Femme Fatale

by Pat Shipman

  Medan in particular and the Deli region in general were notorious for the rowdy drunken parties that took place when the planters were in town. Plantation employees got two days off a month, known as hari besar (big day). During hari besar

  almost everyone went to the club or, even better if the distance was not prohibitive, to the famous—or infamous—Hotel De Boer in Medan. There were none there but menfolk, not a single woman could be seen in the whole hall…. Women, planters’ wives, were still rather rare at that time and those who were there avoided the neighborhood of the hotel on hari besar day. The planters are coarse people, their mirth and their jokes are not fit for a woman’s ear. The evening would start with an extensive dinner and even during the meal the rowdiness began. Somebody would climb on the table, breaking plates and dishes; others poured beer all over each other; a table would topple over and so on.

  Another Dutch colonial writer, H. Veersema, concurred: “A Delian hari besar was always something special, Medan turning into a seething cauldron, the walls of the Hotel Medan were bulging and at the de Boer Hotel personnel brought out their coarsest crockery, in anticipation of breakage once people took to spinning plates on the marble floor.”

  Far away from his wife and children, Rudolf would have found this just the sort of raucous party he had enjoyed so much in his bachelor years.

  A more hidden part of Deli European society was the unmarried women, either Indo or Javanese, who were kept as nyais. Most of them had been brought to Sumatra as contract coolies and had then been offered the position of nyai, with little real chance to refuse. Most of Rudolf’s senior military colleagues kept concubines, and so did the plantation men and the civil servants in Deli he drank and partied with. No one would have been surprised if Rudolf took a nyai to look after him and keep him company until Gretha and the children arrived in Medan; they would have been more surprised if he had not.

  In considering the relationship between Rudolf and Gretha, it is key to recognize that going without sexual companionship was not believed to be an option for men in the Indies. In 1899, the year Rudolf went to Medan, ninety-six Dutch Indies army officers were polled about the wisdom of continuing barracks concubinage; Rudolf might have been among those polled. Eighty-eight of them (almost 92 percent) were in favor of continuing officially sanctioned concubinage within the barracks.

  The women had little choice about becoming a nyai, even if they were already married, because of the dual handicaps of being female and being poor. Few female coolies turned down the opportunity for light work and a life of luxury in exchange for becoming the sexual partner of a white man who might or might not be kind, clean, or good-looking. The alternative was the coolie’s life of grinding poverty, meager food, and exhausting labor.

  While Rudolf was alone in Medan, he almost certainly took a nyai and may have resumed a relationship with an Indo nyai he had kept when he was in Sumatra before his marriage. When he arrived in Sumatra in 1899, the identity of the new garrison commander was the subject of much gossip in both the Asian and European communities. Any former nyai of Rudolf’s would have learned almost immediately of his return in an elevated position. The resumption of a sexual relationship with a former nyai may have caused a devastating event that occurred not long afterward.

  There were two crucial new variables. First, Rudolf was now married—a husband and father—and sooner or later his European family would join him in Sumatra. This meant that, if he took up with a nyai, a crisis was inevitable. Of course, he could dismiss the nyai when his European wife appeared; this is a common plot in Dutch colonial literature. And, as often happened in such literature, the nyai might well turn vindictive, threatening to tell Gretha of Rudolf’s infidelity and provoke an enormous row. Alternatively, Rudolf could try to keep both a wife and a nyai, an extremely difficult deception in a very small community but one some men attempted. Maintaining both a family and a nyai would require a significant outlay of money, which in Rudolf’s life was always in short supply.

  Second, and most important, the laws pertaining to mixed marriages and children of mixed race had changed markedly between Rudolf’s departure from the Indies on sick leave in 1895 and his return to Sumatra in 1899. In 1898 a mixed-marriage law had been passed that gave European status to the wife and recognized children of any European man, regardless of the wife’s race or country of origin. The underlying premise was that the family was the emblem of state authority and that all members of a family must be subject to the same laws. For an Indo or native nyai, particularly one who had borne children to a European man, the law was a godsend. If she could persuade the man to marry her, she would become legally European; even if he would not marry, if he recognized her children, then they would be guaranteed the privileged legal status of Europeans.

  Children posed the most troubling social problem that attended the widespread keeping of nyais. Though nyais were sometimes forced to have abortions or were dismissed for becoming pregnant, a significant number of children resulted from concubinage. Just how many mixed-race children were produced at this time is unknown, but one authority, Robert E. Park, wrote: “One man, a Hollander, who was very free with the native women on his plantation and who kept track of his children had over 1400 descendants in thirty years…. There are kampongs that are known to be full of mixed bloods.”

  Statistics gathered by the Dutch government suggest the magnitude of the issue. During the year 1900, 1,746 children who had been sired by lower-level soldiers were legally recognized and hence reclassified as European or the equivalent. In the entire Dutch East Indies between 1891 and 1900, a total of 7,000 Indo children were recognized by their European fathers. Every year, one European man out of every thirteen or fourteen chose to recognize a mixed-race child whom he had fathered. Fully 28 percent of the Indo children born in the decade at the end of the nineteenth century achieved both recognition and legitimacy through the marriage of their mothers to European men.

  The great majority of Indo children born of concubinage were neither recognized nor legitimized. At the end of the nineteenth century, most mixed-race children were sent into the kampongs, which in the common metaphor of the day absorbed these unwanted children as a sponge absorbs water. There was a widespread European fear, perhaps prompted by guilt, that the kampongs were the breeding grounds of rebellion, criminality, and hostility toward full-blooded whites. Braconier, writing early in the twentieth century, expressed a common view: “This category of children, left behind by their European fathers, whether or not they were recognized, are par droit de naissance [by their birthright] European-haters…. In the future, they will be the anarchists and extremists of Indische society if Dutch lawmakers do not intervene in a timely manner to extend their protective hand to these ‘outcasts.’”

  Where racial tensions were higher, due to the smaller number of Europeans and the greater competition between Indonesian and European men for a limited number of sexual partners, Eurasians were viewed with great suspicion and hostility. Though in Java mixed-race men were typically employed in numerous lower-level professional jobs, few Deli planters would employ sinyos as accountants, scribes, or clerks. White-collar jobs were reserved for Europeans. As Van Marle explained, “Already I have spoken of the misplaced shame some felt concerning their ‘Indies blood.’ Nevertheless it is not surprising, if you hear how others thought about this Indies blood. The remark was repeated into a lot of ears, very clearly, that ‘The Indo-European is a profoundly unfortunate product of Dutch sexual abuse and Inlandsche [Indonesian native] selling [prostitution].’”

  When Rudolf entered Deli society as garrison commander, he probably worried that Gretha’s Indo appearance would cause him considerable embarrassment. If he were also involved with an Indo nyai, his tension must have been nearly unbearable. Rudolf’s letters to Gretha during their two-month separation in 1899 are harsh and critical. They reveal his increasing agitation over the necessity that their household—and her behavior—be impeccably European.r />
  While Rudolf enjoyed the raucous, masculine atmosphere of Medan, Gretha and the children had been thrust upon Mr. and Mrs. van Rheede in Tumpang. Van Rheede was the government comptroller of the province. According to an interview given by the van Rheedes around 1927, the arrangement was effected rather peremptorily by Rudolf. He rode up to their house at about seven one morning and, without dismounting, proceeded to announce that in a few hours his wife and children would be coming to stay with the Van Rheedes “for about a week. That is all right, isn’t it?” Indies hospitality was legendary, and although the MacLeods and van Rheedes were not especially close friends, the latter agreed, never dreaming that their guests would stay with them for more than two months. Rudolf may have felt that putting his wife into a respectable household, with little spending money, would keep her from seeing other men while he was gone.

  On March 28, after he had been in Medan about a week, Rudolf wrote to his wife, describing Medan in enthusiastic terms that were somewhat undercut by the realities he could not help but mention: “It is strange to see this city with its many multiple-storied homes and its excellent roads: electric lights, beautiful tokos [shops] that outshine those in Batavia, wonderful horses and carriages. They have had to kill 739 dogs during two days on account of rabies, but Blackie is inside the house and feels fine; and now, dear Griet, adieu! and be sure to give my regards to the van Rheedes.”

  As the “week” grew into more than a month, Gretha ran so short of money that, as Mrs. van Rheede expressed it, the situation was “becoming quite embarrassing.” Gretha’s everyday clothes were a kebaya and sarong, and even these were worn. Gretha had no money to buy new ones, much less new European garments.

  Finally, Mrs. van Rheede wrote to her sister who lived in Medan, asking her to make Rudolf aware that his wife urgently needed money. To receive such a message from an outsider must have humiliated Rudolf. What would happen to the prestige and respect he enjoyed as garrison commander if people learned he kept his wife so short of funds that distant acquaintances had to beg him to send money to her? Mrs. van Rheede apparently felt rather sorry for her guest, describing Gretha as intelligent, charming, and nice, “if a little bit frivolous.” Gretha regularly went to the local club where she was always surrounded by a crowd of admirers. But Mrs. van Rheede believed Gretha suffered primarily “from being married with a much older man, who was extremely jealous and who did not guide her along, but on the contrary was in some way her enemy.”

  On April 11, Rudolf wrote to Gretha saying: “Wire me if you need money.” It is a peculiar communication that was probably meant to be made public, because he knew she needed money and yet did not send any. On April 24, he urged again, “You know always that you do not have to worry about expenses, I will send more [money] quickly when you ask for it, but 150 guilders, that is not sufficient [for the fares?].”

  Other parts of this letter reveal the tension between Rudolf and Gretha, whom he often still called Griet. He had complained in a previous letter that she wrote too infrequently; she had replied that she was waiting for a response—a letter or money?—to her last letter. He blamed the problem on her foolishness. “You mention that ‘after having written me two letters, you are waiting for my answer from Medan.’ Come now, Griet, I bet that by now you are laughing about your stupidity. ‘To wait for an answer from Medan’—but Griet, that takes about sixteen days, and you mean to say that you intended not to write during all this time? That is really typical of you!”

  Elsewhere in the same long letter, he complained: “The thing that makes me so often inwardly complain is the fact that we absolutely never have any financial luck, and what a great many rotten things we have been obliged to do on account of all that lack of money.”

  The lack of “luck” may be an oblique reference to the fact that Rudolf was spending more money than ever on drinking, gambling, and another woman.

  His letter then turned to a certain lieutenant she had mentioned in her letter. He quizzed her jealously about his identity.

  Who is that naval lieutenant you wrote about, who photographed the children, and how did he happen to be in Tumpang? You never explain things of that sort, Griet, and you can perfectly well understand that when I read this, I start thinking, now, who is that again, and how did he get to Tumpang? It’s funny—you suddenly jump from [Norman’s] sailor suit and [Non’s] affectionate nature to that lieutenant and then I do not hear a word about him any more!…Yes Griet, just try to understand that when I rave and swear, this is caused principally because I am afraid for the children, for do not forget that our characters differ tremendously.

  In response to this, or another one of Rudolf’s rambling and insulting letters, Gretha remarked to her hostess bitterly one evening when she came in from a walk, “I wanted to be bitten by a snake tonight, so I would not have to go back to him.” She had no real alternative but to go back to Rudolf.

  When Gretha did write, Rudolf was abusive and completely dissatisfied with the quality of her correspondence. In another letter, he chastised her mercilessly:

  A puerile letter such as that of yesterday does me no good at all and if you don’t know how to write better you might as well abstain from writing…. If you knew how your silly and superficial letter irritated me yesterday, you would be ashamed…. But in the face of your stupidity you have no sense of honor, happily for you. In effect, there is not a single word that is worth the pain of reading it…. You are satisfied when you have filled a page of foolishness with your scribbles, with nothing of your interior life playing the least part…. You are too limited, too stupid and superficial to ever write an interesting letter, you can speak only of beautiful dresses, of hair-dos and other banalities, for outside of this nothing interests you and everything is strange. Do you understand now why I am always in a bloody temper because of you?

  On May 2, Rudolf still had not made the reservations for Gretha and the children to join him, probably because he could not pay the fare. He wrote her bitterly:

  I await your telegram, the money is at your disposition, but you have only to ask….

  For the love of God, think to note your expenses, because I swear to you, we do not have a lot and all the cares fall upon me, because you are not capable of identifying them [expenditures] when I ask you what this is.

  You will always have what it takes to live, but the good God must be ashamed of having created a creature without a single value like yourself. We live in a bizarre world: one of us has all the worries, must work hard and unhappily, and the other doesn’t do a thing with her ten fingers and is allowed to live without concerning herself with anyone or anything.

  But believe me, Griet, when I will have disappeared and you are the same useless creature as now, you will cry tears of blood for not having done your duty better in your life and for not having passed the precious time doing anything except dressing yourself, eating, and sleeping, and when, then, you are dragging your poor children down into your misery—but stop there. Truly, I had thought for a moment that you would have an identical reasoning to mine, and now I make myself laugh: I know better than you what I keep to myself. Upon people with no sentiment of honor, with neither refinement nor education, similar logic has no effect…. Believe me, my soul is dark and somber, when I think of the future of my poor children. Ah! If I am not there, then sail the ship [rush headlong to disaster] and après moi le déluge!

  May 2 being Non’s birthday, he added an anxious wish: “May God see that the little dear one has a happy life and that I may yet see her grow up and prosper.”

  Rudolf worried obsessively about his children because they were not with him. He knew very well how quickly an adult, much less a child, could fall ill and die in the tropics. He was also gripped by a tremendous fear that was increasingly common in the Indies: that the servants were not to be trusted with the care of the children. Unfortunately, he did not believe his wife was to be trusted with them either. He wrote:

  God knows what is going on
with Norman or little Louise [Non]…. Norman is always so exuberant and takes great risks, and good God, what will I do if he comes to harm?

  I am anxious: I know well that you do not concern yourself with these things; you give yourself airs, but you are insensible to everything. You know me, therefore you know that I am tormented at present. At last, I have nothing to do, other than wait, hope, and pray…I give myself all sorts of black ideas and I am anxious more and more. All in writing, I never stop thinking: when will it come?

  Perhaps Norman has been killed by a serpent or he has eaten poison!

  That Rudolf despised and mistrusted Gretha was obvious. His fears for his children were also based on an acute awareness that they were genuinely at risk. If Rudolf had contracted syphilis and given it to Gretha, she would have passed it to the children during childbirth. This interpretation makes sense of many of his extreme and vehement emotional responses. His extreme, almost rabid jealousy of Gretha may have been based on the fact that he believed she had caught syphilis from someone else early in their marriage. He would not want to believe she had caught it from him because he had been treated for months by doctors before their marriage. She in turn would have been deeply resentful that he had given the disease to her—a despicable act. Thus the deep cruelty and vicious anger in their marriage may have drawn its venom from their common affliction for which each blamed the other.