KUDA Puti

Copyright © 2012 B E Holland

The right of B E Holland to be identified as the Author of the Work has been

asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

Published in the United States by

CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS

SMASHWORDS EDITION

All the characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons,

living or dead, is purely coincidental.

INDEX

I 1947 The Kimberleys, Western Australia

II 1948-49 Cape Leveque, Western Australia

III 1950-54 Gippsland, Victoria

IV 1963-63 Forever beach, Beagle Bay, WA

V 1976 The Hague, Netherlands

VI 1978-80 Singapore

VII 1995 Melbourne, Victoria

VIII 1942-45 Koepang, Timor

IX 2005 Gippsland, Victoria

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B. E. Holland, an Australian oil and gas engineer has been an inveterate traveller, his work taking him to more than fifty countries. This debut novel has been in the pipeline for about ten years. Several other unpublished stories are waiting for retirement. The Author lives in Western Australia, has a small fishing boat he never finds time to launch and a vintage car whose restoration remains on hold.

The story, spanning seventy years, tells of despair and hope, and love won and lost. When World War II was finally over, migrants from all over the world arrived in Australia to escape the hardships they had endured. They made lives for themselves despite the prejudices levelled by the old Australians.

Refugees was not the buzzword then – they were migrants, the new Australians.

This is one of their stories...

The cover photograph was taken by Ken Stanford who kindly granted permission for its use.

PART I

1945-1947

Kimberley Ranges, Western Australia

The heart of the lighting plant, the noisy generator had shut down.

In the silence following, a bank of batteries powered the few lights illuminating windows in the corrugated iron clad building. On the veranda a bare bulb swung from its frayed cord, copper visible through the perished rubber. The lamp filament yellowed as the day approached and the light from the dull bulb crept through the louvers, barely lighting the iron-framed bed where the young girl turned, waking.

Uncomfortable and unable to relate to her surroundings, she blinked. As her eyes became accustomed to the low light, the wall displayed an eerie silhouette. Between the light and the shadow, she imagined a hooded buckram robe. Something about the shape stirred a recollection in her past. She heard a clicking sound emanating from beneath the coarse garb. She had heard the noise before however, could not focus her memory. From under the cowl, dull eyes stared malevolently at her. A trail of incense smoke left a foul smell, accompanying the shrouded figure as it moved towards the doorway.

Afraid, she hunched her shoulders to fend off a shiver. She held her breath and lay quietly. The young girl rolled her eyes without turning her head, watching the back of the form traversing the length of the room. She waited for the profile to recede. Her lungs screamed for air, her ears popping then an involuntary expulsion through clenched teeth. She used her hand to cover her mouth, gagging any sound.

A dream...?

The figure of a man but his garb gave him an amorphous shape.

Once the sinister figure departed there was silence. She dredged her memory without recall. What was the smell... something in her recent past she should remember?

A beam of light from a hand held torch beside her bed caused her to start. She lay motionless, taking another deep breath. A few seconds elapsed while her heightened senses took in the new circumstances. This light did not carry an aura of terror, this time her twitching nose did not detect the foul stench or any click – click – click.

Her initial fear allayed, she relaxed. Breathing slowly, she closed her eyes. Somebody moved to the end of her bed. She sensed the visitor pluck the chart from the box hanging there. The new activity comforted her as opposed to fear she had experienced. She squinted through the narrowest of slits formed by her eyelids. In the low light, a beautiful visage stared intently at the periodic scribbling on the chart. She watched the woman replace the chart and move to the adjacent bed to repeat the activity. In spite of the calming experience this created, the girl’s fears lingered. She closed her eyes, feigning sleep and waited for the person with the flashlight to visit all the beds in the long room. Strangers, oblique shadows, foul odours, an unfamiliar place.

The girl became more comfortable as the woman with the flashlight left by the door at the other end of the room. Now quiet, she felt safer. She listened intently, but the only sound was the breathing and wheezing noises emanating from the adjacent beds. The low light did not allow recognition, her neighbours simply bumps in the linen.

The room felt like a hospital, however she had no idea where she was. Her lack of knowledge and fear, notwithstanding, she needed answers. Gingerly swinging her legs over the side of the squeaking iron bed, the girl stood. Her head spun.

While she gained her composure, she took in her surroundings, the room long and narrow and the walls white. The concrete floor was not cold in spite of her bare feet. She wore nothing more than a calico gown but felt warm. A thin slit of light emanating from the bottom of a third door facing her illuminated the legs sprouting from the calico smock. The sight of the legs surprised her… as if she was seeing them for the first time. The legs were not unattractive, simply unfamiliar, and more like her mother’s legs.

She moved towards the slit of light and pushed against the flimsy wooden panel that was the door. The hand at the end of her arm was not as she remembered. Her fingers seemed longer and now slender. The nails appeared manicured.

The door swung open silently, the light inside illuminating the small bathroom and WC. The girl entered, closing the door. A reflection stared back from the angled framed mirror above the basin. Initially, the reflection appeared to be that of a stranger. On closer examination the reflection was not alien but not the image the girl anticipated. She stared at the figure in the mirror, waved her right hand… the figure waved back in perfect unison. She turned and the image spun with her, the calico robe she wore flared. Fastened with three ribbons down the back, the robe gaped. She touched the protruding cheeks, checking if the image was hers.

The last time she looked at herself in a mirror, she was a child. Now the figure of a woman filled the hospital gown she wore. Unsure of the extent to which this metamorphosis had occurred, she slipped the robe over her head. The image surprised her. Embarrassed, as if she had been caught staring at a naked stranger, the girl saw a tall and slender woman. Youthful breasts, ending in pink nipples, rose from the chest she remembered as boyish. The stomach she recalled as a small ball-shaped belly appeared flat and smooth. She adjusted the mirror, looking at the forest of hair covering her pubic area. This hair, light in colour and long and smooth, obscured the mounded pudenda at the top of her legs.

Her recollection brought her to the present. Where were her parents? She recounted what she remembered, making a mental list. The cowled figure traversing the length of the room woke and frightened her. The beautiful woman behaved like a nurse and the hospital-like quality about the building.

She had no answers only questions. In a hospital... why, she was not ill, a little wobbly maybe but she should not be in hospital.

She thought about her circumstances. There may be an explanation for her hospitalisation, but how had she aged overnight?

With only a thin wall between an inside passage and the bathroom, she heard footsteps in the passage. The foul smell again assailed her aquiline nose, associating the smell with the black figure. She heard again the click – click – click of the spectre approaching. Terrified, she chose to leave.

She donned the calico robe and moved back to the iron bed, quickly looking for more clothing. She found nothing except for a pair of felt slippers tucked at the foot of the bed. In the half-light, some kind of formal document and small squares of newsprint from a journal lay on the bedside table. She needed to leave and did not round the bed to fetch them. Her hands were full with the slippers and the blanket she had stripped from the bed. The clicking sound came closer. She moved quietly through the room, further from the fearsome apparition. The question nagged. ‘How had this room aged her so fast?’ Beyond her comprehension, she knew the answer would be here in this place, but she was not waiting. She had to go, the smell – the odour of evil – clung in the air. She stopped at the door, cautiously poking her nose out like a timid pup. The outside air was pure and inviting.

The young woman stumbled across the concrete veranda, entering the velvet darkness of the night. The silhouette of other buildings scattered around the compound offered shelter. They were not illuminated and the light from the veranda did not penetrate the darkness. Her comfort level rose as she crouched against the building. She fitted the slippers and adjusted the blanket she had brought from the bed to cover her shoulders. She waited, squatting on her haunches in the shadow of the adjacent building, her eyes adjusting to the darkness.

Her sixth sense alerted her to somebody watching her. Not a threatening stare, her head turned to seek the watcher. In the blackness of the shadow cast by the building opposite her, she made out a human shape. She concentrated, focusing her eyes. She could outline the form of two people... an adult, and a child, not very old, clinging to the adult’s legs. There was no threat. The pair cringed, trying to get closer to the wall. With a thousand questions swimming in her fuzzy brain, the girl moved towards them in a crouched, cat-like manner, keeping close to the wall and sprinting furtively between buildings. As she had suspected, they were dark-skinned people.

The woman ignored the girl’s first words, unable to comprehend the Temo phrase she spoke. Repeating herself in Bahasa, the girl said, 'Jangan Takut.' Don’t be afraid.

'Saya tidak takut, sama kamu,' the dark woman replied. I am not afraid of you.

They continued their conversation in Bahasa. The woman pointed to the veranda and with a mock shiver indicating fear, she said, 'Debil Norby.' The dark woman said he wanted to keep her daughter, explaining she was waiting for another woman who had gone to collect her children from the dormitory. The girl told her she wanted to leave as well. The dark skinned woman replied, inviting the girl to go with them. Soon another woman and two small children appeared. They appeared black, the girl mused, much darker than the brown-skinned natives with whom she had a lifetime of experience.

An immediate and common trust became apparent. As the two women and the three children walked off in single file, the young woman joined them. From the confident manner in which they set off into the scrub, they knew where they were going.

The track took them past a white church building where the girl had second thoughts about following these native women to an unknown destination. A church meant a priest, someone she could trust. She slowed and took in the structure. There were no lights, but soon it would be morning and the priest would come for early mass. The party noticed her hesitation, waiting for her. The first woman beckoned. Pointing at the white coral building, the woman shook in mock horror, 'Debil Norby.'

The young girl followed the women. The hospital and church must be associated. What scared her had an association with this place. Leaving would put ground between her and the spectral shape haunting her.

The slippers were too big and she continued to step out of them. Betty, the second woman with the two children, kept looking over her shoulder, her aspiration to escape hampered by a skinny white girl who could not keep up.

Mary gave a yell, giving chase to something. Running into the sandy scrub, leaving the group behind. Betty held up her hand, a signal for the girl to stop. She took a strand of string made of twisted hair from the belt around her waist, dropped to her knee and tied a ligature around each of the slippers flapping on the girl’s feet. The young woman attempted to thank her in Bahasa. Betty smiled but gave no indication of comprehension. She smiled back.

Betty and the children moved off and she followed. The laced slippers made walking easier, and the pace picked up as they moved in a single line across the unmarked scrub country. Mary soon re-joined them, a large lizard slung over her shoulder that reached halfway down her back. They walked into the morning sun and the orange sky revealed the desolate scene. During the darkness it had appeared as jungle, in the morning light tinder dry scrub. Trails invisible to the girl during the night, cut across the scrub in all directions. Nevertheless, the two women continued and with a slight turn east, they were on the beach.

The girl watched as they gathered driftwood and effortlessly struck a fire from the heat of the friction between two dry sticks. When the fire had died down to coals, Mary lay the lizard on it, poking it with a green stick, pushing the dead, yet twitching, creature into the coals as it cooked.

The women conversed in a language incomprehensible to the girl. They did not attempt to include her. Nothing was familiar, nothing as she envisaged. She wondered if she was dreaming... if so it was a nightmare.

As the group squatted around the fire, waiting for the meat to cook, one of the children came close and stroked the pale skin on the girl’s forearm. The touch of the small black-skinned finger on her arm made her smile and she received one in return. A bond developed, the small black girl clinging to her arm. She tried to converse in Bahasa with the child.

'Apa nama kamu?' What is your name? There was no response. She repeated the question a little louder.

Mary overheard the question and responded. 'Nama dia, Molly. Dia saya punya anak.' Huge smiles and giggles rippled through the group, the ice broken. Mary repeated, in English, '’er name Molly. My daughter.'

Although the tall blonde girl understood the Bahasa, the spoken English was garbled mumblings.

'What is your name, Missy?' Mary asked in English. When she received no response, she repeated her question in Bahasa.

The girl’s face screwed up and a worried look crossed her countenance, leaving deep ruts. 'I do not know,' she responded. It became obvious to Mary if she were to have a conversation with this fragile girl. She would need to give her a name. She will call her Missy, and talk in Bahasa.

That they both spoke Bahasa came by chance. Mary gained her unique knowledge of Bahasa during a relationship with a stranded trochus gatherer. His plight started when he fell overboard from a pinici, a fishing boat he sailed from Indonesia. The boats came annually to harvest the highly prized shellfish found on the coral shoals of Australia’s northern waters. In the past, the trochus ended up on the tables of oriental royalty, and thanks to these hardy fishers, the harvest continued a thousand year legacy.

They had their fill of the sweet, oily, white meat of the lizard. Finished, they drank from the communal stream where a sweet spring broke from the bank. There was evidence of many feasts at this spot. Discarded shells of various bivalves littered the area and mounded up in a heap, seemed to point to the spring.

The group gathered their possessions and trudged along the beach. Mary led and the piccaninnies filled in the space between Betty and Mary. Missy stumbled along behind, trying to maintain her place. She marvelled at the thick soles on the feet of the group, who never faltered whether walking on the hot sand or through the tussock grass, known as spinifex. The awl-shaped pointed leaves cut her legs and pierced the rubber soles of the roped-on slippers, impeding her progress.

The scenery was unfamiliar. She expected to be in homeland surroundings. She appeared to have lost the ability to recall. All that she could remember was her recent experience. She remembered her escape, and the walk – before that nothing.

In front of her and to the right, a large grey animal sprang from its cover and bounded off. The girl recognised the leaping gait as that of a kangaroo, an image from a book. Was this her memory returning or an extension of her nightmare?

Mary gave out with a shout. She ran after the large creature, which sped away easily outstripping the overweight matron. Mary gave up after a short distance, rejoining the group as Missy was cautiously navigating a small stream. Soon they started up a sandy hill, which appeared to create a headland jutting out into the azure sea. The group continued to move forward, keeping parallel to the beach. There seemed to be an unwritten discipline keeping them together, although the children’s natural exuberance led them off the track, returning from time to time with small bunches of grass or herbs. The women would inspect the weeds, tucking the occasional fruitful bunch away in either of their dillies.

A red sandy headland punctuated the end of the sand cove and they trudged up over the sparse red rocks scoured by countless seasons. In contrast with the previous beach, this area was absolutely unlike any part of the girl’s homeland.

Her thinking became more coherent. The kangaroo and the landscape made her realise she had been transported to Australia. She knew her home was in the Dutch East Indies in a town called Koepang on the large island of Timor. She knew she was Dutch although she had never been to Holland, being born in the Nederland East Indies.

‘Where in Australia?’ She wondered.

Although steep, the climb was not high, and soon they crested the brow of the short peninsula. The tide was receding, the white beach growing, widening, but becoming a darker shade of grey as the silty bed of the tidal flats became exposed. She was alone at the top of the hillock as the others scampered down the escarpment.

She took stock of her situation from her lofty vantage point, ticking off what she knew on her fingers. In a strange place with almost naked strangers, only a hospital gown covered her fair skin. On her feet were stranger’s slippers, tied with hair string, starting to tear away from the moulded rubber sole. The patterned felt was full of spiky vegetation, which often penetrated and scratched her feet. The blanket she wore around her shoulders became a burden as the day heated up but she clung onto the grey coarse square with the blue stripe, knowing she would spend another night here in the wild. The option of returning to the hospital did not cross her mind. The circumstances concerned her, but the inability to account for her metamorphosis to someone older, worried her most. She squeezed her breasts once again to make sure the image in the mirror was still with her. How could this have happened? She invoked the immediate response – it must be a nightmare.

Her reverie was broken with a whooping call from the beach. Her black companions danced on the spot, beckoning her to join. Betty poked a roll of pasty dough into a pile of sea creatures bubbling in their own juice as the girl approached.

'Missy, Missy!' Mary called, holding up a pair of stout leather sandals. 'These belong you!' Pushing them into the girl’s hand, she produced a rolled bundle of cotton material. 'This one too!' Mary continued, her smile huge with strong white teeth and watermelon pink gums glistening in her black face.

Without recognising the shoes or the garment, the girl instinctively rolled out the cloth. A large rectangle of patterned cotton sewn along the edge, made it into a tube. The roll appeared to be a carryall containing several tee-shirt-style cotton chemises wrapped in sheets of a news magazine and a small leather satchel, which in turn held an oilskin envelope. Originally, a natural gum had sealed the envelope. The salt encrusted leather satchel indicated seawater immersion at some time.

Anxiously the girl fitted the sandals, and to her delight, they covered and caressed her foot, fitting like a glove. She untied the ribbons at the back of the gown, letting the calico rag fall to the ground. She enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her fair skin. She adopted a feline pose stretching her arms, legs and her back, before returning to the bounty, slipping a chemise over her head. Without any instruction, she stepped into the tube of cotton fabric, winding the excess around her waist, and with a deft twist, fixed the garb as a dress. She was pleased with her acquisition, now more comfortably clothed, in spite of the mode of undress adopted by her travelling companions. As she posed, the native women and children stood in an admiring circle, pointing and giggling as she transformed herself from a gangly naked sprite into an imperious woman of substance.

Her attempt to straighten the wet and rumpled newspaper caused it to clump in an unreadable mass. The date, November 1945, jumped off the page. Logic told her today must be after that date. She searched her memory, her most recent recall providing a reference for the year. The Japanese were coming a month before her twelfth birthday... in 1942. She had lost more than three years.

'These are your clothes, Missy,' Mary explained. 'Our mob found you crawling along the beach. We carried you to Beagle Bay,' Mary continued, as if that explained everything. 'We eat now.' Mary broke off a piece of the hot damper and shoved it into her hands. 'Eat!' the dark-skinned woman insisted. Missy broke the bread and waved it through the air to cool. It tasted good, with a hint of some herb she did not remember encountering before. She crushed the shellfish between two rocks. She gorged herself.

She sat back, satiated, rubbing her stomach. The day had become hotter and the relentless sun beat down on the girl’s head. Without forethought she gathered a bundle of broad leaf grass, dexterously plaited, and wove the vegetation into a conical coolie hat. 'How did I know how to do that?' She murmured.

She gathered her recollections, seeing herself as a small child at the feet of a brown-skinned man who appeared to be dressed in a sarong and sandals. His muscular chest was bare. Above his smiling face a black fez perched precariously on his head. The small girl handed a distressed bundle of grass to the man. 'Please make one for me? Please Syamsuddin.'

'No you must make your own hat. Your fair skin will burn without a hat.'

She muttered, 'The lesson must have stuck.' She admired the fine chapeaux she had created, looking skywards. 'Thank you Syamsuddin,' she said aloud, but softly. She remembered her father’s manservant. He and his wife Yati were as much a part of her family as her parents and brother.

The children had run into the water to gather more shellfish, the tasty molluscs loaded into the straw dillybag the women carried on their back, secured with a long, looping carry-strap across their forehead. As the tide receded and more of the beach became exposed, the women and children dexterously plucked the shells from the sand with their feet and dropped them into the bags.

Missy stared out to sea, half-watching her group but intrigued by a shape rising out of the ocean, appearing as a shadow. As the water receded, it quickly took the shape of an aircraft’s tail section. A familiarity about the aircraft stirred some recall in her consciousness.

Screams and shouts from the fishing party interrupted her reverie. She watched anxiously as they ran from the water. She jumped to her feet and ran towards the beach. ‘What is the problem?’ the girl asked in Bahasa.

Mary was much calmer now. She had gathered her clan close to her and out of the water. Mary held up her hand, waggling her fingers and thumb to indicate a biting action, 'A big crocodile out there,' pointing towards the plane. 'You see him?'

The shallow water frothed in a white ring and a thin dark shape rose and fell in the circle. 'He’s eating plenty fish,' Betty said. The words unintelligible to the girl, but the pointing finger explained what was happening.

Chased from the water by the crocodile, they took stock. The women decided they had sufficient shellfish and packed to move off. Mary rounded up the group, hiding the grinding stone and the mortar under about six inches of sand, placing shells in a pattern visible to all. To those in the know, the shells provided a coded instruction of the grinding stone's position, by this process sharing the cooking utensils between wandering members of the same tribe.

The small group struck out southwest, the sun high above their head. The ground rose slightly, taking an hour to gain a view of the several bays. The beaches making up the coast unfolded at their feet. The tide had receded and the plane was exposed, the wings and the engine nacelles clearly visible. The small entrance appeared as a black hole, and she stared at it. Images danced in the girl’s consciousness, initiating recollections. A tall shadow appeared to stand in front of her. A memory returned. From the shadow she heard a booming voice.

His lip curled spitting out the words with venom. 'He’s dead. I’ll take his share of the diamonds too.'

A greedy look appeared in the tall shadow’s eyes. Her own words echoed back to her. 'AC gave his payment to Ema in Koepang. The diamonds are yours anyway...'

'Well, then...' the booming voice paused for effect, 'I’ll take them now.'

She passed him the envelope. Vaguely, she recalled saying, 'We had agreed on you having the pick of the stones.' The towering figure took the envelope, gave a crooked smile and slipped the stones into the pocket of his bush shirt.

He gave a grunt and looked down. Her eyes followed. The tall shadow's feet were under water. Something was wrong. Inside the seaplane, there should not be any water...

'What have you done, Kuda, you little bitch?' The voice in her head boomed. 'Kuda, we’re sinking. You pulled the plug.'

She could see water bubbling in from a hole in the fuselage next to a lifeless body floating face down. 'You shot a hole in the plane,' she levelled accusingly. 'You sank the plane.' She wondered where the calm rationale came from, considering her situation, trapped in a flying boat on the high seas with a dead man and a homicidal maniac.

There was no sound just still, dry air. These thoughts were her head. She stood on the crest watching the plane appear to rise from the water. Although she knew she was on the shore with her small group of native friends, she sensed the warm heavy weapon in her hand and felt the sticky blood congealing on her fingers. She shook her hand as if to shake free the imaginary pistol.

From behind her the voice came again. 'Kuda, you little bitch.' The words sounded so clear, the girl spun around to see who had spoken them. Nobody was there. The booming voice became softer now, 'Kuda. You shot me.' A gargling noise muted the harsh edge, the voice of a stranger yet with familiar words. She had heard them before.

Kuda was her name.

She started to remember. She flew from her home in Timor in that plane. There had been a lot of trouble, and she had flown to Australia. The plane had put down here off the coast, the pilot and the engineer were dead, and she had blood on her hands. She looked around, greeted by the smiling faces of her current companions.

'Apa Susa, Missy?' Mary asked.

She could be in trouble if she presented to anyone resembling authority, she mused. Kuda chose to stay with the small group.

'I remember now. My name is Kuda. Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. We can go now,' she replied, comfortable with her clothes and shoes and secure with her newfound friends. She looked out to sea again. The incoming tide was covering the plane. Soon it would be gone. Kuda murmured to herself, 'I am recalling more now – I am Dutch, I came by plane and crew is dead. And one more thing I just remembered, the diamonds were under the staircase.'

*****

The space under any staircase is limited, unusable for an adult but a secret kingdom for a small child. Visions of the space under the staircase filled the recall of Kuda as she travelled with the native women. Nothing she remembered explained her transport from her home in Koepang to this hot dry desert in Australia.

The stairs and the diamonds became a recurring memory as she followed her companions across the spinifex plain. Her brother Bernhard had given her the space when he grew too big for games. He, in turn, had inherited the space from his