I shook my head. This was ludicrous. Why was she giving her ginger bun to a monkey? “You shouldn’t be feeding him at all,” I said, walking up to the steps.
Brigitta turned her catlike eyes on me with a scornful glare. “You’re one to talk, Katrien. Don’t your neighbors feed the monkeys?”
Our neighbors, the De Groots, were an older couple who danced outside under the full moon. They also mashed bananas and smeared the paste onto sticks. Then they placed the sticks in their tamarind tree and encouraged the long-tailed macaques to enjoy a free meal. I loved the De Groots. They were eccentric, but kind and wonderful neighbors. “They feed them what they eat in the wild,” I said. “Not ginger buns.”
“But he likes the buns,” Rika said, pointing to the monkey. He had run under a nearby tree and was clutching the bread tightly in his hand.
I shook my head. Poor thing. Of course he liked the buns. He would probably start raiding people’s compost piles and trash now. Vader always said not to feed wild animals. He even tried to get the De Groots to stop, but they refused.
“When he has to be killed after he invades someone’s kitchen looking for scraps, you’ll only have yourselves to blame,” I said.
Brigitta stomped halfway down the front steps and looked down her nose at me. “For goodness’ sake, Katrien, he’s only had a few bites. Don’t take it so seriously.”
“It is serious!”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re so melodramatic! Not everything is about you.”
Flummoxed, I stammered, “M-me? I’m not making this about me.”
“If you say so.” She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows.
My arms tingled as if worms were crawling on me, but I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare back at Brigitta and wonder how I had ended up in this situation. Tante Greet would not consider accusing people of indirectly killing monkeys a strong foundation to renew a friendship. But I didn’t want to be friends with these girls. I only felt sorry for the macaque.
“Why are you even here?” Brigitta asked.
“I’m on my way home.” I jiggled my net full of giant stag beetles in her face. “I have work to do.”
She let out a little cry and jumped back, tripping over her skirt and landing with a thud on the dirty step. Dusting herself off, she glared and said through clenched teeth, “If you keep playing with bugs, Katrien, you might turn into one.”
I responded by dangling the net until it touched her hair. She screamed, and Maud, Rika and Inge tossed their ginger buns aside to drag Brigitta away from me. The macaque dashed over and stole the sweet treats.
Safely back on the porch, Brigitta huffed and shuddered. “Are any of them on me?”
Her friends shook their heads, and I counted the beetles in my net to be sure. Three. Whew! “Stupid thing to do. Could have hurt the beetles,” I whispered to myself.
“I hear you muttering over there, Katrien,” Brigitta spat. “You are so strange. Go home and play with your stupid bugs. Leave those of us who have respectable interests alone.”
My hands trembled with anger and tightened around my funnel net, but I only retorted, “They are insects, Brigitta, not bugs. Try to learn something for once,” before I resumed my journey home.
I had comported myself with as much restraint as possible, but inside, my anger shook me with a force that rivaled the tremors in Batavia.
Chapter 3
Plop!
I dropped the last of my newly deceased beetles into a pot of not-quite boiling water and listened as some of the liquid splashed over the sides and sizzled on the hot stove top. In the pot, the water undulated with enough motion to cause the insect—about the size of a deck of cards cut lengthwise—to dance and shimmy across the surface, softening its limbs.
On a piece of wood near the stove sat the stag beetle I had just removed. I carried it from the kitchen into the parlor where I had better natural light. With tissue paper, I carefully dried the specimen’s spindly legs, powerful mandibles and other delicate parts, drinking in the details as I worked.
I pushed my spectacles up. This stag beetle had orange eyes. Not so unusual. The darker orange flecks were different, though. I hadn’t seen those before.
This beetle also had a solid black body. All my other specimens had brown heads and thoraxes with abdomens that appeared more like polished walnut. Was this a mutation? Or something more important, like an incipient species? I would have to collect hundreds more samples to determine that.
I pinned the unique stag beetle onto the cork and glanced at my watch-pin. Less time had passed than I thought. The insect in the kitchen still needed a few more minutes to soften, so I had time to attack the next step in my stag beetle display, which I happened to dread most: the labeling.
Killing the beetles didn’t bother me. That was simply a matter of placing each one in a glass jar with the lid tightly closed, which suffocated them. I explained this process to Oom Maarten once and he was horrified, but then, he didn’t even like watching cats chase birds.
Boiling the beetles didn’t bother me either, nor did pinning them to the display backing. But writing their names perfectly on those minuscule slips of paper with no drips, splotches, or spills? I shuddered.
It was then that I saw the sunlight was shining onto the varnished teak desk, lighting up my work space as if trying to encourage me. So, with a deep sigh, I set to work. I wrote as neatly as I could, but before long, the wooden pen began to shake in my grip, and black drops of ink splattered across the blotter and onto my fingers. Frustrated, I set the pen down and rubbed my face.
Drat. I forgot the ink on my fingers. I licked my upper lip and sure enough, a bitter taste filled my mouth. I hastily wiped at the ink smears that I knew were decorating my cheeks, and resumed scratching tiny letters onto the tiny paper: H-e-x-a . . .
On my sixth piece of paper, which would yield my second successful label if I managed it, I was startled by a sudden thump at the front door. Seconds later, Mrs. Brinckerhoff whirled through the double doors of our parlor, reminding me of a pink-headed fruit dove with her green skirts and pink hat. Mrs. Brinckerhoff never knocked. If I ever walked into someone’s home unexpected, my aunt would have torn into me like an angry Javan tiger.
But Tante Greet considered Mrs. Brinckerhoff a friend, and that made all the difference, apparently. I didn’t understand how. Mrs. Brinckerhoff was the type of person Brigitta would grow up to be.
“Goede dag, Katrien,” she said, patting her brow with a gleaming white handkerchief.
I walked over to greet her, my aunt’s reminders about courtesy ringing in my head. She kissed me three times on the cheeks—right, left, right—as was customary.
“Good day to you, too, Mrs. Brinckerhoff.” I tried to sound polite, but I think I sounded more irritated. “How do you do?”
She let out a breath of air so massive that even her stiff hat moved atop her head. “The trip across the strait from Ketimbang was quite rough today. May I sit?” Before I could even nod, she eased into the overstuffed chair. “Is Greet home?”
“Ja, she is. I’ll get her.”
Horrid woman. As I left the room I thought of a quote from Mr. Charles Darwin: “It would, indeed, have been a strange fact, had attention not been paid to breeding, for the inheritance of good and bad qualities is so obvious.”
When I popped my head into the study, I didn’t see my aunt. Instead, our housekeeper, Indah, was there, dusting the bookshelves and humming some Javanese tune.
“Indah, have you seen Tante Greet?” I asked.
“Pantry,” she said in her thick accent.
Tante Greet stood inside the small room muttering numbers. She appeared to be counting jars of jam. A pointless exercise. Who cares how much jam is in the pantry? I almost spoke the question aloud, and caught myself just in time. No need to give Tante Greet an excuse to teach me yet another lesson. “You will need to know this when you run your own home, Katrien,” she would say.
No,
I would not need to know that. I had no intention of running my own home. Especially if it involved counting jam jars.
I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Brinckerhoff is here.”
“Johanna?” Tante Greet shifted a bag of flour, rice or sugar—not sure which, they all looked alike to me—on the shelf.
“Ja,” I said, wondering if she knew another Mrs. Brinckerhoff. I slunk out of the pantry.
“Katrien,” my aunt called.
I poked my head back in the doorway.
She handed me a handkerchief. “Clean your face, please. You have ink by your mouth.”
My cheeks burned hot enough to melt the ink right off. I rubbed my face. “Is that better?”
She touched my cheek. “I think you’re going to need soap and water.”
“Mrs. Brinckerhoff saw.”
I expected her to be disappointed, but she surprised me and smiled. “She has children of her own. I daresay she’s seen ink where it doesn’t belong.”
Stiffening, I said, “I’m not a child. I’m thirteen.”
“Go clean your face, Katrien.”
I groaned but did as I was told. When I returned to the parlor, Mrs. Brinckerhoff had not moved a muscle. She sat rigid, like a wooden post being held erect by an invisible string. I longed to poke her. Instead I said, “My aunt will be right with you.”
She nodded, staring out the open doors at the Ousterhoudts’ across the street. The flowers in their front yard caught everyone’s attention. Deep reds, vibrant purples, golden yellows, bright oranges—they grew with wild abandon stretching from the ground up to and above the porch roof as if they were trying to impress God. Tante Greet seethed every time she saw them. Her own flower beds had more weeds than blooms.
I was trying to think of something to say that sounded polite and grown-up when a short screech erupted from the kitchen. I jumped, and Mrs. Brinckerhoff, I was pleased to notice, clutched her chest.
“Katrien!” My aunt’s voice carried down the hall.
I rushed out of the room. “What?”
Tante Greet, pale and shocked, stood in the kitchen pointing at the stove. “You forgot something.”
“Oh, no.” My stag beetle! I peered into the pot of water, now at a full boil. The beetle dipped and dived like a ship in a storm-tossed sea. Pieces of the mandible had broken off, and its legs floated and bobbed beside it. He looked mushy, too. I rubbed my eyes and groaned.
“Get rid of that thing, Katrien. Next time you do this, you do not leave the kitchen. And make sure you always use that pot!”
“Ja, Tante.” I grabbed some cloths and hauled the pot of water off the burner.
She shuddered. “I can’t abide the idea of a boiled bug.”
“Insect,” I corrected.
My poor stag beetle. Mutilated beyond repair.
“When you’ve finished in here, please join Johanna and me in the parlor for some civilized conversation.”
Wonderful. Trapped in a room with Tante Greet and Mrs. Brinckerhoff talking about dress patterns. What could be better?
I looked up and saw that Indah had appeared at my aunt’s side. Tante Greet shook her head as she left the room and muttered, “Never realized she used our kitchen pots for her bugs.” Indah followed her with a tea tray.
Once the water settled, I hauled the pot outside and tossed the water—beetle and all—then joined the ladies in the parlor as I was told. The two women chattered like birds, but I still had labels to complete. I sat at the desk and waited for Tante to object. She merely said, “Sit up straight, Katrien,” before returning her attention to her friend. “I have to admit I am surprised to see you, Johanna. I thought you would not be in Anjer until next month.”
I adjusted my posture and returned to my labels. Trying to look on the bright side, I reasoned that one less beetle meant one less label, but that still meant I had work to do. Once the new beetles sat under glass, I would place the little identification labels below them and they would officially be part of my collection. I already had twenty-five cases filled with twelve stag beetles in each. I hoped to collect thousands of these insects to see natural selection at work, to see the process Mr. Charles Darwin described in beautiful detail in his book:
“For during many successive generations each individual beetle which flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or from indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving from not being blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which most readily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea, and thus destroyed.”
Mrs. Brinckerhoff’s haughty voice floated across the room and interrupted Mr. Darwin’s words. “I told my husband to go over to the island and see for himself what was happening. I mean, the natives just had to be wrong. A beach does not blow up!” Her hands moved in imitation of an explosion. Then, with a sniff, she pulled herself even straighter. “I imagined it was some simple phenomenon that had merely overwhelmed their smaller brains.”
I jerked at the insult and the movement made my pen slide across the paper. Another label was ruined. “Homo sapiens,” I muttered.
Tante Greet, who had the ears of a leopard, heard me. “Language, Katrien.”
Even though I had said the Latin name for human, I meant it as a curse, and my aunt knew it. “Apologies, Tante.”
Mrs. Brinckerhoff ignored me. Or maybe she didn’t hear. She blabbered on about commanding her husband to go to the island and investigate, which he did. It was probably a wise decision, or he would have had to listen to her constant nagging.
“And what did he see on Krakatau?” my aunt asked, taking a sip of her tea.
“Why, he said the beach had split open, just as the natives reported!” Mrs. Brinckerhoff gave the side of her cup a firm tap with her spoon.
The beach had what? I pushed my spectacles up, suddenly eager to join the conversation. “Was that about two weeks ago?” I asked.
“Ja,” Mrs. Brinckerhoff said, surprised. “On the twentieth of May.”
Tante Greet asked, “Do you remember, Katrien? We felt those tremors that morning?”
I nodded, remembering Slamet’s story about ash falling. So the two events were connected.
But Batavia was more than a hundred kilometers from Krakatau. An earthquake on that small island should have barely registered in the capital. And it certainly shouldn’t have caused tremors for an hour.
But Mrs. Brinckerhoff hadn’t said it was an earthquake. She said the beach exploded.
What could have caused this? An eruption? From an extinct volcano?
“My husband hopes we can all go to Batavia in July,” said Mrs. Brinckerhoff, changing the subject. “He said the circus will be there, and the children would love to see the animals.”
“If the circus is in town, I can guarantee that Maarten will attend,” Tante Greet said. “You’ve heard me talk about him. He might even have more fun than your children.”
The two of them laughed, but I missed what was so funny. I wanted to hear more about Krakatau and growled in frustration.
Tante Greet turned to me. “You may be excused, Katrien.”
“Dank u!” I fled the room, leaving my labels for later. Right now, I had to tell Slamet what I had learned.
Chapter 4
I thought I would find Slamet in the kitchen, but instead Indah was there now, scrubbing the table with strong, steady movements.
“Indah, do you know where Slamet is?”
She paused her scrubbing and said something in Javanese.
“What?” I understood some of the natives’ language, but not much.
Indah sighed. “He is boy.”
“I know.”
“You are girl.”
“Ja . . .” I drew the word out, unsure what Indah meant.
“I want . . .” She hesitated and stared out the window, muttering under her breath in Javanese.
“Indah, what’s the matter?”
“He is”—She str
uggled with the next words—“at water.” She nodded in the direction of the beach.
“Perfect. Terima kasih, Indah.”
She indicated a plate of sugar-covered doughnuts resting on a table by the oven.
“You made oliebollen?” I could sometimes get such treats when we ate at the Hotel Anjer, but they were rare and quite a delicacy.
“First time.” Indah held her head high. She excelled at making local dishes like rice and seafood but had trouble with Dutch food. Tante Greet helped, since she didn’t care for spicy Javanese food. My aunt would be thrilled that Indah had made something Dutch without any assistance.
I snatched an oliebol off the plate and popped it into my mouth. Still warm. “Mmm. These are delicious,” I said around a mouthful of the sugary goodness. “Dank u!” Indah grinned, and I grabbed another one before running out the door.
Outside, the humid air slammed into me so hard that I took a step back. Thankfully, though, a gentle breeze sprang up and helped keep me comfortable as I walked. Squinting against the bright afternoon sun, I slowly inhaled the scent of coffee and tea, flowers and fruits, and the sweet smell of my oliebol. I took another bite and brushed sugar from my face and skirts.
Anjer songbirds trilled, greeting me with their cheerful chirps. Their chattering reminded me of something. I hadn’t heard any birds on May twentieth. During those long tremors in Batavia, there was no birdsong at all.
I always noticed birds and animals, so I knew I wasn’t mistaken. I paid strict attention to the sights and sounds of nature. It was how Mr. Charles Darwin made his great discoveries: by observing the lives of those creatures he saw every day.
Since I wanted to be a naturalist, I followed his lead. And I was in the perfect place to do just that, for interesting and unusual and amazing and beautiful creatures covered the entire west coast of Java. “The Malay Archipelago is one of the richest regions in organic beings.” Mr. Charles Darwin’s words spoke to my very soul.
I loved my town of Anjer. I loved the coastline at high tide with its pristine beaches. I loved the coastline at low tide with its exposed corals. I loved the jungle that awaited me less than a kilometer away. It was my temple. My sanctuary.
After the Ashes Page 2
