After the Ashes (24 page)

She squeezed my shoulder. “Then that is precisely what we'll do.”

We walked in slow silence for a long time. Snails were probably passing us—if there were any snails left.

More bodies lay scattered around the forest, wedged under fallen trees, piled on top of each other. Like something out of a nightmare.

We kept going.

“I think I can walk on my own now,” I said. I no longer felt the pain in my feet, and when Brigitta released me, I found I could stumble along with a clumsy, shifting gait. My puffy, tight toes left odd impressions in the mud. As long as I focused on moving forward,
I avoided thinking about all the dead around me—and the reality that I might just find Vader and Tante Greet or Indah and Slamet among them.

After hours of slow progress, at last, we passed what had been the edge of the jungle and beheld Anjer.

No amount of mental preparation would have ever been enough. Even the darkest, most insidious workings of my imagination could never have conjured the scene before us.

A new pain struck me as I gazed out over the remains of my home.

I pushed Sister Hilde's spectacles up, hoping to wake from the nightmare in front of me, but Brigitta confirmed what I knew in my heart was the reality.

“Nothing's left,” she whispered.

“Ja.”

I thought the first wave had been bad. But now, there truly was nothing. Not a single building, not a wall, not even fences stood. Only splinters remained where homes and offices once sat. Small bits of shredded bark and twigs were all that remained of trees. Even the huge stones of the Catholic church had been scattered like beach sand. There was nothing to indicate that a town had been here. That people had lived here.

Anjer had been annihilated.

I swayed, and Brigitta steadied me. My heart pounded in my ears.

Brigitta gasped and pointed. “Katrien, look. The lighthouse.”

The sturdy Anjer lighthouse that once rested so proudly on its rocky spit of land was gone.

In its place was a piece of coral so large and heavy that it had obliterated the stone beacon. I never realized nature had that much power.

Brigitta squeezed my hand. “There are so many people, Katrien.”

It was true. Bodies were strewn everywhere. What was, three days ago, a thriving, beautiful town full of thousands of vibrant, healthy people was now nothing but an open mass grave.

A numbness settled over me.

“We should see if anyone needs help,” she said.

“Needs help?” I gestured to the devastation. “Is anyone even alive?”

She bit her lip. “Someone has to be. Don't they? We can't be the only survivors.”

I wasn't sure about that, and I was suddenly gripped again with the dreadful fear that somewhere down there I might find Vader and Tante Greet.

As we wove around the dead, Brigitta called out the names of those she knew. She recognized so many. “There's Mrs. Van Tassel. And that's Mr. Bleeker. Over there is . . .” Her voice faded.

“Who?”

“Adriaan Vogel.” She stared at the body about halfway between us.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't say anything.

“I hope he found his brother before . . . well . . . before . . .” She let out a watery breath.

I turned away. I had no interest in identifying bodies, only in finding my family. “Vader! Tante Greet!” My voice rang out across the desolation.

Behind me, Brigitta continued moving through the bodies. “Oh, no.”

“What?” I made my clumsy way toward her. My swollen feet were acting like heavy clubs as I stepped gingerly through the carnage. “Is it Vader?”

“No.” She shook her head. “It's old Mrs. Schoonhoven. She always called me ‘Bibby' and never seemed to remember my real name.”

“How can you tell that's her?” All that was visible was the back of a yellow blouse and gray hair.

“She always wore a yellow blouse. Did you not notice?”

“Oh.” I didn't notice. For all my observational skills, I never
paid much attention to details about other people. “I never realized it was always.”

The thought weighed heavily upon me. I had lived here my whole life. Could I not name anyone in this mass of death? Perhaps if there was just one person lying before me, like Sister Hilde, or even a few at a time, then I could identify them. But the hundreds scattered around us now were too much.

I took a wobbling step over another body and then fell. Brigitta caught me before I crashed into the corpse. When I saw its face, I gasped. There was no mistaking its identity, and I immediately decided it had been easier not knowing.

“Is it your aunt? Or your father?” she asked, trying to steady me.

I shook my head. “It's Wilhemina De Graff.”

“From the hotel?”

I nodded.

We knelt beside her. “She was so nice,” I said. “She lent me a handkerchief to get home in the ash.” As I spoke I realized that made two people whose kindness—and handkerchiefs—had helped me since the eruption. I wished I could tell Wilhemenia and Sister Hilde how grateful I was.

“She waved at me whenever she saw me,” Brigitta said, brushing Wilhemina's hair out of her eyes.

“I used to think she was independent and adventurous.”

“Why?”

“Because she had come here from the Netherlands all alone. But then she told me she was only trying to find a rich husband. That's why she came to Java.” Disappointment filled my voice, and I instantly regretted it. Wilhemina had had a dream, and her dream didn't come true.

“That's ridiculous,” Brigitta said.

Amazed that she and I agreed about something like husband-hunting, I said, “I thought so, too.”

“She should have stayed in the Netherlands. I imagine you would find richer men in Amsterdam.”

I smiled wryly as Brigitta helped me to my feet.

Picking our way past more and more friends and neighbors, we reached the shoreline. The tide was in and the coral was covered, and then our living nightmare became something far worse.

“My God,” Brigitta murmured, and crossed herself.

Floating in the Sunda Strait were more bodies, as far as the eye could see. In every direction. Nothing but bodies.

“It looks like they go all the way to Sumatra,” I whispered.

A mournful awe filled her voice. “So many people, Katrien. How could so many people die at one time?”

“The waves.” They tore through Anjer and ravaged not just buildings, but people, too. They seemed to have taken every person they met. Except us.

And maybe, maybe my father and my aunt.

But I still could not find them. Turning my mind from darker thoughts, I shifted my gaze to Krakatau. A choked cry escaped my throat.

“What?” Brigitta clutched my arm. “What is it?”

“Krakatau.” I squinted through Sister Hilde's spectacles. “It's gone!”

“Don't be silly. How can an island be gone?”

I pointed where the island used to stand.

“That's not poss—” She stopped when she saw.

Where Krakatau once stood, guarding the entrance to the Sunda Strait, there was now nothing. I scoured my memory to find an instance in history of a volcano erupting and disappearing. But I could think of nothing. “Vader would know,” I muttered to myself.

But he was not here. Nor was Tante Greet.

My feet began hurting again, and I let the pain overwhelm me. At least this kind of agony I knew and understood. The gritty beach sand cut into the soles of my swollen feet like glass. I needed to get off them.

I found a small patch of beach and sat, extending my legs straight in front of me. My back slumped, and my mind went blank.

I had no idea what to do next.

Brigitta found a space next to me, and we sat in silence.

The water lapped the shore with gentle waves and soothing sounds.

They were so different from the monstrous ones that had changed everything I knew.

My toes, red and sausagelike, were nearly unrecognizable. Somewhere along our journey I had lost Sister Hilde's handkerchief. I pulled my feet close and rubbed them. Pain shot through my legs and I hissed aloud. I stopped rubbing.

The sun crawled across the sky as the afternoon wore on. It warmed my skin and tickled my scalp.

Everything about the feeling of the beach was normal. The breeze cooled my face. The sand danced across my fingers.

I wished it were possible to imagine away all the destruction and loss of life. All the fear and misery.

Still Brigitta and I sat.

We didn't move.

We didn't speak.

I let the truth wash over me. Vader and Tante Greet were gone. I would never see them again. Vader would never again encourage me to use logic. Tante Greet would never again try to make me more ladylike.

I squeezed my eyes shut as memories flooded over me in a rush more powerful than any giant wave.

Vader. Taking me into the jungle for the first time. Pointing to the stars and telling me their names. Encouraging me to collect beetles. Giving me a copy of
On the Origin of Species
. Teaching me Latin.

Tante Greet. Arriving in Anjer. Digging in her flower garden. Correcting my posture and language. Lecturing me about judging people. Making me read books other than Mr. Charles Darwin's. Teaching me to cook.

Brigitta and I were, quite possibly, the only people alive in Anjer. Perhaps even the only people alive for kilometers.

The only people alive.

I broke down and great, gulping dry heaves wracked my body. But I shed no tears. I was so thirsty; my body had no water to spare.

Brigitta wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close. I sobbed and moaned for long moments, and she soothed me, rubbing my back and whispering a song.

“Full moon, full moon

are you a guard at night

high in the starry sky?

Full moon, full moon

I look at you and I'm

sure that you smile.”

When I quit hiccupping, I sat up and wiped my eyes out of habit.

Somewhere, among those thousands of bodies surrounding us, were Vader and Tante Greet. I had to find them. “Help me find them.” I clutched Brigitta's arm.

“Find who?” She, too, had no tears, but grief contorted her face.

“My father and my aunt.”

She removed her arm from my grasp. “They're dead, Katrien. Surely you know that.” Her voice, gentle and soothing, was not the harsh slap I expected.

“I do know, Brigitta. Why do you think I was crying?” My own
tone was far harsher than hers. “But I want to find them. I want to bury them.”

“Bury them? Have you lost your mind?” There was the Brigitta I remembered. “How do you propose to do that?”

“By digging a hole and placing them in it.” Had the sun affected her brain? I thought she was clever. How else did she think I would bury them?

She rolled her eyes. “You don't have a shovel. Or a spade! Even if you could find them, you could never get them buried. Think, Katrien!”

I flinched as she echoed Vader's words. But I also thought. It was almost instinct. “Then I'll use my hands! Like I did with that baby.”

She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “They're much larger than that baby. You're not making sense. There are thousands of bodies here. It would take weeks to get all those bodies out of the ocean.”

“I don't care! Mr. Charles Darwin says,
‘Shells and bones decay and disappear when left on the bottom of the sea.'
We have to find them before that happens.”

“Stop quoting Darwin! They're dead, Katrien. They're all dead. Whether you find them or not, they're not coming back. I saw my family. Nothing was left but a shell. All the life was gone.”

In my delirium I seized on false hopes once more. “That's just it, Brigitta! I don't know they're gone. I haven't seen their bodies. Maybe . . . maybe . . . I don't know . . . maybe they survived!”

Brigitta stared at me with eyes full of pity. Pity! From Brigitta Burkart! “Katrien, do you truly think that's possible? Look around you.”

I pushed Sister Hilde's spectacles up and reality set in again.

She was right. I would never find them. They were lost within this faceless mass of death along with everyone else.

And yet . . . there were survivors somewhere. There had to be. Which meant maybe help was out there, too. Not all of Java had been inundated by the waves. The forest around the clearing was still
there. Raharjo was still in the jungle. The water hadn't destroyed everything.

Brigitta wrapped her arms around me again. “We're all each other has,” she said, repeating my words to her from days ago.

“How can you be handling this so well? Why haven't you flown into hysterical fits?”

“I told you I was stronger than you knew. And this isn't the jungle anymore, Katrien.” She gestured to the devastation. “This isn't bugs or animals that might eat me, or dangerous people. There is no threat here.”

“No,” I whispered, taking in the bodies around us. They blanketed the ground like a new layer of earth.

“Of course, now that we've reached Anjer, I don't know what to do. I admit, I wasn't expecting this.”

“Nor I.” I thought for a minute, as Vader taught me. “We still need food and water.”

Brigitta nodded. “Where are we going to find anything?”

“We should head north.” My instincts told me that was the way to go. I would trust my instincts, as any animal would.

“Why?” she said.

“Maybe we'll find something farther north. Farther from Krakatau.”

“Merak,” she suggested. “Maybe Merak is unharmed.”

Merak was on the coast, too, about twenty kilometers from Anjer.

Twenty kilometers.

That never seemed far when Vader and Tante Greet and I took a wagon. But on foot, through this devastation, with no food or water—twenty kilometers may as well have been two thousand.