I: BATAVIA
Slides of old photos smoulder in the afternoon
made dark. Our shadows move
on the stiff fingers of an omniscient player
who strokes and puckers the skins as of old.
The ventilator makes the past on the screen
regenerate children-rich. I close my eyes but hear how
she catches her breath, as then, beneath that other sheet.
Lying stories. Pictures soaked in lye. Sweat.
Names like Koningsplein, Molenvliet and Rijswijk
disappear beneath the limewash of Japanese law.
Barbed wire rolls out. Canals choke with weed.
I aim, I aim; her son aims at me.
II: THE BABOE
Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Fuji. Neon beats
against the blackening blanket of clouds,
her turned-away face. Searching antennae
stand out. I caress her pleated skin.
The city sinks in the sea of kampongs, night
enclosing the verandah with a suck, making us
come together in the washhouse. The holes
in the zinc, a last cricket, elastic. I rise,
she remains seated, in tears, the souvenir
bared in her lap. Languidly, I kiss her white hair.
A blow, red that tears itself from the impact,
and as then the sudden rain, the unbridled water.
III: 1965
Paper rustles. A cockroach creeps from news papers
that remained new. Our landlady asks her father
something in Chinese. He shakes his head
almost imperceptibly, keeps on stirring his tea.
The year which our family never talks about
ripples open: rolled-up money, ampoules and lists
of names from Glodok. My new aunt embraces
him, stares for help. I am only ten but write
what I can: ‘She buried the books, undid her
hair and put on the white dress in the outhouse,
where they found her, and did not let her go again.’
Grandma is the small cup, tinkling in his hand.
Publisher: In de Knipscheer, December 2003.
Book: € 15,00, cd (music by Dirk Stromberg): € 18,00. Set book + cd: € 29,50.
Postbox 6107, 2011 HC Haarlem, The Netherlands.
www.alberthagenaars.nl
www.indeknipscheer.nl
