The Interpreter from Java

by Alfred Birney

  ‘Would you really have gone to New Zealand with him? You didn’t want to go to America with Pa.’

  ‘Of course I would have gone away with Tommy!’

  ‘To New Zealand? You? Don’t make me laugh!’

  ‘Love is blind! Not that you’d understand. And you don’t know that song we always sang when we were sad. Always too busy listening to that jazz and pop rubbish of yours.’

  The heffalump sings:

  The war it came

  And then it went

  You walked into my life

  We were oh so content!

  Then you had to go

  Love left on the tide

  It took you so long

  To return to my side

  We found happiness again

  Then came clouds, then the rain

  And you left me forever

  Alone

  ‘Pa had his songs too, but they weren’t nearly so sentimental. Remember this one?’

  Her dear son sings:

  Your dreams of the babu are made to last

  Just lift up her sarong and ogle her ass

  ‘Your Pa taught you those songs when you were barely out of nappies, that madman.’

  ‘That one even features in his memoirs. You read them, didn’t you? After the police threw him out of the house?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. He got Arti to sneak them out of that trunk of his, that big, ugly thing I kept banging my shins on when I did the housework. One ladder after another in my stockings.’

  ‘In any case, they’re back in circulation.’

  ‘The memoirs of that filthy war of his? Never read a word of them. Willem did, though. He found the manuscript, read it from start to finish and told me all about it.’

  ‘You let your boyfriend read your ex-husband’s secret memoirs? Is nothing sacred?’

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk! Your father’s holy scriptures were thick as a brick. Do you honestly think I was going to sit down and read all that? I was happy to be shot of that lunatic once and for all. Willem was curious. I sure as hell wasn’t.’

  ‘Not even now? Pa went through a war in his youth, just like you. Your country was occupied by Germans, his by the Japanese. To say nothing of what came next. Of course, you lot never want to hear about that.’

  ‘What do you mean “you lot”?’

  ‘You. The Belandas.’

  ‘Oh, so now you’re calling your own mother a Belanda?’

  ‘Only because you act like one. You show no interest in the history of the young man from the tropics you ended up marrying. Like most Belandas, the Dutch who think the war started and ended with the German occupation. You’re full of stories about being the first white girl to take a stroll through The Hague with a boy from the Indies but forty years later, with Nana on the tram to Scheveningen, you looked around and announced to everyone within earshot, “That’s right! She’s my daughter!” Nana was livid.’

  ‘To this day I’ve no idea why she got so worked up about that.’

  ‘Because you were apologizing for your daughter, your own flesh and blood, a woman in her thirties. Are you still stuck in the fifties? How often did you apologize for me and Phil when you were out with the pram? That’s something I’d like to know. Didn’t they all stare at you for having kids with some jungle bunny? Whose side were you on anyway?’

  ‘Your side, of course!’

  ‘Even so, Pa’s stories never interested you at all. You were always telling him to shut up.’

  ‘I did that for your sakes!’

  ‘Fair enough, Mam. But his youth was about more than just the war.’

  ‘He never spoke about that.’

  ‘Yes he did. Shooting bats as a kid, that kind of stuff. Your father drove a Citroën Traction Avant and his father drove a Ford. In the 1930s! Now that was classy, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so daft.’

  ‘I’ll leave the first few pages here with you. Okay? Listen, your father grew up in an orphanage, my father was a bastard son. I grew up in a children’s home, the same one your boyfriend Willem grew up in during the thirties. You’re the only one who was raised in a decent family. Everyone around you has a dodgy past.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Maybe you don’t see it that way. But other people do. And Pa was a dodgy character even before the war broke out.’

  From Baldy’s memoirs (2)

  Regarding my birth

  I was born at around three o’clock in the afternoon of 28 September 1925, to be raised on the dark side of East Indies society. Much has been written about the well-to-do circles in this former Dutch colony, in particular the bygone days known as tempo doeloe, when life was said to be sweet. I barely knew those ‘good old days’. And the history that surrounds them, a history the Dutch never tire of reading, is a lie.

  Later in life, when I came to Holland, I made a point of avoiding social clubs and associations that celebrated the Indies. Their tempo doeloe nonsense sickened me. I was a warrior, a fighter, not some mollycoddled runt who attended the theatre with mummy and daddy.

  When I was born, my parents lived at Koninginnelaan No. 3 in Surabaya. I enclose documentary evidence below:

  Extract … [illegible] … certificates of Birth for the Chinese, issued in Surabaya in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-five

  No. 726.

  On this day, the first of October nineteen hundred and twenty-five, I, Alexander de Witt, deputy registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Surabaya, acting in the absence of the registrar, who is otherwise engaged, hereby record the declaration of Pieter Hendrik van Baak, aged fifty-three, a resident of Malang with no profession. Having been present at the birth, Mr Van Baak declares that at three o’clock in the afternoon on the twenty-eighth of September nineteen hundred and twenty-five, at the home of Willem Nolan, Master of Laws, in Surabaya, a child of the male sex was born to SIE SWAN NIO, a resident of Surabaya with no profession, and that the child has been named SIE AREND.

  Present at this registration are Charles Guillaume Roerich, aged seventy-five, no profession, and Tan Tjhan Ing, aged twenty-eight, occupation tradesman, both residents of Surabaya.

  To this end, a certificate has been drawn up which, having been read aloud and presented in the Malay language, has been signed by the declarant, both witnesses and myself.

  Signed: P.H. van Baak; C.G. Ror Roerich; T. Tjhan Ing; de Witt.

  Issued as a true certificate on the fifth of December nineteen hundred and twenty-five by the undersigned, Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Surabaya.

  [stamp and signature illegible]

  Seen for authentication of the signature of Bernard Benjamin Faber, Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Surabaya. The President of the Court of Justice in Surabaya.

  [stamp: president etc. signature: illegible]

  I am the illegitimate son of Willem Nolan, who was born as a European in Jember, East Java. He was raised in the Indies and went to the Netherlands to study law. The offices of his law firm were located on Rozenplein in Surabaya. His clients were people of means and my father preferred to handle cases that reeked of foul play, as these tended to be the most lucrative. He imported his own whisky from Scotland. Alongside his law firm, he ran a dry-cleaning business in the Simpang neighbourhood. He was also the owner of two cargo ships, which sailed from Surabaya to Makassar, Balikpapan and Banjarmasin, transporting coal, wood and the like.

  My father married his cousin Aleida and had two children with her, a boy and a girl, who unfortunately cost a good deal of money, spoiled as they were. From the boy, my ‘legitimate’ half-brother, I received a large metal bedstead as a memento upon my return from Blitar, more of which later, as he left for the United States of America never to return. My brother Jacob later heard that our half-brother had considerable trouble finding work in America due to the dark colour of his skin.

  My mother Sie Swan Nio was a Chinese housewife of simple means. By the light of a waxing moon,
she made her own kecap in the back garden and sold it to the people of the neighbourhood. She was divorced from her Chinese husband named Djie Lian Hwa, by whom she had a daughter, called Nonnie for short. As I was not recognized by my father, the following epistles were sent to my mother:

  Surabaya, 20 November 1925

  To

  Miss Sie Swan Nio

  Koninginnelaan 3

  in

  Surabaya

  The Orphans and Probate Court of Surabaya asks you to consider recognizing at the earliest opportunity the child by the name of Sie Arend, born on 28 September 1925. According to the notification given to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Surabaya, you are the child’s mother. Recognition may take the form of a notarial deed or a declaration of your intention to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Without such recognition there can be no legal bond between you and said child, whereas recognizing the child has the following consequences:

  a. You will have custody of the child and are therefore the child’s legal guardian. If you refuse, the present Court will submit a request to the Court of Justice to appoint another person to be the child’s guardian. (If, in the interim, the man who fathered the child decides to recognize or jointly recognize the child, a course of action which this Court deems highly advisable, he will then become the legal guardian.)

  b. The child will require your consent in order to marry before reaching his majority.

  c. The child is under the obligation to support you in a fitting manner should you find yourself in reduced circumstances.

  d. You will be the child’s legal beneficiary and the child will be yours (which without recognition will be out of the question).

  Lastly you are informed that if this Court has received no notification of your having recognized your child within three months of the above date, immediate arrangements will be made for the Court of Justice to appoint a legal guardian.

  The Orphans and Probate Court in Surabaya.

  President

  Secretary,

  [signature illegible]

  No. 38

  R E C O G N I T I O N

  Today, Wednesday the twenty-third of December nineteen hundred and twenty-five.

  There appeared before me, JUST TOWNSEND, Notary in Surabaya, in the presence of the witnesses named below, whose identity is known to me:

  Miss Sie Swan Nio, of no occupation, a resident of Surabaya, Koninginnelaan 3, by her own declaration thirty-five years of age and unmarried.

  The party is known to me, the notary.

  The party declared that she wishes to recognize as her natural son the child who according to the notification given to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Surabaya was born in Surabaya on the twenty-eighth of September nineteen hundred and twenty-five, to whom she is mother and to whom the names Sie Arend have been given.

  T H U S D U L Y N O T E D

  Drawn up in Surabaya on the above date in the presence of Loo Lam Twan and Sie Khwan Djioe, both notarial employees, resident in Surabaya, who immediately after the reading aloud of the certificate to the party and the witnesses by me, the notary, and interpretation in the Malay language for the party concerned, signed this certificate along with said party and me, the notary.

  Drawn up with an appendix and a deletion without amendment.

  (Signed) Sie Swan Nio, Loo Lam Twan, Sie Khwan Djioe, Townsend.

  ISSUED AS A TRUE COPY

  [stamp and signature of Townsend]

  Horoscope

  There’s nothing remarkable about your birth certificate, of course. Its inclusion in your memoirs is the act of an illegitimate son, determined to prove he was ever born at all. Phil told me to pass on his regrets for the ‘three o’clock’ they scrawled on your birth certificate over there in Surabaya. An approximation, most likely, which makes your horoscope difficult to pin down. Half an hour’s difference only affects the position of Pluto in your houses, but then Pluto is Mars squared: violence, terror, magic, compulsion, sadism. Three o’clock on the dot puts Pluto in your sixth house and spells trouble in your working life. Wind the clock back fifteen minutes and Pluto is in your seventh house – extreme relationships – which would account for the miserable marriage to that heffalump of yours. As if the Moon, Venus and Mars in your marriage house wasn’t enough! Uranus doesn’t do us kids any favours. Those with Uranus in their fifth house have trouble with their children. We were trouble, weren’t we Pa? But my God, then there’s the Sun, Mercury, Saturn and Neptune in your eighth house, the house of death, sex and the deepest recesses of the soul. In a single word, that spells war. In fact, only Jupiter is auspiciously positioned: in your second house, you old skin-flint. Always had more money than you let on… a Chinese trait, if you ask me. An experienced astrologer could only read this as the horoscope of a fascist, paranoid, mass murderer. A seasoned astrologer might see a bald eagle. And if he’s a fool into the bargain, he might see a young Buddha. Was your father a fool by any chance, wielding those hair clippers of his? I mean, did he see a baldy little Buddha in you? But there I go poking fun again. Not at all noble of me.

  One phrase from that last document piqued my interest: interpretation in the Malay language for the party concerned. So your mother could not read Dutch, at least not well enough to know what she was signing. I’ll refrain from calling her a nyai, for fear you might chuck stones at me.

  From Baldy’s memoirs (3)

  Near death

  I was a baby, ten months old, when a wound behind my right ear began to fester and I was soon at death’s door. Prominent physicians and acquaintances of Papa’s – Dr Markovitch, a Hungarian, and Dr De Vries, a Dutchman – gave me up for dead. My mother could not bear to see me die. She summoned her younger brother Sie Soen Thjwan, Uncle Soen for short, and told him to take me to her family in the country. Uncle Soen swaddled me in rags and an old sarong and took the train to Blitar. There he was to seek the help of Aunty Mien, his sister Sie Mien Nio, who would attempt to heal me with all kinds of wild herbs. If this failed, he was to bury me in a secret place deep in the jungle.

  It took over two years, but I was cured and Uncle Soen brought me back to my mother in Surabaya. She spooned cod-liver oil into me three times a day. I loathed the stuff, but if I refused to take it she would beat me. On Papa’s orders my head was shaved. He believed a bald head would make me a better scholar, though what is there for a child of three to learn? Until my twelfth birthday, I had to walk around bald headed. At school the other children threw stones at me.

  My older brother Jacob was fourteen years my senior, my twin sisters Ella and Ina were twelve years older, and my brother Karel eight. Of the five of us, I had the darkest skin, and so my brothers and sisters often bullied and beat me. They liked to insinuate that I had been fathered by an Indian. Karel and both my sisters had a slight slant to their eyes that betrayed their Chinese blood; Jacob and I did not. Of course, they never dared treat Jacob the way they treated me, as he was the eldest and ruled the roost in our father’s absence.

  At that time my mother was a follower of the Kong Hu Cu, the teachings of Confucius. When my grandmother died – a woman straight out of Canton, who dressed like a classical Chinese doll and hobbled around on lotus feet – we attended her funeral with my mother and they rubbed chalk behind our ears to protect us from evil spirits. After the funeral, I sneaked some sweets from her grave and had myself a feast. This was at the cemetery, so my mother, brothers and sisters were not allowed to hit me. But as soon as we got home, the lash appeared and I received my deferred punishment. I was four years old.

  The happiest times of my childhood were the Feast of Saint Nicholas, Christmas and my birthday. On these special occasions, I was spoiled with expensive toys and Mama, our babu Tenie and our kokkie Tas would make my favourite dishes: Cantonese fried rice and macaroni cheese.

  On New Year’s Eve, my father used to order an ox cart full of Chinese fireworks. My big brothers would festoon our front fence w
ith firecrackers and the whole neighbourhood would turn out to watch. The tremendous din lasted a full hour and the streets around us disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

  At the age of five I became an uncle of sorts, when my half-sister Nonnie gave birth to a daughter. Betty Tie was her name, but everyone called her Poppy. I watched the birth through a crack in the door and it made me feel very uneasy. Poppy refused to call me ‘uncle’. To the family I was her half-brother and we grew up fighting like cat and dog. She had a big mouth and would never let me tell her what to do.

  Wolf and Bear

  I had two good friends in those days: Wolf, a watchful stray dog, and Bear, a little black bear my father had shipped back to Java from Banjarmasin on the island of Borneo.

  One morning I was helping our driver Petro polish my father’s 1929 Model T Ford in readiness for his daily trip to his offices on Rozenplein. In the mood for mischief, I sneaked onto the luggage rack below the spare wheel to hitch a ride. We set off with Wolf bounding along after us. When Petro hit a bump, I nearly fell off and was dragged along behind the car. Wolf barked at Petro, and he braked. Shocked to see me lying there in the road, Petro accosted a Javanese man and asked him to carry me home. He did not dare say anything to my father, who had been dozing in the front passenger seat throughout the incident. When my mother saw me in the arms of the Javanese stranger, she thanked him and gave him a bottle of her homemade kecap for his trouble. The man was barely out the door when my mother grabbed the cane and was ready to give me a beating, but Uncle Soen, who had just started feeding Bear, walked over and snatched the cane from his sister’s hands. Our two babus took me to the bathroom, undressed me and washed the cuts and grazes on my knees and legs. My mother had calmed down by this time and made a paste from traditional herbs for the babus to rub on my wounds. I cried out in pain. As a punishment, I was sent to my room. Wolf stayed with me and bared his teeth at my mother whenever she popped her head round the door.