Shadows Over Paradise (26 page)

“He was working for us until we left; he was fine,” my mother replied. “But I don’t know what’s happened to him since—or to anyone else on the plantation.”

“Susan still loves Arif,” Flora declared. “Don’t you, Sue?” Susan glared at her.

Peter was leaning against Mum’s shoulder. He looked up at her. “Will we be going back home when the war’s over?”

She kissed his head. “Of course we will,” she answered, though I heard the uncertainty in her voice.

“We
have
to go back,” Peter said. “I promised Jaya. And
don’t
forget the chess set we’re going to get him.”

“I won’t forget,” she assured him. Now we asked them about Tjideng.

“At first, life here wasn’t too bad,” Irene explained. “We were allowed to cook, and to leave the camp during the day as long as we were back for evening
tenko
. We could hold church services and even concerts—the pianist Lili Kraus played to us a few times; she’d been on tour and got caught by the invasion. But then, on April first, like some hideous April fool, Kenichi Sonei arrived. One of the first things he did was to have all the pianos chopped up.”

Peter blinked in astonishment. “What for?”

“The fuel for the
dapur
was running low. So all the furniture was burned—even the doors. He halved our rations and doubled the number of
tenkos
. He did utterly evil things too. He had all the sick people dragged out of their hospital beds.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he didn’t want them dying in the camp, as that would look bad for him in Tokyo. So he just dumped them outside the gates—elderly men and women—and left them there to die. It was dreadful. And
then …
”

Irene closed her eyes, as if preparing herself for some ordeal. “Many people had brought their dogs into the camp,” she explained quietly. “One night Sonei had all the dogs put into sacks; then he gave the teenage boys cudgels and ordered them to club the poor creatures to death, or be clubbed themselves.” She shuddered. “The boys were crying—we all were. Many of them refused to do it, and were badly beaten, but eventually, it was done.”

Peter clenched his fists. “I’d like to put Sonei in a sack and club
him
!”

“Morale is very low,” Susan said. “We count every grain of rice, and each drop of soup. We constantly accuse one another of stealing—clothes mostly, but also soap and food.” She explained that if anything went missing, the Tjihapiters were usually prime suspects because they had fewer possessions.

My mother nodded. “That explains the hostile reception that we had at the gate.”

Irene laughed bleakly. “But we’re
all
paupers now. Think of what we once had! Now we measure our wealth in terms of spoons, cups, plates, or garments—even an old rag has value. Have you seen what a lot of the women here are wearing as tops—tea towels! They wear frocks made out of sheets, and most of us have no shoes, because they’ve fallen apart.”

“Look how callused our feet are,” Susan said, gesturing to hers.

I asked her what had happened to her hair. I was worried that she might have been shaved, but she nodded at her mother, then made a scissoring motion.

“I cut it,” Irene explained. “I didn’t want the soldiers to notice Susan. I’m going to cut Flora’s as well soon, Anneke, and I suggest you cut Klara’s.”

Peter, clearly puzzled, asked why.

“Because the soldiers sometimes try and find girlfriends among the young women here,” Irene answered carefully. “If they refuse, the soldiers force them. For that reason it’s best for girls to look as plain as possible, and so Susan’s lovely tresses had to go.”

“Don’t worry, Sue,” said Flora. “It’ll only take five years to grow back.”

Susan scowled at her. “No need to rub it in!”

“I wasn’t!” Flora wailed.

Susan tugged at Flora’s hair. “Yours is going to be chopped off too, missy.”

Irene pushed herself to her feet. “Don’t fight, girls,” she said wearily. “Life’s quite hard enough. Come and see our luxurious accommodation,” she said to my mother.

We followed them inside.

“It
is
luxurious, having a bedroom,” Peter said.

“Yes, though it has no door,” Irene responded. “But at least we have a little privacy.”

On the way to their room we’d had to step around several sleeping women, and I noticed that two had the swollen legs of hunger edema. We went into the Jochens’ room and sat on their mattresses. Flora showed me her dolls; the china doll, Lottie, had lost a hand, and one side of Lucie’s smiley mouth had come unstitched.

Flora picked up Lucie, then put her finger to her lips.

“All our precious things are sewn inside her,” she whispered. “Mummy’s jewelry, and our passports. I take her with me when we go to
tenko
to keep it safe. I keep my other treasure
here
.” She picked up her pillow, and out of it pulled a piece of wadded cloth. Inside was the brass lizard, gleaming softly. Impulsively, I ran my fingers over its sinuous beauty and, once again, wished that it was mine.

Irene asked us where on Laan Trivelli our house was. When my mother told her, a shadow crossed Irene’s face. I thought this must be because she knew that it was so near to the gate, but that wasn’t the reason. “You’re living in the boys’ house,” she told us. “That’s where the boys were held in the days before they were sent to the men’s camps. The youngest were ten.
Some were holding their teddy bears as they climbed onto the truck.”

“How heartbreaking,” my mother murmured, “and how wicked to classify little boys as men.”

“Annie,” Irene said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s something you should know …”

“Yes?” my mother said anxiously. “What?”

Irene drew in her breath. “Sonei’s planning another transport of ten-year-old boys.”

It was a huge comfort to have found Flora again. With so many women and children now pouring into Tjideng, I recognized other people as well. Two more classmates of ours arrived—Edda Smits and Lena Bosch. Lena and her mother were sent to Flora’s house, and I worried that Lena and Flora would now become best friends.

Edda had been in a camp called Kampung Makassar. She told us that Miss Broek and Miss Vries had been there too. “But Miss Vries is
so
thin now,” she confided. “She cries all the time because her fiancé was killed in an air raid.”

One day my mother, Peter, and I saw another familiar figure. We returned to our house to see Marleen Dekker unrolling her mattress in a corner of the living room. We hadn’t even known that she was in Tjideng.

My mother was taken aback but went up to her straightaway and greeted her. Mrs. Dekker ignored her—she clearly hadn’t forgotten my mother’s scolding her for being snobbish about Jaya and Peter’s friendship on that April day.

“So she bears grudges,” my mother whispered as we walked away. Before long we would discover that Mrs. Dekker was the type not just to bear a grudge but to take revenge.

We learned that she had been in Tjideng for a year, on Moesi Weg, but had made herself so unpopular with the other women in her house—they called her “Queen Marleen”—that her group leader had suggested she be moved. And so, a few days after we’d arrived, Mrs. Dekker appeared in our house. Her son wasn’t with her, and someone told us that he’d been put on the latest boys’ transport a month before.

“I feel sorry for her, Klara,” my mother said. “She must be very worried about Herman; but I do wish that she’d gone anywhere else. I won’t let it affect me though. I’m just happy that Irene and the girls are here.”

Whenever we could, Peter and I would spend time with Susan and Flora. We’d all close our eyes and pretend that we were back at the plantation, gazing at the mountains. In Tjideng our eyes just hit the
gedék
.

Flora and I were both on sweeping duty, and sometimes we’d go for a walk while pretending to work. We’d go to the western side of the camp and peer through the rolls of barbed wire at the outside world. Often people would notice us and stare. I’d usually see shock on their faces, because we were so thin, and dirty, and looked like boys because by then Irene had cropped our hair. But sometimes I’d see satisfied smiles at our degradation; they were glad to see the privileged Dutch colonials brought low. But something else amazed me.

“Why aren’t they thin like us?” I asked Flora.

She shrugged. “I guess they get more food than we do.”

“So … are the Japs starving us?” I asked. “On purpose?”

Flora pursed her lips. “Some people say that they are. But I don’t know.”

In Tjideng, time seemed to stand still. I felt as if we were always waiting—waiting to be counted, waiting to go to work, waiting to be fed our meager rations or to go to bed. In our spare time my mother and Irene took turns to teach us, just as they’d taken turns to look after us when we were at school. We used to write on a tile with a piece of lead, or draw marks in the dust with a stick. Sometimes Corrie joined us for “lessons” while Ina and Kirsten watched the twins. We also played games. For the boys it was jacks, played with bits of bone; for the girls it was hopscotch, using white stones to mark out the squares, or we played ticktacktoe in the dirt, with our fingers.

Tenko
was sometimes up to three or four times a day, because Sonei would call us out, without warning, at any time. At full moon he’d call us out in the middle of the night. Mothers would bring a blanket for their children to lie on, and if they saw Sonei coming, they’d quickly rouse them and make them stand. But
tenko
wasn’t the worst thing about Tjideng; the worst thing about Tjideng was the gate. We called it
de Poort
, and were terrified of it, because that’s where all the bad things happened. The gate was where the punishments took place—usually head shavings and beatings. Sometimes women were made to kneel with a length of split bamboo behind their knees, which cut off the blood supply to their legs; or they were suspended by their wrists, which were tied behind their backs, their feet barely scraping the ground. For serious “crimes” women were tied to a chair, in the sun, with no food or water, sometimes for days. Most women didn’t survive, rapidly succumbing to dehydration
and sunstroke. So to us the gate was a place of hell. We had come into Tjideng through it and knew that we would leave through it, most probably dead, we came to believe as the weeks went by.

By February 1945 people were dying in large numbers, not just from malnutrition but from dysentery, pellagra, whooping cough, and beriberi. Death became so common that we no longer even remarked on it. I might play with a child only to be told, two days later, that the child was “no longer alive.” In the “real” world, such an event would be shocking. But I wasn’t shocked because in Tjideng, death was a normal occurrence. There was even a work party that made bamboo coffins; Sonei seemed perversely proud of this.

Peter wanted to play with the other children, but our mother now made him stay in the house because she was increasingly worried that he’d blurt out his age.

“If anyone asks you, you must take a year off it,” she whispered to him. “Do you understand?” He nodded.

“And, Klara, you must never,
ever
tell anyone how old your brother is. Do you promise me?”

“I do.” I laid my hand on my chest. “I solemnly promise that I will never, ever tell anyone Peter’s age.”

For weeks nothing was said about any further transports, and I began to believe that it would never happen. Then, in March 1945, the axe fell. We learned that all the boys of ten and over, being a “danger to women,” were to be transferred out of the camp.

Mrs. Cornelisse came to see my mother, holding a clipboard. “Our records show that your son, Peter, will be ten on the eighth of April,” she began. “Is that correct, Mrs. Bennink?”

I saw a muscle clench at the corner of my mother’s mouth. “No,” she answered calmly. “He’ll be nine.” She added that when they’d gone to Garut to register, the official had mistakenly recorded Peter’s year of birth as 1935 instead of 1936. “I wrote to the authorities about it,” she went on coolly. “But they clearly didn’t correct it. He’ll be nine on that day,” she repeated firmly.

Mrs. Cornelisse said that she would look into it and went away.

Peter, for his part, was confused. “I’d
like
to go to the men’s camp,” he whispered to me, “because then I’ll see Daddy again.”

“We don’t even know where Dad
is
,” I reminded him, “let alone whether you’d be sent to the same place. In any case, Mummy doesn’t
want
you to go.”

“But I—”

“Peter,” I interrupted, “we both
promised
Daddy that we’d do whatever Mum said, with
no
argument. You’d better not break that promise because he’ll be very upset with you.”

So Peter agreed to do what our mother asked.

On 8 April, Mum made a point of celebrating Peter’s birthday—as far as it was possible to celebrate anything in Tjideng. She gave him a bread roll that she’d saved, and we picked some red hibiscus flowers and arranged them in a jar. We sang “Happy Birthday” and did nine birthday claps. Later that day, Mrs. Cornelisse returned. She told Mum that as she’d been unable to clarify Peter’s date of birth, she was going to remove his name from the list.

My mother received this news calmly, as though it was only what she had expected. Inside, though, she was elated. But her euphoria was to be short-lived. Two days later she got a letter
saying that Peter Hans Bennink would be transported to a men’s camp on 15 April. She ran to Mrs. Cornelisse, who told her that she’d have to discuss it with the camp leader, Mrs. Nicholson. So my mother went to the camp office, taking Peter and me with her.

Mrs. Nicholson was sitting behind a small desk, going through a list of names; just visible in the adjacent office was Lieutenant Kochi, who was almost as hated as Sonei. Engrossed in some paperwork, he took no notice of us.

My mother’s face was very pale. “My son is nine,” she told Mrs. Nicholson. She stood behind Peter, her hands on his shoulders. “Look how small he is.”

“Most of the boys are small,” Mrs. Nicholson remarked.