Continuation 3, Chaper 1.
And he freezed. He felt as if a wet hot towel fell to the nape of his neck. And though the night was icy cold, a burst of hot air blown on top of his head. What was more, the towel like thing on the nape of his neck was moving, too! And at the point when he was about to faint, there was a light inside the dark house in front of him across the gate. The door opened. A stoutly woman figure stood in the doorway, with the light behind her, calling out through the drizzle of the rain, “Bruno, stop! Come in here! Now!”
My father told me that the voice was almost like the voice of Grandma Kopral – one of the so many grandmas I had, the one that when I was a kid I thought that sometimes she could be the fiercest human on earth … she married to a Corporal in the Dutch Royal Army, and by living in the barrack learned her ways to be rough and loud at times. Very contradictory to her husband, Grandpa Kopral, who I thought was the meekest man alive.
Not only that ‘barking’ from the door startled my father, but suddenly he also felt a big whoosh beside him as something, or some creature, jumped beside him, over the fence and run toward the lit doorway.
The way my father told the story, that creature was as big as a colt or a calf, jumping over the fence easily and in three jumps reached the door way and the other creature that was there.
“Who’s that?” the creature in the door way asked.
“I … the son in law of Pak Harjo …” father recalled answering that question. Pak Harjo was the name of my mother’s father, and apparently that name was more known than my father’s – should he answered it with that.
“Ah! Why are you here?” through the misty rain now my father was able to see that the figure was the midwife he came for, a mrs. Paulus. According to my father, mrs. Paulus was a Menadonese – coming from Menado, or Northern Sulawesi, whose people were mostly had fair skin almost like Chinesse.
“I think my wife time has come!” shouted my father. He was still in the gate.
“Ah!” mrs. Paulus seemed hesitated. Father said he was afraid that the midwife would not come with him, the rain and it was still too early.
But, no. After a moment that seemed ages to my father, mrs. Paulus said, “Pak Harjo, he? The factory’s overseer? Okay. Wait!”
The door closed again. It was dark again. It seemed ages again.
But at last the door opened. The matronly figure come out wearing a raincoat and the creature that was as big as a colt trying to push out beside her. But mrs. Paulus said sternly, and in Dutch, “Bruno, shut up. Go inside! Now!”
The creature meekly went in and the door was closed by somebody from inside.
Mrs. Paulus opened the gate, came out, and shut it again. “Bruno was too big for this fence, too strong to be chained … he could eat you in two gulps!” she told my father. But after eyeing him, she added, “Maybe only in one gulp! Show me the way!”
“Bruno?” my father asked for the sake of showing that he was alive.
“The dog,” said mrs Paulus. “Come on! Show me the way. Your house is near Kamar Bola, is it?”
(to be continued).
