The Ten Thousand Things

by Maria Dermout

  The young voice sounded authoritative yet not too emphatic, very clear; everyone in the proa could hear his words but they were directed only to the steersman.

  “Aye, sir,” said the steersman and as if the others hadn’t heard he repeated (that was his duty), “men, remember, no tricks, do you hear? the officer says,” and “the wind is staying nice and steady for the way back!”

  “Aye, steersman,” one of the rowers answered for all of them.

  And it was over. The tightening circles had been loosened, without much effort.

  The Binongko sat down again between his two guards.

  The rowers relaxed, stretched, looked at one another, laughed at something, cut a quid of tobacco, smoked, chewed on a nutmeg. “Come on, you!” someone shouted to the leadsmen.

  The policemen lit self-rolled cigarettes. The one—not he who could talk with the murderer, the one who had called him “dog”—asked the officer whether he (he pointed at the Binongko with his thumb) could have one too.

  “It’s all right with me,” the officer said.

  The Binongko accepted the cigarette and the match—his chain was so light that he could easily lift his hands. He smoked, his face was as before, like brown clay.

  The two under the roof smoked too.

  “Yes,” the officer said after a while, squinting against the smoke, “there are things—a man thinks he’s doing his duty and yet, I don’t know”—and he stared at his cigarette.

  “Do you mean to say that we should have thrown that man overboard, chains and all?” Suprapto asked bluntly.

  “No,” said the other, “that’s just it, no! But I do understand how the men feel.”

  “Yes,” the Javanese said, “a stranger—they hate strangers.”

  “No, no, that’s not the reason! Of course they’re not particularly fond of these half savages who land on their islands, burn off whole stretches, exhaust the earth and then vanish again; no, it’s certainly because of the murder. Perhaps you don’t quite understand—they’re spirited fellows, there are many soldiers among them, from traditional soldiering families, they are fighters, not lap dogs—”

  Dogs—you and I . . .

  “When one man knifes another on account of a woman or an old feud, or just because he doesn’t like him, they don’t mind so much—but four young men with machetes who set on a myopic old man whom they know to be unarmed,” and he made a face of disgust.

  “Did they know he was unarmed?” the Javanese started to ask, but he didn’t say the words out loud.

  And I still have my plant knife, young friend . . .

  “And then, the island considered him more or less its property. Do you know how they called him here? ‘Mister only-half-crazy.’ He had already made a place in their songs, with his topee and glasses and parasol and that green plants case and his polished dimes and quarters. They knew that he didn’t do harm to their children, didn’t lure them into the woods or things like that, he made his watch chime for them, grinned, and if he pushed beautiful dimes or quarters into their hands for a flower or a plant instead of pennies—well, if he wanted to be crazy, others must keep their hands off him! And assassinations aren’t their style.”

  “Wasn’t this more of a hold-up murder?” the Javanese asked in his clipped voice.

  “All right, if you prefer, a hold-up murder,” the officer said, suddenly annoyed. “You knew the professor better than I, but I have the feeling that there aren’t so many of his caliber, even considering all his peculiarities. I tell you, when I think about that bridge and what happened there, and afterward—then I stand with my men!” He said it clearly, emphatically, put himself on their side: “my men.”

  All of them: rowers, steersman, drum players, police, leadsmen, all were my men—except the Binongko, not he, and of course not Suprapto, the Javanese, the stranger—curious, wasn’t it, that he had to be ill just that day . . .

  He would be silent again, think his answers, his re-marks, not say them out loud, and his thoughts became bitter and suspicious again as before, and burned like acid in a wound.

  The leadsmen were finished, had taken the line back in, and one of them wrote slowly and solemnly in a notebook.

  “How many fathoms?” the officer asked dutifully.

  “More than two hundred fathoms,” said the man and put the book away.

  “That’s deep,” the officer said.

  In deep water . . . or we’ll grow old . . . you too, Radèn Mas Suprapto . . . like the other prince . . .

  The drum players on the roof played a bit, just lightly, for themselves, soft and swift—dook-dooke-dook and the plong of the gong.

  Dook-dooke-dook-dook-dooke-dook-plong!

  “Is there anything you might want?” the officer asked awkwardly, and the Javanese said, “no, not I, thank you.”

  “Well, we’ll go back then, steersman.”

  The steersman told the drum players, who stopped. Then a few hard blows on the gong—attention!—the rowers took the oars, dipped them into the water.

  And they went back.

  The two sat under the roof.

  It had become warmer. The sky, at first so dome-high and open and blue, was now hazy, untransparent, white heat vibrations running through it; the water in the outer bay was much wilder, with whitecaps on the gray of the waves, and a growling sea in the distance.

  I . . . I’m afraid of the sea, young friend . . .

  Suprapto rubbed his forehead—how annoying was that beating of the drums and especially that ringing blow on the gong all the time, right over his head.

  After a while the officer said, “we’ll never be able to pull him up, we don’t even have diving suits; and the Binongko says ‘here,’ but it might as well be somewhere else; anyway, what will be left of him? I’m afraid the professor will have to be satisfied with a watery grave! Did he like the sea?”

  “No,” the Javanese answered slowly, “the professor said that he”—“feared,” he had started to say—“that he didn’t like the sea much.”

  And then he asked, “in your job, you must often be at sea, have you ever seen those little jellyfish? ‘Mizzens’ they are called, they can put up some sort of a membrane like a sail.”

  The officer laughed, “what makes you think of that so suddenly? They’re quite common in the sea of Banda, masses of them, they sting like the devil when you touch them. Yes, I’ve seen them.”

  “Would they come here too?” the Javanese asked, and he pointed to the place they had just left behind them.

  The officer looked, “perhaps,” he said, “I don’t know, the outer bay is quite open there, but they appear only at a certain time of the year, I think. Shall I ask the steersman?”

  “No, don’t bother,” said the Javanese, and after a while, “Rumphius says that they’re quite beautiful.”

  “Yes,” said the officer, “a strange poisonous green, with long blue streamers, and the sails are sort of transparent with a colored edge.”

  “A crystal sail edged with purple or violet.”

  “Yes,” the officer agreed, a bit astonished.

  “Like a jewel, Rumphius said.”

  “Yes,” there was a flicker of enthusiasm in the blue eyes, “yes, that’s true!”

  Glorious, someone said.

  And Suprapto continued, “I guess the sails aren’t very big—”

  “No, how could they be big? Without the streamers these jellyfish aren’t big themselves—the sails aren’t bigger than—” the officer looked around for something to compare them with: his own firm hand, and then the slim dark hand which the Javanese held on his knee. He didn’t touch it, but he pointed at it, his finger moving over the knuckles, “a bit larger than the width of your hand perhaps.”

  Suprapto looked where the other had pointed—his own thin hand.

  “Yes,” he said in his even, toneless voice, “I realized that those sails are small—not big.”

  For a short moment it caused him an almost inhuman pain.


  FOUR: THE ISLAND

  AND SO the lady of the Small Garden wanted to be alone for one day and night of the year.

  Early in the morning she had sent all the servants and their families to the town at the outer bay in the milk proa. It became quite a party, they liked to make a trip to town all together, and they would come back the following day.

  Sjeba and her husband, Henry, who was still cowherd, stayed with her. Slowly they had become the only ones left from the past, the only ones who knew everything, had gone through everything—anyway, the cows had to be milked.

  The day had been dry and sunny, and there would be a full moon in the evening—it didn’t always happen that way, often this evening and night had been a pit of darkness for her.

  Not this time.

  When the moon rose above the inner bay, which lay as quiet as a lake, and shone over the foliage of the trees and palms on the beach, it seemed almost day. The small leaves of the many palms gleamed as if wet, as if the moonlight would roll off them in silver drops and trickles. The trunks of the plane trees lighted up gray and silvery white, the foliage took on a hard, almost metallic gleam.

  It was still, there was hardly a murmur from the inner bay; the waves of the surf—the father, the mother, the child—ran out on the beach with a little sigh.

  Now the crabs and the lobsters came out of their caves: those with the white gleaming eyes, those whose shells shine in the moonlight like mother-of-pearl. One of the large tree crabs, which were becoming so rare—hard blue with white stripes, Don Diego in full harness, Mr. Rumphius said—climbed into a coco palm, cut off a nut, dropped it on the ground, climbed down, tore off the shell and slowly began to crack the stone-hard nut between its claws. The sound could be heard quite a distance in the night’s silence.

  The species of lobster with the single, monstrously enlarged claw which was constantly moving up and down would be somewhere near the water, waving at the moon—that’s what they did.

  The tiny duck crabs with their scarlet legs could safely crawl around while the cruel ducks were asleep.

  All the brightly colored little fishes woke up and swam through the moonlit water where it wasn’t too deep—fleeting flashes of gold, red, and light blue.

  In the deep center of the bay the big fish hid: the robbers with swords and saws and pointed shark’s teeth, with the sweeping knife-sharp ray’s tails.

  Later the fishermen from the village would pass by, wading into the water up to their knees, with torches and bamboo spears to spear the little fish. They were careful to stay out of the moonlight and within the darkness of the coast with its high trees, so as not to throw shadows. In the past the lady of the Small Garden had occasionally gone with them, her sarong bound up and pieces of leather under her feet against the sea urchins, but she had pitied the pretty fishes and been afraid of octopuses.

  So were the fishers. A short time ago an octopus had wound itself around the arm of a fisher and had let go only when he held his burning torch against it. The man had burned his arm; he was still coming to the Small Garden for ointment.

  The lady of the Small Garden brought out her little rattan chair and put it on the beach near the stone quay which had just been built. The old one with the pieces of white marble had slowly collapsed—now a proa could once again moor decently and her guests wouldn’t get their feet wet. She was a hospitable woman and always had many visitors.

  That night there would be four, and they would not need a proa; perhaps they had already arrived. It was different each year, there had been years when no one had come.

  But this year there were four: a Scotch professor, a woman from the island whose name was Constance, a sailor from Macassar, and the retired commissioner who had lived at the outer bay.

  Two she knew by face: the professor she had met several times in town, with his young Javanese assistant. They had immediately been deep in conversation about their mutual friend, Mr. Rumphius, and the professor had asked her whether she had ever seen a “mizzen.” She had invited them to the Garden to search for trees and plants and flowers, and she had looked forward to it: she would be able to show them the way—the way to so many things!

  She had thought the professor a bit grotesque—weren’t professors often? She had never before seen one as they are caricatured, distracted, with umbrellas they are always leaving behind. The professor had a large parasol but he didn’t seem distracted. She had liked him very much.

  She hadn’t known quite what to think of the young Javanese: so refined in appearance, so reserved, not to be reached, and yet overflowing with something—she didn’t know what. But what did it matter now?

  Constance had been the cook of the official and his wife who lived in her old house in town with their child Sophy. She remembered Constance; she hadn’t been a woman one forgets easily. But what was Constance really like? She had had a walk like a queen in exile. The lady of the Small Garden had heard the strange story about the sailor’s knife—she always heard all the stories.

  She had never seen the sailor; but sailors are usually nice.

  The commissioner she had not only never seen, she couldn’t visualize him either. If one listened to the stories about him, he really couldn’t have been very pleasant. At the auction she had bought the one beautiful jug with the lion heads and the rattan rope (much too expensive!).

  Would the three little girls come? The real ones—Elsbet, Katie, Marregie? She didn’t know yet; did they belong to it or did they not? But this was their place, and children are curious, she thought.

  Perhaps they were all together in the living room; she had put plants and flowers there as usual. She had not burned incense as her grandmother would have done—the congealed tears—tears enough!

  Her son—this was the night of her son—did not always come either. Yet he belonged to it, she thought, because this was the day, the night, of the murdered.

  She wasn’t an oversensitive woman and certainly not sentimental, but she would always keep that deep and burning pity for those who had been murdered; she rebelled against it, murder, she couldn’t accept it, not for her son nor for anyone, not then, not now, and not in all eternity.

  Dying, yes!—everybody must die, young or old, from sickness, age, an accident, perhaps even from Venom, but then by mistake. One has to resign oneself to that. But it is not good that one human being is killed by another.

  And so on that one day and night of the year she commemorated together with her son all those who had been murdered on the island—that was all she could do for them.

  “She never quite got over it,” her friends in the town at the outer bay whispered, “that’s why at times she’s a bit—although she is still quite sharp!”

  They couldn’t say to her, “you must try and get over it,” that made her furious, “do you think we should get over each other,” she asked, “is that what you think?”

  “Without love, without loyalty, without memory—cowards!” she would mutter afterward. Cowards, that was it—it hurt them too much.

  As she had tasted bitterness, more bitter than the bitter water from the bitter spring, so she now knew pain, inside and outside—and what is there to still pain?

  She did not have the firm belief of her grandmother.

  There are those who say, see with your eyes, hear with your ears, but know, know without seeing or hearing; none of that was given to her—never, not once—she did not even meet him in a dream any more.

  There were the silent conversations but she had no illusions about them. She asked, and she gave his answer to her questions. He was not only her child, he was close to her, and she had begun to know him so well, especially in that last part of his life, that she could put his questions and answer them—but what had all that to do with him?

  It was never a communion with him as a being, detached from her, with his own face—at most it was with that small part of him that lay enclosed within herself.

  Did he still exist as a being, or was the
re only his silence? Had she—with that everlasting conversation, the questions and the answers—had she locked out his silence with that?

  But she was a woman living on earth who had loved her child living on earth—perhaps it was his silence which she could not bear.

  While she was thinking this, looking over the inner bay in the moonlight for the thousandth time, thinking it and not thinking it, she suddenly had the feeling that there was someone sitting with her on the little wooden bench against the plane tree, outside of the moonlight, in the dark. She couldn’t see anything, but if there was someone it was not her son Himpies but another: someone she did not know, whom she had never met, someone she did not like, she was certain of that!

  The commissioner, she thought, annoyed, who else, why did he come and sit here? At first she remained silent.

  “Why don’t you go in and join the others?” she asked after a while, “the professor is very agreeable and the sailor too, I think. Constance is a queer one but she is pleasant to look at, the three girls are nice children, if they’re there—” She didn’t mention her son, and she received no answer.

  It irritated the lady of the Small Garden, she’d rather sit alone at the inner bay—what did he want, did he think he didn’t belong inside?

  “Well, you were murdered too, weren’t you?” she asked then.

  “Drowned,” said whoever it was, testily.

  “Oh yes,” the lady of the Small Garden said with impatience, “we know that, but did you drown or did they drown you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She made such a sudden movement that the old rattan chair creaked in all its joints.

  “Nonsense!” she said, “you must know whether you fell or were pushed.”

  “Both, madam,” the commissioner or whoever it was answered seriously and politely.

  What can one say to that?

  She stood up without looking at him and went toward the house, her house which was really a guest pavilion: four rooms in a row with a side gallery. The moon was now shining in through the pillars. Here she had so often sat with her grandmother, each leaning against a stone pillar—here the bibi had opened her basket and brought out the strings of white shells with the two children watching, Himpies closest—here was the spot, to the left of the third pillar (she could find it with her eyes closed), where she often stood, looking straight ahead: over the flower bed between the nutmeg trees where the house had been (the house that must not be rebuilt) and then farther on, through the valley with the shell of the Leviathan, across the river, the wood, the hills, the sea, the other island, “the land at the other side,” the high mountains there, straight on to the clearing in the jungle.