So Long Been Dreaming (30 page)

And there is Papa. And there is me.

I am eleven years old. Later, there will be a camp for me and Mama and my sisters. But for now, they take only Papa.

The man steadies Papa, who is shaking now, who is so afraid he cannot stop shaking, who hates himself for shaking, who should not have to fear his own neighbours. “I am a bookkeeper,” he says. “What have I to do with this?”

“You are a Dutchman,” says the man. “Isn’t that what you always insist? At your office at Rotterdamse Lloyd? At the train station where you buy your Dutch newspaper? At the cantina where you drink your coffee? At the swimming pool where only the Dutch can swim. At home, where your servants cook your food and clean your house and raise your children? ‘I am a Dutchman. My family is a Dutch family.’ Isn’t that what you always say?”

Three generations ago, a Dutchman came from the Netherlands and married an Indonesian girl. There have been Indonesians and Dutch-Indonesians in our family for three generations, but no one from Holland.

“Yes, I am a Dutchman.”

“Yes. You are,” the man says to Papa. “And now, you must run.”

Papa is not the first to receive this command today. He knows what’s expected of him.

The men with rifles change their stances. They spread their legs to shoulder width. They bend at the knees. They raise their guns over their shoulders, inverted with the rifle butts held before them, and they wait.

The dirt at the feet of these men, his neighbours, is dark with blood and vomit and urine and shit. This is the entrance to a new prison.

Papa hopes that if he runs fast enough, maybe only a few of the rifle butts will strike him. Maybe not too hard.

He makes the sign of the cross and takes a step forward.

2367

At school, they tell us about Preparation. It’s almost all we talk about. For the last three months, we haven’t read stories. We haven’t done logic problems. We haven’t learned songs or sculpted in clay or played games or done swim-dances. All we talk about is Preparation.

In three months time a ship will arrive, and all 879 of us Brevan-Terrans will board, and we will spend the next four years travelling to Earth.

We need Preparation for the journey, and we need Preparation for the arrival.

At the beginning of the year, our teacher was Mr Daal, a Brevan-Terran like my classmates and me. But after the Re-Negotiation Si Tula, a Brevan man, with eyes so blue they seem to glow even when he shuts his lids, replaced him. He speaks in a deep-horn voice and is very nice.

In a circle, we sit on the floor in trays of warm brine, watching the pictures Si Tula projects before us. There is a planet of blue and white and brown, and I already know this is Earth, because I’ve been seeing it for months and months now. It’s been on the news. Mama has been showing us books about it. Opa has been reading pamphlets about Earth.

Si Tula begins every lesson by showing us Earth. “This is your home,” he always says. And then he raises his arms, his long fingers slowly fluttering as though they were underwater, and we know what to say:
This is Earth. This is where we come from. This is where we going. It will be good to be home.

After that, the Preparation lesson is always a little different. We have seen the cities of Earth, which are big, sprawling fields of light. We have seen the animals of Earth, which are kept inside the cities in houses of their own for all to see. We have seen the great oceans, so much broader and deeper and more powerful than our little lakes on Breva.

“Your home is a mighty world,” Si Tula says. And he flutters his fingers, and we respond:
Breva is too small for Earth.

This is something the Brevan said a lot during the Re-Negotiation. It’s the reason why all us Brevan-Terrans must go.

I have a question, so I raise my hand, and Si Tula bows respectfully towards me, his rib-arms lowered. It is odd, seeing my teacher bow to me. It is not something our old teacher would ever do. But Brevans are taught from childhood to bow to Brevan-Terrans.

“You may speak, Dool,” he says.

I click my valves. “We have seen Terran habitations and Terran animals and Terran planetary features.”

Nervous – and not knowing why – I shift in my tray, water sloshing over the sides. Si Tula nods encouragement, so I continue. “But . . . when will we see Terran
people
?”

Si Tula makes an appreciative click. “Thank you, Dool. I am pleased you asked. For what now follows is the most important part of Preparation. All else is merely knowing. But this, what we are about to learn, will require doing. It will require doing from you. It will require doing from the Health and Wellbeing Authority. It will require doing from all.”

The Health and Wellbeing Authority is a new organization formed after the Re-Negotiation. Only Brevans sit on the Health and Wellbeing Authority.

Si Tula moves his hands, and a new projection appears in the middle of the circle. It is a pair of creatures. They are four-limbed – two thick limbs upon which they stand, and two thinner, upper limbs which end in things that look very much like hands. One of the creatures has a large pair of teats in front. The other has much smaller teats, and a penis. Their faces are flat and unexpressive. I have seen enough pictures of Terran animals to know that these creatures would live on land.

The projection progresses, and the creatures now wear clothing of sorts, and they move about in various settings. Here, they fold their legs beneath them and sit on the ground, planting a tree. And then they are in a structure, putting food into their tiny mouths. Here they are holding a baby creature, and despite their alien faces, it is clear they are happy. These are intelligent creatures, perhaps. More like me than like animals.

“This is you,” Si Tula says. “This is you. These are Terrans, and this is what you are. This is how you were when you came to Breva. This is how you will be again.”

Si Tula pauses. When he does this, we know we are to remain quiet and think about what he has said. This is us, he has told us. This is me. This is how I was.

After a suitable interval, I raise my hand.

Si Tula bows.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “How can these creatures be us? They have no rib-arms, no dorsals, no valves. They are land creatures. How can this be me? I don’t understand.”

He smiles, his eyes very blue. “Your confusion is not surprising to me. It is a new concept. It is a new concept for all of you. But you will get used to it. Given enough time, one can get used to anything.”

1949

They had told us we’d be coming to a place of colours. There would be fields of tulips, white and pink and yellow and red, a celebration of colours against the blue sky. There would be wonders – windmills and canals and lanes alive with bicycles. This would be a home. We were not Indonesian, we were Dutch, they told us, and this would be our home.

What we find here is stone. The buildings are blocks of neatly stacked stone, and the streets are stone and brick, fitted together, tight and clever. They had told us it would be cold, and it is. They had told us we would get used to it, and they were lying, because how can I get used to this? Even in my jacket, which weighs as much as I do, and the wool hat that scratches my scalp, and the gloves that prevent me from feeling anything I touch, I am cold. “You’ll get used to it,” they tell us.

We are home. The third floor of a narrow stone building is our home. There is a small sitting area, and we can all sit together if we keep our legs tucked close. There is a room for Mama and Gerda and Anki. Because I am the only boy – the only male in my family who survived the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian revolution – I have a room to myself, shared with the two steamer trunks we brought from Jakarta.

When Mr Kaarl, the landlord, was showing us the apartment, he realized it was quite different from what we were used to. “The water closet is down the hall,” he said, jingling a ring of keys. “That’ll be different for you, but you’ll get used to it. They make a lot of noise, but it’s more privacy than you had in your other life.”

Gerda peers down the hall skeptically. “More privacy? But we have to share it with everyone else on the floor.”

Mr Kaarl laughs. He has a very friendly laugh. “But it’s covered and indoors, at least. No prying eyes.”

Gerda frowns, not understanding.

I, however, understand very well.

Mama casts me a sharp warning look, but I don’t mind such looks. At fifteen, I am the man of the house.

“Mr Kaarl believes,” I explain to Gerda, “that back home we used the river as our lavatory.”

When I see terror, rather than anger, in Mama’s eyes, I feel a small pang of regret. There have been many moments in the last few years in which the wrong word has had grave consequences. She still thinks Papa is dead because of all his bragging about being a Dutchman. But many of our neighbours are dead, and they weren’t all the braggarts Papa was. There was a war, and once the Japanese were defeated there was a revolution, and the Dutch were cast out. Many people died, of course. Blood of all kinds soaked into the ground.

But my comment was spoken in Indonesian, so Mr Kaarl only smiles a happy, puzzled smile. “Chattering monkey,” he says, winking. “I’m renting to a lot of chattering monkeys lately. I should have invested in trees instead of buildings.” And he laughs, his cheeks very pink.

2367

When Preparation finally happens, it happens in a dry, silver room. It is unlike any room I’ve ever been in. There are no mollusks clinging to the walls. There is no soft carpet of moss beneath my feet. There is no gentle trickle of water.

I am alone. I am here with only a Brevan doctor, his green-and-black mottled chest blinking with medical devices.

“This is the kind of room Terrans build,” he says.

I tell him no, that is wrong, that my ancestors were Terran, and they built no dead rooms like this.

And I am told, Yes, oh, yes, they did. But Breva remained Brevan, and over time, Terran rooms became Brevan. The Terran rooms were changed, sometimes deliberately, to adapt to the Brevan environment. And sometimes Breva simply took what Earth brought into its embrace, and then transformed it. But too often, Brevan rooms were made into Terran rooms, and many Brevan rooms died forever. “Earth is mighty, indeed,” says the doctor. “But there is more than simple might, is there not? Is there not also patience? Is there not also resolve? What lasts longer – a heart that beats hard, or a heart that beats gentle?”

This particular room has been drained of water. In this room, the mollusks have been scraped away. In this room, herbicide has killed the moss. This room is once more a Terran room, and it must be this way, says the doctor, for the Preparation.

In the centre of the room is an oval table, shaped like an altar in a bulb-temple. “Recline upon it,” says the doctor.

I look at the table. I look above it. Hanging above the table is a cluster of silver arms, dangling down like jellyfish tentacles. Blades glint in the silver room.

The doctor’s eyes are blue as Si Tula’s, but not at all kind.

And I run. I run towards the door, towards the cool wet air of outside, away from this dry and silver room, away, away, towards home.