The rumors, whispered furtively among my school friends, were that even the richest bankers in the world had no chance of courting her. Handsome and manly nobility scrambled head over heels just to be noticed by her. Just to be noticed!
Whenever I had nothing to do, I would gaze at her face while supposing how it would be to court her. How would it be! And how high, too, was her station. And how far away she was, nearly twenty thousand kilometers from where I was: Surabaya. One month’s sail by boat across two oceans, five straits, and through one canal. Even then there’d be no certainty of being able to meet her. I didn’t dare speak my feelings to a single soul. They would have laughed at me and called me mad.
At the post offices, so rumor was also whispered, letters were occasionally received proposing marriage to this maiden who lived so far away and so high above. None ever reached her. Even if I had been crazy enough to try, it would have been just the same: The post officials would have only kept the letter for themselves.
And that beloved of the gods was the same age as me: eighteen. We were both born in the same year: 1880. Only one figure shaped like a stick, the others roundish, like miscast marbles. The day and the month were also the same: 31 August. If there were any differences, they were only the hour and sex. My parents never noted down the time of my birth. And I didn’t know the hour of her birth. As for difference in sex, I was a male, she was a female. And that bewildering difference in time: When my island was blanketed in the darkness of night, her land was lit with sunshine. When her country was embraced by the blackness of night, my island shone brightly under the equatorial sun.
My teacher, Magda Peters, forbade us to believe in astrology. It was nonsense, she said. Thomas Aquinas, she said, once saw two people who were born in the same year, in the same month, on the same day and at the same hour, even in the same place. The joke played by astrology was that one became a great landowner and the other his slave.
Indeed I don’t believe in astrology. How could anyone believe in it? It has never lit the way for progress in science and in learning. And it demands of us that we submit to its predictions. There is nothing else we can do except to throw it into the pig’s slops bucket. Once I had my fortune told, just for fun. My horoscope was turned over and over. The fortune-teller opened her mouth. She had two gold teeth: If sir is patient, she said, he will surely meet the maiden. So I just prefer to trust my intellect. Even with the patience of all mankind, I would never meet her.
I put my trust in scientific understanding and in reason. With these, at least, there are certainties that can be grasped.
* * *
Without knocking on the real door of my rented room, Robert Suurhof—I won’t use his real name here—entered. He found me crouched over the picture of that maiden, that beloved of the gods. He burst out laughing; my eyes grew moist, I was so embarrassed. His shout was even more impudent.
“Oho, you philogynist, lady-killer, crocodile! What is the good of wishing for the moon?”
I could have thrown him out. But instead: “Oh . . . you never know!”
Let me tell you about Robert Suurhof: he was then my school friend from H.B.S. (the prestigious Dutch-language senior high school), H.B.S. Street, Surabaya. He was taller than me. In his body ran some Native blood. Who knows how many drops or clots.
“Forget her,” he said. His voice had a coaxing, groaning note in it. Then: “There is a goddess here too in Surabaya—beautiful beyond comparison, easily equal to this picture. It’s only a picture anyway.”
And he mocked me, the one who had defined beauty, by quoting my definition back at me: “Bone structure and body proportion must be in balance. And with fine, soft skin. She must have eyes that shine and lips that are clever at whispering.”
“You’ve added ‘clever at whispering,’” I said.
“Yes, then if she curses you, you won’t hear.”
I offered him silence.
He gave me a look. “If you are a real man, a true philogynist, come with me there. I want to see what you do, whether you’re indeed as manly as you say you are.”
“I’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
“You’re afraid even to descend into the arena,” he accused.
That offended me. I knew that the H.B.S. brain inside the head of Robert Suurhof was only clever at insulting, belittling, disparaging, and working evil on people. He thought he knew my weakness: I had no European blood in my body.
“It’s on!” I answered. That was several weeks ago, at the beginning of the new school year.
And now all of Java was celebrating, perhaps also the whole of the Netherlands Indies. The tricolor fluttered joyously everywhere: That one-and-only maiden of the photograph, goddess of beauty, beloved of the gods, was now ascending the throne. She now was my queen. I was her subject. Exactly like Miss Magda Peters’s story of Thomas Aquinas. She was Her Majesty Wilhelmina. Date, month, and year of birth had given the astrologer the opportunity to raise her to become a queen and to cast me down to become her subject. And my queen would never know that I had walked this earth.
The date was September 7, 1898. Friday. This was in the Indies. Over there in Holland: September 6, 1898. Thursday.
All the school had gone crazy celebrating the coronation: competitions, performances, exhibitions of all those skills and abilities studied by Europeans—soccer, acrobatics, and softball. And none of this interested me. I didn’t like sports.
The world around me was bustling. The cannons were booming. There were parades and hymns of praise, but my heart was empty, tormented. So I went, as usual, to my next-door neighbor and business partner, Jean Marais. Jean was a Frenchman and had only one leg. But his story comes later. He greeted me in French, forcing me to use his language.
“Ça va, Jean, I have some work for you. One sitting-room suite.” I gave him a drawing of what the customer wanted.
“Master Minke!” came a call from next door.
Sticking my head out the window I saw Mrs. Telinga waving to me.
“Jean, I’m going. She may be serving cake.”
At home I found no cake. Only Robert Suurhof.
“Ayoh!,” he said. “We’ll go now.”
A new model buggy was waiting for us at the front gate. We climbed aboard; the horses began to move. The coachman was an old Javanese.
“The rent for this must surely be more expensive than for any other,” I said in Dutch.
“No fooling, Minke, this is no ordinary buggy, no cheap kretek. It’s got springs—perhaps the first in Surabaya. Its springs probably cost more than the rest of the buggy put together.”
“I can believe you, Rob. Come on, tell me, where are we going?”
He replied in his insolent, mysterious way:
“A place to which every youth dreams of receiving an invitation, because of the angel that lives there, Minke. Listen, I’ve had the good luck to be invited by her older brother. Nobody has ever got an invitation, except this one.” He pointed to himself with his thumb. “Listen, coincidentally her brother is also called Robert.”
“There are a lot of children called Robert now.” He took no notice of me and continued.
“We met at a soccer match. And now I am invited to lunch to eat bull calves. That is what interests me most.” He glanced slyly at me.
“Bull calves?” I did not understand.
“Veal, to eat veal. That’s my problem. Your problem”—he made a noise with his lips, his eyes sharply examining mine—“is that little sister of Robert’s. I want to see how far this masculine charm of yours gets you, you philogynist.”
The steel frames of the buggy’s wheels rattled on as it ground along the stone road of Kranggan Street to Blauran, in the direction of Wonokromo.
“Come on, sing veni, vidi, vici—I came, I saw, I conquered.” He prompted me to join in between the rattle of the wheels. “Ha-ha, you’ve gone pale now. He no longer believes in his own virility. Ha!”
“Why don’t you take it all for
yourself. Veal and this goddess?”
“I? For me—only a goddess with Pure European blood!” So the goddess we were about to visit was an Indo girl, a Mixed-Blood, Indisch. Robert Suurhof—I remind you once again, I’m not using his real name—was also an Indo. When his mother, an Indo, was about to give birth, his father, also an Indo, rushed her to Perak Harbor, boarded the ship Van Heemskerck, which was tied up in port, so she had the child there, and he not only became a Dutch subject but a Dutch citizen as well. So he thought anyway. But I found out later that to be born on board a Dutch ship had no legal consequences whatever. Perhaps his behavior was similar to that of the Jews with Roman citizenship. He held himself to be different from his own brothers and sisters. He did not look upon himself as an Indo. If he had been born only one kilometer from that ship, maybe on the docks of Perak, perhaps on a Madurese sampan, and obtained Madurese citizenship, his behavior would have been a bit different. At least I began to understand why he carried on about not being interested in Indo girls. Under the illusion he was actually a Dutch citizen he strove to act as one for the sake of his grandchildren’s future. He hoped that, in the future, he’d have a position and salary higher than that of an Indo, let alone a Native.
It was a very beautiful morning. The blue sky was clear, cloudless. Young life breathed nothing but pleasure. I was succeeding in all that I was doing. I was doing well in my studies. And I had an unworried heart and clear emotions. And she who had ascended the throne? That was all over for me. All the decorations on the buildings and gateways were for her. All the official gatherings were also for her. Beloved of the gods! Heavenly goddess! And now Suurhof wanted to make fun of me in front of this other earthly girl whom he also wanted me to conquer.
I did not even notice all the village people walking to town. The yellow stone road went straight to Wonokromo. Houses, dry fields, wet paddy fields, trees enclosed in bamboo lattice along the road, clumps of forest washed with silver rays of sunshine, all of it flew past brightly. And far away in the distance, indistinctly visible, were the mountains, standing silent in their arrogance, like reclining ascetics turned to stone.
“So we’re off to a party in clothes like these?”
“No, I just told you. I’m only going to eat, you to conquer.”
“Where are we going?”
“Direct to target.”
“Rob?” I boxed his shoulder because of my curiosity. “Come on, tell me.”
And still he would not say.
“Don’t make such a sour face! If you prove your virility,”—he smacked his lips—“I will respect you more than I do my own teacher. If you fail, look out, all your life you will be the butt of my jokes. Remember that well, Minke.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“No. One day, Minke, you’ll become a bupati. Perhaps you’ll get a regency where the land is arid. I’ll pray that you get a fertile one. If this goddess were to be beside you as your raden ayu, all the bupatis of Java would be in a high fever because of their envy.”
“Who said I shall become a bupati?”
“Me. And I shall continue my education in Holland. I shall become an engineer. Then we’ll meet again. I shall visit you with my wife. Do you know what will be the first question I ask you?”
“You’re dreaming. I will never become a bupati.”
“Listen, first I will ask: Hey, philogynist, lady-killer, crocodile, where is your harem?”
“It seems you still look upon me as an uncivilized Javanese.”
“What Javanese, even a bupati, is not but a crocodile on land?”
“I’m not going to be a bupati.”
He laughed at me scornfully. And the buggy still didn’t stop, and with time we moved farther and farther away from Surabaya. I had been offended. Actually, I was too easily offended, and my feelings too easily hurt. Rob did not care. Indeed he had once said: The only way a wealthy and powerful Javanese could prove that he did not intend to have a harem was for him to marry a European, Pure or Eurasian. Then there could never be any co-wives or concubines.
The buggy entered Wonokromo district.
“Look to the left,” Rob suggested.
I saw a Chinese-style house with a big yard, well kept and with a hedge. The front doors and windows were closed. It was painted red all over. I didn’t think it was at all attractive. And we all knew whose house it was and what it was—a pleasure-house, a brothel, owned by Babah Ah Tjong.
But the buggy kept on going.
“Keep looking to the left.”
For about one hundred and fifty meters past the pleasure-house the land was empty. Then there stood a two-storied timber house, also with extensive grounds. Standing behind the wooden fence was a big sign with the words Boerderij Buitenzorg—Buitenzorg Agricultural Company.
Everyone who lives in Surabaya and Wonokromo, I thought, knew that was the house of the wealthy Mr. Mellema—Herman Mellema. Everyone thought of that house as Mellema’s private palace, even if it was only made of teak. Its grey, wooden-shingle roof was already visible from quite a distance away. Its doors and windows stood wide open—not like Ah Tjong’s pleasure-house. There was no veranda. In its place there was a broad, expansive awning overhanging the wooden stairs, which were also wide, wider than the front door.
But that’s all that anyone knew, his name: Mr. Mellema. People would see him once or twice only, or once and then never again. But everyone talked about his concubine: Nyai Ontosoroh. People admired her very much. She was handsome, in her thirties, and she managed the whole of this great agricultural firm. People called her Ontosoroh, a Javanese pronunciation of Buitenzorg.
The family and its business were guarded by a Madurese fighter, Darsam, and his men. No one dared to call on that timber palace.
I sat up, startled.
The buggy suddenly turned, passed through the gate, passed the Boerderij Buitenzorg sign, and headed directly to the house’s front steps. I shuddered. Darsam, whom I had never seen, appeared in my mind’s eye. Just a mustache, nothing but a mustache, a fist, and a giant sickle. I had never heard of anyone receiving an invitation from this eerie and sinister palace.
“Here?”
Robert just spat.
An Indo-Eurasian youth opened the glass door and came down the steps to greet Suurhof. He appeared to be about my age. He looked European, except he had brown skin. He was tall, well built, sturdy.
“Hi, Rob!”
“Oho, Rob!” greeted Suurhof. “I’ve brought my friend. It’s okay, isn’t it? You don’t mind, do you?”
He didn’t greet me. I was just a Native. He looked at me piercingly. I started to become anxious. I knew we were beginning a new round in a game. If he refused to receive me, Suurhof would laugh and wait for me to crawl back to the main road, driven away by Darsam. He hadn’t yet refused, hadn’t yet expelled me. With just one movement of his lips, I could be driven out—God! Where must I hide my face? But no, suddenly he smiled and held out his hand.
“Robert Mellema,” he introduced himself.
“Minke,” I responded.
He still held my hand, waiting for me to give my family name. He raised his eyebrows. I understood: He thought I was an Indo who was not, or not yet, legally acknowledged by my father. Without a family name, an Indo is considered beneath contempt, like a Native. And I am indeed a Native. But no, he didn’t demand my family name.
“Pleased to meet you. Come on in.”
We went up the steps. His sharp glance did nothing to dispel my suspicions.
But suddenly a new mood replaced suspicion. In front of us stood a girl, white-skinned, refined, European face, hair and eyes of a Native. And those eyes, those shining eyes! (“Like a pair of morning stars,” I called them in my notes.) If this was the girl Suurhof meant, he was right: Not only could she rival the queen, she triumphed over her. And she was alive, flesh and blood, not just a picture.
“Annelies Mellema.” She held out her hand to me, then to Suurhof.
The voi
ce that came from her lips left an impression that I will remember for the rest of my life.
The four of us sat on a rattan settee. Robert Suurhof and Robert Mellema were soon engrossed in talk about soccer. I felt too awkward to join in. I had never liked soccer. My eyes began to poke around the big drawing room: the furniture; the ceiling; the dangling crystal candle chandelier; the hanging gaslights with their copper piping (I couldn’t work out where the main gas tank was); a picture of Queen Emma, who had just abdicated, hanging on the wall in a heavy wooden frame. Being a part-time trader in furniture, just one look at these objects told me that they were nothing but the most expensive, made by master craftsmen. The carpet under the settee was decorated with a motif I’d never come across before. And for the umpteenth time my gaze ended resting on Annelies’s face.
“Why are you so quiet?” Annelies asked. She addressed me in familiar Dutch.
Once again I gazed at her face. I hardly dared look into her eyes. Surely she would be repulsed by me. I had no family name and I was a Native too. All I could do was smile—and once again I forced myself to look away toward the furniture.
“Everything is so beautiful here,” I said.
“You like it here?”
“Very much,” and once again I looked at her.
Even in the middle of all this sumptuousness she appeared grand, a part of it but outshining all these rich and beautiful things.
“Why do you hide your family name?” she asked.
“I haven’t hidden it,” I answered, and I began to become anxious again. “Do I really need tell?” I glanced over at Robert Suurhof. Before I could look away, he let fly his own glance.
“Of course you do,” Annelies said. “Otherwise people will think you’re not acknowledged by your father.”
“I don’t have a family name. Truly I have none,” I answered.
“Oh!” she exclaimed slowly. “Forgive me.” She was silent for a moment. “That’s quite all right,” she then said.
“I’m not an Indo,” I added in a defensive tone.
“Oh!” she exclaimed once again. “No?”