Child of All Nations (22 page)

She had covered five miles. Yet there was still no sweat on
her. She walked another few miles and a few more again. Then she stopped under some trees and descended into a big ditch. She washed herself again. At the peak of the moon’s mist-covered brightness, she put on her makeup once more. For a long time she sat under the tree, not thinking of anything. During those last few days, she had stopped thinking, surrendering herself to the flow of events as they happened, as though she were part of nature itself, like the wind, like the water, like the earth. She began to see people out walking on that dark morning. She too stood up, walking slowly so as not to ruin her makeup and her adornments, just like a woman of the aristocracy. Slowly enough even to control her sway.

As the sun rose, Tulangan became vaguely visible behind the mist. She saw several carriages carrying goods and heading for the markets of Sidoarjo.

On entering Tulangan she stopped and whispered to herself. Here I am, coming to you, Tuan Besar Kuasa Manager. Greet me, Surati!

The factory office was open when she arrived. The roads around the factory were busy with coolies pushing loaded carts. She didn’t know what they carried, nor did she have any desire to know. Her legs took her straight to Plikemboh’s house.

She announced herself formally. In her imagination she could see Aunt Sanikem, a score or more years ago, standing before this same house, there to become the concubine of Tuan Mellema. The door was open, but no one answered her. She sat on the steps with her back to the house. Her dried food was finished. She felt hungry. The fever was still obedient to her plan.

She heard slippered footsteps behind her. She stood facing the door, bowed, and once again announced herself.

Plikemboh emerged still wearing his pajamas. He stood gazing at her, and at once recognized who she was.

“Sastro Kassier’s daughter?” he asked joyfully, and sped down the stairs to fetch her.

“It is I, your servant, the daughter of Sastro Kassier, Tuan Besar Kuasa.”

She ascended the steps, escorted by Plikemboh, and surrendered herself to be taken into his room—the place that forever would be the boundary that marked the end of her life as a virgin and the beginning of her condition as a kept mistress.

Take me! Take all you can get from me, she thought, and may you soon be destroyed.

As soon as she entered the room, the smallpox ran amok within her. Her strength was broken. From the moment she lay prostrate on Plikemboh’s bed, she was unable to rise again. And very quickly Plikemboh too became infected. During those last few days, they both lay sprawled out on the bed, awaiting death.

Tulangan was pronounced an epidemic area. All work stopped. The traffic was stilled. Those who managed to sneak through the government’s encirclement ran for their lives, forgetting position and income. The sugar-cane fields were left unattended. The steam-generated electric plant was mute. The factory whistle went dumb. Tulangan was in darkness. The chimneys lost their grandness, craning forward, looking down on Tulangan as if wanting to know what was happening, nodding sadly, but no eyes cared to look up at them.

The village across the fields, which Surati had left behind, was burned out by the soldiers, destroyed together with all its trees that the villagers had looked after for many years. Tulangan itself was not set on fire. Doctors were brought in from all over Java to end the epidemic. A big sugar mill must not be destroyed just because of smallpox. Capital must be kept alive to grow, and people can be left to die.

Lieutenant Doctor Mortsinger was also called to Tulangan with all the medical troops from the antiepidemic service in Bandung. Inoculation was carried out in Tulangan and all the surrounding areas. But the encirclement of Tulangan was kept unmercifully tight. People could neither leave nor enter. People were even forbidden from leaving their houses. Food was brought in and shared out. Every day people buried the victims.

The first to die was Tuan Besar Kuasa Manager, Frits Homerus Vlekkenbaaij, alias Plikemboh.

Surati was still prostrate on the bed when the heavy corpse was taken from beside her to be burned. Only then did people find out that the maiden had already begun her life as a nyai. And hadn’t died.

Even while facing the threat of death by smallpox, all the people of Tulangan, regardless of race, Native, Pure, or Mixed-Blood, stopped to thank God for the death of Tuan Besar Kuasa Manager. To them his corpse was a talisman that would protect
Tulangan from disaster. But no one ever found out who it was that had really killed him.

The young mistress was carried home by her mother, whose insults and abuse of Sastro Kassier never silenced.

Sastro Kassier himself did not stay silent. The death of his boss gave him the chance to make his accusations. Witnessed by local officials, a search was made of his late employer’s things. There, in a cupboard, they found the missing money, still intact. Sastro Kassier remained triumphant as the honest paymaster, but his honor as a husband and father was gone, and would never return.

So, too, was Surati’s beauty gone forever.

And the sugar mill of Tulangan remained grand in its command over all of Tulangan: humans, animals, and growing things.

F
or three days we had been resting in Tulangan. The new manager who had replaced Plikemboh sent a letter to Mama, inviting her to come and have a look around the factory. Mama turned down the invitation. He then came to Sastro Kassier’s house to invite her in person. He was very young, about thirty years old. Mama refused the invitation again.

I don’t know why the master of that sugar mill felt he had to invite Mama. Mama herself had never mentioned having any special business with him.

Kommer also sent us a letter: He would not be able to visit us. He couldn’t leave the carpenters while they were making his trap. It was proving to be quite difficult to make.

Every day Mama and I went for a walk through the paddy fields, plantations, and villages. She was really changed; the dark, eerie aura about her had vanished. She was truly enjoying her holidays. She didn’t look at all like a widow, nor like someone out walking with her son-in-law, himself a widower. She looked like a young maiden, not yet married.

Her walk was confident and free like that of a European
woman. She always wore the kebaya that for a century had been the fashion for Indos, nyais, and now for Chinese women to wear. Very few Native women wore them, at most a few from the elite classes, and perhaps their children. Most wore a simple cloth wrap or even went totally bare-breasted.

Nyai Ontosoroh’s beautiful and delicately embroidered kebaya became the focus of everybody’s attention. Such a kebaya was still rare in the villages, and its whiteness and the brightness of its embroidery shone out in the middle of all this greenness, drawing all eyes to it.

On the fourth day she wouldn’t go for a walk and sent me out by myself.

So on that day, in European clothes (people called them Christian clothes), carrying a bag containing pen and paper, a bottle of water, and a little dried food, I set off alone in a southerly direction. My plan was to visit the village that the government had burned down, the one that Surati had visited.

In the middle of the ocean of sugar cane I saw something odd: the tiled roof of a house. Whose? Somebody’s home, or a place for workers to take shade? The trees behind it showed that cane did not grow around it. Probably somebody’s house-garden.

It wasn’t out of mere curiosity that I set off in the direction of the house, but because I wanted to accustom myself to taking an interest in everything that was related to the lives of the Natives, my people.

The path, hemmed in on either side by the cane, was still and quiet. Not a single person passed me. But from the direction of the tiled house came the sound of muffled shouts, roughly spoken words.

The sun radiated shafts of heat. Sweat soaked my back. The air was fresh and invigorating. My body felt unconstrained by the etiquette required when escorting Mama. I walked along, enjoying it all to the full, savoring how healthy I was. I felt fortunate to be alone in the middle of this greenness. I had never in all my life gone for a hike alone and so far. Perhaps I had already traveled more than three miles.

This was the same road that Surati had once traveled, not in the midday heat like this, but in night’s pitch darkness, before the moon had risen.

The cane to my right and left would ripen in a few months’
time. It would become sugar, helping to make Java the second biggest producer of sugar in the world. The sugar would be dispersed over the earth to many countries and give enjoyment and health to millions of people. And the name Tulangan? No one would ever hear of it.

There were those shouts again.

The path I was following branched out. A lane led to the suspicious-looking house.

A farmer with a hoe at his waist passed me. He raised his bamboo hat, bowed without looking at me—only because I was wearing European clothes, Christian clothes. He was heading towards the main road. Perhaps he was a cane cutter.

“What’s all the shouting about?” I asked in Javanese.

“The usual, Ndoro. Old Truno is not like everyone else.”

“Who is this Truno?”

“The one who lives there, Ndoro.”

“In that house?”

“Yes, Ndoro.”

“Why are they shouting at him like that?”

“He won’t move out of his house.”

“Why must he move?”

My barrage of questions scared the peasant. He shrank back, bowed, raised his bamboo hat again, excused himself. Perhaps he had been among those shouting just now.

The shouts came again. Now it was clear what they were saying, in crude Javanese: “When are you getting out of there?”

Other shouts followed from several mouths at once, but I was unable to pick up what they were saying. Then there were further angry exchanges and cries for Truno to get out. What was happening in the middle of this ocean of cane?

Because I had been accused of not knowing my own people, yes, and because of curiosity, my legs took me closer to the location of the quarrel. Perhaps I could learn to understand their problems. Without my realizing, my feet were now carrying me more quickly. I no longer took any notice of the foliage above me as the branches and twigs squeaked against each other whenever the wind blew.

In this very lane the tile-roofed house stood. It was made out of thick bamboo. In front of the house stood a mustached man
with a thick beard, bare-chested, wearing black trousers down to just below his knee. In his hand was a machete with that just-honed shine about it. His eyes were wild. He was now standing alone. On seeing me, his eyes popped out in challenge.

“
Pak!
”I shouted, in friendly Javanese. “Who was making all the noise just now?”

He still stared at me wild-eyed as if I were his enemy. I stopped in front of the bamboo gate.

“What?” he hissed in low Javanese. “You too?” I was offended. I could feel the blood rise into my face. A Javanese had never spoken so roughly towards me, let alone used the familiar form for
you
. No doubt he was that kind of insolent Javanese, hadn’t been properly educated, I thought. Then quick as lightning came the voice of Jean Marais, accusing me: You are not fair, Minke; what right would you now have to abuse him? What have you done for him? Just because you are the grandson and the son of a bupati? You say you understand the great call of the French Revolution? What’s the use of having graduated from H.B.S.?

A smile of awareness crept onto my lips. I must remain friendly.

“Don’t be angry with me, Pak. I’m not your enemy.”

“Every single day…” The man frowned, yet my friendliness did relax him a little.

“What is it, Pak?”

“…like a pack of barking dogs!” It poured out in sharp tones.

“Who, Pak,” I asked affably, “is like a pack of barking dogs?”

He observed me with suspicion. It was unusual for a Javanese peasant farmer to be suspicious of his superiors. Peasants had no right to be suspicious. It was clear that this one peasant had “escaped the prongs of the rake,” had turned his back on the proper way of behaving. Like an elephant that had left its herd, as Nijman had said about Khouw Ah Soe, a Javanese peasant who refused to fit himself to the old mold was also dangerous. Machete in hand, loud voice, not listening to orders: All this was evidence.

“Don’t get me wrong, Pak, I’ve only just arrived.”

He wouldn’t give up his suspicions. His smallish eyes stood out as if they were not interested in ever blinking again. Indeed they seemed ready to hurl themselves out of their sockets at any
minute. I must try to win his trust. Must! Must! There’s no way of getting close to somebody without first making contact with his heart.

Daring myself to go on, I took a step forward, passing through the gate, not without having to suppress my fear.

“What’s really going on here?” I asked affably.

“Is Ndoro a
priyayi
from the mill?” he suddenly asked in high Javanese, a question that also struck me as insolent.

“No. I have just arrived from Surabaya. I am not an official from the mill. I’m still at school, Pak. I write for newspapers, that’s my work.”

With savage eyes—not normal either for a Javanese peasant—he looked me over from the top of my head to the tips of my shoes.

“This machete is not just good for cutting down banana trees,” he growled threateningly in low Javanese. “One more time, and someone will cop it.”

“What is it? What is it?” I asked, in the politest of ways.

“I don’t care who he is, Javanese, Madurese, Dutch soldier, one more howl from them…”

His anger passed its climax with these growls and threats.

“Is Ndoro one of them or not?” He turned abruptly, interrogating me. More insolence.

“Who do you mean by
them
?”

Once more he challenged my eyes, and looked at my bag.
“They,”
he said savagely, “are those factory dogs who just left. This is my own land. What business is it of theirs what I do with it.” He wiped sweat from his back.