Child of All Nations

  “The kings of Java owned nothing but their grandeur and their harems. They had no horses, no cattle, no buffalo—nothing to use as beasts of burden. So Minister Baud sent donkeys to Java, ten times more than the now-dead camels. The battalion of donkeys put on a different act, Mr. Tollenaar. During the first month they grouchily made their way along the Vorstenlanden–Semarang road with the sacks upon their backs. In the second month, their tongues hung out as they carried the sugar. Then, as they carted the indigo, they began to sneeze. In the end, they all died as well of infection. And there was nobody fuller of spleen than the European landowners of the Vorstenlanden. Finally, in the end, Mr. Minke, it was the iron horse that they decided upon, the locomotive. And more and more land was stolen.”

  Now that first locomotive in Java, in the Indies, was hauling me in my carriage towards the Vorstenlanden, the source of the indigo and the sugar and all the other commodities needed for the comfort of Europeans.

  Van Duijnen didn’t speak. He was reading a poetry book in Malay: “A Poem on the Arrival of Prince Frederick Hendrik in Ambon” by Ang I Tong. The Malay newspaper on his lap remained untouched, and he did not offer it to me. Now I saw for myself a Dutchman reading Malay books and newspapers. My thoughts didn’t want to focus. I had no desire to read. My mind kept wandering, groping to discover what was about to happen to me.

  That evening Van Duijnen was kind enough to pick me up at the hotel. He took me around in a luxurious carriage to see Surakarta. He spoke a lot about this center of Javanese culture. He liked it here.

  I think I knew why he liked it so much. Ter Haar had also said, “Surakarta is the center of your culture, and of a hundred and ten large European-owned plantations. Imagine! Where could the peasant farmers possibly find land for their own needs? Just imagine! Do you know what that means? Heaven for the European planter, for every white person, like me.” His laugh boomed. “Isn’t it so? Yes? True, heh? And your people, Mr. Minke, except for the aristocrats and a few successful traders, they got nothing. They had to crawl like worms to get a bowl of rice.”

  It was as if Ter Haar’s finger were pointing at my forehead: To whom should you speak now? Still to people like Van Duijnen, who can lounge on the cushions of your culture, your civilization?

  The streets were lantern-lit—lamps at the mouth of every alley, peddlers’ kerosene lamps along the road, everywhere, tiny, flickering, dim. Forgive this son of yours, Mother. I have not answered your letters. I have given you nothing you desired, even though your hope was simple, that I write in Javanese. Speak to the Javanese, said Jean Marais. Kommer too. But it is only the little lamps I see, Mother.

  The train was headed back to Surabaya. Van Duijnen was silent again. His head lolled, then he jolted awake.

  “You look pale. Ill? A chill?” he asked.

  “No,” I shook my head. “Perhaps it’s just that I’m so tired.”

  “Is that why you took the boat?”

  “At least on a ship you can walk about, and bathe.”

  “For a long journey it’s true that ships are still superior.” He became more friendly.

  But I had lost the desire to respond. I deliberately exhibited my tiredness and kept my eyes closed. I curled up in the corner.

  At five o’clock in the evening we arrived at Surabaya station. A government carriage picked us up. Where were we heading? Wonokromo? I knew all the countryside; I didn’t need to look.

  All of a sudden there was a crowd of people on the road, blocking the traffic. The carriage had to stop. Van Duijnen stuck his head out, amazed to see this crowd cutting off the roadway. Our carriage bell rang out. The people wouldn’t move out of the way. Van Duijnen rose to his feet, his face glowing.

  “Look, Tuan Minke!”

  Out of politeness I did what he wanted. In front of us were…what were they? Ya Allah, the velocipede, the bicycle! There were four Europeans spread across the road holding each other’s shoulders. Each was slowly pedaling his own bicycle. I had seen these magical two-wheeled vehicles many times now. They looked so fragile, as if they could be taken apart, folded up, and thrown anywhere you liked with one hand. They looked thin and tall and frail.

  The onlookers were astounded that the riders did not go flying onto the ground.

  The four Europeans seemed quite young. They raised their hands into the air—“no hands!” Now while their feet pedaled they all began to sing. And they didn’t fall! Once again Europe showed its magic.

  Walking in front of the performing youths was a Mixed-Blood who shouted through a loudspeaker, in Malay: “This is what they call the keretaangin, sirs, the velocipede, the bicycle. Genuine German-made. Speedy, as fast as the wind. The Lord Wind gives his aid to the riders so they do not fall. You sit safely in the saddle. The feet start pedaling slowly…and rider and vehicle shoot off like an arrow! Anyone can buy! Cash or time payment with the Kolenberger Company, Tunjungan Street. And it is not expensive, sirs.

  “Runs as fast as a horse. Needs no grass, needs no stable. Just takes a quarter of an hour to learn how to ride, and you can travel anywhere. Far more comfortable than a horse. This vehicle never farts, never needs a drink, never drops dung. Genuine German-made. You can take it straight inside the house; it never sweats.”

  The government carriage we were traveling in moved to the side of the road, making way for the slowly advancing bicycle riders.

  The pedestrian announced again: “The Firm Kolenberger also gives lessons. Only on tali for as long as it takes to learn to ride. Don’t miss this chance! The most dependable of all modern vehicles. The missus can ride at the back and a child at the front. Three people can set off together and pedal all around the town—no exhaustion, no cost.”

  They passed us and our carriage turned back into the traffic.

  “Crazy!” whispered Van Duijnen. “The world’s gone mad!” Suddenly he laughed. “Two wheels. Just think, two wheels! There’s more and more of them nowadays too. Crazy! Just one bump and husband, wife, and child would be over and injured. Who’d buy a thing like that? Like a mantis! It’ll just end up messing up the traffic.” He laughed again. Perhaps he was imagining the victims of the bicycle falling in the middle of the road. “And did you hear what he said?” he exclaimed. “Better than a horse. Can that thing jump over a gully? Can it climb a mountain? Can it swim? Can it have children? Crazy! Yes, it’s superior if all you worry about is that it doesn’t drink or eat or drop dung.” He laughed again. “It can’t neigh either!”

  I sat down and rested my body against the seat. A number of Dutch magazines had begun criticizing young women who rode bicycles. It wasn’t polite, they said. If the wind blew, all eyes looked the girls’ way, so not only was sin being encouraged, but accidents as well. The problem was that people had to stare bug-eyed at every new thing. But once things got started, the world lined up behind. And these young women had begun riding around in public, just for the fun of it, without any real purpose! The Netherlands and Europe were being attacked by bicycle fever.

  I remembered an article in another magazine: To oppose progress was no different from Don Quixote’s attack on the windmill. If women now liked to ride the bicycle, why wasn’t a special version made for them so that the wind couldn’t be made the scapegoat? Did people think the world belonged only to men?

  The bicycle of my imagination was in the Netherlands, and so my thoughts went to Annelies. She now lay in the earth. She never had the chance to see the two-wheelers proliferate in the land of her father. Had her heart not been broken, this year she would have been free from her guardianship, able to return to Java, and we could have been together again.

  Must I keep remembering her? And why do thoughts of the Netherlands always link me with her? She chose extinction without me. She made her own choice. And in the embrace of the earth of the Netherlands she would never witness the wave of women’s emancipation that was roaring through the land: emancipation on bicycles.

  Now my mind, leaving Annelies alone in her grave,
concentrated upon the wonder of this emancipation. You will never hear the famous Dutch feminists, Ann. Humanity would collapse without womankind, they said. Why must women be just the substratum of life? Why do their own children, who happened to be born males, have such extraordinary objections to women appearing in public? Why does the Netherlands even today deny women the opportunity to become ministers or members of parliament, even though twice consecutively it has been ruled by female monarchs?

  This modern world! What blessings have you really brought us? The rotten heritage of the past still has not been flushed away: Natives are not allowed to be equal, let alone superior, to Europeans, and must always be defeated. Europeans are against each other too, liberals opposing nonliberals, liberals opposing liberals. And now there was the women’s movement for emancipation: women fighting men. Is the modern age the age of the victory of capital? Machines and new discoveries cannot answer, cannot say anything. Humanity stays as it always was, complex and confused by those same old passions, just as in the wayang of ages past.

  I had fallen asleep in the government carriage. I awoke when it came to a stop. As soon as I climbed down the surroundings felt familiar. Yes, it was so: We had stopped in front of Nyai Ontosoroh’s house in Wonokromo. What was the policeman doing? My heart beat strong and fast: Trunodongso! It was the Tulangan affair after all.

  Nyai Ontosoroh came out, greeting me with a smile. No, that smile could not have anything to do with Trunodongso.

  “Nyai Ontosoroh,” said Van Duijnen, “I have brought Tuan Minke back. I will leave now. Tuan Minke is not to leave this place, as ordered by the prosecutor. My respects!” Having said this, he left in the carriage.

  “Come in Child. Let someone else look after your things. Don’t be angry, don’t be disappointed. You look so tired. I understand what you’ve been through. You want to forget your past as quickly as you can,” said Mama, “and now it turns out things still have not finished. Even so this house and I are a a part of your past. Smile, sit down.”

  “What is it this time, Ma? Trunodongso?”

  “He’s caused no problems.”

  “Robert Suurhof?”

  “No.”

  “So what now, Ma?”

  “Don’t be so depressed, Child. You are not the only one who has experienced these new troubles. I too, and all those we love. I hope this will be the last incident. Forgive me, Child, a thousand pardons. We all want some happiness. If the other has come instead, forgive me. Have a bath first, then we can talk properly about all that has happened.”

  Nothing had changed in the front parlor. The picture of Nyai still hung in the place of the picture of old Queen Emma.

  “You’ve only been gone a few days. Why do you look so foreign now? I’m sorry. A thousand pardons,” she said again.

  She went into the office.

  15

  Something had happened in the household: Minem, that saucy girl, was now living in the main house. Minem, the milker of cows! She was sweeping the floor. Even from a distance I could see her eyes wandering.

  As I passed I heard her soft greeting: “Young Master has arrived,” like the whispering of seduction.

  I pretended not to hear and kept walking to the bathroom.

  Poor Mama. It seems you became so lonely after I left that you gave in to Minem’s desires. Or is it that you want to be close to your grandson? At peace with your fate?

  Close to dinnertime, when I was reading the paper, Mama came in carrying Minem’s baby: “This is Rono, Child.”

  “Minem’s son, Ma?” I put aside my newspaper.

  “Robert’s child, my grandson.” Her eyes shone. “So my line will not be broken, Child. It was your child really that I hoped for.”

  Seeing that I was still confounded by it all, she began to explain: “It is Robert’s child. See his eyes! The eyes of his grandfather. Rob himself has confirmed it.”

  “Rob!” I cried.

  “Yes, his last and concluding letter.”

  “Last and concluding?”

  “He is dead, Minke. Rob is dead. Venereal disease. In Los Angeles.”

  “The United States?”

  She nodded.

  “So far away.”

  “This child will never see his father.” She was speaking to herself rather than to me. Her voice was lonely, heavy.

  I understood and bowed my head. Both her children had died in their youth, within months of each other. And before Robert, Annelies’s beloved horse Bawuk had died too.

  For a moment I remembered the horse’s death. The stable hands had not been able to humor its heart. Every day Mama spent two or three minutes chatting to it, just as Annelies had. It ate its favorite sweets, but lazily. Slowly it became thinner and thinner. Finally the veterinarian announced there was no hope.

  The animal could no longer stand, perhaps just like Annelies. It lay on the stable floor, without the desire even to raise its head.

  Then, one day before we went to Sidoarjo, Nyai and I were working in the office. Nyai asked the time. It was ten past nine. She covered her ears. Half a minute later there were two shots. Mama uncovered her ears and went on working. “What was it?” I asked Mama. She answered: “Bawuk, Bawuk has been put to sleep.”

  Bawuk had made itself a member of the Mellema clan.

  And now there was Rono.

  “It’s over with my children. I need Rono, this child.”

  I looked at Nyai with questioning eyes. She started to tell the story, slowly, like someone groping through the darkness of the night. It was not straightforward.

  While the Oosthoek was carrying me to Semarang, a letter had arrived from Robert Mellema in Los Angeles. That afternoon Nyai took the letter to the prosecutor’s office as evidence in the Ah Tjong case. She was received politely. The letter was copied by two clerks. Mama was asked to check that the two copies were the same as the original. She received a copy. The original was kept by the prosecutor.

  Then Mama had gone to the police to ask for help in contacting Robert Mellema. Darsam had driven Mama there in the buggy. Then something had happened in the police-station courtyard. Like a plot devised by a playwright, Fatso, alias Babah Kong, appeared in the yard.

  “Fatso!” Upon hearing his name in Nyai’s tale, I stood up from my chair.

  “It turns out he is a first-class police agent.”

  “What did Darsam do?”

  “It was Fatso who quickly told Darsam not to say anything about the earlier shooting.”

  “And Darsam, what about Darsam?” I asked impatiently.

  “Darsam ran inside and reported everything to me. The police looking after me were surprised too, so they summoned him—his name is not Babah Kong, it is Jan Tantang.”

  I couldn’t picture how confused Mama must have been at the time, as though she were watching a complicated melodrama unraveling on a stage.

  “Jan Tantang was questioned in front of us,” Mama went on. “And it turned out he isn’t a peddler, he is a police agent, first class. But he wasn’t doing official work, so he is in trouble for that. He’s a Manadonese-Dutch Mixed-Blood.”

  “Did he admit everything, Ma?”

  “From the very beginning, as soon as the questioning started.”

  “Another trial, Ma?”

  “Of course.”

  Rono gurgled. Minem came and took him, leaving behind sharp glances.

  “Yes, Child. A lot has happened. Yesterday the police came with a telegram from Los Angeles. They had found where Robert was living, but that’s all they found; Robert himself had died four months earlier.”

  “Ma!”

  “Yes. So be it. That’s what had to happen and indeed has happened.” She told me the month and day—exactly the same day Bawuk had been shot by the vet.

  “I am sorry, Ma.”

  “He has reached the destination he set off for. I think that’s for the best. At least his dreams were fulfilled: to be a sailor, to sail the world.”

  This extraordinary w
oman showed no signs of sadness; but I knew her heart was torn apart. It would not be long now before she had to lose the business as well—which had always been her first child, her honor, the crown of her life.

  She turned the conversation. “Isn’t it amazing, Child, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I have a grandson.”

  So now I knew with more certainty: It wasn’t because of Trunodongso that I had been brought back here, but because of the arrival of Robert’s letter and the discovery of the identity of Fatso alias Babah Kong alias Jan Tantang.

  “You must read Rob’s letter, Child; here’s the copy.”

  “It’s not for me, Ma. I don’t think it’s necessary.”

  “The trial will involve you, Minke. You must read it.”

  After dinner Mama gave me the letter. I don’t remember now exactly what was in it as I only read it once, and there were so many errors of language. But I have written it up again to read like this:

  Mama,

  I know you have not forgiven me. Even so I ask again for the thousandth time: Forgive me, Mama, forgive this son of yours, this Robert Mellema, whom you yourself brought into this world.

  Ma, my Mama, as I write this letter I feel so close to you, as when I was a child who suckled at your breast. But it seems now that there is nothing for me in those breasts. The water of life, Ma, the water of forgiveness no longer flows. I know I will die young, Ma, without your forgiveness. With my head splitting, aching, throbbing, all my joints stiff and pained by any movement, I forced myself to write you this letter, Ma, news from a lost child. Fever attacks me again and again, my vision is almost gone, lost in the haze. I no longer know if I write in a straight line. But I must finish this letter. Perhaps it is my last. I will keep writing for the next week, until I can write no more.