“Laura,” I said, “do you think you can run to the kitchen and borrow one of the wooden spoons the women use to stir rice?”
I envisioned the long handles, just the perfect diameter for my plan.
“They won’t just give it to me,” she said.
“Then borrow it. What’s the worst they will do?”
“Tell my oma.”
“And then we will tell your oma why we wanted it. Do you think she’ll like the reason?”
“She won’t like that we are taking chances at getting caught.”
“It will look like only a marble game. I promise.”
Laura thought about this. She was, I was learning, not an easy girl to push around.
“Wait here,” she said.
I had full confidence she would find a way to steal—borrow—a wooden spoon. She was back within minutes.
“We will wait until they stop work for lunch,” I said. “Then you watch. Pietje and I will do the rest.”
“Don’t make me angry with you,” she answered. “I’m not a servant girl. Treat me as you would any other boy.”
Treating her as a boy would be a good rule until Holland, after the war, when for obvious reasons, I would hold her as a woman.
I remembered her straight back as she’d marched into the house to confront Georgie. I remembered that she had not told a single adult why she had kicked him without warning because that would have revealed the shame of the letter, and I remembered how she had accepted the necessary spanking from her oma without complaint. Together, Laura and Sophie served as the first and best lessons I had in realizing that not only are both sexes equal, but it verges on idiocy to make any other point about it except quickly dismissing any suggestion of inequality.
I grinned. “Like a boy? If you are going to play marbles, it will be for keepsies then.”
“I don’t have any marbles,” she said.
“I will lend them to you. After you lose them, I will lend you more.”
“After I lose them? We will see about that.”
I grinned again, almost forgetting our purpose of sabotage against Commander Nakahara.
I had a sudden inspiration.
“Hey, everyone,” I said. “Laura thinks she is going to beat me in marbles!”
That drew the attention of the surrounding children, about a dozen or so.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
“The more children that watch, the safer we will be.”
She kicked my shin. Hard enough to hurt.
“What?” I said. “It’s a good idea.”
“Next time,” she said, “you discuss the idea with me first.”
“Yes,” I said. She saw enough humbleness in my eyes to relax, but I made a note of how quickly she could lose her temper.
Boys and girls drifted toward us. When they were gathered, I explained that Laura and I were going to play Off-the-Wall. It was a simple game. You mark off a line about five feet from a wall. The first player throws a marble at the wall to serve as a target. To win that marble, the second player needs to bounce the shooter marble off the wall before hitting the target marble. We decided that the first one to hit five marbles would be declared the winner.
As a plan, it was more successful than I had hoped. The soldiers went for a break, and all of us drifted over to the wall. I chose a spot down from the wheelbarrow, far enough away from where the next blocks would be mortared so that any discrepancies would be invisible.
As Laura and I took turns, with the children cheering us on and full attention on the game, Pietje wandered farther down the wall and in various places, with a quick look to ensure it was safe each time, pulled the spoon out from his shirt and used the handle to poke a hole between the blocks where the weakened mortar was still setting. In some places he set the holes lower, and in others, he reached above his head. He was sneaky and did it with a smile.
We intended to daub those holes with mud that we could remove and replace anytime in the future, but the second part of the plan failed partly because the marble game was so successful at drawing everyone’s attention that no one noticed that Nakahara had turned the corner. With his dog.
“Kiotske!” one of the boys behind us finally shouted, but too late.
Such was our conditioning to the phrase that my first reaction was to stand straight, arms at my side, before registering that the approaching Japanese man was Nakahara himself, wearing black aviator glasses, with his dog at his side. As I was coming to attention, I gulped down a shriek. There were over a dozen of us, all literally frozen with that shared fear, rigid in the hot sun.
My fear was greater than the others’, however. If Nakahara noticed anything wrong with his wall, he’d be sure to wonder why. And if that led him to the spoon hidden beneath Pietje’s shirt, a spoon with bits of wet concrete clinging to the handle, the conclusion would be obvious.
I decided to draw attention to me.
“Kirih!” I shouted.
Half of the children began to bow, but the other half—those who understood the Indonesian language—looked at me in confusion. I had just shouted out the Indonesian word for dog, a word similar to the Japanese command to bow, kere. I’d nearly made the mistake many times before, only because kirih came to mind so often when I saw the soldiers that I’d been tempted to shout it out as an insult.
“Kirih?” Nakahara screamed in guttural rage. “Kirih?”
So he did understand. He put his hand on his sword.
I moaned and pointed at the German shepherd, saying “kirih” two more times, making it clear I was in terror at my mistake. That took little acting.
I bowed now. “Kere, kere.”
I straightened and pointed again at the dog. “Kirih. Takut! Takut!”
Takut. The Indonesian word for fear.
For a tipping point of about a second, my fate hung on whether Nakahara would first understand that I was trying to tell him that the fear of the dog had made me mix up my words, and second, if he did, on how he would react. But at least it was my fate in the balance, not Pietje’s, for Nakahara’s entire focus was on me—not Pietje or the wall behind us.
I wondered if he would motion for the dog to attack. The tipping fell in my favor. The time of the full moon had made him crazy, for Nakahara began to laugh like a maniac and even slapped my back in glee.
Some of the children began to laugh with him, but he cut them off by screaming, and when their eyes widened with fear, he lifted his hands and said, “Boo!” When they jumped back, he burst into more maniacal laughter.
He was still laughing as he walked away from us, and because he forgot to shoo us away from the wall, I made sure from that day on to play marbles there as frequently as possible. That would make it all the more natural, I knew, for the times we wanted to peek through the holes in the concrete.
TWENTY-FOUR
Jasmijn worsened, despite the condensed milk and other supplies we had found for her, and after examining her at the hospital, Dr. Eikenboom gave her pronouncement to me and Elsbeth.
“All the symptoms lead me to believe that Jasmijn has developed diabetic ketoacidosis,” Dr. Eikenboom said. “This happens when a baby has so little insulin that the calories from milk can’t be used for energy, and the body starts to burn fat. It makes the blood acidic, and as she burns up her fat reserves, it leads to all the other difficulties.”
I was holding Jasmijn, as Elsbeth seemed to be giving up the fight and the hope. My tiny sister had been vomiting constantly, and any touch on her abdomen led to sharp cries of pain. She didn’t seem alert—her black eyes were a dull gray and failed to watch me with any intensity as I held her. When she breathed, it was a deep sighing respiration that was so unnatural, I had to fight tears as I listened to it.
“Then there is nothing we can do,” Elsbeth said, settling deeper into her depression.
“Not without insulin,” Dr. Eikenboom said. “And with the camp up in arms and ready to revolt against Nakahara because of t
he deadline he has given for us to choose the teahouse girls, I can’t see any way he would let us go outside of camp and purchase some.”
“There is insulin outside?” I asked. I kissed Jasmijn’s hot forehead and she stirred slightly in my arms.
“If you find the right person,” she answered. “And you have something worth trading.”
Sophie had already done trading for me, but not for insulin. Beneath the bush at the drainage pipe were four remaining bottles of Bols sloe gin, and a fifth partway down the pipe were I brave enough to retrieve it.
“If we find the insulin, will it save her?”
Dr. Eikenboom nodded. “I don’t want to give you false hope because there is no way to get insulin, but the answer, if this were a normal situation, is yes.”
Right then, I told myself I would find the courage to crawl through the pipe.
But I was wrong. That afternoon, when I snuck toward the bush, I wasn’t even given a chance. Guards had been doubled along the fence. Then, after curfew, when I returned in darkness, no matter how hard I tried to push myself into the pipe, I could not do it. I loathed myself. And worse, the next morning, I had no choice but to admit it to Sophie.
“I’ve heard from Dr. Eikenboom about Jasmijn,” Sophie said when Pietje and I stopped by the house to see Laura. “We’ve been praying for you.”
“Pray instead for insulin,” I said. “And pray that I won’t be such a coward.”
She knelt and put an arm around my shoulder, and I couldn’t help but break down and tell her of the drainage ditch and my fear. As I explained the situation, I didn’t even notice that Laura was listening. But when our trio walked away from the house, she looked over her shoulder to make sure that we were out of earshot of Sophie and said two simple words.
“I’ll go.”
“No,” I said. “You’re a girl. It would be too dangerous.”
“I can do anything a boy can do.”
“That’s not what I meant. The Indonesians on the other side. It would be dangerous for you to wander the streets at night. If they see that you are a girl, it will be very bad.”
Laura spun and ran back to the house, leaving me speechless. Pietje and I looked at each other in mutual puzzlement over how I could have possibly insulted her enough to make her that mad. The mystery was explained when she returned fifteen minutes later with short-cropped hair.
“Huh?” I said.
“It was getting to be a bother,” she answered. “I didn’t like my hair anyway. Now if there is mud on my face, people will think I’m a boy.”
“You can’t do it,” I said. “Sophie won’t let you.”
“Does Elsbeth know when you sneak places? Did she know you were going to go through the pipe to outside?”
I didn’t answer. It would incriminate me and prove Laura right. But, of course, so did my silence.
“We are not going to let Jasmijn die,” she said. “I’ve already cut my hair. If you don’t help me, I’ll find a way to do it by myself.”
She put her hands on her hips. “So. What’s your decision?”
A Dutchman can be stubborn, but even he knows he will not prevail against a female of his nation.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was a couple of days past full moon, but the natural light of the waning moon was sufficient illumination for escaping notice of the guards. I hid under the bush as Laura crawled into the concrete pipe toward the bottle of Bols sloe gin I had left behind, and the hope that somehow, on the other side, she could trade it for insulin that would save my sister.
She had bravely wriggled into the darkness, wearing pants into which she had tucked a rock to use for communication. I held a similar rock.
It took only a few minutes. From my side of the drainage pipe, I heard two quick raps of stone echo against concrete, the signal that she had made it to the other side. I, in turn, was to signal twice to let her know that I’d heard, but before I could do so, I heard a brief scream roil toward me through the pipe.
I froze, then whispered, “Laura?” We were past curfew. I could not be loud. “Laura?”
She did not answer. She was supposed to rap three times if she encountered trouble, but she’d rapped only twice upon making it through. I rapped my rock against the concrete three times.
“Laura!” I hissed.
I peered into the drainage pipe, hoping for some kind of miracle of vision.
“Laura!”
In daylight, I could see bushes silhouetted against the opening at the other end, but now in the darkness, I could see nothing. And I could not shake the terror I’d heard in that brief scream. I squirmed into the tunnel, carrying the rock in my hand. I was overwhelmed by panic and every cell in my body revolted. For a moment, I was so terrified that I was unable to move.
“Laura!” Now I was pleading. I moved a few body lengths into the pipe so that I had no choice but to move forward. I squirmed and slid, fighting a sensation of drowning. Forward! Forward! My knees scraped against the rough concrete but I didn’t notice.
Finally, my hand felt the scratch of bushes. I flailed through the end of the pipe, landing on my stomach in soft dirt, then rolled over and sucked in a gulp of air. As I scrambled to my knees, I began to call out her name, but then my eyes locked on a nightmare before me. My throat closed. I couldn’t even whisper.
Pythons don’t hunt. They ambush. Some, like the reticulated python, ambush from trees near a water supply. The geometric patterns of their scales make them near impossible to see among the branches and leaves.
In the light of day, I would later learn that this drainage pipe directed water that collected in a low spot of the Jappenkamp down a hillside to the other side of the fence. There, it was held in a pond that fed a banyan tree near the bank. Although I was aware that a venomous snake like a cobra could be a danger if it was resting in the cool shade of the pipe, it had not occurred to me to give any thought to the banyan on the other side of the fence, that I could see from inside the Jappenkamp.
Pythons of staggeringly large size lived in the Dutch East Indies, but they stayed invisible. The Burmese python used water to hide and was able to submerge a body up to twenty-five feet long, leaving only eyes and nostrils above the surface. While it was rare that a python would enter a hut in pursuit of a child, it had happened. Much less rare were ambushes from trees by reticulated pythons. We would discover later that in the town outside our Jappenkamp, two Indonesian children in the previous year had disappeared. While the Indonesians had been unable to find it, they suspected a massive python somewhere was responsible, for the snakes are capable of taking down small deer.
It had been three months since the last child outside our fence had vanished.
In the moonlight, I stared at a tableau of horror, the figures set in a Dante’s Eden painted by a madman, the girl child and snake in a bizarre embrace of death.
All I could see of Laura was the pale of her upper face and the shine of the moon reflected in her terror-stricken eyes. A coil of the python draped her lower face. Had she not instinctively ducked her head and pinned her chin to her upper chest, that coil would have already crushed the bones of her throat. The snake had struck by grasping the top of her head in its backward-pointing teeth. It had rolled the upper third of its body into a ball around the rest of her, pinning her arms against her body. She was on her knees, legs braced apart to keep her from falling, and the lower coils of the snake were tightening and curling toward her in preparation of dragging her sideways, then down to the ground.
I had a rock in my hand. Almost as a reflex, I smacked the python’s head, hoping to dislodge it or distract it, but that only created a dull thud and made no impact on the snake. How could I smash the python’s skull without hurting Laura? What if one of my blows missed the snake?
I ran behind and grabbed the python’s neck, just below its head. It was so massive, even at the thinnest point I couldn’t fully get both hands around it and, even so, didn’t have the strength to strangle it.
The python wasn’t crushing her, but with each breath that she exhaled, it squeezed tighter, making it impossible for her to get more air into her lungs.
When the cold rage began to build, I shoved aside my panic. I jammed my fingers into its upper jaw line, searching for leverage. The pliable flap of skin that could stretch wide enough to allow it to swallow an adult goat easily gave way, but I could not fit my fingers between its jaw and the top of Laura’s skull.
I felt my foot hit something hard, and registered that it was the bottle of gin that Laura had dropped when the python struck.
I grasped the neck of the bottle and raised it, ready to swing down like an ax. I saw the terrible risk of missing the python’s skull and hitting Laura, or of the bottle sliding off the python’s skull and directly into hers. But what choice did I have?
Then I remembered the burning taste of the gin on the day my father had given me a sip and I’d run to spit it into the sink.
I gave a shove against the coils, and as Laura fell, I tried to scrape the seal off the top of the bottle, tearing my thumbnail in the process. I ripped at it with my teeth and finally managed to pull away a strip so that I felt the top of the cork. But the cork was too tight to remove.
With each new constriction, the snake sucked her life’s breath. My rage intensified, giving me clarity. A coil of the snake brushed against my ankle, and I stepped over it to find the rock that I’d dropped. It took two hard blows to snap the top portion of the glass neck. Then the sharp sting of alcohol hit my nostrils.
The python held its grip on Laura’s head, and with her now on her side, the python’s throat was in a position where I could pour the gin inside. I peeled away the skin that covered its jaw line, tipped the bottle of gin sideways, and poured the liquid against her skull so that the alcohol could find its way into the python’s mouth.
Electricity could not have jolted the snake into a faster reaction. The head snapped backward and a rasp seemed to come from somewhere deep in the snake, a rasp of the same rage that I felt. Just as its jaws released Laura’s skull, that massive head struck my left arm, and I felt searing blades bite into my flesh.
Thief of Glory Page 15
