The war has barely begun when the youngest child in the family - Yvonne, just two months old - dies of convulsions. Medical help in wartime is scarcely available, or impossibly expensive. Muis is aged three at the time. He is asleep when Pappie is taken away by the Japanese. The next day he notices that Pappie is missing. For days they are not allowed to leave the room. Muis is very hungry and thirsty. And he is frightened, very frightened. He is too young to understand what is happening. But he feels the threat of the war and later the bersiap. He senses his mother's, his brothers' and his sisters' distress. He misses Pappie. And he is so afraid that Mammie, too, will be taken away. And his brothers and sisters. All through his very early youth Muis is unable to play outdoors. It is too dangerous. Muis is treated as the baby of the family, surrounded by the loving care of Mammie and his sisters. Mammie is not strict. She is busy running the home the whole day. However his eldest Broer Kroes and his sister Toetie are strict but this is because Pappie is absent. When Pappie was in the Semarang prison, Muis saw him one more time. Pappie had thought of a trick so he could see his wife and children. He pretended that he had a very bad toothache, so the Japanese guards allowed him to visit a dentist. The Chinese dentist passed this information on to Mammie. She, and a couple of children, were allowed to hide in a room adjoining the dentist's practice. When Pappie was alone with the dentist, they were let in. Muis was allowed to sit on Pappie's lap for a moment. For the last time. That moment is engraved in his memory for the rest of his life. For a long time afterwards Muis was unable to talk about it, out of grief. And then comes the news of Pappie's death…. All hope of his return evaporates. The misery of the war rages down on the family even more fiercely: hunger, illness, a lack of money, hard labour, not being able to leave the house… The flight from the pemudas was a terrifying adventure for Muis, who was then six years old . First the great white villa uptown, where the Japanese kept guard on the opposite side of the street. Then the night-time journey in a military truck straight through the city to the prison. And then the chaotic flight to the convent. Muis remembers it as a nightmare from which he cannot awaken… After the hardships during the bersiap, the house in Sompok is a relief: finally a normal house! With a veranda, and a large garden with banana trees.  They can play outside again, also with other local children. Sometimes Javanese youngsters waving knives and bamboo sticks run through the streets. Then Mammie calls Muis and his brothers inside quickly. The short period of peace is rudely interrupted by the flight of Hardy and Fer from the Indonesian soldiers. For Muis, the surrounding of the house by infuriated Indonesians is once again a terrifying experience. He can't understand it. Where are Hardy and Fer? Why don't they come home? Only much later does he learn that Hardy and Fer fled from the city to save their lives. They spend some time in hiding in the sawahs (rice fields) and then end up in a camp of Moluccan KNIL soldiers. They hide Hardy and Fer from the Javanese. Otherwise they would have murdered the boys. Then Mammie goes to the Dutch consulate to ask for help for her sons. A few days later Hardy and Fer are taken in secret to New Guinea. Thousands of kilometres from home. All alone. Hardy is 14 and Fer 12 at the time. It is years before Muis sees them again. In the Netherlands. |
