After the Ashes (4 page)

“Katrien,” a kind voice behind me said. “How are you this fine afternoon?” I turned to see Sister Hilde, my favorite teacher, beaming at me.

“I'm well, Sister. And you?”

“I am as good as the Lord allows,” she said. “Which is always wonderful.” Her green eyes twinkled behind her spectacles. She leaned over and whispered, “You have a smudge on your specs.”

“
Dank u
, Sister,” I said, and moved on past her.

I reached into my pocket for a handkerchief and found nothing but a loose thread. I thought of asking Sister to borrow hers, but when I turned I saw she had been swallowed by the crowd. With a sigh, I wiped my spectacles on my blouse and promptly crashed into a young woman in front of me. I was forced to steady myself against her back, and as I pulled away I left a white mark on her dark blouse. Sugary remnants of my
oliebollen
still covered my hand, and now a stranger's clothes. “Terra firma,” I swore, and rubbed my hand on my skirt to wipe off as much of the evidence as possible.

“I should have known it was you,” a cutting voice said. I groaned inwardly as the young woman turned to face me. “You're the only person in Anjer who would use the Latin for earth as a curse. How nice of you to share your feelings with the entire marketplace.” It was Brigitta Burkart.

A jolt of anger burst through me.

“At least I am honest about the feelings I show,” I snapped. “You are all smiles and manners on the outside, but inside you are full of spite!”

She blinked and took a step back.

I pressed my advantage. “Now if you'll step aside—”

But Brigitta cut me off. “You think you're so clever, don't you? Doesn't Katrien think she's so clever?” She turned to Maud, Rika and Inge, her herd of dimwitted friends, who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

They nodded automatically. “So clever,” Rika said with a blank stare.

I tried to move around them, but the four girls surrounded me and kept me trapped.

“It must be so lonely,” Brigitta said, her voice full of false pity.

“What must?” I pushed my spectacles up and again attempted to get by. The beach wasn't much farther away. I could see the sand glistening over Maud's shoulder.

“Being you, of course,” Brigitta said.

“What are you talking about?” I finally managed to push through their blockade, but Brigitta grabbed my arm and whirled me around.

“All you do is run around like a wild monkey, collecting those odious bugs. It's no wonder you don't have any friends. Even your aunt is tired of your behavior.”

If she had slapped me, I couldn't have been more shocked. Tante Greet thought Brigitta had impeccable manners. If my aunt only knew how hateful and mean Brigitta could be when no one was watching.

I stood gaping at her and she huffed in exasperation. “You know, Katrien, if you weren't so strange, I might feel sorry for you.”

Just then, Mrs. Van Tassel approached us. “Brigitta, that hat looks lovely on you,” she said, smiling.

Brigitta's hostility vanished. She straightened and beamed. “
Dank u
, Mrs. Van Tassel. I adore it.” It was a simple straw hat with one bright yellow silk flower, like those in the Ousterhoudts' garden.

“You must tell your mother to bring your brother by the shop. I normally make only ladies' hats, but I would make an exception for that adorable little brother of yours. He's such a doll.”

“I'll tell Mother. We think little Jeroen is special, too.”

I fought to keep from retching. The
oliebollen
I ate was less sweet than Brigitta at this moment.

Mrs. Van Tassel glanced at the rest of us. “Ah, to be young and have a bevy of friends again.” Maud, Rika and Inge smiled politely, and I stared in disbelief as she walked away. Once again, Brigitta had convinced an adult that she was perfect and wonderful. How did she do that? How could she charm people so easily? Why couldn't I be like that?

Then again, no. I didn't want to be like Brigitta. She was a manipulative phony.

“I pity your brother,” I snapped. “Having to grow up with you for an older sister is a fate worse than death.”

Brigitta paled and her face fell. Then her gaze hardened. “Katrien, you should consider your words more carefully.” She raked me up and down with a condescending glance. “At least more carefully than you consider your clothes. Even the natives look more civilized.”

The bottoms of my skirts had mud stains almost up to my knees. And now the sugar from the
oliebollen
clung to the fabric. I didn't normally care about my appearance, but even I knew I must look like a beggar.

My aunt would be furious when she found out. Brigitta would certainly tell her father, who would inform Vader, who would tell Tante Greet, who would punish me.

At this point I knew I should ignore Brigitta's words. But she
brought out my worst instincts. “Compared to you,” I hissed, “the natives
are
civilized.”

She gasped, and her friends recoiled as though they smelled something nasty.

I spun on my heel and stomped off toward the gleaming shoreline.

I crossed the beach, my heart filled with fury and despair. Every time my heels sank into the sand I pictured them grinding into Brigitta's phony smile.

I would never admit this to anyone, but her words hurt. I didn't want to be an embarrassment to Tante Greet, but I dreaded disappointing Vader even more.

After I read
On the Origin of Species
for the first time, I wrote a letter to the author. Because of my abysmal penmanship, Vader offered to rewrite it for me. “So Mr. Darwin can read it,” he had said in all seriousness. “In fact, I think we should translate this into English, since he is an Englishman.”

“Can you do that?” I had asked, awestruck by my father's ability to make sure Mr. Charles Darwin could read my letter.

I remembered the excited shiver that passed through me when I signed my name to the letter. For months after that, I pictured Mr. Charles Darwin opening the letter and crying, “I must go to Java. Miss Katrien Courtlandt has offered to be my assistant. There can be no one better.”

Only my father would go to such lengths for me. No one else treated me like he did, as a person with thoughts and opinions that mattered. He respected me. Recently, though, he had been frowning more and more at my stained skirts and dirty hands.

I pushed my spectacles up. Perhaps he wanted me to be more ladylike as well. I shouldn't jeopardize the freedom Vader gave me over a fight with his supervisor's daughter, even though it
was
all Brigitta's fault. That girl could make me lash out like a Javan stink badger.

On the horizon, Krakatau rose from the sea. A thin line of gray smoke stretched from its peak and reached into the sky like a strange storm cloud. Closer in, a small pilot boat was heading to the docks where my father had his office, and the Anjer lighthouse, tall and powerful, rested on a rocky spit of land about half a kilometer farther south.

But even closer to me, on the beach itself, stood Slamet, staring across the Sunda Strait. His black hair glowed in the bright light. Seeing him standing there drove thoughts of Brigitta from my mind. She was wrong. I did have friends. I had Slamet, and I hadn't seen him since yesterday afternoon.

“Slamet!” I called over the roar of the waves.

“How is your day?” he asked when I made my way up to him.

“Not well.” I groaned and dusted my skirts in a vain attempt to remove any remaining sugar from the
oliebollen
.

“What happens?”

“Well . . . ,” I said. I decided to skip over my encounter with Brigitta. “Mrs. Brinckerhoff came to visit Tante Greet.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Brinckerhoff. She lives in Sumatra.” I pointed across the Sunda Strait to the landmass directly west of us.

He shook his head and frowned. “I do not know this woman.”

“There's no reason you should. She's horrible. You're better not knowing her, believe me.”

He didn't say anything.

I groaned again. “I wish my aunt weren't friends with her.”

“Maybe your aunt feels same about me. Your aunt does not like me, I do not think.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, she doesn't dislike you. But she thinks I should have more friends who are girls my own age
and . . . background.” I sighed. I was nothing like those girls, and I didn't want to be. Couldn't she see that?

Slamet and I fell into silence and watched the waves. Tiny bubbles popped along the water's edge as the ocean washed in and out, in and out. The rushing water was clear and bright, like the wings of a Javan kingfisher, and the words of Mr. Charles Darwin came to mind: “
Throughout an enormously large proportion of the ocean, the bright blue tint of the water bespeaks its purity
.”

My gaze returned to Krakatau. Looking at the smoking volcano, I was reminded of the interesting part of Mrs. Brinckerhoff's visit. I pushed my spectacles up and proceeded to tell Slamet everything Mrs. Brinckerhoff had related about Krakatau and the exploding beach. “That was on the twentieth, Slamet. Two weeks ago. The same day you said it rained ash, and when we felt those tremors in Batavia. They must be connected.”

“Ya.”
He nodded. “We hear noises here for two days.”

“You did?” We hadn't heard any noises in Batavia, but Krakatau was a long way from the capital.

“
Ya
, and ash is soft and warm and sticks to nothing.”

“Sticks to nothing?” I thought about this, trying to decipher his meaning. “Oh! You mean
everything
.”

I knelt down to study the beach. All I saw was sand, no ash. “I wonder where it went.”

Slamet crouched down beside me. “What do you do?”

“I'm looking for traces of ash.” I stood and hurried to a cluster of nearby palm trees. I couldn't see any ash on them either. “Wouldn't it look like ash from the stove?”

“It does, but it rains.”

“And it's all washed away,” I concluded.

“Not . . .” He held his fingers a few centimeters apart.

“Not much fell?”

He nodded, relief that I understood him etched on his face.
“Ya.”

The blue water stretching to Krakatau twinkled like diamonds. Except for the thin plume of smoke, I could see nothing different
about the island. From where I stood, it did not look as if its beach had exploded only two weeks ago.

It was high time I spoke to the one person I knew who could make sense of all this. “Let's go find Vader, Slamet. He'll know what's happening.”

Slamet and I scuttled down the beach toward the docks. With the afternoon sun still high in the sky, we were sweating by the time we reached Vader's office. I wiped my forehead with the sleeve of my blouse, moistening the fabric.

As we approached the building, Mr. Burkart walked out the door. His back was ramrod straight, as if he wore a military uniform. I nodded at him, but he only raised an eyebrow in reply. Remembering the stains on my skirts, and my argument with Brigitta, I blushed and scurried inside Vader's tiny office, with Slamet right behind me. The doors and windows stood open, allowing the cooling breeze inside but keeping the hot sun out. Perfect.

Vader sat at his desk with his head in his hands, muttering to himself. “Don't know what I'm going to do . . . laughingstock . . . needs discipline.”

Was he talking about me? I cleared my throat nervously, and Vader jumped in his chair. “Katrien!” He frowned. “And Slamet.” He joined us at the counter. “What can I do for you?”

I repeated Mrs. Brinckerhoff's story in a rush, adding my information about the tremors and Slamet's about the ash. “What do you think is happening, Vader?” I asked him breathlessly.

I trusted my father with my whole being. His intelligence
surpassed that of everyone I knew, including the nuns who ran the girls' school and the priests at church. Vader spoke seven languages and knew geography and advanced mathematics and botany. He was teaching me Latin. If anyone could understand what had happened on Krakatau, it would be Vader.

But for the first time in my life, Vader disappointed me. “I do not know, Katrien. I would have to see the island for myself.”

My shoulders drooped, and I felt like I had been dropped in the middle of the ocean, unable to touch the bottom. How could he not know? He had never been unable to answer a question I had.

Vader grinned. “You are in luck, however. I have heard that there are tour boats going to Krakatau from Batavia.”

“Tour boats?” I asked at the same time Slamet said, “Why?”

“For just the reasons you explained. So people can see what is happening on the island.”

“Can we—” I began.

He held up a hand. “No, we are not going. We will await their reports from here.”

I frowned, and Vader smiled fondly at me. But his expression quickly disappeared, replaced by a look I couldn't describe. Not disappointment exactly, but not pleasure either. Realizing he was just now taking in my appearance, I was once more acutely aware of my dirty skirts and sweat-stained blouse. I fidgeted in front of him.

Slamet unwittingly rescued me by asking, “How do they know?”

“What do you mean?” Vader asked.

Slamet gathered his thoughts into Dutch words. “How do they know in Batavia what happens on Krakatau?”

“Tante Greet and I felt the tremors when we were there,” I reminded him. “Although I think everyone thought it was an earthquake. I never would have thought it was a volcano.”

“Especially one that is supposed to be extinct,” Vader added in a worrisome tone. He stepped to the window and frowned at Krakatau.

“But how do they know?” Slamet repeated.