“Mama, what Mr. Kommer says is beginning to make sense to me. But I need to think about it calmly.”
“Yes, Mr. Minke, you are an admirer of the French Revolution; you want to see human dignity given its proper place. If you look at people from one point of view, that of suffering alone, you will lose the many other aspects of humanity. Reflection upon suffering alone will only give rise to revenge, revenge and nothing else.”
“We’re on holidays,” Mama suggested. “Why don’t we talk about something else, something happier?”
“Nothing happy has happened to me just lately, Nyai. I didn’t catch the panther I wanted. Tomorrow I’ve got to go back to Surabaya. When are you going home, Nyai?”
“I think it will be after you go back.”
The conversation stagnated. Kommer began to lose his sharpness. He had already yawned three times. I myself had just yawned for the second time. Perhaps also it was because he was such a sleeper that he hadn’t caught that panther, and hadn’t caught Mama’s heart either. He could fall asleep in front of Mama on the train, precisely at the time he was hoping she would say yes to his proposal. Maybe he could even fall asleep in the middle of giving a speech.
“If you’re already sleepy,” Mama prodded him, “you—”
“It’s better I go home straight away, Nyai, Mr. Minke.”
We went with him out to his horse. Then he rode slowly out of Tulangan.
“He was just showing off what he thinks he knows,” Mama growled, “like a little child showing off her doll.”
“Perhaps there is some truth in his words, Ma.”
“Of course. But it was the way he put them across, Child, his excessive enthusiasm, his pride…that wasn’t his heart’s voice. He wanted to put his knowledge on display. Perhaps he doesn’t really believe what he says.”
“He is a good man, Ma,” I said.
“Yes, he is a good man. That help he gave us was without any self-interest; at least I hope that’s the case. But that speech of his just now, there was self-interest there.”
“What self-interest, Ma?” I asked like a whining child.
“Are you bored with staying here?”
“Perhaps Panji Darman has arrived back in Surabaya.”
“So you do really intend to leave me?”
“Whatever else happens, Ma, I hope that you will give me a little sister-in-law.”
“Hush,” and Nyai quickly walked back into the house.
Sastro Kassier’s house was usually busy with the sounds of children. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and this time no sounds could be heard. Sitting in the front parlor by myself, gazing at the two portraits of Her Majesty, Queen Wilhelmina, I thought about what Kommer had said. He always ordered and insisted, suppressing me and robbing me of my freedom. I knew his intentions were good—not everything he wished from me was wrong. Perhaps indeed he was right about everything. But why did he have to push his ideas so aggressively? Why was he more interested in bragging about his own greatness and in flooding those around him with his enthusiasm? So he can control them? Must and Don’t are his banners, no matter what the particular idea—as if there were no other point of view. Earlier, when I had only known him a little, and superficially at that, I had been attracted to him. I saw him as a man of decision, and without rival. But the more I got to know him, the more my feelings changed. They were no longer sympathetic, indeed the opposite. Even Mama didn’t want to continue the debate with him.
How different he was from Sarah and Miriam de la Croix. Even Magda Peters had not gone around ordering, insisting. Jean Marais, who was such a gentle and shy man, was not like that, except for the one time he pressed me about using Malay. And that was probably a result of Kommer’s influence.
My father and elder brother were exactly the same as Kommer, full of musts and don’ts. I smiled: Perhaps that was how they were, those backward people who had never been touched by the spirit of the French Revolution? Men who had become comfortable with ordering around their wives and children and their neighbors and their relatives who had no power? My smile developed into a laugh. I was pleased with this idea of mine—an idea that was by no means certain to be right.
Yes, perhaps Kommer was right this time. Very likely so. But with so many musts and don’ts he should entertain no hopes of getting close to Mama’s heart.
Why was Jean Marais so easily influenced by him, trying to coerce me to learn Malay? Such a polite and shy person. I tried to recollect what he had said that had hurt me so much. All I recalled was that old reminder of his: Be just and fair, starting with your thoughts. I have always tried to think and act justly, my heart assured me. Have a go now at weighing things up again, as if Marais were testing your true inner thoughts. You still spend more time weighing up the good and bad of other people. What about yourself? Have you really considered all this fairly?
Is it true that you write for Dutch readers when you don’t have the slightest debt to them? Just as your beloved Mother says?
I am about to start to learn Malay, I answered. That cannot be achieved in just a day.
Are you absolutely sure that you have never forced and pressured people into doing things, nor gone around forbidding them to do things just because you liked it, as some kind of luxury or enjoyment? Like Kommer?
No, never. Really, never.
If it is true you are an admirer of the French Revolution, why were you so offended when a farmer like Trunodongso spoke in low Javanese to you?
I was ashamed in my heart and unable to answer. And I admitted it: The spirit and ideals of the French Revolution still had not cleared away my old attitudes as I lived my day-to-day life. It was still just something I’d read about, no more than an ornament to my thoughts.
Good, you have admitted that. Now, if a Native starts to talk to you in high Javanese will you advise him to switch to low Javanese? Ha, you can’t answer. You are still not able to give up the comforts and pleasures that are yours as an inheritance from your ancestors—rulers over your own Native fellow countrymen. You’re a cheat! The ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity of the French Revolution?—you have betrayed them for the benefits of that inheritance. It is only the ideal of Liberty that lives within you, and then it is only freedom for yourself, no more. Don’t you feel ashamed that you dare call yourself an admirer of the French Revolution?
I shriveled up in shame. Yes, I had to admit it: I was still unable to give up the benefits of my heritage. When someone spoke to me in low Javanese, I felt my rights had been stolen away. On the other hand, if people spoke to me in high Javanese, I felt I was among those chosen few, placed on some higher plane, a god in a human’s body, and these pleasures from my heritage caressed me.
You are not being honest as an educated person should be, Minke.
Those peasants addressed me that way of their own free will.
They do not do it of their own free will. They behave that way because of their experiences over the ages, as the slaves of both great and little kings. They would be flattened flush to the ground if they themselves did not flatten their bodies napkinlike before their kings—indeed they had been forced to prostrate themselves that way. If that is how they act towards you, a fellow Native, they will behave the same way before other peoples too. Then why should you be offended when Natives abase themselves before the Europeans? You have not learned and practiced justice; it is not yet part of your character.
One can’t throw away all those benefits and pleasures in just one go, I rebutted.
You are learning to know more about your people. You now have a little knowledge about them: How you yourself actually help to enslave your own people through the Javanese language. And then you pretend you want to defend Trunodongso through your writings in the newspapers.
I will defend him.
Do you really want to defend him?
Yes. Truly, I do, by Allah.
Mama says: God is always on the side of those who win.
And
so people must struggle to be victors, and thus God will bless their efforts. When Mama speaks like that, she is speaking in the name of her own experiences. She did not accept defeat. But in the final confrontation with Europe she was defeated; God has not yet blessed her struggles.
So now you want to defend them from oppression, using Dutch, your language? Ha, you can’t answer. Then they are right: You must begin to write in Malay, Minke; Malay does not hold within it any oppressive character. It is in accord with the aims of the French Revolution.
“Are you daydreaming, Tuan?”
I was startled. Djumilah moved my manuscript away to make room for banana-coconut custard and some thick black coffee. I answered with a laugh and nodded my thanks. I put the manuscript away.
“Perhaps you’re thinking of someone, heh?” she jibed me. “Is there someone you’ve met here in Tulangan?”
“I’ve met so many people, many indeed,” I answered.
“Thanks be to God,” and she went out to the back again. I watched Djumilah as she left, a lioness without strength, except to roar. Truly different from the wife of Trunodongso—without needing to roar she goes side by side with her husband, as a friend in life, and as an ally as well. Different too from Mother, who knows only devotion and doing good. Different again from educated Kartini, who longs for the arrival of the modern age. Different also from Mama, an independent human being—the essence of the ideal of Liberty from the French Revolution—who sees the modern era as containing no blessings beyond the advances in tools and technique.
From among all those women it is Mama who most closely resembles the ideal of the French Revolution.
And you yourself? You too are a free human being, like Nyai, but you are not trying to live up to the ideals of Equality and Fraternity. Wasn’t the revolution over more than a hundred years ago? What do you say now? More than one hundred years have passed!
Yes, there is very little of these ideals within me. Jean Marais works towards his ideal of filling his life with his paintings, not just obtaining his livelihood from them. Why do I want to write? Just to be famous? Just to feel satisfied with myself? You are being unjust again, Minke. Does your search for your own satisfaction give you the right to fame? Unjust! Others work until they sweat blood, to the edge of death—and there is no fame for them. They may not even be sure of eating two meals a day.
And you are no different from others. You are no taller, no more to be honored than Trunodongso. That is, if you truly understand what the French Revolution was all about. What do you think now, Minke?
And I remembered Khouw Ah Soe. He was fulfilling his life.
And the Filipino Natives who had tried to oust the Spanish, they too had given substance to their lives. And they had fought back against the Americans as well.
Writing is obviously not just a means towards self-satisfaction. Writing must be a way of giving substance to your life, as Jean said. And I was happy: My story about Trunodongso would do that. I would publish it. No need to take notice of Kommer’s opinions.
10
Stepping down onto the platform at Surabaya station, I asked Mama’s permission to go straight to Nijman’s office. In my bag were two manuscripts. One I thought was very good, the other perfect. Both contained eternal values, both were dedicated to eternity. I was most proud of the second article: A defense of all those suffering the same fate as Trunodongso. The world must be told how Java’s farmers are being thrown off their rice lands—the most fertile lands with the best irrigation—by the sugar factories, and with the aid of the Native civil servants in colonial employ and of the village officials. If Multatuli had been here in Surabaya, I would have come to him and said: Teacher, today I begin to follow where you have trod before.
Today I am important.
All who have fallen from on high, I began my story about Trunodongso, have been saved and then restored by the farmers: Kings, ministers, soldiers. And all the treading feet of men: They too have been borne on the backs of the farmers.…
There had never been any fiction written about farmers. Mine was the first. People said I did not understand my own people. Just let them wait! Soon they would know.
At Nijman’s offices the Pure-Blood boy invited me to go straight upstairs. Nijman stood and held out his hand: “It’s been so long since you have been here. The readers have been waiting for another article from you.”
I took out the article about Trunodongso. Proudly I handed it over to him. “Mr. Nijman, here are the results of my silence all this while.”
He took it politely and asked if I would allow him to read it now. I nodded. He would be amazed by the advances I had made.
“Poetic!” He nodded very politely and went on reading.
He had never used that word before. Just one word, and I felt it was a measure of the article’s worth.
I observed his face. He hadn’t finished one page; the smile had disappeared. On the second page, his forehead wrinkled. Before he went on to the third page he raised his eyes and looked at me.
It could be no other way, Mr. Nijman; this is the first time you would have read such a story as this!
He went on again. His face was turning red. On the fifth page, he put the manuscript down. He took up his pipe and began to suck on it. He blew the smoke out slowly into the air. Then: “Do you remember the person who sat on the same chair as you now sit?”
“Of course: Khouw Ah Soe.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t go on. He seemed to be groping for the right words. Why bring up Khouw Ah Soe? I became wary.
“Yes, Mr. Minke. All of a sudden I’m reminded of him. It seems you became friends with him after that meeting.”
“I never met him again after that.”
“True? As I read this, I get the feeling that you must have talked with him again.”
His words came at me like accusations. What was the connection between Trunodongso and Khouw Ah Soe? My pride in the story was overshadowed by a new fear.
“The spirit of this story—your spirit, your enthusiasm—has influenced the story too much.”
“Influenced it? How?” I asked anxiously.
He didn’t answer, but asked instead: “What were you thinking of when you wrote this?”
“What was I thinking of? The person about whom I was writing.”
“A true character or just someone out of your imagination?”
“A real person.”
“So you would dare to claim that all this here is more than just imagination? That it is factual?”
“Of course it is.”
“You would dare guarantee that?”
“Yes, I would,” I answered, once again the hero, my pride returned.
He said nothing more. He read the story again, starting from the beginning. I was still nervous about being connected that way to Khouw Ah Soe. That wouldn’t happen, would it?
Nijman stopped reading and fell into thought.
Yes, he would be impressed by this—my best writing, perfect—a protest about the injustices suffered by who knows how many thousands of Trunodongsos. I would reveal to the world the conspiracy of blood-sucking vampires who were cheating those illiterate farmers of their rents. Who could tell how many decades this deception had been going on?
Before reaching the end of the second page, Nijman raised his eyes again, looked at me very sharply, and asked: “You are the son-in-law of the late Mr. Mellema, yes? And what would your father-in-law think if he were still alive and saw what you have written here?”
My expectation that he would be impressed disappeared abruptly. On his face were signs of restrained fury.
“What’s the connection with the late Mr. Mellema?”
“You yourself know, don’t you, that he was the administrator of a sugar factory? You yourself have written: ‘And who knows for how many decades this deception has been going on?’ If it has only been twenty-five years, it means you have accused the late Mr. Mellema of carrying out such deceptions
for at least four years.”
My eyes almost popped out. Such a thing had never crossed my mind. Nijman’s lips were still moving; his voice continued. “You have accused your father-in-law of being involved in a conspiracy to defraud people of their rents. And you must know the implications of such a deception: Nyai Ontosoroh’s company, Boederij Buitenzorg, was set up with money obtained from such conspiracies. Yes? Or wasn’t that what you meant? Why are you silent? Do you still wish to say that all you have written is true? Not just fantasy?”
I was speechless. My mind worked faster and faster, but whatever I thought of, it was Mama’s face that I saw.
“Good; what you have written here is not just fantasy,” Nijman went on. His voice was soft but its lashes still hurt. “Could you prove these embezzlements if the appropriate officials demanded evidence from you?” He stared at me as though he would never blink again. “Or indeed is it your intention to publish a libel?”
“No! But these peasants—they have no place to air their grievances.”
“Nowhere to take their grievances? There are police everywhere. That’s what police are for. They can ask for protection from the police.”
“The police are closer to the factory officials than the peasants, Mr. Nijman. You must know that yourself.”
“So now you’re accusing the police of being in on the conspiracy too?” He awaited my answer. “Are you out to multiply your accusations? Look, Mr. Minke, if another person were here with us now, and he later made accusations against you, as a witness I would naturally have to recount everything that had been said. You are lucky there is no other witness here. And you’re luckier still that I am not a police official. If I were, and if I made a case of this, you would be involved in a case of libel, and you yourself, I think, would find many difficulties in obtaining both evidence and witnesses.”
Now I began to realize how dangerous it was to be a writer. But why had there been silence about this issue for so long? And why now that I was writing about peasants did Nijman no longer like my writings?