Dutch Short Stories
The Defeated Dutchwoman…
The ships were burning, a maelstrom of fire, smoke, and ash that stung nostrils and blinded the bravest into cowardice. She leaped into the water, swimming in punishing waves and confusing waters, searching for anything to keep her afloat. In such chaos, thoughts come to her of her two children. Raised to take over her husband's shop, in a town not far from Germany, a neighboring country that grew bold and mighty, dangerous. Now in another continent, she struggles to survive in the East Indies.
An exploded furnace has caused a fire on the passenger ship, forcing all to evacuate. Where Janet will wash ashore, tomorrow will unveil. She drifts alone in the darkness.
Sunburnt. Dehydrated. Alive, Janet washes up on the shores of a foreign land. A Calvinist until her last breath, her predestination in life has been assured. What has not been assured is her work as a missionary. To spread her beliefs to the colonies. The Dutch East Indies. Fertile grounds for such conversion. She does have one consideration. Islam has spread across these lands. Her Christianity will need to contend with that.
If she ever returns to the Netherlands, she plans on having another child. Janet survived two childbirths. She will survive a third. She survived the disaster.
Wandering the shore, her crucifix necklace dangling above her bosom, she brings it to her lips, whispering to it in Dutch. The holiest Dutch she can muster. She pecks it and enters the vast jungle with nothing more than courage, determination, and ambition. She will build her church. She will preach to the locals. All will be judged and forgiven. Some may not make it. Some will make it. She will build paradise in the uncharted. If she meets those who speak her language and share her culture, she will judge them before her beliefs, not by their status or wealth. Christians all bow to the same ruler.
A day has gone by, hiding from wild animals, following dirt roads, and swatting bugs. She saw nothing to salvage on the beach, and if she did, only wreckage from the ship. The dirt roads have stopped long ago, as she wanders into a field, feeling the effects of dehydration. She stumbles to continue, growing dizzy, sweaty, and weak in her legs. She falters, defeated by nature itself. Her predicament after such ardent zealousness. The last she hears seems to be noises. Men speaking in a strange language. She sleeps, dreaming of her children, her husband, and their pets. She will be with them all soon.
Janet gasps awake when a dark-skinned girl of child-bearing age drops some items. Her face seems much different than Janet's: large eyes, full lips, round face. Janet speaks to this alarmed girl in Dutch. No use. Janet simply hears a gibberish language in return. She knows she must be in the Dutch East Indies, and by speaking Dutch, the girl has run off to Janet's perplexity. Janet has been treated, changed, and nurtured. Looking at her clothes, not at all comprehensible to something European, she gawks at them, how well they manage to fit. They must have found a way to clothe her during sleep.
The chieftain rushes in, haughty, proud, and guarded against Janet's presence. But in too comes a man wearing simpler clothes, nothing stupendous or excessive. Not like those in higher places, although they will always be lower to the divine, who judges them all. This man, perhaps the chieftain's advisor, bows in a gentlemanly way to Janet, smiling. He then speaks Dutch, akin to ice-cold water splashed on a sleepy face. She stares. He repeats himself, but she cuts him off. She controls the conversation, not this man. She stands up inside this wooden lodging, the same height as this chieftain. The girl hides behind the man, scared of Janet, shaking with mild terror. But Janet has no fear at all.
She demands in Dutch that every single person in the village be brought to her. She will then preach, and call upon those with divine light in their hearts to begin construction. The man does not seem to understand her. His Dutch seems to have exhausted itself. She takes off her necklace and presents it to them. The sign of the cross. Her duty. Her ambition is to bring a slice of paradise to these people, these unaware people who stare.
Janet will need 3 things: workers, patience, and paper. She will need to find a town. Except one of the items the girl dropped seems far too familiar. Janet picks it up.
A Dutch Bible. Her eyes widen with disbelief. The girl then approaches Janet, curious.
She points at it then Janet's necklace. Janet nods. She then points at Janet's head.
Janet nods again. The girl waits. She then points at the Bible and soon points at her head.
The Vision of Paradise…
Much work will need to be done, but the sentiment of Janet's vision dreamt after a long sleep, a sleep that divided her between two places, the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies, comes with uncertainty. She has a translator who at best can carry her point across, but at worst, confuses the locals’ faces. Her life has been spared at least, tended and followed by the girl, learning Dutch so she can understand what Janet has spent a lifetime trying to understand herself. Her beliefs were bolstered amid foreignness and strange surroundings. People here hold unusual beliefs, eat odd-looking foods, and still, want to learn about Janet, the outsider. The stranger that hails from a colonizing nation. The foreigner.
Janet dreams of a minimalistic community governed by biblical teachings and charity. Sharing, giving, nurturing, providing, helping, and congregating. Coming together to worship or to communicate as a whole. So many faces, young and old, male and female, happy or sad. Faces. People. All have a place in Janet's vision, so profound and magnetic. She gasps awake, realizing where she sleeps. The girl checks on her again, writing sentences in Dutch. Brilliance can be found in the jungle, in the wilds, and the obscure. At the rate she learns, in a month, she will converse in Dutch, write in Dutch, replace the current translator, more interested in other activities than translating. He seems distracted, smiling, and spaced out.
Two weeks have flown by, but a new community seems to be built as time passes along. Somewhere without the stress of money, politics, or tensions. Money. Janet knows why the Dutch came so far to seek such lands. Prosperity. The wealth hasn't circulated. It has made one country rich at the cost of somewhere becoming poor, sapped of its resources and natural wealth. The people made irrelevant, byproducts of rule. Janet finds money to be the ultimate corruptor. Greed, avarice, extravagance: vile detriments of the soul. The strife of human nature against spiritual duties. The girl seems curious to know more.
Janet has grown fond of her, seeing her as her right-hand woman, this young girl looking for a role model like many youths in the world. Time will tell if they've found that role model. Janet doesn't mind, she does mind that this girl keeps to her studies, doesn't let men talk her down, believes in her beliefs to get through the worst their world can throw at her, find the right person to love and marry, don't be picky about who, yet Janet could go on for many minutes, but such conversations would be better once she knows more Dutch. Enough to have deeper conversations, targeting her education, her beliefs, and her ambitions.
Work has made the days flow like streams of light and darkness across the starry sky, one a comet, the other a swath of darkness. Janet lays there, tanned from constant exposure to rich sunlight, watching the stars while villagers speak to her in a language she knows fundamentally. Taught to her by the current translator. The girl would do it but she gets headaches from learning Dutch. Janet has cried before a few villagers, talking about her family and homeland. She closes her eyes and feels her children. She daydreams and hears conversations with her husband. Agony doesn't do these feelings justice. She writes to no one in her makeshift journal. Akin to looking at a dirty, old mirror. The girl watching Janet jot down things into bullet points.
The village girl has so much time and energy. What she chooses to do with it will be irrevocable. Forever.
Not Enough Time, Not Enough Willpower…
Janet used her fingers to show the village girl how it should look. The local church. Somehow, it got crooked and now looked slanted. The village girl frowned with agreement because her home past the trees and foliage had no crookedness in it. Janet knew this too, meeting the girl's family, finding them hospitable, and though she grasped the local language better than before, with assistance from the girl, gorging on the Bible like a voracious, scholarly theologian, Janet missed speaking Dutch. For every time she glimpsed this Bible, seeing the Dutch, homesickness engulfed her like a tidal wave, swirling and sucking her into this undertow vortex of melancholic gloom. She wanted to hold her children again, be with her husband, and see the grazing cows in the meadows. The resting chickens. The cantering horses.
Everywhere around her has been jungle and dirt roads, paths she preferred not to take, even if the villagers took them regularly. She would rather not know where they lead, perhaps the water, which when she asked, seemed closer than she realized. A day or two away. The village girl seemed keen on the trek, but the chieftain and his sometimes translator, busy supervising the remaining construction of a school, disapproved of this decision, mainly because the foreign woman could pose a threat to the entire village if she left with a local. Or just maybe, the village girl would have something else to read in Dutch than one book. The Good Book. She already can hold a conversation with Janet, speaking politely and informally, though Janet prefers polite speech. She told the village girl that Dutch officials would understand proper Dutch better than words spoken to children and intimate partners. The village girl seemed enamored by that other example. An intimate partner. They must all look like Janet, so white and tall, so intelligent and educated. Janet smiled as they laughed.
Neither of them went beyond the village, only into the jungle to gather wood for fire. Alone with the village girl, Janet asked if she had a person in mind. The village girl did. Janet then asked if she could receive a name, or some description about the person, assuming a boy. But she was stunned by the description. Not a boy, but a girl. The village girl, this personal translator and often assistant, caught another girl her age, a young adult, bathing in the past year. What was meant to be routine and normal became abnormal and memorable. Something, a flash of hotness, occurred in her. She couldn't view women the same ever again. She viewed women like how Janet viewed her husband. In that way.
Janet took this in with silence, understanding the danger within this village girl's preference. She instructed the village girl to keep such a preference to herself from now on, and if she dared act upon it, she could not stay in the village. She must flee, but now, Janet's curiosity consumes her. If she had to flee for her safety, would she take this other girl with her, or leave her be, to remain a question for countless months, if not years, and if so, could she discover that same spark again elsewhere? Even so, the village girl would need to survive to fall in love again. When Janet asked this question, the village girl didn't even blink. She won’t wait anymore. She will express herself when she sees the other girl again. She will give her the truth.
A truth with consequence. Janet and the village girl collected enough firewood, carrying it back to the village, smelling a roasting boar. A tribal society transforming into some society very mutated from Janet’s own back home. Janet warned the village girl that love makes people do irrational things. She must show caution and consideration. Plan out exactly what she will express and consider all the possible answers, like a scientific formula, something the village girl seemed confounded by. Science. Of course, science would be fiction in these parts. Janet grumbled. A Dutch education was in order. To put these locals on a suitable, efficient playing field.
But the occasional translator rushed towards them. Dutchmen have been spotted.
Fight into a Flight…
There wasn't enough time to understand all the variables other than Dutchmen, under the command of a Dutch general, perhaps a dozen kilometers away, were advancing onto their village. Janet demanded further information, seeing the fright in the village girl's eyes, not understanding what Dutchmen could mean other than fear or awe. The translator tried to grab answers from nearby, panicky villagers, their distress heightened and inflated with dreadful terror. Nothing seemed to translate other than Dutchmen had been spotted, yet Janet demanded if they were soldiers or perhaps merchants, shipwreck survivors, or somebodies. She received little more than a faint utterance as the translator abandoned any further assistance.
It was never supposed to end up like this, her idyllic peace shattered by countrymen. Looking around the village, worrisome chatter hung in the air like the very humidity that hung in her lungs. She cleared her throat and got the village girl to gather her belongings, anything she needed, and give goodbyes to her family. She might have to flee if they turn out to be soldiers, not innocent travelers. Janet snorted and wiped her sweaty brow, staring at the translator who seemed lost, if not accepting whatever end shall befall them. Janet barked for the girl to move, standing still with dread. She made haste, gone with her anxieties and perhaps the Dutch Bible. Janet could shepherd her to safety, but if they emerged as soldiers, not wayward sailors, a woman's voice would be crushed under male might. Any arguing or negotiating would be in Janet's favor, not the village girl's. Janet could assume what soldiers were capable of if left alone. Not God's will, that was for sure, so Janet gathered her belongings too, moving through all the palpable panic.
She heard some young men speak of battle and victory, but she chastised them that if Dutch soldiers came, none of them would survive a battle. They must prioritize life. One of them shoved her to the ground as the others laughed. For a Dutch woman, she wasn't that strong after all. They left with their weapons, fantasizing about war. Janet didn't bother looking at them, instead, she met eyes with the village girl, ready to depart with her belongings in a satchel. Tears streamed down her eyes, those tears of having to abandon the one place she had known all her life. Her paradise. Her home. Her comfort. Taken away by a foreign power which made Janet growl.
Life wasn't cheap, yet the imperialists had no problem showing the bitter reality. Power governed like status reigned. Lands and seas fell into spheres of influence. These feelings stuck with Janet, who took the girl's hand, stood up, and found courage again. They had to abandon a newly built church, adjacent to a school, and shouldered by a prayer room, expected to be a clinic one day. They fled into the jungle, though once they did, Janet realized she had forgotten her belongings and rushed back, running towards a place where distressed murmurs became audible screams. Janet wasn't paying attention, heading straight to her hut to grab what she could. What she failed to hear too was the chieftain trying to rally the villagers, except the moment she exited the hut, she was halted by warriors, glaring at her.
They seized her, took her towards the chieftain, and before the whole villagers, the chieftain showed her a bitter reality. All those newspapers she read about the East Indies, how life was different compared to anything a Dutchwoman could know, or the mysticism, which swirled and flew in the wind like ritualistic smoke, could mesmerize all it touched, and of course, the adventure that gripped the hearts of the bold, those daring enough to journey into its mysteries. It was all a fantasy.
A Dutch regiment was marching towards the village. Her village. Her past paradise.
Relocated Home…
It all happened so fast. But now, she was in Dutch military custody, debriefed first then analyzed like some puzzle. Survivors were made subjects of Dutch authority, yet the village girl couldn't be found, lost in the jungle, gone far away, off to recreate another paradise. Christianity, the Dutch language, and local culture: an image that made Janet smirk, though it did not help the interrogative officer, perplexed by her smirk. He furrowed his bushy, white eyebrows and wiped his hawk nose, above a thick, white moustache. It felt so strange hearing her native language again, forced to wait in a military office, forced to return home. Back to her real home. The officer ignored her smirk and explained further to her the return route. She heard soldiers marching, men writing, and horses trotting along the dirt roads.
The officer then leaned back, smoking his cigar, and asked her if she knew the local language. She did, so he grunted, studying her closely, his dark eyes shifting slowly. He coughed and told her she had two choices: return to her true home, the Netherlands, or have a job somewhere so far from her true home, the East Indies. An old life or a new life awaited her decision. She had little time to consider all the details, yet the officer seemed willing to give her time, but transport ships from here back to the Netherlands were rare, on schedule, but rare. His next words shrunk her consideration. She'd have to board tomorrow's ship, otherwise wait for months. At that point, she may grow comfortable in her new position, fine with it. Happy with it.
She gasped, staring at the officer, and exhaled. She did have a family. She did have a home, and a previous life, except, much time had passed, and with her assumed demise, her husband may have remarried, moved on to another woman, and had another family. She didn't want to find out, living on false hope, and so she steered herself towards the officer's other choice. This job didn't have any conclusions, only possibilities. A whole new career, if she was daring to believe such, so she inquired. The officer chuckled and smoked. He told her she could have it if she learned more than one local language, like stepping stones for Dutch military interests. She could be a polyglot and a preacher. She sought to proselytize in the East Indies. She could easier with her linguistic expertise. She inhaled, nodded, and contemplated, staring.
With a few sentences, her future was sealed like an official stamp, and her position as a local translator with potential career growth seemed obvious to not her, but other soldiers, some from other parts of the Dutch empire. She sighed. She was in an empire again, but for some time, she was living in a remote, secluded village. She would be a translator and preacher, the officer interested in her conversion practices. He spoke to her about the constructed church, an impressive sight indeed. She shook hands with the officer and left to wander the town, a bustle of activity, smells, and noise, so deviated from her life in the mysterious jungle. She stopped by a street peddler, browsing the wares, and felt her heart quickly sink to her stomach.
Never will she make contact with the village girl, her protégé in some ways, her confidant in others. She never felt so alone than she did in this town with a heavy military presence, soldiers looking at her then veering their sight to other people, and the expectation of service. She could've declined it all and gone back home, but things have changed, considerably and mentally. She remained optimistic, hopeful that life holds as much potential as she desired, a breakaway from the somber past. She has a new life now, one that expects much out of her, but one of much growth.
She just had to give up her history for her present. She gave it up. She missed her.
