Tramp Royale

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The ship had neither radar nor gyro compass to make the shiphandler's task easier, nor did the master have any pilot but himself for the dangerous passages. It meant that he was on duty almost continuously a great deal of the time, night and day-his skill and years of experience against very real dangers. I know that he gave unsparingly of himself to keep his ship safe, so I don't quite have the heart to blame him personally for the faults in the ship's housekeeping. He kept us safe.

  But just the same, it was a filthy tub.

  Every ship that leaves Djakarta takes its quota of Dutch refugees who are leaving "Holland in the East" for good. The Dutch have been there for three and a half centuries; many of them have known no other home for generations. Those who still remain run the risk of surprise arrest and imprisonment, even of assassination-while we were there, in a town we visited, an entire family of Dutch dairy farmers was murdered by terrorists.

  One of the refugees gave me a genteel tongue-lashing aboard ship, the theme being that the United States had forced Holland to surrender the Dutch East Indies to "communists," and that we would someday be sorry for our folly.

  But Indonesia is a very complicated place; whatever the truth may be, it is certainly not that simple. It is true that we played a role, through the United Nations, in helping the Indonesians to gain their freedom. We were not alone in it, nor could the United Nations have forced the outcome on the Dutch had the Dutch been physically able to maintain their rule there after the defeat of Japan. Out of the maze of facts and allegations, one thing is sure: the Indonesians were fed up with the Dutch and wanted their freedom-and the Dutch were not able again to subjugate them.

  But that, too, is oversimplification. Here are two facts which illuminate but do not tell all. After three hundred and fifty years of Dutch rule 92% of the natives could not read or write-nor did Batavia, the capital city, have anything resembling modern sanitation. These facts prove little but they do cast doubt on the validity of the long-standing reputation the Dutch have enjoyed for being the world's ideal colonials. To my simple mind a lack of schools and sewers after centuries of rule spells exploitation of the natives-not benign paternalism.

  But one may ask how the Dutch could reasonably be expected to take education and sanitary engineering into remote jungle villages? That is not the situation at all. Java is an island a bit smaller than North Carolina and the Dutch built fine roads into every corner of it, to take out its incredible wealth. As for "villages," Djakarta, formerly "Batavia" and capital of Holland-in-the-East, is a city as large as Chicago. Imagine, if you can, Chicago without running water and sewers-or go to Java and see what the result is, though I do not recommend this course.

  One of the results is an infant mortality estimated at 75% in the first year.

  But I am oversimplifying again and Indonesia is not simple; a lifetime of study would not be ample in which to dig out the facts about it and put them in their true relationships. Despite the notion (and, in some part, the fact) that it is a "small" country, "unimportant" and certainly one we hear little about, it has half as many people in it as the United States, some eighty million. Java, which is effectively three-quarters of the nation in population and wealth, has a population density of more than a thousand to the square mile, versus about fifty for the United States. No country in Europe is so crowded, not even Holland itself.

  This new nation is broken up into five major islands and countless smaller ones. There are twenty-five major languages and two hundred and fifty dialects. It has undergone centuries of colonial rule, four years of Japanese occupation, four years of revolutionary war thereafter, and civil war was going on in Sumatra while we were there . . . even in the "quiet" areas the bushes still held terrorists. They are undergoing drastic inflation, most of them can't read or write, and they have no experience in the difficult art of self-government. They are in a vulnerable position both to communist invasion from the north and to communist infiltration at home. Wish them luck; they are going to need it.

  The harbor at Djakarta is a good one, well equipped by the Dutch with docks and facilities. As our ship stood in, the marks of war were plain to see; I counted seventeen sunken hulks as we approached our berth. We were told that Surabaja, the former Dutch naval base farther east, displayed even more wreckage of war.

  Our time was limited and we were anxious to go ashore, but even after our visas were checked (Indonesia requires a visa to permit even a through passenger from a transient ship to step ashore, which most countries do not)-after our papers were checked, it was necessary to buy Indonesian money from the chief steward and then arrange transportation.

  It is against the law to take any foreign money or traveler's cheques into Indonesia. The chief steward sold us rupiahs at 11.4 to the U.S. dollar, and it is much more than possible that he made a good thing out of it, as the black market rate was about 25 to one. I think it may be assumed that the chief steward of a ship calling regularly, himself a citizen of the country, would have means, if he chose, to get dollars ashore and change them back into rupiahs without going through official channels. I have no slightest evidence that he so operated, but the opportunity was there. The Chinese crew members used a simple and straightforward way of beating the currency laws; they were not permitted to go ashore, but they sailed currency ashore to confederates in paper darts. No doubt such transactions were well planned in advance; all sailors throughout history have been part-time smugglers. The stewards in the Ruys made most of their income from smuggling between the Far East and South America, with Japanese pearls figuring largely in the undercover trade.

  At the customs gate I was subjected to the only body search I encountered in any country. I was not required to strip but my person and my pockets were most carefully frisked. I took it with beaming good nature-we had been warned in Singapore not to argue with a policeman or a soldier in Indonesia no matter what happened, as they would show no hesitation, if angered, in shooting you down on the spot. I don't know if this is true as I never put it to a test; I co-operated and was never treated with anything but smiling courtesy. Indonesians are more than friendly under peaceful circumstances, but news items confirmed the rumors that they could be quite dangerous if crossed. I was happy not to find out.

  The customs officials looked like soldiers, which is not the case in the other countries we were in. Soldiers were very much in evidence elsewhere in the country, too, helmeted and always armed. If there were policemen who were not soldiers, I did not see them; the country simply seemed to be under martial law.

  Women were not subjected to search at the customs barrier, none of any sort, not even their handbags. They were simply waved on through while the men were detained. The logic of this escapes me. But in consequence of this Ticky was decidedly miffed with me that I had not let her bring dollars ashore. The logic of this escapes me, too, since I had no way of guessing the circumstances in advance. Once through the barrier we stood in the rain for nearly an hour while trying to arrange for any sort of transportation. The docks are far from the city and there was neither bus nor taxi. At last, through phone calls put in for us by a Eurasian clerk who spoke English, two cars showed up and three carloads of tourists piled in; we headed for town.

  Singapore is a city, a true metropolis, of slightly less than a million; Djakarta is a village of more than three million-it lacks almost every attribute of a city save people. It has just one modern hotel, Hotel des Indes, and even it is not modern compared with the Raffles, or even by comparison with the little Hotel Paragon in the remote town of Nelspruit. I do not remember seeing any building as tall as three stories and not many that were two stories high. Some of the downtown buildings are Western in type, of masonry, stucco, or sheet metal, but the overwhelming majority of buildings are typical Javanese homes of poles, woven matting, and thatched roofs crowded in together almost wall to wall. We had been told that here, if a family of swallows moved into a house, the family of humans moved out, because then other swallows would follow
and the nests would be of much greater value than the house-as an article of commerce to be sold to the Chinese for bird's-nest soup.

  This was hard to believe until we saw the houses.

  I am not sneering at the houses; they suit the climate; the temperature in Djakarta averages 79 degrees the year round and never varies from that by more than a few degrees. The constant high humidity makes it seem much hotter, however; grass-and-bamboo shacks are not inappropriate.

  The most unforgettable feature of Djakarta (and the one I would like most to forget) is the canal which runs for miles through the city and is paralleled by the main highway into the mountains. This canal has no perceptible current and contains opaque yellowish soup; it is used for every conceivable purpose-every purpose, it is sewer, bath, laundry, and well. Every fifty yards or so there was a stone staircase leading down into the water and at each there would be people using the canal for all of the above purposes. I don't want to be too graphic about this, but in Java most bodily functions are performed in public.

  Our guide pointed out the swarms of people bathing in the canal and said proudly that people here were very clean; they were likely to come down to the canal for a bath three and four times a day. I could understand how it could be an endless process, since bathing in that filth would leave a person dirtier than ever. The so-called bath was rendered still less efficient for females by the fact that they bathed with their sarongs on, whereas the men just stripped naked and went in-though I don't suppose it really mattered either way; filth is filth.

  People stooped to drink, housewives dipped up pans from it to take home for cooking, and at one point we saw a woman dipping a toothbrush in the canal to scrub her teeth-an unexpected refinement. Just upstream from her the canal was currently being put to use in its aspect as a sewer; the guide glanced at both activities and said happily, "People never get any disease from the canal. The sunlight, beating down all day, kills the germs."

  It was a comforting thought even though without scientific basis. The people here are Moslems and I think I see in the guide's remark a modern version of the very old Mohammedan belief that water in a stream will purify itself in a few feet.

  Djakarta is not pretty but it is colorful. Traffic is dense everywhere, some automobiles, many trishaws, many two-wheeled carts drawn by tiny, dispirited little horses much too small for the loads, countless swarms of people on foot. Coolies trot along with poles over their shoulders, carrying loads heavier than they are-sometimes the load is a portable restaurant with charcoal stove smoking and the bearer himself the chef. The sarongs of the women and the jackets usually worn on top of them are in the garish, bright, and somehow beautiful color combinations and patterns made famous by Gauguin. Twelve-year-old mothers not much more than four feet tall stagger along, made lopsided by a child riding one hip. Gums made bright red by betel-nut chewing startle one from time to time and there are depressing sights of leprosy, twisted limbs, and numerous blind beggars-a spate of humanity as overpowering as an avalanche and one which produces the same feeling of helplessness.

  Ticky and I located a friend of a friend at Hotel des Indes, an American motion picture producer brought out by the revolutionary government under contract to build up a motion picture industry in Indonesia. I could not help but feel that Java needed a movie industry the way great-grandmother needs a pogo stick, but the new government is determined to make Indonesia self-sufficient in everything-"Export everything, import nothing" is the implied slogan of resurgent nationalism right around the world. In any case the wisdom of it was no responsibility of the American in charge; his firm had sent him out to do a job the Indonesians wanted done and he was doing it. I have no doubt he did it well, as he was Mr. Lothar Wolff who produced the world-famous Martin Luther.

  Mr. and Mrs. Wolff seemed to be glad to see people from home, drove us around town, and took us out to a very pleasant seaside country club for a drink-a club which had been built for the Dutch masters but which was now used by the uppercrust irrespective of skin or race. Perhaps I should have used the opportunity to have pumped him about the "real" Indonesia; instead we talked about an imminent eruption of the super-volcano Krakatoa, located in the Sunda Strait a hundred miles away. In 1883 Krakatoa produced a disturbance which makes H-bombs look like toys: 3600 people were killed, the noise was heard 3000 miles away, the air wave traveled three times around the globe.

  Now the giant was rumbling again and Mr. Wolff was about to leave to take pictures of the explosion. He was as pleased as a child with a new balloon; the possibility of becoming a statistic did not seem to fret him.

  We stayed aboard ship that evening not only because Djakarta is not safe after dark but also because there is literally no place to go. But there was amusement aboard ship, for it was Chinese New Year's. We noticed first that the ship suddenly became without service after dinner, no one to answer a ring, no bar boy to sell cigarettes or drinks; they had all gone aft and below, where they were whooping it up with noise and gin and firecrackers and feasting. We moved back to the fantail to watch.

  Fireworks are fireworks, and, while the stern of the ship was kept spectacularly illuminated for hours, there is no need to describe it. After all, some of our own best fireworks originated in China; these were the same sort we use on the Fourth. But we met back there a Scot just discharged from the Gordon Highlanders and who had been serving for several years in jungle warfare in the Malay. This is an area which has for some time been officially free of communists, terrorists, liberation forces, and other freewheeling soldier-bandits. But according to our shipmate the "police activities" that continued still added up to daily slash-and-run warfare; the casualties were still high even though news stories no longer appeared.

  His report seems strengthened by the fact that mere possession of any firearm on the part of a native in the Malay States carries with it the death penalty-contrast this with our own custom wherein such possession is not only not a crime but a constitutionally guaranteed right.

  Some of this we had to get through an interpreter, a young Australian who was present. The Scotsman had spent the first fourteen years of his life in a highland village, the next ten in a highland regiment, and his accent had never been corrupted . . . and Ticky and I had never before heard pure Highland Scottish. At first we were unable to follow it.

  He was a handsome, well-mannered young man with the social and political attitudes of a barracuda. To him, all who were not white were "slanties" and deserved killing on sight. The only trade he knew was war; he was on his way to Australia where he expected to join the Australian army-he had been ten years a private but expected to do better in the Australian army. During the voyage he got into a certain amount of trouble, as he was traveling third class but demanded the privileges of first class, because of his white skin. The Indonesian chief steward could, of course, do nothing with him; the young Scotsman ignored his pleas to stay in his own part of the ship. Finally the Captain told him that he would put him in irons if he again showed up in the first-class lounge. After that he was a little more careful, but not much.

  We arranged the following day to go to Bogor, a town in the mountains in the middle of Java which is noted for botanical gardens started by the Dutch a couple of centuries ago. We went through customs as before; I was searched but Ticky was not. As soon as we were clear of the barrier she said, "Fine! Now let's locate that black market."

  "Huh?"

  "I brought my traveler's cheques. Let's cash a few. I want to do some shopping today."

  "I thought I told you-"

  "I know what you told me, but I don't intend to be cheated out of sixty per cent of the value of my money. Ridiculous! The whole thing is a swindle."

  I shut up. My objections were purely pragmatic anyway; my opinions matched hers. I have no moral scruples about dealing in a black money market. (Rationed foods and such in wartime are an entirely different matter.) Wherever there is an attempt to control currency there will be found a black market in mon
ey, as the control laws are not merely an attempt by the government to get something for nothing at the expense of its own citizens and their customers, they are also an attempt to defy natural law, to lift by the bootstraps. Fiat cannot determine the value of a country's money; only free exchange can do that.

  I admit that fiscal theory is much more complicated than my sweeping generalizations, but the last sentence above expresses an easily observed fact to which there are no exceptions in history. But I do not mind going along with the gag and treating the process as a form of concealed taxation if the controls are moderate, as they are in general in the Commonwealth. But where the scheme approaches confiscation, as it did in Indonesia, my reluctance to deal in a free market is based only on a fear of getting caught.

  But Ticky is never afraid of getting caught. When the time comes, she will no doubt tell Saint Peter that his bookkeeping is all wet and that she intends to make some drastic changes in the way the joint is run.

  On the previous day some of the passengers had managed to sneak contraband money ashore; our driver had, without hesitation, told them where to find a black exchange. Ticky had listened to this and had asked him, "But will they deal with you when they don't know who you are?"

  The driver let go the wheel and made an imploring gesture with both hands so oriental in its histrionic emotionalism that I was forced to suppress a laugh. "Madame-they will beseech you!"

  "Oh." Ticky threw me a dirty look and shut up. On that day we had nothing with us but a few high-priced, official-rate rupiahs and she wanted to buy some sarongs.

  So on the next day we drove to the black market. "I didn't tell you," Ticky said happily, "because I knew you would get cold feet."