Thief of Glory

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “Kiotske!” Attention! The newcomers straightened instantly, as did we. So they, too, had been taught the same at whatever Jappenkamp had been their previous home.

  Within seconds came the expected order to bow.

  “Kere!”

  With my upper body forward at the proper angle, arms straight back, and eyes at the ground, I heard the approach of a Jeep. I tilted my head slightly, hoping that a soldier wouldn’t notice, and I caught my first glimpse of Commander Isamu Nakahara.

  He was standing on the passenger side of the open Jeep, holding the top of the windshield to steady himself. Sitting on the passenger seat, head at the height of Nakahara’s hip and nose almost into the windshield, was a German shepherd, nearly black. Nakahara’s shiny black visor and the sword strapped to the side of his uniform were clearly visible, even with the short glimpse.

  The Jeep came to a stop, and, pointing his sword at a woman, Nakahara screamed a string of words at the nearest soldier, who in turn slapped a woman across the head for an infraction that I could only guess was an improper bow. I decided it would be prudent to keep my chin straight down and smother my curiosity. When the Jeep rumbled forward again, I relaxed slightly. That’s when Elsbeth fainted, falling into the street just before the Jeep passed us.

  I acted without thinking. I broke from my bow and hurried to her. Dimly, I was aware of screaming from Nakahara, but I was focused on trying to get my mother upright again. I heard the Jeep door click open, then saw a flash of black. I found myself pushed backward, and I lifted my arm instinctively against the monster that had bowled me over.

  It was the dog, all the more terrifying for its silence. Its claws scratched my legs as it braced to a halt on top of my body, and before I realized it, it closed its jaws over my protective arm, inches away from my throat. I froze, lying on my back, with the dog’s legs caging me in a perimeter around my body.

  More screaming came in Japanese from Nakahara followed by the Dutch from our translator. This dog will kill you at my command. Don’t move.

  It was an order easy to obey. Frightened as I was, a part of my brain marveled at how gentle the dog’s grip was on my arm. If it had been trained this effectively to hold without biting, I had no doubt it would do anything else that was commanded.

  More Japanese words came from Nakahara, and the dog let go of my arm and backed away.

  “Kere!” Nakahara said in a voice so eerily controlled that my fear intensified. What will he do to Moeder? I found my feet and forced my trembling body into a bowing position, leaving my mother motionless on the ground beside me.

  God, God, I prayed in my thoughts, please protect Moeder.

  “Kere!” Nakahara said again. For a moment I was confused. I was bowing in the perfect position, just as we’d been trained by the previous commander. Then, to my horror, I realized he was speaking to my mother. Her arm had fallen awkwardly behind her back. Her dress was skewed partially sideways, showing her lower thighs. Her belly pushed tight against the dress.

  “Kere!” Nakahara said to her. I could see it too clearly, even with my head down. When she didn’t respond, he kicked her in the side of her buttocks with such force that his sword slapped against his thigh. With the dog inches away from me, I was helpless to protect her.

  “Kere!” This time, Nakahara screamed. My mother did not respond. He raised his foot to kick her again, and in the silence of hundreds of people frozen by this horror, one clear word came out in Dutch.

  “Niet meer!”

  From the corners of my eyes, I saw Nakahara swivel to search for the woman who had spoken.

  “Niet meer!” the woman said again. “Ik zal haar straf.”

  Stop! I shall take her punishment.

  I could not help but lift my head, and I saw that up and down the lines, others had too. No one received a kick or punch for this, because the soldiers, too, were transfixed by the sight of a woman stepping out of the line and marching toward Nakahara and his dog.

  He smiled in anticipation as she neared, and I saw him moisten his lips with the tip of his tongue.

  I had not seen her before in camp. She was one of the new arrivals.

  Yet I had seen her before. I knew it.

  It seemed like all sound in the world paused as the woman walked a straight line toward me and my mother.

  The dog growled, but Nakahara silenced it with a gesture. When she was only a step away, she stopped, arms at her side, and bowed her head. I had a flash of memory that almost made me gasp.

  The months had changed her, and hunger had etched out the bones in her still-beautiful face. The fabric of her clothing was faded and thinned from too many launderings, but this was the same woman who had stepped into the goat pasture and broken up the fight between me and Georgie.

  Laura Jansen’s grandmother. Sophie.

  Just as I realized this, Nakahara crossed the single step between them and punched her full in the side of the head. He continued in a silent frenzy of kicks and punches that only stopped with Sophie on the ground, flies already swarming the blood that oozed from places where his blows had broken her skin.

  SEVENTEEN

  I did not sleep that night, such was the anguish of responsibility that pressed upon my soul for the beating I had witnessed. It was wretched in the dark. An overnight storm had blown in, but it could not mask my mother’s groans as she shifted on the floor, likely trying to escape the muscle pain from the vicious kick she’d received in the side of her buttock, much too close to her stomach. How much worse was it for Laura’s grandmother?

  When the rain stopped, I tiptoed past all the other families and found my own escape outside. I leaned against the damp house and let the darkness bury my shame for failing to protect my mother. I wanted to cry, but I was arid. I had not cried since my father had been taken.

  Years later, my memories of the sleeplessness of that night remained so vivid that as an adult, when I questioned how it could be possible that I had seen dawn arrive twice at the end of that night, I found it a relief to learn that it was not self-delusion. Sunlight had scattered off space dust in a diffuse white glow ahead of the path of the sun. Scientists called it zodiacal light, so faint that moonlight or light pollution renders it invisible.

  False dawn. A dawn that dissipates when the light of the real dawn overpowers it.

  False dawn. Just like the all-too-short time of peace that had found my mother in the days since women had begun helping her instead of ostracizing her. As the sky grew brighter with the second dawn, I dreaded what was ahead of us. My failure had caused another woman to be beaten near to death in place of the punishment that most surely would have been inflicted on Elsbeth. Surely our family would be forced to bear that same ostracism again. Surely that ostracism would swing my mother back into her darkness.

  How can we ever get through all of this? I asked myself again and again throughout the night. How can we keep going?

  Yet immediately after real dawn came, so came those same women who had earlier helped mother in front of all the others with Dr. Eikenboom—Mrs. Altink and Mrs. Meeuwsen, hardly in better health than Mother had been before her collapse.

  At the usual morning time, Nakahara made all of camp go to the streets for roll call, and Mrs. Altink and Mrs. Meeuwsen stood with her on the wet street to help her remain upright. Immediately after, when the Japanese soldiers dismissed us for our duties, Mrs. Meeuwsen stayed with Nikki and Aniek and Pietje, while Mrs. Altink stayed with me to support Elsbeth as she hobbled to the medical line. It took us such a long time to walk that already two dozen people were in front of us when we arrived. Mrs. Altink and I found a spot for her to sit.

  “It’s okay,” I said to Mrs. Altink. “I can stay with her now.”

  I owe that nondescript, tired woman so much for her response. But I would not have a chance to thank her. Within a week of that morning, she would die of a fever, and her body would be buried as anonymously as if I had never known her. It wouldn’t be until years later that
I realized how much different the next months in camp would have been for my mother—and me—without Mrs. Altink there that morning to admonish me.

  “Lift your head and look at me,” Mrs. Altink said. She pulled me away from my mother to ensure our conversation was private.

  I was reluctant to do as commanded, so she forced my chin up with pressure from her hand. I looked into a face that was splotched with rash.

  “We will not let them win,” Mrs. Altink said. “Do you hear me?”

  Her cheekbones were pushing hard against skin that was drawn tight from lack of food. Her hair was limp with grease. But she had the eyes of a warrior.

  “They can take our homes and our husbands,” she said. “They can take our health. But we are Dutch. We will not let them take our spirit. Don’t for a moment believe that you were at fault for what happened yesterday. When you assume you deserve the evil that someone else inflicts upon you, then you are choosing to be a victim. Do not give someone else that power over you.”

  Her intensity took so much willpower that after I nodded, she blinked back tears and whispered, more to herself than to me, “Do not cry.”

  This was something the children heard again and again from all the mothers. Do not cry.

  The Dutch would not let the Japanese soldiers see our children cry. We were too proud.

  “Do not cry,” she repeated. “We will not let them win.”

  I took my place in line for Moeder, while Mrs. Altink returned to her and put an arm around her shoulders to keep a blanket in place for the half hour or so it took me to near the front of the line.

  There, Dr. Kloet noticed my presence. He waved me forward.

  I believe that had Mrs. Altink not been so fierce with me, I would have succumbed to the temptation to cut in front of the others still standing in front of my spot in the line. My earlier sense of defeat would have meant total surrender. When there is no point in even trying, what would it matter to push others aside and take only for yourself?

  Instead, as he waved repeatedly, I pretended not to notice and tried not to feel scorn for Dr. Kloet’s lack of political sense. I had been in school. I had seen the teacher’s pets and disliked them for the fawning and the acceptance of favors from the teachers who did not understand how it was for the boys. Yes, there was a certain duplicity to this. I had no hesitation bilking the man for whatever food I could take from him in marble games at the end of the day. But it was different to take something here, for that would be like taking from the women and children who had paid their time to stand in line.

  To step forward now would cost my mother the acceptance and grace that had so recently been extended to her. It would have given Nakahara victory.

  When, finally, I was in front of Dr. Eikenboom, Mrs. Altink led Elsbeth forward.

  I stepped away, my duty finished.

  But Dr. Eikenboom would have nothing of it.

  “Look at your leg,” she said to me.

  I glanced down. I was wearing shorts, and my legs were streaked with dirt. Two scratches, courtesy of the claws of Nakahara’s killer dog, traveled from my knee to my ankles. In places, the scratches were wide enough and deep enough to have torn through the skin.

  I shrugged.

  “No,” she said. “Remember what happened to your mother?”

  Dr. Eikenboom called over to Dr. Kloet, just as a few weeks earlier she’d done for my mother; vital medicine would not be dispensed without a joint agreement. “We need sulfa for Jeremiah. If we give him a little now, we won’t need a lot later.”

  Dr. Kloet was just grumpy enough at how I’d ignored his waves to walk over and make a show of deciding whether to agree with Dr. Eikenboom. He looked at the red scratches on my leg.

  “Same thing as your mother, I suppose.”

  “No,” I said. “She scraped her leg in the kitchen. This came from a dog.”

  A strange expression crossed his face, an expression that would not make sense to me until much, much later, when it was far too late to make a difference for what I should have also realized in that moment. Dr. Kloet was a blunderer in social situations, but not stupid, as I would also learn much, much later, when it was far too late to make a difference.

  “A dog?” he asked.

  “Yesterday. At roll call.”

  He blinked several times, putting together the stories he must have already heard about the previous afternoon. Most certainly, he would have helped Dr. Eikenboom treat Sophie after the beating.

  “Fine then,” he said and walked back to his desk.

  “Dr. Eikenboom,” I said, “will she be all right? The woman from yesterday.”

  Dr. Eikenboom knelt and made sure we were at eye level. “That is in God’s hands. But whatever happens, she made the choice.”

  The tears that had failed me during the night now threatened to roll down my face. I blinked back the tears.

  “Yes,” I said. “We will not let them win.”

  Do not cry.

  EIGHTEEN

  Naturally, I had questions about why Laura’s grandmother Sophie was in camp. Hadn’t she—and Laura—escaped by ship just before the Japanese invasion? This meant that I also had questions, naturally, about Laura. But these were questions I felt I had no choice but to keep to myself, especially because of the gravity of the beating I had witnessed.

  I doubted I could comprehend how badly Nakahara had hurt Laura’s grandmother, given that Nakahara’s single kick to Elsbeth had penetrated the muscles so deeply she could barely walk that morning, let alone take her turn at kitchen duties.

  Do not cry. We will not let them win.

  I was determined that the Prins family, represented by me, would not let them win. Thus, I made my way to the kitchen to present myself for duties in Elsbeth’s place.

  The overnight storm had blown rain under the tin-covered roof, drenching the firewood and turning the dirt floors into mud. Someone had begun the fire in the stove, and because of the wet firewood, smoke hung shoulder high beneath the tin roof.

  The women who had already gathered were sitting at a table, drinking tea before starting their duties. These were the women who heard rumors first because of their contact with the drivers who brought in supplies, the ones who had known ahead of the rest of camp, for example, that the dogs would be taken to prevent rabies. My mother would have been near or among them if she’d been able to help with duties. I was content to listen to their conversation as I waited for one of them to address me; one simply did not interrupt elders. It would have been nice, however, to have a cup of tea in my hand.

  Mrs. Aafjes held court, and her voice was distinctive above the rest. She was a large, intimidating woman who wore men’s clothes—a loose, faded black shirt and ragged pants—and she was the mother to four children. Her face was ruddy from sun exposure, and she had a fascinating mole on the side of her nose.

  “If someday these animals ever try to take us away from our children, I say that’s when we make our last stand,” she said. “Every one of us. Then the world will remember how we refused to surrender. Like Masada. That’s a far kinder fate for our children than leaving them with these fiends.”

  “Take us away from our children?” someone asked.

  Mrs. Aafjes leaned forward like she was going to speak confidentially, but the large-boned woman could have been heard in a cattle stampede. “The man who brings the bread. He said he’s heard that the Japanese need more workers in Borneo. He says they might start taking women from camp and leaving the children behind.”

  “No,” another woman wailed.

  It seemed like Mrs. Aafjes savored the drama and the news she was delivering. “It’s just a rumor, mind you. Still, if it happened, I say we gather ourselves in a group to choose our own deaths, just as the Jews did on the mountaintop. They knew if the Romans caught them alive that—”

  The woman beside her tugged on her elbow and pointed at me. “Not in front of the boy.”

  Mrs. Aafjes turned her nose and her mole
toward me and glared. “Yes?”

  I tried not to stare at the mole as I spoke. “My mother is Elsbeth Prins, and she cannot help keep the fires burning. So I am here instead.”

  Without rice, we starved. To cook rice, we needed boiling water. Vats and vats of it. This required constant fire in the stoves that were inefficiently leaky in the best of conditions.

  “That will not be possible,” she said. “Children are no longer permitted in the kitchen. Those are the rules.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I must. I am not a child.”

  “Last month,” she said, scolding me, “you didn’t have to endure the tragedy that still gives me nightmares. A little girl, only three, tripped one of the women holding a vat of cooked rice, just before we drained the water.”

  The women had to lift these large vats of boiling water with bamboo poles. In the first months, it had been a task that required two women for two bamboo poles. Since then, as everyone in camp grew weaker, it had become a complicated task that required four women.

  “That boiling water,” Mrs. Aafjes pronounced, “spilled on the child and her mother.”

  She continued her glare. “It burned both of them, and both were dead two days later. So no more children in the kitchen. We don’t want to have to see something like that again. A horrible, horrible thing for me. I can still hear the screams.”

  “I know how to split wood,” I said. “I know how to wash dishes. I know how to stay away from boiling water. If my mother cannot be here, I will work in her place.”

  The woman beside her—the one who had interrupted the story about the Romans and the Jews—tugged again on Mrs. Aafjes’s sleeve and whispered in her ear.

  Mrs. Aafjes looked at me with new recognition. “You’re the one the dog attacked at roll call.”

  I knew what that meant. I was the one whose mother fainted and drew a beating for Laura’s grandmother.

  “I am here to work in my mother’s place,” I said.

  “I now understand why,” she said. Her mole twitched as the moralistic tendencies of the Dutch triumphed within her. My work, I knew she believed, would serve as a payment for Sophie’s sacrifice. “Very well then. If you chop off a foot, don’t come running to me.”