The Caprices (14 page)

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?

Colossus

T
HERE ON THE GUTTER
the icicle hung down like an incisor. The afternoon sun shot through it, then flung the shattered light over the back wall of the porch. A steady drip muted by dead leaves on the step kept time with Jim’s heart. And this taptap reminded him of something that he had once heard, but could not remember. The tide was low and despite the chill the odor of brackish rot was clear from the bay, while from the opposite side of the island, Jim could hear the waves exploding on the beach. At this near point, where Plum Island was two hundred feet wide, the honking of geese mingled with the low warning of foghorns. The dripping water punctuated the day’s waning with its steady beat. On the mainland, the trees rose up like a purple wall, muted and unreal. Here, on this long sliver of barrier island, the land was squeezed tightly between a brilliant Atlantic sunrise and the bayside dip of a cool, evening sun.

The icicle was wasting into water.

What was that sound that he could not place? Was it the IV when Peggy spent that last week in the hospital, before they sent her home to die? He remembered the clear vein of fluid wasting itself into her arm, but the music of Peggy’s illness was her harsh
breathing and a beeping noise from some ineffective machine. No. Further back. Maybe when he was a boy. Maybe in his mother’s kitchen. His mother’s legs were traced over with veins and there were splinters in the kitchen floor. She was at the sink accompanied by a rush of water, something useful to complement her industry. He remembered his brother Paul’s sniffling. Did Paul’s life drip from him? Did his passing have a sound other than startling silence? No. Jim had seen life spill, pour silently into the earth. Blood left nothing but a stain—the heart left a knot of stilled muscle. Could the drip of the icicle be just that? A useless process of reduction? Jim thought of himself as having no more blood. He was as desiccated as the gulls killed on the causeway, which, within a week, were nothing but an oblong of leather with a few clinging feathers and a pair of blackened claws.

In the kitchen the radio halted between the football game and the storm, which had been brewing in the Great Lakes for days and was now heading east to Massachusetts. One town in Ohio had been annihilated by the storm’s progression, but Jim had never heard of the town before and he couldn’t remember the name. He understood the announcer’s elevated voice and the force of the deafening wind, the sudden intrusion of static, but it was hard to feel the loss of something that Jim had never known was there. The air was consciously still and Jim watched a woman, parka pulled over her head, dragging an old black dog down the street. The dog’s chain collar jangled as he bounced along. They disappeared where the elbow of the road curved left and soon Jim heard a door slam.

Some had evacuated the island. The rich routinely built houses on the beach, cathedrals on stilts reflecting the ocean in their glass faces, houses occasionally pawed off the sand by waves. But Jim’s house was a genuine cottage, low and sturdy, sheltered by dunes. He had survived worse and there was no brick apartment in Boston for him to retreat to. He had no use for the desperate pleas voiced over the radio. Leave while you still
can. Jim reinforced his windows with brown crosses of masking tape, neat and military. He secured the shed door with a web of rope. The wind would obey. The kitchen pantry was newly stocked with cans of beans, spring water, and a liter of Cutty Sark.

The Patriots were losing, 21–0, no relief in sight. Jim coughed to clear his throat, but the cough was unproductive and dusty. The storm massed itself to the south. The icicle stood sentinel, refracting with the precise brilliance of a rose window. Jim watched a gull beating slowly in the air. Just now, odd gusts like old spirits were coming on the street, tossing paper cups and old news, buoying leaves upward, then dropping the gull a good ten feet. The cold air was making Jim’s hands stiff and there was a sharp pain in his lungs from inhaling it. Now it was time to go inside, but Jim felt himself pulled down. He sat down on a pile of greasy rags on the creaking wicker love seat. He was tired. He could not move. He was paralyzed.

The drip on the leaves continued and Jim thought he was drifting to sleep.

“Don’t sleep,” he warned himself. “You won’t wake up.”

There was a drip in his ears that echoed the sound of the melting icicle. Maybe his blood pressure was soaring. He should be watching that. Sometimes he heard his blood pushing on his ears. It sounded like even footsteps in the snow. Push. Push. There was a warmth extending from his feet up to his knees. He looked at his boots—duck boots from L. L. Bean. His feet seemed unattached. They could have been anyone’s feet. His hand was resting on the arm of the love seat, which was fraying, trying to return to its original jumble of twigs. Jim regarded the spots on his hands, his fingers which were no longer straight, each headed in its own direction, his nails cracked and yellowed from a life spent in the stomachs of planes, under cars, prying apart riding mowers. Maybe that melting icicle echoed the drip of gasoline or oil from some tank that was no longer sound. Jim’s nostril hairs
were freezing. He watched the gull beat in place, first at ease, then with effort. Now it was being blown tail first, reeling in the face of the wind as if the earth were winding in reverse. The wind chimes beat against the house.