Thief of Glory

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “Ieder een er uit! Ieder een er uit!”

  Everybody out! Everybody out!

  All the houses began to discharge the adult women as if the sirens had wailed again for roll call. When the women got to the streets, instead of forming lines, they began to march down the street toward Nakahara’s residence.

  We began to follow, and Mrs. Bakker noticed.

  “Stay behind,” she said. “No children.”

  “It’s my grandmother,” Laura said. “I will not stay behind.”

  “And I will fight anyone who tries to stop Laura,” I said.

  Any other time, this open rebellion would have earned spankings and forcible removal. Laura and I knew it, and Mrs. Bakker knew it. However, Mrs. Bakker only said, “I will deal with your disrespect later.”

  The women from the other blocks streamed in from all streets to converge on the stretch of cobblestone in front of the Nakahara residence. He was inside, no doubt, waiting for the deadline to come and go so that he could send his soldiers to gather some teahouse girls. Or perhaps he expected that with Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg captive, the camp’s resolve to defy him would collapse.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of women gathering in front of his residence spoke otherwise. Soldiers scurried up and down the street, pointing their rifles, but the fear was obvious on their faces. With no orders, they were uncertain about what to do. Several bolted into the Nakahara residence.

  The women formed orderly lines up and down the street. There were too many for the customary roll call formation of one line on each side of the street, so when all the movement had stopped, the women stood four lines deep on each side, with enough space between the lines for the women to bow.

  Laura and I took spots at the front line where we had a clear view of what might happen.

  Soldiers continued to walk up and down the center of the street, yet each woman remained motionless. And silent. It was an eerie tension-filled bubble of time.

  Then, down the center of the street walked the woman who intended to replace Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg in defiance of Nakahara. Laura grabbed my wrist in an unspoken gesture of support.

  It was Elsbeth. Head bowed. Plodding step by step. Wearing a faded dress with a dotted pattern and walking in bare feet.

  Much, much later I would understand what had driven her, an attempt at redemption for an act that I would never fully comprehend. But in this moment, I could only question whether my eyes were deceiving me. Out of all the women in this camp, it seemed impossible to me that my mother—who in her despondency over the last weeks had rarely left our cramped room and in so doing had become as invisible as the dead thrown onto the wagon—would have made a decision not only to face Nakahara’s wrath but to put herself at the center of attention.

  “Moeder!” I ran out to her, uncaring that it put me squarely on the same stage of attention.

  “No, Jeremiah,” she said in a dull voice. “It must be done.”

  “He will kill you,” I said. “Please, don’t.”

  “If he does, you will take care of the family as you have always done. Go.”

  I pulled on her hand. She reacted by slapping me across the face with her other hand.

  “I am your mother,” she said. There was sudden strength in her voice. “Do as I say.”

  I backed away, blinking with the same disbelief that had overwhelmed me upon seeing her walking alone down the center of the street. I stumbled back to Laura.

  I felt a woman’s hand on my shoulder. From the line behind me. I pushed it away. I looked straight ahead. I would not let my eyes follow my mother to the steps of the Nakahara residence. In the silence, however, the sound of the closing door betrayed me, and I knew she was inside.

  Time remained suspended. Even the soldiers stopped the nervous patrolling of the center of the street. When screams came from inside the house, every woman stood like a statue. Except the woman behind me, who must have anticipated what I would do, for her arms grabbed me and prevented me from running to the house. No matter how much I squirmed, I could not move. As the unseen beating inside the residence continued, I was enveloped in the peculiar smell of that woman’s unwashed body, her hand around my mouth to keep me from screaming. What little shaking of my head I was able to accomplish showed me that while some of the women were watching our struggle, all of them maintained the discipline of formation.

  When the screams stopped, so did my struggle. But the woman behind me did not let go.

  The door opened. Nakahara stepped outside.

  “Kiotske!” Attention!

  It was an unnecessary command. All the women had been standing at attention from the moment they had formed into lines.

  “Kere!” Bow!

  Only then did the woman behind me let go of my body.

  In the moments that followed, there remained total silence. Total obedience. All these hundreds of women crisply bent forward at the waist and held position. Although I raged inside, I, too, bent forward.

  Five minutes passed. Maybe ten minutes. The older women must have been in agony, because I felt horrible strain on my back. Some groaning began to break the silence. When the moment came that Nakahara was satisfied that he had proven he was in control, the final order came.

  “Naore!” At ease!

  Perhaps this was when he intended to speak to all the women through an interpreter, but when the women straightened, he discovered how mistaken he was in believing he had managed to quell the revolt by taking away its leaders and beating the woman who had replaced them.

  When the women straightened, they pulled out weapons that had been hidden in their clothing and held them at chest level. Not a word was spoken. From my position at the front line, I saw the resolute determination on the face of the women who stood facing me across the street.

  No translation was needed because no one spoke. Nakahara faced knitting needles and scissors and forks and paring knives and wooden spoons and the jagged necks of broken bottles. The soldiers formed tiny circles in the center of the streets, backs to each other, rifles pointed outward.

  Had a single shot been fired, there is no doubt that the entire group of steadfastly disciplined women would have become an unstoppable mob, releasing its fury on the dozens of soldiers, who would have been overwhelmed by hundreds and hundreds of women seething with hatred at the daily roll calls and the reduced rations and the misery inflicted upon their children.

  Nakahara broke the silence and shouted in Japanese. It took several moments, then the translation came. “No teahouse deadline. Volunteers only.”

  We knew it was defeat for Nakahara, because there would be no volunteers. Mrs. Bakker took a step forward and spoke in a moderate tone that was still clearly heard up and down the street.

  “We will not leave until Mrs. Jansen and Mrs. Schoonenburg and Mrs. Prins join us.”

  Nakahara shouted again, and the translation came again. “No teahouse deadline. Volunteers only.”

  He turned quickly and retreated to the house, leaving his soldiers in their tight circles to face the women. Within minutes, the door opened again. Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg framed my mother as they stepped outside, supporting her as they helped her walk to their freedom.

  This time, when I tried to break from the line to race past the soldiers toward my mother, no one held me back.

  THIRTY

  As Elsbeth recovered from the beating that Nakahara had given her, Sophie had taken it upon herself to nurse her, and they became like mother and daughter. During those weeks, one day to the next had the numbing effect of making everything seem unchanged. The siren wailed each morning, and families stumbled to the streets for roll call. Mothers tried to comfort children who cried from hunger, and women and girls over sixteen carried out the duties of camp routine. Rice and stale bread were served at every lunch and dinner. Sirens wailed for end-of-day roll call and then wailed again to impose curfew.

  In their lives before camp, my sisters had lived like beautiful china
dolls, pampered and exhibited accordingly by Elsbeth. Now their legs were streaked with dirt, their knees scabbed, and they wore tattered dresses far too small for their growing bodies. They knelt in dirt to search for snails and squealed in delight on the rare occasion they found a frog for our boiling pot. Even so, when Elsbeth could, she insisted on brushing their hair every morning and lectured them if they allowed their faces to be dirty.

  Georgie was unable to find his own group of boys as friends and made sure that when I was in sight, he disappeared. It felt to me like a justification of my hatred for him, as in a large part he earned the dislike of those he tried to befriend. He wasn’t alone, however, for he had Dr. Kloet, a man in the mirror image of Georgie. While it didn’t appear that he suffered physically, Georgie no longer had the arrogant swagger of an American boy whose father was the big boss of an oil refinery. It’s an easy assumption that he was fearful and lonely, yet he could have eased both afflictions if he had joined our collective defiance of the Japanese by sharing chores and food and hymns. Perhaps, had any of us reached out to him, he might have reciprocated. Instead, we enjoyed ignoring him and making it obvious we were ignoring him.

  So, happily without him, we roamed and made the best of our prison. Part of my own routine was a fake marble game with Laura, Pietje, Aniek, and Nikki, played along one of the walls that formed protection around Nakahara’s private garden. As often as possible, Laura and I would peek through the holes that we had once formed with the handles of wooden spoons.

  Our amusement consisted of watching Pietje mainly lose marble games to kids in their own little gangs on each street. I was Pietje’s banker, supplying him with an ample number to distribute among the camp through his losses. I had managed to establish an unspoken agreement. A day or two after Pietje lost his marbles, I would be allowed the chance to win them back again, which invariably I did. It wasn’t as much of a thrill as earning marbles that weren’t mine in the first place, but it was a way to pass the time. Occasionally, something out of the ordinary would feed new rumors, eagerly passed along and discussed in minutia as a welcome change from conversations that often revolved around the first meal a woman would cook and eat once the war was over. In innocence, I contributed to a rumor that swept through the kitchen lines with delicious self-righteousness and indignant speculation.

  Through the holes in the garden wall, we could see that Nakahara was growing his own vegetables and using some of the produce to feed a pig penned in the corner. But this was not news worthy of passing along. The squealing and grunting of the fat sow already had reached us, tormenting us with visions of bacon and cured ham. Also, the women responsible for cooking his meals daily entered the garden for vegetables and were able to report the bounty with expected degrees of frustration and hatred.

  These same women confirmed that Nakahara was keeping American Red Cross parcels for himself, storing them in stacks in one of the unused rooms of his residence. These parcels contained bandages and ointments and disinfectants and painkillers that would have alleviated so much suffering in camp. The parcels also contained soap and chocolate bars and powdered milk and tins of food.

  Nakahara’s cooks reported that Nakahara made no effort to hide the opened parcels, eating chocolate as they took away the dishes after his meal. They saw him give soap and tins of food to soldiers as rewards. They also saw him load the medicines into larger boxes to sell outside of the camp. Because Nakahara was the ultimate authority at this camp, he had no reason to hide this from them and would even smile, they said, when he noticed them staring at the items that rightfully belonged to the families of camp.

  From day to day, our view of the private area did not change. We could see the pig, and often, we saw Dutch women weeding and picking vegetables under the guard of Japanese soldiers who were there to keep them from eating from the garden. Occasionally, we saw Nakahara snoozing in a chaise lounge in the shade of the banyan near the center of his garden, his monster guard dog on the ground beside him, tongue out and panting, head on paws, one eye open. In the middle of one afternoon, however, when I peeked through a spy hole in the wall, what I saw shocked me: the back of a woman in a silk robe crossed my small circle of vision, then moved toward Nakahara in the chaise lounge. Her identity was obscured by a towel wrapped around her head and the robe covering all of her body. I did see Nakahara sit up and smile at her and that her skin was white on her shoulders as she began to pull the robe away.

  I saw nothing else because Pietje tapped my shoulder.

  Soldiers.

  I straightened and shouted automatically. “Kiotske!”

  Pietje shouted, “Kere!”

  We had to wait in a bowing position until they passed by.

  “Naore!” Laura said, and we all relaxed. Farther down the street, another boy yelled “Kiotske!” to warn all those around him, and then came “Kere!”

  When I looked again through the peephole, the chaise lounge was empty.

  What I’d witnessed was so astounding that I immediately had to tell someone, who was Pietje and Laura and Nikki and Aniek, and what I’d seen gave us such an air of self-importance that we first stopped at Dr. Eikenboom’s table to tell her. Enough of our conversation reached Dr. Kloet that he broke in with questions that were overheard by some of the women in line. By supper, women I did not know were coming up to me in small groups and asking for an eyewitness account and then walking away to speculate on the identity of the woman in the robe. Not one of those women, however, would answer my own questions about why a woman in a robe would have been in the garden with Nakahara or why the woman had so much of her skin exposed or where they could have gone.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized how much of a mistake my lack of discretion had been. When our little gang wandered over to the garden wall as part of our routine, our spy holes had been plugged with fresh concrete. Until then, it had never occurred to me that the mystery visitor would hear the rumor about herself and report it to Nakahara, thus securing her identity. I should have known, however. After all, someone had denounced Sophie and Mrs. Schoonenburg and their intent to defy Nakahara about the teahouse. Thus, I feared that Nakahara would know it had come from me, but after a day or two had passed without incident, I relaxed. That was my second mistake.

  A few mornings after that, as I was crawling out of the drainage ditch with supplies left for me by Adi, I was met by Nakahara on the other side of the bush, waiting for me. Laura had been standing guard, and if soldiers happened nearby, she was to yell Pietje’s name, as if calling him to come and play dolls with her. Once every few weeks, she’d been forced to use this ploy. The first time, we had both been terrified, but after our system had worked then and every time since, much of our fear of using the tunnel to the outside had disappeared.

  I crawled from beneath the bush as I always did, headfirst, but then I saw boots. Army boots. I saw legs of soldiers. And beyond those legs, I saw Nakahara’s dog with Laura’s arm in its teeth. I saw Nakahara with a triumphant grin as he made eye contact with me. He and the soldiers had been waiting.

  Nakahara shook his head as if he were addressing a naughty boy. He put his left forefinger to his lips and made a shushing sound, and with his other hand, he opened and closed his thumb and fingers as if they were the jaws of his guard dog.

  I understood. I remembered when the dog had attacked me and clamped down on my arm. Nakahara had screamed and our translator had made it clear. “This dog will kill you at my command.”

  Now, Nakahara’s smile was more frightening than his screaming. He was a man in control and savoring revenge.

  I crawled out, and he motioned for me to stand. As I did, he barked a command at his soldiers. One of them kicked aside the bushes and found the cloth bag that held the day’s supplies of sulfa and ointments for Dr. Eikenboom. The soldier gave that bag to Nakahara, who looked inside and grunted acknowledgment.

  Nakahara gazed upon me again like a lazy lizard in the sun. Then he gave a quick strea
m of Japanese that I didn’t understand. A soldier on each side of me grasped each of my arms and lifted me.

  My instinct was to kick and struggle, but Laura’s eyes were wide with terror because of the dog clamped to her arm. Nakahara had made it clear if I made any noise, he would order the dog to tear into her arm. Or worse.

  If Nakahara was trying to scare me as well, he was failing. I felt my rage build. My eyes locked on the sword in the scabbard on Nakahara’s belt. I could feel myself pulling the sword loose and impaling Nakahara with a joy I knew I would never regret, even if it cost me my life.

  His eyes narrowed, as if he understood the depth of my anger. But he smiled again, with an exquisiteness of someone who had planned to enjoy the first moments of torture. He calmly spoke more Japanese. While I was still in the air, another soldier grabbed at the waistband of my shorts. It took me several moments to comprehend. The soldier was looking for my marble pouches and found the first one almost immediately. Often enough, others had seen me reach for it, so it wasn’t a camp secret.

  But Nakahara barked at him, so the soldier kept searching until he pulled the other one loose from my shorts. Then he squeezed out the two marbles—my precious china marble with the dragon and the far more precious marble that my father had given me with the tiny statue inside.

  The soldier walked across to Nakahara and gave him both marbles. Nakahara rolled both of them across his open palm so that he knew I saw them in his full possession.

  He spoke to his dog, and it released Laura.

  Then Nakahara said, “Kere!”

  Laura and I bowed. He laughed as the soldiers walked away, and just before they turned around the corner of the nearest house, Nakahara called out in a mocking voice, “Naore!”

  Now, I realized, I was a personal enemy of the commander, who knew me well enough to know the one punishment that would hurt and haunt me. But it wasn’t enough, for he and the soldiers marched to the medical tent and, in front of all the women in both lines, Nakahara dumped the confiscated supplies onto Dr. Eikenboom’s table. She was standing, so he punched her to the ground and kicked hard and repeatedly enough to break her ribs, an act that I knew was directly my fault.