“Enough, enough.” Jean Marais tried to intervene.
“Don’t keep on, Ndoro Tuan,” appealed Fatso.
Telinga lost his temper: This person dared defy him! He no longer cared who Fatso was. His pride had been wounded. His right hand swung a death blow down towards Fatso’s head. And the rebel calmly moved out of its way. Telinga was thrown forward by his own blow as it missed its target. In fact Fatso could have easily punched Telinga in the ribs, but he didn’t. Each time Fatso successfully avoided Telinga’s blows, Telinga became angrier, and he attacked again and again. Fatso retreated, then retreated a little more, and then ran off. Telinga chased after him. Fatso disappeared down a narrow alley, where there were heaps of rubbish piled up.
“Telinga’s crazy!” Jean Marais frowned. “He thinks he’s still in the army.”
And the person Jean was frowning at went off hunting after Fatso, and disappeared down the same alley.
“What’s all this in aid of? Come on, let’s go home, Minke. You’re the cause of all this.”
He wouldn’t let me support him. May and Mrs. Telinga rushed about asking us what was happening. No one would tell them. The two of us sat and waited for the hothead to return. Anxiously, of course.
Ten minutes later, Mr. Telinga returned, bathed in sweat, red-faced and short of breath. He threw himself down into a canvas deck chair.
“Jan,” his wife complained, “what’s wrong with you? Have you forgotten that you’re an invalid? Looking for enemies? Do you think you’re still young?” She approached her husband, seized the pipe from his hand, and took it inside.
Mr. Telinga didn’t speak. It was as if there was a secret agreement between us. And no one regretted all that had happened more than myself. Deep in my heart I thanked God that no catastrophe had happened. And I felt it was fortunate that I hadn’t told them Darsam’s story. I would have really been blamed for everything then.
“Young Master is still ill,” called out Mrs. Telinga from inside. “Don’t sit outside in the breeze. It’s better you get some sleep. Food will be ready in a little while.”
“Go home, May,” ordered Jean, and May went home.
The three of us sat silently until Telinga had got his breath back.
“Let’s forget everything that has happened,” I proposed. What if the police became involved. I’d truly be the shameful cause of it all. “My head is aching again, Jean. Excuse me Mr. Telinga, Jean . . .”
Once in my room I became even more convinced: It had been Fatso and he had been spying on me. He was obviously one of Robert’s men. Darsam’s story could not be dismissed as nonsense. Be careful, Minke!
For the first time ever, I locked my door and windows while it was daylight. I got ready a hard wooden stick, formerly a mop handle, and placed it in a corner. I could grab it at any moment. Even if only at a basic level, goat-class, we say in Malay, I too had studied self-defense when I was in T.
Being an educated person, there was something I had to accept: Someone wanted to take my life, but I could not report it to the police. It would be unwise to involve Nyai and Annelies, or Father, who had just been made a bupati, or, most of all, Mother. I had to face all this silently, but with vigilance.
Four days passed and my headache still did not disappear. I certainly wasn’t getting enough sleep. And every day milk arrived. But there was no news from Darsam.
I had been away from school too long. The doctor had given me a certificate to stay away three weeks. The palakia seed had grown into a full-grown tree inside my head, without permission from its one and only legitimate owner, me. You’re right, Palakia Tree in My Head, I have to forget Nyai and Annelies. I must cut all relations with them! There is no point in maintaining relations. Only trouble will come of them. My life would suffer no great loss. I would not catch leprosy by not knowing this strange and forbidding family. I must become well again. Go after orders as before. Write for the papers. Graduate from school as was hoped for by so many people. Whatever else, I still liked school. To mix openly with all my friends. To be free. Obtaining new, unlimited knowledge and learning. Absorbing everything from this earth of mankind from the past, the present, and the future. At the end of next month, Magda Peters was going to hold discussions, lighting up this earth of mankind from every possible angle. And I was ill like this.
I had wasted these emergency holidays: a clot of time packed with tension. Often I thought: Should someone as young as I have tension such as this? As often I replied: No, not yet. Miss Magda once told us the story of Multatuli and his friend, the poet-journalist Roorda van Eysinga: They lived in tension because of their beliefs and their struggles to improve the fate of the people of the Indies, against both all-European and all-Native oppression. For the sake of the peoples of the Indies, who knew nothing of the world, those two ended up in exile, without comrades who visited them, without a single hand stretched out in aid, Minke. Read Roorda van Eysinga’s poem, written under the pseudonym Sentot, “The Last Days of the Hollanders in Java.” Every word was filled with the tension of somebody calling out in warning.
Multatuli and van Eysinga came under great pressure because of profound actions. And the pressure that I was under today? Nothing more than the result of the stumblings of a philogynist. I must let go of Annelies. I must be able to do it! But I still couldn’t convince myself. A girl as beautiful as that! And Nyai—such an inspiring and impressive character—a regal woman of great powers of betwitchment. Yes, yes: “If attracted, no limits to one’s praise; if hated, no limits to one’s finding fault.”
Slowly I began to understand: All this was the result of my reluctance to pay the price of entering the world of pleasure, the world where dreams become reality. Multatuli and van Eysinga paid the price but they wanted nothing for themselves. What do my writings mean compared to theirs? Everything I hope and lust after is for myself. The thought shamed me.
Yes, I must let go of Annelies. Adieu, ma belle! Happy separation, oh dream, which I’ll never meet again, not at any time nor in any place. There are things more important than a girl’s beauty and a Nyai’s charisma. There is no point to a meaningless death. And my life and my body are my basic capital and the only life and body I have.
This decision chased away the headache, though not all at once. That’s how all illness develops: It comes on suddenly, but disappears lazily. The palakia tree stopped spreading its roots and seedlings. Then they too died, but only because of the arrival of a letter from Miriam de la Croix. Her writing was fine and small, neat.
She wrote:
My friend, You have no doubt arrived in Surabaya safely by now. I’ve waited for news from you but none has arrived. So it is I who give in.
Don’t be surprised, but Papa is very interested in you. He’s already asked twice whether there have been any letters. Papa wants very much to know how you’re progressing. He was impressed by your attitudes. You, he said, were a different type of Javanese, made from different material, a pioneer and innovator at one and the same time.
I write this letter gladly. Indeed, I feel honored that I am able to pass on Papa’s opinions. Mir, Sarah, he said to us another time, that will be the face of Java in the future, a Java which has absorbed itself into our civilization, no longer shriveling up like a worm struck by the sun. Excuse him, Minke, if Papa uses such a coarse metaphor. He does not intend to insult. You’re not angry, are you? Don’t be angry, my friend. Neither Papa nor the two of us have any evil thoughts towards Natives and especially not towards yourself.
Papa feels moved when he sees how the Javanese people have fallen so low. Listen to what Papa has also said, even though he still uses that earlier coarse metaphor: Do you know what is needed by this nation of worms? A leader who can give them dignity once again. Do you follow me, my friend? Don’t get angry before you know what I mean.
Not all Europeans have been participants in, and causes of, the fall of your people. Papa, for example, even though he is an assistant resident, is not one of them
. Indeed, he is unable to do anything, just as Sarah and I are also unable to do anything, though we all desire so greatly to stretch out our hands to help. We can only guess now at what we must do. You yourself are fond of Multatuli, aren’t you? That writer, so glorified by the radicals, has indeed been of great service to your people. Yes, Multatuli, as well as Domine Baron von Hoëvell and another person also, whom your teacher perhaps forgot to tell you about, that is, Roorda van Eysinga. But all these people never spoke to the Javanese, only to their own people, the Dutch. They asked Europe to treat your people properly.
But now, says Papa, at the close of the nineteenth century, nothing that they did is of use today. According to Papa, it is the Natives themselves who must now act. So when we talked about Dr. Snouck Hurgronje that day, it was no coincidence. That particular scholar holds an honored place in the thinking of our family. We praise Association Theory, at which you laughed that day. So please understand, my friend, why Papa is so interested in you. Indeed, Papa, and the two of us too, had never met a Javanese like you. You, he said, were totally European. You showed no sign of the slave mentality that the Javanese developed during the era of their defeat, from the time the Europeans set foot on this, the land of your birth.
On those still nights in this big and empty building, if Papa is not tired, we like so much to sit and listen to his explanations about the fate of your people. How they gave birth to hundreds and thousands of leaders and heroes in their struggle against European oppression. One by one they fell, defeated, killed, surrendering, gone mad, dying in humiliation, forgotten in exile. Not one was ever victorious in war. We listened and were moved, and became angry also to hear how your rulers sold concessions to the Company, benefiting no one but themselves. It was a sign that their character and souls were being corroded. Your heroes, according to Papa’s stories, always emerged out of a background of selling concessions to the Company; and so it was over and over again, for centuries, and no one understood that it was all a repetition of what had gone before, and that as time went on the rebellions became smaller and more and more stunted. And such is the fate of a people who have thrown all their body and soul and all their material wealth into saving a single abstract concept called honor.
According to Papa, the fate of humanity now and in the future is dependent on its mastery over science and learning. All humanity, both as individuals and as peoples, will come tumbling down without such mastery. To oppose those who have mastered science and learning is to surrender oneself to humiliation and death.
So Papa agrees with Association Theory, that is the one and only road for Natives. He hopes, and so too do both of us, that one day in the future you will sit together, as an equal with Europeans, in advancing this people and this country. You have already begun this yourself. You understand what I mean. We love our father very much. He is not simply a father, but also a teacher who leads us in our efforts to see and understand the world. He is a friend, a mature man with great authority, an administrator who hopes for no profit from the woes and tribulations of those under him.
Let me tell you what he said after you left us following that first visit. You left feeling angry and irritated, didn’t you? We could understand because we knew that you didn’t understand our intentions. Papa left us alone on purpose, so you could speak freely with us. But a pity, you were so formal and tense. As soon as you left, Papa asked us our opinion of you. Sarah reported: Minke became angry in the end, Dr. Snouck Hurgronje and his Association Theory were three hundred years behind the times, repeated just as you had said. Papa was surprised and had to ask me to explain further. Then Papa said: He is proud to be a Javanese, and that is good as long as he has self-respect as an individual as well as a child of his race. He mustn’t become like the general run of his people; when among themselves they feel as if they are from a race which has no equal on the earth. But as soon as they are near a European, even just one, they shrivel up, lacking the courage even to lift up their eyes.
I agree with this praise of you, my friend. May things go well for you.
Then from the wayang orang performance building, gamelan music began to waft across to us. Papa had ordered us to study your people’s music. You have studied gamelan for a long time now, he said to us, and perhaps you can already enjoy it. Listen to how all the tones wait upon the sound of the gong. That is how it is in Javanese music, but that is not how it is in real life, because this pathetic people has still not found their gong, a leader, a thinker who can come forth with words of resolution.
My friend, I ask with all my heart that you try to understand these words, which you will obtain nowhere else except from my father, not even from the great scholar Snouck Hurgronje. That is why we are so proud to have a father like him. Papa is sure that the reason you like gamelan better than European music is because you were born and brought up under the swaying sounds of your great gamelan.
Minke, my friend, when will Life’s gong sound? Will you perhaps be the one? The great gong? May we pray for you?
Listen again to the gamelan, said Papa once more. It has been that way for centuries. And the gong in the life of the Javanese has still not arrived. The gamelan sings of a people’s longing for a messiah. Just longing after him, not seeking him out, not giving birth to him. The gamelan translates the life of the Javanese, a people who are unwilling to seek, to search, who just circle around, repeating, as in prayers and mantras, suppressing, killing thought, carrying people into a dispirited universe, which leads them astray, where there is no character. Those are the views of Europeans, my friend. No Javanese, not one, would think like that. Papa also says that if things remain like this for another twenty years this people will never find their messiah.
My friend, what will your so-saddening-a-people look like twenty years from now? One day in the future, we will go home to the Netherlands. I will go into politics, Minke. It’s a pity though that the Netherlands still doesn’t allow a woman to sit in the Lower House. I have a dream, my friend, that one day, when it is no longer as it is now and I can become an Honorable Member of the Lower House, I will speak much about your country and your people. And when I return to Java I will, first of all, listen once again to your gamelan, a gamelan whose beautiful unity of sound has no equal on earth. If its theme is just the same, a longing without effort, it means no messiah has yet arrived or has yet been born. It also means that you have not yet emerged as a gong, or indeed no Javanese ever will, and your people will drown forever in the overflow of repeated tones and vicious circles. If change has taken place, I will seek you out, and hold out my hand in respect.
Friend, twenty years! That is such a very long time in this pounding, racing era; and it is, of course, also a long time if looked at as part of somebody’s life. My friend Minke, this is the first letter from your sincere and well-wishing friend,
Miriam de la Croix.
As I folded up the letter I knew that tears had left blue smudges here and there where the ink had run. Why had a letter from a girl whom I had met only twice in my life made me cry? She was neither kith nor kin, not even of the same race. She had such hopes for me. While there I was totally confused because of my recent mistakes at Wonokromo. She wants me to be of value to my own people, not to her people. Is it possible there is now a new style of Multatuli and van Eysinga?
How should such a beautiful letter be answered? I had begun to consider myself a writer and had been praised by Mr. Maarten Nijman, Chief Editor of S.N.v/dD, but I felt too small to be able to equal Miriam’s thoughts. Still I forced myself to answer. Thank you, and no more than thank you, poured out in so very many words, perhaps just like the pouring out of Javanese musical tones that separately headed for and waited upon the gong. In the letter I sated my astonishment that Multatuli and Eysinga, whom I had just been thinking about, should be mentioned in her letter. Perhaps, I wrote, because we live in the same liberal era, in the same era, and I ended my letter with:
My good friend Miriam, I am so lucky to ha
ve found a friend such as you. I do not know what is going to happen in the next twenty years. I myself have never felt that I would ever become a gong. Neither had I ever dreamed of being even a drum; I have never had such thoughts, perhaps would never have had such thoughts had your beautiful and moving letter not arrived. Especially as it has come from someone who is not of my people. Peace and well-being be with you, my sincere Miriam. May you indeed one day become an Honorable Member of the Lower House.
I rested my face on the table. I tried to absorb all of Miriam’s letter, trying to ensure I would never forget it as long as I lived. Friendship is indeed beautiful. And my headache slipped away and slipped away, and then disappeared altogether, who knows to where. Miriam, you did not just send a letter. More than that: a charm to rid me of tension. If only you knew: Suddenly I felt brave, and the world became brighter and clearer. Become a gong to be heard booming out everywhere.
“Young Master!” I raised my head. On seeing the person in front of me the tree in my head returned, spreading its roots and seedlings. But now more vigorously. Him. Darsam.
“Excuse me, Young Master. I must have surprised you, you’re so pale.”
I tried to smile, my eyes darting to his machete and his hands. He laughed in a friendly manner while stroking his mustache.
“Young Master suspects me,” he said, “when Darsam is Young Master’s friend.”
“So what’s the matter?” I asked, pretending not to know anything.
“A letter from Nyai. Noni is very ill.”
I started and my eyes opened wide. He stood across from me. I read the letter while every now and then glancing across at his machete and his hand. Yes, it was true, Annelies was very ill and was being looked after by Dr. Martinet. Nyai had told him of the origins of her illness, and she requested very strongly that I come quickly. This was also advised by the doctor. Dr. Martinet said that without my presence Annelies had no hope of recovery; and her illness would probably get worse and there would be complications.