by Nigel Barley
* * *
‘The Portuguese arrived in 1511. We have been here ever since.’
It was one of those breathtakingly simple statements that required dismantling and holding up to the light. The Portuguese of Malacca are a fiction that has become a fact.
Alfonso Alvarez lived in the Portuguese Square, an ancient colonial structure built a few years ago by the government. The walls were decorated with ‘Come to Malaysia, Year 1989’ stickers. Beneath them could be seen, confusingly, ‘Come back to Malaysia in ‘87’ stickers. He was nineteen years old. During the day he worked in the museum, selling postcards of the traditional Portuguese wedding display to tourists. In Southeast Asia if you want to have a regional identity you have to have a wedding ritual and a local costume. The costume here was something like the outfits worn by the fake Mexican folksingers who haunt Jakarta hotels.
At night he worked in the Lusitanian restaurant, across the square, selling Portuguese food. The menu included something which after lengthy interpretation turned out to be meat pie. A popular alternative was ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken – Portuguese Style’.
He spoke English, Malay, Chinese and – most importantly – Papia Kristen, a pidgin of Portuguese and Malay, once the lingua franca of the whole vast archipelago, now shrunk down to this small enclave in the way that Latin has become the language of chemists.
Alfonso and his friends Diego and Rodrigo were the most untypically friendly people I had met in Malacca. They were attractive, relaxed, easy-going with the slow, open-handed gestures of fishermen. Physically they were Indians. When the Dutch threw the Portuguese out of the East, there were great tidal migrations back and forth between Malacca, Timor and Goa. Many empires have risen and collapsed in these islands, leaving their ethnic debris. Raffles had used such ‘Black Portuguese’ troops in Bengkulu. I remembered they had been called Topazes.
‘We are Catholics. Yes, yes, we all go to church every Sunday – even the young. We are fishermen. It is hard, dangerous work. We need God’s protection. We cannot marry Malays, they are Muslims. But we can marry the Indians and the Chinese.’ Alfonso executed a groin-writhing movement. ‘Wah! I shall marry a Chinese. They are pale-skinned – beautiful.’
I got out a word–list. This was a Rafflesque windfall for pedantry. I had a colleague who was researching pidgins. It would be useful thesis-fodder, an opportunity not to be missed. We were halfway through the list when a fat, slightly threatening man appeared. The lads leapt up and proffered chairs with respectful gestures, made room for him to sit and fell silent.
‘Garcia,’ he said, stabbing out a hand like a swordthrust. ‘I own the restaurant here. If you want to ask about the Portuguese, you must ask me.’
We had to start the word-list again. This was clearly the official version. The answers were different.
‘These are children. They know nothing. See, they give you Malay words. I have been to Portugal. I know the proper words, so I correct them all the time.’ Music started up and drowned his correct words. In an unthinking gesture, he reached out frowning and slapped the nearest boy sharply round the ear as if it were his fault. ‘The folk-songs too. I have fetched the records from Lisbon, so we get the words right.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘The Portuguese arrived in Malacca in 1511 …’
‘No,’ I amended, ‘how long have you been here? In the square.’
‘It was a priest who moved us here in the thirties. He said it was the only way to keep the language. We have the Bible in Papia Kristen but now we use English. Maybe you don’t think we look Portuguese?’
‘Well …’
‘I tell you. We are a mixture. Indians, Malays, Europeans but …’ he eyed me shrewdly, ‘we have become Portuguese. It is important our children stay Portuguese.’
I could see his point. Instead of being the odds and ends, the racial dandruff, the result of three centuries’ playing the genetic fruit-machine, they were now the original Portuguese, not the upshot but the source of it all. It is too simple to say that tourism destroys a people’s identity. By selling the Portuguese identity to tourists, they had come to feel it themselves.
We chatted on. When the owner left, the boys whispered together in their doubtless faulty Portuguese, then quietly lost my bill.
Alfonso walked me back to the gate, a rueful grin on his face.
‘They don’t know it yet,’ he said, ‘but I’m leaving. A friend’s fixed a job for me in Australia. Lots of us go there. Here there’s no work. And there we can marry white women. A fisherman’s life’s so hard, you can’t imagine. I want better things. I have dreams. I’ve got a job in a cheese factory.’
We stood by the sea wall and, without any particular reason, looked out over the bay, the stuff that Europeans build their dreams of.
‘That island,’ he said. ‘It looks like a pregnant woman, see there’s the lump. They’re developing it for tourists. There’s a story that only the righteous can go there. The boats of the unrighteous would sink.’ He looked at me. ‘Are you righteous? We always believed the English were righteous.’
‘Inhabitants of Java! … Your future happiness or misery, as well as that of your families, is in your hands. The English character is not unknown to you – it is for you to decide.’
– T. S. Raffles, ‘Proclamation to the People of Java’
‘At that time, there were not yet many English in the town of Malacca and to see an Englishman was like seeing a tiger, because they were so mischievous and violent. If one or two English ships called in at Malacca, all the Malacca people would keep the doors of their houses shut, for all round the streets there would be a lot of sailors, some of whom would break in the doors of people’s houses, and some would chase the women on the streets, and others would fight amongst themselves and cut one another’s heads open … Moreover, a great number were killed owing to their falling in the river, owing to their being drunk; and all this made people afraid. At that time, I never met an Englishman who had a white face, for all of them had “mounted the green horse,” that is to say, were drunk. So much so, that when children cried, their mothers would say, “Be quiet, the drunken Englishman is coming,” and the children would be scared and keep quiet.’
– Munshi Abdullah, Hikayat Abdullah
‘We are now in the agony of preparation for Java; and I will whisper in your ear that I am going there myself, not to command the Army but to see all the political work done to my mind. “Modeste” is to be my state coach.’
– Lord Minto
* * *
I walked down past the memorial to the war dead, across from the new Japanese clock. A perfectly preserved Morris Minor chugged past – thirty or forty years old, but immaculate. Its driver steered it as though driving a statue of Queen Victoria. Through the balustrade of the bridge you could see the harbour of Malacca. It is not what it once was. It no longer teems with the multifarious trade of the Indies. The rich scent of spices no longer overwhelms the stench of the water. In Raffles’ time it held a vast flotilla of sixty ships crammed with British and Indian troops and a single, low, black vessel, the Modeste, the ship of Lord Minto commanded by his peevish, horse-faced son. The mouth of the river has silted up and been sidestepped by Raffles’ other home, Singapore. Yet you can still find an exotic mix of nationalities in this narrow waterway, flat-faced Javanese, sharp-nosed Buginese, disdainful Achinese.
A rusty hulk was loading coconuts with an even rustier crane, chains rasping and jangling. The logic of coconuts in the East has always escaped me. They seem to be simultaneously imported and exported by just about everywhere. Perhaps the appropriate model is the exchange of women in marriage, since everyone ends up with the same number of coconuts but different coconuts.
Away from the main channel a small vessel, a pinisi, flying the red-and-white Indonesian flag, was being slapped from side to side by the waves as if they were trying to sober it up. A man was gutting fish into a bucket, using a dagger whose shea
th lay on the deck. He looked up and caught my eye and gave that unmistakable Indonesian gesture of acknowledgement, a simultaneous raising of the eyebrows and widening of the cheekbones. In the West it could only be a sexual advance. In the East it means something like ‘We do not know each other, we may never speak, but I acknowledge your presence.’ I twinkled back and he smiled, threw down the fish and gestured a circuitous route with wrist and elbow by which I might come abroad. It was time to get out the cigarettes again.
He held out a hand in greeting. It was slimy with fishscales.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked.
‘Wah! You speak proper Indonesian. We are from Woring. You will not know it.’ He picked up the fish and squeezed out the contents of its head as one would burst a boil.
I did know it. I had been there a couple of years before.
‘It is near Maumere, Flores. Your boat was built by Habib.’
He reeled back. ‘You know Habib?’
‘I met him. He was building a new boat for a man from Australia.’ It was true. It was their first foreign contract. Everyone in the village had been very excited. It would mean a trip to Australia for the men who delivered the boat.
They were sea-gypsies, and the government was trying to settle them and turn them into farmers and good citizens. But they could not abide living in houses. They turned sickly and died. Then a brilliant local official had worked out a compromise. He discovered houses were fine as long as they were built of coral so the people could smell the sea all around them. Even then they built them on stilts out over the water.
He gave me a fishy hug. ‘My name is Dion. I have four children, all of them boys. Too much of this, I reckon.’ He waggled his thumb suggestively through his fingers and laughed.
In that instant, I realized how little I had been enjoying Malaysia up till now. The people had been nice enough, but rather as Europeans are nice. They were polite. They did not disturb you. In Malacca, it would be possible to go for days without talking to anyone, like in London. But Indonesian friendliness was a powerful bear-hug that grabbed you despite yourself. It changed you, made you a warmer person.
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘We were headed for Singapore but we had problems with the navy. Last year they shot up a couple of boats. I am too old for that.’
‘Navy? Which navy?’
He sighed. ‘The Indonesian navy, of course. They don’t like direct trade. Everything has to go through Jakarta. It’s taking the rice from our children’s mouths. They call us smugglers.’ He leaned over the edge and slid a mouthful of bubbly saliva into the water.
I laughed, but not because of what he said. I had suddenly found Raffles. I was now quite certain he had been here and had this same conversation before me.
* * *
The British had sought to impose a blockade on Java. The annual Buginese fleet approaching to trade from the east had taken this very ill and it had come to a fight with casualties on both sides, as the British, eager for prize-money, fired on their ships. The Dutch meanwhile sought to uphold their own monopoly over most of the archipelago. Spice was produced by a few islands only in the Moluccas, at the eastern end of their empire. To trade illegally in spice carried the death penalty, and the Malays were caught in the middle. One Western power blockaded Java, the other channelled all trade through it. One urged the ‘illegal’ export of spice, the other punished it with death. The Malays were ill-disposed towards such interference and Raffles was delegated to soothe them.
Raffles had another reason to talk to the sailors. The Eastern monsoon had set in and the wind was in totally the wrong direction for the expeditionary force. In the face of an equally stiff opposing wind from the navy, who declared the route impossible, Raffles urged sailing almost directly for Batavia using night winds and currents to sail against the monsoon. The navy declared this too dangerous. They would have to pass round the whole island of Borneo and approach from the other side. Raffles took his plan from the Malay sailors in the harbour. That was what they had told him to do. It succeeded brilliantly. The navy, including Lord Minto’s ratty son, George, was furious.
‘When I saw the appearance and form of Lord Minto, I was very much amazed, for I had been imagining what he would look like, and how handsome he would be and big and tall, and about his clothes … As to his appearance, as I saw him, he was past middle age, his body was thin, and his actions gentle, and his face pleasant; it seemed to me he could hardly lift a twenty-five-pound weight, so feeble did he appear to be. I noticed he was wearing a black coat of broad-cloth and black trousers, and there was nothing else I could mention … I did not see the slightest sign of haughtiness or raising his head but he merely bowed with a pleasant face … At that moment I was deep in thought, remembering the truth of the Malay proverb, which says, “If a snake creeps along a root, it will not lose its venom”: and still more the Chinese proverb which says, “Will the water shake in a full barrel? But in a barrel half full the water will shake” … I noticed that amongst all the numerous officials Mr Raffles was the only one who dared to approach him …”
– Munshi Abdullah, Hikayat Abdullah
* * *
‘Come back with us to Flores. There is plenty of room.’ Dion was cooking the fish into a rich, peppery stew.
‘I can’t. I have to go to Jakarta. Anyway, the Immigration Department wouldn’t like it. They’d put me in jail. They’d call me a smuggler.’
Dion mashed the fish-head against the side of the pot. The eye had gone opaque as though with cataract. ‘Governments!’ he cried in disgust. ‘Everyone should be able to go where they want and carry cargo where they want. You come and stay with me. I bring my family to stay with you in Australia. We buy, we sell. It’s no one else’s business.’
‘Er … right.’
Raffles would have agreed with that too. As he got older, he saw freedom of trade as the basis of all human freedom.
* * *
The man in the Singapore Airlines office was skittish.
‘I can’t hear you!’ he had shouted smirking across the counter. ‘Not until you take a number from the queuing machine!’
I had taken a number and sat down.
‘There’s no need to wait. There’s no one else queuing.’
I hauled myself up again and went back to the desk.
‘One way to Jakarta.’
‘One ticket? Go on, buy two.’
‘I’m on my own.’
He shrugged and grinned. ‘If you have a spare ticket, you’ll find a friend.’
‘You’re Indonesian,’ I suggested.
‘How did you guess?’
‘Your vowels,’ I lied.
‘Tourist or Raffles?’
‘… or what?’ I had dropped my number. The name came at me out of the blue like a punch to the stomach.
He sighed. ‘Raffles class. I know it’s silly but it’s what we call it.’
I thought of poor Raffles sleeping under a cannon on an East Indiaman, the foul water, the vomit and fever, the stink of men and horses, cockroaches running over his face.
‘It means Business.’
‘Yes. I suppose it does.’
Spice Invaders
‘Now I must admit that in my youth I was so terribly handsome that I was almost girlish-looking. Because there were so few female intellectuals in those days, there weren’t many girl members and when Young Java put on a play I was always given the ingénue role. I actually put powder on my face and red on my lips. And I will tell you something but I don’t know what foreigners will think of a President who tells such things … Anyway, I will tell it. I bought two sweet breads. Round breads. Like rolls. And I stuffed them inside my blouse. With this addition to my shapely figure, everybody said I looked absolutely beautiful. Fortunately my part didn’t call for kissing any boys on stage. I couldn’t waste my money so after the show I pulled the breads out of my blouse and ate them. Watching me on stage, spectators commented that I showed a definite talent for pl
aying to audiences. I concurred wholeheartedly.’
– C. Adams, Soekarno: An Autobiography
On top of everything else, the British forces on the way to Java had to put up with amateur theatricals starring nautical female impersonators as ‘young, accomplished and generally sentimental ladies of quality’. Lord Minto adored it all. In Malacca there had been balls, comical plays and, on board ship, charades. Lord Minto had immediately set the festive tone by freeing the slaves of the Company and rebuilding the prison along humanitarian lines – acts that Raffles would not forget and would take as models for his own administration. In Minto he saw a relaxed, instinctively civilized man of spontaneous generosity, with an aristocratic contempt for calculation. Minto provided a precedent for all that was good in anxious, hard-working and repressed Thomas Raffles.
Raffles, for his part, had organized a meeting of the Malacca Asiatic Society. He was desperately anxious to impress. To ‘scientifically’ protect the fleet against lightning he had caused an inverted glass tumbler to be nailed to the top of each mast. Since not a single ship was lost it must have proved efficacious. The serious nature of the business could not hide the fact that this was, for both Minto and Raffles, the earl and the former office boy, an enormous jaunt.
A third figure was involved, John Leyden. Leyden was a Scot, like Minto, of peasant stock but formidably learned. By the age of nineteen he had exhausted the knowledge of his professors at Edinburgh University, studying Hebrew, Arabic, Theology and Medicine. That knowledge, it must be admitted, was probably not very great. He was a famous poet, though his verse is excruciating to the modern reader. Against all expectation he joined the Company as a medical doctor, then became Professor of Hindustani at Fort William. Minto always respected learning and it was owing to Leyden that Raffles became known ‘at court’. He it was who slipped Raffles’ Malacca report before the busy earl and made sure he read it.