeze that carried the stench of the sewage away from our house. Within a week of arriving at the Jappenkamp, the flushing mechanism o
n the toilet in our house had snapped, and we’d been forced to rig it so the lever was in a permanently open position. A bucket of water poured into the bowl sent the contents into the septic system, but after a few weeks, the septic had overflowed. Now we squatted over buckets that had to be carried and emptied into a large hole dug near the center of the former neighborhood, and the odor hung over the entire camp in a stench that seemed like oil clinging to our skins. Today, though, the breeze brought in the perfume of flowers from the gardens outside the bamboo curtain that separated us from the world.
As we walked, I did not see my mother or Aniek or Nikki. Boys and girls played games with marbles and sticks while the women labored according to their assigned duties. Pietje kept kissing Coacoa’s nose as we passed several blocks of houses. We neared the houses where the camp commander and his soldiers stayed, and when we rounded the corner of one block, I saw the commander on the street, walking toward us.
“Pietje,” I hissed. I pulled at his shoulder to bring him to a halt. “Commander Shizuka.”
I stood ramrod straight and shouted a single word. “Kiotske!”
I would have been obligated to yell the Japanese word for attention even if it had been the lowest-ranking soldier.
All the children playing nearby immediately jumped to attention. We had all seen what happened when a woman or child forgot to pay sufficient respect or attention to any soldier or officer. If a child failed, the woman received a beating. If the woman failed, she was punished in the same way.
“Pietje,” I whispered, arms straight at my side. “Put Coacoa at your feet. Do you want Moeder to get a beating?”
Pietje set the puppy’s body on the road.
As Commander Shizuka came closer, I continued to follow protocol, as I had been the one to first give warning to everyone in earshot.
“Kere!” I shouted.
This was the signal to bow from the waist down, at a minimum ninety degree angle, arms straight back. It was unthinkable to make eye contact. Only equals could do that, and it had taken many beatings for the strong and independent Dutch women to conform. Already decades had passed since Dutch women could stand for election and vote, but as Dutch men often ruefully chuckled, they had been in control for centuries before that.
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