I didn’t understand, but I nodded. Even how one thing related to another I didn’t understand.
“But the greatest outcry in Holland is over the debt the Indies accumulated—one hundred million guilders in six years—to finance its lust to conquer Aceh.”
The image that appeared before me was of Jean Marais. And a question: Who was this man that I have called Ter Haar? As he watched me—perhaps I was standing open-mouthed in confusion—he laughed boisterously.
“What can one do? Your eyes must see these things clearly. Ignorance is shameful. Allowing someone to remain in ignorance is betrayal. I’m free from accusations of betrayal now.”
He slapped my shoulder. “What a De Locomotief man says is different from what a Soerabaiaasch Nieuws man says.”
“Do you know Kommer?”
“Kommer? The reporter from the Malay paper? I’ve heard his name.”
“He’s never spoken as you have.”
He didn’t react. Instead he bent his tall body over so he could bring his lips close to my ears. “And Governor-General Rooseboom, famed for his liberality and gentleness, no less a fraud—the deceit of a mousedeer, Mr. Minke.” Abruptly, he straightened his body. Leaning against a ship’s ladder, his head thrown back, he broke into cascading laughter. And when he finally stopped laughing, he bent down again, his lips near my ears: “You read the newspapers.” And like Nijman: “But not everything is printed in the papers. Have you heard about the decision to grant the Japanese equal status with Europeans?” I nodded. “Russia is furious with the Netherlands Indies.”
“Russia?”
“Yes, Mr. Minke, the czar. You know why?” I shook my head. “Well, isn’t Russia at odds at the moment in Manchuria with Japan? Several weeks ago”—he tried to count it out on his fingers but was unsuccessful—“the Russian fleet turned up at Tanjung Perak harbor, Mr. Minke, at Batavia itself. Old Governor-General Rooseboom, Mr. Minke, he was rushing about everywhere looking for ways to make the Russians happy. Yes, Mr. Minke, the crown prince was with the fleet. He was on his way to Port Arthur.” He let out a breath. “Do you know where Port Arthur is? In the name of neutrality of the Netherlands Indies, the crown prince was entertained with a hunting trip in the forests around Priok. And so there would be no complaints, Rooseboom ordered that some of the deer from the governor’s palace at Bogor be caught and let loose at Priok.” He broke out into that boisterous laughter again. “Just imagine how happy the crown prince must have been to make those half-tame animals topple to kiss the earth. And the flattery from the Dutch officers, already prepared: What a great hunter is His Highness, the noble crown prince of Russia. It was the first time in the history of the Indies a hunter could down three deer in one strike.”
Now his voice slowed down.
“That was during the day. At night the daughter of a bupati was brought to him. God! In the name of the neutrality of the Indies! How old was that girl? Almost fourteen! God! In Europe, in the Indies, the lies are the same.”
I wasn’t capable of following all his chatter and all his laughter, his bendings and straightenings. Now a new cigarette inhabited his mouth. The previous one had been elegant; this one was of corn husk, tied with red thread.
“And that neutrality, Mr. Minke, is all for the sake of big business in the Indies.”
It seemed he was relieving himself of some burden that had nothing to do with me. Now that he was released he was silent. I used the opportunity to question him about where he came from and where he received his education. He seemed so young. He laughed. He did not avoid my questions, but neither was he clear in his answers. From his sparse replies I gathered that at twelve he had become a cabin boy on a ship bound for the Indies. In Surabaya he had jumped ship. He then became a general run-about at a factory. Later he went into the interior of Borneo, and the land of the Torajas in the Celebes, and the Batak lands in North Sumatra—perhaps then too as general servant—with a research scholar. Since that time many researchers had sought to hire him as an assistant, especially people from the churches.
Humbly he acknowledged: “It was from them I gleaned what knowledge I have of the world. But it was with my own eyes, my ears, the soles of my feet, that I gathered a few clumps of knowledge about the Indies themselves.”
“What you’ve just been telling me—it’s not about the jungles, is it?”
He laughed again, but not so boisterously this time. He was no longer smoking; his stock had been wiped out.
“What’s the difference? All these great cities are just jungles, places to wield power over others, to get whatever life-essence can be sucked from people’s bodies. Yes? Isn’t that so?” His laughter was less and less convincing. Then, abruptly: “Mr. Minke, the government is not as it used to be. Your people, Mr. Minke, there’s nothing left of them but the dregs after their bodies have been squeezed by forced cultivation. The great companies pay the fattest tribute to the Indies state now. So, if necessary, the government will mobilize army and police, civil service and village officialdom to make sure their will is done.”
So we returned once again to that issue. I could find no way to escape the harangue.
He talked on and on about a dozen things of which I had never heard before. The Oosthoek sailed calmly to the west. Everywhere there were sailboats of the fishermen, and of the Bugis and the Madurese.
“I don’t know how long these Buginese and Madurese boats will be able to hold out against the Dutch ships. There used to be many more; I myself have witnessed how the steamships—first the Arabs and then the Chinese—started to push them aside.”
“That’s never been taught at school.”
“Sorry, Mr. Minke, I’ve never been to school. And anyway, what would be the point of teaching things like that? Truly, I am so happy to hear a Native say something like that. These times, Mr. Minke: Like a perforated rice-steamer, this age can never be filled up, no matter how many different questions are asked and answers given. Deceit is flourishing everywhere. Not the deceit of people who only want a dish of rice—that’s no more than the cunning of a people already at the same level as the mud of their homeland—but deceit and falseness that ride the wind, Mr. Minke, deceit as the legitimate child of excessive power. I’m sorry, Mr. Minke, this person you speak to here is no more than the illegitimate child of one mother and who knows how many fathers.”
His confused talking, as if he were being hunted by some devil, ended abruptly. His hands groped in his pockets, left and right, but he couldn’t find a single cigarette.
“Why would the queen invest capital here?” A question flew from my mouth to mask my stupidity.
“What for? Ah, Mr. Minke, what does it mean to be a queen in these mad times? Without capital she too would be the servant of capital. Even a king is best off being a king of capital.”
“But the teachers all say we are entering the age of modernity, not the age of capital.”
“They only half know what’s going on, Mr. Minke. The journalists know more about what’s actually happening. And to half know something is not necessarily to know it all. Look, Mr. Tollenaar, didn’t you use the pen name Max Tollenaar to conjure up the image of Multatuli’s Max Havelaar? From that alone people will know you are the spiritual child of Multatuli. Your humanity is great; even so, Mr. Minke, such humanity, without real knowledge of life in the Indies, could miss its mark altogether. What people call the modern age, Mr. Tollenaar, is really the age of the triumph of capital. Everybody alive in this modern age is ordered about by big capital; even the education you received was adjusted to capital’s needs, not your own. So too the newspapers. Everything is arranged by it, including morality, law, truth, and knowledge.”
As time went on Ter Haar’s talk became more and more like a pamphlet. (I myself had some doubts about including all this here, especially as I wasn’t really able to fathom it all. But not to include it would also not be right; Ter Haar took me on a journey to new continents that I had never encountered in my geography
lessons. So if these notes read like a pamphlet—yes, that was the situation in which I found myself. The ship, the past, Surabaya and Wonokromo back there—they all became the pages of a pamphlet, splinters of an incomplete knowledge.)
And it was still difficult to accept the notion of the absolute sway of big capital over people’s lives. In the villages people weave, spin, make batik, plant their fields, marry, reproduce, die, and are born—and none of this is because of capital. And early in the morning people leave their beds, ritually wash themselves, and face God—and is that because of capital?
Now I was beginning to understand what Jean Marais had said about the power of capital in the Aceh war. Ter Haar gave more than a glimpse: It was a flash of lightning. Marais had said that the Netherlands Indies was jealous of English capital, which could fondle and control Andalas through Aceh, a buffer state. The independence of Aceh was violated by the Dutch, even though Holland always said that the Netherlands violated Aceh with the agreement of England.
“Yes”—Ter Haar spoke again—“but what people call capital is more than just money, Mr. Minke. It is something invisible, abstract; it has a supernatural power over real objects; it causes everything that is scattered to collect together, that which is together to scatter, that which is liquid to solidify, and that which is solid to turn into liquid. Once in its grip, everything changes shape. The wet is made dry and the dry made wet. A new god has the world in its fist. Yes, it’s a boring thing, but a fact. Production, trade, the sweat of the people, transport, communications—no one, not one person, is free from its power, influence, and instructions. Also, Mr. Minke, the way people think, people’s ideals, they too are approved or not approved, blessed or not blessed by it.”
The longer he spoke the more fantastic his story became, contradicting everything I had ever been taught at school. It burst from my lips—an attempt to restate a classic issue: “Would it be as true to say that everything is ruled by science and its laws?”
He laughed amiably. “Science and its laws are now no more than just an empty swelling, powerless.…”
And Mama reckoned everything was ruled by authority, by power. Ter Haar broke into that uncontrollable laughter again. His tall body shivered. At that moment I reckoned he must have a nervous disorder. Neither he nor his rhetoric could be completely accepted.
“There is no power that does not stem from massed capital, Mr. Minke, not these days. That other kind of power is to be found only among shepherd peoples wandering the grasslands, or other nomads in the deserts, jungles, and savannah. The cleverest of people, and even Stephenson, the hero of the century, would never have been able to give the locomotive to the world with no capital. It is only with capital that he was able to order the clouds of steam to make those carriages move hundreds of feet. Without capital people could not make light or bring to life the telegraph. Without capital, those big men would be nothing more than leather shadow puppets with no backbone to keep them from flopping. Isn’t that so?”
The wild wolf had spoken too much. It was too complicated to digest.
That afternoon I slept well. I used the evening to note down all his babblings and to think a little about the truth of his words. Everything my teachers had taught me was now threatened with being turned upside down, thanks to this Capital. What had Ter Haar said? Everything is subjugated by it: individuals, societies, and peoples. Those who don’t wish to be subjugated remove themselves, run away. Kings, armies, the president of the United States, France, even the beggars by the roadside stalls or the churches, all, he said, are in its grip. Peoples who reject the power of capital will languish and die. Societies that run away from it will return to the Stone Age. All must accept it as a reality, like it or not.
I was on my way to Betawi to continue my schooling. After I graduated I would become a government doctor, curing the sick employees of the state. They must be able to carry on their work for the government. And the government, in its turn, would ensure the health of the capital. Is that all that will become of me in the future? An insignificant expender of energy in the interests of capital?
I had not finished with my thoughts. The writing still stood on the paper, gaping open-mouthed. I had not closed it with a full stop when he came to my cabin. He invited me to eat with him.
On leaving the cabin I realized it was already night.
Dinner in the second-class dining room was all European. My appetite died. Ter Haar, on the other hand, ate happily and lustily.
“You don’t like European food very much,” he said. “Yes, food is a matter of habit. I still to this day prefer pears to bananas.”
Back up on the deck, however, it was I who began: “Mr. Ter Haar, why did Mr. Nijman and his paper treat Khouw Ah Soe as an enemy?”
“You mean the Chinese immigrant murdered at the Red Bridge?”
He didn’t know what had happened, so I told him.
“Mr. Minke,” he began, “the situation is now safe, calm, and orderly for big capital. People can get on with their work without any significant disturbances. Khouw Ah Soe and his Young Generation might have influenced the Chinese in the Indies, might have had some influence generally. If society is disturbed, then trade will most surely be disturbed as well, and prices too.”
“But there are always disturbances.” I told him about the troubles of the peasant farmers in Tulangan, about which he already knew.
“Peasant rebellion is meaningless, Mr. Minke.”
“But the situation is disturbed too.”
“Such small upsets are already calculated as part of general production costs.” Now he seemed to try very hard not to lecture. “What kind of power do those peasants without capital have? How much damage can they do? It won’t cost the companies more than twenty sacks of sugar to put things back in order.” He laughed. “What’s twenty sacks compared to five thousand? The peasants will be put down. It takes a week at the most. Then they return to their original state. But, Mr. Tollenaar, if the people themselves change…things will never be the same. The conditions of life will begin to change also, slowly moving further and further away from the original situation.”
“But it wouldn’t be the farmers, but the Chinese that changed, that is, if Khouw Ah Soe had indeed succeeded in his efforts.”
“It’s not as simple as that. All kinds of people influence one another—even into their kitchens. Perhaps you yourself are already a lover of bean curd, and noodles without ever feeling you have been influenced by another race. And not just the Natives of the Indies, but the peoples of Europe too. People use spoons and forks, eat spaghetti and macaroni—all influences from China. Everything that gives pleasure to mankind, everything that does away with mankind’s suffering and boredom, everything that lessens his fatigue, will, in these times, be copied by the whole world. That young sinkeh too. He and his friends were only trying to copy the United States and France. In the end so too will the Natives of the Indies. And if the Natives started on that path, then soon there would be no more comfortable place for big capital in the Indies.”
This last exposition of his was easier for me to follow and helped explain what had been said earlier. A spot of light appeared to expose the way ahead so I could travel it without the aid of others.
Before us, the island of Java was swallowed up by the darkness. Here and there were lights like yellow-reddish fireflies. There was life there, the greater family of my people. They were not allowed to copy America or France, either directly or through the influence of others; they have to stay in their present state forever.
“They are the source of earnings for big capital,” Ter Haar went on. “Everything must be turned into a source of profit. From every inch of thread that is sewn into a torn garment, from every stride that makes itself felt on the earth. And in the towns of Europe and America, from every mouthful of water. Maybe in the future they will take profits too from each cubic inch of air we breathe.”
Abruptly the tone of his voice changed. Stingingly: �
��Do you know anything about the Indies’ close neighbor, the Philippines?”
“A little. They rebelled against the Spanish colonization, then against America.”
“Where did you hear that? It has never been reported here in the newspapers.”
“Just by coincidence, Mr. Ter Haar,” I answered. I could not say anything else, not because of the subject itself but because my source was Khouw Ah Soe. I still had his letter in my suitcase.
“News from the Philippines is very scarce. It seems the government feels it has to restrict such reports.” Ter Haar’s words came forth more and more quickly, more enthusiastically; he seemed now to be expounding his own beliefs: “The government is afraid that if the Indies Natives find out a lot about what’s happening, about how far the Filipino Natives have progressed under Spanish rule, they would be ashamed.
“Many Filipinos are educated, really educated,” he went on. “Already some are graduates. And the Indies Natives? Just a handful sit on the benches of universities in Holland. There is still not one graduate in all of the Indies. Public schools are not even three-quarters of a century old. In the Philippines, they have been going for almost three hundred years. In the Indies ninety-nine percent of Natives are illiterate. In the Philippines it is ten percent less than that.”
Such progress. The Filipino natives were closer to European science and learning, closer to understanding the power that rested with the European peoples, to knowing how to use that power, and so they rebelled. They had changed as human beings because of European education. They could never return to being the Natives of earlier times. And the government of the Netherlands Indies was worried that the educated Natives of the Indies would find out that the Filipino rebellion against the Spanish was led by educated Filipinos and was no mere peasant disturbance like that in Tulangan.
Before the rebellion itself took place, he went on, the port workers in the Philippines harbors refused to work. Coolies refusing to work! I thought, amazed. In a flash I remembered something like that being reported in the newspapers here, something they gave the name of “work desertion” and in Holland “striking.”
Child of All Nations Page 29