KEES BOUMAN stood alone in the sala of his house. The breeze, which had earlier bowed the tops of the palms, was suddenly quiet and the only sound was the clock as it shuddered to each tick. Middle age was making him contemplative, he thought, because with each forward step of the clock, second by second into a modern future, Bouman felt the jungle struggle forcefully against it. Here in the tropics there was one endless season that cycled on and on, then circled back onto itself like a serpent eating its tail. He felt like the first, or maybe the last, man on earth. His evening tea was not waiting on the table and his daughter, Katrina, was not ready to serve it.
Bouman went to stand at the door. The orange sun was sinking fast behind the topmost brushes of the palms. There was a soothing hush hush of waves, out of sight from where he stood. A bird excited by the final moments of the day let forth a rattling cackle, beat the warm air with its wings, then followed the sinking sun into the jungle. If his wife had still been alive, she would have stood on the doorstep and started yelling. One call from her and the entire household would have leaped to attention, come running across the swept dirt of the compound. The very chickens would have cackled to life. That gnarled pony tied to the post would have raised his head in respectful attention, but Bouman could only transfer his weight from one bare foot to the other, adjust the waist of his baggy pants, and hope that someone would notice him so forlorn and bereft of tea.
He smelled chicken curry. Bouman looked to the cooking shack and was surprised to see Katrina exit. She was wearing her new white kabeya, the one embroidered in a floral motif, which had been very costly; she was hurrying through the compound’s center with such speed that she lost her slipper and had to go back for it.
“Katrina!” called Bouman.
She stopped, stunned, and seemingly guilty. “Father?”
“Where is my tea?”
Katrina put her slipper on and turned back in the direction of the cooking shack.
“What is this nonsense?” he called again.
“Father, we have a visitor.”
“A visitor?”
“He’s on the veranda. I’ll bring the tea there.”
Bouman raised his eyebrows in resignation. He hadn’t heard anyone on the veranda but now on reentering the living room he could hear the low voice of Aya, the housekeeper, chattering away. He peeked out the door and sure enough, seated at the table—on which someone had set a large stinking bunch of frangipani—was a young native in brilliantly pressed colonial whites. Bouman looked at his own bare feet and baggy batik pants with some amusement. His European shirt, made from coarse local cotton, was frayed at the collar. Bouman felt a certain pride in all of this, especially the way that it would annoy Katrina, the way her immaculate dress was annoying him. Aya was squatting on the floor next to the visitor’s ankles. Her elbows rested on her knees and she absently swatted the air in front of her face for mosquitoes.
When Aya noticed Bouman she jumped up straight.
“Tea,” she said, embarrassed.
“Oh, forget the tea,” said Bouman. “Gin now and some limeade for our visitor.”
“Mr. Bouman . . .” The visitor was now standing, his hands clasped behind his back, his head at a respectful incline.
“Yes, I am Bouman. And you?”
“I am Tan Lumbantobing. I deeply appreciate your hospitality.”
“I can take no credit for that,” said Bouman. “But I am not so rude as to deny that the hospitality of my daughter and my housekeeper is correct and admirable.” Bouman smiled. He was actually relieved at his guest, better than a European planter, who would be eager for fresh sympathy over disease and sullen workers. “You will not mind if I call you Tan?”
The young man smiled.
“Are you a visitor or a customer?”
“That depends on what you’re selling.”
“You are looking for weapons and gunpowder.” Bouman shook his head. “Excuse my frankness, but I am an old man and don’t want to die not having spoken my mind.” Bouman was just forty-five, but felt a great deal older. The sun had creased his skin and the army had calcified his joints, which made him seem old at first but, on closer look, permanent.
The drinks arrived and Bouman poured himself a glass of gin. Tan was smiling at his hands in subtle, respectful silence.
“I would offer you gin, but I suspect your religion forbids it. If you care to help yourself, go right ahead.”
Tan took the glass of limeade. He sipped and nodded at Bouman. “This is very refreshing,” he said.
“Yes,” said Bouman, “refreshing. I prefer my beverages steeped and aged—pickled berries,” he said, raising the gin, “or dead leaves soaked in hot water.”
Katrina appeared at the door with the tea. She set it down on the table and wiped her hands on her skirt. She was flushed and distracted.
“Sit down, for heaven’s sake. Have some tea. Have some gin, if you like.” Katrina did not move. She looked from the guest, back over to her father, then at her hands. She was paralyzed with embarrassment.
“Where’s the food?” said Bouman to his daughter.
“It will be ready soon,” Katrina whispered.
Bouman took a mouthful of gin and closed his eyes. He smiled. “She is a quiet girl,” he said to Tan, “but good. She is nothing like her mother, who was wild and, in my opinion, better. I find it hard to believe that there was something that could kill that woman, but there was. And now she is dead ten years.”
“You are lucky to have a daughter to care for you,” said Tan.
“Yes. Yes, I am.” Bouman drank again. “And you, where is your family?”
“My father is in Aceh. My brother is also on a buying expedition. He has gone to the west.”
“How are you traveling?”
“By prahu.”
“I saw none.”
“My brother has taken the boat with him. I do not mean to tax your hospitality, but your housekeeper told me that I could stay in a room in the manager’s quarters. It is only for one week.”
“You are welcome to stay as long as you like.” Bouman did not care what Tan did with his time. “You are from Aceh?”
The young man nodded.
“A relative of the raja?”
“Yes.”
“I trust he is alive and well?”
“Alive, but not well.”
Even better, thought Bouman. “Did he speak of me?”
“Only to say that during the war, you had been on opposite sides, but if there was one Dutchman in Sumatra who could give me a straight answer, it was you.”
“I was on the side of pepper. That’s what we fought for in Aceh. Many lives were wasted, uselessly, on both sides. I will not have the stuff on my table.”
“Pepper?”
“Pepper and war, so if we must talk of arms, we will do so after we eat.” Bouman spun his glass on the table.
“You lost your fingers in Aceh?” asked Tan.
Bouman raised his right hand. The thumb was solid and his fore- and middle fingers had survived the war, but the other two were sheared right off. The shadow of Bouman’s altered hand fell across Katrina’s face. “During the war, but not because of it. A bull elephant frightened by the conflict entered camp. Some were trampled and in the effort to kill it, a stray bullet took off my fingers.”
“I am sorry that you lost your fingers.”
“Oh, I still have them, and later, if I’ve had enough of this stuff”—Bouman raised his glass—“I will show them to you.”
Katrina looked shyly at her father. She had an overbite and when she was uncomfortable, struggled to get her mouth closed over her teeth. Despite this, she was pretty. Bouman thought she had taken the best physical traits of her mother, the gentle brow, the broad cheeks, the unblemished skin that glowed in the sun. From him, she had inherited horsy European teeth—at odds with her small jaws—and social awkwardness. At seventeen she looked more womanly than her full-blooded native peers. She also lacked their guile and awareness. Bouman noticed sadly that Tan had taken a few cautious glances in Katrina’s direction and that her burning cheeks and anxiety had been noticed and seen as encouragement.
During dinner Katrina cowered behind the floral arrangement. When Tan thought Bouman so involved with his food that he was not being watched, he slid the flowers slightly to the left with the tip of his knife to take a better look at the girl. She was concentrating on her food, taking the tiniest bites. When she saw Tan watching her, she met his eyes frankly and nervously. It was not he who rattled her, it was her father. Bouman ate fast, without conversation, and loudly. To keep up Tan choked down the chicken and bitter squash, which was spicy and good, only clearing his throat with water. The entire meal took ten minutes. Katrina was not even halfway through her food when the men stood up together and went to stand by the railing to smoke, or in the case of Tan, to pinch a little betel nut, as was his custom after dinner.
“I sent her to Batavia for school,” said Bouman, smoke pouring out the corners of his mouth. The two men stood now on the edge of the veranda and a bright moon hit the water and the trees, lighting everything with a pleasing, silver glow. “When she chooses to speak, she can speak in Dutch and French.” He smiled at his daughter, who had overcome her shyness enough to smile back. “She came back with a taste for embroidered cloth and now wants me to buy her a piano. I can no longer eat with the simple smell of meat. Now I must be menaced at the table by bouquets of these tough, native flowers whose cheap perfume makes the food taste like shampoo.”
“Women like pretty things,” said Tan. Bouman took in Tan’s soulful eyes and long-fingered, elegant hands. His hair had a sheen to it. Bouman laughed.
“And men,” he said, “care only for drink, and barring that, war.” Here Bouman gazed knowingly at his guest.
“I don’t need to darken this evening with business,” said Tan. “I am enjoying your hospitality and I can wait until tomorrow.”
“Why,” said Bouman suddenly, his face gripped in a smile, “why do you think that I have weapons?”
Tan nodded a few times and turned to his host, who was now only inches from his face. “I know that you have supplied hunters with weapons. They have come out of the jungle with elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, boar. They have taken their heads mounted back to Europe. And you have supplied the cartridges to this end.”
“No more hunters for me,” said Bouman.
Tan was poised to speak, but then changed his mind. He raised his limeade in a quick, silent toast.
“What were you going to say?”
“What do you mean?”
“Be frank with me. It is the only way to get what you want.”
“I don’t intend to be disrespectful.”
“Of course not.”
“You are the supervisor of the trading post.”
“Ah. And you would like to speak to the owner?”
Both Tan and Bouman looked up the coast, where a mere two hundred feet away there was another house, much like Bouman’s, only this one was still and dark. “Peter Versteegh is on a hunt,” Bouman said.
“When did he leave?”
“Five years ago.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“I don’t,” said Bouman. “He was foolishly hunting with a stout businessman from Marseille, someone he knew from the trade. They were hunting orangutan. I suspect the Batak got them, that Versteegh’s bony head is gracing a chieftain’s mantel as is that Frenchman’s. He had a very plump head and impressive mustaches. Even I could see the value in collecting a head like that . . .”
“Father!”
“Ah. She speaks. I’m sorry to offend.” Bouman laughed. “Go get some sweets for our guest. I’m sure we have something.”
Bouman waved Katrina off. She reluctantly pushed away from the table and the chair legs ground loudly across the floor. Bouman saw her look at Tan with complete frustration and Tan smiled back.
“The Frenchman,” whispered Bouman as Katrina left, “had little appreciation for life. He shot an ape and brought it in. It was a female, lactating. He’d lost the infant and didn’t seem to care. I went out looking for the baby. I went out for hours, all night, with a lantern. Call me sentimental, but I know what it’s like when a child loses the mother.”
“Do you really think the Batak killed them?”
“You know better than I do their beliefs, that the ancestors come back as animals—elephant, tiger, and orangutan. Even death is not permanent. I saw little value to the lives of Versteegh and this Frenchman. His name, I remember, was Guillotte. Yes. And they are dead.”
“But you say they are still hunting?”
“I wrote to Guillotte’s family saying that I doubted he would return. And as for Versteegh, his native wife is still living in the house. Why would I write to his cousins in Holland? They would come and sell this and where would I go? And why should they have this place? You cannot put the value of our little house, our compound, and small business into guilders. Besides, is it not a romantic thought that the Dutchman and Frenchman are wandering through the heart of Sumatra chasing an elusive ape who stays always two steps ahead?”
“A pretty myth,” said Tan. “You are romantic, from another time. You forget that it is 1922, that the ways of the ancestors, yours and mine, have long been buried with them. I don’t mourn that. Change is good.”
“Change?” said Bouman sadly. Katrina appeared in the doorway with a plate. She had picked more blossoms and arranged these in with the rice cakes and wafers. “If I could make this evening last indefinitely, I would do it.”
The prahu returned six days later. Bouman had convinced Tan that he had no weapons for sale. Bouman had a half-dozen rifles and countless boxes of cartridges, but Tan was unwilling to name his enemy and rampaging bull elephants were no longer the problem they’d been twenty years earlier. Bouman decided to give the boy a good deal on some bolts of cotton. He’d thrown in a few pairs of embroidered slippers for the boy’s relatives, offered gin and tobacco, which had not been of interest, and an immense cooking pot (for boiling missionaries, Bouman had joked), which Tan had thought would be useful. Bouman was just coming out of the warehouse when he saw Tan running down the steps of the house. A figure appeared in the doorway immediately afterward, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Tan stopped and turned, then he ran back up the stairs and embraced her. In his shock, Bouman wanted to believe that the woman was Aya, who, gnarled as she was, could offer occasional sexual gratification. But no. It was Katrina and a cold chill slowly took over Bouman’s heart.
When Tan entered the warehouse Bouman was sitting at his desk. There was a box of ammunition by his feet. A dozen rifles leaned against the wall. Bouman sat at his desk, his face covered by his hands. Tan could see the man trembling and at first thought that he had been moved to tears, but when Bouman lifted his head, his eyes were clearly fired with anger. Bouman stood up.
“You were a guest in my house and you have deceived me.”
“My intentions are honorable.”
“Who is the judge of that?”
Tan was silent. “You know my family . . .”
“That they are rich, powerful—yes, I know that. And I tell you that you will never have my daughter. Take the guns. Leave. Never come back.”
“She wants to go with me.”
“What does she know of what she wants? She is seventeen years old.” Bouman picked up a rifle and swung it gracefully to point into Tan’s face. “I am offering you the gun. You take the muzzle or the trigger.”
Tan was silent.
“I will kill you. I have killed dozens of men in my time and not once has my sleep been disturbed.”
Bouman watched the prahu round the promontory and thought with a cautious satisfaction that he would never see the boy again. No doubt, Katrina was in tears and would not speak to him for months. His household was in disorder. Aya would be glaring at him from behind the posts of the house, going about her daily tasks with more than the usual menace; she would be spitting in his food. Bouman shook his head. A stiff breeze stirred the water and the palms dipped and swayed. More than the usual monkey chatter was going on overhead. The birds dipped and swooped with unusual urgency. On the ground Bouman saw the ants coursing fervently in streams. There was the burn of electricity in the air. At the edge of the horizon a beam of lightning flared, leaving the margin a menacing dark purple. Bouman sighed deeply, baring his teeth at the world. He knew he was in for trouble.
About many things, Bouman had been wrong. He was wrong to think that his father-love could satisfy his daughter and wrong to think that he would never see Tan again. By the time the young man returned he was no longer a young man and Bouman had seen so many things—more than twenty years had passed—that he questioned every reality. The very nose in the center of his face was up for debate, as far as he was concerned. But as he squatted and smoked in the burned-out square of earth that had once been his house, he somehow knew that the prahu dipping over the edge of the water, rising up like the sun, bore his old acquaintance, Tan. And Bouman thought, in an uncharacteristically mystical way, that his new clairvoyance meant that his life was drawing to a close.
Tan had lost the colonial whites and was now wearing the baggy batik trousers of his people, those and a European shirt of coarse cotton, with a belt of ammunition slung from shoulder to hip. There was silver in with the black, but he looked much the same. Bouman got up and threw his cigarette. He cocked his head to one side. Tan hesitated, stopping twenty feet from where Bouman stood. To his surprise, Bouman laughed.
“I told you not to come back or I would kill you, but it is you who are armed and I have nothing but these two imperfect hands.” Bouman splayed his eight fingers up for inspection.
“How can it be,” said Tan, “that you have not changed?”
“A mystery,” Bouman shrugged. “I am wiser now and so I will ask you to dinner, to have some tea with me, because I now know what an enemy looks like.” Bouman laughed again.
“I thought you were dead,” said Tan. “I myself looked in all the nine camps of Sumatra. I had my people check every Javanese camp, every Dutchman.”
“Did you not think I might be lost under a different name? And the islands are full of Dutchmen.”
“Eight-fingered Dutchmen?” said Tan.
“So thinking I was dead, you came back for my daughter, but it is she who is dead.”
Tan was silent.
“That saddens you.”
“The Japanese killed many.”
“Many, but not her. I have you to blame for that.”
“Me?”
“Katrina died in childbirth.” Bouman closed his eyes. He heard again Katrina’s frightened screams. He remembered Aya’s desperate butchery. “Come. Have tea.” The Dutchman gestured for Tan to follow. “You can send me back to Holland after dinner.”
Bouman had moved into the manager’s small house. He walked quickly and Tan followed, two steps behind, his hands resting nervously on his ammunition belt and gun. The sloping thatch roof was repaired with ragged sheets of tin, probably the work of Bouman. He no longer seemed to have anyone in his employ, not even Aya, who would have made her presence known had she been there. Leaning up against a tree to the right of the hut was an ornate, carved door, blunted and polished by exposure. Tan recognized the door as belonging to the original house and wondered what had inspired Bouman to move it from the flames that had no doubt engulfed and destroyed all of his former dwelling. The hut backed onto a wall of vegetation—a development of the last twenty years—and was shadowed and dreary. A few tough vines had lassoed the roof and beams, and soon the hut would be dragged back into the jungle.
Bouman cooked now. He could offer Tan a weak chicken and vegetable broth. Tan set his gun down and took a stool at the table. The sun was low and forced its way inside in blades of harsh light. Soon they would need to light candles. Bouman lit a flame beneath the pot and stirred the chicken. He was whispering to himself, almost singing to the soup. Tan looked cautiously around. There was a hammock in the corner and a sleeping mat rolled up, leaning against the wall. A case of gin (or what had once been a case of gin) acted as a side table and set on that was a greasy candle and, of all things, a Bible. There was a large wooden box on the floor, blackened by the fire, and it took Tan some moments to realize that it had once been a clock.
“You see, I have survived the war,” said Bouman, setting the soup before his guest, “but only in pieces.”
“Where were you?” said Tan.
“Here.”
“Here? The whole war here? Mr. Bouman, how can that be? All the Dutch were transported.”
“But the French were not. Remember, Vichy is an ally of the Golden Prosperity Sphere.” Bouman smiled slyly, then, reaching behind him to a splintered shelf, he found a passport. He handed it to Tan.
Tan opened the passport. There was Bouman’s picture—an old picture, to be sure, where Bouman’s fine blond hair actually reached his forehead in a bank rather than one sharp point in the center—the name Jean Guillotte, and the birthplace, Marseille, République de France.
“Very clever,” said Tan. “And how did you survive the natives?”
“I hear a trader down the coast was buried alive,” said Bouman with a smile. “But I am lucky. So much sadness puts people off,” he said. “They say the ghost of Katrina wanders here, that she will steal your heart as her heart was stolen.”
Just then a shadow passed by the window and Tan thought he’d seen her, Katrina, although thinner and darker. He turned quickly to Bouman.
“And you,” said Bouman, “do you think Katrina still walks here?”
There was an awkward moment of silence, then a figure appeared in the door, a young woman carrying an infant strapped across her in a batik sling.
“This is Karen,” said Bouman.
Tan stiffened. The young woman looked Tan up and down, then turned to Bouman who gave an almost imperceptible nod. This woman was nothing like the shy Katrina. She was darker and Tan realized with a shock that this was his genetic donation. Her eyes met his boldly and it seemed that she recognized him for who he was. Her hair was not brushed but matted into one huge knot at the nape of her neck. Tan calculated that she must be twenty-three years old, but she looked a good deal older. This Karen squatted by the table. She did not seem to care that there was a visitor, but looked at her father with some slyness and satisfaction.
Tan had anticipated another situation altogether, where he was in charge, but now Bouman and the woman were grinning at each other across the table in an exclusive way that could easily be taken as clairvoyant. No, thought Tan, madness. He took a spoonful of soup and began planning his departure.
The soup was odd, slightly bitter, with a nutty aroma that he could not place. People ate many strange things during the war and in the deprivation following. Tan wondered if perhaps the soup had been flavored with wood. Just then the baby, which Tan had pushed to the back of his mind, stirred in the sling and began wailing. The woman shifted on her ankles, clucking anxiously, then produced one skinny breast that she popped into the baby’s mouth. She moved the sling slightly to accommodate this action and Tan saw the baby’s sharp eyes and square face, the thick shock of vertical hair that was not a family trait, the paler skin.
Tan looked to Bouman.
“Yes,” said Bouman, “the father is Japanese, but she does not know who. She was not as lucky as me. She spent the war in Batavia as a comfort woman. She’d always wanted to go to Batavia, like her mother, for schooling.”
“I am sorry,” said Tan, stuttering over the phrase.
“Irony,” said Bouman and smiled. “My greatest fear was that men would steal my girls, but look, ruined for anything, delivered permanently into my hands, given back to me, my lovely girls, by men.”
Tan shook his head sympathetically. “She does not speak?”
“She,” said Bouman, “has nothing to say.”
The baby had fallen back asleep while nursing and Karen pulled up to the table, taking a seat and a bowl of soup close to Bouman’s right elbow.
“Tell me,” said Bouman, “what you plan to accomplish by this visit. I am no longer a trader, everything is gone, except for a small stash of gin and some rat poison.”
“I will be honest with you,” said Tan. “I thought you were dead. I was worried what would happen to Katrina, because of her Dutch blood. In Java, the Allies have herded all the Dutch into protection camps.” Tan glanced sideways at Bouman, who, in the old tradition, was speedily slopping up his soup. “They have been forced to hire Japanese troops to protect them.”
“Protect them?”
“From the Indonesians.”
“Indonesians?” said Bouman, looking slyly up from the bowl. “And who are these Indonesians? Before we got here, there were no Indonesians. There were Dayak, Batak, Asmat—headhunters and cannibals selling their daughters for glass beads. And now, you are Indonesian? Can you tell me that you love the Balinese as brothers? That you find the negro of Irian Jaya anything but a terrifying barbarian?”
Tan felt a chill at the base of his spine. “What can I tell you that will satisfy you?” said Tan. “There is nothing just in this world, but some things are essential to improvement in the future and we must take the bitter to achieve the sweet.”
“You speak like a politician.”
“I am a politician,” said Tan. “You would like something more direct? Your time has passed. You have profited in another’s country, which is equivalent to theft, and I would rather see you leave, but could easily kill you and feel justified.”
“You support the devil Sukarno.”
“Sukarno,” said Tan with a cryptic smile, “supports me.”
There was silence after that, maybe a whole fifteen minutes without a word said. Karen stood up to spill more soup into everyone’s bowl and Tan continued eating, despite the odd flavor, because he was tired of speaking to Bouman. Bouman was insane and this woman, Tan’s daughter, and the little Japanese baby, Tan’s grandson, were strangers and more than that, beyond the realm of his plan of noble return and rescue. What would he do with these people, inextricably bound to him by his own folly, by accidents of blood and union? Bouman was drinking a tall glass of gin. Tan saw that Karen too was drinking and thought of his other daughters, perfect ladies protected in yards of fabric, manners. They would never recognize her and they would despise their father’s indiscretion. Tan closed his eyes, unwilling to imagine further the sequence of ideas.
“Do you remember,” said Bouman, interrupting the moment of peace, “how I once told you that if I had enough of this”—Bouman raised his glass—“that I would show you my fingers?”
“Yes, yes I do. I remember that.”
Bouman got up and went to the far corner of the room, where the hammock was slung from the beams. Bouman ducked under it and began to rifle through some belongings that cluttered the top of a crude set of shelves. He lit a candle and long shadows began to dance across the wall, animated by each breeze that shivered the flame. Tan could see from the man’s clumsiness that he had had a lot to drink. Karen watched her grandfather for a moment, her face softening, but then growing blank. She stood up and took the baby from the sling. She rocked it softly, then offered the baby to Tan. Tan was chilled. He did not want to hold the child; he shuddered, then realized he had never been in a position to be so cruel.
“I can see you love your baby,” said Tan, finally relenting, extending his arms, and taking the child who, from his estimate, was about four months old. Karen smiled slightly, but her eyes were filling with tears. She snatched the baby back and began desperately cooing at it, even though the baby seemed peaceful and content.
Tan stood up. He had had enough for one evening. His blood pressure, he thought, must be soaring because he was dizzy and heavy pounding had begun in his ears. He was also a bit short of breath. He looked over at Karen. To his surprise, she too seemed to have difficulty breathing. Her lips were pulling at the corners and Tan saw that she had no teeth.
“Here they are,” said Bouman with satisfaction. “Sit down, Tan. It will all be over soon.”
Tan sat down. Bouman was holding a yellowed linen handkerchief. He unfolded this ceremoniously until the two shriveled, leathery fingers were revealed. The nails were brown with age and the fingers had curled, which made them look alive. Bouman set them down on the table.
“To what do I owe this honor?” asked Tan. He was feeling sweaty and weak. Something must have been off in the soup because his intestines were seizing up and he felt suddenly cold.
“This honor? I would like to be buried whole.”
“Why?” asked Tan unsympathetically. “Are you dying?”
“We are all dying,” answered Bouman. His voice sounded distant and muffled.
“Age,” said Tan, “has made you philosophical.”
Bouman laughed. “No, no. We are all dying. I have poisoned us by putting arsenic in the soup.”
The next morning Aya crept into the compound. She had heard the Japanese were finally vanquished and was worried about the old Dutchman, who was an idiot and a drunk, but not evil. She also missed soap and cigarettes, which at this juncture she preferred to betel. Most compellingly, she wanted to know if Karen, who was a daughter to her, had survived the war. Many nights she had stayed awake with her heart pounding, vibrating down to her very wrists, remembering the soldiers dragging Karen by her hair as she struggled to get her feet beneath her. She remembered Bouman’s strong arms holding her back, whispering, “Aya, they will kill her if we protest. Let them go. It will not be long before we are liberated.”
Aya stood in the burnt square of what had been the house. Versteegh’s dwelling was gone too. There was a cigarette half smoked, carelessly tossed into the ruins. She picked this up, smoothed it straight, then stuck it behind her ear for later. Bouman was still alive, still smoking, still wasting tobacco. There was a prahu anchored close by and on it she could just make out the outline of men moving about. Why would a boat be moored so close without Bouman in attention? Perhaps the Nationalists had taken over.
“Bouman!” she called. “Bouman, sir, where are you?”
In response, Aya heard the caterwauling of an infant. Aya’s blood froze. The sound was coming from the manager’s hut. She was not one to be overwhelmed by superstition, but her first thought was that a spirit was tricking her, using the most compelling sound known to woman to draw her into the hut. Who knows what evil awaited her there?
“Bouman, sir!” she called again. “Bouman!”
A canoe had set off from the prahu angling for shore. Aya watched the rise and dip of paddles, the sun glinting off black hair and sweating arms, the sun brightening the surface of the water in bladelike light and purple depressions. She felt the heat beginning slowly in the day, rising up through the earth. Aya found a match in her pocket that she had managed to secure before coming to the house. The baby was still crying. She lit the half cigarette. When it was burned clear to her fingers, she would make the short walk to the manager’s hut. She would boldly greet whatever evil awaited her. She was an old woman and tough. Was there something stronger than she? What secrets and horrors were there that these old bones did not remember, recorded in the very stuff, ringed in the marrow and shell as years are told in the trunks of trees?