by Dawn Farnham
At Buitenzorg, she began to feel a happiness and a surge of feeling for Tigran, especially when he joined her in la seraille, sending the women away chattering and giggling, taking her in his arms, feeling the movement of the baby and running his hands over her, pouring water through her hair, massaging her, kissing her. When he came to her she pulled him to her unashamedly. She liked watching him as she touched him, exploring his body, enjoying this power. He warned her, smiling, of his revenge when she was over her confinement. Against his expectations, he enjoyed this delay, this quiet exploration of each other. He had never kissed any woman as much as he kissed Charlotte. She sought his constant touch now when they were together, wanted his lips all over her. This newfound sensuality in her he found surprising and gratifying. Apart from the most intimate place, there could not be one inch of her skin that his lips had not touched, and he found it as heady and potent as any aphrodisiac. He discovered you could get drunk on kisses. For two weeks, he found himself practically abandoning his business; all other claims on his time annoyed him. They shared the big bed in the long room, sinking into the soft cotton kapok mattress, drinking wine, watching the fire, talking of the day, planning the morrow. She lay in his arms as content as a kitten, and he stroked her hair and kissed her, filled with gratitude and joy at her quiet trust in him. He was almost sorry when her time came.
Takouhi had told Charlotte about the Javanese ways of birth, the jamu, the ceremonies. To Charlotte’s astonishment, the father was always present. Tigran had attended the birth of all his children, Takouhi told her; he was very experienced.
It was not like the horrible English way. When it had been time for her to give birth to Meda, George had been banished. She had been attended only by Dr Montgomerie, a man she hardly knew! Only one of her own Javanese maids was allowed to help her, wipe her sweating body. There was no singing and soothing incense, no water and loving words. It was hideous and embarrassing, utterly cold, a dreadful, fearful experience, especially at her age, over forty. She was amazed to have survived.
Charlotte knew that both Takouhi and George had been surprised by this late conception of their only child, their delight greater for its unexpectedness. But their life together had died with Meda; neither had been able to get over this loss.
The Javanese way of birthing was much better, said Takouhi. And so it was. Though Tigran had brought the Dutch civil surgeon from Batavia as a precaution, the birth was carried out in a Javanese way. The low, square bath was prepared with pure white cloths and soft cushions. Curtains and bamboo screens were hung around la seraille against the cold and in case of rain. Flames from the braziers chased shadows on the walls and warmed the air.
It was early evening, and candleglow and frankincense filled the room. The dukun chanted quietly in the corner. Two women fanned her continuously, wafting the fragrant and healing smoke of the frankincense gum around her lower body. Clad in a loose white sarong, Tigran cradled her. More frightened than she had ever been in her life, Charlotte clung to him, and he supported her, his cheek against hers, murmuring words to her: words he had never before said, feeling her pain like a knife in his chest. When the crown of the head appeared, Charlotte was exhausted, but Tigran whispered Madi’s instructions to take little breaths so as not to tear as the head passed. Madi eased the baby forward with her hands and when the final contraction came, pulled him out gently. Tigran cut the cord, and the Javanese women chanted quietly in that sing-song way, sending prayers. A healthy boy, they exclaimed, praise be to Allah.
It was over, and Charlotte had never felt such relief, such a release.
One hour after the delivery, Madi bathed her carefully with wild rose and jasmine oil and wrapped her like a mummy from below her breasts to her thighs in a long white cloth. Round and round they went, sealing her up. Cooling aloe lotions were massaged into her breasts to encourage milk and warm oils on her lower body to rid her of the lochia, the postnatal blood. Her table was covered in special foods in dozens of tiny dishes—tonics bitter and sweet. Twice a day she was placed in a billowing skirt over the smoking frankincense bowl to cleanse her birth passages, bathed and wrapped again. After six days, she was permitted to walk in the evening around the park with Tigran and Takouhi. In this way, Takouhi explained, she would heal quickly and regain her figure.
Tigran was forbidden to do anything but hold her hand and kiss her for the forty-day period of confinement. He did not mind, though Madi’s strict instructions to sleep apart were galling. Madi knew that, though her master might have some control, in her experience many men would require “comfort”, some even within a few days of the birth. This lack of care for the birthing woman made Madi despise men. She was adamant, knowing the master would obey.
Charlotte, despite all that had gone before, perfidious, suddenly desperately missed Zhen as she gazed at his little son, seeking a resemblance in his features, his eyes. She let herself be smoked and fed, wrapped and rubbed like a doll. When it was over, however, she had regained her spirits. And she had to admit, it had all worked. She was as slender as ever, her skin glowed and she felt rejuvenated.
On the forty-first night, Tigran banished everyone from their quarters. Madi, knowing this would happen, treated Charlotte carefully with the essence of Neem and other oils to prevent another pregnancy so soon after the birth. Then the maids dressed her in the white satin nightgown Tigran had sent, infused with the smoke of incense, and brushed her hair down her back. As they pampered her she felt as if she was in a story from Les Mille et Une Nuits, which she had read avidly in her grandfather’s library. But it did not matter. She was happy to play Scheherezade, and she had nothing to fear from him.
All restraint she had felt was in the past. They had lain together too often, touched each other too much. She wanted this final step now, and more than she had thought she would. The forty days had restored her health and filled her with gratitude for Tigran’s strength and generosity at the birth of her son. She felt his sureness, the security he gave her in her new motherhood. As he lifted her onto their bed, she held his head in her arms and sought his lips. At first he simply held her, but so tight she thought he would crush her, and she pulled her head from his shoulder and cried out. When he came into her for the first time, he was all urgent and groaning passion, and she felt a disappointment.
She had been adamant in her wish not to compare him with Zhen, but she could not help but feel the difference, almost the shock of this rapidity. Tigran sensed her feelings, but the waiting for her had taken its toll. When Zan was brought to her to suckle, he watched, touching her breasts, kissing her lips, stroking the baby’s head, and when Alexander was taken away, he pulled her again into his arms. This time he determined to show he was not just storm. As Charlotte sensed this she relaxed into his hands. He was glad he had had the wisdom to endure the torment of waiting for her. This night and those to come would make it all worthwhile.
Only when the sun began to rise did they sleep.
Zan was a lusty baby. Very quickly her own milk was not enough, and he went to the wet nurse. Before long, she ceased nursing him at all.
Fourteen months later, Takouhi and Charlotte were bathing, surrounded by petals of jasmine and mountain rose. A fire under the stone baths kept the water warm if the day was cool. The odour of aromatic wood smoke floated on the air. Meda’s final mourning period, the one thousand day slametan, would be next week. The final details were being settled, and Takouhi was speaking quietly to her dukun, who knelt on a gold cushion by the side of the bath. When the old woman left, the maids brought cotton towels and they rose, dripping, and then, dressed in batik gowns, sat on the cushions to pick at the little dishes which lay on the low wooden table.
Jasmine-scented incense glowed in the stone bowls at the four corners of the pavilion. Beyond the parapet, the valley fell away five hundred feet below. Two of the maids were occupied in staining henna patterns on Takouhi and Charlotte’s feet and chattering quietly. There was always a little tussle as
to who would serve Charlotte, her white skin a canvas they all wanted to paint. When Charlotte was here, she felt like Cleopatra.
She looked over at Alexander playing in the smallest pool with the son of the wet nurse. Alexander was as strong and muscled as his little companion was slight and fine-boned. The Javanese children were small and delicate-featured, pretty. Charlotte was not big, but she felt like a giant next to the graceful, tiny Javanese women. Alexander’s wet nurse and her niece, his babu, called him Iskandar, sometimes Zandar. Charlotte mostly called him Zan. Tigran refused to call him anything but Alexander. He had very light brown skin, dark almond eyes and thick, jet black hair. He was as handsome as Arjuna; all the maids told her so, and showered him with kisses.
His babu, who had nursed him since the day he was born, was sitting next to him, ready to cater to his every whim. She adored him and was his ministering spirit. Until he began to crawl she had carried him all day long against her heart in her long slendang. She fed him, bathed him, dressed him, took him everywhere, ready always to lift him up against her heart. She never tired of playing with him. She was very young and a child herself at heart. She suffered Tigran and Charlotte to cuddle and play with him, sure in the knowledge he would return to her. At night, she crooned him to sleep and slept on a mat by his bed.
Charlotte had learned first of Alexander the Great from a book in her grandfather’s library: a French translation of an ancient Latin text. Now here was the legend of Alexander, the Persian Iskandar, carried forward in a book in the library at the Harmonie Club. It was John Leyden’s translation of the Malay Annals, which Raffles had published in honour of his friend.
It happened on a time that Raja Iskandar of Makedonia wished to see the rising of the sun and with this view he reached the confines of the land of Hind.
As she read these opening lines she was caught up. The first Mohammedan sultanate in the Malay world had been founded at Malacca by Parameswara, a Hindu prince who claimed to be a descendant of Alexander the Great through sons brought forth from this land of Hind. When he married a princess of the Arab faith, he converted and took the title Sultan Iskandar Shah, for Iskandar was the Arabic name for Alexander. Charlotte recalled the holy tomb on Bukit Larangan in Singapore, where some said he was supposed to be buried. She was immediately enchanted. The first kiss with Zhen had been in the old spice orchard on that hill. They had met there so many times. This mingling of Eastern and Western legend was perfect. Everything seemed to lead to this name for this child.
The approaching slametan had affected Takouhi in unsuspected ways. She began to talk of visiting the grave of her own mother, the Javanese princess first mentioned when Charlotte had met Takouhi in Singapore.
“When she die, family take her back to Surakarta, bury her near old palace.”
Suddenly Takouhi took Charlotte’s hand. “Let’s visit my Jawa family in Kraton, go to mother’s grave.”
Charlotte gathered Zan’s wet little body into a cotton cloth on her knee, handing him pieces of sticky rice cakes, smiling as he squished them between his fingers. A visit to the royal palaces of Surakarta! She had read about the Javanese royal courts both in Raffles’s enormous tome on Java and Crawfurd’s entertaining book on the archipelago. She went often, with or without Nathanial, to the library in the Harmonie Club. The keeper of the books had grown used to her. She enjoyed spending time poring over these books in these elegant rooms as the rain pounded on the roof. It reminded her of childhood hours spent reading in her grandfather’s library in Aberdeen.
She squeezed Takouhi’s hand. A trip to the princely eastern provinces. Yes, it would be wonderful!
13
Meda’s one-thousand-day slametan would take place at Brieswijk.
They travelled away from the plantation high on the hills, down the steep winding road to the Grote Postweg, the Great Post Road, which swept across Java linking Anyer in the west to Panarukan in the east. Here, Daendels’s great highway passed through the Puncak Pass eastwards through the high Priangan plateau and on, and westwards down to Buitenzorg and the capital. Rumour had it that thousands had died to construct it, from disease and forced labour; that Daendels had ordered the Javanese regents to supply labour and keep to a tight schedule. Failure to do so resulted in the death of the labourers and the regents; their heads hung on trees along the wayside as a constant reminder to others. Tigran told Charlotte he was not sure how many had died. His father and the old men talked of the benefits it had brought, not the costs. Corvée labour was as traditional as the wayang in the Javanese countryside. It had been built in one year. A thousand miles in one year, through swamp, jungle and mountains, Tigran said. In his History of Java, Raffles claimed 10,000 had died, but he did not care much for Daendels, Tigran added. He shrugged and left Charlotte to her thoughts.
They were glad of the highway, though, as they made their way to the palace of the Governor-General at Buitenzorg. One of the glories of this journey was the sight of hillsides covered with rasamala, the liquid-amber tree, rising straight as a pole to 130 feet.
The colourful majesty of the jungle was impossible to enjoy from the ground. Only above it, as if offered exclusively to the exalted eyes of gods and angels, could one gaze on the blossoming beauty of the vast canopy of trees. Tigran stopped the coach to look down from their vantage point. Below them spread, in swathes of brilliant scarlet and purple, the tubular flower clusters of the rasamala. Here and there, climbing plants of white and fiery orange had found their way to the tops of the trees, and the combination of blossoms spreading from hillside to hillside was of a staggering beauty.
The staging posts offered refreshments and a change of horses. Stalls sold fried ikan mas, fried banana, fruits and vegetables. The scenery was always spectacular. The volcanic mountains of Gede, Salak and Pangrango surrounded the lower foothills, pierced with small, rushing waterfalls and rock-strewn rivulets. As the road wound down the mountainside, the tea plants stopped abruptly and gave way to jungly forest and amphitheatres of terraced fields of yellowing rice.
It enchanted the senses, and no matter how often she made this journey, it was always the same.
The Manouks were guests for several days of Pieter and Wilhelmina Merkus.
This was not the first time Charlotte had seen the Buitenzorg Palace, but the first time they had stayed as guests.
Much of it had been destroyed in the earthquake which followed the eruption of Salak Mountain eight years before. The main house had been remodelled from the original grand three-storey to a single story Palladian-style building. There was still much to be completed in the outer buildings, and the grounds remained to be restored to their former brilliance. They liked to come, Wilhelmina said, for the children, and she enjoyed the cooler weather.
Charlotte was standing with Wilhelmina, admiring a painting of the old palace hung in the dining room. The original, Wilhelmina was telling her, had been a private estate purchased by Baron von Imhoff, the Governor-General, in 1744, as a place of cool repose. Buitenzorg meant “sans souci”, the place without a care. Since then it had always served as the official country retreat. Daendels had spent a lot of time here, and, of course, Raffles had lived here almost all the time with Olivia during the British interregnum.
Charlotte liked the old Governor-General and his wife, with whom she and Tigran enjoyed a pleasant, easy relationship. They were the epitome of Dutch Indies life. Merkus had arrived in Batavia as an ambitious young man from Holland. He had passed through the ranks of government and was appointed Governor of the Mollucas at Amboyna, the capital of the Spice Islands. He fought the British, who marauded constantly in the region, and brought West Papua into the power of the Dutch.
Wilhelmina was a Cranssen, a daughter of one of the most illustrious families of the Dutch Indies. Her father had been a chief adviser to Raffles and her mother, a Balinese, he had legitimised as a Nessnarc, reversing the name. The Cranssens’ pedigree stretched back into the VOC times, and they were related by marriage
to every one of the great families of that era. Wilhemina’s grandmother, Catharina, incredibly old, lived at Buitenzorg. Her grandfather, Abraham Couperus, had been the unfortunate Dutch Governor of Malacca, humiliated and imprisoned when it passed to the British in 1795.
The influence of these Compagnie dynasties had faded with the dissolution of the VOC and the arrival of Herman Daendels. Daendels was a man of the Enlightenment, of revolutionary Europe, and he came determined to make a clean sweep of Javanese feudalism. He abolished hereditary rights and put the princes under his command to build the Great Post Road against an expected British invasion. He completely dismantled the old town of Batavia, ordering the destruction of the ancient fort and the use of its stones to build his new palace at Koningsplein, away from the disease of the old port. He laid out the new town, with its wide streets and vast squares. Charlotte began to understand the broken-down appearance of the lower town. To raise revenue, he took the drastic step of selling public land to private ownership, particularly to rich Chinese to whom the government was already indebted. Three provinces in the far east of Java were swallowed up in these sales.
The lands around Batavia, the ommelanden, and in the Preanger, the coffee growing regions, were further sold off under Raffles. Tigran’s father, Gevork, made sure he profited from this unforeseen and permanent sale of government lands, and the estates for both the tea and coffee plantations had been purchased during the government of these two men. For this sale of government lands and his perceived profit from it, Raffles was subsequently accused of corruption and had returned to England under a cloud.
Wilhelmina was always most interesting on the recent history of Java. She was well-read and politically clever, a perfect companion to her husband in his high office. From her own family, she had learned a great deal. As well as the most capable Javanese linguists, Raffles had many former Dutch administrators, sympathetic to English ideas, to help him in governing Java. Two of the most important were Herman Muntinghe and Willem Cranssen, Wilhelmina’s father, both of whom were able, liberal-minded and spoke excellent English.