When he was still under the wing of his teacher, he was “Marko.” After his teacher departed so suddenly, he changed his name to “Marco.” It seemed that his teacher’s departure made him feel he had lost a source of strength. Now he had a new source of strength by changing his k to a c, so that it was like the great names of Marco Polo and Marconi, and read more like a European name, and felt more like the name of an educated person. Yes—yes, I could see that many of the literate Natives in the towns and cities of Java would follow Marco’s example, having lost faith in the power of their own ancestors who had always been defeated by Europeans. This action of Marco’s seemed to indicate there was a trend to surrender unconditionally to European civilization.
He was very different in many ways from Wardi. In fact, he was almost the opposite of Wardi. Wardi came from the Javanese high aristocracy and he understood fully the empty extravagance of his nobility and so he gave up all his titles. As far as Europe was concerned, Wardi also seemed to reject it too, even to see it as an enemy. To show his sympathy for the poor masses he deliberately wore black shirt and trousers, no shoes and a sarong, as if, I said as if, he had given up priyayi and European clothes forever. That he was sympathetic toward the peasants did not mean he was interested in taking up the peasants’ occupation. He had a tendency to seek strength in being different.
It was different with Marco, now with a c. He tried to understand and then go with the flow of history as it picked up speed. He always wore a white shirt and white pantaloons. His hair was always neatly parted in the middle. His eyes were always wide open, always, as if he did not want to miss even one thing that happened around him and in the big world outside his country. He passed on everything he understood, half understood, or he thought he understood to whoever was willing to pay him any attention.
In some things they were the same. They both had explosive and agitated spirits, they were both spontaneous spirits, and both were full of hatred for the colonial power.
Nah, while Wardi gave up all his titles, Marco followed in his teacher’s footsteps, affirming his, and so in recent times his full name began to appear—Mas Marco Kartodikromo.
From one of his writings, the one that I thought was particularly important, I could see just what lived in his soul. This is the piece I mentioned earlier, written in very chaotic market Malay. I have copied it out below, with many improvements.
Finally he could work no longer. Neither could his wife, who had fallen ill before him. Only his nine-year-old son still had his health. As could be expected, though, the village official then forced the son to go off and do his mother’s and his father’s quota of work.
The little boy cried and cried all the way along the four-kilometer track. Not just because of hunger—the soles of his feet were covered in ulcers and yaws had spread throughout his body. Among the crowd trudging along the track, there was an emaciated woman heavy with child, old people coughing and walking with canes, a man carrying a baby a few months old whose mother had just died of hunger.
A procession of future corpses, and for most that fate would come in just a few months. All walking south. To the government indigo plantation. Forced labor. Forced cultivation! No pay. Cultuurstelsel.
The name of the village was Cepu. Not the Cepu of today. It was a poor village. But that former village was now part of one of the richest regions in the Indies. It was here that I was born. And it was here too that I heard every night the stories of the old people who had to leave every day for months to walk to the indigo plantation, to work for no pay, without any security, left with no opportunity to tend to their own land. And every day some among them died of illness and hunger.
My village was just like other villages. The people should have lived as farmers, hunting for wood in the forest, breeding goats, cattle, chickens, and themselves, and living among big families. But the Cultuurstelsel had split asunder these families and robbed them of rice and spirit.
In short, don’t imagine that Cepu was anything like the district of Cepu today. My Cepu was sheltered by very many fruit trees. Today’s Cepu district is sheltered by lampposts and telephones.
The nine-year-old had been working for ten days when he was discovered in his empty house one evening. He had laid out on the floor leaves that he had gathered on his walk home. A cold hearth. There was no food, no people. He had called out for his sick mother and father. There was no answer. He went to his neighbor’s house. All he found were more sick people. Those who were a quarter sick or half-sick also had been off to work.
As dawn approached his father returned, linked arm in arm with others so that they would not fall, or lose their way in the dark. They were returning from burying the child’s mother.
A month later even more were buried like this, including his father.
The child still carried on doing his quota of work. He ate young grass, because that was the easiest to get while he was working. And furthermore the Chinese petai fruit and leaves, though they had more taste, made all his hair fall out, and in a gaunt and haggard state, and hairless, a person looked like Satan.
Then one day the people heard that the indigo plantation had been closed down and forced labor had been abolished. But that village had to endure it for another two years yet. And later I found out that any forced labor that took place after the government abolished it was done for the local officials, European and Native.
I don’t know what happened that finally brought it to an end there. Perhaps there had been some dispute over the spoils. But I don’t really know. That was the business of the gods above. So people went back to cultivating their paddy fields and gardens that had grown into jungle and wild brush. The number of inhabitants had been halved. So the recultivation of the jungle and brush was never completed properly. And the village government did not improve even after the abolition of state agriculture, otherwise known as the Cultuurstelsel.
Then there were new reports: The government plantations were going to become private plantations, and these private plantations would belong to Europeans. Village people would be allowed to work there, for a wage—a wage enough so that a family could eat.
Meanwhile the child had reached the age of eleven, and was stronger now than three years before. And these reports never turned out to be true. What was true was that both the village’s fields and the land of individual farmers were stolen by the government, including five sixths of this village’s land, also, it was said, for private plantations. When this happened, these farmers, who were only just recovering from hunger and deaths, rose up in anger.
They were led by Pak Samin, a man from another village. A peasant rebellion took place.
The eleven-year-old joined up with the rebels. But the peasants were defeated, and defeated easily, by the police militia who were brought in from the towns. They did not have to face the army, because, everybody said, all the soldiers had been ordered to Aceh.
The men who escaped returned to their villages. There were fewer still now, many having been killed in battle.
The child turned fifteen years old.
It seemed that there might be peace now and their land would be returned to them. But no. Teak trees were planted on the villagers’ land. It was said there were no European companies interested in the stolen land because it was too chalky and infertile.
But it turned out that the star of ill fate still shone. Because then the village people were chased out of the village. An oil company wanted to set up its refinery and offices on the village site. The villagers took their animals and opened up new land to make new fields and paddy and homes. It was said that the villagers were compensated with money for the loss of their village but no one ever saw any of this money which had been promised in unspecified amounts. They were even saying that the villagers were being paid for each teak tree that was planted. These were nothing more than empty reports, nothing more.
My village, once shaded by its many fruit trees, was magically transformed into an open fiel
d. The houses disappeared. They built beautiful roads, and buildings too. Everything was beautiful, except they did not belong to the people of the village.
The child lived in the new village. There he married one of the remaining maidens who had not been borne away by death. And I was one of their children.
Later on, much later on, I found out that in just five years the oil company, which had started with just five thousand guilders, had developed into a giant company worth half a million guilders. The villagers who had been evicted from their village never even heard about, let alone saw, any of this huge profit. It was also later on that I found out that the teak grown on this earth of my ancestors was the best in the whole world and became famous as “Java-teak.” The best quality teak was not allowed to be used in the Indies; it was for export only. And we never received any share of this profit. Now it was only privation and loss that they dropped down on us from on high.
How strange is the way that profit and this man-made fate we all suffer is apportioned among us. I know and I am prepared to prove that the local oil barons started off as engineers working for the government in Bandung. They came to where I lived, where my parents, neighbors, and relatives lived, to carry out exploration on the land where my ancestors were born and buried. The villagers always gave the visitors a warm welcome, not caring what was the color of their skin, or their religion. We brought firewood, old and young coconuts, and fruits to their house. After they had discovered what resources there were, they returned to Bandung and—resigned. Then they returned to Cepu as giant mosquitoes to suck up our blood, flesh, land, and the oil in the womb of my ancestors’ land. Within ten years their company was worth millions, while their former hosts had lost their land and continued to live in greater and greater poverty. And not only that. From being free farmers they had been turned into the coolies of their former guests.
It was while they were drilling in our region that I was born. My father, the boy with yaws and ulcers, was no longer a coolie. He had become the village head. And the oil company was becoming even greedier for land. They were afraid of the competition from other companies that were springing up like mushrooms throughout the region where we lived. They started to pay for the land they stole. Each company was afraid that its competitors would expose the other’s criminal activities.
Then we reached the stage where our village no longer had any land where we could graze our animals. If even one of our animals strayed onto company land, the Oil Police would grab it, confiscate it, and its owner would be fined one hundred times the normal daily wage.
I just want to make it plain that in the government, there was also an Oil Government, and the people of our village had to obey both of them.
Now thousands of people from other areas flocked to Cepu, from all races, to seek their livelihood. Soon the district of Cepu, which originally comprised only three villages, had spawned twenty more, turning into a busy town. Crime and indecency were rampant. Syphilis spread through the village, leaving many cripples and invalids for the village to look after.
The farmers almost rebelled again. All of a sudden several villagers were arrested and were never seen again. They were arrested by the Oil Police.
There was no more restlessness after that. It was as if the old sense of security, with all of its deformities, had returned once more. Neither the government nor the companies shared any of their profits with the local people. There were no decent-sized pieces of land left. The village cattle had also disappeared because of the forced cultivation.
If I had been an American, honored readers, do you know what I would have done? I would have drawn my revolver and defended whatever could still be defended. But I was just a Native boy, with no weapons, and no knowledge of the world. I did not even know where the location of the village where I was born was in relation to the rest of the world. Nor did I know where lay the land of these people who came and impoverished us. I had been to school for only three years; I had been educated only to become another coolie for the oil companies who had stolen my ancestors’ land. I was educated to know nothing and to obey every order that came from the white-skinned tuans.
When my father was dying, his parting message to me was: “They have stolen all that we have. No, my son, you must not be their coolie any longer. Go to Bandung. There you must serve a man of honorable heart. This man is named Raden Mas Minke. Find him. Carry out everything he asks of you, and take as an example for your life all of his good deeds.”
I did not know and had never heard of this man. And I had no chance to ask my father either.
After my father died, someone from the town told me who Raden Mas Minke was. He was not a lord like the other priyayi, I was told. He was a priest, a teacher, they said.
And so I left my village for the very first time on a quest to carry out my father’s instructions. All that I had with me were a few cents, a village school education, my father’s instructions to me, and three years’ training in fistfighting from one of my uncles, who was among those who still wanted to fight back (and who later died somewhere or other). So, honorable readers, you can understand how difficult it was going to be for me to find this Raden Mas Minke. I didn’t know if I should board the train to Bandung or not. I didn’t have enough money. I had to find some more money. Don’t become one of their coolies, my father had said. But there was no work for me to do anywhere in this town. All they needed were coolies, only coolies. I lived off the streets while I tried to get together some more money. Because I could give a bit of a display of fistfighting, the Oil Police liked me. But what was I going to be able to achieve this way?
Then one day at the railway station, I met another boy like me. His name was Gombloh. It was an easy name to remember. I didn’t think it was a good name for him. He was clever, perhaps seven years older than I. He liked to read the papers and he taught me to read Malay. The two of us fought once with a group of black and white sinyos who were harassing some girls selling peanuts. One of the sinyos had his jaw dislocated. I managed to get a black sinyo in the midriff and knocked him down. The village people hid us. They gave us what little money they had and told us to leave Cepu.
Gombloh left and I didn’t know where he lived. I left Cepu too but returned three months later. I had spent the three months in the teak forest with a hunter. He taught me to master the use of a knife. It was with this new skill that I returned to Cepu feeling much stronger, protected, and indeed I was now an adult.
For several more months I lived like this, not knowing what was to become of me. There were many other boys about me who also did not want to become coolies. Then I heard that someone was looking for me. I looked for him, and it turned out to be Gombloh. Do you want to live in Bandung? he asked, making an offer.
It was then I remembered what my father had asked me to do. I cried and embraced him. I knew that I had put off carrying out my father’s orders for too long. I looked upon Gombloh’s offer as a test from my father himself. Gombloh had suddenly become very important in my life.
We went by train together. In the middle of the journey, he asked me if I had ever heard the name Raden Mas Minke. My heart started to pound as if it might burst at any moment. I just nodded. And he spoke again. We are going to protect him from any and all dangers that might arise. I shivered. Why are you shivering? he asked. Are you afraid? And I answered: Just give me the chance to defend him.
And so it was that I was taken in by Raden Mas Minke, in a big town called Bandung, where I did not even speak the language of its inhabitants. He treated me as his own younger brother. He educated and guided me, and taught me to do good. Do not become their coolie, he said as if repeating my late father’s words. Don’t make them richer and more powerful because of your sweat. Learn all you can from them so you become as clever as they are. Then use that knowledge to lead your people out of this never-ending darkness.
My honorable readers, we will never return to how things used to be. The sun has set behind the mountains a
nd behind our backs. The sun will now rise before us, bright and brilliant, and will never set again.
I think Wardi read this as well as Minke. That’s my guess. It has exactly the same spirit as NEDERLANDERS ALS KOLONIALEN. It has that Multatuliesque spirit. The thing that I saw most of all in his story was the change that was taking place in the Native soul. The theft of their land and of their livelihood and their way of life had made them more patriotic and, more than that, had turned them into nationalists, in the European mold.
Perhaps what he had written was not the absolute truth, although it was clear there were autobiographical elements, as in Minke’s manuscripts. The important thing was that he was able to describe the process of transformation in values that was taking place, and also the economic and social transformations of the time.
God knows what all this European influence, whether through the things it has built or the things it has destroyed, will ultimately produce. After just a few years of mixing with an educated Native, this village boy has been able to absorb the European skill of writing, but uses it to oppose Europe itself. He no longer talks about the world he left behind, with its ghosts and spirits. Now he speaks only about what needs to be written and what needs to be done. What will things be like in another quarter of a century when European education and society have spread even further and the means of communication have become more effective, tearing away the distance and the hierarchy that keeps Natives apart?
Marco’s article also reminded me of what Minke wrote about Nyai Ontosoroh, a Native Javanese girl, who could not read or write. After just thirteen or sixteen years as a nyai, she was able to manage a large European-style business, and according to what Minke wrote, then chose to become a French citizen rather than a subject of the Netherlands Indies with only uncertain legal rights. Consciously! And not just because she married Jean Marais.