The Shallow Seas

by Dawn Farnham

  Tigran looked at her, and Charlotte found again, to her annoyance, that she felt like blushing.

  They went into the great hall. The floor was tiled in white, surrounded at the outer edges with a frame of Dutch Delft blue tiles.

  “These tiles tell a story, the story of Holland,” said Tigran.

  He pointed to the many images of fish in a variety of numbers and dispositions swimming around the floor; other tiles showed fish piled in baskets, some sold by sturdy women, some in boats.

  “Herring,” he said and smiled at her frown. “A humble fish to be sure. But without the humble herring, Holland would never have become the greatest trading nation on earth.”

  He pointed to a tile that showed a fat-bottomed ship heaped with herring. Elsewhere, merchants stood proudly displaying their wealth, their houses, their cities. The square-rigged, wind-filled sails of 17th- and 18th-century ships sailed around the edge of the hall floor.

  “A Dutchman, Jan-Willem Beukelszoon, you see, discovered a method for curing the herring at sea so that it would not spoil. In a stroke, the Dutch had a long-lasting and delicious commodity they could trade all over Europe. They became sailors, traders and merchants of repute, began to build great new types of ships and invented a country which was built and governed not by some war-mongering and greedy king but by sensible and clever burghers. When they outgrew Europe, they looked to the rest of the world. It was inevitable that when the power of Portugal and Spain waned, the Dutch with their ships and knowledge would take over world trade, especially here in the Spice Islands. The VOC was their means of conquest, the first joint stock company every formed. In 1602, it raised six and a half million guilders. Can you imagine such a sum!”

  Tigran pointed out other tiles showing coats-of-arms of the countries which had flown the VOC flag, including the fan-shaped man-made island of Deshima and its bridge in Nagasaki harbour, which the Japanese had built to prevent their enterprising trading partners from encroaching on their country. The VOC had ruled over Amboyna, Banda, Ternate, Macassar, Malacca, Ceylon, Java and the Cape of Good Hope. They had had factories in Bengal, on the Coramandel Coast, in Siam and on the Persian Gulf. Their trade routes connected the whole of the Orient, Africa and Europe with Amsterdam. In the Persian Gulf the Company traded spices for salt, in Zanzibar salt for cloves, in India cloves for gold, in China gold for tea and silk, in Japan silk for copper and in the islands of Southeast Asia, copper for spices. The inner Asian trade had been as profitable as that with Europe.

  “My Dutch tutor used this floor as a history lesson,” Tigran said as he wandered around the hall. “He was always somewhat annoyed that VOC had traded New Amsterdam in exchange for the English leaving the Spice Islands, but it must have seemed a good proposition at the time. It is ironic that Holland has lost all these places because of their support of America, a colony they traded away over a hundred years ago.”

  He looked over the hall.

  “They created the first stock exchange, the first exchange bank. By the middle of the 17th century, they controlled half the world trade. Holland was a tiny nation, but what enterprise, what vision! Fifty fleets a year, 150 trading ships, 40 warships, 20,000 seamen, 10,000 soldiers, 50,000 employees from all over Europe. With all this it still managed to pay a dividend of 40 percent. Remarkable.”

  Charlotte felt the admiration in Tigran’s voice and smiled at this enthusiasm. He noticed and laughed, embarrassed.

  “My apologies,” he said and bowed slightly. “I confess to an admiration for such a people. The Dutch then had a great intellectual curiosity, and the VOC profits paid for arts and inventions. Their religious tolerance allowed my Armenian family to find refuge and a new life in Amsterdam. My father taught me to admire Holland, and I was sorry not to have gone to Amsterdam for my education.”

  From the hall the doors led to the terrace and, on either side, the white marble staircase curved to the upper landing. Charlotte could see it needed care, for in parts the white limewash was dingy, and some of the tiling was chipped. It needed attention, a woman’s attention. She would have liked to know more about the original Japanese mistress of this house, about the extraordinary circumstances that had led her, much like Charlotte, to become the first lady of such a place. Before she could carry these reflections further, however, Tigran took her hand and led her to the main door.

  4

  A wide-bodied, big-wheeled carriage with a white calico sunroof stood waiting. The two ponies were pretty black-and-white kumingans, ubiquitous in Java. They appeared slight and fine-boned, yet they were strong and resilient, capable, Charlotte knew, of pulling heavy loads. The shafts of the carriage were shining black and bore at the heads finely wrought silver garuda birds, their wings flung back imperiously in flight. Tigran held on to Charlotte’s hand to help her in. Then he took the reins, and they turned onto the road around the house and out onto a broad avenue of monumental saman trees which formed a shady canopy over their heads and cast a dappled light on the road which would take them down to the river. As they clipped along in the morning breeze, a faint sound came to her ears. It was a gamelan orchestra playing somewhere out of sight, the sound of gongs and bells carried on the air. It was almost magical, as if the music were being played by invisible nymphs or carried down from the spheres. Then Tigran astonished her as he began to recite a poem.

  “Thus spoke the Genius, as He stept along,

  And bade these lawns to Peace and Truth belong;

  Down the steep slopes He led with modest skill

  The willing pathway, and the truant rill,

  Stretch’d o’er the marshy vale yon willowy mound,

  Where shines the lake amid the tufted ground …”

  Charlotte looked at him and laughed, and he grinned broadly.

  “You see, Madame, not just an ignorant dull Indiesman. My English tutor put poetry into my head. I’m sure you cannot name it? Eh? Eh?”

  Charlotte laughed out loud. She could not.

  “Erasmus Darwin, 1731 to 1802, The Botanic Garden. Very long and very difficult for a poor half-Dutch boy. I have forgotten much, but some just stays. I learned words like effulgent and adamantine, though I am still not sure what they mean. Are you not impressed?”

  Charlotte bowed her admiration.

  At the end of the avenue, the view of the river opened out. Charlotte saw the Japanese bridge, and Tigran stopped briefly. It was unusual but incredibly lovely, she thought, with its faded red wooden balustrade. Its curved shape was mirrored below in a constantly changing and intricate shadowy distortion of itself as the river ran over the stones, forming small waterfalls and pools. The sound was like bells, and the windrush in leaves. Here on the river she understood why the estate had been named Brieswijk. She could see the gnarled shapes of trees and old bushes, quite unlike jungle flora. The Kali Krukut was a swift flowing river. Tigran pointed out a hut amidst giant trees which extended out over the water. He often held bathing parties here, with picnics on the park. It was quite a common custom in Java, where the villagers used the river for washing and bathing.

  Tigran jigged the horses into movement and turned the carriage along the bank. They passed a boathouse, with boats pulled up on the side: little sharp-prowed, blunt-sterned, gaily painted craft with palm-leaf roofs to shelter from the sun and one large oar to row and punt.

  As they rode along the river’s edge, Charlotte saw that on the far bank, where the jungle relented or had been removed, there was a series of villages surrounded by sun-glinting paddy fields of rice. She heard a clear whistling sound, as plaintive as a wind-harp, and she saw floating high above three brightly painted kites, shaped like birds and winged dragons. She had seen fighting kites in Singapore, but these were new to her, and she shaded her eyes and watched as they swooped and soared, sending their music floating on the air. Their owners were lost in the undergrowth, and their lines so slender as to be invisible. They seemed to hang and swoop of their own volition, and Charlotte smiled.

 
; Here, Tigran told her, the villagers grew rice for themselves and for the estate. He took one-fifth of the rice as a tax, and the villagers were obliged to supply labour for repairs of roads, riverbanks, canals and other works on the estate and to grow and process indigo. Otherwise he levied no taxes. On the fringes of the estate, towards the west, he had opened a free market to combat what he saw as the pointless and invidious habit of charging taxes to transport and trade at the market places which existed in other parts of the city. Here the villagers could sell their surplus produce for money, for doits, the small copper coins of the Dutch Indies.

  They rode on, and Charlotte found that she was very interested in everything Tigran told her. She realised with a small jolt that she had already accepted that she would now be mistress of this place. It was a seductive and unsettling thought. He stopped the carriage, and they looked back over the park to the house standing on the knoll. From here, it looked quite small.

  “I want you to love this place, feel it is your home, Charlotte,” Tigran told her. He would have liked her to say, with ardent and passionate avowals, that home was in his arms only, but it was too soon, he knew, and he smiled at the thought of these boyish wishes. When he smiled like that, his mouth rose to one side and made his eyes crinkle. She looked into those eyes now, and for the first time she noticed that they were a deep brown flecked with gold. Like his sister’s, they turned up very slightly and were framed in long, black lashes. His face was etched with lines at the eyes and a slight furrow above his nose, which deepened when he frowned. These were the only reminders of his age, but they were not unattractive. She found herself smiling back, knowing his meaning.

  The road gradually moved away from the river and became a jungle path. The shade was deep and cool. Great groves of thick bamboo spread feathery green leaves along the length of the path and whispered and rustled, though Charlotte could feel no breath of air. It was as if they spoke a secret language known only to themselves. Tigran looked straight ahead.

  “I do not keep concubines, Charlotte, though it is common practice. I do not oblige women to occupy my bed.”

  “But you did, Tigran. You had concubines. Takouhi told me.” Oh, dear Charlotte thought, why do I blurt out these things? What is the matter with me? But she wanted an answer. If she was to marry this man, at least she must know about this.

  Tigran slowed the carriage. Charlotte sensed in the tightening of his jaw a certain discomfiture. He spoke softly.

  “There were two women. One was a Balinese girl who was in Takouhi’s house. Her name was Surya. I was a young man, just nineteen. Takouhi always freed her slaves immediately they came into her house. Actually, when I inherited this estate she obliged me to free every person on Brieswijk too. She cannot abide slavery, particularly women in slavery. Of course, I did so. Not to have agreed would have chased her from my life, something that was impossible to imagine. So this girl was a free girl. I thought about nothing but her for months. She was so lovely. So young, only seventeen. Near my age. I admit I was a little crazed.”

  Charlotte, listening to him, found herself wishing she had not asked. She felt a strange annoyance at these professions. Was she jealous? As the thought entered her head, she dismissed it. It was twenty years ago, and she was the one filled with rather uncivil curiosity.

  “I was nineteen and already a father of two children. I had not known real love, I think. I asked Takouhi to see if Surya would want to be with me, and she was so happy.” He smiled at the thought, and Charlotte could see that in some ways it was still fresh in his mind. “We had two girls, but they died, you know … of fever, on the same day.” He stopped speaking, and Charlotte could sense his thoughts flying back to that time.

  “The same day … God bless them.” His voice had grown very quiet. “It was a bad time and she got … low and very sick.”

  Charlotte now utterly regretted prying into past wounds. She put out her hand to his.

  “I’m sorry, Tigran, I should not have asked.”

  He turned to look at her.

  “No, I’m glad to tell you. I want everything to be clear between us. These things are in the past, old wounds. If we live, and especially if we love, we must have wounds. But when we are young they heal, Charlotte, though it seems they never will.”

  She said nothing, looking down.

  “The second girl was Ambonese, like Mia. After Surya, I needed someone. I couldn’t bear being alone. I didn’t want Mia. It was a strange time, a bit like I was dead. I can’t remember the days. I needed a woman with me all the time at night. If I was alone, ghosts would come. I couldn’t get rid of them. She wanted to come to me. When Surya died, she went to Takouhi and asked. She was so good to me, for she must have known I did not love her at all. There were no children. It would have been too much.’

  Tigran smiled and looked at Charlotte.

  “The ending is happier. When I was healed, I lost all need, all feeling for her. There was nothing I could do. So I proposed to find her a husband, gave her a dowry. She is respectably married to a trader in Surabaya and has three children with him. She has become a Dutch housewife; it is far better than being my concubine.”

  Tigran jigged the horses into movement.

  “Now you know my whole life. I gave my heart a rest and thought it would be peaceful, but now here you are, unsettling it again. Are you satisfied, Madam?”

  Charlotte looked straight ahead.

  “For now, sir. Just so long as when you are done with me, you do not send me off to a trader in Surabaya.”

  Tigran laughed. He had a nice, throaty laugh, she thought.

  “Impossible. You shall be mistress of all you see, the unassailable queen of Brieswijk.”

  They emerged into the sunshine, and Charlotte saw a village ahead. An old man was driving a pair of buffalo down the track with two little boys mounted on their backs. Their long horns curved from their heads like crescent moons. Two baby buffalo, fluffy and gangling, came behind. It was a charming scene, like a painting, almost unreal. In the distance lay the village, clean and swept, the stilt houses of wood and thatch surrounded by the greens of the jungle and the lime-coloured rice stalks. A narrow, three-tiered, thatch-roofed mosque occupied one side. On the other was another small temple of unusual design, it too, three-tiered with a manicured thatch roof but much smaller, a shrine made of carved stone and wood, dressed in a wide skirt of black-and-white checked cloth. A Balinese temple, Tigran told her.

  Five hundred people, husbands, wives and children, occupied this kampong on the river bank. The rice, the herds of animals, the vegetables and fruits supplied the house and the kampong first, and any surplus was sold in the market. Charlotte realised quickly that thousands of people lived on Brieswijk alone.

  Charlotte had been somewhat startled at the number of domestic servants. At least a hundred gardeners worked tirelessly to confine the ever encroaching jungle, tend the fruit and spice trees and grow the lowland vegetables. Cows, sheep and goats grazed on the low slopes by the river. Cotton, kapok, java jute and a myriad of other grasses and plants were harvested, and in the kampong the women wove, dyed and printed the cloth for the house and for the town. In the big house, there was an individual servant for every chore, and each jealously guarded his or her preserve. Keeping squabbling at bay was one of the senior housekeeper’s most onerous duties. The fire servants would not gather the wood, which was the wood servant’s job, nor the oil for the lamps. The cooks would not cut the food; the bath maid would not wash the floor. The maid who ironed the sheets would not touch the tablecloths. Charlotte had four personal maids, each with her appointed task, and she transcended their duties and privileges at her peril. She reflected that the Javanese domestic enjoyed a life of ease which her sisters in Scotland would have envied. All of this Tigran related to her as they moved along the path, the little horses’ tails waving gently from side to side, flicking at the occasional insect which annoyed their flanks.

  She was glad no one here was a s
lave. Her Scottish family had been vehemently against slavery; her grandfather had been, she knew, a vocal and heartfelt supporter of Wilberforce and the abolitionists.

  She questioned Tigran on the Dutch Indies attitude towards slavery. Where did the slaves come from?

  They were sold to Bugis and Macassarese slavers by the local kings themselves, he said. The chiefs rounded up their own people, the poor, the destitute and the criminals of their islands and sold them to the markets in Batavia.

  Charlotte looked at Tigran. He knew what she was thinking. The English ideas on this matter were common knowledge.

  Raffles, Tigran said, during his command of Java, had tried to convince them all of the benefits of getting rid of the practice, but, apart from his own sister and a few others, no one had been receptive to these ideas. Raffles had imposed a tax on slave keeping and the official numbers had dropped dramatically, Tigran said with a wry smile. Raffles had officially prohibited the trade, but many, even in his own entourage, kept slaves and concubines, which caused no end of trouble. It was well known, for when they left, they advertised their sale quite openly in the Java Gazette.

  The Sundanese people of West Java, this area, and the Javanese of the east had never been enslaved, not by their own kings, not by the Dutch; it was strictly forbidden. Mohammedans did not enslave those of their faith, and the Dutch were careful not to antagonise the Mohammedan population. The slaves came from the other islands, from Sumatra, Bali, Makassar, Ambon, Kalimantan, the eastern islands. In the VOC days, they came from everywhere: Africa, India, wherever the Dutch had colonies. Tigran admitted that during his father’s time he had thought nothing of keeping slaves. The slaves at Brieswijk were treated with kindness; many of their domestic slaves more like old friends. The worst abuses, he had heard, were generally at the hands of some of the nyai wives, who, being too much surrounded and spoiled, grew petulant and cruel. They were often jealous of the pretty slave girls who might catch the master’s eye and would resort to beatings and even poison. But slavery was, he assured her, on the wane. The English presence had had at least one effect on the Batavian attitudes. The English officers and officials brought their own free servants, who were quite cheap and worked hard and showed the old Batavians that one could do without slaves. The costs of slaves had risen dramatically, and they died too frequently. The whole business had come to be seen as uncouth and unsophisticated.