“Whom do you think they will target?”
“How would I know, Meneer? People they don’t like, I suppose.”
“And no doubt it will be like before. None of them will be arrested by the police, or if they are, they will be released even before they get to the police station.”
“Could be, too. Ah, it’s already dark. I must go. Please excuse me. I will visit you in a few days’ time in Bandung.” He stood up, held out his hand and said “Good evening,” then strode calmly out of our grounds.
That night I studied all the reports we had from the sugar regions, both reports from the branches and letters from readers. I rushed off an article about how justice was implemented there. This will be the first shot fired at the Syndicate.
The article itself didn’t discuss the most important issues. It just reported to those people who knew nothing at all about life in the sugar areas what happened to children who took cane from the mills, how they were maltreated by the plantation officials. They would be detained until their parents came and paid a fine of one hundred cents. Their parents’ wage, if they worked in the sugar plantations, would be seventy cents at the very most. But it wasn’t the fine itself so much that signaled the injustice but the fact that the children took the cane out of hunger and need for sugar, took cane grown on the land of their own ancestors, sometimes even from their own parents’ land, land they had been forced to rent to the mill.
I hadn’t quite finished writing when Princess called me in for dinner. She asked then: “Who was that, Mas?”
“Pangemanann with two n’s,” I answered.
“I didn’t like him from the moment I saw him. Even the spelling of his name is strange, with two n’s. What did he want? Was he making threats?”
“I think that was what he was here for. Now they’re called the Zweep.”
“If they bother us again, I will shoot them again.”
“Is that necessary yet?”
“Rather than let them get in first.”
She was talking out of anger and frustration.
Three days later, my article touching upon the power of Sugar was published. And on that day too, just a few hours after publication, Pangemanann was sitting at my desk. He had his manuscript Si Pitung with him. I observed him closely. I could see him furtively glance down at an envelope that was lying on my table. Its corners were marked with red stripes.
It was possible he recognized the letter. With a somewhat piercing look from his eyes, he handed over his manuscript, saying politely: “I hope you like this and will decide to publish it.”
“Do you have a copy at home?”
“Unfortunately, no, Meneer. But I know it will be safe in your hands.” He stole another glance at the envelope on the desk, then returned to watching me.
I returned his gaze with a patient smile. The letter was a threat from the Zweep that they would move against me if I did not withdraw the article about the cane fines and the maltreatment of the children who were hungry and did not have enough sugar. Medan was supposed to explain that the article wasn’t serious and the things described in it never happened. At the bottom were the words De Zweep, and there was a signature. The name seemed European.
I thought that Pangemanann was going to discuss the letter, but it didn’t happen. Then he suddenly turned the conversation: “It seems you are really determined.”
“There is nothing to be afraid of, is there, Meneer? What is it that we should be afraid of?”
“I mean it seems that you are very determined and committed in carrying out your work. Committed people must be respected. That is why I respect you.”
“And where do you see this determination in me, Meneer?”
“In your attitude.”
“It appears that you seem to see some danger ahead of me. Or perhaps it is you yourself, Meneer, that is the danger to me?” I joked.
He let out a rather indecent laugh. He wasn’t carrying his cane this time. He wore clean white clothes but now his shoes were brown. As before he wore no hat, and his rather golden hair—there was no gray at all—shone with hair oil.
“I like the way you talk, Meneer. Bold. Sharp. No mincing words or suchlike.”
“You are a true man of letters,” I said, praising him, “taking so much notice of every word spoken and how they are spoken.”
“Yes, it is a hobby of mine. Could I have a receipt for my manuscript? I must go. I have other appointments.”
I made him out a receipt. He took it and excused himself, leaving behind the words: “May you have success, Meneer.”
I didn’t escort him to the door. And I began to examine the day’s mail. At that moment I heard a voice thundering before me: “Are you withdrawing the article or not?”
I jumped up. Before me there stood three Indos, each one hiding his hands behind his back. At the front was someone I had known since the last century—Robert Suurhof.
Before I could answer, I heard a cracking sound. My vision went black. I saw stars everywhere. My face and body felt the lash of whips again and again. My mouth was hit. I tasted a salty taste. Blood.
I don’t know how many times I felt those lashes. I felt my body fall, after staggering for a moment, crashing into the arms of the chair, then…nothing. All I could hear was the voice inside me shouting: “No! No! I will not withdraw it!”
As I regained consciousness I heard voices about me. I couldn’t tell whom they belonged to. Perhaps Suurhof and his friends. I tried harder to tell. It was Hendrik’s voice that I heard first: “How are his eyes, Doctor? They’re not damaged, are they?”
“They’ll need care for quite a while.”
I tried to speak. But my lips refused my orders to move. My hand seemed to move by itself, groping for my lips. I had no lips. All I could feel were wet bandages. And now I could smell medicines.
“Minke!” I recognized Mir’s cry.
I moved my hand, and I felt it grasped and caressed by a smooth palm. I felt the slipperiness of a metal ring. There wasn’t a sliver of light that penetrated my vision. My eyes were also covered with bandages.
“Tuan.” I heard Marko’s voice. “Everything happened so quickly. I was in the print shop. Sandiman heard the noise first. He came up to the office. The attack was already under way. He grabbed a typesetter’s hammer and threw it at them. He got one in the shoulder. They fled. Sandiman went after them. But they had horses waiting and escaped on them.”
I gave a weak nod, accepting his request for forgiveness. I moved my hand again and my fingers indicated they wanted pencil and paper. As soon as someone put them in my hand, I wrote these words: “Continue with all our work. Study all the reports from the sugar regions. If they seem to be more or less accurate, then publish them. Watch security. Take me to Buitenzorg.”
“And this incident, Minke, are you going to remain silent about it?” asked Hendrik. “I don’t think it is right that we keep quiet about it. We should begin now.”
“Yes, we will now begin publicizing this terror,” I wrote. “But keep a good watch on security. And you too, Hendrik, Mir, be careful.”
“Thank you, Minke.”
Mir and Sandiman took me by taxi to Buitenzorg. Mir sat with me in the back. Sandiman rode in front with the driver.
“Is the driver an Indo?” I wrote on a piece of paper.
“Yes,” whispered Mir in the bandage that covered my ear.
“Be careful, Mir,” I wrote again.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered, then kissed the part of my face that was not bandaged. “Sandiman is armed.”
She spoke no more, but just caressed my hand.
As we journeyed along I thought of my mother, and Mama and Princess, three extraordinary women whom I had met during my life. Then I saw Ang San Mei, pale, skinny, and narrow-eyed. It was as if she came to me at that moment, knowing the helpless state I was in, as helpless and powerless as a worm. And I thought I heard her whisper: As long as you realize, Minke, this is just the beginning
. And I nodded that I understood. Then I saw Khouw Ah Soe waving to me and then suddenly he vanished. But SDI had already announced itself to the world. They had written that the Indies bourgeoisie is beginning to rise. And now its dalang lay bruised and beaten in the care of a European woman.
Suddenly my heart started thumping. The idea that the Syndicate would get a laugh out of all this made me furious. And I couldn’t picture them in my mind—they were abstract and anonymous.
“Your pulse has got faster, Minke. What are you thinking about?”
I shook my head.
I felt the taxi come to a stop. We must be in the grounds of the house in Buitenzorg.
Mir led me out of the car and up the steps.
“Princess! Princess!” Mir cried out.
It wasn’t long before I heard running footsteps and cries: “Mas, what has happened? Why are you like this?”
I felt her hand take mine and she led me into the room.
“He can’t speak yet, Princess. And he can’t use his eyes yet either. It was the Zweep.”
“The Zweep,” Princess whispered into the bandage over my ear. “I should have shot that Pangemanann.”
“Don’t be a hothead, Princess.”
“I know that one day I will have to shoot them.”
“Don’t think about such things, Princess, for God’s sake. You’ll just make him worried and anxious,” said Mir.
They led me onto my bed.
I could hear Sandiman giving orders to the men from Banten. Nobody was allowed on the grounds, except with the permission of Princess. Anyone who did come in had to be taught a lesson so that they understood next time.
That afternoon Hendrik arrived, with the nanny who looked after the baby. He came straight to me and reported that everything had been done as ordered. He also passed on a message to Sandiman to go back to the office in Bandung as soon as he could.
Reports of the attack, my wife told me, were published in some of the Betawi and Bandung papers, mentioning the names of the attackers. The SDI was moving into action and demanding revenge. I wrote a message to the Central Leadership that there should be no action taken against the Zweep. They were just the instruments of greater forces. We must not be sidetracked from our challenge to Sugar. Victory in the struggle against Sugar was the most important thing.
Hendrik Frischboten had also been at work. The attackers had been detained and would be put on trial as soon as I was well.
One afternoon Douwager came to visit me to say he was sorry to hear what had happened. My mouth had been unbandaged by then, though my lips still felt swollen.
“Where is Wardi?”
“He hasn’t been in Bandung for a while,” he answered.
“He’s been traveling around propagandizing for that new party, perhaps.”
He didn’t confirm or deny. “If he knew what had happened, he would have come straightaway.”
“It doesn’t matter. The propaganda work is important too.”
And it was then that it also became clear to me, even though my eyes were still covered—he and Wardi were not joining in the fight against the Syndicate. Not with deeds, and not in their hearts either. Indies Nationalism was more important to them.
And I was not discouraged because of it.
The trial proceeded quickly and without complications. The motive for the attack was that Robert Suurhof did not like the article in Medan. Why didn’t he like it? No reason. He just didn’t like it.
I tried to open up the trial to broader issues, but the court wouldn’t let things go outside the actual attack and firmly rejected moving even an inch off track.
Robert Suurhof and his friends were found guilty of premeditated assault and were sentenced to four months each. And with that, the matter was considered ended.
But for me the matter had not ended at all.
While they were shut away in jail, we published even more reports about the sugar districts. In some areas people went into action and began setting the cane fields alight. This movement began in Sidoarjo, where Nyai Ontosoroh was born, the place where my story began. One of the laboratory workers who was a member of the SDI taught people how to set the cane alight.
When the dry season had reached its peak, it was enough for one person to slip in among the cane at night and pour phosphorus over the leaves that lay on the ground after the cane had been pruned. Then next day, as the temperature rose, the phosphorus would ignite by itself. The fallen leaves would burn. If the guards looking after the cane were at all slack, the fire would spread very fast. Even if they acted quickly, they would still lose a quarter of a hectare that would be burned to the ground. And there would be another hectare of cane that could no longer be sent to the mill. To put the fire out, all of the coolies would have to be mobilized. The cost of putting out even a small fire would at least equal that of putting down a rebellion.
At first, the sugar barons didn’t understand exactly what was happening. After there had been twenty fires in just one month in Central and East Java, they organized a conference. The results—security of the plantations would be strengthened. The fire epidemic stopped, but not because of the increased security. The wet season had arrived.
Reports from the sugar areas became more and more popular in the press, especially the Malay press. There were no signs of any activity from the Indo gang, perhaps because their ringleaders were still shut away in jail.
Then came one more trial, the heaviest of all.
One afternoon a man came to see me. He was already beginning to show his age. His clothes were dirty and faded. He wore a black Malay fez, so that you could hardly see his hair. He was an Acehnese named Teukoe Djamiloen. This name indicated that he had been a traditional leader in Aceh.
“There is nothing else for me to do than come and see you, Tuan,” he said in a rather strangely pronounced Malay. “After living some time now in these uncertain straits, and after asking here and there, it seems it is only Tuan who can perhaps help me. So here I have come. Who knows? Perhaps it is God Himself who has led me here.”
I observed his lean dry skin. He moved lithely, and had the appearance of someone from Southern India. He was perhaps forty-five years old. He wore a week’s growth of mustache, beard, and whiskers along his neck under his chin.
“What is it you want?” I asked, impatient with his ornate and over-polite manner of speaking.
“At first I humored myself that it did not matter being here in Priangan because our leader Tjoet Nya Dhin too was exiled here. But as time passed I have found less and less consolation in this thought. The feeling that I had been treated unjustly, Tuan, began to gnaw at my soul more and more, day and night.”
“What was it that happened?”
“Yes, Tuan, just before the Aceh War ended, the army captured me in a blang.”
“A blang?”
“A field, Tuan. They caught me after we had been surrounded. Then they beat us. Several of my comrades were killed. They took the rest, all badly wounded. It was about the same time that Tjoet Nya Dhin was caught in the jungle and exiled here to Priangan. I and some of my friends were put in jail—for five years. After they let me out, I lived in Kotaraja back in Aceh for four years. I got married again and had a child. Then one day I was summoned to the office of tuan of Kotaraja. All he asked was: Is this Teukoe Djamiloen? Then and there I was taken to the harbor and put on a ship. I had nothing with me. I was brought here to Priangan in Java, and then just let go like that.”
I took him to see Frischboten and I told him to repeat his story.
“Barbarians!” hissed Hendrik, who himself was unable to control his fury. His eyes burned.
“Then how did you live after that?”
“I have trodden all roads, Tuan, all roads—and they all led to jail.”
“You’ve been in court?”
“Several times.”
“The matter of your being exiled here from Aceh without any court order has never been raised?”
&nb
sp; “Never.”
“Can you prove what you have told us?” I asked.
“I am an Acehnese, Tuan, and a teukoe, who for more than fifteen years fought in the battlefield. Is it right that I should now lie?”
“We’re sorry, don’t be angry.”
“What is the point of lying and cheating if I can still use my muscles and my mind? Yes, I have stolen, fought, and robbed. But lie, Tuan, and cheat, that is not in my character. I am a true Acehnese.”
“Fine,” said Hendrik. He took some paper and started to question the Acehnese in more detail.
Two hours passed. The questions were finished. Teukoe Djamiloen was asked to come back the next morning to continue the interview.
“Have you ever met Tjoet Nya Dhin?” I asked.
“I have never been able to find her. How could I look for her when my situation is like this?”
“This is enough now. You can go.”
He didn’t seem to want to go.
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“If you would allow me, I could guard your door at the office?”
He had no place to stay.
Hendrik looked at me, nodding. He believed all that Teukoe Djamiloen had told him. And that meant that the Teukoe’s request was agreed to, and so he joined Marko’s men.
As soon as he had left, I asked Hendrik; “Could a kontrolir exile someone without any recourse to the law like that?”
“It’s happened before, hasn’t it, Minke. Not just in the Indies, but in all the colonies. This is not the only case.”
“And the person has no way of defending himself?”
“He could, if there was someone who could handle his case.”
“So it is because he has no money that he can’t defend himself?”
“No, it’s more than that. Look, Minke, according to the law, the only person who can act arbitrarily like that, who has a legal right to do that, is the governor-general. You know yourself about the extraordinary rights, rights that only the governor-general has. But there are those local officials who, because they’re crazy with power, or because they don’t understand the limits of their authority, or because they’ve been bribed by the local Native rulers, come to think that these rights extend down to them, and they use them. They use them without ever requesting permission from the only one who has such rights under the law—the governor-general. It’s always been like that.”