Under the Java Moon, page 8
Oma was the one who talked about prayer the most, and now Mama was. Rita wanted to ask how exactly did prayer work, but Mama’s eyes were watering again. So Rita wrapped her arms about Mama’s waist and held her tight.
A moment later, Oma spoke from the front room doorway. “This has happened to all our neighbors,” Oma moved across the room, her walking a bit unsteady—something that happened first thing in the morning.
Oma sat on the other side of Rita and reached across her and grasped Mama’s hand. “All the native servants are staying in their villages. At least most of them. Some nannies are staying with their employers for now.”
“The radio this morning said that the banks are freezing money,” Mama said in a quiet voice. Maybe she didn’t want Rita to hear.
Rita knew a little about money. But what did Mama mean about “freezing” money? Rita could count and she sometimes was allowed to buy a trinket or treat when out with Oma at the market. She also knew that if they didn’t have money, they couldn’t buy things. Now, Rita’s stomach was hurting again.
“Oh no,” Oma murmured. “Is it too late to make a withdrawal?”
“George took everything out he was allowed to yesterday, so we have it hidden in the house,” Mama said. “But he said that many people were too late to get their funds.”
Oma was silent for a moment, then she said, “We will focus on what we can do, and what blessings we still have.” She looked down at Rita. “Now, how about you help me with breakfast? Your mother can rest a bit more.”
This all sounded good to Rita. She liked to help in the kitchen when she wasn’t busy with something else. She often sampled what Kemala was cooking. Rita’s favorite was stealing the hamburger mixture for Dutch round mince balls. Would there be enough money for her favorite foods? If Papa had gotten all their money from the bank, then they would be fine and still have food, right? She moved off the couch, and just then, the sirens went off.
The sound always made Rita jolt inside. Like she’d been pushed in the stomach very hard. Mama would not be resting now.
“I’ll fetch Georgie,” Oma said, already moving toward the hallway.
Before Oma reached it, Aunt Tie appeared. Her short, dark hair was snarled on one side as if that’s where she’d been sleeping.
“Where’s the shelter?” she asked in a sharp voice.
Oma stared at her, and Mama said, “Tie is staying with us for a while.”
Tie nodded at Oma, then walked toward the front door.
“It’s between our property and the Vos place.”
Tie headed outside without another word, and soon, Oma had Georgie in hand. They hurried toward the underground shelter. Johan and his mother and sister were already inside by the time Rita stepped down into the water-filled trench. It seemed that Johan’s father had left, too, but Rita didn’t want to ask her friend in front of everyone.
Tie sat at the far end of the bench, closed her eyes, and kept to herself.
Johan stood at the entrance watching the sky.
It wasn’t long before they heard the planes overhead.
Rita nestled against Oma and held her hand as she wondered if bombs would really drop this time and if she’d be able to see the smoke. Sometimes there weren’t bombs at all. Just planes flying overhead.
But these planes sounded closer than she’d ever heard them before. She let go of Oma’s hand and joined Johan where he stood. At first, she saw only the blue sky and patches of clouds. Then the planes came into view. Her heart rate doubled, then tripled.
“Oh no,” Johan whispered, but it was just as loud as the sirens and the engines.
As Rita watched, she saw dark shapes falling from the planes.
Bombs.
She watched them falling, falling, rushing closer to the ground, until she felt someone tug her away from the entrance. It was Mama who pulled her in tight and shielded her, even though they were in a shelter.
Rita bit down on her rubber wafer just as the explosion rocked through her ears. It was close, she knew, but she wasn’t sure how close.
No one spoke for a long moment, not even when the acrid smell of smoke stung their eyes and noses. It felt like another entire hour before the sirens stopped. They were free to leave the shelter, but no one seemed to want to leave.
Finally, Aunt Tie said, “We can’t stay here all day.” She moved past everyone and stepped out.
That seemed to wake everyone else up, and clinging to Mama’s hand, Rita followed the rest. Oma carried Georgie, holding him close. The smoke was thicker than Rita could ever remember, and they all looked toward the direction in which the smoke was still climbing to the sky. Had it hit a house? It was still too far to tell, but it was very close, all the same.
“Has Java surrendered?” Mrs. Vos asked Mama in a quiet voice.
But Mama murmured, “I don’t know.”
Once inside the house, Rita helped Oma with breakfast. She’d told Mama to go lie down with Georgie. Aunt Tie had disappeared as well. Rita and Oma prepared one of Kemala’s recipes—maybe in honor of her. Making the nasi kuning, a rice dish cooked with coconut milk and turmeric, Rita realized how much she missed Kemala. She wished she could’ve given her a hug before she left. She’d been a friend, and Rita hoped she was staying safe.
They’d left the radio on, but there wasn’t any news about bombers. Most of it was about the Red Cross.
“They will help us, right, Oma?” Rita asked.
“Of course,” Oma said, but the lines about her eyes were tight, and she said nothing after that.
It seemed all the adults were tense today. And no one wanted to talk about how close the bombs were that had dropped.
After breakfast, Rita went outside into the yard. Everything was quiet outside. Besides, she didn’t like the worried looks, the grave expressions, and the silence inside. Without their servants, and with Aunt Tie there, everything was different.
Rita didn’t even feel like climbing the trees, so she sat on the grass in the shade. The sun was still out, and even though it was getting almost too hot to play outside, Rita felt like being by herself to think about everything.
She stretched on the grass and nestled her teddy bear next to her. Maybe she’d tell him a story or teach him how to count. But before she could decide which one, she heard a rumbling. Or more like a stomping. The noise grew louder and louder, but it wasn’t coming from the sky like the bomber planes.
A movement to her right caught her attention. Johan had come out of his house. He walked to the hedges that bordered the road, then he quickly crouched down.
Rita rose to her feet, then she hurried to her own row of hedges. The thundering sound grew louder, but she had to see what it was. She peered around the hedges and there, coming up the cobblestoned Laan Trivelli, were rows and rows of soldiers.
Japanese soldiers.
Rita couldn’t move. Was she even breathing? Their boots marched in the same rhythm. Their uniforms were all the same, too. They wore hats that had flapping neck pieces attached. And each of them marched with rifles with long bayonets. The man in front carried a white flag with a large red circle in the middle of it. The soldiers weren’t just Japanese, either. Korean men and Indonesian men marched among them. Radio reports had announced that more and more Indonesian soldiers had pledged their loyalty to the emperor. As they neared her house, she crouched even lower, trying to make herself small. What would happen if they saw her?
What if they saw Johan? Would they make the Dutch children join their army too? Like they had the gardener?
As the marching soldiers passed, Rita couldn’t take her eyes from them. Their faces were so stern, their dark eyes unblinking, their bodies moving in exact formation. On their backs, they carried bedrolls and canteens, along with their guns. Their footsteps mimicked the pounding of her heart, and it wasn’t until they’d passed and had disappeared from view, that Rita felt like she could breathe again.
She didn’t know if Johan was still watching, but she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She clutched at her teddy bear and ran to her house, faster than she’d ever run before. There, Mama would keep her safe.
Chapter Eight
“Looting erupted everywhere, especially around the town’s warehouses. It was the end of an illustrious era and the beginning of a tumultuous, never-to-be-forgotten chapter of our lives. A few days later, planes flew overhead so low that the ground trembled beneath our feet, and the house shook on its foundation. Pamphlets were dropped. The nation was informed that the enemy was nearby and closing in.”
—Rita la Fontaine-de Clercq Zubli, Jambi Camp
George
The Japanese seaborne bombers opened fire on the decrepit minesweeper as George floated with his fellow officers in the undulating sea. Many of the men dived under water, but George was focused on supporting Hooft. The man’s eyes were closed, and his body trembled in the cool sea. The temperature of the water was mild this time of year, but it was exhausting to stay afloat, even with life vests.
The minesweeper was on fire again, flames cracking and popping in the morning air, and the level of the vessel had become lower. It was going to sink. After the bombers moved on, there was no point trying to climb aboard again. The creaking vessel was doomed.
What did that mean for the surviving men? For him? For Hooft? They’d lost five men to the torpedoes, which left nineteen of them. Five men’s families would be forever changed, leaving behind widows and fatherless children . . . and what about the rest of them? What were the chances of survival? Were they just enduring excruciating circumstances, only to face death in the next few hours?
“Come on, man,” George said to Hooft. “We’re getting you into the dinghy.” The men in the water had gravitated to the biggest floating device—the dinghy. They were either swimming alongside of it, or hanging on.
Vos swam closer to them, his red hair darkened from the water. “How is he?”
“He’s slipping in an out of consciousness,” George said. “He needs to rest and not tread water.”
“Let’s get him on the dinghy,” Vos said.
It took three men pulling at Hooft to get him onto the dinghy. George wondered if the man was even aware of what was going on.
The dinghy was badly damaged, and a couple of men were trying to plug up the holes in the bottom with pieces of cloth or bits of floating wood they’d snatched from the wreckage. George grabbed for a floating plank, using it to create more freeboard space. Other men snatched life belts out of the water to aid as well. George shifted Hooft onto a plank where he could at least lie down as they waited for rescue.
“You can rest now,” George murmured to Hooft. There was no response.
“Make room for one more,” Vos called from where he’d slipped back into the water.
George turned and helped haul one of the quartermasters, Jaden, onto the dinghy.
Once Jaden was laid out on a plank, there wasn’t room for much more. Vos and a couple of men sat on the dinghy. George perched on the edge, his legs dangling in the water as he watched the two injured men, wondering how much they were suffering. Beyond them, the minesweeper continued to creak and groan as it sank deeper into the water.
All of the men stared as the sea finally rose above the vessel, and the minesweeper was sucked downward until nothing was visible anymore.
None of the surviving men spoke for a long time. The only sounds were the movement of the sea and the distant rumble of Japanese planes, dark specs in the blue expanse of sky.
“What are they doing?” Hessing, the lieutenant commander, said.
George looked up at the sky. Four planes were circling, but at quite a distance. Surely the planes knew there were Dutch enemies clinging to a dinghy in the middle of a sea. But they only continued to circle, and none of them approached.
No one was about to signal to the pilots.
The Japanese prisoner-of-war camps were notorious for their torture and starvation methods. George had even heard a few reports of Allied pilots choosing to leap from their battered planes and freefall to their deaths rather than risk capture by the Japanese forces.
Would George and his comrades be captured and taken as political prisoners? Or would they be shot in the water after all—and meet the same fate so many other sailors had in the past few days?
George glanced about at the surviving men. Not far from George, Commander Rouwenhorst was floating in the water, his hands gripping the upper part of his life jacket. His gaze was rooted to the sky, as if he were waiting for more bombs to drop.
“We should do roll call,” George said, choking out the words. He hoped he wasn’t overstepping command. “We need to get organized and figure out a system of bailing water and taking turns in the dinghy.”
The commander nodded, then began the roll call. Everyone called out their name. Nineteen were left out of the twenty-four men originally on the minesweeper.
“May their souls rest in peace,” Vos murmured.
The men echoed, “Amen.”
It was not a fitting memorial for men who’d sacrificed their lives for the Allied cause. But it was all the men could do right now.
When it was George’s turn on the dinghy, he worked to bail water with a steel helmet that someone had fished out of the water. It was a daunting process since the stuffed holes in the bottom of the vessel were still leaking.
The day progressed, hot and humid, with the sun beating down upon them without mercy. The life vests were filled with kapok fibers and had become so waterlogged that those who were on the dinghy took them off and tied them upon their heads to dry out.
A croaking voice alerted George, and he paused and turned to see Hooft’s eyes opened. George scrambled over to his friend. “How are you?” he asked.
Hooft’s gaze shifted past George and then back again. “I don’t feel well.”
That was certainly an understatement, George mused. Then Hooft jerked onto his side and coughed up blood. George rubbed the man’s shoulder, feeling helpless. “Get it out,” he said.
The blow to the man’s abdomen the night before must have started internal bleeding. Nothing about that was good. Not when they were floating on a crippled dinghy in the middle of the sea, surrounded by enemy planes, and with little hope of being rescued.
At least George’s toe had stopped bleeding, for the most part. It hurt to put weight on it, but he was keeping to his knees anyway.
The buzzing of the planes continued high above, like a mosquito that wouldn’t go away, staying just out of reach from being swatted.
Hooft’s eyes closed again, and he stayed on his side, one hand curled into a fist. The seawater lapped at the sides of the dinghy in a steady rhythm, echoing the dull thud of George’s heart. He wondered if the sinking of the minesweeper had been reported to the naval base yet. Was the Japanese military already announcing its conquest? Would the news get back to Mary and the rest of their wives and families?
“They’re moving farther away,” Rouwenhorst said. He’d hardly taken his gaze from the sky.
George blinked against the sun and looked over at the commander. He pointed toward the piece of sky where the bombers had been circling.
Sure enough, if George’s sight could be trusted, the Japanese had moved off. To refuel and return?
“Not the best strategy,” Bakker said in a humorless voice. “Leaving their enemy in the water, to rise up and strike again.”
Someone laughed. George was too tired to figure out who. His head buzzed, his body ached, his toe throbbed, and the tips of his ears were burned. He began to bail water again. A few moments later, he spotted something floating.
“Can you reach that tin can, Vos?” George grabbed one of the paddles and tried to tap it closer to the dinghy.
Vos was already in the water, and in a few strokes, he got ahold of the tin. He turned the can. “They’re biscuits.”
“We’ll eat them at sunset,” Rouwenhorst announced.
George spent the better part of the next hour scanning for more floating tins, but there was nothing but seawater.
Rotations changed. Men who were floating in the water climbed onto the dinghy to take their turns bailing. And George slipped back into the water since only five or six could fit onto the dinghy. The hours passed, and they continued to rotate. Men floating in the water, paddling on the dinghy, bailing water, or sleeping on the spare planks next to the injured men.
The afternoon wore on, likely the longest day of any of their lives. Most of the men didn’t have shirts on since they’d been awakened in the middle of the night by the torpedo. George’s shirt at least gave him some protection from the sun. The sun’s rays were merciless, like a hot iron pressed directly to the skin. And the sea below offered little relief, the salt only adding to the painful irritation of sunburn.
At least the Japanese bombers had left.
It was time to take action instead of waiting to be acted upon. By consensus, the men decided to set off in a southerly direction, aiming for the Thousand Islands. If they could reach the northern tip, then they could land in unoccupied territory. The islands harbored coconut plantations, and there would be plenty to harvest and eat. But any error in judgment, even a slight one, would send them off course.
Once the sun began to set, Vos used a knife to open the tin of biscuits.
George wished there was more food to share. Although he was surrounded by seawater, his mouth watered in anticipation.
After Vos twisted the metal lid off, he groaned.
