Shadows Over Paradise (29 page)

The medical staff handed out tiny quantities of bread and lentils, from their emergency supplies. But there was nothing to cook them on because Sonei had confiscated all the Anglos. So we ground them up with a rock, mixed them with water, and ate them with our tiny piece of gray bread.

My mother looked at her lentils. “We are now Stone Age people,” she observed quietly. “This is what they have done to us.”

The three days felt like three weeks. But at last Sonei gave
the order for the
dapur
to reopen. While that happened we waited on our beds, too weak to do anything else. I had found a piece of cardboard and was fanning myself with it, but my mother told me to stop, as even this small exertion would waste precious calories.

“When can I see Flora?” I asked her. We’d been unable to see each other during the “hunger days,” and I missed her.

“After we’ve eaten,” my mother answered wearily.

When Mrs. Cornelisse’s megaphoned voice once again summoned the food carriers to the kitchen, my mother and Kirsten hurried off with the tub. When they returned, my mother seemed upset, but she wouldn’t say why; I knew that she was worrying about Peter, as we still hadn’t heard from him. She gave me my cup of porridge, then, as soon as we’d finished, she told me that she’d seen Susan.

“Did you tell her that I’m going to go over there?”

“Yes. I did tell her … but …”

“But what? What’s the matter, Mum?”

She put her hand on mine. “Klara,” she said gently. “Flora’s ill.”

A warmth rose in my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because I was worried that you wouldn’t eat.”

I stood up. “I must go and see her.”

“I don’t think you should,” I heard my mother say, but I was already halfway across the front yard. As I got to the gate I saw Irene and Susan, with two other women, hurrying up the road, carrying Flora on a stretcher. Flora had got too hungry, I told myself. She just needed some extra food; I would give her some of mine. But as she was carried past us toward the hospital, I saw
that her skin was gray, and that her body was twisted in pain beneath the thin sheet. It wasn’t hunger that had done this to her. In distress, I ran back to my mother and asked her what had.

She explained that the previous night, Flora and Lena had found some cakes of
bungkil
in an outhouse and had eaten some.
Bungkil
was animal feed, made of flaked soya beans.

“Why would that have hurt Flora?” I demanded. “Soya beans are good.”

My mother explained that
bungkil
, though fine for animals, can be poisonous to humans. Lena had eaten only a little and would recover, but Flora was very ill. I asked my mother if I could go into the hospital to be with her, but she said that Flora was too unwell. I must just wait, and pray that she would get better.

I prayed morning, noon, and night, stopping only when Susan came by to give us news. By the end of the first day Flora was barely conscious; by the end of the second day she had slipped into a coma. On the afternoon of the third day, my mother and I were inside our net, dozing. I heard a
tokeh
and began to count its croaks, hoping against hope to hear seven, but it stopped at six. I’d have to start all over again.
One … two … three …
I opened my eyes and saw Susan standing on the other side of our
kelambu
. In my half-asleep state I thought she was an angel.

I sat up, my heart pounding. “How is she? How’s Flora?”

Susan didn’t answer. She knelt down beside me. “The doctors did everything they could,” she whispered through the net. “They did their very best for her—they tried so hard to make her better … I’m sorry, Klara.”

As if in a dream, my mother and I went with Susan to Ampasiet Weg, where we found Irene, cradling Flora’s china doll, Lottie. The doll’s face was wet with her tears.

“I didn’t know,” Irene sobbed. “I didn’t know that the
bungkil
was there or that she would ever have
eaten
it!” She clasped the doll to her, rocking back and forth.

The next morning we all stood beside Flora’s small bamboo coffin as it was loaded onto a truck with five others; then the gate was opened and the vehicle drove out, toward the cemetery.

My mother and Susan were crying, heads bowed. Irene was standing a little way in front of us, staring at the gate. I went and stood beside her. I wanted to say something, but didn’t know what.

“She was my best friend,” I whispered after a moment. “I’ll never like anyone as much as I liked Flora.”

A tear slid down Irene’s cheek. “You’ll have other friends, Klara.” She swallowed. “But please, don’t forget my Flora.”

“I won’t,” I vowed. “I’ll never, ever forget her.”

For the next few weeks we hardly saw Irene and Susan. Then one day Irene came to our house. She told me that she wanted to give me something of Flora’s as a keepsake.

“It’s just a small thing,” she said as she handed it to me. It felt heavy in my palm.

“Thank you,” I managed to whisper as, in the saddest possible way, the lizard became mine.

By the end of May, thanks to a very brave woman named Henny, who had smuggled in a radio, we knew that Hitler was dead and
that Holland had been liberated. We knew that victory had been declared in Europe, and that the Allies had retaken the Philippines and Borneo and many of the Pacific islands. A new mood took hold in the camp. Everyone whispered of freedom, not
if
, but
when
.

In early June my mother and I were overjoyed to receive a card from Peter. It was from Tjimahi and had been written six weeks before. He’d ticked the usual prescribed phrases stating that he was “enjoying excellent health,” had “good fresh food,” and was being “treated well” by the Forces of Nippon. In his twenty-five “free” words he’d managed to convey that he was “fine,” but that he “still missed Daddy and Wil.” At the end he’d added, “Herman’s been kind.”

Anxiety clouded my mother’s face. “So Daddy isn’t in Tjimahi. Poor Peter—he was so sure that he was going to see him. Wil isn’t there either. I must go and tell Irene.”

“Mum, Herman
is
there. Shouldn’t we tell Mrs. Dekker?”

My mother stared at me. “I am
not
prepared to,” she said. “If it weren’t for that hateful woman, Peter wouldn’t
be
there.” I felt a pang of guilt. My mother chewed her lip. “But I suppose we should, in all conscience, pass that on. But you can tell her, Klara.”

“I will.”

After Peter had been taken away, my mother had been unable even to look at Mrs. Dekker. Summoning all her self-control, she’d ignored her, fearing that if she didn’t, she might strike her. But Marleen hadn’t liked being ignored.

“
My
son had to go, Anneke!” she’d shouted after my mother. “Why should you have got away with those lies about yours?”

Now, while Mum hurried to see Irene, I went to look for
Mrs. Dekker. Unlike my mother, I didn’t blame her for Peter being transported; I knew that he’d been transported because of me. And after the war, when everything was all right again, I would tell my mother what had happened in the guardhouse that day, and she would not only understand, she would forgive me, and it would all be forgotten. That was my plan.

I found Mrs. Dekker in her usual space in a corner of the living room. She was lying down, and through the
kelambu
I could see that her feet and ankles were swollen with the beginnings of hunger edema. “Mrs. Dekker.”

She pushed herself upright. “Yes?” she said warily.

“Mrs. Dekker, we’ve just had a card from my brother. He’s in Tjimahi, and he says that your Herman’s there too. I expect you know that already, but just in case you didn’t, I thought I ought to tell you.”

She opened the net, staring at me, clearly surprised at my friendly tone. “I did know,” she said faintly. “But … thank you.”

“Peter said that Herman’s being kind to him.”

Mrs. Dekker smiled. “Good. I’m glad to hear that—he
is
a kind boy. If Herman sends me news of Peter, I’ll tell you, Klara.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Dekker.” I walked away but, on an impulse, turned back. “Mrs. Dekker, I just want to say that it’s not your fault that Peter was transported.”

She didn’t answer for a moment, fiddling with the collar of her shabby dress. “I shouldn’t have done what I did,” she said softly. “I feel bad about it, but I was … angry.”

“It’s all right. I just want you to know that I don’t blame you.”

She looked puzzled. “Well … I’m glad. Thank you, Klara.”

In a while my mother returned from seeing Irene. She sat on her mattress, took out a grubby card that she had been saving, and began to write. “It’s so good to know where Peter
is
, Klara.” She gave me a radiant smile. “And to be able to send him a card is just wonderful after all our worry.”

“Are you going to tell him about Flora?”

“No. It’ll make him too sad. We’ll tell him when he’s safely back with us, which, let’s pray, won’t be long now.”

“I
do
pray for that.” My mother could have had no idea how fervently. One afternoon toward the end of June, Louisa ran into the house.

“Sonei’s gone!” she screamed. “He’s gone. Sonei has GONE!!!” As we gathered round, Louisa explained that it was to do with the coming end of the war. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Ina sniffed. “I don’t believe it. Our hopes have been dashed often enough before.”

As for the war supposedly ending, we had no idea whether or not this was true, because our radio had been discovered. Henny, who had smuggled it in, had been tied to the chair. We’d managed to get a little water to her when the guards weren’t looking. Even so, she’d died on the evening of the fourth day.

“It wasn’t a punishment,” Kirsten had said angrily. “It was an execution.”

A few days after this, Greta’s grandmother, Mrs. Moonen, hurried into the house. “I’ve just seen a new officer by the gate,” she said breathlessly. “He’s called Sakai, and he’s Sonei’s replacement. Someone told me that Sonei’s been made a captain and has been transferred. That’s why we haven’t seen him—because he really
has
gone!”

A cry of unadulterated joy went up.

That night there were celebrations throughout Tjideng. Some women wept with happiness; others were so euphoric that they decided to go
gedekking
. They went to the northwest corner, right away from the gate. We heard afterward that they’d been in such a happy frame of mind that they didn’t trade in the usual terrified silence but in an abandoned way, with conversation and laughter. Then the laughter had abruptly stopped.

We learned that while the women were still at the
gedék
, Sonei, who had been in town celebrating his promotion, returned and caught them by surprise. At gunpoint he marched five of them back to the guardhouse, where he beat them, then locked them in the interrogation room.

The next day the group leaders went through the camp with their megaphones and ordered all last night’s
gedekkers
to report to the gate. No one came out of the houses. During evening
tenko
, one of the guards, a Korean called Oohara, advised Louisa to get volunteers to come out in order to appease Sonei, who was becoming
“gila”
—crazy.

We went out into the front yard to see what was happening. At first we saw a dozen women standing at the gate, but we were then told that Sonei had said it wasn’t enough. Within an hour there were seventy, but he was still not satisfied. By midnight five hundred women stood there in the moonlight, motionless and silent. They were prepared to suffer for something they had not done, in order to save those who had.

Sonei, in his metal-tipped boots, strode up and down the rows. He stopped in front of one woman, pulled her out of the line, then began to slap and punch her. He picked out five others. With his guards, he marched these six women to the house opposite ours, which served as the air-raid building. He made
them line up on the verandah, where, in the light from the one electric bulb that hung from the ceiling, I could see their terrified faces. The monkeys were screaming, as if they knew that something dreadful was happening.

“What’s he going to do?” my mother murmured.

“I don’t know,” Louisa answered. “But it’s going to be bad.”

Sonei started haranguing the women in broken Malay. He called them “ungrateful sluts” who had dared to disobey the “divine will” of His Imperial Majesty, the emperor. He pushed the nearest woman onto her knees. She crouched down and covered her head with her hands, but he began to beat her with the butt of his rifle.

“Our Father,”
I heard Ina murmur,
“which art in Heaven …”

As other women joined in the prayer, Sonei rained down his blows. We could hear them thudding against her body. Twice the woman staggered to her feet, but this only seemed to enrage him all the more. He threw her onto a chair and took a knife out of his belt. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled back her head. The blade glinted as he held it to her throat.

“My God,” Kirsten breathed.

“… and deliver us from evil.”

Sonei sawed at the woman’s scalp. As blood streamed down her cheeks there were screams and gasps. I covered my face with my hands.

My mother was sobbing. “If there’s nothing we can do, surely we shouldn’t watch.”

“Yes, we
should
,” Louisa shot back. “Because soon the war’s going to end and then we’ll tell the whole world what this devil did! We
must
watch—and remember!”

“How could we ever forget?” Kirsten wept as the woman fell to the floor for the final time.

Sonei beat and shaved the other women too. Then he ran down the front steps of the building. As he headed off toward the
dapur
, we all rushed forward to take the injured women to hospital. While we were doing this, Sonei was pushing over the drums containing the following morning’s breakfast. Once the food was oozing over the ground, he went back to his villa, his work done.

This infamous night was Sonei’s swan song. He left Tjideng before the sun came up. We never saw him again.