House of Glass

  And, both of you, if anything happens to you, it will not be because of Pangemanann. You are both very interesting objects of study. You face a friend here in the Algemeene Secretariat, a friend who has neither face nor substance for you, but who, my two friends, does indeed exist.

  Then faintly I once again began to hear of vague, difficult-to-pinpoint noises, like out of the fairy tales of children—our own government! And now too! It was the voice of the Indische Partij speaking from its grave. . . .

  Marco continued his career as a writer, public figure, orator, journalist, publisher, and jailbird. And there was one thing that many people didn’t know—he was also a great writer of letters, especially to Siti Soendari. A number of his letters that were detected by the Solo Post Office were now in my hands.

  And Siti Soendari? Even with her refined ways and her adroitness, and bolstered by the warmth of Marco’s enthusiasm, she was soon the target of great hostility from among the colonial establishment.

  “So, Meneer Pangemanann, now we have no alternative,” my boss told me. “His Excellency has been very quick to reprimand us during this last period while we have been so inactive. Now the people in Non-Native Affairs have just reported on a pamphlet that has been circulating which reflects exactly the themes and ideas of the young generation activists in Solo. The style and vocabulary are exactly the same as the open letter signed SS some time ago. I want you to study it. And if it is true that the two documents have been composed by the same person, then you know what you must do, yes?”

  He wanted action, not advice. “His Excellency has read this pamphlet himself,” he added.

  “What did he think of it, if I may ask?”

  “He didn’t say a word. Just frowned. A sign of a storm looming.”

  And so I studied the pamphlet. And there was no doubt it was the work of that beautiful girl with the complexion of a betel leaf. I didn’t know what her relationship was now with Mas Tjokro, but it was clear that Marco had fallen hopelessly in love with her. And now I had to take action against her, a woman, the one and only Native girl whom I admired with all my moral and intellectual being.

  It’s not because I want to do it, Soen. The Algemeene Secretariat is in a panic because His Excellency has frowned! This apparently means that the Algemeene Secretariat has been too lax—and so now my pen, and my ink, must interfere in your life, still so young and beautiful.

  Very well. You must forgive me if you suffer because of what I must do. I will prepare the most moderate proposal that I can. And so this is how things then unfolded.

  The governor of Central Java first of all indicated to the assistant resident of Pekalongan that he should speak to Siti Soendari’s father about exercising more control over the behavior of his daughter. Both the governor and the resident agreed with my advice. It would be a great embarrassment to the government if it had to arrest this lovely girl just because she held beliefs and opinions different from the government’s. It would be different if she were a man.

  The resident of Pekalongan then instructed the Bupati of Pemalang to apply gentle pressure on her father to find her a husband. This was the same procedure that had been successfully used twelve years ago in the case of the girl from Jepara. The Bupati of Pemalang summoned the unfortunate father, who was then given two choices—he could be dismissed without honor and without a pension and also lose his daughter, or he could make his daughter happy by marrying her off honorably while keeping all his positions and his pension when he retired. If he did not have a candidate husband in mind, the government could provide a list of the sons of bupatis and of medical school graduates. And if the father chose the first option, there was a chance too that his son would be expelled from the Institute of Commerce in Rotterdam.

  He was a proud father, respected because of his children’s success, taken as a model by educated Natives in neighboring towns, envied by certain Europeans and Eurasians. Yet coming from the middle ranks of the aristocracy, he could not live without his official position and status. He was from the older generation of aristocrats who could not yet fully accommodate to modern ways, who could not yet liberate himself to become a free and independent individual. He was an educated man from the older generation who believed that honor and respect could only be gained as a blessing from the government. In his own way and with his own style, he made the same choice as the father of the girl from Jepara—he chose his position. He was too afraid of the government’s wrath.

  His hands trembling, this parent raised them clasped before him in obeisance to His Excellency the bupati, requested about two months in which to arrange things, and hurriedly set off home. Back in Pemalang he asked to take some time off work.

  He hired a taxi and, taking only a small suitcase, traveled to Pacitan. When he arrived at his destination, an old woman greeted him at the door with the words, “Forgive me, Master, Lord, it is so that mistress Soendari has moved from here.”

  He set off again and turned right, heading for where his daughter was a teacher.

  “Yes, Meneer, Juffrouw Soendari left our school a little while ago.”

  The father now became very worried. From Pacitan he sent a telegram to his relatives in Malang. Back in the inn, he received a reply: “Yes, she had called in on her way to Surabaya but did not leave an address.”

  Traveling in the same taxi, he went to Surabaya, where he stayed with a friend. He let the taxi go, paying in full. He and his friend spent the whole of the next week looking for his daughter. It was as if Soendari had vanished into thin air.

  He set off to return to Pemalang by train very dispirited. He had to stay overnight in Semarang. After alighting from the train, he hired a horse cart to take him to an inn. Up on the horse cart, he watched the hubbub on the streets—wait, yes, wasn’t that Soendari? The woman was walking, slender, in fact a bit thin, and her face was pale. Such a pretty girl, who knew her mother’s love for such a short time! The father hesitated. His love for his daughter was very great. But his fear of the resident was even greater.

  Soendari! Did you have to be the source of your father’s fall, and would you be the cause of your brother being expelled from his course in Holland?

  He knew that his beautiful daughter wanted to be a free and independent woman, working for her people and country. It was he himself who had taught her this.

  And so it was these events that were brought about by the ink from my pen which had dried on the stationery of the Algemeene Secretariat. I had written that any action that was taken should be well advised and should avoid at all costs any harsh measures. Perhaps if I had proposed such harsh and severe measures, her father would not have suffered so much. He would suddenly be confronted with a new reality and would soon adjust. He suffered in the same way, I thought, as the girl from Jepara’s father must have suffered when he was ordered to marry off his daughter against her will. And I, as a European-educated person, could sympathize with such suffering.

  Would this father regret embarking on such a course for the rest of his life just as the father of the girl from Jepara had? That was a secret that only he himself would be able to answer.

  For those few moments of thought, he was unable to speak and the horse cart kept on moving. But his head remained fixed in the direction the young woman was walking. He had traveled another ten meters before he was able to cry out: “Ndari! Ndari!”

  The driver stopped the horse cart. But Soendari kept on walking.

  The rest of this story was not reported to me by the bupati’s office but traveled from mouth to mouth among many people. Perhaps it was spread by Soendari’s friends to protect her from the tentacles of the colonial authorities, because there are many gaps in the story.

  Just at that moment, the father found himself without the strength to climb down from the horse cart. He said later that he felt as if there were a hundred-kilogram sack of rice weighing him down. That was the weight of the sins of a father who had become the weapon of colonial power against his own b
eloved daughter. Whether this actually happened or whether it is only half true or even if it is a total fabrication, I can still feel his suffering.

  He asked the driver to help him down. But when he at last stood on the ground, he could not walk. He asked the driver to chase his daughter and call her back. Meanwhile he sat on the step up into the horse cart, holding on to the door.

  The driver called out: “Mistress! Mistress!”

  The pretty but now skinny and pale woman walked on so gracefully, not turning back, her eyes straight ahead, as if nothing was happening around her. The driver chased after her and she accelerated her pace.

  “Your father is calling you, Mistress,” said the driver, trailing behind her.

  Now Soendari was almost running. The driver was afraid of leaving his horse and horse cart unattended and so turned back. He helped his passenger climb back aboard.

  “Follow her,” and the horse cart turned around and followed her.

  It was getting dark. The father saw his daughter enter a wayang orang theater that was filling up, perhaps for the evening performance. But there was no sound of a gamelan inside. More and more people were arriving. But there was no crowd of people gathering around the ticket window. There was no one collecting tickets at the door. And there was hardly a woman accompanying her husband.

  The driver refused to help the old man get inside. With the aid of two young boys whom he paid a few cents, he was assisted inside and sat down on one of the few empty seats. The two boys sat on either side of him.

  It turned out that there was a public meeting under way. It was a meeting organized by the Tram and Train Workers’ Union, the TTWU, which had its headquarters in Semarang.

  Soendari disappeared in the midst of all the people there. The father anxiously watched a man ascend the stage, give a speech, and then come down again. Another followed. Then, yes, then he shuddered. It was Soendari, his beloved daughter, one of the very few women present in the building, who climbed the steps to the stage accompanied by the tumultuous applause and shouts of the crowd. All eyes were on her, this beautiful girl, even more beautiful once she stood there on the podium, despite her being obviously pale and tired.

  Then once again the father heard his daughter’s gentle voice, even though it was a gentleness that shouted loudly. And it was the first time too that he heard his daughter’s voice speak in her school Malay. At home they spoke Javanese and Dutch. Now she spoke Malay. When had she studied that language?

  Assisted again by the two children, he moved up closer to the stage. Everyone looked at him, thinking that he was an old man, hard of hearing, trying to hear what Soendari was saying. Perhaps there were people thinking to themselves that even sick people needed to come to hear Soendari speak.

  When they saw this, the crowd shouted and clapped even louder. The cry of “Long live Juffrouw Soendari!” echoed in salute to her.

  A member of the committee brought over a chair for the father.

  No one knew who it was that was being honored with a seat in front of the stage. But the father knew that all the people there respected and honored his beloved daughter.

  And so he sat there, this father, head bowed, listening to his daughter’s voice, a daughter whom he himself had educated, listening to each of her words, discovering in them echoes of what he himself had once taught her, finding out just how fully had the seeds he planted in his daughter’s soul now grown and blossomed. He was now in the grip of his own daughter’s spell. And even her mother’s smile at the peak of her beauty was not as beautiful as Soendari’s smile. And she moved so quickly and surely!

  The young woman’s fist would be raised for a moment, sometimes a finger pointing. And those soft palms of her hand would even come crashing down onto the lectern. Her pale face was now glowing red, all tiredness disappearing from her countenance. Her face literally glowed. The way she moved, with such authority, made him forget to listen to what she was saying. All of Soendari’s being was like a twin of her mother. But Soendari’s mother had never raised her fist, her fingers had never pointed jabbingly into the air, her hands had never thumped down onto a lectern.

  For a moment he remembered how her mother was during her last moments before her death. He had held her hand, and that woman had spoken her last words: “You must never hurt my child Soendari, Mas. Do not ever do anything to make her afraid or lose heart. Love her even more than you loved me when I was still healthy and beautiful.”

  And he had never done anything to hurt his daughter. He had always granted whatever she asked. Everything. And now too it was Soendari who had paralyzed him for a while like this, he who, because of the government’s scheme, had been blown into the midst of all these people who wanted to hear her. None of them knew who he was. They were just there to hear his daughter, that is what they wanted.

  He didn’t hear his daughter’s words flow forth. All that he could catch was the rise and fall of her beautiful voice, loud even in its gentleness and softness. What would her mother say if she saw such a scene as this?

  Suddenly he heard a piercing shout come from his daughter’s throat. He didn’t hear what she said. And the young woman’s head was bowed, showing her respect for her audience. Applause and cries of “Long live Juffrouw Soendari” kept coming from everywhere, as if there would never be an end to it all, while she descended the stairs from the stage.

  Her parent’s hands shook as he greeted her: “Ndari! Ndari!”

  The sparkling beautiful eyes found her father.

  “Father!” whispered Soendari, and she continued in Javanese, “How happy I feel to know that Father has been willing to listen to his daughter’s speech.”

  “Yes, Ndari. I needed to come to witness all this myself.”

  “Has there been anything that pleases you, My Father?” she asked in Dutch.

  “Well, it was wonderful, Ndari.”

  A speaker closed the meeting and the crowd all moved to encircle Soendari and her father.

  “Long live Juffrouw Soendari!” people cried.

  “Long life! Long life!” they cried.

  Hearing that people so respected his daughter, he felt very, very much ashamed and he didn’t know what he would say now to His Honour the Bupati of Pemalang. Would he tell the bupati that he was proud to have a daughter like Soendari? It was precisely these sorts of goings-on that the honourable government hated most of all. What was clear was that he was ashamed because he had brought Soendari up to become the moon, the sun, a shining star. And now that her time had come, he was supposed to condemn it all. He was ashamed of himself.

  The people escorted Soendari to a horse cart, and as if they were all drunk, they lifted her up high and put her straight into the carriage. And the horse cart itself could only move slowly along, because of the crowd of people around it all shouting: “Long live Juffrouw Soendari!” Many people also tried to shake hands with her father and congratulate him on having such a wonderful daughter.

  The tumultuous crowd escorted the horse cart all the way to the TTWU headquarters. The small front grounds of the office were packed with people. Everyone was happy. The whole atmosphere was happy. Only Soendari’s father was bathed in a cold sweat.

  Perhaps he had forgotten to pay the two children for helping him.

  Father and daughter were taken inside, where they sat down on a simple old rattan divan.

  A young boy, probably short for his age, in long trousers and short-sleeved shirt, all in white, quickly and efficiently served them tea. After putting down the glasses, he stood up straight and in fluent Dutch welcomed the father to the offices and congratulated Soendari on her success on the podium that evening. After that he bowed like a courtier in one of the European palaces and introduced himself: “My name is Samaoen. I will always remember this glorious day with great happiness. No doubt you will too, sir.” He addressed these last comments to Siti Soendari’s father.

  The fear of the fate that awaited him (and who was it that created this fate if not
that unknown god named Pangemanann?) and the great waves of pride in his daughter kept crashing up against each other. The father felt as if he were floating backward and forward between heaven and hell.

  The formalities did not take long.

  That night the TTWU executive organized a taxi to take Soendari and her father back to Pemalang. Her father had convinced her to go by telling her that something had happened in the family.

  Semarang at that time had already set up a Political Investigation Unit unbeknownst to Betawi. Nothing went unnoticed by them. The very next day after Soendari spoke to the railworkers, a new regulation was issued—underage children were forbidden to attend public meetings and visit the offices of any organizations.

  This new regulation stemmed from the authorities observing the two young boys help Siti Soendari’s father into the wayang orang building and because of the young boy Samaoen’s presence in the TTWU office.

  It did not surprise me that Semarang took such action. Several times after I had sent telegrams asking about something, I would notice that some related action would be taken. Now they were trying to lead the way in handling these matters. The result was that people who had never been trained for this sort of work, who couldn’t even write a proper report yet, had been assigned to carry out this kind of very complicated surveillance and intelligence analysis. The other result was that the reports that came in from Semarang contained a whole range of different kinds of information, but their reliability was very suspect.

  Take for example how they reported the conversation between Siti Soendari and her father before they left for Pemalang:

  Father: Tonight, Ndari, we must return to Pemalang tonight.

  Daughter: Forgive me, please, Father, but my work has just begun.

  Father: I know that, Daughter, and I respect you greatly for it. And I thank all you men here too for helping and guiding my daughter. But you must forgive us now for there is an urgent family matter that we must resolve. Forgive me if this disturbs all your work a little. I hope you all won’t object to giving us a little time to deal with our family affairs.