Child of All Nations

  On entering the parlor, he stopped, raised his hand, and said in Malay, “Greetings!”

  The people sitting in the chairs all stood up, as if on command. Jean Marais too, and Nyai carrying Rono Mellema, and Maysoroh too.

  “Greetings!” they all answered together.

  “Am I now meeting Nyai Ontosoroh alias Sanikem?” He continued in Malay, his gaze focused on Mama, ignoring the others.

  “You are not wrong, Tuan Engineer Maurits Mellema. I am Sanikem,” answered Nyai. “Please sit down.”

  “No time to sit,” he answered arrogantly. “This will only take a moment.”

  “It does not feel right that it should be just for a moment. Look, the friends of your business have all come to greet you.”

  He looked at them one by one, from Darsam at one end to me at the other.

  “Let me introduce you to them. Over there, Tuan, is Darsam, our chief of security.”

  Darsam coughed, and thrust forward his machete. Engineer Maurits Mellema was unsure what to do, and just nodded to the Madurese. The object of the nod showed his teeth.

  “Then, there is Tuan Jean Marais, a painter, a French artist.”

  The guest was even more unsure of himself now. His legs moved for a moment. Forcing himself, he moved forward, closer, and held out his hand. He asked in French, “You are a Frenchman?”

  “Yes, Mr. Mellema.”

  “A painter?” he asked amazed.

  “Not wrong, Mr. Mellema. And this is my daughter, Maysoroh Marais. Greet Mr. Mellema, May.”

  The child held out her little hand, and the guest smiled as he took it. He pinched May’s chin, saying in French, “Good afternoon, pretty child.”

  May quickly started prattling in French, admiring the embroidery and decorations on his shoulders and sleeves and asking if she could feel them. The guest bent down so she could feel his epaulettes, the gold embroidery on his back, the embellishments to his sleeves, even the decorative cords hanging from his sword.

  The tension fell away. This arrogant man is a normal human being; he is fond of little children too, I thought.

  And at that moment I felt Mama’s sharp gaze piercing my back. I turned to her. Yes, her eyes were watching me to ensure that I was not taken in by the pretense.

  “Enough, May. Say thank you,” said Nyai.

  Engineer Mellema straightened again and Nyai Ontosoroh continued: “And this is Tuan Kommer, a journalist, Tuan Mellema.”

  The guest was startled again, nodding. Seeing that Kommer was an Indo he didn’t offer his hand.

  “And on the end there is Tuan Minke, my son-in-law, Annelies’s husband.”

  He seemed nervous. Standing erect before Nyai, he turned to look at me. I saw that he didn’t know what he must do. With a reluctant heart and obviously forcing himself, he stepped towards me. Nyai went on, “A graduate of H.B.S., a candidate doctor.”

  He held out his hand to me, saying in Dutch: “Yes, Tuan, I am here above all else to express my sadness to you.” He turned to Mama and said the same thing to her in Malay.

  “No need for that,” said Nyai in Malay when she saw Mellema coming across to her with hand extended. “The loss of my daughter cannot be replaced by the handshake of her murderer.” Her voice trembled.

  Despite the signs of his grandness—his uniform, his white skin—he shriveled before us. I too shriveled at those words. My breast tightened, knowing I did not have the courage of my mother-in-law.

  “That is too harsh, Nyai.” Engineer Mellema defended himself. “I understand how sad you and Tuan…”—he turned to glance at me—“but to accuse me of murder is going too far. It is not true.”

  “Tuan has lost nothing except respect in our eyes. Yet you have gained everything from our loss,” Nyai went on. Her voice still quavered.

  “I can’t accept that. Everything has its rules,” the guest answered. He still stood, and all his welcomers still stood also.

  “That’s true,” said Nyai in Malay, “there are rules to deprive us and to allow you to profit from everything.”

  “I didn’t make the rules.”

  “But you have done your best to use those rules for your own profit.”

  “Nyai can hire an advocate.”

  “A thousand advocates cannot return my daughter to me.” Now it was not only her voice that trembled, but also her lips. “There is not a single advocate who would take on the defense of a Native against a Pure. That is not possible here.”

  “What can one do, if that is the will of God?”

  “Yes, the will of Tuan has become the will of God.”

  Engineer Maurits Mellema went silent, perhaps because his Malay was limited.

  “You don’t want to be responsible for any of this, so it is God that you order held responsible. Very beautiful. Why won’t you account for yourself to me? To her mother, who gave birth to her, raised her, educated her, and looked after her financially?”

  The tremble in her voice and her lips slowly disappeared. She turned to me. Now again I shriveled up, having nothing of my own to fling at him.

  “It has already happened,” the guest began again. “That’s why I have come here, to—”

  “—to give up your guardianship over my wife and give it back to me?” I hacked at him, forcing myself, in Dutch.

  “…to-to-to—not to fight.”

  “You don’t need to fight with us. There are many other people you can use to do that, even to kill some of us,” parried Nyai. “Tuan Kommer, what do you have to say?”

  And with that fluency of his, he spoke in Malay: “Tuan Engineer Maurits Mellema, as a journalist I promise you that everything you say here today will be made public. All of Surabaya will know what kind of man you are. Keep on talking, but maybe you had better sit down.”

  Still the guest would not sit. He bit his lower lip.

  “Tuan Marais,” said my mother-in-law, “this is Tuan Engineer Maurits Mellema, about whom you have heard so much. Do you not feel that it is only proper that you accept the honor of using this very valuable opportunity to speak with him?”

  “Monsieur Ingénieur Mellema,” began Marais in French, “Monsieur was born and educated in Europe, a scholar. So was I, though I did not graduate. But how great is the difference between us, Monsieur; you came here seeking wealth and power, I simply as a wanderer.”

  “I came here for the Netherlands,” answered Mellema.

  “You did not come to this house for the Netherlands. There is no Netherlands here, not even a picture of the queen.”

  The guest coughed; his eyes sought out a picture of the queen but all he found was a painting of Nyai Ontosoroh, in all her grandness, hanging over the door that led into the back parlor.

  “We are both pure-blood Europeans, Monsieur,” Jean Marais continued, “and I can agree with some of what Nyai has said. You are to blame for Madame Annelies’s death. Monsieur owes Nyai and Monsieur Minke a life.”

  “There is someone who takes care of all that sort of thing, who is responsible,” answered Engineer Mellema.

  “What you took care of, and what you are responsible for, is that death.”

  “That’s for the courts to say.”

  “You are a liar! In your heart, in your conscience, do you feel guilt?”

  “No.”

  “An even greater lie!”

  “We don’t understand French,” protested Nyai in Malay. “Now that you have killed my daughter, when do you want to throw us out?”

  The guest was still standing, and went pale for a moment; then he went red with impotent anger. Seeing Mellema was still not ready to speak, Mama went on stabbing at him: “Very beautiful.”

  “So this is what the real Europe is like, the Europe without rival that has been stuffed into my head for so long,” I added in Dutch.

  This educated man, this marine engineer turned to me. He answered softly: “I understand your sorrow, Tuan, and I join with you in your sorrow. But what can be done? It is all over now.”


  “Very easy. Do you think your life is more valuable than that of my wife?” I swore. “You thought of my wife as a piece of portable property that you could shift around at will, that could be treated as you wish. You don’t recognize Native law, Moslem law; you did not honor our legal marriage.”

  “I didn’t come to discuss all that.”

  “Yes, you didn’t even bother to let us know that my wife had died. You wanted to surprise us with the news of her death. Yes?” I pressed.

  Mama exploded in fury when she heard my accusation: “Good. He doesn’t want to talk about all this, the sins that weigh so heavily on his heart. Now just tell us: When do you want to throw us out so that your plan may be complete?”

  “You are going to do that too?” asked Kommer.

  “It’s nothing to do with you,” answered Mellema.

  “Who said so?” Kommer contradicted. “Everything that happens under the sun is the business of thinking people.”

  Now this person, this officer who was used to having his every word listened to, was stuttering, unable to speak.

  “If one’s feelings of humanity are offended,” Kommer went on, “everyone with feeling will also be offended, except for people who are mad and those with truly criminal mentalities, even though they may be university graduates.”

  “As a European, and more especially as a Frenchman, I too feel offended. That is why I am here,” said Marais in French.

  “That’s it, Tuan Marais,” Kommer encouraged him, even though he didn’t understand French.

  “Dressed in your navy uniform like that, with your title of engineer, you will surely be the subject of my next painting. And what will I call that painting? This: L’Ingénieur Mellema, Le Vampire Hollandais.”

  Our guest went pale again. His lips seemed to have been deserted by his blood. He had run out of words.

  “For the world, for God, one day I will exhibit that painting in Paris, and in your own country.”

  “No need to show it in the Indies, however,” I added in French. Marais looked at me, shook his head, and smiled.

  “There is no need in the Indies, Monsieur Minke,” he answered. “No vampire likes to admire another.” Marais’s voice rumbled in a low tone, like the far-off thunder. “Murdering people’s children, robbing the fruits of labor of a woman he should in fact be protecting, and a Native woman too, whom he normally would consider a barbarian!” He laughed loudly, insultingly. “Long live Tuan Engineer Maurits Mellema! Long live murderer and thief.”

  “There has been no murder, let alone any theft.”

  “What did Tuan Mellema, your father, bring here from the Netherlands?” asked Mama. “No one knows but me: Two sets of underclothes. Not even a shirt. It was only afterwards that, together with me, he began to keep a few dairy cattle in Tulangan. Listen to me, Tuan Engineer Mellema. Everything he owned in the Netherlands—I don’t know whether it was a lot or not—he left for your mother and you. If you know dogs, you would know a dog could tell you that there is none of the salt of your sweat spilled on the floor upon which you now stand. Nor on the land that I now occupy.” She coughed and Rono woke up. She rocked him in her arms. “Everything you see around you here would tell you if it could, it is all salty with the sweat from my body.”

  “The woman you consider a barbarian is speaking to you now, Tuan Engineer Maurits Mellema,” said Kommer in Malay. “Now you’ll pretend you don’t understand Malay?”

  “You understand the meaning of salt and sweat?” asked Jan Marais in Malay.

  “I understand,” he answered weakly.

  “You haven’t spoken enough,” Mama pressed me.

  “Mama, I’m admiring, at the moment, an educated European, civilized and cultured, who has robbed my wife in both life and death. So this is what he is like in reality: a graduate, dashing, handsome, tall and well-built, broad-chested…”

  Engineer Maurits Mellema turned to me: “Truly, Tuan, I join you in your sorrow,” he said.

  “He does not know even the name of my wife’s husband,” I said. “Was this the kind of guardian my wife had?”

  “Truly, Tuan”—now he began to defend himself—“I was in South Africa at the time.”

  “So you’re saying South Africa is to blame?”

  “Yes, it’s indeed South Africa that’s to blame,” said Jean Marais. “Tuan Mellema doesn’t have any business with blame, let alone sin. His only business is profit.”

  Engineer Mellema, uninvited, dropped to his seat. His white scabbard got in his way and he shifted it with his left hand. His white cap still sat perched on his head.

  Seeing him collapse onto his chair, the others, with relief, sat down as well.

  Maysoroh’s eyes popped out as she tried to follow the conversation that was going on in French, Dutch, and Malay. She did not understand what was happening, but suspicion shone from her eyes, and it went straight towards the visitor wearing all the gold embroidery.

  “Speak, Darsam!” ordered Mama.

  In Malay, and with words that he had readied beforehand, Darsam began: “So it is Tuan who took Miss Annelies. Since she was little, I have been the one who guarded over her. Every day I took her to and from school. No one dared worry or touch her. Then you came and took her as if she were some goat’s kid. And only now I found out”—he couldn’t go on for a moment—“she died at your hands.”

  The visitor took out a handkerchief. He wiped away his sweat.

  “If you like, Tuan, you can unsheath your sword, and we will fight like men.”

  Engineer Mellema pretended not to hear. He didn’t even turn to look at Darsam. Darsam stood up, rubbed his machete, and stepped forward.

  “Stay where you are,” ordered Mama.

  Darsam’s face was red with anger. As he edged back to his place, he growled in fury, “It was I. I who gave Miss Annelies away when she married!” He pointed accusingly, still on his feet. “You wouldn’t recognize it! Legal and right! Legitimate in the eyes of my religion!”

  Hearing Darsam’s roars, two sailors came in, gave a salute, and stood on either side of their superior.

  “Good. The three of you can fight me at once.”

  “Go!” the visitor ordered his guards, “and bring that thing inside!” he shouted without looking behind him.

  They saluted, then went to fetch the thing. What kind of weapon was it?

  “My job is to guard the security of this family and business. Whoever disturbs it, Darsam’s machete is ready to cut up anyone who deserves it.”

  “That’s enough, Darsam. You have to understand that the Tuan before you now is going to take over all this business, everything that the business owns, now that he has murdered Annelies.”

  “He has killed her, and now he wants to take everything?”

  “Yes, that’s the man.”

  “Is it he, Nyai? He did that?”

  “Yes, Darsam.”

  “And I must keep still and do nothing, Nyai?”

  “You may only speak. Nothing else.”

  “Just speak, Nyai? That’s all?”

  The guest took no notice of the conversation taking place in Malay. He pretended not to hear, but he was struggling to stay calm and in control of himself and the situation.

  “But Darsam is willing and ready to fight with him, Nyai”—Darsam’s eyes radiated disgust—“now, later, whenever he wants.”

  One of the sailors came back inside. It wasn’t a gun he was carrying, but a large package, not heavy, tied up with silk. He saluted, put the thing down beside his officer’s feet, saluted again, then left.

  “Sit down, Darsam.” Darsam sat down again, still grumbling.

  “You shame Europe before Natives,” Marais began again, “and in the eyes of Europeans too. If you are the best Europe can produce—a graduate, a scholar—what in heaven’s name are its ignorant bandits like?”

  “Nyai, Tuan-tuan.” Mellema began to regain his confidence and self-control. “If need be, if you feel it’s necessary, t
ake me to court. I am willing, I would accept that happily.”

  “Give me a pencil and paper,” said Kommer. He had forgotten to bring his weapons of war. I gave him what he wanted and he began taking notes straight away.

  “You of all people know that there is no way for a Native to sue a European.”

  “You can do it, as a European, Monsieur Marais.”

  Jean Marais lost his temper. In rapid French he answered: “Good. I will paint you and exhibit the painting both in France and in the Netherlands. And I will not paint the vampire with a tail but just as you are now, in an officer’s uniform, representing the barbarian who salutes the law.”

  “Please, do,” answered Mellema.

  “Don’t worry, Tuan Mellema,” Kommer started, “I will publish a special edition in both Dutch and Malay. I will circulate that special edition among the sailors, so that they too may know who you really are.”

  “Please do. That is your right,” he answered, with reviving confidence.

  “And to the readers of Surabaya, I will say: Read about Lieutenant-Colonel Engineer Maurits Mellema and find out who he really is. I will tell the newspaper boys to shout out on every street corner: He hated his father, but not his father’s property, and now he faces his enemy—a Native woman named Ontosoroh, the person who worked to build the wealth of the father Mellema hated so greatly.”

  “Superb!” shouted Marais.

  “Don’t worry, Tuan Kommer,” I said. “I will write it all out for you in Dutch: the day I met my wife’s murderer, the murderer of his own stepsister.”

  “No need for a lawyer, no need for a court,” added Mama enthusiastically. “Only then will I be happy to leave behind what I have worked for all these years, this building and everything in it, the business and all its wealth.”

  For the first time, the guest bowed his head deeply and wiped away the sweat again with his handkerchief.

  “So, so,” Maysoroh shrilled in her pure, clear voice, “Sis Annelies is dead, Nyai?” she asked in Dutch.

  “Yes, May, she is dead,” answered Nyai.

  “This Tuan, he was the one who took her and killed her?”