State of Siege

She paused, and then went on slowly. “One day, a lot of them came in trucks. They had guns, and they made everyone in the village leave their houses and stand in the square while they searched the houses. They said that they were looking for hidden arms, but they were really looting. They took everything of value that there was and put it in the trucks. Then, one of them saw my father. Some of the other men in the village had made him stand among them so that he would not be noticed, but this pemoeda saw him and shouted to the others that he had found a Dutchman. The others came running up. Some of them were boys of fifteen or sixteen.” She drew a deep breath. “They took my father, and tied him by the wrists to a hook at the back of one of the trucks. They said that he should stay there until there was nothing left of him but his hands. Then they drove the truck fast up and down the road and round the square in front of us. And while my father was battered to death, the pemoedas clapped and laughed and ran along behind the truck shouting ‘ Merkeda! Merkeda!’ ”

She stopped, still staring up at the ceiling.

“Why did you say that he’d died in a prison camp?” I asked.

“That is something that everybody understands. Sometimes I almost believe it myself. It is easier to think of.”

Her eyes closed. When I went over to her a few minutes later I saw that this time she was really asleep. The voice on the radio in the next room finished the second reading of the announcement and the bamboo xylophone began again.

I needed to go to the bathhouse. I picked up a towel, went to the window and snapped my fingers. The sentry turned quickly and raised his gun.

I explained what I wanted. He said something that I did not catch; but he nodded, too, so I went along the terrace. I had left my shaving things in the bathhouse, and by the time I had finished there, I felt less depressed. I have always sympathised with those legendary Empire-builders who changed for dinner in the jungle. When I came out, I did something which I would not have done when I had gone in. Although the sentry was watching me, I walked over to the balustrade of the terrace and looked down into the square.

There were even more troops there than I had imagined; over a hundred, I thought, split up into squads of about a dozen. Rough barricades had been erected at the four entrances to the square, and the squads manning them either sat on the ground smoking or lounged in nearby doorways. Between the trees on the edge of the gardens, four machine guns had been set up covering the approaches, and parked in the centre under tarpaulins were two anti-tank guns. They looked like old British two-pounders. I had always been given to understand that Sanusi’s army had no artillery of any description. Possibly two-pounders had not been reckoned as artillery; possibly the situation had changed.

The sentry was fidgeting, so I went back to the bedroom, bowing to him politely on the way.

Rosalie was still asleep. I got out some new slacks and a clean shirt and changed into them. Then, I considered another matter.

I had taken a bottle of water into the room the previous night, but most of it was now gone; and the water from the bathhouse main could not safely be drunk without boiling it first. There were bottles of drinking-water in the refrigerator; but that was in the kitchen and therefore inaccessible. And there was the matter of food. With some people fear creates a craving for food; but with most, I think, it has the opposite effect. It has with me. But I knew that, if we survived the next few hours, a moment would come when food would become really necessary. I also knew that when the men murmuring in the next room grew hungry, they would soon eat what was in the refrigerator. It would be as well to see if I could appropriate a little of it, some fruit and eggs, perhaps, before that happened.

I went to the window, beckoned the sentry over and explained what I wanted. He stared back at me resentfully. I had begun to repeat my request when, without a change of expression, he suddenly drove the muzzle of the gun he was holding straight into my stomach.

I staggered back, doubled up with pain; then one of my feet slipped on the polished wood floor of the room, and I fell forward on my knees, retching helplessly. The sentry began to shout at me. The noise woke Rosalie. She saw the sentry standing over me with his gun raised, and cried out. That brought the men in the next room out on to the terrace.

There were two of them, both officers. While I struggled to get my breath, I was dimly aware of the sentry’s voice telling them what Suparto’s orders had been. As Rosalie helped me up, one of them came into the room.

He was a squat, bow-legged, dark-complexioned man with a jagged wound scar on his neck. He looked down at me angrily.

“It is ordered you stay here,” he said.

I managed to find the breath to answer. “I only asked if I might get some food and drinking-water from the kitchen.”