And I remembered the words of the girl from Jepara before she died, when she expressed her hopes that her sons would be educated to respect womankind. And you, Mir, stay safe. Do not die. Because life is beautiful. Push your new child out into life. And do not die!
The shriek of the baby from behind the curtain pulled me out of my reverie. A new human being had arrived. I straightened my posture and took a deep breath of the fresh Bandung air. From behind the curtain I could hear someone working hard at breathing.
“A boy!” came the voice of the midwife.
“Oh, God! Is he all right?” asked Mir.
“As healthy as a fish in water, Mevrouw.”
“Does he have everything?”
“He’s perfect, Mevrouw.”
“Thank you, O God!”
“Quiet now, Mevrouw, everything is over.”
The baby was crying, unconcerned at anyone else’s problems, demanding whoever was about to pay it attention, and give it love. All I could do was listen to it crying…and who did this shrieking baby look like? A cold sweat broke out all over my body.
Hendrik stood up. He didn’t move across to the curtain. He turned around, looked at me, and then sat down.
These were the most important moments in the life of my friendship with my good friends Hendrik and his wife.
Whose child was it? I felt I would have to shout out the question to the baby at any moment.
“Meneer”—suddenly Hendrik was using the formalities with me again—“you too are shedding tears?” and tears hung from his eyes too.
He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. I did the same.
“Would you like to have a child too, Meneer?”
Lightning out of a clear blue sky would not have caught me more unready. I grasped for something among all those feelings and thoughts I had been having. I answered quickly: “The great honor of womankind appears in its full glory at the time of birth, Hendrik. That’s what moves me. Go on, go in and see her. I will wait here.”
He looked at me for a moment, then stood and strode over to see his wife lying in bed behind the curtain. I sat and waited but with my ears pricked to hear what was said.
“Hendrik, here is your child, the child you have been longing for.”
“As white as cotton, Meneer!” added the midwife. “Congratulations, Meneer, congratulations, Mevrouw. No, Meneer, don’t squeeze his nose like that, his bones aren’t strong yet. A true Roman nose. No, not really, more a classical Greek.”
My heart felt empty and blank. And only two people knew why. It was not my child. I wanted to run, to run away from that room.
“Minke, aren’t you coming in?”
“Of course, Mir, if you’re ready!”
“Come on in, I’m ready.”
Hesitantly I too entered behind the curtain. The European midwife was washing the howling baby in a big washbasin. Her assistant was gathering the dirty towels, stained with the blood of the baby’s mother. The baby screeched again and again. Mir was lying down with a blanket over her. Hendrik was combing his wife’s hair. And—I don’t know what the smell was—but I could hardly breathe, something was pressing in on my lungs.
Mir summoned me over close with a gentle wave of her hand. I held her hand, which was warm, and said: “Congratulations, Mir. I join with you in happiness over the birth of your child.”
“Hendrik’s child too.”
“Congratulations to you too, Hendrik.” I held out my hand to him.
“Thank you, Minke.”
“Well, everybody seems safe and well. I must get back to the office, if I may,” and I left without waiting for an answer.
As soon as I got out of their house, it was as if I were running, carrying with me the blankness and emptiness that was in my heart. It was not my child. How I longed for a child at that moment! I now experienced the agony that Hendrik had once experienced.
“Quickly!” I ordered the coach driver.
And the coach raced off in the direction of my office.
I stared down at my desk. With my thoughts still on the baby, on Hendrik and Mir, I began examining the letters that lay waiting there. The one on the top—didn’t I recognize the way he wrote the letter r? Whose writing was it? But my memory wouldn’t work for me. I tore open the envelope. The handwriting, with that peculiar way of writing r, was the same inside. I had known that handwriting for a long time now.
“Meneer,” it read, “Governor-General van Heutsz has left for good, he and his pension. You are now without a protector anywhere on Java. There is no more special-friend-of-the-governor-general status for you. Be careful, Meneer. Don’t disturb things. Stop all your activities. Disband the Islamic Traders Union. Listen to this warning. If you don’t, be assured, Meneer, that something will happen to you.”
There was no signature. It closed with a line of big block letters: DE KNIJPERS—the Pincers.
I was not in a mood to deal with this or any other kind of threatening nonsense. I called Marko, and showed him the letter.
“Read it!” I ordered, and he read it. “Understand?” He nodded. “The Dutch isn’t too difficult, is it?”
“I get the meaning, Tuan.”
“So. What do you say?”
“No problems, Tuan. Don’t worry.”
“What if they have guns?”
“No, Tuan. If they had guns they wouldn’t need to send a letter like this.”
“How do you know?”
“They would come straight here and take action.”
“How do you know that?”
’From experience, Tuan. If they have guns, they are government people, or people close to the government, and they would be in uniform.”
“This is your responsibility, Marko.”
“Of course, Tuan.”
“Even if they have guns?”
“No problems, Tuan.”
I went on with my work, reading through the mail. There was nothing there that was at all interesting. Everything felt empty. What was it that I wanted? I handed all the work over to Wardi and told him that I couldn’t work that day.
I returned to Buitenzorg by train.
The emptiness and blankness began to smother me inside. The scenery that flashed by could not claim my attention.
“Mir did not give you a child.”
“And not Mei either.”
“And Annelies, neither did she.”
I bit my lip until it felt it might drop off. Was I indeed infertile? I had never had myself examined. I had never been sick all this time. I had never even had a cold. But such a frightening thing as…could I be impotent? Had the infliction that Hendrik suffered now befallen me?
I found Princess examining the latest SDI mail.
“Home already, Mas? Are you ill?”
I didn’t answer. I grasped her head in my hands and kissed her with all my might. It felt as if the blankness and emptiness inside me were driving me insane. How I longed for a child of my own.
Princess groaned in protest.
“What’s the matter with you?” she protested. “Let me go. There is a letter for you, for you especially.”
“Who cares about any letter!”
“Listen to me,” she said, still trying to get loose from my grip. “We had guests earlier. Three Indos. They were looking for you. They didn’t give their names. They made threats. They called themselves De Knijpers.”
“Who cares about the Knijpers?” I answered. “Listen!”
“What, Mas?” she answered, as I covered her with kisses.
“Give me a child, Princess,” and then I embraced her.
“Who have you just met to make you like this?”
“Give me a child,” and I dragged her inside.
14
Branches of the Islamic Traders Union mushroomed in all the coastal towns outside Java. Its membership grew to over five thousand. We received several journalists in the office who wanted to discuss this development. Then reports started appearing
in the press of the European capitals about how a new bourgeois organization was emerging in the Indies that was the precursor to a future Indies nationalist movement—a movement that wouldn’t be long in developing.
I have heard about your activities, wrote Mama from Paris. You are becoming more and more important to your people. You must be more and more careful. You are moving closer and closer to danger. Don’t forget what I advised you once, make sure you have people who can guard you properly. Don’t forget, Child. This worries me.
Marko had brought in several people from his village to help him with his work. There was no other way. I received more threats as soon as SDI began to get international press coverage.
On the other hand, the rich merchants in Solo and Jogja brought more and more contributions of money to the national headquarters for use by the Leadership Council.
I bought a two-story timber building, made from teak, in Kramat Street in Betawi. I turned it into a hotel, called Medan, which was used by people staying over in Betawi on their way to making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We used the ground floor as a shop to sell office and school supplies and as the central distribution point in Betawi for all the Medan publications.
During certain hours Thamrin Mohammed Thabrie would be there to look after SDI business. After only two weeks, he received an order from his superiors to withdraw from all involvement with the SDI. He was faced with a choice—his job or the organization. He had served the government now for twenty-five years. Almost overcome with emotion, he said he was sorry but he would have to resign from his positions to become an ordinary, nonactive member. It was a real loss for us. But what can be done? The organization should not be dependent on just one or two people.
The Leadership Council decided to buy or rent some ships. But the government quickly indicated that such a thing would not be allowed. Even the shipping companies owned by the Arabs and Chinese, which had once transported the soldiers of the Colonial Army on their way to war, were now being closed down by the very same colonial power. They had to sell their ships in Hong Kong and Singapore at very low prices. Meanwhile, the Royal Shipping Company, known as the KPM, step by step consolidated its monopoly over interisland shipping in the Indies.
Others urged us to buy a printing press, but I knew better than anyone that most of the printing presses in the Indies stood idle for much of the time. The market for reading material in the Indies was now almost saturated.
Our plans to set up schools also faced difficulties. Half of the members wanted to set up religious-based schools, the other half wanted schools that provided a general education, and the two points of view just didn’t seem to be able to reach a compromise. What was the use of calling the organization Islamic if we didn’t educate our children in Islam? But a general education was no less important, in fact it might be more important, not just in terms of meeting the higher standards of today’s world but also so that we could understand Islam better.
There was no agreement, so we used the contributions that came in to fund some of the other nongovernment schools that had been set up by Natives and were already running. These included the school founded by Nyi Raden Dewi Sartika in Cicalengka, Bandung, as well as the Boedi Oetomo schools, and those too of the Jamiatul Khair. And we also used some of the money to fund our legal aid work.
Still the SDI was unable to set up its own schools.
Meanwhile fighting had broken out in several towns between gangs of Indo youths, under the banner of the Knijpers, and SDI youth, mostly Marko’s people. Marko himself had been involved in one fight. The Knijpers had attacked an SDI group with brass knuckles. One of Marko’s youths suffered a broken rib. Meanwhile the Knijpers disappeared without a trace.
None of the papers, including Medan, reported these incidents, hoping that the fighting might not spread. In a report issued by the SDI leadership, we argued that the Indos weren’t simply motivated by prejudice but were fighting to prevent any real advance in the position of the Natives.
I received a visit from Douwager, who expressed his concern and regret that this fighting—which he referred to as ridiculous and indefensible—should be occurring.
“It’s a fact of life now, Mr. Douwager,” I answered. “If the Indos had been united in the way that you hoped for, then I think the first thing they would have done is to act to oppress the Natives, just as they have done in the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State in South Africa—oppression for oppression’s sake. It reflects their psychology—they hate having Native blood flow within them, something that happened to them that no one ever consulted them about. It’s a part of their mentality that is affected by their frustrated desire to be Pure-Bloods.”
“That’s a bit extreme,” he answered unhappily. “The world is not heaven and there will always be evil people, from all races. Not just from among the Indos. Anyway, we should be using the term Indisch, not Indo. I thought we had agreed to use the term Indisch for all the people of the Indies.…”
“I was talking about the Indos in particular.”
We found no way out of our disagreements.
I was worried that I had become blind to what was going on in the government. What was being discussed in the governor general’s circles? The officials of the State Secretariat never visited me anymore. Idenburg himself never summoned me.
I could not afford to let this ignorance continue any longer.
When Sandiman arrived back in Bandung, I ordered him to find work as a waiter or gardener at the palace. He had no success. Marko also failed. Then the Patih of Meester Cornelis offered his nephew for the work. He worked there for three months and was then caught looking through some papers. They found out he understood Dutch. He was dismissed. The Patih was also pensioned off and he returned to his village.
Through Wardi I asked Douwager to act as intermediary with the Knijpers to see if he could cool things down a bit. It turned out that he had already tried. And from him I found out that their leader was Robert Suurhof. And it was also confirmed for us that the group wasn’t motivated just by racial hatred. It was receiving funds from some mysterious organization about which we couldn’t find out anything, except that its task was to ensure that no one except Europeans would have any success in establishing major businesses. So it became clear why it was only the Natives who were arrested whenever there were fights.
The Knijpers were active throughout West Java wherever there were active SDI branches. The smaller the town, the more afraid people were of the Knijpers, who were brought in from Bandung and Betawi armed with knives and sickles. Among them were also to be found Ambonese, Menadonese, and even Javanese.
There were no signs yet of the problem spreading to East and Central Java. The Solo SDI branch announced that if the Knijpers turned up in Solo, the Mangkunegaran Legion would act against them without mercy. They were prepared to move to wipe out the Knijpers, whatever loss of life was involved. They sent a group of Legion soldiers to me in Bandung, offering to start a campaign to get rid of the Knijpers. There were more and more fights, but still there were no reports in the papers. No matter how many they mobilized, the Knijpers were always outnumbered. Then soldiers in civvies started to help out their fellow Indos.
I had no choice but to seek an audience with the assistant resident about these developments. I gave him a list of the incidents, the dates, and places.
“The SDI, Your Excellency, in accord with its Constitution, has never intended to contravene the law or cause trouble. We only aimed to raise the welfare and prosperity of the Natives, thereby assisting the government in raising revenue. So we hope that Your Excellency will be prepared to intervene to bring to a halt the activities of the Knijpers. We promise not to start any fight, and indeed we never have started any of the fights. We have only been defending ourselves!”
The assistant resident for Priangan region just nodded and listened. He never said a word. He just shook my hand when I arrived and shook my hand again when I departed.
We had to find our own answer to this problem. Wherever there were SDI branches we began self-defense classes. Silat classes sprang up everywhere, but with the proviso that no weapons were used.
The government did not move to help us. We had to help ourselves.
There was one big battle near the Bandung railway station one day. I had just arrived on the train. Marko was there to meet me and ordered me to move away behind the train and to leave the station by some other exit. The Knijpers were waiting at the exit gate, shouting as if they were insane: “Where’s Minke! Where’s his snout! Drag him out!”
The Knijpers didn’t understand the situation they were in. They didn’t realize that I had good relations with the rail workers because of the magazine we published for them. The rail workers moved to disperse the Knijpers, who then went on the attack. A huge fight ensued. Using all sorts of railway equipment and tools, the rail workers defended themselves and soon were also on the attack. Blood was flowing everywhere. Some police arrived but just stood there openmouthed, not knowing whom to act against. They weren’t going to attack the Knijpers, but neither could they move against the workers who were only defending their workplace.