House of Glass

  In just one week’s time! In one week I would be meeting with a teacher so rich in experience but no longer able to teach.

  I sat down and began the painful task of composing the statement that he would later have to sign. I knew that I would have to take a very, very sympathetic approach. And my boss gave me full authority to handle everything, just as he gave me a very meaningful look, a look that made me cringe. His glance pierced right inside me. Perhaps he also saw me go ghost white.

  In his textbook English he said: “You have always tried to behave like a responsible and rational human being. You seem to want to try not to act in the colonial way. I can sense that you are beginning to become fed up and sick of this colonial prison. I can understand the conflict that you must be suffering inside.”

  “Thank you, Meneer. Perhaps that is also the reason why you prefer America?”

  “You are not very wrong there, Meneer.”

  “But there is oppression too in America,” I added.

  “It is not so much that there is oppression, I think. There is freedom to oppress, yes, that’s true. But there is also the freedom not to be oppressed. Here there is only the freedom to oppress. There is no freedom not to be oppressed.”

  Who would have guessed that he could talk like that? Someone so close to His Excellency the governor-general? And I was even more amazed when he said: “You needn’t worry. As long as I am your boss I will always approve your ideas, Meneer. The only condition is that they are within the guidelines of colonial policy, because that is today’s reality, even though they may become the source of humiliation in another time.”

  I studied his face. He was much younger than I. His front teeth were brown from tobacco tar. There was no mustache or beard. His face was smooth like a young girl’s. His nose was slightly longer than usual for a European, but it was straight and not crooked. He had crystal-clear gray eyes that gave the impression that he could see right inside a person’s brain. But his own thoughts were difficult to guess, always a puzzle and somehow uninteresting.

  “You regret the work you have carried out in the past because it hasn’t benefited the Natives enough, or didn’t benefit them at all. Isn’t that so?”

  My heart shriveled up inside me. I could hear myself sobbing inside. What had I become? What meaning did my life have or my existence?

  Then the day arrived. The ship had docked. The sky was beautifully clear. And the sun seemed to be overjoyed at welcoming him. Seven minutes past nine o’clock. There were other people at the docks to meet their families. As soon as the anchor had been dropped and the ship moored, the gangway was lowered onto the wharf.

  Along with the families and some government officials who were also there, I went aboard. I obtained Modern Pitung’s cabin number from the purser—Number 22 in second class. I hurried to the cabin, not caring about colliding with all the passengers impatient to get off the ship. His cabin door was open. Raden Mas Minke was sitting on the couch smoking calmly. His destar looked old and worn and so did his vest and his batik sarong. His right leg was crossed over his left leg. He was wearing new slippers. His mustache was still luxuriant, black and twirled upward. He looked much older than when he had left for exile.

  I knocked slowly on the open door.

  He looked at me without interest. “Good morning, Meneer,” I said in Dutch.

  “Morning. I don’t want to rush off yet.”

  “Are you alighting here or in Betawi?”

  He stood and somewhat inhospitably took hold of the door as if he were going to forbid me to enter. He didn’t recognize me. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure. Perhaps here, perhaps in Betawi.”

  “I think you should alight here, Meneer Raden Mas Minke,” I said.

  He was startled. There was a sudden glint in his eye and he became very wary. He studied me closely. And I nodded, giving my respects.

  “Oh, Meneer Pangemanann with two ns,” he said. “You are not in uniform.”

  “I am retired now, Meneer,” I answered, and he still didn’t invite me in.

  He still held on to the door. “Retired,” he repeated unbelievingly.

  “I think I should inform you, Meneer, that I am once again your escort. You may alight here or you may go on to Betawi. Whatever you prefer, Meneer. But I think perhaps you might like to have a look around Surabaya?”

  “I should go on to Betawi. If I am permitted to have a look around Surabaya, I would of course like to take that opportunity.”

  “Good. Then let me escort you.”

  “I am to be escorted? So I am still not free?”

  “You are free, Meneer. But there is still a formality that has to be taken care of. Until that is completed I will be your escort.”

  “Thank you. What formality are you talking about Meneer?”

  “It’s nothing much. You will find out yourself in Betawi.”

  “Perhaps, Meneer, I will have to bow and scrape before you in Betawi, is that it?”

  I performed an amicable laugh, and he still held on to the door.

  “You will never be below anybody else, Meneer,” I said to put him at ease, “especially not this Pangemanann here, Meneer Raden Mas.”

  “You are making fun of me.”

  “No, Meneer, certainly not,” I said convincingly. “The Indies has changed, Meneer; it has all changed since you left. And it was you who brought about all these changes.”

  I could see him warily sharpen his observation of me. I think he was trying to see behind what I was saying.

  “The Indies is a smoldering cauldron now.”

  “A smoldering cauldron? Then I have come back at the wrong time,” he said, pretending that he didn’t understand what his role in all this had been.

  “His Excellency Van Limburg Stirum brought a new policy with him. He is not the same as Idenburg. Under his administration all exiles are being returned home.”

  He was lost in thought for a moment. Perhaps he was thinking about his wife and father-in-law. But he didn’t ask anything.

  “Let’s go, Meneer. Let’s have a look at Surabaya.”

  He locked the door without getting anything from inside the cabin first. We walked to the purser’s office and handed the key to one of the clerks, a very old man.

  “You are going into Surabaya, Tuan Minke? Don’t be late coming back,” the clerk reminded us. “Have a good time. Don’t go across to Madura; then you will be late for sure.”

  In the taxi, he said: “I’d prefer to do my sightseeing alone.”

  “Of course, Meneer. So would I,” I responded. Then to the driver: “Drive slowly, driver.” Then to the passenger beside me: “Meneer Raden Mas Minke . . .” I saw the driver try to get a look; I could see his face in the rearview mirror as he tried to see us. “Meneer Minke”—I raised my voice and glanced again at the mirror—“where will we go?”

  “HBS Street,” he answered briefly.

  The driver turned in the direction of HBS Street. I glanced at Minke. He was lost in thoughts which I could never know. I was reminded of This Earth of Mankind, and even though I did not believe he had graduated from the HBS, it was possible he had some beautiful memories connected with the school. Perhaps he once had a loved one—no doubt a pretty girl—at the school, someone who still had a hold on his heart, but whom he had not been able to obtain for his wife.

  The school was quiet because lessons were under way.

  I couldn’t help thinking of This Earth of Mankind. Minke had written about his experiences as a student who had been expelled from this school that he was now looking at. He was defended by the resident of Bojonegoro; then he graduated, gaining the highest or second highest marks in the whole of the Indies. It was the story of a child’s resolve to be his true self. And it was clear that the resident of Bojonegoro at that time was not de la Croix. Minke would not have dared use his real name. Not enough time had passed yet. Minke had to use another name for the resident.

  The taxi drove slowly past the HBS. My neighbor in
the taxi still did not move from the window. It was only after we were quite a ways past the school that he sat back again, drew in a breath, and closed his eyes.

  Yes, in exile all that you could do was remember and reflect on the past, and so the past did not seem so far away at all. As someone who had been a police inspector, I could understand that. I remembered the conversations of so many prisoners. It was as if they had no present and no future. I could understand.

  “We still have plenty of time, Meneer Raden Mas. More than enough time. There is still time to change your mind and catch the train to Betawi.”

  He kept his eyes closed, and I regretted having disturbed his memories. What could be done? He looked at me, his eyes open now.

  “Yes, you can’t travel about much if you go by ship,” I said, repeating a sentence I remembered from one of his manuscripts. “If we go by train we can stop off at various places. Perhaps you would like to see your parents . . . ?”

  He turned and looked out the window again. Then he bent over close to the driver.

  “Kranggan,” he said.

  The taxi turned right.

  “Perhaps you would like to know, Meneer, that your father has established quite a good school for girls in Blora.”

  He looked at me but said nothing. He had written about that in Footsteps but I didn’t try to discuss it with him.

  He bowed his head in silence. He had no interest in the passing scenery, nor in the traffic. It seemed that he wanted to meet only with his memories of the past, things that were forever out of his reach now, vanished forever from reality but eternal and always disturbing him in his thoughts.

  “Slowly,” I ordered the driver when the taxi entered Kranggan Street.

  I knew that he glanced at me but I pretended not to notice. When I glanced back at him, he was gazing at an old house. It was in that house that a Frenchman had once lived, whom Minke had named Jean Marais and described as a former student of the Sorbonne, a painter, and a veteran of the Aceh War. My research had shown that his name was not Marais but Jean Le Boucq. And he hadn’t been a student at the Sorbonne either but at the Catholic University in Louvain in Belgium.

  “A Frenchman named Le Boucq used to live there,” I said, while stealing another glance at him.

  He took no heed of me, even though I saw his eyes blink warily. He didn’t ask anything, as if he had no interest in any of this, yet I could feel too that in his heart there were so many questions that wanted to burst forth.

  “He was an invalid with one leg, Meneer. It’s said that people here in Surabaya have great admiration for him because he was able to marry a nyai, a Native woman who was very, very wealthy.” Of course, he knew better than I all about that story. I said these things to him to show him that I was completely familiar with what he had written in This Earth of Mankind.

  I saw him draw in a deep breath. And I am sure I would have heard him sigh, had it not been for the droning noise of the engine. He was no doubt remembering that fortunate Frenchman.

  “There used to be a boardinghouse next door. You can see it’s a warehouse now. It used to belong to an Indo. He was a veteran of the Aceh War also.”

  I watched him take out a handkerchief. His chest was heaving. But I pretended not to see. I understood his feelings. He was wrestling with his past, with the time before he had become acquainted with colonial power, when he was young and the future looked bright and full of possibility and all sorts of hopes for the future, when everything was beautiful. Today’s reality was rich with bitter experience and power games. It was a reality where he was just a mouse in a cat’s world.

  He wiped his eyes. I knew he was shedding tears and he was hiding it from me. Yes, weep, Modern Pitung, because this is the only way you can honestly speak with your past. I can just imagine how it was when you were studying, how you would open each page of your books, fully believing that all you transferred from those pages into your own self would become your strength as you set out to cross the fields of life. You were such a simple person then. You didn’t realize that life would not be as simple as you imagined. But even so, you did set off across those fields until the moment arrived when you had to face me. Even now you are, in certain ways, in my grip. But in other respects my hands and fingers are too weak to keep you in my grip, and more than that, you are too big for me ever to be able to hold you in my grasp.

  The taxi arrived at the three-way intersection where the right-hand turnoff led to Pasar Turi.

  “Take me to see Mas Tjokro.” He suddenly awoke from his past.

  His request startled me. He was challenging me, announcing that he was not afraid of me. He had leaped into the present. He could not hide how he missed his youngest child—the Sarekat. He still believed that the law would protect him. He should have given up all belief in colonial law by now—he who had had so much experience of it. Or is this just a challenge?

  “I think not, Meneer. It will only get you into more trouble.”

  “So this freedom that I have been promised, freedom Van Limburg Stirum style, is just the old-style one, heh?”

  “You are not free yet, Meneer. And perhaps you are right—here in the Indies there is no freedom like that you have read about in the European books. Here only His Excellency the governor-general is fully free.”

  He looked at me with unbelieving eyes. I could see disgust in that look, I don’t know if with me or with the whole world under European occupation. Suddenly he turned away and looked straight ahead. Meanwhile the taxi turned right in the direction of Pasar Turi.

  “Very well then. Take me wherever you like. I am still not free anyway.”

  “In that case we will go back to Kranggan.”

  The taxi turned back to Kranggan, driving along slowly as if bearing newlyweds who had to be seen by everybody.

  “There is so much of what we studied in the books from Europe, Meneer, that does not apply in the Indies,” I said, trying to be friendly. “Europeans taught me to honor and respect those who are my superiors and to love those who are less fortunate than myself. Europe taught that all the great men are humanity’s teachers. That is Europe. America teaches that whoever succeeds in life should be your leader. Japan teaches that a man who has many friends is a man who has mastered life and such a man is a good man. None of this applies in the Indies. You are my superior. You have had much misfortune compared to me. You are a great man. You have succeeded in life. You have very many friends. But just look, Meneer. I know all this, yet I am also the one who had to arrest you, and even now I am still your host and escort, but in the worst possible sense.”

  He cleared his throat, looked out the window, and spat outside.

  Yes, I felt so small beside him, yet his action was clearly intended as a very crude insult to me. I could hear the blood rush into my ears as I seethed with rage. As a European-educated man, I had to control myself. And he was within his rights to insult me, as was Sarimin. What was I compared to him? If I took him to Contong Square and let him get out, people would be swarming about him in no time and he would be welcomed as a hero. And if I took him to see Mas Tjokro, that “emperor without a crown” would probably dissolve before him. And nobody would ever have any respect for Pangemanann. That was the reality that could happen at any time and that could be verified.

  I suppressed my feelings of humiliation and returned to the subject of his past. “Yes, Le Boucq. As a soldier he took the name Antoine Barbuse Jambitte. He was a strange man, Meneer. He was a painter, an educated man, but also just a Company soldier. There are many Europeans who become bored with Europe and try to reinvigorate themselves by living in primitive societies. They try to forget Europe and everything it teaches just when these societies are longing for European knowledge and learning. What do you call that, Meneer Raden Mas? A mutation? Or an irony of civilization?”

  He didn’t answer. I don’t know whether he was listening or not, whether he was submerged in the past again or was continuing his reflections on the present.
In the house that belonged to the man that Modern Pitung had called Telinga, there stood a beggar, a woman holding her skinny, dehydrated baby. My guest beside me seemed amazed that there should still be beggars in this area. And I wanted to whisper in his ear that if it was beggars that he was thinking about, then he should know that their numbers will always increase, because a beggar is always a beggar, and a beggar family gives birth only to more beggars, and a beggar never mutates into something other than a beggar. There was even a whole social group—all those thrown out of work and forgotten because of the world war—who now stood on the edge of destitution.

  “Right!” I ordered the driver.

  And so the taxi now headed off in the direction of Wonokromo. But just fifty meters past the turnoff, Minke ordered the taxi to stop—in front of a row of stalls and shops. He gripped hold of the window edge with both his hands. He was watching a pockmarked woman leading a small child and escorted by a broad-shouldered, strong, and handsome-looking youth.

  “I need some eucalyptus oil,” he said and, paying me no heed, opened the door and climbed out.

  I followed him, went into the stall, and saw him pocket a bottle of eucalyptus oil. But his eyes remained fixed on the pockmarked woman standing in front of him, busily choosing clothes. He went over to her and I heard him clearly ask the first question: “So you live in Surabaya now, Surati?” he asked in Javanese.

  The pockmarked woman seemed startled and studied him without fear. Her lips quivered with an unasked question.

  “This is your littlest?”

  It was then that I remembered Painah, a character in Kommer’s work Nyai Painah, who might have been based on the story of Surati in Minke’s manuscript Child of All Nations. Kommer’s work was published just before he died, a thin little book that was very pro-Native. The two of them talked and I couldn’t follow what they were saying because I didn’t understand Javanese. But I did hear the names Sastro Kassier and Tulangan, names that were also mentioned in Kommer’s work as well as in Child of All Nations.